Soleil

Soleil waits until she can hear her mother’s footsteps recede down the hall before she thrusts open her closet doors and pulls out a large cardboard moving box, filled to the brim with envelopes. They’re all different sizes and colors, different levels of worn and torn, with handwriting of all types scratched on the outside. She had sauntered into the garage to take a phone video of Raul’s newest car to share on Instagram—she wasn’t sure if her mother would have approved but she knows that she can share car videos as long as the license plate is obscured. Besides, Merry was so busy, she couldn’t keep up with everything, especially something as ephemeral as her Instagram stories. Soleil figured she could share the videos there, so they’d be available for twenty-four hours before disappearing into the ether, and Merry wouldn’t know.

When Soleil entered the garage, she noticed that someone had carelessly stacked a set of big cardboard boxes in a corner, taken down from the adjoining storage area. Soleil had seen these boxes before—a few of the many items that had been transferred by movers from the Malibu house to this one—but had never actually looked inside them. She pried open a corner of a box and dipped her hand in: paper. Her fingers swam through a disorderly collection of envelopes, all crammed without care into the box. She pulled out a fistful of letters and read the mailing addresses: some to Rosalind McGill, some to Meredith Warner, Yumiko Otsuka, and Cassidy Holmes, and some to just “Gloss” or “GG,” care of Big Disc Records. The post dates on the envelopes were from over a decade ago.

Her heart had soared. Fan mail! Who knew that her mother was so sentimental that she’d keep her fan mail? Maybe these were destined for the trash. Soleil needed to save some for posterity.

A thought struck her immediately after: people loved this sort of thing. Nostalgia. Fan appreciation. Soleil was sure that this would be more interesting to her followers than a fancy car. She’d hauled one of the boxes to her room and stashed it in her closet. She was almost sure her mother wouldn’t mind if she looked through the fan mail, but Merry had also been so touchy about Soleil’s latest Instagram post that maybe it was worth keeping quiet, for now.

It wasn’t Soleil’s fault that she didn’t know who her father was. Didn’t it make the most sense to ask her thousands of followers who she looked like? Have the mob do the detective work for her? “Just another bastard who doesn’t know her dad.” It was the perfect way to gain sympathy—and virality.

Soleil opens her window blinds to let in pretty natural light and carefully does her makeup the way she’s seen the influencers do. By the time she is done, she looks sixteen and her cheekbones pop. She changes into a cute cropped shirt with glitter rainbows on it before she decides that she looks too young and switches to a black V-neck. Then she studies herself in her phone’s camera, making sure her look translates well to selfie.

Going live on Instagram, she starts with a big smile and a toss of her shiny blond locks. “Hi guys,” she says, in her best imitation-YouTuber voice. “I’m here with a special treat. FAN MAIL!!!” She indicates the box. “In here is NOT fan mail for me, but mail sent to my mom in her Gloss glory days. We’re going to roulette this bitch and open a few live on air. I might make this a weekly segment, what do you think?”

Her interaction count is rising, so she chats a for few more minutes, letting them join in, and sets her phone at an angle on her desk to have both hands free. Then she pulls open a corner of the box and fishes for an envelope somewhere in the middle. “We’ll keep this anonymous, to protect the innocent and maybe not-so-innocent.” She waggles her eyebrows while opening the envelope. It had already been sliced open, so she doesn’t feel bad about going through this one: it is already vetted. “Addressed to my mom,” she announces, “and sent from Georgia.” She unfolds it and begins to read: “Merry Gloss, as talented as you seem to be, you set a terrible example for our children. You should be ashamed of yourself, wearing those slutty clothes . . .” Soleil trails off, pressing her lips together. This woman who wrote to her mom really did not like the stage outfits and was pretty mean to her mother. “Wow, this lady is unhinged,” she says aloud. “She doesn’t like that my mom had a wardrobe malfunction, but it’s not like she could’ve helped it. Let’s see the next one. To Yummy.” She flips the envelope toward the camera, gesturing, but so quickly that it’s illegible to anyone watching. “It’s actually spelled out as Yummy. How gross.” She’d heard about Yumi being called Yummy or Tasty, but in this day and age, even she knows that is unpleasant for any woman. If it is this easy for a fourteen-year-old to grasp, Soleil wonders why this person with neat, adult handwriting was rude enough to address a person this way.

She is glad she reads a line or two before reading it aloud, because this is in no way PG-rated and she feels the color rise in her face. “Ohmigod,” she squeaks, setting it down. “Okay, there were some real weirdos writing to the group, people. Ew ew ew,” and she places the letter down with two fingers gingerly, like it is wet.

“Maybe roulette wasn’t the best choice. I should’ve checked a few beforehand,” she says into the lens. “What do you think?”

More chatter pops up on-screen, none very intelligible. Even though she is young, people call her Mom, they scream #goals, they comment on how pretty she looks. No one really seems to care about the content of the letters, just that she is there and they know she is streaming live. A famous person sharing their time is more valuable than a lot of things to these fans.

“Here’s one to Rose,” she says, finding one with distinctly female handwriting on the envelope. She figures a woman might be harsh to Rose, but it would be safer than the explicit garbage written to Yumi. She rips the envelope a little to get it out and begins, “Rose, I thought to call you but I didn’t think you’d answer. I’m better at writing, anyway. I just wanted . . .” She stops abruptly, her eye skimming to the bottom, and then she checks the envelope for the address. “Oh. I think this is actually a personal letter that got sent to the wrong place.”

The people on the other end of the ether are curious now, urging Soleil to read it to them anyway. Others are cautioning her about opening other people’s mail, which is a federal offense apparently, and to stop. The comments are devolving into people yelling at one another over what Soleil should do. She shrugs her shoulders and stuffs it back into the envelope, setting it next to her. Even she knows that there are some things you don’t share, and an actual, personal letter to another member of Gloss is probably off-limits. If it’d been to her mom, all bets would be off, but she likes Rose—while also knowing about Rose’s temper.

“Never mind,” she says, smiling at the camera. Her over-lined lips stretch thickly and she waggles her head slightly so that her cheekbones catch the light. “That was boring. I’ll take questions about my makeup now.” The comments surge forward again, this time with people berating her for wearing too much, while others tell her how pretty she looks. Her eyes stray once back to the letter on the bed: a letter Cassidy wrote to Rose in 2002.