Extracurricular

Chapter 8

Ramona hates to be a cliché, going shopping to self-soothe, but fuck it.

She likes pretty, expensive things, and even if she usually prefers trying them on in the privacy of her own home after they’ve been delivered in a nondescript cardboard box, the siren song of owning something lovely right now is just too tempting.

Quit, urges the voice in the back of her mind. Just quit. Let this dream die and move on to something else.

And maybe she will. She could dive headfirst back into the nothingness she’s wrapped herself up in for the past half year.

Or maybe this really could be a break, the way everyone suggested, and she can get back to music after all.

Even if recording another song sounds about as appealing as being tied to a chair, forced to listen to a three-hour lecture from Professor Nick Navarro.

What does UCLA hold for her, really? Four years of suspicion and judgment? Four years of people not taking her seriously?

Maybe her parents were right.

“Looking for anything in particular?” the jewelry store salesgirl asks, with a suppressed smugness that implies she knows exactly who Ramona is but has enough tact to keep quiet about it.

“Just browsing, thanks.”

The upscale mall is less than ten minutes from campus, and though she’d typically avoid public outings like this, she keeps her sunglasses on and peeks into shops to check which ones are empty before going inside.

Ramona picks up a diamond tennis bracelet she doesn’t need. Lab grown, so that means it’s ethical, right? Technically she’s a good person if she buys this. She smiles at the hovering salesgirl and points to the bracelet, then flashes her black Amex without looking at the price tag.

It’s a luxury, she knows, not to worry about money.

The first decade of her life was marked by scarcity—groceries from the dollar store, clothes from Goodwill or rummage sales, tepid showers.

A warm bath only every other week as a treat.

Surely it was normal for the electricity to get cut off sometimes when her parents couldn’t pay the bill; that must happen to everyone.

When she started booking jobs and her family could afford to go out to eat, Beck and DeeAnn treated her like it was her birthday, Christmas, and Hanukkah combined.

“Go ahead, take a look,” her mother would say with twinkle in her eye when the server asked if they’d like to see the dessert menu.

“You earned it.” That was before the extra calories made it off-limits.

Ramona was her family’s ticket out of poverty, and it took her years to realize that was never her responsibility.

She shouldn’t have had to go to work as a child to provide for them.

Yet that’s exactly what she did, and until she was old enough to understand, she loved it.

From a young age, she tried to be smart about money.

The parts of her paychecks that didn’t go into her Coogan Account or get funneled toward voice or guitar lessons, she saved, vowing that she’d never let any of them go back to that Lancaster apartment, explaining to her skeptical friends that yes, the Dollar Tree did sell food and no, it wasn’t that bad.

Then she booked Greta and DeeAnn started dressing like a Real Housewife and suddenly they could afford to gift her agent a Rolex for Christmas, and Ramona realized something else: the distinction between comfort and excess.

She tucks the bracelet into her oversized Miu Miu tote and heads back into the mall, vowing to buy only lab-grown diamonds from now on, though she imagines what would really make her feel better is only buying what she needs. Starting tomorrow.

“Oh my god, Ramona? Ramona Wilder?”

The words are punctuated by the squeals of a dozen preteen girls streaming from one of those build-a-whatever party shops. There are neon clip-on extensions in their hair, sparkles smeared on their cheeks.

Ramona freezes as the girls approach, reaches for her sunglasses only to realize they’re perched on top of her head. No. Oh god no.

She lifts a hand in an awkward hello as her stomach drops to her feet. “Hey there.”

“I love you so much!”

“You’re my favorite singer!”

“This is the best birthday ever!” one of them, ostensibly the birthday girl, yells out. Then she bursts into tears.

Ramona clutches her bag tighter and urges herself to breathe. This is what she gets for going shopping midafternoon in Century City instead of in the middle of the night on her phone.

The adults look on with mildly amused expressions. “Give her some space, girls,” a mother calls, halfhearted, her face buried in an iPad.

“Can we take a picture?” one of the girls asks, and twelve bejeweled phones are shoved in her direction.

“I—” Ramona tries, but the rest of the sentence dies in her throat. What’s she going to say—that she’s in a hurry? That she doesn’t do that anymore, and leave them with a terrible story about the time they met their idol?

