Love at First Sighting

Chapter 1

El

Once you put something on the internet, you can never take it back.

Which is why I think extremely hard about how I’m going to push this sponsorship.

I prop my tripod on a flat patch of ground and take a few establishing shots to guarantee the best-lit angles, especially the ones that’ll hide the boob sweat currently dripping down the center of my chest. For an athleisure company that boasts extreme moisture-wicking fabric, it’s leaving me extremely moist.

The sun’s setting behind the Santa Monica Mountains, casting an orange-and-pink glow onto the ocean behind me. It matches my brand’s color palette—blue (my sports bra and yoga pants), orange and pink (the sky), and tan (of the spray-on variety). I’m in a race against time to get these pictures before I lose the sun. I step in front of the camera and shoot a few test shots. The lighting looks good, my skin’s glowing, and all that’s left is the hard part—making it look like I’m not trying too hard.

Of course, I have to try a little. No one climbs up to the top of a mountain at dusk, alone, with nothing but a tripod, camera, and water bottle, and does it effortlessly.

I hustle through a few poses.

A hand in my hair, laughing at an unhilarious patch of bramble—passable.

Taking a sip out of the trending, overpriced water bottle of the moment—but it blocks my face, and shows off mixed branding messages.

Facing the ocean, a hand on my hip, glancing back at the camera—this is weird and feels like a bad attempt at a Bond Girl pose.

I take one final shot, glancing down at my waistline like I’ve just slid into the best pair of buttery yoga pants, water bottle in my free hand—competing brand name turned around—and flash a smile to no one in particular. Bingo. This is the one. The right cocktail of casual and capitalism.

Anyone looking at the picture on Instagram would probably see a stunning model with sculpted curves, flawless makeup, and a sports bra that costs as much as a small mortgage. They’d see someone who has a perfect life. Yet, as I look at the smiling woman in the picture on the screen, all I see is the lifelessness in her eyes that no filter can fix. She’s got no reason to want for anything. This is the picture-perfect life she’s always wanted, but it’s actually woefully underdeveloped.

But for the sake of Spinx yoga pants, lifeless and plastic is more than good enough. In fact, it might be exactly what their brand is looking for. I transfer the photos from the DSLR to my phone and run a few tried-and-true filters over them to send to my marketing contact.

I draft up a caption—a Thoreau quote and something inspirational about how these yoga pants make me feel closer to nature—apply the proper spon-con labels and tags, and hit send. Now all I have to do is wait for their blessing and I’m free to post.

Even a few years ago, there was a thrill to every post, especially as I migrated from my child beauty pageant era to my lifestyle influencer era. Brand transitions are never easy, and the transition from the done-up “Toddler in Tiara” life my mom foisted upon me to “I’m My Own Woman, I Swear to God” felt near impossible sometimes. They’re even harder when you have to face them alone.

As I open up Instagram, my feed refreshes and a post from Alaka-Sam floats to the top.

In theory, nothing about a borderline-skeletal grown man in leather pants and a sapphire-sequined pirate shirt should make my stomach knot, but it does. He poses in his dressing room at Houdini House, a swanky and private Los Angeles magic-themed nightclub, fashioned like a knock-off Haunted Mansion. Los Angeles, Vegas, and children’s parties are possibly the only places where magicians are cool.

He’s dabbing moisturizer onto his alarmingly sharp cheekbones, and the caption reads, Magic is Skin Deep. Now, he’s got his own sponsorship with Epidermeé cosmetics and doesn’t need me. Of course, I can’t be too upset. While he might have been mostly interested in me for my sponsorship connections, I was mostly interested in him for his open invite to Houdini House. A few months ago, everyone and their mother wanted an in there, and I had to be the It Girl. But the second their marketing associate DMed him on Instagram, there was no need to keep dating me.

Needless to say, I was not devastated to be dumped by a man named Alaka-Sam, but the post feels like a particularly harsh blow to my ego nonetheless.

I do not hit like on his post.

Instead, I close up shop and begin the trek down to my car now that the sun has dipped behind the horizon.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve climbed way out of my way to take these pictures. I broached quite close to a rusty gate that might have said No Trespassing, but the faded letters look more like No ass at this point. But if I simply went to the populated overlook near the highway, I’d look like a tourist, and that’s not part of the brand.

Above me, the sky turns a deep cerulean, with twinkling stars that look like the face glitter I wore to Coachella a few months ago. My phone buzzes in my back pocket and I slide it out. I’m well used to my notifications popping off, full of comments from my fans, fair-weather friends, and fraudulent bots. Usually, they’re full of affectionate emojis, ads for suspicious clothing giveaways, and pleas to “please come to” whatever country happens to want me that day.

Today, at the very least, there’s a text from my mom.

MOM (7:42 PM): Contractor said the kitchen would look better with a backsplash. Can you send $

Our green-and-white ping-pong of a conversation is scarcely full of love and care. The last few messages aren’t much different from this one. I wonder if the repetition is really that lost on her. There’s no inquiry into how I’m doing or desire for a catch-up. Just a favor. A financial favor. I shouldn’t be shocked, and yet, the pinpricks of pain stab in my chest. This is how it’s been for a long time.

She’d been delighted when a modeling scout hawked me down at age five at the Fashion Fair Mall in Fresno. Once the scout, and ultimately the photographers, saw dollar signs in my cherubic cheeks and big doe eyes, so did she. It was the least I could do to support a single mom. If my smiles paid our bills, who was I to complain? But I think the glamour shots and filters hid the girl I was underneath, the one who craved a normal relationship with her mother. Now my brand projects a girlboss who doesn’t need anyone. She can handle anything on her own.

It’s always been on her own.

I have more—shampoos, fitness equipment, exclusive invites—than most people could ever dream of.

