My Nervous Breakdown Will Absolutely Be Televised

My Nervous Breakdown Will Absolutely Be Televised

Sydney Rende

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“Monsters” by Sydney Rende

A few weeks before we were set to film season eight, I made an account on a dating app. I had been dumped on national television at the beginning of the summer (they put the dumping in the season finale), and I thought it’d be a good idea to start off the new season with an exceptionally attractive and mature rebound.

Our show was called Hotel California. They called it that because for the first handful of seasons we all worked at the Hotel Bel-­Air. I was in reception. Derek ran the bar. Riley and Maya were hostesses—­although they both left the show after season three. (Maya met some billionaire who started a “voluntourism” business. He took her to Costa Rica to save the turtles, or whatever, and ended up buying the whole beach town and naming it after her. Riley went to Vegas. Last I heard she was waiting tables at the Ramsay’s Kitchen in Harrah’s.) There were eight of us in total. Around season five, we grew a little too recognizable, in certain circles, to continue working at the hotel. People—­fans, crazy ones—started booking rooms just to be near us, and management wasn’t psyched about that. Plus, we didn’t need the minimum wage anymore. So production filtered a handful of new cast members in and out over the next few seasons, waiting to see who stuck.

By season six, Derek and I were the only original cast members left on the show. This gave us a lot of clout. We got paid more than everyone else. This was also because we had real chemistry—­people liked to watch us. We’d met while working at the hotel, before the show started, and became instant friends. I’d pop into the bar when my shift was over at reception, and Derek would make me vodka sodas on the house while I gave him all the dirt on the guests. Once, when a certain newly single and extremely famous actress was staying at the hotel, I’d put in a good word for Derek at check-­in. She came to the bar that night, got completely wasted on champagne and showed us her facelift scars and gave us each two hundred dollars and called us cute. Then she took Derek back to her room. They texted for a little while after that, but the fling fizzled when she went on location in London. I think she married some guy over there and then divorced him a few months later. Anyway, Derek and I always knew how to turn a normal, dumb day into a time.

I didn’t meet Gemma until season six. We’d been filming at a bar on Sunset late into the night (Derek’s birthday), and she came out of nowhere.

“I think I’m in love with you,” she said. She was at least a full head taller than me, and she was kind of hovering over me in a way that would have looked desperate had she not been beautiful. Her face was perfectly angular, her skin smooth and lightly freckled. She looked glass blown. But she smelled like cigarettes. “We should make out.”

The kiss made it into the episode. I never watched it, but I remember her running her hands through my hair. I remember she tasted like lime. And I remember my whole body going a little numb afterward. In the moment, I hadn’t been thinking about the cameras, but Gemma had noticed them. She’d pop up occasionally wherever we were filming, usually at a bar or a restaurant in West Hollywood, and find her way to me. She didn’t try to be coy about it. She said things like “I was hoping I’d find you here” and “I’ve been thinking about you,” which would have sounded psychotic coming from anyone else, but she was so good at flirting, so comfortable in her clean, glossy skin, that it actually turned me on. I mean, it was like being hit on by a celebrity. Derek thought she was sketchy.

“I don’t even think she’s a real lesbian,” he said one morning at my apartment. We were drinking mimosas and eating animal-­style burgers to cure our hangovers. We did that a lot back then.

“So? I’m basically not a real lesbian.”

“If you weren’t completely gay, we would have fucked by now.”

“Ew. Can you not?”

“I’m pretty sure I saw her making out with that asshole bouncer.”

“When? Who?”

“Like, a few months ago, I don’t know. The guy who kicked you out of the bar for stealing french fries.”

Derek snorted, and I laughed. “I hid in the bathroom for like two hours.”

“He literally held your hands behind your back like a criminal.”

“You’re just jealous she likes me instead of you.”

“That’s probably true.” Derek’s mouth was full of burger. “Even more reason not to trust her.”

I knew Gemma wanted to get on TV, but that didn’t bother me. Everyone in L.A. wants to get on TV. I was drawn to her. She had an aura that couldn’t be ignored.

