Fake Plastic Girl Read online

  9.  I’m fourteen years old and a friend of a friend is dating Reese Witherspoon’s daughter. We’re at the mall and Reese picks us up in her Range Rover. I have her drop me off down the block so nobody will see the tiny house I live in.

  10.  I’m fifteen years old and it’s summer and I get a job at a ritzy horse-riding camp in Malibu where Taylor Swift keeps a horse. Everything is “Taylor this” and “Taylor that.” She’s all they can talk about. It drives me crazy.

  Get the idea? Great.

  Okay, so, back to the last day of tenth grade.

  Sorry to skip ahead so abruptly like that; I know I’m not the most graceful of storytellers. Of course I’d like to write this novel as seamlessly as the greats are able to, jumping elegantly across time periods and tenses, making elaborate choices of style and structure, holding the plot tightly by its reins. But this is the first book I’ve ever written, and so I will by no means have the plot by its reins. This plot won’t even have reins. It will have seams, and you will see them.

  But anyway, it was the last day of tenth grade and we were sitting on The Hill—Maddie, Abbie, Riley, and me—eating lunch. We weren’t actually eating lunch (we ate lunch after school at Cafe 50’s), but it was lunch break and everyone was dispersed across campus in their designated lunch-eating territories. The Hill was ours. It was prime real estate—we got to look down on the Hot Topic Punks who sat on the brick steps and the school-spirited popular kids who gathered around blue picnic benches in the science quad—but the real estate was worth nothing in my mind, because if we were actually cool we’d be “eating lunch” off campus, where the non-school-spirited popular kids went. The kids with parents laid-back enough to sign off-campus permission slips, and the kids deviously capable enough to forge their parents’ signatures. My parents would have signed the slip, but what good would it do me if all my friends were stuck on the wrong side of the fence? The sad thing is, in their minds they weren’t stuck; they wanted to stay on campus during lunch. Or so they said. Stockholm syndrome, IMHO.

  “Should we leave?” I asked the group, tiredly gazing at the front gate, which was currently unguarded by the normal glorified janitors who stood there like medieval goblins and barked at anyone trying to leave without an off-campus pass.

  “We can’t,” Riley said, clearly confused by my suggestion. “We have two more classes left.” Riley I’d known since fifth grade. We saw everything eye to eye, once upon a time. She was a redhead with unruly freckles and what people like to call a “free spirit.” Out of the two of our spirits, hers had always been the freer one, anyone would have told you that. But as tenth grade came to a close I felt that despite its freedom, her spirit lacked imagination. Her idea of an adventure was taking the bus east on Wilshire to an all-hours café that permitted indoor smoking, playing board games with strangers until four in the morning.

  “Yeah, but how much could we possibly miss? I mean, really. It’s literally the last day, you know they’re just gonna put on some Civil War documentary and call it a lesson.”

  “My fifth period is marine biology,” said Abbie. “Mr. Cameron isn’t going to be putting on any Civil War documentary.” Of everyone in our group, Abbie was my least favorite. She was the kind of girl who denied getting her eyebrows shaped despite their obvious, unnatural perfection, the kind of girl who loved Taylor Swift but pretended not to.

  “Okay, even better,” I tried. “He’ll probably put on, like, what? Finding Nemo?”

  Riley giggled.

  “If you’re caught ditching class it goes on your permanent record,” Maddie reminded us. “Colleges can see it.” She took a chewed-up piece of Winterfresh gum from her mouth, stuck it into a silver wrapper, and rolled it into a tight ball. Then, with French-tipped nails, she unwrapped two new sticks. She was a chain gum-chewer, she didn’t go anywhere without at least two packs of Winterfresh. And she always chewed two sticks at a time; if she ended a pack with only one stick left, she’d save it in her wallet for when she had a second piece to go with it. I wondered if the wet, smacking sound was as loud in her head as it was to the rest of us.

  “What college do you think is going to possibly care that in tenth grade you skipped the second half of the last day of school?” I asked.

  “Harvard will,” said Maddie. “They have over thirty thousand straight-A students competing to get in, they look at every tiny detail to weed people out.”

