"Excuse you; I'm changing in here."
Britney gave her an odd, over-the-shoulder look, like she was saying something totally
nonsensical about plantains or orangutans, and hung the garment bag on the rod over Willa's
shower. Willa rolled her eyes and hooked her sports bra; maybe years of quick-changes and
shared dressing rooms had rendered the very concept of privacy alien to Britney, but as far as
Willa was concerned, barging into the only bathroom on the tour bus was one thing and barging
through someone else's actual bedroom and into the master bath was different. God, her own
house could be her own, couldn't it?
"I want to show you my dress," Britney was saying, and Willa could hear the zipper on the
garment bag and glimpse ruby red out of the corner of her eye, and she had to turn away. She felt
angry, but it was the kind of anger that tried to compensate for guilt, and Willa knew it. They
should have had this conversation weeks ago, and then there would be no red dress to turn into
some kind of stupid symbol.
"I'm busy right now."
There was a baffled pause, and then Britney said, "You're standing right here. Turn around; it
just takes a second."
"I need to jog. I'm supposed to jog, remember? Management whined." Cardio, they said;
endurance. They can see you sweat in the cheap seats. Somehow, she'd always known that when
she could dance on command, with perfect rhythm and grace, then it wouldn't be enough to
dance. There'd always be some new and torturous skill to master, for example, dancing like it
was easy and she wasn't tired.
"No wonder you hate exercise," Britney said, seizing her by the arm, locking both of hers around
Willa's and leaning her chin on Willa's shoulder. "You jog? Why don't you do something
fun?"
"Such as?" She nudged Britney away, nose to Britney's forehead.
"Basketball is good. You like basketball."
"I live with Lance. Lance hates basketball; he'll only play when Justin is watching " And that
didn't sound right at all, didn't sound even a little bit like she was part of the team effort to
protect Brit from full awareness of her beloved Justin's...habits. "You know how boys make fun
of each other," she added, hoping that made sense, that Britney would buy it as a male-ego thing
instead of a get-Justin-sweaty-and-horny thing.
Britney laughed, and gave Willa a little shove between the shoulders. "Well, today you don't
have to play with Lance. I'll help you out."
"No, you don't "
"Jogging? I so do."
"You're not dressed...." Willa began, and then gave up. Britney's normal wardrobe did look an
awful lot like Willa's idea of gym clothing.
There was a half-court on Willa's back patio; they used to play a lot, when she first bought the
house. Boys against girls, Justin and Nick, Britney and Willa. Lance filled in when she and Nick
were fighting, or sometimes Tony, and sometimes they went three-on-three if they could get
Wade and Chantal to come over. JC watched, very seriously, as though it were an actual game
instead of just a bunch of them horsing around, and Christina just sunbathed, looking like she was
asleep behind those dark glasses, but she always caught the ball when it came careening in her
direction. She generally tried to peg someone with it when she threw it back into play generally
Nick.
They didn't do that much anymore. First she and Nick had broken up for good, and then
everyone went from ridiculously busy to obscenely busy, and Willa didn't even know when she'd
last seen Tony, but it was a while back. Sometimes Lance and Justin went out there, but they
didn't really play, just did some lay-ups and jostled each other around and drank beer and made
each other laugh. Willa could see them from her office window, Justin fucking up Lance's hair,
Lance tripping Justin and pretending he hadn't, the sun setting behind them, and she wished she
understood that relationship. Most of the time it seemed so damn heartless, aggressively so, both
of them taking shelter behind the fact that Justin was unavailable for commitment and Lance
unwilling to commit. And then she'd catch them like that, like they'd forgotten not to be friends,
and it made Willa...something. Jealous, maybe. She had people she'd fucked, and people who
were easy to be around, but they were never the same people.
It wasn't evening now; it was the height of morning, not hot but hellishly bright, and Willa
considered sunscreen. But Britney had the ball in her hands, and she looked like she didn't intend
to wait or to lose. Willa tied her ponytail into a knot at the back of her head and refused to give
in to the psych-out, to be the one who pussied around over skin-care.
Britney's game was mostly a defensive one, and in no small part about the psych-out, too.
Accustomed to being the shortest person on the court, Britney stayed right in your space, so that
you could always move sort of in the direction you wanted to, but not quite. It was frustrating
as hell, and a little frightening; you always felt as though you were just on the verge of slamming
into her, of getting hurt. It used to drive Nick crazy; she would cover him tight, anticipate
everything he did, and he'd end up red-faced, yelling, "Fucking bitch! Get out of my way!"
Nobody but Willa ever seemed to think he might be seriously angry, but then only Willa had to
put up with his sulking afterward.
It had been a long, long time since just the two of them had played, a long time since she'd had
Britney guarding her ruthlessly, and suddenly she sympathized. Fucking bitch was playing in her
head, an ugly, Nick-like voice, but not Nick's. Hers. Britney, cutting her off, hemming her in,
too damn fast, glowing in the sun. Willa tried to pivot, and her elbow connected with Britney's
breast; Britney hissed and she froze for the thinnest, shaved second, concerned. Britney's fist
darted out, struck the ball, bounced it into her own space and pushed past Willa to score.