“That’s the cigs,” Derek said.

The first time Gemma and I got together alone, I invited her to go with me to the five-­dollar psychic on La Cienega. It wasn’t my idea—­production wanted me to do it. The psychic read our palms and told us we were soulmates and said something about eating cantaloupe to strengthen our bond. She made us hold hands and gaze into each other’s eyes. I remember feeling afraid to blink, like if I closed my eyes for even a split second, Gemma might disappear. I actually started crying, which made Gemma cry, and she somehow looked even more beautiful with tears streaming down her face. After that we were a couple, and she officially joined the cast a few weeks later.

That season, I became desperately obsessed with her. Everyone would mock me in their confessionals. Gemma and I aren’t eating sugar right now. Gemma says yellow makes my eyes pop. Gemma says if I spin in a circle three times while moaning her name, bubble gum will shoot out my ass. Nobody could stomach me—­not even Derek, who once referred to me, on-­screen, as a “sickening, wide-­eyed little Furby.”

It went on like that for two seasons. Gemma moved into my apartment. We bought an expensive couch. We talked about eloping in Cabo. Sometimes, we shared a toothbrush. Until one random night after filming wrapped for season seven, I was home alone, and I got a call from Jimmy, our producer.

“We’re going to film at your place tonight,” he said. “Be there in thirty.”

“What happened?” I assumed someone had been arrested. I was so stupid with love I couldn’t see what was about to happen to me.

“Just buzz us in. I’ll explain when we get there.”

Moments after the cameras were up, Gemma and Derek walked through the door together, looking all solemn and pitiful. They sat down on the couch, legs flush against each other, hands intertwined, and told me that I was moving out.

So I spent the summer reinventing myself. I hired a personal trainer and started working out in an EMS suit. I stopped drinking on weeknights and tried to wean myself off Adderall. When that didn’t work, I upped my dose and lost fifteen pounds. I got Botox in my neck, which made me look like a fairy princess. I hadn’t heard from Gemma or Derek all summer. The last time I spoke to them was at the reunion. I was proud of the way I’d handled it.

“You two have a reckoning coming your way,” I said. “The worst of your lives is yet to come.”

Chilling, I know. Everyone loved it. They wanted more of me. They invited me onto their podcasts. They wrote articles about me, about the justice I deserved. They sent me messages begging for me-­themed merch, so I put my face on sweatshirts and coffee mugs and sold it to them. A few months later, I had enough money for a down payment, and I bought a house in Beachwood Canyon. A new relationship would round me out nicely before we picked up cameras.

I didn’t want someone to go out with me because they had seen me on TV. I wanted someone to go out with me because I was an extremely chill person, and if they had seen me on TV, they might have suspected the opposite. So I set my preferences to “men” in the hopes that most of them had never watched reality TV. Then I filled out my profile as plainly as I could.

Age: 28

Height: 5’6”

Location: Los Angeles

Occupation: Entertainment

Looking for:

I had no idea what I was looking for. Someone to die with, maybe, or at least someone who could fall in love with me immediately.

Looking for: Love, or equivalent

I started matching with people, but a lot of them knew me already. They sent me messages:

Are you as nuts as you seem on TV?

I bet you’re hotter on TV than you are in person.

You seem like a fake bitch. I’ll pass.

It’s crazy, the things people will say to you. I ignored all of them, except for one: Cleo. I thought his name was sexy, and I liked his thick black hair, which he wore shaggy and tousled in a way that didn’t seem strategic at all. I thought he was probably Italian or Spanish, and I’d always wanted to have a fling with a European.

Hey Mel, I’d love to take you to dinner sometime.

Adorable. I responded right away.

I’d like that.