She knows these girls. They came to her concerts, they wear her merch, they buy her albums on vinyl even when they can stream them for free.

She’s always held so much affection for them, the girls who are so unashamed about what they love, even when that thing is bubblegum pink and stomping around in combat boots.

alwaysgonnadisappoint

nevermakeanyonehappy

Here in front of these girls, she has to perform. She has to be that person they love, the one they put on a pedestal. The singer suffocating under the invisible, impossible weight of expectation.

They’ll compare photos afterward, maybe remark that she looks different than she used to, the way the tabloids did a few months after her retirement.

DeeAnn had texted her when those first photos hit the internet, telling her daughter she hoped they’d just caught her at a bad angle.

I’m only saying this out of love, because it’s going to be so much harder to get back to a healthy weight if you decide to come back.

With a shaky hand, Ramona reaches for one of the phones, crouches down, and holds out her arm for a selfie with the much shorter girl. Her smile feels like plastic.

“Did you really retire?” a girl with blond pigtails asks.

“Is there going to be a Greta Life! reboot?” asks one with a smudge of blue sparkles on her nose.

Ramona’s heartbeat pounds in her ears, her lungs tight.

She has to be smiling.

She has to be charming.

She has to be perfect.

“Excuse me, sorry, I just—I have to—”

And she backs away from the crowd, escaping down a narrow corridor.

—

Five things she can see …

The hexagon-tiled floor. The toilet. A Dyson hand dryer. A bronze trash can and a dwindling roll of toilet paper.

Four things she can touch…

Her forehead to the cold wall. Her knees on the floor she hopes was recently cleaned. The ends of her hair. The handle of her purse.

Three things she can hear—or is it smell?

She can’t even have a panic attack correctly.

“Couldn’t have just smiled and posed for a few pictures,” she mutters, suddenly full of self-loathing.

“Would that really have been so fucking hard?” Those girls and so many others like them—they’re the reason she has this career.

The reason she has the privilege to break down in a bathroom in the middle of the day.

She should have left LA. She should have moved to a farm in Montana, fallen for a moody cowboy, and learned to ride horses, even though they scare the shit out of her.

One bad experience with the music video for “Regret Me”—a horse named Houdini the director swore wouldn’t buck but reared up the moment she was on his back—was enough to put her off them for life.

What she really needs right now, what she craves, is other people.

Not that gaggle of glitter-soaked girls and not any of her new classmates, but people who truly, deeply know her.

She considers herself a bit of a black cat in that she’s never had many close relationships, and while she’s not exactly seeking out a massive friend group, just a handful of people who don’t hate her would be nice.

People who care if she’s locked herself in a bathroom at a Westfield shopping mall because she’s not sure she can make it to her car without tripping and/or throwing up.

And yet this life she’s created for herself has loneliness threaded into it.

That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To be free from all the expectation?

Every night of her tour, a whole team made sure she looked flawless. Even if she was lonely then, at least people wanted to be around her. Yet she gave it all up, certain she’d be happier without it.

Maybe only now is she seeing it for the foolish, shortsighted decision that it was.

She takes out her phone and hovers over her therapist’s contact before remembering she’s on vacation this week.

“But of course, call if you need me,” Emily said at the end of their last session, but Ramona doesn’t want to be that person disturbing her while she’s lying on a beach somewhere.

So she scrolls to Betty. Texts, then calls, getting her voicemail.

She’s probably with a client because damn her, she’s successful, and she should be; she deserves it.

Still, Ramona calls again, gets the chirpy Hey, babes, it’s Betty, please only leave a message if this is important! Hangs up. Tries to breathe.

She has no idea who to call next. Not Petra, who sent Ramona a couple follow-up emails asking if she’s sure she doesn’t have a statement.

Not her parents, though her thumb lingers over DeeAnn Wilder longer than she’d like.

She saw in Variety that they’ve taken on a few new clients, other young musicians trying to make a name for themselves amid all the noise.

She wonders if they’re as hard on them as they were on her.

If they’ll send her some generic Chrismukkah card this year.

If they miss her.

Because not every memory of them is tinged with darkness.

There was Ramona’s first period, when DeeAnn sprang into action and told the Greta producers Ramona was sick, and instead took her out for lunch just us girls, followed by a mani-pedi and a tearful conversation about how Ramona was growing up so fast. The way they celebrated when they got news of each season renewal: a low-carb cupcake with the number of the season written in icing.

