Page 76 of Hollywood, Ending

As a kid, I yearned for a normal life, one where your mom wakes up before you do and makes you breakfast and takes you to school. Instead, I was always chasing her around. She’d go out one night and just not come home, and then I’d call and call until eventually she’d answer and I’d figure out how to get her home, even when I was eleven or twelve. She’d come back smelling like whiskey and cigarettes and tell me she’d met a producer who was going to make us a star or whatever.

But, of course, every time there was a possibility that something worse had happened. Something dangerous. Something fatal. That was always a worry with my mother, and now that is a worry with Kai.

To distract myself, I keep scrolling through Instagram, searching for Kai’s name, hoping he’ll post or someone will post about him, that he’ll show up hungover in some paparazzi picture. I’ve been doing that for a while when I get a call from a 310 number I don’t recognize.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Todd, with the studio,” he says. “I need you to come to the New York office if you don’t mind. There’s a car waiting for you outside.”

“Is everything okay?”

“We’ll talk about it shortly.” He hangs up.

_____

As the car fights its way down Seventh Avenue, I can’t get air into my lungs. I think about how Kai seemed yesterday. He was out of it, but that’s to be expected at a premiere, where everything is happening all at once. He was shy around my friends. He was pissed about Matthew’s betrayal, but not so much that he abandoned the premiere.

I imagine him hurt. I imagine him dead. I imagine how I will hug him when I see him. If I see him.

I’m dropped off at a skyscraper in lower Manhattan, where a security guard personally escorts me up to the seventeenth floor and into Todd’s corner office with a view of the Statue of Liberty.

I sit down on a plush couch and resist the urge to speak first. Todd stands up and walks to a little bar atop a side table. “Drink?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“Well, I’m having one.” He pours a scotch and toasts in my direction. “So we tracked Kai’s phone to JFK, where he dumped it in a trash can. But we can tell from his credit card charges that he took an early morning flight to Jamaica and booked a beach hut at a resort called GoldenEye. That’s all my guys know.”

“Your guys?”

“This sort of thing happens more than you might expect with actors,” he says. “Not everyone is a pro like you, Juniper. Some of them are…well, artistes. I’m afraid Kai may be an artiste. Problem is, he’s also a damn good actor and we need him to be in Vancouver in two weeks prepping for Gods of Andromeda.”

“Right, of course,” I say.

“I think we’ll have to recast the movie if he bows out.”

“Yes, I understand he’d have to be replaced.”

“The two of you are a package, Juniper. The story is, two talented kids stick together for a big tentpole movie. Without both of you, that story falls apart. You’re brilliant, but I think realistically we’d have to recast both roles.”

“You’re telling me that if Kai doesn’t come back, you’re firing me from Gods of Andromeda?”

“Firing is a strong word, kid. Recasting.”

“You’re gonna fire me because some boy skittered off to Jamaica?” I am not only mad at Todd. I am also mad at Kai.

He pauses for a moment, sits down, and puts his feet up on his desk. He’s wearing black lace-up boots. “Yeah,” he says. “I’d have to. But I think we can still save this thing.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“I’ve got you on a flight to Jamaica first thing tomorrow,” he says. “You’ll be swimming in the ocean by noon. All expenses paid.”

“Because you think I’m the only one who can bring him home.”

Todd takes a long breath. “Yeah,” he says. “Because I think you’re the only one who can bring him home.”

_____

When we started Andy Warhol Never Gets Old, I was the star. I mean, Matthew was the star, but I was the starlet, the one with boundless potential, the one who might just be the Next New Thing. But instead, Kai has taken on that role—in part because of his inexperience, his lack of polish. Of course, that’s also part of why I fell in love with him. He is so goddamned charming, and so dreamily unaware of his charm.