We agreed to meet at a little martini bar that also served lamb souvlaki and shrimp scampi in Los Feliz. Derek and I had been there a few times together off-­season when we wanted to get wasted extravagantly. It was a small, amber-­lit space, its ceiling decorated with crystal chandeliers. Tiny candles lined the bar, and you had to hold them to the drink menu to read the cocktails. It was the perfect place to go if you didn’t want to be noticed. I got there exactly seventeen minutes late, which was perfect timing. I saw Cleo sitting at the bar beyond the host stand. He hadn’t noticed me walking in, so I pretended to fiddle with something in my bag for a few moments before looking up at him again. When I did, he was smiling at me. I smiled back. He waved me over.

“I almost thought you were going to make me drink alone.” He stood up from the barstool and wrapped his arms around me. He was a lot taller than me, and his embrace was firm but not aggressive. His shirt smelled like laundry detergent. I made sure to pull away first.

“Who, me?” Gemma had turned me into a fantastic flirt. I knew when to talk, when to laugh, when to pause for effect. This also made for great TV. “What are you drinking?”

He sat back down, and I took the seat next to him.

“Bulleit on the rocks.”

“Oh, not for me. Brown drinks make me crazy.”

“Crazy how?”

“Hopefully you’ll never know.” I looked at the bartender, who was standing on the other side of the bar, watching us. “I’ll have a vodka martini.”

She nodded, and her eyes lingered on mine a little too long.

Cleo and I spent the next twenty minutes totally engrossed in each other. He was asking me questions I would never have answered had they come from some other, less magnetic person. Who’s your favorite family member? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done? Do you remember the best day of your life? I mean really psychotic questions. I kept searching for clues that he knew who I was, but his eyes were too curious, too lasered in on mine, not bouncing around my face like he was distracted by some preconceived notion he’d had of me.

The bartender poured us our second round of drinks. She kept letting her eyes drift toward me, then snapping them away when I made eye contact with her. Cleo sipped his drink, then paused, the rim of the glass still in his mouth. He put the drink down.

“I have to ask—­why are you single?”

I felt like I’d been caught. How had I not prepared an answer to this question?

“Honestly?”

“Yes, of course.” He had this bashful smile that made me want to tell him everything.

“I haven’t quite figured out what I want.”

Cleo’s gaze darted off to the side. I was worried that I was losing him.

“I mean, I know what I want now. I just didn’t know until now.”

He looked back at me, half distracted. “What’s that?”

“Normalcy, I guess.”

“Sorry,” he said, his eyes trailing away again. “It’s just . . .” He nodded toward the bartender. I turned to look at her. She was staring at me so awkwardly. She looked like she might cry.

“Is everything okay?” Cleo asked her. He cocked his head and furrowed his brow like a confused dog, which was a cute look for him.

She nodded, then scurried to the back of the house somewhere, embarrassed. I felt relieved to not feel her breathing so close to us.

“What was that?” Cleo said.

If he was going to be my season eight boyfriend, I’d have to tell him eventually.

“It’s me. I swear this never happens. Barely anyone watches my show anymore.” A lie, obviously, but I didn’t want to scare him off.

“Your show?”

“It’s not my show. I’m on a show.”

“You’re an actress?” He looked betrayed.

“Not exactly.” I fiddled with the stem of my martini glass. “It’s a reality show about me and my friends.”

“Like one of those dating shows?”

I was almost impressed by how little he knew about reality TV.

“Sort of. But it’s not a competition. The cameras just follow us around and document our lives.”

Cleo looked around the room as if he were seeing it with new eyes. “Are there cameras here right now?”

“God, no.” I didn’t want to talk too much about the show. I wanted to talk about future vacations we’d take together to Nantucket, Amalfi, Marrakech—­romantic places. I reached out and touched the top of his hand and felt comforted by its warmth. “We don’t start filming again until next month. Look, you don’t have anything to worry about. I don’t let the show affect my real life.”

“You said the show is about your life.”

“It’s about one part of my life. I’m actually looking to get out soon.” It was a thought I’d never had before, and I was surprised by how easily the words escaped.

“Why?”

“The whole group is pretty toxic. We used to be close, but now everyone’s turned into monsters. We fight a lot.”

“Oh, man.” He stared at my hand on his. “People watch you fight?”

