Break It Up (22 page)

I can feel everyone’s anticipation in the air—it’s almost palpable. Any minute now, they think I’m going to break down and whine and fill the hour with an entertaining sob story that will get me ripped to shreds. I know the next question. Kimberly’s going to ask me how I feel about being the victim my whole life.

“How’s that make you feel now, looking back on that?”

Yeah, enough of her fishing for pity,
I think.
Time to switch it up.
“You mean, was their perception accurate?” I ask. “Did I sleep around and do all those things?”

“That’s not exactly my question, but do you want to answer that one?” She’s nervous now. We’re
right
on the brink of Questions Not Allowed, and Jason could have my handlers pull me at any second. Which would be sensational. People would talk about it. I’m sure the show has a backup guest and program just in case, or maybe they’d just move to some kind of news desk interaction where opinion columnists from around the country could discuss my tantrum and bring it firmly out of tabloid reporting and into serious news.

This transition to mainstream news will happen only on my terms.

“Let’s just say for the sake of argument that I did deserve my reputation,” I say. “I’m not going to say yes or no because it’s no one else’s business. But assume that I have done everything people have said about me.”

“All right,” says Kimberly, going along.

I wonder if she notices I’m now in control of the interview. I’ll assume she does, and that means I don’t have the degree of control I think I do. She can snatch this back at any time.

I maintain eye contact and say, “None of that would give me the power to break up Triple Cross. It just provides a lot of gossip and distraction, which people seem really into.”

Kimberly takes my bait and goes for the meat of the issue. “So it isn’t your fault that Triple Cross broke up?”

I think carefully. Whatever I say next is likely going to be THE sound bite of the evening since it answers THE question of the moment. This is my one chance to get it right or flub it up royally. I wait, which I know builds dramatic tension, but I really am scrabbling to collect my thoughts. It’s not an intentional ploy. I discard yes and no answers—nothing beyond the first word of those would make it into the sound bite. I discard diplomatic answers, like, “It depends on your perspective.” I need to get this
right.
I’ve rehearsed a million possible ways to address this, but they all seem flawed. I need to make sure I push this conversation in the exact direction I want to go.

So I decide not to strategize. I show my hand. “Imagine that I’m fourteen years old,” I say.

“But you’re not—”

“—or younger, even, and that I’ve had a lot of sexual partners—”

“That’s not the question-”

“—and that everyone at school and around town is saying I broke up everyone’s favorite band. A little garage band, right? All teenagers.”

“That isn’t the question,” says Kimberly. She’s not happy with me talking over her.

I don’t care. “Yeah, it is basically. Because when you accuse me of this, forget about what it does to me. I’m older and I’ve got the best family there is—”

“I am asking you—”

“When you ask me that question, if the band breaking up was my fault, you are saying to the world that it’s okay to blame me, even though the band is made up of mature adults able to think for themselves who had some deep creative differences. You’re saying that my colorful sexual past is something that I deserve public shaming for. Think about
why
some young girls sleep around and ask yourself, do you want to contribute to their feelings of guilt and worthlessness, to the perception they deserve to be judged? By making an example out of me?”

“This isn’t about anyone but you,” says Kimberly.

“Um, I’m on prime time television. If this was just about Kyra Armijo, eighteen-year-old girl from New Mexico, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Well, it’s also about Triple Cross, one of the top selling musical acts of all time.” She knows how to make a good, solid grab for control. “It seems to me that you’re pulling in the topic of young, sexually promiscuous girls as a shield to hide behind. You’re saying, ‘Think of them and ignore me.’”

“People do not have to ignore me,” I say. “Photographers and reporters have been following me around ever since this blew up and I don’t tell them to leave me alone or get lost anymore. If people think I’m so interesting, going to the grocery store and stuff, fine. I don’t care. I mean, it’s hard to park my car sometimes, but…” I shrug. “I’m not hiding.”

“So what is your strategy here?” Kimberly must be a little flustered to use a bald term like “strategy.” I don’t think we’re supposed to admit this is part of any strategy, us being here, even though the world knows it is.

“I’ve got two things to say.” I look her straight in the eye.

She stares back.

