JANUARY 1999
MALDON HELPED GET EVERYTHING BACK ON TRACK. I WAS serious Nadine once more, the thespian who was just hot enough for her devotion to the craft to not be too irritating to bear.
Ruchi had proposed gathering my team for an expensive meal at a restaurant on the Santa Monica coastline on the day we were expecting to hear about the Academy Awards.
Harper had mobilized a small group around her—Kayla Alexander and Stephanie Cameron, a model and a party-girl heiress respectively.
She’d started leaning her direction in such a girl-power, yay-friendship way that my isolation was starting to come across as unfeminist. (Though, of course, that’s not a word I can say aloud now, let alone five years ago).
So Ruchi had this idea of positioning me as both a devotee of the finer things in life but also a salt-of-the-earth girl who knew the power of hard work and saw no job as beneath her and no person as unimportant. Harper could party with millionaires, but I was the actress you wanted to work for.
And indeed, she got the call while we were there, and that’s the shot—me screaming and jumping, Lana’s hand clasped in mine, Amos punching the air, Ruchi with the phone pressed to her ear and a delighted smile on her face.
Even Victor was there—who was an excellent agent because he was apart from us all, out at lunches or in his swanky office getting me roles, but in the photo he’s clapping a hand on my shoulder and beaming as I heard the news.
Best Actress.
Far better than a Supporting Actress nod.
I couldn’t wait for Harper to find out.
———
This time I pondered the idea of winning. I’d sat with it during a long, solo lunch, course after course at a divine brasserie a little farther along the Santa Monica coast. I was ravenous that day, one thought ringing in my mind: I might actually win this—it could happen.
I’d begun to worry I only wanted it to one-up Harper, that she might have buried herself so deeply within me I would have to extricate her to find my childhood hopes and dreams once more.
But the opposite was true. I was jumpy, ecstatic with energy I hadn’t felt in years, kept picking at the bronze beads of my dress because I couldn’t sit still.
And then they read my name and …
It was like everything I’d ever wanted arrayed itself before me: roles, acclaim, adoration. There wasn’t an ounce of Harper in the mix, a moment entirely without her, and I vowed to myself to cut out the noise, to refocus on the job I loved and pursued with such determination.
I didn’t want to be a better actress than Harper; I wanted to be a better actress than anyone in the whole world. I wondered if my parents were watching only briefly, and then decided I didn’t care, because this dream never belonged to them—it was mine.
I cried the moment I stepped offstage and the Maldon cast rushed to hug me—though Sasha couldn’t make it because she was filming in Phuket. They were genuinely happy for me. And with the trophy tight in my hand, wrapped in their embrace, I didn’t feel half as alone as I did most of the time.
———
I met with Victor the next day, pushing past the hangover with renewed vigor.
“I deal in dreams, Heywood. You got your Oscar. What’s next?”
What indeed? I’d been so focused on potential award winners—arthouse films and big-budget dramas. Now I could put my attention elsewhere.
“I want something stupidly commercial,” I decided. I wanted mass-market, butts in seats, something that centered around fun. I wanted to give people a good time.
(And though it wasn’t the only reason, I’ll admit it did cross my mind: I’d beat Harper in the awards. Now I wanted to do it in the box office.)
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I went to so many auditions. A lot of those sorts of casting people didn’t see me as a fit for roles like the ones I was trying out for.
But I could do it. I wanted charm and charisma.
I wanted to rebrand, I suppose, as someone who cared about the art of it all, yes, but someone who thought that art was expansive and available to everyone, not limited to those who could sit through a three-hour-long speculative “masterpiece.”
“It’s a no on Beast Hunt,” Victor told me after my latest.
“That’s the third no this week,” I groaned. Beast Hunt was a seven-book series for kids, and I’d read every tedious one of them. What a waste of my time.
Worse, it was Harper’s voice in my head, in the woods, telling me that working for it doesn’t mean I deserve it. That there’s a point where hard work doesn’t make up for a lack of talent …
“It’s a new direction for you,” Victor said—but there was a strain there that told me it wasn’t the whole story.
“And?”
He groaned. “Look, it’s just rumors I’ve heard. But apparently some of the big funders of those sorts of franchises don’t want you in the pictures. They think you’re bad press waiting to happen.”