The things no one ever offers are love and care.

Yet I keep trying, in hopes someone might prove me wrong.

EL (7:43 PM): Of course, send me the invoice.

I seal it with a heart emoji. In return, I get a thumbs-up reaction. Instead of letting it get to me, I keep trucking forward until the sounds of traffic and waves are punctuated by a gentle whirring. It’s not the thunderous staccato of a helicopter or the deafening drone of a landing plane. This, I feel instinctively, is something that doesn’t want to be heard.

I peer over my shoulder and catch sight of a faint shimmer over the deep blues and sandy browns of the mountainside. I blink and wonder if it’s a trick of the light, but it can’t be. There’s something there. The backdrop ripples around it like a fun-house mirror as it inches closer to me.

I pick up my pace and begin to move quicker through the ravine to reach my car. I’m a sitting duck out here, and the inevitable murder podcast plays in my head.

Because it took so long to find Ms. Martin, her body had fully decomposed and a small family of rabbits had made a home in the tented sanctuary of her blue yoga pants.

I don’t get far before a blinding white light floods behind me. I panic for a split second before I run. Whatever this thing is, it might be after me.

It whirs faster as I dash away, stumbling over rocks and downed bramble as I try to remember my path back to the car. I pass the same No ass sign and trip over a shrub. A scrape bleeds through my poor Spinx yoga pants.

“Fuck,” I mutter, rubbing at the wound. I use my tripod to climb back to my feet, but my stalker is still breathing down my neck with its floodlights.

This is far from the fake problems I solve with my sponsorships, like greasy hair or a wine-stained shirt emergency. This is real. I mentally run down my contacts list, follower lists. Since I’m really in danger, who would come? Certainly not my roommates. Not Alaka-Sam. Maybe my random fans who’d ask me for an autograph midmurder. Then they’d claim I was rude for not paying enough attention to them as I bled out.

I genuinely don’t know if anyone would try to help me.

What I do know is that if these are my last moments, I’m sure as hell not going to go quietly.
I pull out my phone, flip the camera on myself, and go live.

“Hi, guys,” I start, squinting and still trying to focus on fleeing. “So, I was out shooting some really great Spinx content that should be coming in a few days, and I’m on my way back to the car, but there is something following me. I can’t see what it is, but it looks like a ship or something. I don’t know, but look, it’s just behind me.”

That makes it mad. The lights flash from white to red to blue and it picks up speed. So do I. Then a horrible thought crosses my mind: Am I getting abducted by aliens?

Like actual, for real aliens?

Aliens are so not my brand. I believe they’re real because the universe is too big for us to be the smartest things out there, but I did not expect them to come to Earth. I did not expect them to follow me home from my photo shoot. I know I’m hot and might be hearty stock for their intergalactic babies, but I didn’t think they’d pick me. My brain plays an Instagram carousel of photos of what’s to come—little green men standing over my bed, probing, way too much chrome.

I have a meal delivery service and a snail face mask to promote by the end of the week.

I do not have time to get abducted by aliens right now.

“Holy shit,” I gasp as I stumble again. Dirt and rock shards dig into my palms. I scramble for the phone, the tripod, and the water bottle I’ve dropped. As I grasp the bottle and the craft nears, I get an idea. I hurl the aluminum water bottle into the air at full speed and hope my one season of softball in fifth grade prepared me for this. It clangs hard against the metal, and I anticipate that maybe a laser beam will sear me in half, but instead, the craft wobbles.

Then it spins.

Then it crashes.

Then I realize that this Well bottle could definitely be used as a murder weapon.

The lights along the front flicker as they die, and sparks pop from the pile of sheer dark metal. It looks like translucent scrap metal, but far thinner, far silkier. It actually looks like the dress I wore to Corbin Bleu’s fragrance release party a few years ago. The craft isn’t nearly as large as it first seemed. The flashing lights and shimmering iridescence made it seem massive and unknowable. I reckon maybe it’s the size of a golf cart, but lying crumpled and destroyed, it feels like much less of a threat.

I grab my phone and turn the camera back on myself as I move toward the crash.

In California, fire season has become a yearlong event, so I role-play my best Smokey Bear and scuttle down the side of the hill to the wreckage. Thankfully, the smoke has dissipated by the time I reach it.

“I don’t know what I just saw, you guys.” I’m out of breath and my fitness watch tells me my heart is racing, as if I didn’t already know. “I have no idea what just happened, but I hit it with my Well bottle and it crashed. It’s like . . . busted, oh my god. Not only was it a lifesaver, but I’m glad I have my Well bottle here to . . .”

I sprinkle water over the few sparking embers, to make it clear I am preventing a forest fire like a true friend of the environment. There’s been debate after I almost got canceled for taking a private jet from LA to Coachella. But that’s when I realize that even with the flash on, it’s near impossible to really see the iridescent, reflective sheet metal on camera.

I kick aside another piece of metal and it flips over. This time, it displays a serial number and product info. It’s stamped on, mostly smudged, but it could be enough to find the culprit.

“What does that say?”

The logo is a circle with three letters printed along the inside and three stars beneath each letter.

Property of PI . . .

I can’t make out the rest of it. But I take a screenshot of the my live video anyway. If only I knew who to tag . . .

I’m breathing again. The craft is destroyed and I stopped a forest fire, but I still feel a sense of looming dread and adrenaline that’ll take hours to get rid of. Whatever this was, it could have killed me. I could have died in Spinx yoga pants.

And the brutal reality is that I’m not sure anyone would have cared. Or believed me.

“Guys,” I say into the camera. “I have no idea what just happened, and I doubt anybody is going to believe me, but I need to share this. And in case someone murders me on the walk back to my car, you’ll know what happened and where to find my body. Uh, peace and love. Bye?”