And I wait. I wait for her to open the door and give me a soapbox or slam it in my face and heckle me for the rest of the hour. I have played the best hand I knew how.

“Okay,” she says.

It takes me a minute to realize she’s yielded. She’s silent. I can talk now.

“First of all,” I say, “I don’t owe the world any details about my sex life. That’s personal. I’m not dating the public. I’m not leading the public on in any misperceptions of me. The only people who have a right to know about my history are people I date. People I might be intimate with.”

“Did Zach Wechsler know about your reputation?”

“He did not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t realize at first that our friendship might go that way. He has a lot of female fans. I thought he was just flirting sometimes. I didn’t know that he had genuine feelings for me. And then once I did know…” I take a deep breath. I’m about to break one of Jason’s rules and divulge a very personal detail. I just pray he’ll hold his horses and not call for his people to end this interview. “I didn’t want it to end, and I was afraid that once he knew the truth about me, he’d ditch me, so I didn’t tell. Which was wrong of me. I lied to him and I am sorry.”

Kimberly blinks, and I watch as she considers her next words. “Was Zach a good boyfriend to you?”

It’s an odd question to answer, given Zach and I were only together for a matter of hours. “Yeah,” I admit. “The best. Everything his fangirls dream of, and he’s real about it. It’s no act.”

“What about Ben?”

“I don’t know him as well,” I say. “We never really talked much.”

“Did he try to pressure you into having sex with him?” That question is definitely out of bounds.

But no one shouts out to end the interview, and I’m glad. I can handle this. I shrug. “He never made me uncomfortable. I don’t really have anything more to say about that.”

“So his reputation for drugs and partying—”

“Yeah, speaking as someone with a reputation myself, I’m not gonna throw fuel on the fire there. People don’t know him, and that’s just the way it goes. Most will never know how much of all that is made-up hype and how much is fact. That’s how the celebrity thing works.”

“And you’re not going to enlighten anyone?”

“My words would just get put through the media spin process, so nothing I say would enlighten anyone.”

“Touché,” says Kimberly.

“I guess I’m supposed to say ‘Present company excepted’ or whatever.”

Much to my surprise, she laughs. “Well let’s hope so, for this interview at least. We’re live. I don’t know how much spin we could add tonight.”

I’m not sure I’ve read her right, but she doesn’t seem to mind my accusations at all. “True,” is how I answer her.

“All right, you said you had two things to say. What’s the second one?”

“That I know what it’s like to be the girl everyone hates and to feel worthless. Like you’ve given away so much of yourself that there’s nothing left. And I just want to say to any person who feels that way that you’re not worthless. You’re not trash. Any guy, or any
person,
who would be ashamed to be with you isn’t worth your time. There’s something Chloe Vanderholt, Jason’s wife, said to me once.”

“What’s that?”

“Having standards is a great jerk filter, but the downside is that there are a lot of jerks out there. She’d tell me about the long dry periods she had while dating and, I mean, look at how the media treats her because she’s too busy worrying about details like saving lives through her job rather than whether or not the paparazzi get her good side? Her standards show and people don’t like it.”

“She does have a reputation for being a little bit of a cold fish.”

“And why would Jason Vanderholt marry a cold fish? Obviously there’s more to her. But people don’t see it and that’s the way the world is, and that’s why it’s hard sometimes to be yourself. I know this fear, but I also know now that it’s worth it. Not that being true to yourself always gets you a proposal from Jason Vanderholt or anything—”

“Or a date with Zach Wechsler,” Kimberly adds. “Is your point that having standards enabled you to date someone like Zach?”

I examine that question from every paranoid angle I can and decide it’s a softball. “Yeah, it let me believe that I could talk to Zach Wechsler, that if he laughed at me I could think less of him for it rather than less of myself. I didn’t think it’d lead to dating, but…yeah, it opened up the opportunity.”

“And what if he’d known about your past?” Not a softball question.

But I’m ready. “I don’t know. I never gave him the chance to decide, but I wasn’t trying to hide it. I mean, Zach Wechsler sending me text messages wasn’t enough to make me think he was smitten with me or anything.”

“Text messages?”

“Yeah. We’d text.”

“How often?”

