Something Real (27 page)

“Okay?” he asks, his fingers hesitating on the top button.

Yes Yes Yes.
I nod and his lips come back to mine. His fingers fumble with the buttons on my blouse, but I keep mine in his hair. I don’t know what else to do with them. I can almost hear Mer saying something cringe-inducing like, “Put them on his man parts!” But the thought of trying to undo his belt buckle fills me with more fear than the red carpet on Emmy night. That horribly embarrassing episode of season seven pops into my head—the one where my family was on the
Kaye Gibbons Show
and Kaye Gibbons asked me if I’d heard of the birds and the bees yet. And I’d made that stupid comment that I didn’t like bees because they had big stingers, and everyone had laughed because little Bonnie™ Baker didn’t get the double entendre.

“What’s wrong?”

I blink. “What? Nothing.”

Patrick’s looking down at me, and I can’t believe how MetaReel managed to sneak into the negative space between us. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.” I pull him to me and close my mind off to my family, to the past, to the nothings before this something.

We don’t go far or anything, but it feels good just to have my skin against his. To have his eyes travel down the length of me. I like how his fingertips make shapes against my stomach and how mine clutch at his bare shoulders when I pull him closer. And I like how for a lot of the time, he just holds me and listens while I tell him about last night in whispers and sighs and silence.

SEASON 17, EPISODE 18

(The One with the Autograph)

“Coffee?” Benny asks.

I hold up our two thermoses and make a sad face as we leave the kitchen. “Got it. I miss Starbucks.”

Lexie™ brushes past us on her way out the door. “Why are you guys not going to Starbucks?”

“Um, so we don’t spend the first half of our morning dealing with the Vultures?” I say.

The paparazzi have doubled since the live episode. Now wherever we go, it looks like we’re part of a caravan. Which is why we only go to school, then come right back home. It’s like we’re under house arrest. Movies? Forget about it. Shopping? Strictly online. Dates? Impossible. I don’t think I’ll ever see the Tower District again, which sucks because, A) I love it and it’s where Tessa, Mer, and I used to go almost every weekend, and B) I wanted to do that girlfriend thing where you go visit your boyfriend at work and bring him treats whilst looking cute. This is shaping up to be the worst senior year in the history of senior years.

“Girls!” Mom calls from the living room. “Don’t forget to come home right after school. We have our mani-pedis, remember?”

How could I forget? Mom decided that all the girls in the house were in dire need of some R and R. I suspect this is the core of this week’s episode, where Beth Baker-Miller tries to reconnect with her daughters after a stressful weekend. I can’t help but feel like anything my family does from here on out is at the suggestion of a producer.

“Okay,” I mumble.

I ignore Puma Guy as he gets in my face, his camera trying to steal a sip of my coffee, and tuck myself into the car. Once Benny and I are on the highway, we commence with our early morning bitch session about MetaReel. The Complaint of the Day: Frosty Fun™ cereal is one of our sponsors, so we had to say good stuff about it every other bite (“Wow, Mom, this Frosty Fun™ cereal is so yummy!”) and do a few retakes of us pouring it into our bowls, and it just sucked because now we’re running late and my stomach is full of soggy, nasty cereal. Also—and this is really shallow, but I don’t care—Lexie™ mentioned the zit on my chin in front of one of the cameras and asked if I wanted to borrow some concealer. I take that as a sign that she’s still holding Dad’s favoritism against me.

Bitch session over, I spend a few minutes looking out the window. There’s something simultaneously comforting and depressing about the abandoned fields. We pass the orchard where I used to go to collect my thoughts. I haven’t been able to go there since we started shooting. Longing for that little corner of the world I could call my own pulses in me—it would have been nice to have a place I could run away to. I hear Lex’s voice on Saturday morning:
Do what you always do when someone wants to talk about something uncomfortable. God forbid you actually have to
deal
with your problems.

“Benny.”

“Hmm?”

“Lex said something that kind of got under my skin.”

“And this strikes you as unusual?”

I frown. “She said I always run away from my problems.” My orchard, after I first saw the cameras. Sprinting upstairs the night of the live taping. Taking the pills. “Is that true? Do I have trouble, you know,
dealing
?”

Benny gives me a sidelong glance, probably trying to figure out if I’m really angsting or just feeling contemplative. He must have guessed the former, because he lets out a long sigh.

“Well,” he says, “I think maybe … yeah. A little.”

I take a sip of coffee, and Benny turns onto the road that leads to school. Trees and vineyards give way to suburbia: chain stores, gas stations, cookie-cutter houses.

“I don’t mean to. I’m not trying to be a drama queen.”

I wonder what the tabloids are saying about me now, after this weekend.

Benny shrugs. “We all run away from stuff in our own way. I mean, when things get too intense, I know I can always see Matt or at least call him.”

“Cantaloupe,” I say. He smiles.

My voice grows soft. “But this weekend, when Dad came … why did you stay in the dining room?”

Benny steers with one hand while he takes a long drink from his thermos. “I honestly couldn’t tell you. Maybe I’m a yes-man. They told me to be there, so I was there.”

I shake my head. “No. You’re pragmatic, maybe. But not a robot.”

“Whatever you want to call it.” He shrugs. “I guess I figure we’ve got six more months until graduation. After that, I’m out.”

“I can’t even imagine being free of it all,” I say. What would life be like without my family, without this albatross around my neck?

“I can,” Benny says, his voice quiet.

We’re pulling into the parking lot, and on instinct, I keep my head down as the Vultures surge toward us. How much are our pictures worth? One Vulture jumps in front of the car for a good shot, and Benny lays on the horn as he slams on the brakes.

