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When Carrie was younger she wanted to be a star. It’s what she tells everyone who asks. ‘What were your dreams when you were a kid?’ And Carrie always smiles, and says—‘Well, I wanted to be a star.’
It’s a lie.
But much of Carrie is a lie, and it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that should would lie about this, after everything else that she has lied about.
“What did you want to be, then?” Millie asks. She curls a strand of blue hair around one finger. “I thought I wanted to be an astronaut, back then. But space is complex.” Blowing out, she creates a yellow bubble with her gum before popping it. Thoughtful, she adds, “Dreams change quickly when you’re a kid. It’s harder now.”
Carrie hums. “Yeah.” She presses her fingers together. Feels the callouses there. “I wanted to be anything but a star, really. I mean—just look at my dad, I guess.”
Silence falls over the groups and Sandra puts down the cards she’d been shuffled. Trevor’s name isn’t a taboo, never has been, but… they don’t really talk about them. About Carrie and Trevor. About Trevor.
Oh they know that it’s the Wilson name that gives them more support than they would otherwise see, and allows them to speak to people that would otherwise never give them a second look. And yet, Carrie’s never really relied on Trevor’s fame either aside from his connections, which any rising star needs. She knows far too well the snakes behind the masks with their fangs carefully hidden.
She’d tried to fashion herself into one, once. It was hard to unlearn it.
“So?” Val asks. They hold their nails up to the light, considering the blue nail polish they’d put on. It glitters faintly. “What did you want to be?”
Carrie laughs, feeling a little self-conscious. “For a while, I just—wanted to be not-famous, whatever that meant. I was young, still, and-” she breaks off, shaking her head. “I think, later, I wanted to be a drama teacher. Then I realised I hated kids.”
The others laugh at her, and Sandra chucks a card at her. “We’ve seen you with kids,” she says, shoving some curls out of her eyes. “We know the truth.”
“Your truth is a lie,” Carrie says, but she’s smiling, and so are the others. Stretching her arms out, Carrie continues, “It’s—I grew up seeing those child stars, and- there’s so much to lose, you know? I probably could have gotten my name out further if I’d started young, but it’s only now I feel like I could manage it. Or I did. I don’t think so anymore.
“Child stars are so often brought to ruin, or a breakdown, and I don’t want that. It’s—I know what it’s like to grow up with the spotlight on you, fame draped over your shoulders whether you want it or not, and there’s no escape. I can understand wanting to get out of it.”
It’s Kayla who speaks next, voice hesitant. “Your dad was young, wasn’t he?”
This story is not Carrie’s, but it is at the same time. She grew up trying to unravel it, trying to understand, and there is still much she doesn’t know.
She knows enough, though. Enough to know not to pry further.
“He was,” Carrie agrees, and smiles at Kayla to show she’s not upset or any such thing. “Not super super young or anything, but only just out of school. Or almost out of school. He had a band that was going to be big, but didn’t. There was an accident, some tragedy.” The kind of thing that had their house caught in grief, still, and had Trevor forever mourning. It’s something Carrie wouldn’t share with many others—but these people are hers.
As a celebrity, so much of Trevor’s life is already public knowledge. Being famous means that people think they have a right to your private life.
There is a reason, after all, for all the security and warnings surrounding the Wilson property, and it’s not just for looks.
“He also got into a bad contract,” Carrie says, voice becoming softer, “that he couldn’t get out of for a few years. And—he was young. It’s so easy to get manipulated when you’re younger.”
Kayla hums, and steals a bottle of nail polish from in front of Sandra. “So what made things change? You definitely started pushing us for more, this year; and you were definitely preparing for something last year.”
“And then you stopped, just as suddenly,” Millie adds. Her eyes are focussed solely on Carrie now and, beneath them, Carrie feels pinned.
There’s no good explanation. Not much of an explanation at all. Still, for them, for Dirty Candy, Carrie tries, even as the words twist around her tongue.
Slowly, taking time to think over each word carefully, Carrie replies, “If we started getting famous now, slowly began getting bigger and bigger, we would have a bit more time to- to just be or something. Since we’re still in school, it’d be expected of us to finish which—would give us a little more time, I think. And- And I haven’t been forgotten just yet, but I’m sure that’s what the tabloids will write when I graduate. ‘What’s Trevor Wilson’s daughter up to now? Nothing!’”
“So what made you stop?” Kayla asks, and there’s a thoughtful expression on her lips but her question is nothing less than genuine.
Carrie’s immediate answer, that Julie played the Orpheum, isn’t the correct one. Because- Because, in the end, she and Julie are different people living their own lives. For all that sometimes their paths cross, their decisions and choices aren’t dependent upon each other. And they never should have been, no matter what Carrie had thought in the past.
What made her stop?
“Do you ever realise that you’ve gotten so caught up on something that the rest of the world has stopped existing?” It’s a rhetorical question and so Carrie presses on, stalwartly not looking at any of the others around her. “I’d gotten so caught up on trying to be some perfect version of me that I- I forgot that it was okay to just be me. It’s—I was hurtling up a mountain so quickly I didn’t realise the cliff ahead of me, I guess.”
What made Carrie stop? It was Julie playing at the Orpheum. It wasn’t at all. It was Carrie and the sharp fractures of her own heart being cupped in her hands and realising the scars she has left behind it.
It was a gradual realisation that settled upon her suddenly.
“Huh,” Val says. “Introspective.”
Laughter makes the room grow warmer and Carrie finds herself smiling; a smile that only grows as Sandra says with pointed eye contact, “It doesn’t matter why you stopped, really—but I’m glad that you seem happier now.”
It doesn’t quite feel true. Or, well, the whole happier thing does, but Carrie has a feeling that it matters why she stopped. Matters to some people. Enough people.
And- And yet the Candys don’t care. They smile and laugh with her and they’ve always been there. Through everything. Shouldn’t their thoughts matter the most?
Carrie exhales. “So am I,” she says at last and, picking up the nail polish that Val hands over to her, she believes it too.
And this, Carrie knows, is how things get better. One day at a time, one breath at a time. It gets better in moments, in comparison, in rolling highs and crumbling lows. But things improve. They always do.
They must.
Maybe one day Carrie will be made anew entirely, maybe she’ll be good enough, but for now she is Carrie and her friends don’t mind at all.
It’s enough.