Everything You Never Knew : Secrets

Chapter 15

Rachel pressed her back against the wall and covered her face in her hands. She couldn't handle this right now. She probably couldn't handle it ever. It wasn't as if she'd never been confronted by the press before. It was quite a shock the first time it happened but she eventually got used to it. It felt worse when she was still in High School because she was Ashley's best friend without a name of her own, but when she went to college she was able to make new friends and assimilate into a new environment with a name of her own. It was still difficult to be seen as an individual, Rachel learned that quickly from her first roommate Ami who often tried to use her to get to Ashley.

Ashley's publicist Gale had been helpful when it came to the press, she not only encouraged Rachel to call her if she had any questions about anything she should or shouldn't say when confronted but practically ordered her to. It was crazy how manipulated Ashley's private life seemed compared to the life the general public saw, but now that Rachel was reading Ashley's journal she realized that Ashley's private life was so inhibited even her family and close friends didn't fully understand it. Fame was not all glitz and glamor. It was complicated and filled with a lot of 'necessary deception.' Ashley said from the beginning that it was very important to her to not put on a fake face for the public, but in the end that's what she did even if she didn't realize it. The things Ashley hid were more subtle than most, though, and propelled by her own guilt and confusion rather than her 'people' forcing her to be a certain way.

Ashley was writing about all of these people in her life, but where was the point when Ashley transformed from a girl who was so eager to let all of her new 'fans' into her private life to the girl who willingly listened to Gale about what to say and what not to say? Did that change happen when Jonathon left her and she had to keep the secret of her abortion buried deep inside of herself? Did it happen because of Jocelyn's Myspace message? Where was the point when Ashley's life shifted from warm and open to reserved and secretive?

When Rachel was in High School she'd loved Biology. It was so interesting to her how life was created and how every life form was connected to another. She remembered something her Biology teacher said once, “If you put a frog in boiling water it will jump right out, but if you put it in cool water and heat it up gradually, the frog will just sit there and boil to death.” Not that they boiled frogs in biology of course, but the class made a point to try and sway the conversation to strange topics whenever the teacher was giving a lecture.

That phrase was true, though. Rachel hadn't noticed the changes in Ashley when she saw on on a daily basis because she was simply too close. She did see Ashley change when Ashley left regular High School, and even more when Rachel moved to New York to go to college. Every time she talked to or saw Ashley she was a little different, but Rachel supposed she hadn't wanted to see just how much her best friend had changed. She hadn't wanted to see past the walls Ashley built because she wanted to always think of Ashley just as she was; that same beautiful, innocent girl she'd fallen in love with and kissed on her porch the first year they'd met.

Knowing Ashley felt like such a long journey. One day at fourteen years old Rachel met the girl she fell in love with, and today, that girl is dead and camera crews were trespassing on Rachel's front lawn. She pressed her back to the wall and raised her arms to cover her ears. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to be invisible. She didn't need Gale calling her to tell her to refuse to comment, what would she say anyway? A worse thought was, what would they say? “So how do you feel about your best friend's death?” How was she supposed to respond?” “Oh, I'm sad but I'm sure I'll get over it” or “I'm devastated and I don't know how life will ever be the same?”

Ashley's changes happened gradually, and a subtle shift in her outlook happened every time someone hurt her. She slowly began to see people as cold, threatening, and the more famous Ashley got, the more walls were raised around her. Fame didn't take away the loneliness. Fans weren't friends, they were people who only saw what the media allowed them to see. Rachel knew how that felt in her own way, she'd been betrayed by people too who have used her to get to Ashley. They made her feel insignificant, cheap, like an old stool that someone stands on to reach up to the high shelf in search of something far more valuable than the stool itself.