It was bizarre to have it be so many people for this.

  It was also time.

  They asked her to do the short scene first, the cousin Charles scene (Heather read for him). Audrey did it well. Maybe she wasn’t quite settled at the start, but then she really nailed a particular zinger and earned a few honest laughs from her cramped audience. And she finished strong, channeling the indignation and displeasure Clara always felt when forced to contend with Charles.

  When she was done, everyone clapped politely, but not like they were clapping only to be polite. And Gray nodded and gave her a subtle thumbs-up. Noel saw him do this and shook his head no and quickly gave her, instead, two thumbs up while also making a, like, rock ’n’ roll fuck yeah face at her.

  Merritt was not smiling, of course, but she didn’t look disgusted, either. Disinterested, maybe, but not overtly disappointed or horrified.

  And then people were shifting in the room so that Harper could get by, could get up to the desk and next to Audrey. “Crushed it,” she said quietly as she approached. Then she winked. It was a move that suited her.

  It was only then, as Harper positioned herself for the start, that Audrey noticed she didn’t have her sides in hand. She’d had them minutes before, as they’d been rehearsing, and it had seemed like she was using them. But now her hands were empty, so she must have memorized her lines. This revelation threw Audrey a little.

  And then, while she was processing Harper’s off-scriptness and telling herself it didn’t matter (Who cares, just do what you did before, do it like that) there was Heather, reading from a text lighting up the screen of her phone and saying, “Oh, wait—wait a sec. Don’t start yet—your mom’s here.”

  At first, Audrey didn’t think she could possibly be talking to her. Other people in the room seemed to understand right away that she was, but Audrey did not. She only half heard her and was like, Whose mom? and then continued to concentrate on Harper and what she’d be able to do in this scene that Audrey herself plainly couldn’t yet, because she still had to read almost all of her lines. But then somewhere in those same seconds, she noticed that most of the people in the room had stopped their chatter and their phone-poking to look at her. And she had to think again about what Heather had just said, and then ask, “Wait, my mom? Caroline?”

  “Yeah, she just texted,” Heather said. “She’s walking up right now so we’ll give her a minute.”

  “My mom?”

  “In the flesh.” Heather smiled.

  Audrey still hadn’t even quite latched on to this when there was Caroline, her just-manicured hand on Noel’s shoulder as she slid around him and into the room, people turning to greet her.

  She looked good. She usually did these days, Readers—but these days people didn’t see her everywhere like they used to, either, so they were more surprised by it. She had this kind of glamorous-natural thing going, where, for instance, she got a manicure, but just to buff her nails and keep them short and shaped, a hint of shine, noticeable only if you looked close. She wore a sleeveless navy jumpsuit with a thin belted sash of the same material around her narrow waist. It fit her very well. But Audrey also thought she could feel other people in the room staring at Caroline’s scars: the remnants of the bite wounds that the many reconstructive surgeons couldn’t make disappear, the thin seams running up from the top of her lip to her nose, the dent, it was kind of a dent, in her right cheek. Or maybe not the scars themselves, but what they represented—the big ugly thing. Probably they weren’t doing this. She was beautiful and once famous and possibly that’s what they were staring at. But Audrey didn’t think that was all of it.

  Caroline managed to look around the people now walking over to greet her to find Audrey staring back at her and smile and shrug an I’m sorry, mouthing I didn’t know—right as Gray half shouted, by way of explanation: “Sorry, hon, it was me—I texted her earlier.”

  Audrey stared at him, wholly confused. And angry.

  “I texted her before, I mean,” he said. “Because we’re running a little late and I’m gonna have to go soon and I didn’t want you not to have anyone here after I left, to drive you, but then Noel stayed anyway, so it didn’t matter.” He turned to Caroline. “Plus, I texted you back to say don’t come.”

  “I didn’t get it until I pulled in,” Caroline said. “Audrey makes me use the Do Not Disturb app when I drive.”

  As explanations go, this one did not make sense.

