“Come on up, Able,” I say, and after a moment’s pause, he climbs the rest of the stairs, his face ashen.
My hands are shaking so I slip them out of view, behind the podium. “So I think this is the part where I introduce Able, and thank him for his unending commitment to giving independent films a platform, for his tireless contribution to our industry as a whole and, most of all, for everything he’s done for me. This is definitely what I’m supposed to do,” I say, my voice shaking. I clear my throat, and the audience is so quiet I wonder if they can hear my heart beating through the microphone. “I have spent years trying to work out what I could have done differently, or maybe what my parents could have done differently. I should have told someone after the first time he made me touch him, or when he told me I was mentally unstable for the hundredth time. Maybe I shouldn’t have waited until every part of my life was already destroyed before I tried to kill myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have worked so hard to become, as I was told just this morning, such an unreliable witness. But it was never really up to me, was it?” I say, and then I pause because, look, there is the queen of Hollywood, watching me with growing interest, her hands still folded on the table in front of her. She’s nearly eighty now, and sitting at a table that is further away from the stage than she used to sit, but in Hollywood, not so much a town as a social construct, she still reigns. At the next table over is the actor who just got caught sleeping with a sex worker in Canada, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself in his reluctance to look anywhere near me. And there is John Hamilton, watching me with an expression of vague horror. He knows I’m about to fuck everything up, but it doesn’t really matter, as there are a hundred other girls like me who will get their breasts out in his film, and they’re probably younger and thinner than me anyway. He’s already eyeing up the nineteen-year-old actress at the table next to him, the one who wore the latex catsuit in his last movie and who, despite still sort of thinking about how she said the wrong designer’s name on the red carpet, already understands implicitly what I’m about to say. They all do. Whether they have guessed the truth about my story or not, they have all known stories like mine. And with that, I’m finally ready for this to end. I’m ready for this to be out in the world, blazing and soaring its way across news sites and text messages and conversations in bars, gyms, restaurants and offices all over the country. I’m ready for it to be anywhere other than just within me. “So, actually, I am here to thank you, Able, in a way.” I turn to look at him, for just a moment, and I can see that he would kill me right now if he could. I take a deep breath. “Thank you, for making me aware that there are an infinite amount of ways to get hurt, every day of my life, even when you are nowhere near me.” The room is more than silent—it is frozen in time. I am suspended above them, my words floating and falling around us all like blossoms, settling into the darkest, loneliest crevices of Hollywood. “Because knowing what I know, and still getting up every single day, despite it? That makes me stronger, and braver, and better than you. So, Able, you don’t get to have ruined me. Not even one tiny part of me.” Able is looking away from me, into the wings behind me, and that’s when I see Emilia standing there. She turns and walks away from both of us. The audience is silent because, like the good, docile actors they are, they are waiting for someone to tell them what to do, some director or publicist to tell them whose side they are on. Then the queen of Hollywood starts to clap, slowly at first, but it rings out like thunder in the silent auditorium. A few others join in, but I’m already walking off the stage and straight out of the back of the building, past the photographers who don’t know what’s happened, past the crowds of fans waiting to catch a glimpse of their favorite actor, and past the black town cars and SUVs that are lining Highland, waiting to take the stars inside back to their real lives. I walk past them all, limping alone down the eerily quiet stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, the hem of my dress dragging over the names of everyone who came before me, encased in stars for eternity.