"I don't want you at my premiere!" Willa yelled, and Britney stopped moving. The ball came to
her anyway, like a faithful pet, and she scooped it up on the rebound without really looking at it.
She tucked the ball under one arm, a lock of hair behind one ear. She shook her head; no, I
don't get it. What?
"I don't want you to go," Willa said again. She didn't yell this time; she'd waited too long for
this, but that didn't make it too late to be an adult. "I'm sorry you got a new dress and
everything."
"Not go? But...it's huge. It's your movie, Willa. I want to support "
"I know you do, but you won't. You won't support me. You'll try, but all you'll do is...be in the
way."
Britney fired the ball back at her, and Willa caught it. "I'm in your way."
"Sometimes," she said, her voice low. "Not on purpose. But that's how it is."
"You're jealous," she said, with something like horror in her voice, something appalled. "You
think I'll...."
"You will. Look, this is mine, Brit. I worked hard for this. I'm nervous enough as it is, and
I don't need to get ignored at my own "
"Ignored? You're the producer, you're the star! They can't ignore "
"They can and they will, if they can get you on camera instead. Jesus Christ, Britney, don't you
get it? Nobody is the star when you're around. Nobody but Britney Spears."
It was intended to be the truth. It was the truth. But Britney touched the backs of her fingers
to her cheek gingerly, as if testing a piece of stinging skin, and it did almost seem like Willa could
see the handprint. "Don't put that on me," Britney said, halfway between angry and begging. "I
never wanted it to be that way. I've tried so hard to make everybody see that it's all three of
us. The shows wouldn't be what they are without Christina. The songs wouldn't be what they
are without you. I never wanted...."
"I know." Pointless to repeat it, to force it down anyone's throat that whatever they'd wanted,
here things stood. Britney had an absolute and undisputed genius for being where the action was,
for being the action. She burned energy without effort, cleanly and endlessly, solar-powered in
a fossil-fuel world. At work or at what passed for rest, Britney simply wasn't capable of drinking
a beer and scuffling around the patio. She played. And she usually won.
"I try really hard," Britney said again, and her voice shook; she sounded strikingly like Jamie
Lynne. "I never wanted anything to change. I'm just me, you know? I never wanted to act like I
was...something real special."
"You are, Brit."
"No, I'm just me. It's just me. Your baby sister, you know? I just want to go with you and
tell you how great you did. Please, Willa, I'm not going so I can show off. I'll take the damn
dress back if you want. I don't we shouldn't split up. Not now."
She didn't look like a diva now, in her pink halter top and navy-blue track pants, her nails painted
mauve and boring gold studs in her ears. Her trembling, little-girl voice and her stricken eyes.
She looked like the youngest of them, the one they used to spoil and pick on, the one they used to
embarrass by prank-calling her crushes while they were on the road, the one who got Twinkies at
every stop for gas, the one who slept with an old t-shirt folded under the pillow of her bunk, a gift
when she was eleven and the first one ever printed up the Britney Spears Fan Club, back when the
club's only members had all lived in Louisiana.
"Britney. If you're really behind me...just do this for me. Just let me have one night."
"My mother said from the start," Britney said, and now suddenly her voice was jarringly cold,
"that it would be there egos, and it wouldn't work. She didn't want me to.... But I told her
it wasn't like that. I told her we could do it without playing against each other."
It was naive and sweet. Exactly the thing Britney had surely believed when she was fourteen.
Even more amazing, she obviously still believed it. "You were wrong, Brit. This time I need to
be the center of attention. That's just how it has to be."
"I'm not going to compete with you, Willa! I'm not going to let it end up that way!"
"It's not your decision! It's mine, okay? It's my fucking premiere, and I have to win. I love
you, Britney, but I have to be more important than you. If just for this one night."
"It's never like this with the boys." She jerked the scrunchy out of her hair, shook it down to
hide her flushed face. "They don't pull this on each other."
"They do, too. Every guy we know understands that Justin could buy and sell them, and that no
matter what they do or how well they do it, he'll always be more famous and have more shit than
them." Why do you think they're all so obsessed with him? she wanted to ask, but of course,
that was forbidden ground. She wasn't thrilled with Britney at this very moment, but protecting
her was still the prime directive, Willa's first language. It was still Britney.
But she couldn't stop thinking about that, when she was alone on the court, dribbling the ball.
About Justin and Lance, their laughs mingling like gold and oak, standing in casual contact
through the deepening twilight. About how Nick could always be eight Billboard slots and six
million album sales behind Justin and still stand over the grill with him, bickering dispassionately,
even amiably, about how much lighter fluid was too much. About JC, who had a voice and a
mind that would never really have needed to take a backseat to anyone's, except that his life had
carried him in a particular direction and he hadn't performed in years; the pleasure JC took in
Justin's triumphs might not have been unmixed, but it was absolutely real, too real ever to bother
doubting. I like to see a Mouseketeer make good, JC liked to say about Justin, about Britney
and Christina, about Tony.
So maybe it was her, after all. Willa took a free-throw, and made it. The entire audience, she
thought darkly, was in the palm of her hand today.