“Idiot! Move the hell away!” he shouts.

The Vulture smiles and snaps an angry Benny and surprised Bonnie™ photo. I can see the caption now:
Inseparable brother and sister team Benton™ and Bonnie™ Baker caught mid-fight on their way to school. Sources say the pair have been growing apart ever since their father’s Thanksgiving visit.

That’s what it would be. Some big, stupid lie because they can’t have the caption say we were yelling at a Vulture for almost making Benny guilty of vehicular manslaughter. When we drive onto the black asphalt of the student parking lot, I immediately relax. Thank God for the principal’s strict policies about who can and cannot be on school property.

Benny pulls into our usual spot next to Jason Calloway’s massive truck and turns off the ignition.

“What were we talking about?” he asks.

“Me. Running away.”

He nods. “Yeah. So…”

I get to the thing that’s stressing me out, maybe even more than the show itself.

“So if I run away so much, then why am I the only one of us who doesn’t know what to do after graduation?” I ask. “You’d think I’d have some grand escape plan, but I don’t. Lex is going to Hollywood, you’ve sent in your college applications—”

“
Chloe
. You told me you already mailed the UC applications.” Benny stares at me, and I get a hint of what he’ll look like when he’s a father someday. “The deadline—”

“I know. I know.” I hold up my hand to keep him from saying more. “My boyfriend’s applying early decision to Columbia, and you’ll be at USC or wherever, and I’m going to be stuck here forever, running and not going anywhere.” My voice gets rubber-band tight, straining against the lump that’s growing in my throat. I close my eyes and swallow until I don’t feel like I’m being strangled by my own anxiety.

Benny puts a hand on my knee. “Hey. It’s okay. We’ll figure something out.”

“I don’t know, Bens. I’m—” I don’t finish the sentence, but I’m scared he knows what I almost let slip:
I’m losing it. Again.
I open the door and step out of the car.

“Chlo—” I can hear the concern in his voice, the unspoken plea:
Please don’t take the pills again.

“I’m fine, Benny.”

Even if he’s right, even if I
am
freaking out, I resent that everyone jumps to the conclusion that I’m going to raid Mom’s medicine cabinet the second life gets overwhelming. Can’t I be allowed to have bad days, really bad days, without them assuming I’m suicidal? And people wonder why I don’t like to talk about my feelings.

I slam the car door and head to class, hoping equations and historical dates will be enough to distract me for a few hours.

*   *   *

“Bonnie™?”

A little girl, maybe ten or eleven, comes up to me as we exit the nail salon. She clutches a piece of paper and a pen in her hands. “Can I have your autograph?”

Her voice cracks on the last word, and her face is fire-truck red—the same color, I’d bet, as mine. For a second, I just look at her, confused. The Vultures press close, and the snap of their cameras makes it hard to focus on anything.

“Oh, that is so
sweet
,” says Mom. She gives me a look and nods toward the paper.

“Um, sure,” I mumble. I take the pen and awkwardly sign my name. My signature looks scratchy, quite possibly the lamest autograph ever. I feel like a total poseur.

The little girl grins. “Thanks!”

She skips away, waving the paper at a middle-aged woman waiting beside a minivan. They smile at me, and I try to smile back, the cameras catching it all.

“Why’d she want
your
autograph?” Lexie™ asks.

I shrug and duck into our big black van with the tinted windows. This used to happen all the time, when we did meet-and-greet events, but it’s so different now, being older and aware of what’s going on.

Mom ignores Lex as she puts the key in the ignition. “It’s a good reminder, isn’t it?”

I cock my head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“That you’re a role model.” She gives me a meaningful glance in the rearview mirror. “Don’t forget that.”

I look back at the little girl as she jumps into her own van. Why, out of all of us, had she chosen to ask
me
? I take a few shallow breaths to ward off another panic attack. My chest feels like it’s in a vise.

At home, I go straight to my room and call Tessa on my prepaid Patrick phone. I know she’s probably still in the newspaper room working on Friday’s issue, but I need
real
girl time, not Reel-sanctioned girl time.

“Hello?” I can hear the boisterous noise of the newspaper staff in the background and for a second I just want to scream, I’m so freaking jealous.

“It’s me.”

“Chloe?”

I’d forgotten she wouldn’t recognize this number. “This is my non–MetaReel-bugged cell.”

“Hey! I forgot about the sugar daddy phone. I’m gonna program it in like that: Chloe’s Sugar Daddy Phone.”

I laugh. “Patrick might prefer
Mopey Emo Dude
over
Sugar Daddy
.”

“Too bad,” she says. “He is now Sugar Daddy. So what’s up?”

“Can it be Friday already?”

A rom-com night at Mer’s was in the works, if I could successfully dodge the Vultures. Otherwise, they’d be camped in front of
her
house, too, and I wasn’t okay with that.

“I
know
,” Tess says. “It feels like the longest week ever, and it’s only Monday. I’m still all sluggish from Thanksgiving. My mom made an obscene amount of Korean food, and my parents just got a Wii so they made me and my sister spend, like, the whole weekend virtual bowling—which is so weird, by the way. And then we—” She stops abruptly. “Sorry. That was just my insensitivity gene acting up.”

She had watched the show, but we hadn’t had much of a chance to talk about any of it yet because she’d spent lunch working on the newspaper.

“No! Don’t apologize for being normal. Besides, my weekend wasn’t all bad.” Even I can hear the bliss in my voice.

“I sense a Sheldon story on the horizon.”

I tell her about the weekend, and she
oohs
and
aahs
and does all the things that Benny would do if he were a little gayer.