Cherry Money Baby (3 page)

Burrito Barn was like a crime scene with no victim. News vans clogged the parking lot, stacked bumper to bumper along Hope Ave., a forest of satellite dishes rising over the treetops. On the ground, crews reported within earshot of each other:

“No news yet whether Ms. Deen survived the attack . . .”

“. . . largely due to unsanitary eating conditions . . .”

“. . . was saved by local high-schooler Alice Kerrigan . . .”

Yokels strained against police tape, while the cops crooked their fingers in their belts and everyone craned to catch a glimpse of Keira Knightley or Nicole Richie or whoever it was (reports varied). Other onlookers were gossip fiends who’d seen the news on Twitter and rushed over.

Ardelia and her blond friend had vanished, escaping in a little Italian sports car just before the press arrived. The manager was more than eager to give his statement, but no one cared what he had to say. Cherry, on the other hand, was cornered in the break room by half a dozen news crews. The reporters were packed shoulder to shoulder pad in the tiny room. The cameramen stood just behind, like a second layer of shark’s teeth, squinting into viewfinders. The sound guys were at the back, balancing fuzzy boom mikes that bumped against the ceiling, making headphones squeal. The wall of plastic, paisley, and heavily made-up faces formed an advancing semicircle around Cherry. Now she understood why they were called the
press.

“What went through your mind when you saw that Ms. Deen couldn’t breathe?” a woman in a neckerchief asked.

Cherry took a breath and tried to gather her thoughts. There weren’t many to gather. Her brain felt emptied. Was this really happening? No, obviously not.

“I think it was,
That woman can’t breathe,
” she replied.

A cameraman chuckled. She hadn’t meant to be funny.

“Are you a big fan of Ms. Deen’s?”

Cherry shrugged. “Not really.”

She judged from their expressions this wasn’t the answer they expected or wanted. “My brother’s obsessed with her, though. He’s got a poster of her above his bed.”

More laughter from the camera guys. This time even some of the reporters smiled.

“Which poster?” a girl in a Freaktallica T-shirt asked, holding out her mini-recorder.

“What’s the one where she plays Jane Austen and hunts vampires?” Cherry asked.

“Lady of the House,”
everyone seemed to say in unison.

A few of the reporters chuckled this time. The bored newspaper guys glanced up, pens poised.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” said Cherry. “She’s in that white nightgown and holding the bloody stake. The movie was okay. I heard the book sucked, though.”

“Were you excited to meet a celebrity?” the local news lady asked, inching forward.

“No,” said Cherry. “I mean, I dunno. I didn’t really know who she was. I just thought she was some hot chick in a polo shirt who didn’t know how to chew her food.”

This time, they
all
laughed.

“So, you didn’t recognize Ms. Deen when she entered?”

“No, but I knew she was rich.”

“How’s that?”

“Her clothes are from Star and Liberty,” Cherry said. “We don’t really have swanky shit like that in Aubrey.” She winced. “Shit. Can I say ‘shit’?”

“Sure!” said the girl from TMZ.

“We can edit it out,” said the Worcester Cable News guy.

“You seem pretty unimpressed with celebrity,” the
Boston Globe
man said.

“I don’t know,” said Cherry. “I never met a celebrity before.”

“So, how does it feel?”

She thought about it, searching for something profound. “She’s so . . . small. She looks big on-screen, you know? Not
fat
just . . . like a
giant.
And in reality she’s this tiny person. I mean, I could wrap my arms around her twice.”

“Are you worried that Ms. Deen has an eating disorder?”

“Could this incident be related to bulimia?”

“Why do you think Hollywood is so obsessed with body-image issues?”

“Whoa!” Cherry put out her palms. “I just said the bitch was fit. I don’t know if she’s anorexic or whatever. In fact, she ordered some pretty fatty food, so . . .”

“I love it!” someone said.

“I have a question,” a woman in no-nonsense glasses asked. “The restaurant was full of people, and by all accounts you were the farthest from Ms. Deen.”

“Yeah,” said Cherry. “That’s right.”

“Why do you think
you
ran to her aid, and no one else did?”

The room got very quiet, and for the first time Cherry was aware,
really
aware, that she was talking to an audience of millions, to more people than she had ever or would ever meet in a lifetime.

“I guess it’s because most people, when something goes wrong, they think about what to do,” said Cherry.

“And you knew what to do?” someone offered.

“No,” said Cherry. “I just don’t think.”

“Amazing,” someone said. “This is way better than Christina’s leaked photos.”

More questions. More photos. She felt faint. She was going to go down like a prizefighter if they didn’t give her some air. They loved her, they couldn’t get enough of her, but Cherry’d had more than enough of them. Finally she said she had to pee and locked herself in the bathroom. There was a skinny window near the ceiling. It took a few attempts, but soon she was able to squirm through the small gap and out into the alley behind Burrito Barn. She dropped to the pavement, her top streaked with grease and grit from the windowsill.