“Oh…uh…I’m gonna look clueless here, aren’t I?”

“Yes, sweetie, you just might.”

But we’re both laughing now. “Okay, so I didn’t figure out how that all works in high school. It was my first real relationship in some ways, and I’ll always treasure it. I’m just sorry for how it ended.”

“Have you had the chance to tell him that?”

“I haven’t, no.”

“So maybe he’ll hear you say it here.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

Kimberly sits back. Now it’s her turn to pause and think. She’s back in control of the interview, and I hope for the best. “Okay,” she says, “so we’re going to imagine the whole audience out there is young girls who feel like the world hates them. Whether they’ve slept around or they have a parent who puts them down or they didn’t get the grades they wanted, whatever. What do you want to say to them?”

Talk about being given a soapbox. I take a moment to consider that, because I can. Because I’m not in enemy territory now. We’re two women talking about an issue that means something to us.

“That it’s never too late. You can always wake up tomorrow and decide to be someone else. If the rest of the world doesn’t get on board? Ignore them.”

“That’s tough to do,” says Kimberly. “I mean, I’ve been allowed to broadcast my opinion and cultivate my own image for decades, and it’s still hard some days to say, ‘This is who I am,’ and ignore people who want to say differently.”

Motion catches the corner of my eye. I don’t look, but all the same I see Jason’s publicist is pumping his fist in the air. I did it.

Tonight, at least. Tomorrow I’ll be back to getting out of bed, asserting my own identity, and probably having to ignore what the rest of the world has to say about it.

But tonight, I did everything I came here to do. I seal the deal when Kimberly asks me, “Are you still the girl who feels worthless because of what people say about you?”

“No,” I say. “I am not. Not anymore. Never again. People can say what they want. I’m just gonna live my life.”

Even Kimberly smiles at that one.

I just wonder if Zach is watching.

When I
get backstage, I’m not
terribly
surprised to find my father waiting for me in the green room. It’s just his style to stay out of sight so I wouldn’t be nervous about him watching, but to be there to catch me the moment I fall. He’s grinning from ear to ear, and as I make my way over to hug him, various crew members give me thumbs ups and high-fives and shouts of, “Well done!”

Kimberly comes back, her cell phone pressed to her ear. “I want at least ten minutes. More if possible. I want to do a post interview piece and I want to get an idea of how it played tonight. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” She puts her phone to her chest. “You interested in being on—”

“No.” I cut her off. “This was it. I go back to being just Kyra now.”

“No,” she repeats into the phone. “She’s done with interviews. Yeah, you do that.” She hangs up and turns to me. “You weren’t what I expected at all.”

I shrug, not sure how to take that. To smile would be to assume she means it in a good way, and that would probably look conceited. So I agonize about how to look grateful but not presumptuous.

She puts me out of my misery with a pat of her bony hand on my forearm. “You ever want a career in journalism or publicity, you call me, all right?”

“Oh…um…thank you.”

“That your planned career?”

“I really don’t know. I’m going to Chapman University.”

“Great school.”

“And I’m undecided still. I’ll see what I like.”

“Good plan. This your father?” She turns to shake my father’s hand.

“Yeah,” I say.

“She won’t let me beat the paparazzi with a baseball bat like I want to,” he says.

“I hear that. I think she’s got the situation under control, though.”

As nice as it would be to bask in the praise, I let it slide over me. Tonight everyone’s on a high. Tomorrow is another day.

The media
fallout is divided between people who say I am amazing, people who think Kimberly Gregg fell down on the job, and people who think it’s all more media trickery and spin and BS. Offers flood in—for me to be a columnist, for me to give more interviews, for me to audition to be a spokesperson for a women’s weight loss company. (Yeah, I thought that one was weird too.)

With the help of Jason, Dave, and Jason’s publicist, I craft careful answers. “Thank you for the ego boost, but right now I just want to go to college and get on with my life,” is my message. Jason’s publicist explains to me that his usual advice is to capitalize on any publicity. Extend your influence.

But my aim isn’t to succeed in showbiz or further my career. I don’t even have a career yet. My aim was to make a point, and we all agree that talking too much is far worse than not talking at all. I’ve said my piece, and now it’s time for society to chew it over and figure out what they think. Meanwhile, I’m stepping out of the spotlight and walking away.

