Extracurricular

1

Six months later

Ramona sees the irony in taking an Uber to a hike, but her car is in the shop, and she lives in Calabasas and Betty lives in Culver City, and as much as I adore you, muffin, I value my sanity too much to go to the Valley on a Friday afternoon.

And Ramona loves that about her-that Betty has never bent over backward just because her friend is Ramona Wilder.

Was Ramona Wilder.

The verb tense is still a little confusing. She's not sure where the persona ends and the person begins.

"Is the music okay?" the driver calls as he merges onto the 101, and it jars her so much that she has to ask him to repeat it.

It shouldn't, of course-it's a simple question. But any mention of music turns Ramona sensitive, makes her feel like she's under a microscope. When the silence in her home gets to her, she turns on jazz or a podcast, something with zero chance of yanking her back in time.

"Sure," she says, because although the electronic untz untz untz pulsing at the base of her skull is about as pleasant as the hard-core dental work she had done between seasons two and three of Greta Life!, she hasn't been able to eliminate that people-pleasing part of her entirely. "It's fine."

Another few moments of silence, and then: "Do you like it?"

Her automatic five-star rating drops to a four. "Uh . . . yeah?" She phrases it as a question, unwilling to insult his taste.

The driver's eyes meet hers in the rearview mirror. "It's my new single."

And then he proceeds to spike the volume while Ramona plasters a grin on her face, inwardly cringing.

Jesus, what if she'd said she didn't like it? Her life is literally in his hands, and though she's taken hundreds, maybe thousands of cars, it really is an absurd amount of trust to give a stranger. Next time she'll opt for a rental.

At the very least, the driver doesn't seem to know who she is. Maybe her sunglasses and hat are keeping her anonymous, or he never follows pop music.

One thing has become clear in the months since that show in Milwaukee: Ramona is too paranoid. But not without good reason.

Her parents seemed convinced the earth would careen off its axis if Ramona Wilder stopped making music, but it has in fact continued spinning. Was it an absolute clusterfuck in those first few days after her announcement? In the few minutes after her announcement, even? Oh, absolutely. Order had collapsed; fans had grabbed at her clothes, her hair; and she'd even indulged a brief is this really how I die? before security swooped in. She still wound up with a couple bruises. A scrape down one leg from a metal gate. The news exploded on social media before she'd even reached her hotel-articles and speculation and conspiracy theories and sadness. She'd anticipated some of that, sure, but the videos of preteen girls filming themselves crying were almost too much for her to bear.

She flew home after posting her planned statement and spent the next forty-eight hours in bed with her cat, Janet, alternating cold medicines until she could breathe through her nose again.

Once she was healthy enough to see her parents, DeeAnn begged her to see reason. Beck thought they could spin it as a publicity stunt, that she could announce a comeback the following year and emerge bigger than ever.

"I can't believe you could be this selfish," DeeAnn said. "We raised you better than this. This is our livelihood. Our family business."

If it really was a family business, then why was Ramona's face the one on every album cover?

Ramona explained herself until she was hoarse. "My mental health is in a fucking dumpster," she said, because it was impossible to divorce her self-worth from the charts, the number of streams, the number of likes. "I had a panic attack before nearly every show on the tour."

So we'll find you a better therapist.

"I've never had the chance to think about what I might actually want in life."

You have money, fame, and thousands of fans who worship you. Who wouldn't want that?

Around and around they went, until DeeAnn started crying that her daughter was leaving them to rot out on the streets and Beck suggested they take a breather and Ramona opened a delivery app without worrying about how many calories were in the KFC Family Feast.

The simple truth was this: if she kept going, she didn't know how much longer she'd last until she completely fell apart.

After that, she confined herself to her house like she was going into hibernation. It would all blow over soon enough, and then she could stride confidently into her new reality, even if she wasn't quite sure yet what it would hold for her.