After two drinks and a handful of olives, I was drunker than I wanted to be on a first date. I realized that I barely knew him, and I’d done a weird thing there with my hand. I removed it.

“Not me, specifically. But sure, I guess so. People love to watch you make a mess out of yourself. It makes them feel better about their own messes. It’s all very scientific, very anthropological.”

He thought about this. “You make it sound like a battleground.”

“That’s what it feels like, sometimes.”

“Then why do it in the first place?”

Money. Fame. The high you get when a group of strangers screams your name with tears in their eyes. The ability to strut around L.A. like you really belong there (most people don’t), like you landed in the exact right spot. That rush of adrenaline—­a floating sensation, actually—­that comes when the cameras start rolling. The bowling-­ball-­size sense of relief you feel when you slap your ex across the face, and the vindication that comes with all the comments after the betrayal was broadcast nationwide. Gemma and Derek are snakes. Mel should get her own show. Justice for Mel. The tingling sense of accomplishment when you negotiate your contract up 200 percent. I mean, it’s really something.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The bartender reemerged from the back of the house and shuffled toward us with the expression of someone who’d just been scolded. She leaned over the bar so her face was in between ours.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, looking at me. “My manager says you have to leave.”

“What?”

She gave me a pleading look. “I tried to explain, you know, you’re not the one to blame. It’s the other guy who caused a scene, but he didn’t care. He’s a dick, my manager. He wanted to come out here and do it himself, but I told him I’d handle it. I don’t want to embarrass you.”

Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I was too afraid to make eye contact with Cleo, so I just stared down at my drink.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Last time you guys were here . . .” She glanced at Cleo. “Not you two, sorry, you and the other guy. And, uh, remember, my manager asked you not to come back?”

“No, I don’t remember that.” I couldn’t decide whether to be apologetic or defensive. “Do you know who I am?”

I meant it genuinely, but it came out like a threat. I felt Cleo’s eyes on me.

“Oh, um. Yes? I know you’ve been here before. It’s just that last time, the guy you were with, he stole a bottle of Casamigos. Or, I mean, he tried to. You were both pretty wasted.”

“I don’t think that was me.”

“Well, it’s just, I was here that night. Your hair was longer. You were ordering vodka martinis, remember?” She leaned in closer and whispered, “You had, like, six of them.”

I held my hand up to stop her from further incriminating me in front of Cleo, who by now certainly never wanted to see me again. “Okay, thanks. I remember.”

I still didn’t remember, but I had ended so many of my nights out with Derek in the bathroom with my shirt off, wrapped around the toilet while he held back my hair. I would have lost more of those nights had it not been for the cameras, one cameraman in the bathroom with us, Jimmy on the other side of the door. Watching those episodes made me want to take a potato peeler to my skin. That’s the thing about reality TV—­most of the time you can’t stand to look at yourself.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“No, don’t worry about it. It’s fine. I’ll go.”

“Wait.” She backstepped away from us toward her POS system. “One second.”

She came back and handed me the bill. “Sorry.”

I dug through my bag for my wallet. Cleo sat still beside me.

“Thanks,” she said, after she ran my card. Then she looked at Cleo. “It really wasn’t her fault.”

“Just stop,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he’s already come to his own conclusion about that.”

She stood there like a dumb little rodent, waiting. I tipped her one hundred dollars, then put the receipt down on the bar in front of Cleo. When I tried to make eye contact with him, he was staring blankly at the bill.

“I had a great time,” I said.

“Oh, yeah. Me, too.”

I felt him growing afraid of me.

“It’d be really great if you could not tell anybody about this.”

Cleo exchanged glances with the bartender, the two of them sharing the same panicky thought. As I watched their eyes meet, I felt like I might throw up. I wondered how long he’d stay at the bar, if they’d share notes once I was gone, if they’d get drunk and go home together. I took out my phone to call myself a car. There were three texts and a missed call, all from Derek.

Can we meet before filming?

It’s about Gemma.

Don’t ignore me.

