Chapter Two

CALIFORNIA ZINFANDEL HAS let me down. It has pushed me all the way down a broken elevator shaft, in fact. It’s well past dark when I roll off the couch onto the shag carpet, skull thumping with a migraine, and release a pitiful wail. The house smells like dessert for some reason, and there’s a stretchy beige bandage on my right hand that I don’t remember putting there. This is what happens when you day-drink.

“What have I done to deserve this,” I murmur forlornly. My phone lies inches away on the carpet. I must pull through for the sake of my fans, which I’m going to have again someday.

Zero outreach from Dad, Felix, or Athena, as per usual. Felix and Athena never check in because they’re snobs, and Dad never checks in because he’s a quiet, private soul who doesn’t contact anyone unless it’s an emergency. One single text from Kaia, which she meant to send to a friend. Six from Mom in the few hours since I last glanced at my phone, asking how I’m doing, if I’ve booked my flight, when I’ll be getting in, if she needs to pick me up from the airport. Directions in case I rent a car. She wants to know if it’s still raining on my end and I have to look up the current weather in Haiku, Hawaii, before I respond. My house, which the bank took away, has been bought and sold twice over. It’s been relisted on Zillow, which I stare at nightly through my tears. The fact that my mother keeps an eye on what the weather is like where all of her children live makes me feel so much worse about lying and being the only Hughes child who didn’t show up at Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving just reminds me of Christmas, which reminds me that I’m a failure with no presents to give everybody, a sponsorless woman in her midtwenties who steals Wi-Fi. And now I wish I were unconscious again.

“What am I gonna do,” I mutter into the carpet. From this angle, I can see everything going on under the couch but pretend I do not see it. An exterminator isn’t in the budget. I’m barely scraping by with my OnlyFans earnings, since ninety percent of my subscribers bailed after I said I wouldn’t post nudes.

I scroll through my many, many notifications. The unofficial BettieHughesUpdates account, which has mostly evaporated—its organizers moving on to shiny new starlets—has retweeted low-hanging gossip about my “clearly shopped photos,” even though they have no proof of that. I’ve endured too much. Like the fire from earlier. It’s frankly miraculous that I survived, since I drank so much wine that going anywhere near that fire should have turned me into a Molotov cocktail.

I decide to deactivate my Twitter. It’s the equivalent of a tantrum, and I’ve done it before, but it makes me feel better.

Then I mosey over to Instagram, where I post stories encouraging my followers to enter a sixty-day “A Healthier New Me” pledge with VerdIgRIS Tea. Sign up today with my promo code HUGHMONGOUSSALE. I find one of my best selfies, change my dark brown eyes to green, and post that, too.