The big day has finally arrived. The joyous reunion between Sasha and Lacey. Well, it was at least going to be a big day for Sasha. For Lacey it feels like a bad dream she can’t wake up from. She couldn’t figure out how she was going to handle it. Sasha had no idea what she had been up to, where she had been living…nothing. So there was an opportunity to create a new reality for herself, just as a placeholder, for her own peace of mind. But she also worried that lying to Sasha might make her feel worse about everything.

Lacey was due to pick up Sasha and her fiancée, Norman, in two hours. She spent ninety minutes of that time trying on outfits and discarding them. Which one of these makes me like look I’m not stuck in a tiny town because I got pregnant and had to give up on all of my dreams? Which one of them looks like I’m as glamorous as whatever lie I’m about to tell them about myself?

Lacey also worried that she would do her best to be overdressed, then find out that she was still about as shlubby as a mushroom compared to whatever Sasha and Norman were going to be wearing.

Ultimately, because they were going to be having brunch at the ritziest spot in town, she settled on a slinky, dark green dress with black heels. She blew out her hair and did her makeup.

“Wow!” said Dana, appearing in the doorway. “Are you going to a party?”

“Sort of,” she said. “I’m going to see a friend I haven’t seen in a long time. I want to look good. What do you think?” She spread her arms and twirled around once. Dana giggled.

“I think you look like a princess. Maybe your friend won’t think she’s pretty next to you.”

Lacey laughed. “Oh honey, that’s not going to happen. Sasha is a hot little number. If anything, I’ll be the one wishing I looked more like her. But thank you very much. You know what? I may look like a prince, but I think you are a princess.” Lacey made her fingers into claws and rushed at Dana, tickling her until she ran out of the room in a swirl of delighted shrieks.

Lacey looked at herself in the mirror one last time. She smoothed down the dress and told herself that this wasn’t going to be half as humiliating as she was guessing. Maybe Norman would take one look at her and say, “Hey, have you done any acting?” Maybe a year from now they’d be at her red carpet gala. Could you make a movie in a year? Maybe she could learn how to act. Yes, that’s it. She rolled her eyes at herself in the mirror.

“Such a hick,” she said, going downstairs to open the door for Anita, who was knocking. After getting Dana squared away, she went to her car, which was about as exciting as a potato. She’d been driving the same Civic hatchback since she was sixteen. It was a dull red and had so many dents in it that it looked like it had been to war.

Lacey turned car down the street and headed to a restaurant she had never set foot in. Galileo’s was the closest thing Palmera had to a high-end spot. There were rumors that it was dreadfully expensive, something Lacey had never had the chance to verify.

She pulled into the parking lot and parked between a Hummer and a Beamer.

“Oh boy,” she said. “This is not my scene.”

The parking slot in front of her held a Range Rover with the license plate PRODUCER.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. She was ready to throw the car in reverse and back herself off of a bridge when the doors of the Range Rover opened. Lacey watched Sasha get out of the passenger side and press her hands to the small of her back, stretching. Then she reached for the sky and a mile lit up her face as she laced her fingers together and pushed her palms towards the clouds. She looked like she had just stepped out of a Vogue magazine and wandered into Palmera. It was like seeing a Goddess who had fallen from Olympus and was trying to get her bearings after landing in a trailer park.

Sasha looked around the parking lot expectantly. Where’s Lacey?

Lacey felt like she was in a movie, her back pushed against a wall in the night as searchlights swept the ground, ready to illuminate her and expose the world to her failures. She scrunched down in her seat just as Sasha saw her.

Sasha opened her mouth, shrieked at the top of her lungs, and raced towards Lacey’s car. She pulled the door open and dragged Lacey out, crushing her in an embrace so tight that she heard her ribs pop.

“I love your car!” says Sasha. “It’s so you!”

Lacey waved her hands at the Civic. “Oh, it’s just what I’m driving while my other one’s in the shop. It’s a…it’s a good one, you’ll see. You can’t always travel in style. I mean, not in Palmera, you kind of take what you can get, right?” Lacey hoped she sounded worldly and world-weary.

“But wasn’t this the car that you always—”

Lacey was spared by Norman’s merciful interruption as he got out of their automobile. “Get back over here, lovely girl!” He stomped his foot and pointed at the ground, but he was grinning. “I’m possessive, but not a creepy psycho,” he called to Lacey, hands cupped around his mouth.