There had been one night, just before we filmed season seven, that Derek, Gemma, and I decided to go to the movies. We had wanted to do something wholesome before descending into the chaos of a new season. I don’t remember what we saw, but I remember Gemma sat in the middle. We snuck in a bottle of wine to share and passed it back and forth during the previews. An older couple was sitting behind us, and the woman kept whispering loudly to her husband about the whole place reeking of alcohol, or something. Gemma turned around and got into it with her. The woman got so worked up she went and got the theater attendant, who asked us to leave and said he’d refund our tickets. I remember Gemma grabbing my hand, lacing her fingers into mine, and, cool as ever, telling the attendant that we weren’t going anywhere. The older woman hadn’t known that she was fighting a losing battle from the beginning. Gemma always got her way.

She held my hand throughout the movie, and I remember thinking I had everything I’d ever wanted. It was during those moments of affection when the cameras were down that I knew Gemma loved me. I hadn’t been thinking about Derek on her left. I hadn’t looked at her other hand.

Fuck off, I wrote.

My eyes were heavy on the drive home from the bar, which took all of five minutes. I fell asleep anyway and woke to the driver tapping me on the foot.

“This is the address, miss.”

It was dark, and I was drunk, but when I opened my eyes, I could see my adorable Spanish-­style home, tucked into the hill behind a pair of peppermint trees. It was so big. It was mine.

“I win,” I said.

When I reached my front door, I realized my keys were gone. Maybe they had fallen out of my bag in the car, but the driver had sped away, so I walked around the side of my house and checked for open windows like an intruder. The guest bathroom window was unlocked. The soaking tub sat on the other side of it, and I climbed through the window and stepped into the tub. I thought briefly about sitting down and falling asleep there, curled up in the tub. There was a fresh towel hanging that I could use as a blanket. Instead, I got out of the tub and drank from the sink. I opened the medicine cabinet. There was a bottle of Adderall, some makeup wipes, and lip gloss. I dabbed some of the gloss onto my lips and stared at myself in the mirror. My face had responded well to the breakup. I was way more beautiful now than I was when I was dating Gemma. Mainly, all the weight I’d lost had hollowed out my cheeks in a very on-­trend way. Plus, the Botox I’d been getting in my neck was slimming it down nicely. I looked like a ballerina.

“Drinks,” I said. “We need drinks!”

I gave myself a little kiss on the mirror. Then I headed toward the kitchen for the half-­empty bottle of wine that was in my refrigerator. But on my way there, I heard a knock on the front door—­it spooked me, and I jumped. It was almost eleven at night, a totally unreasonable hour to be showing up at someone’s door unannounced. It was probably the driver returning my keys. I pivoted toward the front door and made my way down the hall. He knocked again, and this time the knock sounded more desperate, more like a pound. It occurred to me, suddenly, that the person knocking might not be the driver. It was possible, after all the media attention I’d gotten lately, that the desperately knocking person was maybe, potentially, my first stalker. I felt both afraid of and excited by this alternative. I was the most famous I’d ever been and probably would ever be—­it was important to take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate that. A stalker was a new milestone for me, and that was something to be proud of. But I also needed a weapon of self-­defense. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife from the knife block. Then I opened the refrigerator door and took a congratulatory swig from the bottle of wine. It tasted sour and stale. There was another pound on the door. I held the knife behind my back and tiptoed back toward the front door. The adrenaline made my legs and arms tremble.

“I am not afraid,” I whispered. Then, louder, I said, “Who is it?”

Nobody answered. There was another pound on the door.

“I have a gun,” I lied. I’d heard women say this in movies when they were about to be attacked. Usually in the movies the women still got attacked, or some hot actor came to save them in the nick of time. Nobody was coming to save me.

“Where the fuck did you get a gun?”

I recognized Derek’s voice immediately. I let my hand with the knife fall to my side.

“I’m not opening the door for you.”

“Mel, please. It’s an emergency. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

“How did you get my address?”

“From Jimmy. Open the door. I have to piss.”

“Definitely not.”

“If you don’t open the door, I’m going to piss on it.”