"She's taking time off to rest," her parents told the tabloids, so Ramona hired her own publicists to reiterate her statement. Her own lawyers, who bought her out of her contracts.

Quitting her job, it turns out, is the most expensive thing she's ever done.

"Look me up on Spotify," her Uber driver says, jabbing a finger at the QR code taped to the back of the passenger seat.

"Yeah, of course," she says, and honestly, maybe she will. Maybe she never really knew anything about music at all.


When five-star Frank-she can’t help it-drops her off at Cherry Canyon’s parking lot, Betty’s waiting for her wearing a muscle tee, hot-pink shorts, and the kind of effortlessly sadistic grin that promises it’s not going to be an easy hike.

"You're doing advertising now?" Ramona reaches forward to flick the brim of her friend's cap, navy blue with body by betty embroidered on it.

"My little sister made it for me for Christmas last year. Not my fault I look cute in it." Then she turns serious, hugging Ramona before pulling back to examine her. Ramona has five inches on Betty, but in a fight she'd put her money on Betty to win every time. "How are you doing? Or are you sick of that question yet?"

"You're one of the few people who might actually care about the answer." Ramona lets out a slow breath. Inhales the earthy tang of nature. Her own athleisure is designed to blend in: gray tank, black leggings, giant Ray-Bans. "Today . . . today I feel decent. Ready to climb a fucking mountain."

"That's what I like to hear."

Betty Zhu started as her personal trainer a few years ago and has, much to her surprise, become her best friend, the person she texts when she's lonely on tour or has gossip to share with someone she knows won't pass it on. Ramona's worked with a number of trainers, all of them selected by DeeAnn and eager to push her until she threw up. She got Betty's name from the indie singer-songwriter who opened for her last tour. She's tough but gentle, she said. She doesn't actually want to kill you.

That had been enough for Ramona. During their first session at a private gym in Glendale, Betty didn't make a single comment about Ramona's career. Didn't pinch the skin beneath her bra strap like her previous trainer did. Didn't ask for a photo. A couple months later, just before Ramona performed at Coachella, she offered Betty free tickets.

"Oh," Betty had said with a scrunch of her brow. "Are you like, famous or something?" She maintained the faux confusion for three full seconds before both of them burst out laughing.

Betty's known for her discretion, which is why she has plenty of celebrity clients, and ever since those first few sessions, Ramona's been able to open up to her in a way that she hasn't with anyone else. Something about sweating and grunting in front of a near-stranger will do that to a person.

"I forgot how long it's been since I've done this," Ramona says with a rough laugh as they pound the dirt trail. Her phone and keys are tucked into the pack around her hips, water bottle dangling from one hand. She takes a long sip. "Is this what people feel like after being cryogenically frozen?"

"We can take it as slow as you want, sugar-bean." Betty is relentlessly creative with her pet names. She's also relentlessly cruel for barely breaking a sweat while Ramona already feels like she's swimming in it. "You set the pace."

They got into the habit of hiking last year, when Ramona remarked that the gym was starting to feel a little claustrophobic, and she's grown to love it-the thigh-burning, breath-stealing freedom.

She decided to stay in LA for two reasons: one, the weather, and two, because it's always been home. She was born in a drafty one-bedroom apartment in Lancaster, at least fifty miles north of anywhere her parents would have rather lived, but still LA County, a source of pride for them. Her toddler years were spent in the back seat of DeeAnn's '95 Dodge Neon, shuttling back and forth to auditions she didn't fully understand but loved when she could make strangers smile. Then there was the furnished apartment she rented in Burbank while on Greta, and the first house she bought for herself and her parents in Studio City before realizing she couldn't keep living with them if she was going to maintain any sense of calm.

Every time she imagined abandoning the city, she couldn't bear the idea of leaving behind the sepia-toned vistas or taco trucks or grit, that ambition ingrained in nearly everyone from the highest-earning celebrities to five-star Frank, promoting his music in an Uber. Even this rocky desert landscape is beautiful to her, the sagebrush fighting to survive under the same sun that roasts her bare but heavily sunscreened shoulders.

