There was an unnatural stiffness in the air that night as I raced down empty boulevards typically teeming with drivers blasting their radios, or assholes laying on their horns.
Expressionless models from billboards stuccoed on the sides of shopping malls glared down on me; tonight they almost appeared menacing. The city itself felt like a ghost town at this hour, loosely woven and wrapped in nebulous unease. Waiting at a traffic light, anxiously drumming my fingers on the dashboard, I spot the only other living soul out on the street – a tall, muscular man with long brown hair falling past his shoulder blades, rollerblading in circles, wearing nothing but spandex shorts and laughing hysterically as if sending out a warning, ‘Proceed with caution, the crazies are out tonight.’
I turned onto the tree-lined street, lit up by the glow of a sign that read: Emergency Department. It was empty. Momentary relief washed over me. ‘Maybe it’s okay. Maybe no one knows.’ But I knew this kind of thinking was premature. I’d been around long enough to know the percolating frenzy: chatter from police scanners had already alerted reporters and photographers, letting them know that something was amiss deep in the Valley. I screeched to a halt in the first parking garage I could find, almost forgetting to pull the keys from the ignition. ‘Fuck,’ I muttered under my breath, wondering if I could’ve parked any further from the hospital entrance. I moved fast – the gentle summer breeze mocking my distress – time was limited, that much I knew. Up ahead, a single police car with its sirens blaring flew up to the entrance of the E.R. That’s where things get a little fuzzy. A wave of adrenaline washed over me, stimulating my heart rate and dilating my air passages, prompting me to break out into a sprint. Like an animal prepared for an attack, my footsteps echoed noisily along the pavement only to be masked by the drone of helicopters appearing suddenly overhead, circling like mosquitoes. ‘They’ve found her, this is it, get ready,’ I told myself, knowing that within mere seconds I would be submerged in complete pandemonium. I had hoped to make it inside before the throngs of people began to gather, but that hope was gone now.
By the time I made my way to the entrance, hospital workers had begun erecting screens in front of the doors to shield them from the hordes of paparazzi and news cameras on the sidewalk. No one quite knew what was going on.
‘I just got pulled out of bed by my editor,’ a disheveled tabloid reporter, still in her pajamas, complained.
‘Maybe she’s dead!’ one paparazzo yelled out, causing the crowd to erupt in laughter.
‘That wouldn’t be so bad. Then we’d finally be able to get some sleep,’ another reporter muttered to her coworker, who nodded sheepishly.
Our attention was soon directed to the motorcade that seemed to appear out of nowhere, more than a dozen lights and sounds spanning two blocks. As it moved in our direction, inhuman chaos broke out. Photographers leapt from cars stopped at red lights and swarmed the ambulance – hanging off of it as if it were a life raft – all elbows and shoulders, knuckles and dilated lenses, hoping for a snapshot of an American sweetheart in her state of distress. What had really gone on in the hours leading up to this moment, no one knew. Was she near death? Had she lost her mind? Would she emerge in a puff of stage smoke and dry ice, looking absolutely breathtaking and wave to the crowd as if the world were her stage? The only thing that was certain, not only to us outside the hospital, but to the millions of Americans tuning in to watch the drama unfold on live T.V., was that the girl who lived a life that dreams were made of, with a fistful of pop hits to boot – was being ambulanced to the emergency room, prompting people everywhere to ask, ‘How did this all happen?’
I didn’t have to ask.
I knew exactly how it had happened. I had seen it all first hand.
To the rest of the world, Brooke Parker was an immovable force. To them, she was the girl that sang happy songs with childlike abandon, who gyrated with vampy sex appeal across glittering stages and who lived in a world of feelings instead of facts – a dream, all smoke and mirrors. It was that face they’d seen so many times before – her doe eyes turned toward the camera, radiating the screen as she smiles – a smile that made them wonder what it would truly be like, how it would really feel, to be the kind of girl who had it all.
There are three sides to every story:
My side, your side and the truth. And no one is lying.
–Robert Evans
It was unusually warm for February in Beverly Hills. Men in suits beckoned to take their lunch meetings outside while their wives trotted down to Rodeo Drive to spend their hard-earned cash on things like diamond-encrusted purse hangers. I sat at my desk facing the window, watching groups of women saunter in and out of pricey boutiques. Clean-cut boys in ties lounged outside of the Brighton Coffee Shop sipping vanilla lattes, presumably conversing about their mailroom duties at William Morris and favorite movies. As a pack of girls zipped by, arms weighed down with shopping bags from Ron Herman and Hermès, cell phone chimes peeled my attention back to life inside the office.
‘Jackie? It’s your mother.’
‘Mom, I know it’s you, it comes up on my caller I.D.,’ I said, rolling my eyes.
‘How is everything going? How’s the job?’
‘It’s great. Sheryl’s just finishing up a cover shoot for a magazine and then on Sunday I’m assisting her for another job. Not sure yet what it is exactly, it’s on a studio lot in the Valley,’ I told her, trying to sound as upbeat as possible.
‘So, you’re working on the weekends now too?’ my mother asked.
‘When I’m needed,’ I said quickly.
‘Well, this doesn’t sound like a job you had to quit school for…I mean, maybe next semester you could find one like it back in Boston,’ she said.
I inhaled deeply. ‘I didn’t drop out of school for this job. I dropped out because I wanted to take my career in another direction.’
‘Oh honey, you are so close to graduating. You only have four more semesters left…it just seems like such a waste to quit now. Why don’t you just finish and then if you still want to enroll in cosmetology school, do it then.’
‘I don’t want to go to cosmetology school. I want to work on shoots…I don’t need a degree for that, I can do it now and that’s what I’m doing,’ I told her, eyeing the overly Botoxed blond entering the side door to the salon where we rented space. It was my boss, Sheryl.
‘But you’re just an assist—’
‘Mom, I have to go,’ I said hastily.
‘Your father will be home early tonight. I think it’s a perfect time for the three of us to have a serious discussion.’
‘Sure, whatever you want–I have to go,’ I repeated before cutting her off and hanging up the phone.
Phone calls from my mother like that one had become routine during the last six months since I dropped out of Boston University, right before my junior year. Home for the summer and bored with books, I searched for a creative outlet to take my mind off of the grueling schedule that would be waiting for me once again at the end of August.
‘I think I might want to try the whole acting thing again for a while,’ I said to my parents, who were poised on chaise lounges in our house, referring to my brief stint of commercial work at the age of three. My mother grabbed at bits of her graying hair and shook her head. My father just frowned. The endless dabblings of my childhood, which they once considered amusing, had long since grown tired.
Drawn to color and music at a very young age, I spent time experimenting with various artistic undertakings. ‘I am going to learn to play the flute!’ I’d