He had a lisp that got worse when he was drunk, and I could hear it now. I knew he really would piss on my door if he’d been drinking, and that was not something I wanted to deal with in the morning. I opened the door.

“Jesus, thank you.” Derek looked me up and down. His eyes landed on the knife. “That’s not a gun.”

“I thought you were a stalker.”

“What was your plan? Saw me in half with a bread knife?”

I glanced down at my hand. It turned out I had, in fact, chosen the bread knife.

“What do you want?”

Derek shoved past me into the house. “First I need your bathroom.”

I went back to the kitchen and let him wander around my house in search of the bathroom. I wanted him to take in all the rooms, all the furniture and art and taste I’d acquired since he blew up our friendship. There was a promotional photo of me, wearing a long black dress with cutouts on the sides and a high thigh slit, hanging above the mantel in the living room, and I wanted him to see it. A few minutes later he came sauntering into the kitchen.

“Thanks.” He sat down on a stool at the kitchen island.

“So?”

“Can you put that down?” He pointed to the knife, still in my hand.

“No.”

He rubbed his cheek with his hand, a move he used to do when he was trying to find someone to sleep with. Girls love a jawline, he once said.

“I haven’t heard from Gemma in a week. Nobody has.”

I got the wine from the fridge and took another swig. “I don’t see what this has to do with me. She’s your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Oh, just your lover.”

“Don’t say lover.”

I gave him a good stare. I had expected him to look awful, but he didn’t. He looked like he’d been starting his mornings with mushroom-­infused teas. I realized he wasn’t drunk after all, but his eyes were swollen and red as if he’d been crying. Or maybe he was ridiculously stoned. Above him hung a ceiling rack adorned with a bunch of pots and pans I’d never used, and I hoped one of them would fall on his head.

“Maybe she left you.”

He was quiet for a moment in an introspective way that I’d come to understand as acting. He did this thing where he focused hard on one particular spot and tried to make himself cry. More often it would make one of the blood vessels under his left eye explode.

“It’s been bad, Mel. She’s still getting death threats. And now nobody has heard from her.”

“She probably went to one of those wellness retreats. She was always talking about them. Or else she’s in Cabo popping enough Klonopin to remain comatose until her call time next week.”

“This is serious.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what is serious.”

“Forget about me. I’m telling you Gemma is missing. She could have been kidnapped or killed.”

“Or abducted by aliens.”

I took a swig from the bottle and instinctively offered it to Derek. He shook his head.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve gone sober?”

He giggled kind of sadly. “I’ve had paparazzi all over me for the last three months. The last thing I need is a bunch of photos of me drunk off my ass circulating. Do you have any idea how bad it’s been for us?”

I drank the wine. “Frankly, I don’t give a shit.”

“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said with the same solemn look he’d had in my apartment the night Gemma dumped me. “I miss you a lot.”

I still hated him, I could feel it, but enough time had passed to dull the rage, and I had to imagine Derek’s and Gemma’s hands intertwined as they sat on my couch together to stand my ground.

“You ruined everything.”

“I know.”

With each swig of wine, I felt my shoulders relaxing. “I went on a date tonight.”

His face perked up. “With who?”

“His name was Cleo.”

“A dude?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I think I was looking for a friend.”

I decided not to tell him how the date had ended, how humiliated I’d been. After all, I still wanted him to envy me. I wanted him to know I’d come out on top.

“I’m still your friend,” he said.

I glared at him. “Did you see my living room?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Your house is cool.”

His tone made it difficult to decipher if he was being genuine or just trying to placate me. But it felt good to hear the words. I reminded myself, again, not to trust him.

“I’m sure Gemma is okay,” I said, in the same tone.

“Would you consider”—­he took a dramatic breath in, then let it out slowly with his lips pursed, a move I was sure he learned in some discount acting class—­“sending her a message? You might be the only person she’ll respond to.”

“You have to be joking.”

“Mel, this is real. I need your help.”

“I have no reason on earth to help you.”

