It’s a drafty little place, musty-smelling, like it knows Eileen is dead and has decided to die right along with her even though someone’s still trying to live in it. The walls are dark wood paneling, the carpet gray shag that’s crunchy in areas. Crayons and dead mice have melted under the radiators to form the world’s most grotesque rainbow. There isn’t a single decent wall to pose in front of for pictures. I had to nail a tie-dye tapestry up on the wall with the best lighting, which as far as my followers and family know, is the “bohemian room” in my private Hawaiian villa. Don’t ask to visit me because I am simply too busy to accommodate guests—I am making a fortune as an influencer for a nonexistent company called verdIgRIS Tea, a multilevel marketing venture I made up. Allegedly, if you drink the tea it can make your eyes greener. I’ll send details to you in the mail, which will then be lost by our inefficient postal system.

Even though verdIgRIS isn’t real, other brands will surely see my sponsorships, so the goal is to make them think I’m in demand. If you build it (the lie), they will come (with enough cash to get me out of Teller City before my grandmother discovers I’m here and heckles me for being a failure).

I swallow, staring at the ceiling. Three days.

Only three days left until I have to see everyone and put on a convincing show that I’m Doing Great, Actually. No, I certainly did not make a huge deal out of how rich I was, then blow my money on big, elaborate parties for fair-weather friends I haven’t heard a peep from since my brands went kaput. The media didn’t overexpose me to the point where everyone hates me. My face wasn’t all over tabloids, first for my success, and then for my lavish parties, and finally as a target of ridicule. Constant accusations of cheating on partners or being cheated on. Plastic surgery. Debt. (They got that one right, at least.) I didn’t lose job opportunities, left with nothing except for credit too bad to get a loan.

It’s what my parents have been warning me about since I was four years old and crying that I wanted to be a Disney star. My frugal, responsible, ordinary parents, who shunned the limelight my grandmother casts, who’ve been scrupulously saving for their retirement since they were in their twenties. I certainly couldn’t approach them for help, not when my dad tried so hard to keep his kids from chasing fame but we all did, anyway, because bad people in nice suits offer fame-adjacent children the world the second they turn eighteen, exploiting their connections, sweet-talking them right into ruin, and then moving promptly along. Dad hoped we’d choose normal lives, too. He was worried we’d end up spoiled or broken. Joke’s on him: I’m both!

I get up and pour the remaining quarter of a bottle from the fridge into a glass. California zinfandel has never let me down.