It’s clear I’ll have to do a lot of walking before the spotlight stops following me, though. I get fan mail from girls who say that I changed their lives. I get death threats. I get my face splashed all over the tabloids
and
the glossy magazines. I have no trouble seeing how people get lost in all the popping flashbulbs and outcry from fans.

I have the best support system a girl could ask for, and I let them take over. Jason helps me answer my fan mail and advises me on how often to be seen out in public. We discuss whether I should move to California early to take the media spotlight away from Jen and the babies. While I want to spare them, I don’t want to be so far from my parents just now, and they indulge me. They are letting me be the clingy little girl for a few weeks longer before I leave for college. It helps that Jen’s been the twin sister of one of the most famous people on the planet for eons. None of this seems to faze her.

The paparazzi follow me
way
more than makes sense. The tabloids fill up with pictures of me getting in and out of Libby, pushing a grocery cart around, talking on my cell phone, and getting the mail. Even I look at the pictures and think that I must be really boring. I know what the game is, though. It’s to put pressure on until I crack and do something stupid.

It turns out I have people willing to fight back on my behalf, too. Feminist columnists take up my cause. Schoolgirls across the country make themselves “Team Kyra” t-shirts and wear them with pride. Violet Eyes and Shutdown shout their support of me from their concert stages and are answered by the screaming enthusiasm of fans.

Notes from girls pile up around our mailbox, left in the night by fans who want me to know that I made a difference to them.

When I get home from the store about a week before I’m due to head out to school, I find may parents waiting for me at the dinner table.

“Sit down,” says Jen. She doesn’t seem angry, but she isn’t happy either. Her expression is pensive. My father’s posture indicates that he is following her lead.

I sit down at the table and brace myself. “Yeah?”

“We got a phone call today from Lizzie Warner.”

“Huh?” I say. Lizzie Warner is a blond and perky actress in silly teeny bopper television. I can’t imagine what she’d want with me.

“She’s about to start shooting on a television series in Orange County…and she’s looking for a roommate.”

“Okay,” I respond.

“You interested?” asks Jen.

“Is she serious?”

“She doesn’t want another actress, but she needs someone who knows how to handle fame by association. The last girl lined up as her roommate got caught accepting interview requests.”

I nod. My life has come full circle since the beginning of the summer when I got invited to dinner with Triple Cross. I’m still an insider. Someone who knows how celebrity works and won’t take liberties. Even this massive media blow up hasn’t changed that apparently. “She’s sure she wants to take me on?” I ask. “If she wants to avoid the press…”

“Kyra,” says Jen. “People like you. A lot. You’re going to have to get used to it.”

“She doesn’t even know me,” I say.

At that Jen frowns, shrugs, and says, “You can be very, very famous and still not have any real friends to turn to. Even celebrities get celebrity crushes, watching someone kill it in an interview, for example.”

So that’s how I ended up renting a penthouse apartment with Lizzie Warner, because my life is
completely weird
sometimes. Lizzie’s shows aren’t the kind of thing I’ve watched since I was seven. Given my reputation in high school, I know my old friends would laugh their heads off if they knew I was her roommate.

Only most of them ratted me out to the media, so they aren’t my friends anymore. I guess that makes Lizzie my new normal, not a deviation. Maybe I can get used to hanging around girls with rose petal complexions and dainty giggles.

That following week, I go with my parents to Target and Walmart to buy furnishings for my new place. Thanks to the ever-present paparazzi cameras, all of America knows what pattern of sheets I’ll be sleeping on and what color plastic cups I’ll drink out of. Bloggers even post opinions about whether or not the whole shopping trip was a ruse because, obviously, famous people like Lizzie Warner get pre-furnished penthouses, right?

Oh yeah, one other thing—the whole world knows where Lizzie Warner’s going to be living, complete with pictures of the exterior, thanks to me and my notoriety. And yet I’ve not heard a peep from Lizzie’s people. She hasn’t called the arrangement off. She’s even called my cell phone a few times so we could “chat,” and she’s nice enough, I guess. I find I can get along with just about anyone these days, even the reporters who flip me off and hope that I’ll get mad and go after them. I mimed picking my nose once in response, and
that
got splashed on three tabloid front pages, so now I just smile and act like the attention doesn’t bother me.