  “But no matter,” Bo said, now standing next to Caroline, his arm around her. “Right? More the merrier. You didn’t even miss the show. She’s still got one to do.”

  Caroline nodded and smiled again at Audrey, and Audrey smiled back because what else, Readers? What else? The room shuffled around to fit Caroline. She ended up, no kidding, standing directly in front of her own House Mother poster. Of course she did.

  I don’t know, gentle Readers. Audrey was thrown, yes, but she might still have managed something resembling decent if she hadn’t happened to look at Merritt right then. She’d lost track of her in the unexpectedness of Caroline’s arrival, hadn’t seen her specific reaction to it, but if Audrey had to guess, she’d say that it was probably pretty similar to the reaction Merritt was having now. Which was a smirk. Like, an all-knowing, all-mocking smirk of disapproval and pity and maybe even contempt. Wouldn’t put it past her.

  And then, right then, they started the scene. And she was completely awful in it. I mean, think of all the bad acting you’ve ever witnessed and imagine Audrey Wells giving you some of all of it in this performance.

  She flubbed lines. Badly enough that she had to repeat them. In fact, they restarted the scene not once but twice. Bo called for it, tried to give her time to re-collect. It didn’t help. She didn’t play off anything Harper was doing. She felt no emotion, no connection to the material, so she tried to compensate by going big, overacting. And then, when she realized that’s what she was doing and inwardly cringed about how awful it was, she tried to pull back, to go small, but what she gave was flat and empty instead.

  She was aware of the people watching her, their eyes on her—their breathing and movements in the room. She was aware of her mom, and her mom’s poster, over to the left. She wasn’t in the scene at all, she wasn’t Clara.

  She was Audrey Wells, an actor in front of a room of judging people while she poorly read lines from a script. There was nothing there that wasn’t decidedly amateur at best and just plain bad at worst.

  And the flop sweat—her nervous system pumping out perspiration on her forehead, her neck—came and it came in a rush. The beads and shine were noticeable to everyone watching, including Harper Harper. Especially to Harper Harper, crushed under that desk with her.

  And then, because Audrey knew all of this as it was happening, as she was doing such a shit job, she thought (and you’re probably already guessing at this, because it’s exactly the kind of terrible decision a person makes when they’re trying to save something that can’t be saved, when they’re desperate): I can make this better with the kiss. If I do the kiss well, if I get it right, that’s the thing they’ll remember most. It’s the closer.

  Audrey had been told before that she kissed well. I mean, the people telling her that had their various reasons for doing so, yes. But still, she had been told it before. More than once, in fact, and by different people. So she thought, Do that, now. Kiss her well, with all of Clara Broward’s kissing intention, and she’ll respond as Flo would because she’s Harper Fucking Harper and she can act and at least you’ll have that. At least you can say, I blew the read but I nailed the kiss.

  But she didn’t.

  I mean, not at all.

  Because the thing is, the scene had gone so poorly that Harper couldn’t possibly have imagined that Audrey would even want to do the kiss. There had been zero chemistry, zero spark or energy (thanks, Bo) between them during that read. There had been nothing at all, and now here Audrey was with her lips stuffed so closely to Harper’s that it was impossible to misread her intentions. I mean, they’d run it twice and Audrey had never positioned herself quite like this. And yet, Harper probably still believed there was just no way. Not with things going so poorly.

  But oh, there was a way, Readers: Audrey kissed her. She leaned in and crash-landed her mouth onto Harper’s, who was not expecting this move. How could she have been? It takes skill to deliver to an audience a kiss that’s meant to read as passionate but also new; committed, but also questioning. Good acting was the believable embodiment of a character—of a life. This was face-mashing lip wreckage.

  What Audrey later remembered most specifically about that kiss was knowing, even as she pushed her head toward Harper’s, even before the crash landing, that it wasn’t going to work. And then it didn’t work. And then she didn’t want to pull away because, fuuuuuuck, then what? Then there was a whole room of disappointed and embarrassed people who’d just watched this disaster go down was what. And the only thing left to do was face them. Bo and sneering Merritt and Noel and Gray and her mom. And so even though it was terrible—oh, it was so bad—Audrey kept kissing her.

