I WAS BEGINNING TO TURN into a useless thing.
I found myself waking up in a bundle of sheets each morning, and without any plans for the day, I would slip back into those sheets and sleep. Then I'd find myself awake in the afternoon, the twilight sky looming in the supposed to be daylight. I'd get up then, ignore the whistles and catcalls Mason's roommates give me, and go to the bathroom.
I would look deep in the mirror, seeing my face. My hair would be a tangle of knots I probably wouldn't brush out for weeks. My face would have pillow marks from just laying there. But my eyes would no longer be swollen, I haven't cried. I haven't been really feeling anything. I forgot the days as they passed uselessly, I simply forgot myself as the cycle repeated itself.
It wasn't until one late afternoon, or night, when Mason came back with a frown. I have been eating and sleeping, doing nothing else, nothing productive. Sure, I felt sorry that he was taking care of me like this, but I also simply couldn't get myself up. I just didn't want to feel anymore. I didn't want to face what I knew I had to face if I were to pull myself back together..
"How was your date?" I asked him, because that was what he came back from. While he was gone, I imagined what the guy might've looked like. What kind of a guy Mason would like, the kind of guy he would deserve. Funny how it never occurred to me that he didn't like me in a way most guys had, how he had never looked at my breasts like most guys, how he had not wanted to touch me or just simply stare at me like I'm some steak in the middle of a desert. I wonder how I never realized that. He was the same as me, and it hurt me that I had said those things about people like us. I wish I didn't. And I also at the time wished I didn't keep thinking there was something wrong with me.
He didn't answer my question when he took off his blazer and sat on the bed next to me. He sat there, just staring at the cracked wooden floor. I stared at the crack with him, and the more I looked at it the more it felt like a deep hole. A hole that will need money in order to be fixed. I didn't have money. I couldn't fix the hole.
He asked me a question instead, eyes not leaving the small crack. "Why did you leave your village and come here with Mr. Wang?"
I looked away from the hole and at him, searching for some sort of an answer. I already told him why.
And like he knew what I was thinking, he says, "I know you had to get away because of your mother. She abused you, verbally and physically. And she was going to marry you off, so you had to find a way to get out. But there must have been another reason to why you followed Mr. Wang. You could have used him, could have taken the train with him and when you're out in the city, you could have taken your chances and ran away. But you didn't."
He finally looked up, and I saw what it was on his face. Tiredness. Disappointment. I felt suddenly aware of myself when I saw this, realized this. I had been his inspiration in a way, I had been the one who took him in under my arms when Mr. Wang threw him at me like a puppy. He must have, in some way, looked up to me. Yet now I was relying on him with nothing to give even though he was my best friend. Worse, I have fully given up on myself and have been living my life with no meaning. I had let him down, in one way or the other.
"You followed him because he gave you the opportunity to be free of your mother. But he also offered you something else, the possibility to be on screen. That was why you followed him and didn't leave him after he got you out of the city, right? If not, then give me the real reason."
I was laying on his bed, but then I sat up. I went back to all those desperate times, the little meals that never felt like enough for my stomach, the hitting, and the only highlight of those days were to see the people on screen. The evidence of that it's possible to be up there. That hope and ambition I held. I knew I had to get myself back together, for myself, but also for Mason.
"I wanted to prove my mother wrong. I wanted to show this world me, I wanted to be worldwide known."
"Wanted." He considers this to either me or himself for a bit.
I stood up, and I looked him a little more confidently in the eye. "Want. I want to show the world me, I want the world to know me."
At this, he smiles again now, that disappointment gone. "Well, it's about time Maeve Sun Lively got back in the game."
It is one thing to get hyped up about something, and another to actually go through with it. I knew that very well since going into the fame business with Mr. Wang. And now, it was going to be even harder.
"But I'm not signed to any company anymore. I don't have a manager or agent. Mason, I have nothing. Absolutely nothing. And plus, the world hates me right now, they all despise me."
I had seen the news and TV, Nathan Ma was getting more famous ever since that video of me slapping him got leaked. Bridget was now the captain of G.W.F. and I heard they were getting opportunities to go across the world, somewhere in the U.S. And Klarise and Ascending8 were already going to bigger places and getting great chances to become known, while Klarise was also making a good name for herself individually. I couldn't tell if it was because of her involvement with me or if it was just simply her skills. But either way, they were all doing better than me and I was at the bottom of the gutter.
"The world doesn't hate you. It's the people in it, and really, don't they simply hate anyone who is just being incredibly human?"
"Well, I guess that is true."
"And," his grin pulls wider. "You don't need a company, you can have a personal agent. You can go solo."