  “Oh please.” Abbie rolled her eyes. “You’ve been unqualified for Harvard since you failed Intro to Art History.”

  “You wish.” Maddie threw her wrapped piece of chewed Winterfresh at Abbie. “Then I’d have to stay here and go to whatever bullshit state school you’ll end up at.”

  “I’m not going to a state school,” Abbie pouted. She tended to be able to dish it out but never take it. “I got a 1330 on my PSATs.”

  “Right, well, see, I got a 1495.” Maddie chewed triumphantly.

  “Stop!” I was so bored I wanted to literally crawl out of my skin. “Do we really have to be worrying about college right now? It’s summer. And we won’t be applying to schools for like two years.”

  “Actually,” Maddie began, “it’s really more like one ye—”

  “Fuck college,” Riley interrupted.

  “Here we go.” Abbie took out a compact mirror, as if looking at her reflection would block out whatever Riley had to say.

  “It’s a scam,” Riley went on. “You pay a hundred grand to some stuffy institution just so you can put it on a résumé in hope of getting hired to work somewhere corporate from nine to five until you die? And if you don’t have the hundred grand—and really, who does?—then you have to borrow it and end up being in debt to the government for literally the rest of your life. So, no thanks.” She threw her hands up in surrender. “Not me.”

  “So you got a better plan, genius?” Maddie asked.

  “Please don’t encourage her like that,” Abbie pleaded. “If I have to hear her tell it one more time I’ll shoot myself.”

  “Tell what?” I asked.

  “Her plan for after high school,” Abbie told us.

  “I’ve never heard it,” I said, a little hurt. Though not too hurt, because I’d never told Riley my plans either. I didn’t think she could handle them.

  “Me either,” said Maddie, seemingly pleased with the discomfort she was causing.

  “I’m gonna move to upstate New York,” Riley said proudly, “and wait tables at a diner.”

  “That’s … that’s it?” asked Maddie. “You want to be a waitress? You can do that here, you know, you don’t have to be in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Yeah, but I want to be in the middle of nowhere,” Riley said wistfully. “I want to walk barefoot through tall grasses and marry a local musician and have ten babies.”

  “I don’t understand.” Maddie furrowed her brow. She was stumped.

  “It’s just her way of making herself feel like she’s different than everyone else,” Abbie explained. “She wants you to think she’s above your capitalist desires and conformist ideals.” As if she were above Riley’s trying to be above everyone else.

  “Sure, you could see it like that.” Riley shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter to me. All I care about is that I’ll be the one enjoying life while y’all are commuting to a job you hate.” She turned to me then. “Justine, you get it, don’t you?”

  I hated when she said y’all like she was some kind of Southern belle, when really she’d never been outside Los Angeles. And I hated that to her the entire world was laid out in black and white.

  “I get it,” I said, mostly because between the two of them my loyalty stood with Riley. “Everyone has their own path. If that’s what you want to do, you should do it.”

  The truth was I thought Riley’s vision for the future sounded just as flat and dry as the future all our parents wanted us to have with the undergraduate degree and the six-figure income and the stability. To me, Riley’s vision was just another
version of dreaming small.

  “Hey.” We looked up to see Michael Cross standing over us with Autumn Mercer and Christa Rooney. They were juniors, a year older than we were, and represented the elite of the non-school-spirited popular kids. In other words, they were gorgeous and well-dressed in high-end vintage clothing and acted like they absolutely did not give a fuck what you or anyone else thought of them. They were only talking to us because I had fourth-period California Literature with Michael, and was the one sophomore in the class. Maddie and Abbie gawked; Riley pretended to get a text.

  “Oh, hey,” I said, squinting into the sun, not sure if I should stand to greet them. “What’s up?”

  “We’re just heading down to the bowling alley. I saw you sitting here so I thought I’d come see if you wanted to join us for some milkshakes and chill.”

  Michael had brownish-red hair and uniquely blessed bone structure. Girls swooned over him and anxiously fretted over the question of his sexual orientation. But I didn’t care about any of that, I just thought he was so cool with his Doc Martens and pinstriped jeans and clear-framed glasses. He readjusted the strap of his messenger bag and waited for my answer.

