West Hollywood

West Hollywood is the setting of Vivian’s family home, where Ella finds an unpretentious welcome and a sense of belonging she has not found in her father’s house. The neighborhood’s modest apartment and the creative work filling it make a sharp counterpoint to Beverly Hills’ status-conscious school environment.

Setting and Social Context

Vivian describes herself as an easy target at her expensive private school: she attends on scholarship, while her two fathers work as costume designers. Their earnings cover a two-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, but little more. Her account connects the neighborhood to the family’s economic circumstances and to the class divisions Ella encounters at school.

Ella recognizes a point of kinship in Vivian’s situation, explaining that she grew up with a single mother. Their exchange brings together two forms of social marginality: both girls are outsiders at school, and both are poor. West Hollywood thus enters the story not as a glamorous backdrop but as part of the everyday life and financial reality Vivian shares with Ella.

Vivian’s Home and Family

The next day, after lunch together, Vivian insists that Ella come home with her to do homework. Vivian’s apartment is small, old, cramped, and somewhat untidy; Ella thinks it looks as if a fabric and craft-supply shop has exploded inside. Yet she feels more at home there after three seconds than she expects ever to feel in her father’s house.

The clutter reflects the work of Vivian’s fathers, Stefan and Glen Euling, both costume designers. Ella finds them in the dining room among bright fabrics, sequins, lace, and feathers: one sits at a sewing machine while the other pins a sleeve onto a beautiful dress on a mannequin. Stefan wears a teal feather boa that matches the dress’s sequins. Vivian jokes about the mess and introduces both men as her dads; the family’s warmth and humor make the crowded apartment feel hospitable rather than inhospitable.

Belonging and Contrast

Ella and Vivian have different interests—Vivian is a prima ballerina who loves fashion, while Ella prefers reading and has not gone shopping in more than a year—but they connect with the ease of sisters separated at birth and suddenly reunited. Vivian’s home gives that friendship a tangible setting: Ella is welcomed into a household where creative work fills the rooms and where she is invited to stay for homework rather than left alone with the tensions of her own home.

The contrast is central to West Hollywood’s significance in these scenes. Vivian’s apartment may be cramped and chaotic, but Ella experiences it as more welcoming than her father’s house. Its modest means and handmade costumes stand against the polished wealth and appearance-conscious culture of the school, showing how a home’s feeling of belonging can matter more to Ella than its size or order.