Do you consider yourself to be a good friend?
I ask because I think I consider myself to be a good friend. At least most of the time. I try to be there for my friends. I try to do things to help them out. I try to be honest with them and kind to them. I try to make time for them. I try to be loyal and keep their secrets. I think all of those things chalk me up to being a good friend.
But that could just be me being cocky. I mean, look at this: I'm writing this whole thing about myself and what happened to me. You have to be a little cocky to do something like that, right?
But we're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk about Kennedy and the giant mess I inadvertently got myself into with this whole Lydia Farrow shoot. I broke the cardinal rule: you never sign a contract without looking at it first. Especially when it's from a company you've never done business with before.
But that's beside the point. I tend to do that a lot; ramble far outside the realm of what's important to this story. But you're still reading, so you must be at least a little bit okay with it. Right?
Right.
Anyways.
I think that I'm a good friend. I think that most of my friends are good friends. But I also think that I made decisions at this point in my life that resulted in making some friends who were not so good. And this is where nothing makes sense while other things start to make a little sense.
I don't think that anything is going to come of me writing this. I don't think that people are suddenly going to start hunting Kennedy down and hating her. But I hope that it will show how I'm innocent in this entire fiasco. Or, at least...mostly innocent.
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"Knock, knock."
Rebecca hated being that person, but there she was, walking into Kennedy's apartment on Saturday morning before the shoot, saying 'knock, knock' instead of actually knocking on the door.
She walked into a seemingly empty apartment, looking around cautiously. She was never sure of what she would find in Kennedy's apartment when she wasn't expected to be there; she had walked in many a time on Doug and Lyla doing things she didn't want to think about ever again.
Rebecca walked into the living room and found Rian and Lyla sitting on the couch quietly, both girls absorbed in their phones and not speaking to each other. Rian looked up when Rebecca walked in, but Lyla didn't bother.
"Hey, Bec." Rian greeted her before returning her attention to the phone, "Ken isn't here."
Rebecca raised her eyebrows.
"Do you know where she went? We were...supposed to do something today."
In actuality, Rebecca had been in charge of picking Kennedy up and driving the girls to the shoot in Henderson. She figured she could at least make things up to Kennedy by using her own gas to get the two there.
"I don't know where she went." Lyla spoke now, "I told her that Doug was coming over in like an hour and she bolted." She shrugged, raising her eyebrows and scoffing a bit, "Doesn't surprise me."
Rebecca nodded slowly, refusing to get in the middle of the Kennedy-Doug-Lyla sex triangle that was going on. She would say love triangle, but she didn't think there was much of that happening between the three.
"Alright. Um...if she comes home, can you tell her to call me?"
"Sure." Rian nodded as Rebecca made her way back towards the front door, closing it softly behind her.
She picked up her phone and called Kennedy, resisting the urge to throw the phone across the parking lot when she was sent straight to voicemail. It was 10:23. They were going to be late for the shoot if they didn't leave soon.
Rebecca tried calling three more times and was sent to voicemail quicker and quicker each time. She buckled herself into her car and sped off, figuring it would be best if at least one of them showed up to the shoot. She could explain everything: how she couldn't find 'Drew' and how she was so sorry and how they could reschedule the shoot and give Lydia a bigger cut of the profits than before. Anything to avoid a $10,000 cancellation fee.
A fee that Rebecca had a feeling she would end up having to pay.
Once she arrived in Henderson, Rebecca's GPS ended up leading her down a side road that brought the car right up to a large warehouse, with graffiti littering all sides. She parked in the almost-empty lot and walked up to the front door, letting herself in while rehearsing her apology speech in her head.
She found the room that they had been told to meet in and tried to walk in only to find that it was locked. She tried the handle again before knocking softly, worried that this was in fact the wrong door.
The door opened slowly and someone poked their head out, staring at Rebecca in surprise.
"What are you doing here?"
Rebecca felt her eyes almost pop out of her head as she considered Kennedy's question.
"What am I doing here? You weren't home when I got there to pick you up, like we agreed on."
Kennedy shrugged slightly, letting herself out of the room and closing the door behind her.
"Change of plans."
"That you didn't feel inclined to tell me about?"
"Correct." Kennedy nodded, shrugging again. "It's my photoshoot, not yours."
