Fake Halo - Piper Lennox Page 0,2

know they’re her favorite thing ever. She lights up as soon as you compliment her.

Last is a giant, mediocre dick drawing right on the steps, definitely done by teenagers from the corner. I saw them scooping up the scraps of chalk in yesterday’s dusk.

They gave it sunglasses, too. I chuckle, then swipe my foot across the step to help the rain rinse it away.

In the elevator, my phone chimes. It’s my email notification: Dr. Dune responding with, I’m sure, multiple reassurances that she can help me with every problem I typed out in excruciating detail.

Briefly, my hand slips underneath my hat.

I clench my fist and bring it back to my side too hard, punching myself in the leg. My other hand opens the email app.

It is not a message from my therapist.

And it’s then that I notice, as the elevator lurches upward and drags my stomach along like a can on the back of a wedding car, that I didn’t send my multi-paragraph, soul-cleansing, word-vomit email to [email protected], after all.

I sent it to [email protected].

Wes Durham, Westcott fucking Durham, has just read every private thought in my head. Every broken thing about me.

Every deep, dark secret I’ve got.

Hurley:

Ha. Some of that glitter makeup get in your eyes? Forgot you even had my email.

Corner Coffee. Eight a.m.

Looks like we have business to discuss.

-Durham

Two

You know those clickbait articles at the bottom of websites that say shit like, “Melt Fat with One Simple Trick,” or “Doctors are Furious at This Man Because of What He Did with Onions”?

Yeah, well. Today, I’m in one.

You’ll Never Guess What Happened to These Child Stars!

The thumbnail is of me, looking like the goddamn train wreck I used to be.

Sleep-deprived. Strung out.

Retaining about twenty pounds of water and thirty of gas station junk food.

Don’t you dare fucking click it.

I click it.

Of course it’s one of those ad-throttled slideshows. The first nine slides are your usual suspects of 70s and 80s child stars.

Billie Durham fills the screen. First a photo of the blue-eyed Shirley Temple clone she made her name as, on the Dahlia and Charles Show as their go-to for skits requiring children.

The article gets her career milestones all wrong, stating that she did one sitcom in the 80s as a teenager. She did two, and guest-starred on four others. Picked up a new bad habit on every single one.

Which is how they end up with their “Now” picture: my mother, her blue eyes flattened and hollow from her own pill problem (and wine problem…and bulimia problem), walking out of a Trader Joe’s eight years ago. She hadn’t done her time in rehab yet, so I’m not surprised they chose this photo. Outdated, yes—but oh, so clickable.

My slide is much shorter.

“Wes Durham, once the most promising triple threat to come out of the Walden Corporation’s primetime lineup, spiraled after his role as Charlie Chase on Cut to the Chases.”

Wrong again. My spiral began right in the middle of that saccharine after-school special. It just wasn’t visible yet.

It’s funny—everyone’s favorite episode was when my character saved his best friend from alcohol poisoning.

Little do they know, the very night we wrapped up filming that scene, thirteen-year-old me needed his stomach pumped from all the vodka that same costar gave me at his place, courtesy of an older sibling who also didn’t handle young fame too well.

Like my mom’s slide, the website didn’t bother getting a recent photo. I’m eighteen in that one, with greasy hair, a too-small Fender T-shirt strangling my gut, and a middle finger aimed right at the pap’s zoom lens.

I exit the tab and go back to my task at hand, checking the comments on my latest upload.

Kawaii43 commented: Lay off the wah pedal dude. No need to make your guitar whine more than you do.

It’s got seven upvotes already, only ten minutes old.

I usually delete all the shit this user posts. This one’s mild, so I leave it.

There’s also probably some truth to it. I debated all morning over which version to post: the one with the pedal, or without. Guess I chose wrong.

The tab with my email chimes. I ignore it and get up to stretch, cracking open another of the energy drinks my roommate-slash-cousin left behind. Bad idea at four in the afternoon, but I’d probably stay up until dawn regardless. Might as well make the hours productive.

Rain streaks the massive window that angles onto my bedroom ceiling. The minute Van moved out, I shoved my furniture in here and aimed my bed directly at