I keep thinking it’ll have to end soon. Aidan and company are still going to release that concert movie, and my notoriety is still helping them. The last video they posted with me on it got so many comments it crashed the page. I had haters and white knights (people who defend others online) get into a massive flame war. Ben Roland even commented, but I don’t know what he said. I purposely didn’t find out once I got word he’d posted. I’m pretty good at shutting my eyes and ears these days.

People assume that I left Kimberly Gregg’s interview victorious, gained a lot of allies, and am now basking in my own glory. The truth is a lot lonelier. I hope that what I said made a difference to others. To be honest, it made very little difference to me.

Zach has been so silent that people have started rumors online that he’s dead. It’s as if he dropped off the face of the earth, and I realize I may never know what becomes of him. I’ve got no way to reach him, and we might never cross paths again. He could hole up until his fame disappears and then get on with his life as just another guy. Even the biggest stars fade if they let themselves.

That hurts—to think that our last fight is the last memory I’ll ever have of him. I still miss him. Some nights I dream that he lies next to me and I can almost feel his weight on my bed, his arms around me.

I wonder if he saw any of this crazy publicity fallout and whether he hates me for what I did. Nobody else can blame me for the breakup of Triple Cross, but Zach could if he wanted to. He could yell at me and call me names. I owe it to him to let him feel however he wants.

The thought of him brings a pang to my chest like flesh ripping. I don’t know if it’s love, but it sure is intense. I still cry over him sometimes when only Boots can see. Things would have been so much better for me if I’d never met the guy I’d lusted for all through my teenage years.

I’m not sure if I decide to get a tattoo as an act of rebellion or grief or what, but it seems only fitting that a girl with a past like mine should have a tattoo. I don’t tell anyone—not Jen, not my father, not even Boots. I just take a few hundred dollars of textbook and food money out of my bank account and walk into a tattoo parlor, where my notoriety works to my benefit. The artist, a woman, knows me on sight. She sits me down and asks me what part of myself I want to keep with me always. An odd question. It takes me a long time to think about it.

“My heritage,” I say, finally.

“Which is?”

“A little bit Spanish, Hispanic, whatever, and a little bit Anglo. All New Mexican.”

“How about a desert rose?” she suggests.

“Um, sure.”

“It’s just that when the environment got really hostile, you bloomed. It fits.”

It’s flattering at least.

She sketches out a drawing of a silver medallion and feathers and desert roses and I agree that it’s what I want. We ink it on the inside of my bicep, where I can see it with a simple glance down, but it’ll be easy to hide from the world. The needle hurts something awful, a deep scratch that goes on and on and
on
as she inks in every little line and dot. Once she’s finished, she refuses payment. “Just stay true to yourself,” she says, and she then escorts me out the door before I can protest. “Treat it with Neosporin and keep it covered for a week with a bandage.”

Like a typical teenager, I hide the body art from my parents, and a week later, it’s time to move to California and be an adult, which is a tall order after I botched up so much of my childhood, but I figure that if I can’t do it, I can at least fake it. My father and I load up Libby and drive to Orange County. My car and my roommate have similar names. I hope Lizzie doesn’t mind.

She greets me with a squeal and a hug that are pretty much what I’d expect from what I’ve seen of her on her shows. She turns out to be sweet as sugar and doesn’t care about the paparazzi tailing me around. In fact, I think she enjoys pictures of us together in the gossip rags. Kyra Armijo, the reformed slut, now hangs out with Lizzie Warner, and it’s not an act.

I do appreciate Lizzie’s sense of humor about all of this. It’s pretty similar to my own.

About two
weeks into my studies, I arrive back home after a day’s classes, and there, seated in front of the door to my apartment, is Zach.

I freeze at the sight of him, and he gets to his feet, his hands shoved into his pockets. He doesn’t look me in the eye, but rather down at his shoes. He wears the same uber-clean jeans and t-shirt as always.