  “Like, all of us?” Maddie blurted.

  “No, thanks.” Riley looked up from her phone long enough to intervene. “We have plans.”

  “Oh … okay, then.” Michael looked almost disappointed. Autumn and Christa looked like they couldn’t possibly have cared less. “Have a good summer, Justine.”

  “Yeah … you too,” I stammered as he waved goodbye. “I … I’ll see you in September.”

  “So, what”—Riley looked back down at her phone—“are you in love with him all of a sudden?”

  “What the fuck was that, Riley?” I glared at her.

  “Come on, JuJu, you didn’t actually want to go hang with them, did you?”

  “You know I did.”

  “Oh well,” she sighed. “I’d say I’m sorry, but it’s just for your own good.”

  “My own good? What the hell do you—you don’t get to decide what’s—no, you know what? Forget it.” I stood up just as the bell rang and brushed the twigs off my jeans.

  “Justine, where are you going?” Abbie called out after me, but I didn’t really have an answer for her, so I just kept walking.

  * * *

  I threw my backpack over the fence behind the English building and climbed after it. Then I was free.

  Looking over my shoulder every few feet, I power walked down Pico Boulevard to the corner of Fourth Street, paranoid that a gate guard might see me. I stood on the corner, nervously waiting for the light to change, thrilling fear in the form of a hot shiver racing up my spine, certain that any second someone would sneak up from behind and catch me in the act of trying to have a life, God forbid.

  “Finally,” I exhaled as the light changed. “Thank God.”

  I was partially surprised at myself for making it this far, for getting away with it. Once I got to the other side, the nerves melted away and I stood up straight, confident with the knowledge that I was officially in the clear. I took a deep breath and forced myself to keep walking until I got to the bowling alley.

  Hey, guys, just thought I’d take you up on that milkshake and chill. Was that what I’d say? I mulled it over; I moved my mouth silently along the words. No, I decided, don’t try so hard.

  ’Sup? No, too relaxed.

  Hey, Michael, thanks for the invite, sorry about Riley, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Too bitchy.

  Hey, y’all, how are the milkshakes? Too Riley-y.

  Hey, losers, move over. Too edgy.

  You know, some say my milkshake brings all the boys to the bowling alley. No way.

  What’s crackin’, fam squad? Too stoned.

  “Get over yourself, Justine,” I said under my breath. “Just go inside, don’t be an idiot.”

  I walked through the automatic doors and into the glow-in-the-dark-splattered bowling alley, “Any Way You Want It” by Journey raging at full volume. Okay, so, I asked myself, glancing around in the dark, if you were a pack of too-cool-for-school juniors, where would you be? To my right, a neon sign read BOWLING DINER. FRIES, BURGERS, MILKSHAKES. Beneath the sign was a door with a small window. Far too self-conscious to just stroll on in, I stood on my toes and peered through the glass.

  Indeed, there they were, Michael and Autumn and Christa. I had found them. But they weren’t just drinking milkshakes and they weren’t just chilling. Michael and Autumn sat next to each other in the brown vinyl booth, locked in a passionate kiss, her legs lying over his lap, his hand making its way under her shirt.

  OhmyGod. I turned away as fast as I could and darted back out into the blinding sunlight. How could they do that in public? I wondered. And with Christa staring right at them? They’d looked like they were trying to eat each other alive, like somebody should have intervened.

  Well, I naively thought, I guess that ends the mystery of his sexual orientation.

  I didn’t know why, but as I stood there with my heart pounding and the new summer sun beating down on my back, I felt let down, even betrayed. I knew I shouldn’t—he liked girls, this was good news for all of us!—but something about what I’d seen left me unpleasantly mystified, even alienated, like a kid accidentally walking in on their parents during sex. A familiar weight descended on my chest, the weight of frustration I felt whenever I sensed that I was being shut out of something desirable. Sex, like celebrity, was a world I got to look in on, but was ultimately excluded from. That’s how I’d become fixated, that’s how I’d become addicted to the dream.

