I need something amazing,” I said to Alicia, my stylist. I shouldn’t have waited this long to find something for the Lunch at Midnight premiere, but I’d been busy. My agent had texted me some good news, for once: Sing It, America! was going to be revived and the producers had my name down on a short list for a panel judge. They wanted me to come in early next week for a chat. “Something that turns heads. Something to be written up in the style column.”

Alicia flicked through a few wan hangers on a rolling garment rack. “These are all I could get on short notice.”

“Just these?” There were only a handful of outfits. Nothing outlandish or exquisite.

“Like I said, short notice. I called in all the favors that I could, but . . .”

I knew what Alicia wasn’t saying. I wasn’t a big name anymore. Dressing Rosy Gloss wasn’t as big of an honor as it used to be. I wasn’t about to buy my premiere outfit, either.

“Yeah, but this? I could get it at Nordstrom Rack,” I sneered, shoving aside a rayon dress. I didn’t know why I still had Alicia on my payroll; funds were tight already. It felt as though I were climbing the same ladder on which I’d struggled fifteen years ago, but now I had bad knees, figuratively speaking. “Who’s dressing Yumi?”

Yumi had dismissed all of her staff aside from her housekeeper years ago; she lived in that stuffy mansion she’d won in her divorce settlement, with no agent or stylist or anything, and barely touched her money. I doubted she would wear couture to the premiere, but Merry likely still had all of her connections.

“I don’t know. I could find out if you’d like.”

“Ugh, never mind. There’s no point. Go.”

Alicia hesitated, but I turned toward her with renewed annoyance. “I said, leave.”

She click-clacked away, and I ran my fingers over the rack again before shoving it aside. It rolled across my parquet floors and slowed at a bump near a Tiffany lamp. I lay back on my chaise and covered my face with one hand. Ever since the news about Cassidy, I’d been more irritated than usual by the incompetence of everyone around me.

“You okay?” my housemate asked.

I looked over at Viv. She’d poked her head into the room, leaning on the door’s threshold. After she’d gone through remission, Viv had been desperate to have some life experiences, and I’d paid for a few tickets around the world. But soon Viv was clamoring for something familiar—someone familiar—and had moved in with me. After all, I had more than enough rooms to spare, and she could live as though she were independent, but my staff could keep tabs on her health as well. If anything seemed unusual, we had a world-class hospital a few miles away.

Usually she was in the other wing of the house, entertaining her own guests, but she must have heard Alicia leave. Alicia was the harbinger of frustration these days, and if there was anything Viv was good at, it was placating me.

I huffed out a breath. “It’s fine. You didn’t want to go to the premiere, right?”

“I’d rather die than set foot into that nightmare,” she said, smiling. “I have some really good Masterpiece queued up for that evening.”

“Just checking.”

Viv disappeared from the doorway and I scrubbed at my eyes, ruining my mascara, then reached for my phone to call Emily. Maybe she could skim a few dresses from Merry’s offerings and share one with me.

She picked up after a few rings, sounding breathless.

“Are you at the gym or something?” I asked, curious.

“No, I’m just getting some boxes down from the attic, something for Yumi. There are like a dozen left to go.”

I got straight to the point. “Did Merry get her premiere outfit yet?”

“Yeah, Merry and Sunny both.”

“Soleil is going? Not Raul?”

I could hear her shrug. “Sunny really wants to go. Raul has a schedule conflict.”

Great. I’d have to share the carpet with a little nepotistic snot.

“Was there something you wanted?” Emily asked.

“Just wondering what they’re wearing. So, you know, we don’t match too much. We aren’t really a group anymore, right?” I said it casually. The worst part about being broke is that I couldn’t give the appearance of being desperate.

“Merry’s in Dior. Soft pink dress with pleats, green embroidery. Sunny gets a playful jumpsuit from some up-and-coming designer that she wants to partner with.”

“Anything they haven’t sent back yet? I’m thinking of firing Alicia. She doesn’t know how to dress me anymore and everything she brought to me was hideous and out of style.” I held my breath.

“I think a few have gone back already, but we still have a few pieces. Let me look.” Crunching of shoes on gravel.

I KNOW THE generic formula for maintaining fame, which is why it’s so irritating that fame has been an elusive bitch for me to grasp. For some, it comes pretty easily: their family’s in the business so they already have a leg up, they fuck the right people to stay in the spotlight, they strategize their lives for maximum impact. I do the best with what I’ve been given.

The truth is, the public wants you to stay the same as when they fell in love with you. Sure, you can “reinvent” yourself every couple of years, try on different personas. This is important for child stars to transition from adorable to being perceived as a sexual adult. Every ham-fisted kid actor on a cable television series has gone through the change, with much magazine fanfare: “Starlet acts out!” “Teen seen leaving co-star’s home in the same clothes she was photographed in yesterday!” It’s like clockwork. But the public wants you to be the same person underneath. If they feel like they don’t know you or can’t relate to you, they will turn on you.

Becoming a target for the tabloids isn’t bad, either, though it’s a lot less fun. People were already waiting for you to mess up, but now they’re gleeful about it. There’s nothing the public loves more than to tear down someone who was once their idol. Tabloids dictate the public’s opinion, and if you don’t feed the wolves, they make up their own stories. Hell, sometimes you give them the story and they print only half of it. Or none of it.

My point is this: times change and people change, but celebrities are not allowed to leave the box that we’ve been painted into. There are a few exceptions that everyone allows, like the sinner who becomes a saint—usually after having respectable children—or the sexpot who ages gracefully into a bombshell octogenarian, but for the most part, if the world says you’re a five-foot-one, petite, rosy-cheeked, lovable woman, you remain one for as long as you can.

Cassidy, she didn’t understand this. People liked her on that TV talent contest show, but they did not truly fall in love with her until she was a part of Gloss. An ironically named, shy, thin brunette who had a tragic straight relationship. Once she had her arm broken, she was frozen in time forever. The classic vulnerable woman made tragic by circumstance.

People respond to authentic celebrities—or what they perceive as authentic. They are too stupid to realize that most celebrities wear one face in public and another face at home. Merry was a home-wrecker with a heart of gold, so her multiple red-hot boyfriends were the norm. When she got pregnant and didn’t name the father, it was a much-gossiped-about scandal, but people seemed to expect it. They didn’t vilify her for long. It was like, “Oh, that Cherry Gloss, it’s just like Cherry to do something so salacious,” and then they wanted to see photos of the baby when she was born. I tried to get her to capitalize on the birth and sell photos to People magazine, but she refused. I threw my proverbial hands up into the air and had to call a select few photographers myself for her exodus from the hospital. She wouldn’t do what was needed or what the people wanted, so I had to do it for her. It was a classic case of Rosy helping Merry, as usual.