Ned was there, smoking a cigarette.

“What’s wrong with the door?” he asked.

“Those fuckers don’t know when to quit.” Ned offered her the smoke. She shook her head. “See ya, Ned.”

She started down the alley, but Ned stopped her.

“You wanna go the back way.” He nodded over his shoulder. “There’re still a bunch of news guys in the parking lot.”

Cherry smiled. “Thanks, Ned.”

She jogged up Hope Ave., a crazy girl with wild hair in a filthy Burrito Barn uniform. She was halfway home when her brother’s tricked-out Dubber came over the ridge. She flagged him down.

“I was just coming to get you.”

She slid into the passenger seat. “Work let out early. On account of extreme craziness.”

“Holy shit, so it’s true?” Stew showed her his cell phone, a text from his latest girlfriend:

“Choking, actually.”

“Damn.”

He pulled into traffic, reaching across her lap for the glove compartment. Stew extracted a joint and lit up.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Stew shrugged. “This is a
situation.
You want?”

“No.” She waved the smoke away from her face.

“Okay, so, you gotta tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

His voice was like a frog, smoke tumbling out with his words. “Are they real? Her tits?”

“Jesus, Stew!” She punched his arm, and the Dubber swerved a little.

“I’m just saying, when you did CPR or whatever, you probably got a good feel. I mean, you’re in the position to answer a question many a young man has pondered. . . .”

“You are
such
a guy.”

“That’s what they tell me.” Stew smiled around the joint in his lips.

“All right,” said Cherry. “Yeah, they’re real.”

“Oh!” Stew let go of the wheel, throwing his hands up like he was on a roller coaster. “She noticed! I
knew
you were a lesbian!”

“You
fucker.
” She socked him again, plucked the joint from his fingertips, and flicked it out the window.

They were both laughing so hard, Stew had to pull over a block from their driveway, just so they could contain themselves.

Pop was MIA. Cherry and Stew booted up the family’s HP. The dial-up buzzed and sang its weird music.

“Cherry, you are blowing up,” said Stew.

It was true. Not only did she have 217 new friend requests, but her followers on Twitter had tripled. The YouTube video of her interview already had 127,000 views. Cherry read the comment stream:

Squawker, TMZ, all the major celeb blogs were talking about her. The front page of Trip’d featured a publicity shot of Ardelia next to a photo of . . .
shit.

“I look terrible!”

The photo they’d used was from the Burrito Barn break room. Cherry was sweat stained, pale, and haggard. It had been taken while Cherry was midsentence, mid-blink, possibly mid-sneeze.

“‘I just thought she was some hot chick in a polo shirt who didn’t know how to chew her food,’”
Stew read. “Did you really say that?”

“Jesus.”
Cherry gripped the sides of the monitor. “I sound like an idiot! It didn’t sound that stupid when I said it.”

“Check it out,” said Stew. “You’re even on Auto-Tune the News.”

“You’re kidding me.”

Someone had set a clip from Cherry’s interview to music, editing her words together so it sounded like she was singing.

“No, but I knew / I knew / I knew she was riiiiiich,”
the web Cherry sang.
“Shit! / Can I say ‘shit’? / Well. / I knew she was riiiiich!”

“My sister the meme,” Stew said. “Also, thanks for mentioning the poster thing, asshole. You made me sound like a skeeve.”

Cherry leaned her forehead against the desk. “Damn it. Why can’t I just keep my mouth shut?”

“Maybe this is the reason.” Stew brought up SweetWear.com, the design-your-own T-shirt site. Top rated was something called the Cherry Tee, a red-and-black tee with a message in white lettering over the outline of a cherry. It said:

I DON’T THINK
.

“Fabulous,” Cherry said. “Fucking. Fabulous.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” she said, unlocking the back door. “If Pop asks, I’m at Lucas’s.”

The Kerrigans’ backyard was a small patch of scrub surrounded by a chain-link fence. An elm stood in the corner, its branches extending over the yard and their neighbors’, the DuBoises. Cherry used the tree to hoist herself over the fence. Somewhere above her, near the wooden plank Pop had nailed there years ago as a tree house for her and Stew, a heart had been carved into the trunk. Etched inside were these words:
CHERRY + LUCAS
.

The tree had continued to grow, smoothing the rough edges of the lettering, rounding the curves of the heart; the exposed bark had darkened over the years, but it was still legible. It was still true.

Cherry dropped onto the DuBoises’ back lawn. The rear window of their trailer, the counterpart of Cherry’s bedroom, glowed. Lucas leaned over his desk, carving a new design into the hacked-to-shit blotter. Cherry rapped on the screen. He grinned now, his teeth looking immaculately white against his dark skin.