Chapter 30
Ramona’s fired a lot of people over the course of her life. Producers, lawyers, private chefs, that on-call tarot card reader the year she got really into mysticism. Her parents.
So when she calls her publicist to let her go, she isn’t nervous. In fact, she’s almost gleeful.
“Petra, hi,” she says once the assistant finally puts her through, after keeping her on hold a frankly inhumane length of time.
“Ramona! I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” Petra says, which explains why Ramona has precisely zero emails and missed calls from her. “Looks like the Zander Parrish news is dead and buried. I told you it would disappear—she was just a costumer.”
Just.
As though because the accuser was crew and not cast, not someone with their name on a marquee, her safety didn’t matter.
“That’s only part of why I’m calling,” Ramona says, calm and collected as she fills a glass of sparkling water in her kitchen.
And then, without sharing any of the details, she tells Petra her plan to go public with a statement.
The conviction that only crystallized for her while at the cabin with Nick.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Petra presses. “Is it really worth ruining his career over something you barely remember?”
“I’m sure,” Ramona says crisply. “But I don’t need your help anymore, if you could call it that. Our professional relationship is over.”
Truthfully, she should have fired her during that first meeting they had about Zander.
Then she calls Arlie, a long-overdue response to her text. Schedules a coffee date and tells her everything, rightfully assuming she’ll want to sever her own connection to the publicist.
And if losing Ramona is barely a blow to Petra’s agency, losing Arlie J certainly is.
After that, with the help of a criminal justice professor Nick is friends with, she decides to go directly through law enforcement.
The statute of limitations in California is ten years, and maybe there won’t be evidence for the case, but with her testimony and the costumer’s, maybe there can be some consequences for Zander.
If not legally, then at least for his career.
For a while, she hasn’t known how to reconcile protecting girls she’s never met with protecting herself.
Because it’s true that coming forward will likely mean putting herself back in the spotlight.
But of all the horrible things she’s endured during her career, the men leering at her and the vile comments and the invasions of privacy—the abuse—this is one thing she can fight back against.
She thought she wanted to be done with that part of her life.
What she actually wants is justice.
Two weeks into winter quarter, Ramona sits in the waiting room of the detective’s office. She’s wearing a suit even though she probably doesn’t have to, distracted by a wrinkle in the hem of her jacket.
Nick offered to come with her, and after a brief internal debate, she said yes.
She’s not sure how wobbly she’ll be afterward, although she hopes she can be strong.
Once upon a time, she would have thought she’d need to do this alone.
That having someone next to her might mean she’s weak, incapable of independence.
But she can regain control of her life with someone who loves her sitting right next to her.
“No matter what happens,” he says, giving her hand a squeeze, “I’m so fucking proud of you.”
She squeezes back. Whispers, “Thank you.”
“Ramona?” A detective offers her a kind smile. “We’re ready for you.”
—
With a flourish, Arlie J presents the most impressive charcuterie board Ramona has ever seen: at least a dozen types of cheese, feather-thin slices of cured meat, a rainbow of gorgeously cut fruit.
“I know, I know,” she says, giving Ramona and Betty a grimace as she sets it on her pristine glass coffee table, “I went a little overboard. I just rarely have time to host, so I wanted to do something special.”
Ramona snags a cracker and a hunk of Brie. “It looks incredible. Thank you.”
Betty nods her agreement, reaching for a piece of prosciutto while Ramona pours from a fancy bottle of nonalcoholic wine.
When Arlie invited Ramona over for a girls’ night, she didn’t quite know what to make of it. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever had a girls’ night with anyone but her mother, aside from what they called the prime-time block of female-focused programming that Greta Life! was part of.
In fact, she only knows Betty because of Arlie—she was the one who recommended her.
“Catch me up on everything before I have to go back on tour next month,” Arlie says after grabbing a plate for herself. Her curls are piled high on top of her head. “Betty, what’s going on with the van-gym? Gym-van?”
“Almost ready to go,” Betty says, kissing her index and middle fingers and tapping them to her bicep. “Just waiting on some last pieces of equipment, and then I’m officially done with my gym lease.”
“Fuck yes,” Arlie says. “Toning ass and taking names.”
“Spilling the secret of how we all got such slammin’ bods.”
Betty nudges her. “Ramona, bug, have you ever heard someone actually utter the words ‘slammin’ bod’?”
Ramona makes herself look innocent, takes a sip of nonalcoholic wine. “Oh, is that not how I should be promoting your services to prospective clients?”
She sprawls back on Arlie’s couch, wondering how she spent so many years without this kind of camaraderie. She’s determined to make up for as much of them as she can.
Arlie turns to Ramona. “And not that there’s an elegant segue for this…but I read about Zander’s show in Deadline.”
Ramona holds her glass steady. Doesn’t tremble.
