Ellie is Cool Now

Chapter 25

I gasp, and my hands fly to my mouth.

"Oh, shit." Mark opens the door and leaps out of the car. I'm frozen in place while he runs across Rachel's lawn toward the bloody-nosed pizza boy. Rachel spits a string of expletives. Her eyes trail from the boy on the ground to the man running up to stop her. Her face screws up with rage, and then recognition.

The pizza box, now crumpled, is turned over on the ground. She yanks it open and launches dirt-covered slices of pizza at Mark.

Holy shit. She is in the middle of a full-blown nervous breakdown.

I pull out my phone and dial 911, my thumb hovering over the send button. Should I call? I have no clue what to do. I've never attended a pseudo celebrity's semi-public meltdown before. It all feels very bald Britney Spears circa 2007.

Mark shields the frazzled delivery guy with one arm and drags him to his car. Rachel limps toward the driveway. "Who called you? Who fucking called you?"

She starts to pound on the passenger side window of the Pizza Hut car. She looks like a freshly mummified monster — all blood and white bandages and angry gargoyle scowl.

"Was it the fucking stalkerazzi?" Her eyes scan the street for potential threats and land on me. They're fully dilated with murderous intensity.

I'm gonna throw up.

Mark looks completely helpless as Rachel powers up, dropping the piece of pizza she'd crumpled in her fist, and makes a beeline for me. He tries to get around the Pizza Hut car to stop her, but has to jump out of the way as the pizza guy "nopes" out of there so fast that he rams the back of the delivery car into a neighbor's mailbox. There's a horrible metallic crash before he peels out, busted up bumper scraping the asphalt and sending tiny sparks into the air.

I lock the doors and sink down in my seat, my hands covering my face.

I am Brendan Fraser, and Rachel Bumpass is The Mummy Returns.

And we're all going to die.

I hear a chorus of curses and fear the worst until everything goes quiet. I'm either dead or Rachel's heart has finally given in to all the cocaine and general anesthesia.

"Ellie fucking Jenkins?"

I peek through my fingers. Rachel's face has transformed completely. It's a face I know well. It's the "you might know someone who knows someone face" I've often encountered when I tell people I write for Cooler Than You.

Usually, it annoys me. Today, it's my saving grace.

I'm afraid to break eye contact with her, like I'm a lion trainer trying to subdue a rabid beast. I slowly lift my hand to unlock the door, hoping to woo her out of her unsolicited-pizza-induced rage with encouraging phrases like, "Have you lost weight?" and, "We should bring you on the show for a guest appearance."

No one can bullshit like a Hollywood exec.

Co-exec, anyway.

That moment never comes because I watch in horror as a soccer ball makes impact with the only portion of Rachel Bumpass's body that is not covered in bandages: her face. She falls backward, and I'm grateful it's onto grass and not concrete.

"Mark!" I shout, getting out of the car.

"Still got it," he says with a hip level fist pump.

Rachel groans and tries to sit up. I fall to my knees in the grass beside her and try to help her, but she weighs approximately 200 pounds in bandages alone.

"Help me," I say to Mark.

"I just knocked her down. Why are we helping her get back up?"

I sigh and turn back to her. "Are your parents here?"

Rachel shakes her head. It's then that I smell the alcohol on her breath and realize she must have been drinking. Why does everyone from this godforsaken town have a motherfucking drinking problem?

Mark reluctantly helps me get her to her feet. She is sore, but unbroken — at least on the outside. We help her into the house, which is decorated in floral wallpaper and pink plush carpet and her mother's rose-covered, overstuffed couch.

We sit her down on the couch with a cup of collagen tea Mark reheats in the microwave. The Great British Baking Show plays on the TV, joyous and polite. I can't help but think this is not the best thing to watch when you're clearly in a crisis with your own body image. Mark and I exchange worried glances — these foreign baked goods should come with a trigger warning. I'm not even hungry, and my mouth is watering.

"You guys are really great," she mumbles finally, slurping her tea like a child. We sit on either side of her, unsure of what comes next. I don't think we're "great," considering we're the ones who ordered the pizza in the first place. I'm also not sure anything has settled in yet.

Mark mimes a checkmark at me. I nod, clear my throat, and pull my knees up to my chest.

"So, Rachel—"

"I'm so happy you're here," Rachel interrupts.

I watch her slurp her tea, covered in bandages that are now covered in grass stains. Alone in a huge house recovering from unnecessary surgery that is a temporary Band-Aid over her bleeding self-worth. There isn't enough plastic surgery in the world to make Rachel feel good enough. She knows it, I know it, Mark knows it.

The pizza guy's face knows it.

Soon, the tabloids will reveal her deepest, darkest secrets and the whole world will know that Rachel Bumpass is not who she claims to be.

She's just a flawed human being. Just like me. Just like everyone else.

I don't need to compare lives with Most Likely to Succeed. I don't want to compare myself to any of these people anymore. This list started as a game to prove once and for all that I'm better than the kids from high school. That I finally found whatever it was that was missing back then.

That I now see in me what they never saw.

All this time I've been blaming them for something that was never about them. They never made me feel inferior or marginalized. I gave them power they never had. It was always about me. How I saw me, who I thought I was.

Maybe I am cool now. Or maybe none of us ever were. Maybe we were all just trying to figure out how to be and who to be.

Maybe we still are.

Rachel's soft snoring beside me brings me back to the present moment. I take the tea from her lap and set it down on the coffee table before pulling the throw blanket from the back of the couch and gently draping it over her.

When I stand up, I realize that Mark is watching me. I wonder if he has been watching this whole time.

He reaches out for my hand and I take it.

"I kinda feel sorry for her," he says.

I smile sadly.

"Me too."

***

A/N from Victoria:

Sorry that this one came late, you guys!!! We spent the weekend at the haunted Queen Mary in Long Beach for Faith's birthday! We were all wiped when we got home 😴

Everyone say a late happy birthday to Faith!!! 🎉

Don't forget to vote, pleeeeease - so that one day we can all see Ellie on the big or small screen 📺

Hey, I can dream, right? 🤩

XO,

V+F