  CHAPTER 5

  FEMME FATALE

  I took the bus home and when I got there, my mom had just finished up with a patient in her office, which once was a guesthouse, in our backyard. She came into the house holding a leather-bound notebook and sighed deeply when she saw me. She looked skinnier than usual in a beige linen pantsuit with her dyed off-blond hair in a short, Hillary Clinton–style cut, exposing the dramatic line of her collarbones. I looked around the living room and noticed how much had gone missing since earlier that morning. The coffee table was gone; so were the bookshelf and my dad’s CD collection spread out across three towers. His liquor cabinet was now half-empty.

  “Are you supposed to be home yet?” she said nervously, checking her wristwatch. “Is everything okay?”

  “They let us out early,” I said. “It was the last day of school. Is everything okay with you?”

  “Oh, right. That’s right. Honey, we have to talk,” she said, taking a seat on the living room couch.

  I knew what this was about; I’d been expecting it for at least five years.

  I find this next part of the story to be extremely boring, the only unremarkable piece of the puzzle, so forgive me for rushing through it. Believe me when I say it’s for the best, and that you’re honestly not missing out on anything.

  “You’re getting a divorce,” I said calmly, standing across from her, holding on to the straps of my turquoise JanSport backpack. “That’s it, right?”

  “Well, yes,” she stuttered. “How’d you know that?”

  “Call it intuition.” I shrugged, trying to think of something else so I didn’t have to think about the millions of ways my life was going to be different from now on. Maybe it didn’t have to be different, I thought, or maybe it could be different in all the right ways.

  “Do you want to talk about it? I know this can be—”

  “I’m fine. But thank you,” I interrupted, shutting the door on the conversation and then the literal one to my room, before the awkwardness had a chance to grow and fester into real emotion.

  It turns out my dad had already started moving his stuff into a town house in the Valley, where he’d be living with a woman I’d never met or heard of before. And my mom already had a monthlong vacation all planned out, an abbreviated Eat Pray Love, something she swore she’d been dying to do way before Elizabeth Gilbert made it popular.r />
  They arranged for me to stay with Aunt Jillian, my mom’s sister, who lived with a golden retriever named Kellen in Westwood. Her condo was on the nineteenth floor of one of those towering high-rises on Wilshire and decorated with a disordered display of antiques that she picked up weekly from the Fairfax flea market. The glass cat figurines and collection of rusted, dusty scales from the early 1990s were my favorites.

  I liked Aunt Jillian, I really did—her excessive emerald eye shadow, her big pearl earrings, her veneers—but I’d kill myself before spending an entire month with her. So when I found her bottles of Percocet hidden underneath a floor tile in the bathroom, we made a deal: I wouldn’t tell my mom about her pill problem and she wouldn’t tell my mom I was staying by myself in our empty waterfront house until further notice.

  * * *

  That was easy enough, I thought on my first night alone, climbing into bed with my clothes still on. By the time my mom gets home, by the time school starts again, the Justine everyone knew will be dead. I vowed then to spin myself into the sophisticated femme fatale I’d longed to be, to spend the summer collecting experiences like poker chips in a towering stack, to become so worldly and self-assured that when school started in the fall, nobody would recognize me. If only I knew where to begin.

  CHAPTER 6

  LARGER THAN LIFE

  The first time I saw her in person she was nothing more than a paper cutout of a girl, a silhouette, still nameless, with slender arms and ripened hips, hair so long and thick it poured like milk over her bony shoulders.

  It was one week after my parents had left me, and I was sitting on the porch swing with Princess Leia, our two-year-old labradoodle, on my lap. I had an open tube of raw cookie dough sitting next to me and my 2010 MacBook Pro open on the outdoor coffee table so I could click through I Know What You Did Last Night. For those of you who don’t know, IKWYDLN was an online photo gallery of LA’s most exclusive parties featuring mostly celebrities (A-list through D-list) and hipster models and anonymous underage girls getting wasted in decadent settings, often with cigarettes dangling from their lips and always tons of flash. Don’t bother looking it up, though; the site got taken down after everything that happened.