When she gave her statement last week, she told the detectives everything she remembered about the first time she had sex with Zander Parrish.
How she’d told him to stop, and all the times afterward when she hadn’t given explicit consent.
When she emerged from the room after two hours, Nick was still there, telling her once again how proud he was.
The headlines alone would have been reason enough for her to lie low, hibernate a little. Instead she decided that whatever anyone posted about her was their problem, not hers.
She knows she’s not done talking about it. That this is only the beginning, when it was supposed to be an ending.
“Canceled before the first season finished airing,” Ramona says with a shake of her head. “Brutal.”
Betty squeezes her shoulder. “You did an important thing. A hard thing, but an important thing.”
What’s most surprising about it all is that a few days after her accusation hit the news, she got an email from her father, confirming DeeAnn was the anonymous source who gushed about Ramona’s relationship with Zander in that Variety piece, which could have sparked a whole new level of fury.
Instead, she finally blocked her mother’s number. She should have done it ages ago.
She’s getting better at looking at herself in the mirror and not hearing her mother’s voice. Seeing herself in photos and not imagining DeeAnn zeroing in on her stomach or her thighs. Because in nearly every shot, she looks so radiantly happy—especially the ones with Nick in them, too.
Every day since her retirement has been an exercise in letting go. She’s had to grieve someone who’s still alive, gradually accepting that her mother will not, cannot, be the person she wants her to be.
Your mother and I are taking some time apart, Beck wrote in his email. I know you have no reason to say yes to this, but if you ever want to sit down and have some coffee, just say the word.
For most of Ramona’s life, Beck Wilder has been content letting DeeAnn hold the reins. Evidently, not anymore.
She hasn’t said the word yet. She’s not sure she will, but the fact that there’s an opening makes her feel more at peace than she thought it would.
“All of it’s made me wish I could do…more, I guess.” Ramona motions to Arlie. “I think about the girls like you and me who grew up in the spotlight, and how distorted my own body image was for so long. I didn’t have any of the right language to talk about sex.”
Arlie gives her a grim look. “Yeah, pretty sure I learned what it was by overhearing the guys in my band talk about their own sex lives.”
“When you’re not in regular school, you’re most likely not getting any sex ed in the on-set classroom,” Ramona continues.
“And maybe not through homeschooling, either. So I just started taking business classes, and I’ve been thinking of trying to start some kind of sex ed for kids in the entertainment industry. ”
“That sounds amazing,” Betty says, and Ramona’s relieved when Arlie echoes her enthusiasm. “You’d be so good at it, too. Kids respect you.”
The idea is still just an early spark, but if she really thinks about it, this topic has underscored so much of her life. She doesn’t know yet what it’ll look like, or if she even has the skills to coordinate it.
But fuck it—she wants to use her privilege for something good.
When Betty slips away to use the bathroom, Ramona pulls her legs on the couch and turns to Arlie.
“You’ve been really lovely to me,” she says. “Ever since we ran into each other at the office of former publicist name redacted.”
“I’m…sorry?” Arlie says with a laugh. “Why are you saying that like an accusation?”
Now it’s Ramona’s turn to laugh. “No, no. I guess…I haven’t known why you want to spend time with me. And it’s not that I’m not enjoying it, because I am. But I’m not an idiot. I know we’re in pretty different places from when we first met. I’m not exactly helping your career anymore.”
Arlie takes a few moments to process this. “Is there a rule that I can only spend time with people who further my career?” She places her hands on Ramona’s shoulders, stares her straight in the eyes. “Ramona. I say this with love: you being famous is the least interesting thing about you.”
And after all of this, she supposes it is.
—
That evening, Ramona tiptoes into her memorabilia room for the first time since she gave Nick that tour of her house.
The lacquered bodies of her guitars seem to mock her as she sits down on the floor, starting a pile of things to donate.
Not everything—she wants to remember the good parts, because of course there were good parts.
Parts she’s grateful for and parts she still can’t believe and parts that made her the person she is today.
But there are people out there who would love these things so much more than she does.
Once she’s tired of sorting, she gazes back up at her guitars.
When she started learning, she hated it at first. Her hands were too small for the F or B minor barre chords, and it hurt to stretch her fingers that way.
But slowly, she grew to like the way she could turn noise into music.
Or music into noise, depending on which critic you asked.
She reaches out to strum a cherry Epiphone, expecting the chord to strike some profound note deep in her soul—only for it to sound discordant, because of course it’s still out of tune.
So she takes it off the wall and tunes it by ear. Grabs a pick. She gives it a slow strum, her fingers settling into the frets. A G chord. Then a D. An A, and then back to D.
The opening chords of “Wildflowers.”
Softly, she hums along, messing up more than a few times, not forcing herself to start over when she skips a whole verse.
She still doesn’t want to make music for anyone else—that hasn’t changed.
But maybe she could make some for herself.