I knew what he was trying to say, and yet it is comforting to hear what he's trying to tell me, at the same time I didn't want to hear or acknowledge it. "What are you hinting at?"
"You have me, Maeve. I'll be your personal agent."
I started laughing.
"No, I'm serious."
"I'm very grateful for the offer, Mason. But really, you can't just become my personal agent and expect people to hire me like that. It doesn't really work that way."
"Who said it doesn't?" He wasn't smiling anymore and I knew he was very serious and sure about this. But that's just not how it works.
"It's like an unspoken rule. People are hired for personal relationships with big producers and companies. You, Mason, no offense or any of that, aren't anyone. And right now, me, no one would want to hire me for anything. My face is all over Beijing and Shanghai right now, all of them calling me a bitch. So yeah, you becoming my personal agent isn't going to work."
"Well then, what will you do instead?"
I sat back down on the bed next to him. And it wasn't too soon until I thought about what Klarise had written in that letter she had left me. Change into acting as I have seen the potential in you for it. I knew it was hard for me to go into the C-Pop business now that everyone was also saying I couldn't sing, especially with the help of Mr. Wang spreading rumors about not to hire me to other C-Pop companies. I had this one choice, even though I haven't put too much thought into it, but what more did I have? What more could I do?
"Acting. I was thinking of acting."
"I'm not surprised."
I looked at him sideways.
"Hey, you are good at pretending."
I sighed, my chest heaving down. "But it's not like I'll be able to do it."
He reaches my hands and I let them hang in his. "Give it a try, Maeve. Let me become your personal agent, your personal manager. Let me try. I'll try and get you roles, I'll try and get them to hire you. If it doesn't work, we can figure something out."
He looked so much more confident than that seventeen year old boy I had first met. But I knew, deep down, that he was still scared, still shy, still quiet when he can't get himself to talk. But he was trying, trying for me. He really wanted to help me, and I couldn't let myself fall because if I did, I knew he'd just make me pull myself back together. It was always like that. I took myself apart and he put me back together. He wouldn't let me break.
"What about Mr. Wang and Bridget? You're still working for them, and now you're her manager and agent."
He gives me a tired smile. "Ever heard of working a double job?"
I couldn't really smile myself, because I knew how hard this was going to be, how it wasn't as easy as he was thinking it. "Mason, this isn't going to work."
"You haven't given it a try yet, how will you know it won't work?"
"Because!" My voice raised without meaning to, I took a deep breath to try and calm myself down again. "The world doesn't work this way. It doesn't just give so easily. It's not like a fairytale, a story, where everyone gives enough to get back enough, where everyone is happy with what they have. It doesn't. And just because you become my agent, that will not mean the whole world's biggest producers will come running to you and me to get us to film all their movies. It just won't work."
He's silent. And his face was this cold figure I hated to see on him, but it was the truth. If no one was going to give him the truth, break this delusion, he would continue running toward the end of the cliff, and when he falls, it would all be too late.
"I know someone." He suddenly then says, not looking at me.
I snorted a laugh. "Yeah, I know someone too. And he fired me."
"No, I know someone. I'll talk to him, he can help us. Just please, Maeve, give all of this a chance. If you're not going to try, how will you ever know its results?"
"Like I've said, things aren't that simple. And we'll be wasting our time, chasing a dream we can't accomplish."
"Yet you did. And you did it."
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back at the wall behind me, raising an eyebrow at him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that you had nothing in that village but just a dream, an ambition of being on the screen. That got you to where you are."
"Yeah, where I am is in a cramped apartment because I have no home or job."
"Yes, but you also forgot how you came all this way. So just give all of this a try, what is stopping you?"
I knew full well what was stopping me. I was scared. I was scared of being denied, of the people that will hate on me. I didn't want to hear the nasty things they were going to say to me, say behind me, say in front of my face. Do you know how scary that is? To have what feels like the whole world hate on you and try to make a living out of that? To know that some people might even be mindful enough to follow you home and physically hurt you? I didn't want to face any of that.
"Sooner or later, Maeve, I'm going to run out of money for the both of us. As much as I want to, I can't keep taking care of you like this. So please, give this all a try."
I played a little with my hands, not looking at him.
"I'm scared." Was what I finally said. Admit to.
He comes closer to me and wraps his arms around me, his chin resting on my head. " Of course you will be, I am too."
I took in a deep breath. He was right, I had to give it a try. If I didn't, I'm not only dragging myself down but I'm also dragging him down. I couldn't let my own problems drown my best friend. I couldn't, no matter how much I wanted to hide away. He, and maybe partly the world, wasn't going to let me do that.
"Fine then, now give me the paperworks for whatever's to come."