Fake Plastic Girl Read online

  I hurried to the door and struggled to steady my hands as I fidgeted with the chain bolt. When I finally got it off the hook, the cops pushed the door open, sending me stumbling backward. Two policemen stood before me, one burly and tan, the other a little bit older with a graying goatee and receding hairline.

  “Justine Childs?” the burly one asked.

  “Yes?” My chest tightened. The two men loomed over me, their stiff uniforms marking them unmistakably as the couriers of bad news.

  “We’re going to have to take you down to the station for questioning. You’ll need a guardian present. Is there someone you can call?”

  I stared, blinking dumbly, the word guardian undulating like a jellyfish in my mind.

  “Miss Childs?” the older one asked.

  “Oh, um, sorry. Yes. But … can I … can I ask … what this is about?”

  “It’s about Eva-Kate Kelly,” the burly one explained, cold and blunt. “We believe you were close?”

  “Eva-Kate? Is she okay?” I asked, though I knew the answer. If she were okay, they wouldn’t be standing here.

  “No, Miss Childs,” he said, clearing his throat. “She’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 25

  HUMAN AFTER ALL

  They found her body floating in the canal with a fatal knife wound on her left side, just below her rib cage. I thought it would take a lot more to kill a force like Eva-Kate Kelly, but it turned out she was only human after all.

  I thought her death would be the end, but in so many ways it was only the beginning. My Instagram following went up to the millions: 1.4 million, then 4 million, then 11. I couldn’t go outside without facing the dazzling assault of paparazzi flashbulbs. They lit the canal from across the bridge day and night.

  My mom was home and I was trapped there with her. She refused to let me outside and said it was for my own good. Twice, while she was asleep, I was able to get out and have a cigarette in the alley behind the house. The cameras caught me both times, a ghost-white deer in the headlights, startled stiff. Later they’d call me cold, they’d wonder if I was heartless, they’d say I didn’t look sad enough about Eva-Kate’s death, they’d say I looked numb, like a girl who didn’t care.

  But listen carefully when I tell you that, despite what you’ll hear, those first days after Eva-Kate’s death were the scariest of my life. The room they questioned me in was cold and lit by panels of overhead fluorescents that flickered off and on, buzzing, snapping, flooding the room with acid-white light I thought I’d drown in. I swiveled wildly between denial and despair. The memory of her haunted me—her soft lips and sharp tongue, her grace and indecency, her affectation and desperation. The memory of her was still so alive that sometimes I thought I could reach out and wrap my arms around it. But she was gone, and I was free-falling.

  I forgave her for lying to me and I minimized the lie. I made it romantic in my mind. I spent my time wondering what we could have become, wondering about the deep trove of information I’d found in my mom’s office, wondering when I’d confront her about it, wondering what Taylor Swift would do right now if she were me. #WhatWouldTaylorSwiftDo? #WWTSD?

  She’d write about it, that’s what she’d do.

  And I knew that was what I had to do if I wanted to keep my head above water. If I wanted to stay sane, I’d have to get it all on paper, where it couldn’t swallow me up.

  If I wanted to stay sane, I was going to have to tell the story, and if I was going to tell the story, I would have to start at the beginning, and so I began:

  Eva-Kate Kelly.

  Is this story really about a person with three first names? Could anything be more tedious than a person with three first names? I know you, I can imagine you rolling your eyes thinking you’re too good for a girl with three first names, let alone an entire story about a girl with three first names, but the truth is most likely that no matter who you are and no matter how hard you’re capable of rolling your eyes, Eva-Kate Kelly would love that you think you’re too good for her and her three first names, she would revel in the few short moments it took her to prove you wrong, she would chew you up and she would spit you out, she would impale you with the fire-green lasers that were her eyes, stare into you and then through you, so that you’d wonder if you ever existed at all. It would take you months to recover and you’d never really be the same again. That was the Eva-Kate I first came to know, anyway.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without help from my family, friends, and incredible support team.

  Thank you to my parents, Caron and Mark, for encouraging me to live a creative life and supporting me in my writing dreams. For the record, they are (almost) nothing like the parents in the novel you just read. Thank you to my sister, Natasha, for believing in me and for being the official style and home decor consultant on this project.

  Thank you to my editor, Kate Farrell, for understanding this story even better than I do, my agent Richard Abate, who has been an advocate of this book from day one, and Melissa de la Cruz, whose magic touch brought it all to life.

  The following people have been by my side on the journey of writing my first novel, and for that I am eternally grateful: Jenny Bailey, Hannah Denyer, Omar Doom, Quinn Falconer, Brad Kaiserman, Kasey Koop, Kathleen Koster, Liana Maeby, Amanda Montell, B. J. Novak, Cindy Post, Emily Robinson, Sophia Rossi, Arpy Sarkissian, Ali Segel, Kellen Solano, Cameron Solano, Scarlett Solano, Robert Wieder, and a very special thank you to Jason Solano, who was with me in the trenches from beginning to end.

  Thank you to Abby Frucht, Ellen Lesser, Francesca Lia Block, Sarah Maclay, Clint McCown, and Domenic Stansberry for their guidance and inspiration.

  Lastly, thank you to my grandma Ellie and nana Doreen, who this book is dedicated to because of the nature of their belief in me, which was unconditional and life-changing.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Zara Lisbon is a writer of fiction and poetry, and has an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She grew up in Venice, California, and now lives in Los Angeles. Fake Plastic Girl is her first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Chapter 1. The Body in the Canal

  Chapter 2. Dangerous, Devious, Deviant

  Chapter 3. Fearless

  Chapter 4. Fame and Anonymity

  Chapter 5. Femme Fatale

  Chapter 6. Larger than Life

  Chapter 7. I Don’t Believe It!

  Chapter 8. Dgaf

  Chapter 9. Silver Lips

  Chapter 10. Whiplash Girl Child

  Chapter 11. Songs

  Chapter 12. Squad

  Chapter 13. Imitations and Knockoffs

  Chapter 14. Getting the Hell out of Here is Priceless

  Chapter 15. We Were the Knife

  Chapter 16. Sex and Candy

  Chapter 17. Fifty Shades of Hair Dye

  Chapter 18. Red Vines and a Cigarette

  Chapter 19. Emotional Support Girl

  Chapter 20. Baby’s First Paycheck

  Chapter 21. Lost Cause

  Chapter 22. Evelyn Kathleen

  Chapter 23. Transference

  Chapter 24. So Help Me God

  Chapter 25. Human After All

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by Spilled Ink, Inc.

  Henry Holt and Company, LLC

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018945020

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  First hardcover edition 2019

  eBook edition 2019

  eISBN 9781250156303