"So you made me freak out about paying $10,000 for you not showing up, and made me drive an hour and a half up here to make up an excuse for you, and you didn't think, even once, to answer my phone calls or send me a text explaining thing—"
"You're fired." Kennedy interrupted Rebecca's rant coldly, her eyes scanning the hallway around them instead of meeting Rebecca's. "So you can go home now."
Rebecca felt like she was on some sort of prank show where nothing made any sense and there were hidden cameras in every corner. She was fired?
"I'm fired?" Rebecca repeated, "You can't fire me from this photoshoot. I set the whole thing up—"
"You're fired from the account." Kennedy clarified, "You're done with Drew Parley and you're done with the Instagram account. I can take it from here."
She turned to walk back into the room behind the two and Rebecca caught her arm, forcing the other girl to stay still.
"How in the hell do you justify firing me from the account? All of the funds go to me, I sign all the papers—"
"I already transferred the payments to me." Kennedy replied, "And I'm more than capable of signing papers, Rebecca."
Rebecca was still, shocked into silence. She couldn't be fired from the account. That account was her sole source of income. She had cut ties at the grocery store; she couldn't get that job back. She was making good money off of this account, she was finally coming out of her shell and becoming someone who she had always imagined she could be. She had purchased her first pair of designer shoes the weekend before. She couldn't go back. She couldn't go back to being a nobody who everyone made fun of and who had to buy knock-offs of popular products just so she felt like she fit in a tiny bit.
"I don't unders...why? Why are you doing this?"
Kennedy shook her head, making Rebecca feel as though she were being scolded by her grandmother.
"The fame is getting to your head. I'm doing this to protect you from yourself, Rebecca. I can't be friends with someone so power-hungry, and if we're not friends, then you can't be on this account. I am the face of it, after all. You booking this photoshoot without asking me first just shows that you value the fame and money from this account more than you value our friendship. Which is really sad, because I considered you one of my closest—"
"Bullshit."
Kennedy's eyes widened slightly.
"Excuse me?"
"Bullshit." Rebecca repeated, "You're not doing this for me. You're doing this because you want to keep the money for yourself and you're sick of having to include me in everything you do. I was never a friend to you, I was just some sort of minion who set up this entire account for you so that you could be rich and famous."
Kennedy shrugged.
"You're welcome to believe whatever you want, Rebecca. Just know that you're done with the account, and now you can go home."
Rebecca felt her chest start to contract slightly as her breathing became quicker. She forced herself not to start hyperventilating; she couldn't show that kind of weakness in front of Kennedy. Her vision was slightly blurry and she felt as if she could pass out at any second, but there was nothing she could do about it. Kennedy was staring at her with the coldest gaze she had ever seen, and Rebecca couldn't afford to have a panic attack in front of someone like that.
"Drew!" A voice called from the other side of the door, "We're waiting!"
"Coming, Lydia!" Kennedy called back, turning to Rebecca. "You're lucky I'm such a good liar, by the way. This whole thing could have come crashing down when she recognized me. But I got us out of it."
"What if this whole thing does come crashing down?" Rebecca asked quietly, "What if everything is revealed?"
"I just told you, everything is fine." Kennedy rolled her eyes, "Don't get me started on how terrible you are at listening to anything..."
"What if I reveal everything?" Rebecca asked, cocking her head to the side as she watched the color drain from Kennedy's face, "You've pushed me out and put everything in your name. What if I reveal everything that happened and you're no longer Drew Parley?"
Kennedy was perfectly still for a split second before a smile started to creep up her lips and she took a step closer to Rebecca.
"What if I give the police the pieces of your broken windshield with Hank Wilcox's blood on them?"
"I'm sorry, you kept those?" Rebecca shook her head, "You fixed my car and kept the windshield pieces? Did you know you were going to blackmail me—"
"I like to be careful." Kennedy replied coolly, "So just keep that in mind when you think about revealing my secrets. I have plenty of yours to use."
Rebecca stood still, her mouth open slightly as she stared at Kennedy. She didn't recognize the person she was looking at. She didn't recognize anything about the situation she was in, and she didn't understand what she had done to get to this specific point in her life.
"Close your mouth, sweetie." Kennedy grinned, opening the door again to step through, "Jealousy is an ugly color on you."