Chapter 11
SLOANE
The photographers had gone by the time I left the sanctuary, but I spent the entire walk to the bus stop looking over my shoulder.
On the bus, an old woman in the front row watched me the whole way, not even pretending to look elsewhere.
Two teenage boys nudged each other when I got on and one of them held up his phone and I'm pretty sure he was filming me.
Everyone knows what I did and I've never felt so unwelcome. Being famous in LA means getting good tables at restaurants. Being famous in Duster means being the woman who nearly killed Maggie Dawson's pigs.
The best the general store had to offer was a packet of sliced Monterey Jack and a box of crackers, and together they cost four dollars and twelve cents, which is the most economical meal I've ever purchased and possibly the most depressing.
I'm sitting cross-legged on my bed in my underwear.
My shorts are hanging over the shower rail, dripping onto the bathroom floor.
There's no laundromat in walking distance so I washed them in the shower with shampoo.
The receptionist told me the nearest one is in Cawley which is a forty-minute bus ride.
I also bought an eleven-dollar bottle of Chardonnay from the general store and it tastes awful. I'm drinking it out of a plastic cup from the bathroom because there are no wine glasses at the Dusty Rose Motel but after today I'd drink it out of a shoe.
Apart from my daily check-in with Officer Reeves, my probation officer, I've been avoiding my phone. But the notifications have been building and the little red badges on every app have reached numbers I didn't know were possible.
I can't put it off forever and I need to call my father about sending more clothes. I'm currently rotating between two outfits and washing one of them with shampoo. I also need to text Sita back to feel, even for a minute, like I still exist in the world I came from.
I pour another cup of wine, pick up the phone, and open Instagram first because I'm a masochist.
The damage is extensive. My follower count has gone up by almost a hundred thousand, but for all the wrong reasons. The last photo I posted — a picture of me and Tyler just before the wedding, has a ridiculous amount of comments. I scroll through the first few.
princess pigpen lmaooooo — girl you really drove into a pig farm and just LEFT — the pig that stared at her car is my spirit animal — imagine being this rich and this stupid — justice system actually did something right for once — sloane archer community service era
The memes are everywhere. Someone has edited the security footage so that the pigs escape to the soundtrack of Born Free.
Someone else has done a slow-motion version with dramatic narration, like a nature documentary: And here we see the North American swine, freed at last from captivity by an unlikely ally — a drunk socialite in eveningwear.
There's a TikTok compilation of people recreating the crash with toy cars and stuffed pigs.
There's a remix of the police bodycam audio — which I didn't even know existed — set to a beat.
Someone has turned my mugshot into a greeting card template.
Someone has put my face on a pig's body, and someone else has put a pig's face on my body.
Mostly though, it's just hateful comments.
I feel sick so I ignore my other accounts and open my messages. There are hundreds. I scroll past the acquaintances and look for the names I actually care about.
Missed calls from Mom. None from Dad.
Sita: four messages. The first one is the sooo how's jail lol that I saw the day I got out. Then: okay but seriously are you okay? and I've been reading everything and it's insane and please call me.
I text her back: I'm alive. Jail was horrible and Duster is exactly as bad as it sounds. I miss you. Will call soon.
I keep scrolling. My sister, Margot, has sent a few messages. Margot is three years older and works in corporate law in New York. She's never made a bad decision in her life, which she manages to communicate in every interaction without ever saying it directly.
Sloane. Call Mom. Dad told me about the credit cards. I think it's the right call. Don't hate me. Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Hang in there.
Then there's Tyler. Tyler Fucking Ashworth. The man whose wandering hands started this whole chain of events. It's all his fault, really. Funny that I haven't shed a single tear over him. It's mostly rage I feel toward him.
He's sent one message. Hey. Saw the news. That's rough. Hope you're okay.
I block him and call Dad. He picks up on the first ring.
"Sloane."
"Dad." My voice cracks immediately, which is not part of the plan.
The plan was to be calm and make a reasonable case for basic human necessities.
Instead, what comes out is: "It's horrible, Dad.
Everything is horrible. The motel is disgusting.
The sheets are polyester. There's no hair dryer.
