She’s always been the star of the ballet. The captain of the cheerleading squad. The Juliet in school plays. The queen of the homecoming dance.
She’s never had to want for anything, and she does whatever she wants.
“How do we get backstage?”
“Um,” I say as I peel my shirt away from the sweat on my back, “I’m pretty sure we don’t.”
“Don’t be stupid, Hailey,” she scoffs. “Didn’t you see the way Shawn looked at me?”
Like my dad looked at that horny barn cat? Yeah, I definitely saw that . . .
“There!” she interjects, and when she begins walking away, I gaze longingly at a big red sign that promises exit. I wonder how much I’ll regret it later if I make my escape while I have the chance. It’s not like Danica would have trouble finding a ride home. She has the kind of beauty only money can buy—salon-tended copper-brown hair, trainer-sculpted curves, cosmetically whitened teeth. And aside from all of that are pretty almond eyes and naturally flawless skin. Since moving in with her almost two months ago, I’ve stopped counting the number of guys that have stopped by our apartment to pick her up or bring her home.
All of them have been cute. But none of them have been rock stars.
“Are you coming or what?” Danica shouts from a few steps ahead of me, and at the impatient look on her face, I sigh and follow her.
It wasn’t always this way. When we were kids, she sometimes let me be the leader in follow the leader. In Simon says, she sometimes let me be Simon. In house, we took turns being the mom and being the dad. And when her family moved away when Danica and I were in elementary school, I was actually pretty sad.
But that was before she started at her new school, where she became a mean girl made for movies. Our families continued to get together for holidays—Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters—but each year, Danica turned more and more into someone I didn’t know. She grew into someone beautiful and someone ugly, while I stayed more or less the same. I never imagined we’d end up roommates, but at our family dinner this past Easter, when I mentioned wanting to transfer to Mayfield University someday since they have one of the best pre-veterinary programs in the country, she jumped right in and volunteered her father to pay my tuition. She said she wanted to go back to school too. She said we should both go to Mayfield and be roommates. She said it would be so much fun.
At a door near the back corner of the room, my fun-loving cousin marches right up to the first security guard she sees, who also happens to be approximately five zillion times her size, with muscles made of stone and a face to match. “Who do I need to talk to to get backstage?”
At her bossy tone, Muscle Man lifts an eyebrow. “The Easter Bunny?”
“Excuse me?”
“No one’s allowed backstage.” The arms he crosses over his chest warn that he isn’t messing around.
“I’m with Mike,” Danica lies, and after studying her for a moment, Muscle Man laughs.
“Sure you are.”
“I am!”
When Muscle Man just smiles at her like she’s a petulant child, Danica resorts to acting like one. She demands to see his boss and threatens to get him fired. When that doesn’t work, she resorts to curse words. And when those have no effect, all hell breaks loose.
She’s torpedoing her finger into his chest and shouting something about his inbred gene pool when I try to pull her away from him. But Danica is on a rampage, and all my efforts get me is a hard shove that nearly knocks me on my ass. At five feet tall, one hundred and three pounds, I’m not exactly in a position to throw my weight around, and I don’t make a second attempt to try. I’m rubbing my tender collarbone when the security guy picks my assailant up off her feet, and I helplessly follow as he carries her outside.
After serving as an armrest for a sweaty gigantor inside the club, after obliterating my eardrums in front of the world’s biggest speakers, after getting knocked around like a bratty child’s toy all night, all I want is to take a hot shower and crawl into my own bed to sleep for a week straight. Instead, I stand on the sidewalk outside Mayhem, frowning at the furious look on Danica’s face as she glares at the big metal door the security guard just shut behind him.
She came here for one thing, and I know she’s not leaving until she gets it.
“You didn’t have to push me,” I mutter, and her eyes flare.
“You should’ve had my back!”
“And done what? Bite his ankles?”
In her four-inch wedge boots, Danica towers above me. I stare way up at her, trying to remember the girl who played dolls with me up in my parents’ hayloft. But she’s lost somewhere behind fake lashes and fifteen years of getting everything she’s wanted.
“You’ve been nothing but a bitch this whole time,” she snaps, and I sigh and pull my shirt away from my skin again, letting the cool night air dry the sweat beaded on my lower back. There’s no point in trying to defend myself. In Danica’s mind, she’s always simultaneously the victim and the hero, and as her non-rent-paying roommate, I’ve learned to just accept that.
I appreciate everything she’s done for me. I do. If she hadn’t been the little voice in her father’s ear, persuading him to fund my schooling and begging him to make some calls to get us enrolled, I’d be home mucking stalls, not following my dreams. Her dad pays all of my bills—my tuition, my insurance, my living expenses, all of them. And while I suspect that Danica’s sudden interest in my life wasn’t entirely genuine—she’d flunked out of college before, and I think her dad was only open to the idea of her going back if she was living off-campus with a responsible roommate, aka her boring farm-girl cousin—I owe her. I owe her the roof over my head and the massive student loan debt I don’t have.