The Jabberwock

By: Yelitza Leon del Carmen, ’26

Just a few more steps. A few more steps and I’m home. I smile, though I’m not sure who I’m smiling for. Through the blinding lights, I can’t make out a single face in front of me. I can’t see anyone, but I can hear their shouts and demands.

“Over here!” 

“What is it like being the most wanted woman in America?” 

“How was the premiere for your new movie?”

“What happened between you and co-star and lover Max Baldwin? Was it just for the money?” 

These people don’t care about me. They don’t care for my privacy. The sound of their cameras flashing and their invasive questions pierce me like needles. I just want to go home.

I didn’t want to go to the movie premiere. Every bone in my body wanted to stay in bed this morning. The jet lag from my redeye had begun to hit me and my mind hadn’t caught up with my body. My mind was stuck in Arizona, with my mother and sister who I hadn’t seen in months. 

I looked to my right to see the only person I recognized in the growing crowd. He looked down at me, holding and squeezing my hand as he moved me through the mass of paparazzi that threatened to swallow me whole. His eyes shifted as one of the photographers pushed his way through the dozens of the others, forcing a microphone into my companion’s face and making us stop in our tracks.

“Harrison! Johnny Harrison! Is it true you built Eleanor’s career?” 

His gaze returned to mine, a proud smile spread across his face. “Well…”

 

 When Johnny first found me, acting seemed like an unachievable dream. My hair was still deep brown like my father’s, long like my mother’s. Money was low and I was working every night to put food on my family’s table. My father was growing sicker with each passing day, and my mother was getting older. She wasn’t getting the same cleaning jobs as she used to, with her limbs aching from the same pressing routines. The bus ride to the wealthier part of the city was harder for her and the woman she worked for grew impatient. 

He promised me my family would live comfortably and worry-free. I would be able to pay my father’s medical bills and my mother wouldn’t have to work another day in her life, free to raise my young sister however she pleased. 

“You’re gonna have the life of your dreams,” He whispered to me before my first professional audition. “And I’ll be right here to help you.” When you’re seventeen and bringing in the primary income for your family, this is the best thing someone can tell you. 

He was right. Johnny pushed me to the top of the Hollywood food chain. He changed my name, forced out the hints of my Puerto Rican accent, cut and colored my hair, pushed me into relationships that would lift me higher. By eighteen, I was starring in movies with celebrities I’d only seen through magazines. By twenty, I was named America’s Sweetheart of 1971. I was worth more money than I’d ever known. I became an idol. Johnny created a movie star out of me. I could send money and postcards back home, giving my family the peaceful life they needed, and I was proud. 

Johnny had always been kind to me, even when pushing me into more jobs. He assured me it would all be for the better. He was a friend in a community of foes. When I had no one around me, he was the one to reassure me that I was the brightest star in the room.

I was getting burnt out though. I wasn’t born into this life. I didn’t come from mountains of money and trees of connections in the business. My dream was slowly falling into a nightmare I wasn’t prepared for. The great shining light the public admired me for was fading. I was falling, and I made the mistake of telling my creator his glistening creation was cracking. 

“All of this has been for you! All of it!” My dining table shook as his fist came down upon the brown wood, sending an echo whose volume was only topped by his shouts. He stood across the table from me, a threatening look in his eyes I’d never seen before. “And now you tell me you want out?” The storm thundering outside the house’s four walls was nothing compared to the brewing mess in my own home.

“I miss my family, Johnny,” I whispered. “I’m not who you want me to be anymore. I can’t keep doing this,” I pleaded, feeling my nostrils burn as I held back tears. I still had on my makeup from the party we’d just come back from; the same event that became my last straw. I couldn’t stand to be in rooms filled with the richest and most famous people in the acting world. I was a dandelion in a room of roses who had been painted red to match the crowd. My paint was withering away and I missed who I was before any of it. “I’m done.”