  And because she was a good actor, Harper tried to sell it. For Audrey’s sake.

  But, Readers, trying to sell this kiss was like trying to sell a sack of bloody pig lips outside your local vegan grocer.

  It wasn’t working. It didn’t work. So then, with no grace, or skill, or sense of delivery, Audrey stopped kissing Harper and pulled her head away.

  To their enormous credit, the people in the room did not polite clap. If they had, Audrey might have started crying. She was already on the brink of it. But everyone assembled understood her shame in those moments. Some of them offered kind smiles. Some of them looked away, pretended to take notes or read things on their phones. Somehow she managed to avoid looking at Merritt, but Noel’s attempt to not look mortified on her behalf, to look caring if not cheerful, wasn’t at all successful.

  “So that’s it, right?” Heather eventually said to Bo. “We’ve got what we need?”

  “Got what we need,” Bo said. He looked at Audrey. She looked away first.

  And then Heather, now talking like synthetic sunshine, said, “OK! Great. Lots more food in the back, everybody.” She had a smile on her face and her hand out as she approached Audrey. “Thanks so much for trying this out with us last minute.”

  Audrey scurried out from under the table and found words to say as they shook hands. “Of course,” she said. “Thank you so much for asking me to.”

  Heather nodded her shimmery bob once in this very final yep, really didn’t work, don’t ever, ever call us kind of way. So before she could escape the room along with the other people hurrying out, Audrey asked her, quietly, “Is the other part? I mean—is Eleanor—have you cast somebody else in that role?”

  “Yesterday,” Heather said. “Esme Oates. Do you know her? She’s great.”

  “I don’t know her,” Audrey lied. “But thank you.”

  After that it was just a not-that-prolonged shuffle through uncomfortable goodbyes to get out of there. People were busy navigating the awkwardness of professionally stepping around so stunning a failure, while also not going overboard with phony cheer. It was, in a word, Readers: weird.

  Harper gave Audrey a one-armed hug and said something like It was so great to finally meet you. Merritt managed to shake hands, a better greeting than she’d given Audrey out front, and even said, quietly, “Sorry again about earlier. I genuinely didn’t mean to doubt your queer cred.” She seemed earnest enough about this, but even still: fuck Merritt Emmons, Readers.

  Soon enough it was only her people—Gray and Caroline and Noel—and Bo and his assistant left in the room. And Bo and his assistant were deep in quiet conversation. So Audrey had to wait.

  She knew she wasn’t good enough for this part. She had known it right away, the day before at the table with Gray and Noel, there in the green-seed rain. But it still sucks, a lot, to have that kind of knowledge—your sense of your own inadequacy—confirmed for you. And in this case confirmed for you in front of an audience.

  Shame burned in Audrey’s chest and behind her eyes. Really all she wanted to do now was get out the door to the privacy of Noel’s car, where she could cry. But Bo and his fucking assistant were blocking her exit path. So she waited, trading glances with her people, trying not to cry, not to cry, not to cry. At some point she locked onto that stupid House Mother poster and had a stare-off with the fake-bloodied Caroline, the one who had been about her age. Why did any of this ever seem like a good idea? she wanted to ask that version of her mom. And has it ever really been worth it?

  Eventually, not soon enough, Bo finished his conversation and his assistant left, shutting the door behind her.

  He didn’t make Audrey wait. “Well, that was very bad,” he said, leaning up against the edge of his desk where Harper had been earlier. “Quelle horreur!” He gestured for everyone left in the room to sit as well. “I mean you went for it, didn’t you? Can’t say otherwise.”

  “I know,” Audrey said. She didn’t want to sit. She wanted to make with the pleasantries and get the hell out of there. “I don’t even—”

  “You really let Merritt get under your skin, huh?” he said. Was he smiling? He was smiling. “Or was it your mom showing up?”

