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i. darling, darling. turn the lights back on now.
Fear tastes thick -- like the last of the brownie mixture her mother made her promise not to eat but she did anyway, like lying on Christmas about how much she really didn’t care that her brother got twice as many gifts as she did, like talking to Liam, like kissing him, like her dad nearly dying. Every time Amy kisses her, it tastes like fear. It isn’t until she is sat alone on a bench at prom, on the far side of the gym, and watching her blonde best friend (girlfriend? the term jars in her throat because, well, it doesn’t really fit them. there was a kiss in Shane’s spare bedroom and more kisses, and then sex, and that’s been them on and off for the last two years. Sophomore to Seniors, together and not together. They never really set a label.) laugh at Who-The-Fuck-Is-Oliver and Felix’s jokes. A flood, a tidal wave, an avalanche, a cinderblock, a piano -- whatever cliche you can think of for the creeping dread overcoming her overwhelms her and she just has to get out of there.
Was this going to be her life? Of course not. But it would mean splitting hairs and saying goodbye anyway. They would have to set a label. Terms to their relationship now. They couldn’t just be Karma and Amy, it was KarmaandAmy - they would be girlfriends or nothing, now. So, she bolts. God help her.
“Hey...”
And so it goes.
UCLA is everything she imagined and not, because Amy is two thousand miles away, but Karma decides to take the good with the bad and enjoy her life for the first time in forever; it is easier than she expects. Easier without the dead weight of Austin hanging on every expectation. Easier without Shane. Without Lauren. Without Liam. And while she would never admit it, not aloud and never to herself, it was easier to breathe without Amy. Karma no longer spent her days constantly wondering whether she was doing the right thing or saying the right thing or being the right person, being the best girlfriend and best friend without ever actually stopping to wonder if it was really, truly what she wanted.
She studies music, learns how to roll a joint and do a kegstand all in the space of a year. There are boys (and girls) who fill her spare time and they always love her and she never quite manages to fall in love back, so turnaround is quick and recovery even quicker. She loses a little too much weight freshman year and gains it during the summer she spends in Europe with a few of her friends. She joins a band. Gets kicked out of the band.
Nineteen is a good year.
Twenty is even better because she stops thinking about Amy. Or, at least, stops thinking about Amy telling her to stop doing something because “you made me promise to stop you if you ever tried to do this stupid thing”. Now, Karma does the stupid thing because she goddamn well can and Amy isn’t here to stop her.
The system works. Mostly.
ii. no heroes, villains, one to blame, while wilted roses fill the stage.
Karma arrives at cocaine the way John Green said most people fall in love: slowly, and then all at once. There’s a party, basically. In the months preceding, she acquires an agent who throws flashy words like Nashville and the Big Apple and, most enticingly of all, Hollywood at her and hook-line-sinker Karma is putty in his hands. Avenues are opened, as are doors to studios she had only ever dreamed about recording in. (She meets Snoop backstage at this charity thing and the selfie she posts on Insta blows up and suddenly, she’s got invites coming out the ass.) There are numbers exchanged, details and emails too, and then Harry, her manager, says there is a party downtown and she absolutely has to go, that Miley Cyrus is attending, social event of the year.
So, at three a.m., in Brian Austin Green’s bathroom, she’s ripping white lightening off the marble countertops with an ex-supermodel she’s fairly certain only just got out of rehab and a friend of a cousin of Tag Romney.
She doesn’t think about Amy for the first half hour, but when she stands out on a balcony and cries for forty minutes, it is blatantly obvious to anyone who sits next to her there’s only one name on the brain. It doesn’t taste like fear anymore. Just a bone-deep ache she had been trying to ignore for years and her chest hollows out empty where someone was meant to sit; the bird cage of her ribs extends and retracts with every harsh, sharp inhale until the vibrations agitate something in her stomach and she winds up puking over the side. Someone screams underneath, a hurl of abuse coming from the patio as it spatters across Jimmy Choo shoes. Karma doesn’t stick around to find out if anyone realised it was her.
Sober and stumbling out the gates, the Uber arrives just in time and she thanks God her roommate isn’t home.
Twenty-one progresses in much the same vein. After the first time when all she seemed to think about was Amy, the second and third and all the times after, the drugs actually take the edge off; they let her hold herself looser, lets her shoulders relax and it translates into the records -- she sounds better with something electric flowing through her bones than not, and soon it’s all anyone is looking for.
It’s a rhythm she finds it easy to fall into.
Before a show, to lighten up; after the show, to gear up for the parties. And okay, she’s not thinking about Amy. Karma tries to call one night, drunk and alone and trapped in this shitty little apartment, but the line says it’s been disconnected.
iii. we used to have it all, but now’s the curtain call. hold for the applause.
The album drops and it’s fucking big. Not to be self involved or anything. But she slays it and six months after, they write her a check for a cool eight million dollars.
She drops out of UCLA because fuck going back to that hellhole when she actually has the money to do and be whoever and whatever she wants. Buys her mother a car. Her dad a cute little bungalow in San Francisco. Calls less but they don’t seem to mind. Stops calling altogether and slowly life melds into something she can really control; she decides what kind of track to release, decides how much to drink, how much to take, when to go and what parties are deemed worthy by her presence, she gets to pick and choose the guys who come and the girls who go and not once, in all of it, does she think about Amy.
Jason is tall and square-jawed and plays one of the leads in a TV show on Fox, and they have sex in the bathroom after she finishes up a “living room” session show her management taped and is going to upload to YouTube later. He is incredibly normal, almost to the point of being a welcome break in the storm of her life.
So, twenty-two is spent mostly high and sometimes not, and she doesn’t remember New Years.
iv. kisses fading, but the band plays on now.
Jason leaves. And then so does Harry.
“Fuck you.”
“I don’t need you.”
“In case you didn’t notice, I’m the fucking star and you’re the goddamn extra.”
Her house (flashy, in the Hills down the street from Ellen and Portia - and doesn’t that just bring back memories) resembles a tomb by the time she gets started really moping, drunk and high and clinging to whatever is left of her control. The next album doesn’t do as well as the last, but it keeps the checks coming in and people start asking more questions.
Her parents come to stay for a little while.
v. and the thrill? the thrill is gone.
By the time the TCA’s come around, she is eight months sober. Her mother comes with her. It’s not the easiest of things - hands still shake and throat still closes around sparkling water wishing it had a deep tang, a more bitter chill, and that maybe it would take the edge off. But the album is good. Fresh. Stripped of all the background noise - both literally, the beat slower and lower and cut back to mostly just her and her guitar; and figuratively, the lyrics are no longer charged with betrayals and sex and people doing shitty things to each other, closer to the love she used to sing with, outside bedroom windows and on stage at an open mic night - it’s exciting to be back in front of a real crowd again.
Best album. The surfboard is going to make a great coffee table.
For some reason, when she looks into camera three to give her speech, she almost thinks about green eyes and blonde hair and a decade of love she isn’t sure she ever deserved to have in the first place.