She gave him a courtesy laugh and watched Sasha dash away to him, leaping into his arms and covering his cheeks with kisses. If she hadn’t known Sasha so well, she would have thought it was an act. It was almost like something from a skit. But Sasha didn’t have an ounce of guile in her body. When she was exuberant, it was pure authenticity.

Norman finally put Sasha down and walked over with an outstretched hand. His close-cropped dark hair was going gray and he was wearing a suit that looked so expensive she was almost nervous about getting dust on him. His glasses were stylish black frames with orange streaks in the earpieces. “I have heard so much about you, which isn’t going to surprise anyone who knows how much Sasha here likes to talk. All good things, all good things.”

Lacey shook his hand and Sasha clapped.

“I can’t believe we’re all here!” she said.

“Let’s get in there,” said Norman. “I hear they’ve got a whole crate of Laphroaig with my name on it.” He held up one hand and whispered to Lacey behind it. “It’s as good as they can do here in the states. If you ever get out to Scotland, make sure that you get out to the Laphroaig distilleries. You can give them my card and they’ll set you up.”

“Uh. Okay.” She waited for Norman to give her his card, but he apparently had better things to do, like swatting Sasha on the butt and walking into the restaurant.

When Lacey got inside Norman spoke with the host.

“Isn’t he great?” said Sasha. “He’s going to get us the best table.”

Lacey looked around. Nearly all of the tables were empty. They all looked like the best table to her. The thought of the prices on the menu was putting her on edge. But the host took them through the restaurant to a small curtain that opened onto a room with a large table, already set.

“I took the liberty of calling ahead and getting us a tasting menu,” said Norman. “Owner here’s a big Top Gun fan. Sure, I know it’s thirty years old at this point but the classic still open doors, right baby?” He pulled Sasha’s chair out and sat her down. “Lacey, I only had a small role in the production squad, but it’s still a name I’m allowed to drop.”

“Isn’t he amazing?” said Sasha.

“He is exactly that,” she said. “Amazing.”

“To amazing me!” said Norman, raising a glass. After they had all taken a sip, Sasha patted Lacey on the knee. “So what’s been going on with you? I’ve gotten so out of touch that I don’t know anything about what’s happen to everyone here. Tell me everything. Norman, Lacey is a piano player. Right out of high school—no, they came to her like in her junior year, recruiting, right? —she got accepted to the most prestigious music academy in New York. It didn’t surprise any of us. We all knew that she was going to leave us all in the dust.”

“I think that’s great,” said Norman. “Big fan of music. Really important stuff. But if you really want to add to your bag of tricks, you should come out to Hollywood. Do some screen tests. With your features you could absolutely get some roles. I’ll call some people. They’ll call people. We’ll set it up.”

“I’m pretty busy out here,” said Lacey, swiveling her head between them like a tennis ball player caught in a ferocious volley. “With work and uh…everything.”

“What do you do?” said Norman. “I mean, the music, sure, but what’s your schedule like? Take us through a typical day in the life of Miss Lacey, extraordinary being.”

Lacey fought to keep from rolling her eyes.

“She is the greatest musician I have ever heard,” said Sasha. “I know I keep saying it, but it’s true.”

“How’s the biz treating you? The biz is what we in film call the music business.” Norman spoke with a high word-count, but slowly, as if Lacey was an English as a second language student. “If you need any contacts, let’s just say that I’ve got my ear to the ground and my finger is all over the pulse of the entertainment culture.” He held up one finger, presumably the one that he kept on the pulse of the entertainment culture.

“It’s no big deal,” said Lacey. “I’m just doing some sessions with a few local bands. They bring me in when they need someone who can hit the ground running. I’m out here for now because I’m getting more into performance art. I think that if I can soak up some of the local grit, musically, you know, it’ll probably translate well to my bigger, more urbane stuff once I’m back in the city.” From somewhere up above herself, she watched the lie pop out of her mouth. But the lie was better than saying that when she wasn’t waitressing she spent all of her time cleaning up after a three-year-old.

“Only doing some sessions,” said Sasha with a laugh. “Good thing to know you’re still pathologically modest.”

It’s easy to be modest and stay humble when you don’t have anything thought Lacey.

“I think that it was Salinger who said he was born modest but that it didn’t last,” said Norman.

“It was Twain,” said Lacey automatically. “Mark Twain.”

“Isn’t she amazing?” said Sasha. “It’s not fair. It’s just not, she’s so smart and so talented.”

That’s me thought Lacey. Oh, you bet.