  She felt off-balance. Wind-knocked. “No, it wasn’t—”

  He cut her off again. “Either way, it’s what we want. And what we’ll want more of.” He again gestured for them to sit.

  Audrey didn’t think she’d heard him right.

  But then Gray said, “I think so, too,” as he settled himself, comfortably, in the seat Merritt had been in earlier. Now he was kicking out his legs, even flopping one foot over the other, as if he was in a deck chair on a cruise. “I think it might actually be better that it was such a horror show. It’ll unquestionably further antagonize the whole thing with Merritt. Stir the pot.”

  “I thought you had to leave,” Audrey said to him. This addressed just one of the many things confusing her at the moment, but it seemed the easiest one to put into words.

  “No, I’m good, kiddo,” Gray said. “Part of the ruse: the mother intrudes. Come on, sit down.”

  Audrey looked at her mom, at Noel. They weren’t smiling wide, like they’d pulled off the surprise! part of a surprise party, but they weren’t confused like she was: they clearly knew whatever it was that Bo and Gray knew. She felt drugged or maybe asleep. Mostly she felt like she might scream at them. Like she’d start to scream and not be able to stop, to scream and scream and scream.

  “Let’s talk,” Bo said.

  Fin De Siècle Meet Cute

  My dear, anticipating Readers, before I tell you what Bo and Audrey talked about that day in his office (and I will tell you, of course I will) we have a date to get to. Two dates, in fact.

  You already know, don’t you, that we’re set to venture out into the smoky wilds of Los Angeles with Harper and Merritt, but first I’d like to turn your attention to a different girl-on-girl scene from more than one hundred years before: how Miss Alexandra Trills and Principal Libbie Brookhants first came to be Alex and Libbie, our Alex and Libbie.

  It seems to me—given the horrors you’ve already experienced with them, and also the dreadfulness still to come in these pages—that we owe them at least that. After all, their particular subplots of this unwieldy story didn’t make it into Bo’s screenplay. (Though I won’t apportion all the blame for that to Bo Dhillon. Alex and Libbie scarcely made it into Merritt’s book on the curse, either. Or at least Merritt’s first book on the curse.)

  Of course, young Mary MacLane herself might have briefly appreciated that this was to become the Hollywood way of things: nubile bad girls meeting in the woods beat out middle-aged domesticated sapphics every (screen) time.

  And so, before this bad tale subjects them to more trouble, please allow me to linger, for a few moments, on a better time.

  They’d first met while students at Wellesley College.

  Principal Brookhants was then only Libbie Packard—a sophomore, class of 1893—and Miss Trills a junior and captain of her crew team, known widely among her peers as Alex the Flirt. Wouldn’t Eleanor Faderman have been surprised, Readers, to think of dull Miss Trills as the campus flirt?

  Libbie Packard had certainly seen (and heard of) Alex(andra) Trills at various times during the school year previous. However, back then she’d been only a fresh frosh, and even the idea of approaching Alex had seemed a mountain too tall to scale. Now that Libbie had one year of Wellesley under her bicycle bloomers, she decided to take a closer look.

  Her first chance for doing so came at the Class Colors ceremony near the start of the fall semester. Alex had been chosen to wave the junior class flag on the shores of Lake Waban, which she did with a kind of unforced and elegant athleticism, while alternately smiling and ducking her head at the attention. Like several of her classmates, she wore a straw hat and necktie with her bright white blouse and a long, pleated skirt that caught the breeze off the water like the stiff petals of a tulip might. She was so slim it was as if her clothing covered only angles and not actual flesh. Still, she was strong with that flag, capable and aware of the attention she drew.

  Half of the Wellesley campus was then smashed on Alex the Flirt, and she on them, so who could keep track of one smitten sophomore pinching her cheeks for color and hoping to be noticed in a sea of such girls, some of whom seemed—to Libbie, anyway—to require no cheek pinching at all to appear flushed and vivacious?

  And so it was, that very day, that Libbie Packard made a plan to get Alexandra Trills to notice her. And you should know, Readers, that Libbie Packard’s plans to be noticed tended to be successful.