Spoiled (18 page)

“Teddy would kill you if he heard you call him that,” Max said.

“Theodore can’t hear anything over that guitar,” Mr. McCormack said. “Molly, I hope you like veal parmigiana. We have plenty.”

“Ew. You can have mine,” Max said. “Veal is disgusting. Dad, weren’t you looking for something?”

Mr. McCormack clapped his head to his head. “Yes! The iron. I am never going to get this thing to work without it.”

“Dad’s an inventor,” Max explained.

“I’m going to revolutionize the alarm clock,” Mr. McCormack announced.

“Just don’t test this one on me,” Max grunted. “I still have a bruise from that thing with the lacrosse stick.”

Mr. McCormack stared at the weed whacker. “Dinner’s in an hour, girls,” he said, and wandered off through the calf-length
grass.

“That means anytime between half an hour and five hours,” Max explained as they stepped onto the cluttered porch. “He loses
track of time when he’s working.”

“My mom did that,” Molly said. “We once had dinner at midnight because she didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought on
a prom dress.”

“So you get it,” Max said, opening the front door and shuffling through the foyer, down a hallway lined entirely with bookshelves,
and into her bedroom at the back of the house.

Max’s room, like the lawn, was a complete disaster. The floor was covered with library books, magazines, a tangle of indistinguishably
clean and dirty clothes, and several newspaper pages folded to the crosswords—half-finished, and done in pen. There was one
black Doc Marten sitting on top of Max’s dresser, and the cactus on the bedside table was dead.

“I didn’t know you could kill those things,” Molly said, moving aside a pile of bras to sit in the overstuffed corduroy armchair
across from Max’s bed.

“I can kill anything,” Max said, plonking down in the middle of her unmade bed. “So what did my mom want with you this afternoon?
She was on a rampage this week. She called me into her office
four times.
I’m already on track to beat my record.”

“What’s your record?” Molly asked, grabbing a crossword and fanning herself.

Max leapt off her bed and flipped a switch on the rickety
window air-conditioning unit. It shuddered on with a wheeze. “If you think it’s hot now, try sleeping in here during a real
heat wave. Every summer my parents decide to get central air, and then every summer they find out it’s, like, twenty thousand
dollars. Teddy once slept in the backyard.”

Max flopped back down on the bed, her bandanna slipping two inches down her forehead. She shoved it up impatiently. “What
were we talking about?” she wondered.

“Your record,” Molly prompted.

“Oh, right!” Max crowed. “Okay, so one week last year, I got called to my mom’s office
nine times
! It was epic.”

“How did you pull that off?”

Max looked pleased with herself. “I was helping Teddy’s class boycott their fetal-pig dissection unit in biology. And that
was also the week they decided they could do unannounced locker checks, which is a
total
violation of our civil rights. So I chained myself to my locker in protest. And then I ditched geometry.
Six weeks
of detention. What’d you get?”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Prison,” she said. “I have to work on the play with Brooke.”

“
Ew.
Why?”

“This is all part of Brick’s big master plan to turn us into best friends. He’s also making us share a room.”

Max looked horrified. “He’s making you sleep in the same room as the person who told our gym class that your drinking problem
started because you were born a boy?”

That
was a new one.

“Who was born a boy?” Teddy asked, appearing in Max’s open doorway.

Max gestured at Molly with a lazy thumb.

“No way,” Teddy chuckled. “Turns out Indiana’s just full of secrets.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s not
really
a dude, Teddy.”

“Tell me another one, dummy,” he said, coming in and perching on her windowsill. “I mean, it’s not like her name is
Max
or anything.”

“Don’t you have some T-shirts to shrink?” Max retorted. “Anyway, don’t worry about it, Molly. I don’t think very many people
believed her.”

“Well, just as long as a few of them did.” Molly sighed sarcastically and rubbed her temples.

“Way to go, Max, now you’ve given her a complex,” Teddy said.

“Oh, it’s all right,” Molly said. “That’s not even the worst thing that happened today.”

“Yeah, I heard Magnus talking about the corn husks in the hallway. That guy is such an idiot.”

“No, get this,” Molly said. “After your mom told me I have to do costumes for the play, I went to tell Brooke and she acted
like I wasn’t even there.”

Teddy wrinkled his brow. “The silent treatment? At her age?”

“More like the invisible treatment. People actually asked her to acknowledge me and she pretended she didn’t know
what they were talking about,” Molly said. “Even Shelby Kendall was surprised.”

Teddy and Max exchanged glances.

“What was Shelby doing there?” Teddy asked, patting the pockets of his cargo shorts, looking for something. Eventually, he
emerged with a pack of cinnamon gum. “Want some?”

“That stuff makes my tongue numb,” Max announced.

“I wasn’t offering it to you,” Teddy said mildly. “Indiana?”

“No, thanks,” Molly said. “Shelby caught up with me afterward. I guess she overheard the whole thing. She gave me her business
card.”

“She
would
have business cards,” Max grunted. “Let me see it.”

Molly dug the card out of the pocket of her jeans. Teddy hopped onto the bed with Max to examine it. Their height difference
was such that he looked like he was folding himself in half just to scoot up next to his sister. But somehow they were still
unmistakably related—same waves in their hair, same crooked smiles, same crinkled noses as they studied Shelby’s card.

“How much do you wanna bet her dad charged her to use the
Hey!
logo?” Teddy said.

