2.??The crew is the same for all the Dying for Fun episodes. Sometimes in costume or hair and makeup, they do me up a certain way and then consult with each other like, “Is the braid too Alicia?” “Is this skirt too Kristin?” “Whoa, you’re giving me Maggie Donohue flashbacks with that nail polish.”

3.??In the last scene I’m supposed to say, “Don’t you dare be gentle with me,” and I very politely ask if we can maybe consider cutting that line, because who says that? Like, why does she need to be such a bimbo? The director gets pissy and goes, “Say your lines, sweetheart.” To put me in my place, he has us do dozens of takes. He makes me say it over and over again. The first few takes, I’m standing next to Mike, who plays Apollo. Then the director has me press myself against Mike. Then he has Mike pin my wrists against a tree. Then he has me take off my shirt so I’m just in a string bikini top.

“Please,” I say. “Can we be done?”

“Are you tired, Selena? Are you parched? Somebody get this bitch a Perrier.” Fucking asshat.

Poor Mike is so uncomfortable.

I lose count of how many times I’ve said it. Finally, Mike says, “Come on, man, she gets it.”

The director puts down his stupid clipboard and walks over to me. He pulls the string on the bikini top and then I’m standing there with my breasts out in front of the whole crew.

He whispers in my ear, “Do you get it, Selena?”

But I’m not Selena. I’m not Shelly, either. They think they’ve got me. They think they’ve pinned me down. They’re not even fucking close.

OUR BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER

From “Remembering Alison Thomas” by Jessica Nazarian, January 7, 1996, The Daily Princetonian:

On Sunday, students trickling back from Christmas break returned to a campus that had been transformed into a winter wonderland of glittering quads and frosted trees. But one member of the freshman class was not among them. Alison Thomas died over break during a family vacation to the Caribbean. As the investigation into her death continues, students here paused to remember a beloved friend and classmate.

“She was really smart,” said Mike Chernin, her lab partner in Molecular Biology 100. “I definitely had to step up my game with her.”

Larissa Venable, captain of MoDE (Modern Dance Ensemble), shared that Alison was one of only three freshmen admitted to the selective squad this fall. “Usually the frosh hang back in rehearsals, but she was throwing out choreography ideas right off the bat. Her ideas were totally integral to our ‘Like a Prayer’ routine.”

Alison’s roommate, Nika Ivanova, reflected, “I still can’t believe she won’t be here when I wake up in our room tomorrow. I just want to say we will always remember her.” …

From “For Vacationers, Grief and Questions After a Daughter’s Mysterious Death” by Vince Cerusi, January 17, 1996, The New York Times:

… “Alison was an absolute sweetheart,” her aunt, Colleen Thomas, said. “Just the sweetest, gentlest soul you could hope to meet. My dog is a rescue and he really struggles with trust, and she was just wonderful with him.” When asked about reports that her niece was seen drinking and smoking marijuana at a popular local bar on the night of her disappearance, Colleen Thomas replied, “I don’t care what the police down there say. It’s a tourist island; they have an incentive to make her look a certain way. That is not the Ali we know and love.” …

From “Our Town says Goodbye” by Kate Cafferty, January 23, 1996, The Patent Trader:

… Becca Frankel, seventeen and a high school classmate, remembers Alison Brianne Thomas as being a girl who had it all. “She was totally that girl. Smart. Pretty. Great athlete. Awesome dancer. I could probably name ten guys who had huge crushes on her. She got a lot of attention, and you could tell she loved it, you know?” When it was asked whether Thomas was promiscuous, Becca replied, “She was all about Drew.” Alison dated classmate Drew McNamara, who is a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, for three years. According to Becca, “They were the couple.” We could not reach McNamara for comment.…

IT HAD been two weeks since I stepped into Clive Richardson’s taxi, and at work my productivity had dwindled to almost nothing. Every morning on the subway, I scribbled a to-do list: mail off cover-art proofs, draft the back-cover copy for a movie tie-in edition, write rejection e-mails for half a dozen recent novel submissions. Arriving at the office, I hung my coat in the locker at my cubicle and settled in at my desk with every intention of getting things done. But soon, almost without realizing it, the work at hand was abandoned and I was lost in the digital sea of stories about Alison. None of the mysteries in the books I worked on could compare to my own sister’s.

It seemed everyone who had known her, however distantly, had given testimony on the question of who Alison Thomas had been. The articles were filled with tidbits about my sister’s last months that were new to me. She had been to an R.E.M. concert at Nassau Coliseum the fall before she died. She loved the mocha frozen yogurt in the dining hall. She had been a ballerina for Halloween. Each piece of information was like a wound, a reminder of how little I knew about my own sister.

From “An Enigma Abroad” by Sean Winokur, Esquire, June 1996:

… I meet Richard Conti, Thomas’s high school English teacher, at the Station, a diner in the mock-Tudor downtown of the affluent suburb where she grew up. In a town whose quaint main street is crowded with dry cleaners, nail salons, and gourmet take-away shops, the Station stands unmistakably apart. The interior is beyond unfancy—it’s downright dingy. Flickering panels of fluorescents overhead, a skein of mysterious stickiness underfoot, a deli case of mayonaissy potato, macaroni, and chicken salads. A jar of magenta pickled eggs occupies pride of place by the ancient cash register on the counter. My western omelet is emphatically mediocre. From the get-go, I wonder at Conti’s choice of meeting place. You can sniff out someone trying to control the narrative, hoping to convince the world that Alison Thomas was not a silly little rich girl.

Conti is thirty-three, tall and handsome, with the broad and limber build of the Division I soccer goalkeeper he once was. Despite having agreed to this interview, he is hesitant, at first, to discuss his former student. As he bites into his egg and cheese sandwich, he confides that he almost canceled on me this morning. “I teach English, so I know the same story can be spun a thousand different ways.”

But as we speak, Conti grows increasingly comfortable sharing his impressions and memories of Thomas. “She was a very bright girl. Not necessarily the most diligent student, but very bright. There’s a type of student, and I think it was hard for me to recognize in Alison at first because it’s a type that skews male. These kids do the work that interests them and say screw the rest. They turn in papers late but their work is so good you don’t want to penalize them for it, even if you know they don’t really give a shit what grade you give them, and also that they’re kind of banking on that, kind of playing you.” Asked if he’d describe Thomas as arrogant, Conti grows flustered. “No, no, no. She was a good kid. She was just a really intelligent, nice, good kid. That’s what I’m trying to say. She was a star.” …

ALISON WAS an attention whore. She was a gentle soul. She was that girl. The one everybody envied. The one all the boys wanted. A star. She was what all the dead are: whatever the living make them.