Ramona readjusts her baseball cap to push loose strands of hair back into her ponytail. "Guess I should have considered, you know, moving when I was sitting on my couch eating takeout and watching Gilmore Girls for all those months."

"That's just what your body needed. You were starving yourself," Betty says. "Don't beat yourself up for it. Even though you're inexplicably Team Logan."

"The older I get, the more I see the appeal!" she volleys back, igniting one of their age-old debates.

Ramona hasn't beaten herself up for it-at least, not today. She knows she's gained weight since the announcement, but when she looks in the mirror, she tries to focus on how the dark circles under her eyes have faded a bit. The rosiness coming back to her cheeks. The new softness to her belly and around her thighs, all of it proof that she's listening to what her body needs. She wants to make peace with every part of herself. However long it takes.

"Have the reporters stopped calling you?" she asks Betty as they turn a corner, elevation steadily increasing.

"They're always calling, and I'm always blocking. You know I'm a vault." A swift shake of her head. "And what about you, bumblebee? Your parents still trying to convince you to come back?"

"I haven't heard from them in three weeks, actually. A record."

Even though they'll be able to comfortably retire in a few years-sooner if they hadn't been so reckless with their money-Ramona has some guilt that her decision ended her parents' careers, too, though she supposes there's nothing stopping them from finding someone else to manage. She hates that, the guilt, because how many times has her mother ever apologized for calling up the paparazzi, or for the photo shoots that bordered on inhumane? At age fifteen, the first time Ramona saw an airbrushed magazine cover of herself with slimmer cheeks and fuller lips and thought, I hadn't realized there was anything wrong with my face as DeeAnn fawned over how pretty she looked. There'd been no apology then.

It feels a bit like a breakup, although at least with Thaniel, she didn't feel at all conflicted about ending it. What remained after the lawyers' fees were paid was an acute, staggering loneliness. She'd be lying if she said she didn't have second thoughts sometimes-mostly when she's still awake at two in the morning, Janet fast asleep on her lungs-if only because some noise might make the quiet more bearable.

"I guess I thought that once they were done being my managers, they might go back to being my parents?" She catches her foot on a stone, takes a moment to right herself. God, it sounds idiotic when she says it out loud. The two things have been twisted together for too long-they probably don't even remember how to be parents. "What I'm learning is that I was extremely wrong about a lot of things."

"You're healing," Betty says. "Of course it's going to be a process."

Against her thigh, Ramona's phone buzzes. She usually turns it off during her sessions, but there's one particular email she's been waiting on. An email completely disconnected from her past life.

As she taps the notification, she tries and fails to bite back a smile.

"I'm in," she says on a giddy exhale, eyes scanning the screen again to make sure she's reading it correctly. And yes, she is. "All the paperwork went through. I'm officially a UCLA Bruin."

"What, were they waiting for your SAT scores?" Ramona gives her a nudge, but Betty squeals and lassos her for a hug. "My little college student! I'm so happy for you-why do I feel like a proud mom all of a sudden?"

Over the past six months, she's spent hours talking this through with Betty. She's always admired how Betty found her passion-she'd spent her whole life training to be a ballerina, but an injury late in high school forced her onto a different path. As she slowly built her strength back up in the gym, she discovered something she loved more than ballet, and decided she wanted to help other people feel powerful in their bodies.

Ramona doesn't have an origin story like that. The question of what now? has pounded away at her brain since before Milwaukee, because at first she didn't have a concrete plan. All she wanted was out, and then once the pressure faded away, maybe she'd have the space to consider it.

So she journaled and meditated and took long lavender-scented baths, until an idea appeared, almost so laughably obvious that she couldn't believe it hadn't come to her right away.

More than anything else, she's always felt she missed out on school. And while obviously she can't go back to high school . . . she could enroll in college.