Lighting a single candle and telling Ramona to wish for something wonderful.

DeeAnn singing Ramona’s songs to herself, hilariously off-key, only singing louder and more off-key when Ramona caught her, the two of them dissolving into laughter.

Her parents always viewed her industry friends as competition, preventing any kind of real bond from growing.

Sure, she’d go out with other singers sometimes, a group of them causing a frenzy at whatever club or restaurant they wound up at.

She craved those moments of camaraderie, as brief as they were, because she knew they were fleeting.

Superficial connections in a superficial life.

So she has fans but not friends, parasocial relationships that trick her into thinking people really know her. And now she’s desperate for human contact but has no humans to actually contact.

In a moment of weakness, like an addict who just can’t kick the habit, she hits call on DeeAnn’s name.

It only takes one ring for her to come to her senses, heart racing and thumb fumbling to hang up. No no no. She’s not talking to her mother right now. She presses her forehead to the wall again—as the phone starts buzzing in her hand.

DeeAnn’s calling her back.

“Fuck. Fuck.” Ramona doesn’t pick up, can’t pick up, can’t fathom hearing her mother’s voice after all these months, even when part of her craves the long-ago comfort of it. DeeAnn calls again, and again, and Ramona just sends her to voicemail.

Now the panic crushes her lungs tighter. Turns her light-headed. She imagines all the judgment DeeAnn would have for her current life. The criticism disguised as friendly advice.

shouldhavelistenedtoher

nevergonnabehappy

neverdeservetobe

Five things she can see…

Her shaking hands. The bulge of her stomach that didn’t use to be there.

nevergettingbetter

sofuckingweak

Then, somehow, a low voice cuts through the static.

I care about all my students.

She’s not sure why Nick Navarro suddenly takes up residence in her mind—except that he’d sounded like he meant it.

She imagines him bent over the desk in his office, brow furrowed, red pen slicing its way through pop quizzes.

Wrinkle in his sweater-vest, full bottom lip between his teeth.

She’s pretty sure the psychology professor despises her, and the feeling is mostly mutual.

But his name was on that DD list, and she must be truly pathetic, because the next thing she knows, she’s pulling up their email chain.

His phone number is in his signature.

God, is that a landline, an office phone? Ramona hovers over it for a few moments, and before she can lose her nerve, she swallows back all her pride and hits call. Hoping he’s still at work while also hoping he isn’t.

Her heart hammers as it rings. And rings.

And goes to voicemail.

A wave of relief. He’s probably gone home for the day, back to the sweet girl in the photo and his maybe-wife, and all of them can laugh about how Ramona flunked that quiz.

Except then the tone sounds to leave a message. And she is inexplicably opening her mouth.

“Hi, uh—Professor Navarro. Nick. I know this is going to sound completely crazy, but I guess that’s sort of how I’m feeling at the moment,” she says around a shaky laugh.

She’s still dizzy, still struggling to take a full breath.

“This is Ramona. Wilder. From your psych class. I’m at Westfield Century City, and I’m sort of having a breakdown? ”

There’s a stretch of silence during which the reality dawns on her that she is leaving an actual voicemail for her actual professor, and she squeezes her eyes shut as she keeps talking.

“Maybe you can play this to the rest of your students and everyone can try to diagnose me. Um, that was a joke. Ha. I’m just…

not sure I can make it to my car to get myself home.

This happens sometimes but it hasn’t happened for a while and I saw your name on that faculty ride thing, and UCLA isn’t that far away, and I—I didn’t have anyone else to call.

“Uh, if you get this…I’m in the first-floor gender-neutral bathroom near Kate Spade. And if this is crossing some kind of student-professor line, please just pretend you never heard it, because this is definitely the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Okay. Bye.”

She drops her phone to the hexagonal tiles, debates setting it and herself on fire, and thunks her forehead against the wall. If this is what desperation feels like, she is really not a fan.

Deep breaths. Some cool water on her face.

Fifteen minutes later, there’s an urgent knock on the door.

“Occupied!” she yells out. “There’s another bathroom near the Sephora!”

A pause, and then: “Wilder?”