His eyes shrank into two tiny slits, a look he made whenever he was plotting something. Derek was always scheming. It was so obvious to me now. Everything he did was for the sake of entertainment, his own or everyone else’s, and I felt stupid for never having seen it before.

“You aren’t completely innocent, you know.”

“I know one point seven million people who’d disagree with you.”

“They don’t know the whole story.”

“Oh, and you do?”

We were trapped in some kind of sinister staring contest that I couldn’t help but feel deserved to be on TV.

“I know more than you think.”

“Yeah, right.” I could feel the rage building in my chest. I was used to this feeling in the weeks before filming picked up. “Have you two been bonding over how crazy I am? How clingy and manipulative and poor, poor you?”

Derek broke eye contact with me and stared down at his feet. “I know you threatened her.”

A dull numbness crept up my limbs toward my head, and I started to feel a floating sensation that I hadn’t felt since the day Gemma dumped me.

“I didn’t threaten her.” My voice quivered with rage, and I tried to steady it. “Although I’m sure you two have spent the last few months perfecting that narrative for season eight.”

“Mel, you totally lost yourself. You were possessed. You told her you’d kill her if she ever tried to leave you.”

My legs went numb. I leaned back against the refrigerator to keep from falling over.

“I never said that.”

“Yeah, you did. She recorded you. And the only reason she hasn’t released it is because I told her not to, because I knew you didn’t mean it, because despite your insane behavior, I know you’re not insane, so you’re welcome.”

I wanted to speak but I couldn’t feel my face. I looked at my hands. I was still holding the wine in one hand and the knife in the other.

I raised the knife in front of my face. “You need to leave.”

Derek scoffed, “Oh, so you are going to stab me? Look at yourself.”

“I mean it.” My eyes were blurry with tears. I pointed the knife at him.

Derek sighed, then stood up and began backing away. “Just text her, will you? I’m doing a wellness check at her apartment tomorrow morning with her landlord. I’ll be there at eight, if you care at all.”

“Get fucked” was the only ridiculous thing I could think to say.

He turned and walked down the hallway and out of sight. I heard the front door close behind him. The knife fell from my hand and clanged against the tile floor. Tears slid down my cheeks and neck and soaked the neckline of my shirt. I was shaking.

Even in her absence, Gemma was still pulling all the strings. Wherever she was, she’d stay there long enough to build up public sympathy, and then, once everyone was good and worried, boom—­she’d reappear in front of the camera, all thin and victim-­y. I mean, she was remarkable. After seven seasons, I couldn’t believe how naive I’d been. Had I really thought I could go out on top and not come crashing down? Had I really thought Gemma would let me win? When I closed my eyes, Cleo’s face, his eyes glazed with fear, flashed across my mind.

I took out my phone and typed out a message:

Gemma missing. Doing a wellness check tomorrow morning at my old place.

I got a response moments later.

Jimmy: Time?

8am

Jimmy: Thx. We’ll be there.

I didn’t sleep, my insides vibrating at a low enough frequency to keep me dizzily awake all night. I kept thinking about Cleo and the bartender—­the look they exchanged, like they were two hostages plotting their escape, had felt so familiar.

In the morning, I drove to my old apartment from memory, changing lanes and making turns absentmindedly. I felt like I was driving back in time, like once I arrived, I’d see a former version of myself through the window, curled on the couch next to Gemma, our legs tangled like vines. Or maybe I’d see Derek, opening and closing all of our kitchen drawers as he searched for a bottle opener, eyeing the nape of Gemma’s neck as she pulled her hair into a bun.

I parked the car in the lot and looked at myself in the rearview mirror. I felt around for the mascara in my center console and flicked some onto my eyelashes. I blinked a few times and forced a smile. Beyond the mirror, Jimmy and a few cameramen were walking toward my car. Behind them, Derek sat on the ledge outside the building’s front door, smoking a cigarette. We looked at each other briefly. He broke his gaze and spit onto the sidewalk. I steadied my breath.

Jimmy motioned for me to roll my window down. It was a beautiful day. “Let’s get you mic’d up,” he said. “We’re rolling.”