“What?” How was that even possible? My spat with Harper was superficial, and the car crash was the only bad press I’d had since my breakup with Oisín.
“The investors aren’t in the arts, Nadine. They’re businessmen. They’re contemporaries of …”
“Of?”
“Of Declan Moore.”
Harper’s father. I pulled the phone away from my ear, staring at the hunk of plastic. This was new. It had to be, otherwise I wouldn’t have got this far.
Which meant this was Harper’s response to me winning the Oscar.
Oh, that bitch. And me—so very stupid to think the worst she’d do in retaliation was that SNL sketch mocking my apparently desperate need to win awards. Was it not enough to go on national TV and imitate me while shaking manuscripts and screaming: “Will this get me a trophy?”
No, she was trying to blacklist me from roles.
She’d broken whatever line we’d drawn of what we would and wouldn’t do to each other. I thanked Victor and got Lana on the phone.
“Send Harper a bouquet of tansy. I have war to declare.”
———
I couldn’t bring Ruchi into this, not like I had with the spinning rumor mill.
Not when the things I was currently considering for Harper included hiding stolen possessions on her and tipping off the police or spiking her and letting her drive under the influence.
Though both of those would involve me doing something illegal in the first instance and, in the case of the latter, putting others at risk.
For now, I decided to follow in her footsteps—literally. I hired a private investigator.
It didn’t take long for a scandal to present itself.
“She’s cheating on that guy she’s seeing,” he said, sending over pictures. I’d gone through Lana, but I think he suspected I was his real employer. Our rivalry was not subtle.
Harper was supposedly dating her costar Ralph Gaunt. But here were pictures with her and Abel Griffin, lead singer of The Different. The only issue is, the pictures were too dark, the exposure low. There was deniability.
Something in this scandal pleased me greatly, and I think it was the fact she had based our whole rivalry off an accusation of cheating. Well, well. Time to expose her for the hypocrite she was.
Harper had to suspect, just as I did, people stalking her movements. But the paparazzi left it at observation. I could go further. I could set a trap.
I’ll admit I became obsessive. I researched Abel, read his every interview, found out he was an avid astronomer.
There was a hill he ventured to often and some lunar event that, if I knew men as I thought I did, I was certain he’d consider the perfect romantic thing to bring Harper to so he could explain it all to her, the sky above and its movements through his intellect.
Such a shame about the car park installing floodlights—there’d been complaints, apparently, and a sudden donation to get it fixed. Such especially bad luck for them to flick on just as my investigator took that shot of them making out in his car.
Not my finest work, I’ll admit, but I was just getting started with truly getting my hands dirty.
Harper was in my driveway a few hours after the news broke.
“You know Ralph and I are just for promo, right? We aren’t actually dating?”
“Apparently. How’s explaining that going down with the public?”
“I don’t care about them; I care about you.
” She stepped a little closer. Still an expanse between us, but I thought of CADS and the way she’d got so close I could feel her breath on my skin.
If she tried that again I wasn’t sure I’d be able to resist the temptation of that space, felt my hands itching to reach for her, her soft satin shirt beneath my palms as I pushed her back.
“You can spread whatever stories you want about me—they kind of fit with the brand. Fun, messy Harper. Nothing compared to what the right dirt on you could achieve.”
I arched a brow. “Good thing I’m spotless then.”
Harper laughed, aggressively. “Oh darling, we both know that’s not true.”
———
I started filming Starborn a few weeks later—the first commercial project I’d taken since Double Down.
But this was more than I could hope for.
Penelope Lutz, an up-and-coming female director was at the helm.
(Yes, my first time with a woman directing—god, what a difference that made.) And I was starring opposite Caleb Krause, who was interested in a similar rebrand, away from the comedic relief to the hero of the hour.
If the film landed, it would be an entire franchise.
I would have merchandise. There would be dolls creepy nerds would keep in boxes to ensure mint condition.
It was an exciting prospect.
I’d spent those weeks preparing for the role—my ever-rigorous training schedule adjusted so its focus was not on an absence of weight but in building muscle.
Finally, here we were, filming in the Arizona sands in the hope it emulated an alien planet.
And it felt isolated, the middle of nowhere, our hotels a good hour drive away so that I felt zombie-like on that morning, in late September, with the early morning haze still lingering.
We were just two weeks into filming.