She spun around and Adaku, who’d come to stand at the entrance of the kitchen, said, “You didn’t get the part.”
The microwave beeped, but Sewanee didn’t move. As if she had been shot but the surprise of the impact preceded the pain of the bullet.
“I’m so sorry, Swan. I still can’t believe it.” Adaku looked wretched, as if she had pulled the trigger.
Sewanee turned back to the microwave. Opened the door. Removed the burrito. Took a huge bite. She continued to eat until Adaku said, “Talk to me.”
Sewanee swallowed, preemptively steadied her voice. “When did you–”
“Yesterday. I didn’t want to tell you before your big night. But I’m leaving and I wanted to tell you face to face and . . .” She drifted off.
After one more suspended moment, Sewanee took another bite. “It’s fine. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go get ready.”
“No, Swan, you’re not riding with me to the airport, that’s ridiculous.”
“Yes, I am!” She took an aggressive bite. “I told you I’d take you and I will.” She brought the rest of the burrito with her when she left the kitchen.
Adaku followed her into the living room. “I saw your audition. It was so good, Swan! It was more than good.” Sewanee chuckled. “It was. They just decided to–”
“Go a different way?” Sewanee did not try to hide the sarcastic bitterness in her voice. The classic it’s not you, it’s me brush-off of Hollywood.
“Colin wanted you,” Adaku soothed, “but the studio–everyone thought you were incredible. Truly brilliant, they said.”
She searched for her phone, took another bite, and asked, “Who got it?”
“Swan.”
“What? Someone famous who they’ll ugly-up instead of someone unknown who already is?”
“Sewanee–”
“I can see the Oscar campaign for best makeup already–”
“It had nothing to do with–”
“Who got the part, A?”
Adaku sighed. “They found this, this girl, Amber Something. She’s a YouTube celebrity, influencer, TikTok personality, whatever. When she was seventeen, her arm was bitten off by a shark.”
Sewanee choked down the last of the burrito. “Missing arm beats out missing eye.” She snapped her fingers sardonically. “Every time.”
Adaku shook her head. “You gotta stop. It’s about followers. She has like forty million followers. You think talent used to take a backseat? Now it’s in the trunk. She has a meditation app and cookbooks and shit. But they wanted you!”
Sewanee couldn’t contain it anymore. “So what happened to ‘I can do this’？ What happened to ‘star power, babe’？”
Adaku put her hand out, like a crossing guard trying to slow Sewanee down. “I tried, I really did. I was as pissed as you, believe me. But their loss! We’ll find something else. Something better! You’re back in the saddle now! It was just one audition. This happened for a reason, okay? Everything’s meant to be! You’ll see.”
There was a moment in every argument where it could end. Nothing irreparable had been said, no major boundary had been crossed. There was a natural point of no return.
Sewanee blew past that moment.
She flailed her arms like one of those inflatable tube-men outside a car dealership. “Stop it! Just shut up! Everything happens for a reason?! You know the last time I thought everything happened for a reason? When I had two fucking eyes! Everything’s meant to be?! Was this meant to be?” She jabbed her finger at her eye so fast, so hard, she didn’t have time to recall that she wasn’t wearing her eye patch. She hit her scarred eye socket and the wave of pain bent her in half, raised her gorge.
“Swan!”
She felt Adaku race toward her, and she pushed her back, one solid shot to what she thought must have been her hip. “Back off!” She touched her face gently. Saw blood on her fingertip.
“You’re bleeding,” Adaku gasped.
It wasn’t gushing. The scar was long-healed, it wouldn’t have opened. She must have caught her fingernail on it. There was a rational part of her brain still working, that could process all of this logically. But the other part kept looping through the unfairness of all the shitty things that had happened and her inability to accept them because they never should have happened in the first place. Not to her. She had never thought, not once, poor me; but she could never escape thinking, why me?