Epilogue
Levi
I leaned back in my chair late that night, the lamp on my desk illuminating an island in the dark of my apartment.
I’d eked out the article on my laptop just before deadline, a culture piece for Vagabond magazine, where I was a staff writer. But that wasn’t what was on my screen.
When I opened my email to send it to my editor, I found a memo to the writers for Monday—a prompt, really.
The Bright Young Things.
The group of socialites and artists that the media had been hounding for months—Vagabond included—was the subject on everyone’s lips. And the editor in chief wanted us to take it a step further. How could we go bigger? How could we dig into the group in a way no one else had?
The easy answer was infiltration. But that wasn’t my area of interest. As print circulation declined across all media, we found ourselves needing to reinvent, to expand out of culture and into nation and worldwide news, which was where I wanted to be. I covered music and culture like all of us did. I’d been begging for a war correspondency for what felt like my entire employment, though I settled for local exposés, spending time undercover, giving a voice to victims of abuse, underage prostitution rings, homeless youths.
But we’d been tasked with brainstorming ways to crack open the Bright Young Things. So I opened up my browser, curious as to what I’d find.
The first search turned up a dozen pages of gossip columns. Recounts of parties, speculation about the members, who was dating whom, who said what, squabbles, that sort of thing. But the news slider up top held a long string of articles, accusing the disparaging youth of being all that was wrong with America. They reported the police commissioner’s seeming vendetta against them, the raids and an inflated sense of what they’d uncovered, which was largely nothing. And everyone wanted to know who Cecelia Beaton really was.
But what really caught my attention was the image search. I opened the page of photos, and the parties stretched down the page in a parade of glittering glamour.
Most of the images led to Instagram, so I moved there, searching the group’s hashtag. It was brilliant and opulent, a display of wealth and excess I found myself deeply averse to. But on closer inspection, there was another layer, one beneath the allure.
It was joy.
As I scrolled through row after row of photos and videos, one caught my eye, stopped me..
It was a hard flash shot of Stella Spencer at the White Party, the kickoff of the Bright Young Things that had grown into a momentous force. But it wasn’t the setting that struck me, nor was it her beauty. It was something about her smile, something in the unbridled pleasure behind her eyes, which were turned to someone out of frame.
She was radiant in her delight, a freedom so pronounced, so transparent, it momentarily stunned me.
I didn’t know that I’d ever felt so free. In a deep, silent part of my heart, I craved the feeling.
I scoffed aloud, snapping my computer closed with a hard roll of my eyes.
Go to bed, Levi, and quit pretending you’re sentimental.
With a long stretch and a hefty yawn, I took my own advice.
But the fleeting vision of Stella Spencer followed me all the way into sleep.
And I didn’t mind one little bit.