I'm washing my clothes in the shower with shampoo.
The food is fried or beige or both. Everyone in town stares at me like I'm a criminal —"
"You are a criminal."
"— and the woman who runs the sanctuary hates me and the pigs are terrifying and there were photographers today. They were shouting at me and filming me and I had to hide in the kitchen."
I can hear the clink of ice in a glass, which means he's in his study with a scotch, comfortably sitting in a leather chair in a house with central air and Egyptian cotton sheets, and a refrigerator that doesn't sound like a dying lawnmower.
The injustice of this makes me want to reach through the phone and shake him.
"I need you to send some things," I say through sniffs.
"What kind of things?"
"Clothes. A hair straightener and a blow dryer.
And some decent pillows — the one here is basically a folded towel.
And sheets. Cotton sheets, Dad. High thread count.
And champagne. And maybe some sushi — you can get it delivered on ice, there are companies that do that.
And a proper coffee maker with enough pods for two months. And —"
"Sloane."
" — and some face masks, the moisturizing kind. My skin is destroyed from the sun and the dust and —"
"Sloane."
"What?"
"I'm not sending you luxury items."
"Why not?"
"Because that's not the point of this. If you need work boots or sunscreen or a decent hat, we can arrange that. But I'm not dispatching someone to drive four hours with a crate of luxuries so you can turn your motel room into a spa."
"I'm not asking for a spa. I'm asking for basic human —"
"Champagne is not a basic human need."
"It is when you're in Duster."
"No, Sloane. It isn't."
I'm crying again. I seem to cry constantly now, which is new. I barely cried before any of this, not even when Tyler took off with the bridesmaid. Duster has turned me into a person who cries at everything.
"I don't even have enough clothes," I say. "I have two pairs of shorts and I'm washing one pair every night in the shower and wearing the other pair the next day and I can't keep doing this for two months."
"Then do your laundry."
"I just told you, I am doing my laundry. In the shower. With shampoo."
"Well, I imagine you don't have much else going on in the evenings, so that works out nicely. Or buy a few more pairs of shorts at the store. You have your allowance. This is what it's for — solving problems with the resources you have, not calling me to make them go away."
I wipe my face. The wine is warm now and the cheese is sweating. Meanwhile, my father is delivering life lessons from the comfort of his own home and I want to scream.
"Can you at least send someone to pick me up on Friday? So I can come home and sleep in a real bed and eat real food and feel like a human being over the weekend?"
"You have your allowance," he says again. "If you want to come home on your days off, you can take the bus to Bakersfield and the train from there."
"The bus. And the train. Dad, that would take —"
"Several hours. I know. People who don't have a driver or the option of chartering a helicopter do it all the time, Sloane, and they manage."
"I wasn't going to say helicopter."
"You were thinking it."
Damn it. I was thinking it.
"Look. I know this is hard," he continues. "Your mother and I are only doing what's best for you. I know you can't see it now, but one day you'll thank us for this."
I highly doubt that, but I don't have the energy to argue. Nothing will change his mind.
"Your mother's out for dinner with friends but she'll be home soon, so keep your phone on. She really wants to speak to you. Goodnight, Sloane."
He hangs up and I sit there thinking about my mother.
Out for dinner with her girlfriends, which means they're at Matsuhisa on La Cienega.
She'll be sitting at their usual table by the window in one of her silk blouses, ordering the black cod miso and a glass of Sancerre, trying not to think about her own daughter's latest contribution to the family legacy.
She's asked me to join them so many times. Every few weeks — Sloane, come to dinner with us. You'd enjoy it. It'll be fun. Girls' night. Brenda's daughter is joining too. And every time I said no because I had something better to do.
What I would give to be at Matsuhisa right now. To sit in an air-conditioned restaurant with cloth napkins and a wine list. To wear something nice. Even with my mother's opinionated friends who brag about their offspring's achievements.
I peel the last slice of Monterey Jack off the packet and fold it into my mouth. I'm sitting in my underwear, eating cheese like a raccoon. If Brenda could see me now, she'd never have to brag about her daughter again. She could just point at me.