He laughed ruefully. “And go back to what? The few thousand dollars you have back in your crappy town back in the middle of nowhere? That’s not gonna last and you know it.” His voice was lowered, but somehow more terrifying than before, because he was right. Without the life I was living in Hollywood, I would hardly have a life back home. Quitting would mean sending my family back to a state of need that they’d long left behind. “When I found you in that diner, you were a kid with nothing. You came from nothing,” He abandoned his station across the table and slowly made his way to me, his finger pointed and jaw clenched. “You were nothing. I made you something!” He screamed, sending alarm signals throughout my entire body. I was defenseless. He had all the power; he always did. 

“I’m tired, Johnny. I’m so tired.” My voice was weak, tears streaming down my cheeks.

He stood closer to me now, suddenly silent. The only sounds in the room were my sobs and shaking breaths. I looked at him and saw nothing. Everything I was sure of at eighteen became uncertain at that moment. 

I didn’t walk into that diner in rural Arizona with any intentions in mind other than getting a damn good burger. My money was running low. There was no new talent in Los Angeles for me anymore. Everyone was established. I didn’t have any more options. Everything seemed hopeless. 

Until she walked out. Her name tag read ESTRELLA in large messy letters. Her long curly hair was parted to show her beautiful face and shining smile. Her uniform and shoes didn’t fit her right, as though they were hand-me-downs from a much larger worker. 

“Hi! How can I help you?” Her accent seeped through her cheerful words, forcing a smile onto my face despite my stressful predicament. All the troubles I had when I walked into the diner seemed miles away. Every part about this girl called for my attention. That was an effect you couldn’t find just anywhere. At that moment, I knew she was gonna be my star. 

One business card, hundreds of plane flights and five years later, she stands in front of me in one of the finest mansions money can buy. The same hazel eyes that pulled me in all that time ago were hazed in tears. 

I created Eleanor out of nothing. How could she not see that? How could she be so ungrateful? I saved both of us from being stuck and poor, and now she wanted to leave? I can’t go back to scavenging the streets of every damn state in America for some blonde bimbo who could fake a laugh. Eleanor was all I had. I was all she had. We needed each other, couldn’t she see that?

I basked in the light she gave off. She was America’s favorite young actress, and it was all because of me. I introduced her to the right people, sent her on the right dates, and booked her the right auditions. I’d spent every moment of the last five years perfecting every part of her, and I was watching it threaten to fall apart. 

Giving up her fame would mean my world crumbling around me. The money, the parties, the life I would be losing. When I met her, I was almost completely out of money. I was looking for a miracle and I found her, and I wasn’t gonna let that go. Not now, not ever. 

All I could do was stare. I didn’t know who was standing in front of me at that moment, whether it was bubbly and blonde Eleanor who could have anything she wanted from any man in America with nothing but a smile, or a worthless waitress I could’ve left back in Arizona. 

“Wash your face and go to bed.” His command was calm but affirmative. “Don’t let this happen again. You have an interview tomorrow at noon. Be ready.”

I entered the confrontation with my mind made up, that I was finished with acting and leaving this life behind me. Dropping the name given to me, and returning to the name I was born with. I entered that argument ready to become Estrella again. But as Johnny walked out of my house, it was clear Eleanor was all I could be.

Since that night, I never asked to stop working again. I knew what my future was set to be and so did he; of course he did, he’s the one who created it. I understood the world I was put into better now. This wasn’t the fantasy I’d been promised. It wasn’t the deal I’d agreed to. I was cheated. My humanity was something of the past. 

“Well…” Johnny’s proud smile felt taunting. The reporter’s question only furthered the point he made that night months ago, the night that tore the last bits of humanity this job had left me with. “I think that would be pretty bad for me to answer myself wouldn’t it?” He chuckled, the crowd around us laughing along as more cameras flashed, the paparazzi thanking God someone had gotten us to stop trying to escape. 

His response was a mockery only I understood. We both knew he had no issue answering the man; he wanted me to admit it to the world. “Ellie? What would you say?” 

Silence surrounded me as everyone eagerly waited for me to answer. The microphone was held up to my lips. I looked up at Johnny, feeling my heart ache as I cleared my throat.

I surrender. 

“Yes,” I smiled harder than I ever had. He won. The game we played was carefully crafted so he would always win. I would always lose to him. “I would be nothing without Johnny. I would be no one.”