Beautiful People | wlw

Thirteen: Queen

As soon as Carmen hung up, the PR girl whipped out her phone to call the charity. She spoke quickly but calmly and repeated herself several times, as though they didn't understand what she was saying, or maybe didn't believe her.

Horns complained and brakes squealed around them. Jay found a stream of the Teen Taste broadcast and turned his screen so Vera could see. Inside a glitzy theatre bedazzled with cheesy gold emoji-shaped decor, the hosts were chattering away to each other, making stupid jokes about year-old memes as though they could fool anybody into thinking they were cool.

Then one of them lifted a hand to their headset, saying, "Sounds like we've got one more arrival. Someone wanted to be fashionably late." The other host giggled aggressively.

The camera cut outside, to the red carpet, a dark limo pulling up to the curb.

Vera's stomach pulsed unpleasantly, like she was thirteen again, bleeding through her pants in class and terrified to stand up. "I can't watch."

"This whole thing was your idea," Jay said, pushing the phone closer into her face.

On the screen, a bland man in a suit opened the car door. Out flowed Carmen, shining like an angel fallen from heaven. Chin held high as she rose to her full height, sheer ivory robe swirling around her. Perfect face calm and unsmiling. Crotch bloody.

Vera watched with sick fascination. The carpet was empty except for reporters and photographers, all the other stars since disappeared inside the theatre doors. Behind the black railing, onlookers stared, slack-jawed. With no change in her expression, Carmen paced down the carpet, every step precise and measured.

Camera flashes highlighted the sleek lines of her long limbs, shattered in her sharp crown, turned the stain between her legs inky dark. She came to a slow stop before the photo wall and planted her feet apart, throwing her head back and spreading her arms by her hips, palms turned forward. Beautiful and terrible.

"Work it, bitch," Jay said, awed.

"Oh my God," said the giggly host. "Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?"

The other host said, "I'm not sure. Is she really--?"

"It looks like Carmen brought her own red carpet."

Jay let out a burst of laughter. Vera put a hand over her mouth because she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"I can't," she said.

Lowering her hands to her hips, Carmen finally smiled, a relaxed grin with a hint of playful curl in the corners, inviting everyone in on her secret. Reporters waited with microphones, dumbstruck looks on their faces.

Sharise said, "Turn the sound off, Jay."

"You're no fun." But Jay thumbed down the volume until the PR girl's smooth patter drowned it out.

Vera twisted around in her seat to press her back into the cushions, shoulders relaxing and knots in her stomach beginning to unravel. She smiled at Sharise. "She's totally pulling it off."

"I'm glad. I still don't want to hear what they're saying."

"Yeah, it's a little yikes." Vera laughed and prodded Sharise in the knee. "At least it's for a good cause."

"Watching other people doing humiliating things does not make me feel good."

Her tone was sharp, but Vera smiled. It was endearing that Sharise held so tightly to her morals in the face of Hollywood insanity.

Before too much longer, the traffic gave way. Sharise parked as close to the theatre as she could, squeezing into a maybe-illegal spot that was definitely too small for her car. They gathered up clothes and cup and wet naps and Jay's makeup case and hurried down the street, around the corner into the grimy alley. The PR girl ran with them, still on the phone, her voice somehow not bouncing with her steps.