Page 109 of Gilded Fake

The next morning, I wake in a strange, new, white room with the blinding sun streaming through the window. The bed is cold beside me. All that’s left of him is a delicious ache between my thighs and in my throat, the grass stains on my knees, and the whisper he left in my ear as I slipped away.

Until next time.

twenty-four

1 YEAR LATER

Gloria Walton

“I remember the day Gloria walked in the door,” Ruth says, holding up a cup of white grape juice. “I thought, this one’s going to be trouble.”

A couple people whoop, and someone calls out, “You were right!”

I laugh, only a little embarrassed.

Ruth grins. “We’ve seen you come so far in the past year. I have no doubt you’ll go further than anyone here can imagine.”

“Do I have to?” I ask.

Everyone laughs and raises a glass, and I laugh along, even though I’m not joking. I glance at the door, wishing more than anything that Colt would walk through it. But it stays closed, and I try to focus on the moment at hand, the friends I’ve made while I was here. Most of them came and went in a month or two or three. I’m a veteran of the place, which is why the staff is throwing me a goodbye party.

“Remember, you can always call me if you need anything,” Dr. Delacroix says, snagging a pecan sandy from the tray on the table beside me.

“Are you sure I’m ready?” I watch the door, willing someone, anyone, to walk in. Harper comes to visit every time she’s in town on a holiday break, but she’s already back in New York getting ready for her sophomore year at Syracuse with Royal.

“You’re ready,” Dr. Delacroix promises with an encouraging smile.

“But I’m not healed,” I point out.

“We’ve talked about this,” she reminds me.

“I know,” I admit. “Healing is a journey, not a destination.”

She winces. “It’s a process. A practice. It doesn’t end just because you’re leaving.”

“Exactly,” I say. “It’s not a race. It’s not about finishing. I have to keep doing the work. Which means it doesn’t matter where I am. I could stay here a few more months. I can work for my room and board if I need to. I mean, I know the place inside and out. I’ve been here longer than some of the staff.”

“Don’t tell me you’re dragging your feet about leaving,” Ruth says, descending to grab a cookie.

“More like desperately begging,” I say. “I’m a hard worker. I could scrub the toilets.”

She laughs and bites into the crumbly cookie. “And put Marlon out of a job?”

“It’s natural to be afraid of the unknown,” Dr. Delacroix says. “There’s a whole big world out there waiting for you.”

“A whole world of people I might run over,” I mutter. “If they don’t run me over first.”

“If I thought there was any danger of that, I wouldn’t sign your release papers.”

I linger, taking one more cookie, drinking a little more juice, chatting with a cheerleader from Louisiana who’s getting treatment for an eating disorder. People come here from all over the country, sometimes even the world. Amy Bedgood even came in for a month in the middle of my stay. I guess the outskirts of a small city in the middle of Arkansas is about as far from the spotlight as a celebrity can get.

Finally, Ruth tells me it’s time to go, that they have to clean up for dinner. In the modern, tastefully decorated foyer, I hug her hard, both of us sniffling, before I turn to the double glass doors. Evening is falling, the long shafts of summer sun glaring over the parking lot. I grip the handle of my one bag, then pause. I want to run back to my white room, to burrow under the covers and hide from the world another day. But I’m not a celebrity, and there’s nowhere to go but out.

I take a step toward the door. Towards the whole wide world out there waiting, a world that will test me and break me into pieces, that will ignite my rage but not let me express it. I have no family, no money, no Yale. I don’t even have June Bug.

But I have one thing. Something I’ve always wanted. I’m free. I have options. Choices.

I could go to community college, one of the options I talked over with Cedar Crest, which likes to help residents plan for their future when they walk out. I could work for Scarlet again—she told me as much when she showed up on visiting day last fall. She’s come once a month since then, becoming a weird sort of mother figure for me, though with her scarred faced, she’s probably one that the bitchy cheerleaders would have laughed at back when I was one of them. Not like I know anything about good mothers. I didn’t have one, and I didn’t become one.

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