Queer Bookworm

Finally finished my first chapter of Reluctantly Famous! It’s probably really bad and stupid and unclear and stuff, but then, that’s why I’m posting it here: So that all of you can mercilessly criticize it and therefore make me a better writer!

June 8^th, Key West, Florida

This is good for Hilari’s career, this is good for Hilari’s career, this is good for Hilari’s career. You signed her up for a reason, you signed her up for a reason, you signed her up for a reason. Perhaps if I remind myself of that frequently enough, I will be able to prevent myself from murdering Hilari in her sleep, along with Lizzi. Not Amber, though. She’s sweet, just misguided and with poor taste in friends. Well, for a given value of “friends” that also includes “Queen Bee and her browbeaten lackey.” The poor girl is a study in confidence issues. I think I ought to give her some self-help literature, especially books that focus on toxic friends. This afternoon, for example, just two hour after the ship left the dock, I found her in front juggling two cans of soda and three bags of chips. When I asked, she said they were all for Lizzi, but it was alright, she had a dollar leftover to get something for herself! I insisted on getting her whatever she wanted, no matter how expensive, and on helping her carry it back to Lizzi’s room.

Along the way, I subtly insinuated that perhaps it’s not the best mark of a friend that she makes Amber go and buy her food and leaves her almost nothing, but, as usual, she simply didn’t listen. Frustrated as I was already with Hilari and Lizzi, I may have become… just a little too enthusiastic in my efforts. By which I mean I accidentally let go of the two bags of chips I was carrying and they smacked somebody right in the face. She looked like an important somebody (typical gigantic starlet sunglasses, huge floppy hat, and general air of entitlement), around my age, bleach blonde and over-tanned. I was just about to apologize when she shrieked and started ranting at me about “careless, clumsy brats who need to be more f**king careful about what they’re doing” and about how “the help should stay out of sight anyway.” Before I could even register what she’d said and get mad at that, she sneered at me and said, “Are you even getting any of this? You speak-y Eeenglish?” Not. Even. Kidding. I absolutely tore into her, leaving her with no illusions about exactly how well I speak-y Eeenglish.

Then, when she was still stunned silent (her mouth gaping in an unattractively guppy-like manner, I might add), the girl she’d been walking with burst out laughing. She had sort of light reddish-brown hair and was wearing a yellow bikini with a green towel wrapped sarong-style around her. She was pretty cute, I guess, but I didn’t recognize her, so probably not somebody Hilari’s ever worked with, if she was even in the industry at all. Anyway, she told the blonde, apparently named Sandra, that she completely deserved that for “all the sh*t [she’s] been giving the stagehands and techies for the past three months.” Sandra responded by giving another high-pitched shriek, stomping her foot and storming off.

Her friend turned to me and said, “I am so, so sorry you had to deal with her. We try to not let her out among the nice people.” She smiled, picked up the chips, and handed them to me. I grabbed them from her and shoved them at Amber who jumped, startled, but took them without saying anything. The redhead also looked fairly startled, and uneasy. “Hey, listen,” she said. “Can you not say anything about this to any, like, media outlets or journalists or anything? I agree that what she said was horrible, but if it got out, it’d cause a media shitstorm that we really can’t afford right now. And, well, Sandra being who she is—”

“Look,” I interrupted. “I’m not going to sell my story to the paps. I don’t know who she is, I don’t know who you are, and I’m just not in the habit of running to the gossip rags every time a bratty starlet says something racist to me. They’d get tired of it after the third incident, anyway.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.” It hung awkwardly in the air. “Do you really not know who I am?” She blurted out. It wasn’t rude or condescending, merely incredulous. Definitely a famous one, then.

“No, I don’t,” I said pointedly, hoping she’d leave me alone.

She put on a toothy, practiced smile. “Well, I’m Andrea. Andrea Kir—”

“Listen, Andrea, that’s nice and all, but when I said ‘I don’t know,’ what I mean was, ‘I don’t care.’ I’m sure you’re a very nice person, very talented, and very good at shaking hands and kissing babies, but I have other things to worry about right now. So, while it was absolutely fantastic meeting you, I’ve got to go now. Buh-bye.” I motioned for Amber to follow, and she fell in behind me, still looking anxious and unsure. She glanced back at the other girl occasionally, but I didn’t. I needed to focus on everything else going on that I had to deal with.

I’m glad I didn’t, too, because after Amber and I had delivered the snacks and drinks to my decidedly ungrateful sister, I had to go looking for Hilari, who had inexplicably disappeared. Turns out she was in the Blue Dining Room, knocking back her fifth martini. I got there just in time to stop her from ordering a sixth. She pouted and accused me a being an “un-funmonger.” When I pointed out that it was two in the afternoon, and that she had her first meet-and-greet tomorrow morning, she declared, “It’s five o’clock somewhere! Like in the west or whatever.”

“The east, Hilari,” I sighed. “It’s later in the east.”

“Yeah, the east! Y’know what else is in the east? Brazil! HEY, MACARENA!”

She attempted to jump down from her seat at the bar, presumably to start dancing the Macarena, but wobbled dangerously. I took her shoulders to steady her, and looked at the bartender.

“Has she already opened a tab?”

He nodded.

“My name is Violet Banh, and I’m her agent.” I extracted my ID and a business card from my pocket. He glanced over my ID and accepted the card. I continued.

“Please let it be noted that Hillary Biggs is barred from purchasing alcohol between the hours of one AM and six PM. Also note that she is to be cut off when her tab reaches two hundred dollars unpaid, and that she is not to purchase more than three hundred dollars worth of alcohol per week. If you have any questions, I am staying in room 16-A. Do not take Hilari’s word on any changes to these instructions.” He looked a bit taken aback at the directions, but wrote all of it down, asking me to repeat a point once or twice.

“I’ll be sure to follow these rules to the letter, miss, and I’ll make sure that the rest of the bartenders know about them, too.” He glanced at Hilari, who’d crossed her arms and was pouting again. “It’s difficult, isn’t it.” I raised an eyebrow, unsure of what he meant and not wanting to guess wrong and embarrass myself—and Hilari. “My mother was the same way,” he elaborated. “My father was still around, but sometimes it was so hard that it didn’t particularly matter.”

I gave him a grim smile. “Mine isn’t, and if he was, I wouldn’t have to deal with her. Thank you anyway, though.” I turned my attention back to Hilari, and tugged on her wrist. “Come on, Hilari, we need to get you to bed so that you can sleep this off.”

She muttered about me being an un-funmonger again, but went along easily enough, and I got her to her room and into bed without incident. And now, about fifteen minutes after that, I’m writing this journal entry. If the rest of this month is going to go anything like the three hour period after we left the dock, I don’t know how I’m going to survive it.