“Are you going to call her?” Max asked.

“No,” Molly said. “I mean, right? She’s so weird. She was all, ‘I’ve been watching you,’ like she was about to go through
our trash.”

“Oh, no, I’m sure she would have done that before she talked to you,” Max said.

Molly peered at her and saw she wasn’t kidding.

“I think you should call,” Max added, after a moment.

“No, you don’t,” Teddy said, crinkling his brown eyes with dismay.

“It’s a good idea,” Max protested.

Teddy gave her an incredulous look. “In what universe?”

“Brooke hates Shelby, and Brooke is being mean to Molly,” Max said slowly, as if she were explaining a complicated concept
to a very stupid person. “Therefore, if Molly becomes friendly with Shelby, it will turn Brooke into a crazy person, which
is going to be incredibly satisfying for all of us.”

“Maybe for
you
,” Teddy said. “But Shelby is bad news.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Max said. “Maybe Shelby actually likes Molly. You don’t know.”

“Shelby doesn’t like anyone,” Teddy said. “Unless they can get her something she wants, and usually, that something is a story.”

“Look, you can only take the high road for so long,” Max pointed out. “Unless you’re Gandhi, but I think we can all agree
that he was exceptional.”

“Hello, I’m right here,” Molly said, waving her arms. “Don’t I get a vote?”

“Depends who you’re voting with,” Max grinned.

Teddy raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Me, obviously,” he said, yanking Max’s bandanna down over her eyes.

Molly chuckled and sent up a silent word of thanks that the McCormacks hadn’t joined the faction of the Colby-Randall student
body that was filling her locker with agricultural waste products. Hanging out with them reminded her of all the long afternoons
she used to spend in Charmaine’s room, talking about nothing in particular. It was just easy, comfortable, like the battered
old recliner her grandfather sat in to watch Pacers games and tell the same old story about the time he met Larry Bird. And
now that she was grappling with this unwelcome social problem, Molly appreciated having acquaintances—
friends
, she hoped—who could give unbiased advice.

Max smacked Teddy’s arm—for a whippet of a girl, she seemed awfully strong—and scooted away from him, before turning her attention
back to Molly. “So what’ll it be?” she asked, ripping off her bandanna and throwing it casually at Teddy’s face. “Fight the
Evil Empire, or be all boring and nice?”

Well,
mostly
unbiased.

“I feel like getting in the middle of this Brooke-Shelby feud might be a bad idea,” Molly announced.

“Finally, someone is talking sense,” Teddy said. “Well, other than me.”

“I’m just saying, Brooke won’t stop pushing you until she sees that you can push back,” Max argued. “So, yeah, Shelby Kendall
might be kind of a dillhole, but she’s also a means to an end. Imagine how satisfying it will be when
Brooke chokes on her edamame because you and Shelby are palling around at lunch.”

“Girls,” Teddy muttered.

“What?” Max asked.

“Well, it’s just that if two guys are mad at each other, we brawl and then it’s over. Girls resort to psychological warfare.
It seems exhausting,” he explained.

“Don’t be such a sexist,” Max snapped. “This isn’t like that.”

Teddy rolled his eyes good-naturedly and flicked a tank top off the bed. “Well, what it’s like, then?”

“It’s… okay, it’s kind of like that. But come on. Brooke deserves to get a taste of her own medicine for once,” Max said.
“Don’t you think?”

Teddy tugged on a lock of her hair. “You’re just saying that because she called you Maxi-Pad for, like, two whole years.”

“Well. Maybe a little bit,” Max admitted. She turned to Molly. “Seriously, though, do you want this thing with Brooke to go
on for
years
? Because I feel like it could.”

Molly looked down at the business card in her hand. The idea of living through Brooke’s backstabbing and mind games until
the day she went to college made her skin feel too tight. Besides, for an alleged dillhole, Shelby
had
been friendlier at Colby-Randall than Brooke. Molly took a deep breath and tapped the card against her mouth before smiling
timidly at Teddy and Max.

“No,” she said. “I don’t.”

“
I’M
SO
GLAD YOU CALLED
,” Shelby said, twisting her long black locks into a knot, then putting on a sun hat so large that its family reunions would
include at least one sombrero. “You can’t spend every day cooped up in your room e-mailing your friends at home.
Hey!
’s medical expert claims that too much canned air can cause lung depression.”

Molly filled her lungs with sweet, tangy beach air and exhaled. “Nope, nothing depressed here,” she said, letting her head
roll back luxuriously.

She’d assumed that calling Shelby would lead to a few sociable encounters in the hallway, maybe a shared lunch hour or two—just
enough interaction to make Brooke’s brain explode and trickle out her ear. But Shelby had immediately offered to meet Molly
outside the Bel Air
gates—“I can’t go inside. A
certain
beloved Oscar winner had us blacklisted, like it’s
our
fault he went out to get the newspaper wearing a Speedo and bunny slippers”—and whisk her off to the beach. Molly had been
at odds: On the one hand, Shelby’s reputation preceded her. On the other, she’d never seen the Pacific.

That hand won. Actually, it wasn’t even close. And now, staring at the view, not even the issue of
Hey!
she’d found waiting for her in Shelby’s vintage Mercedes convertible could make her blood pressure spike—even if it
did
contain a blind item implying that Molly stole all Brooke’s designer shoes. El Matador felt like a secret, tucked away in
a far corner of Malibu and reached by two steep wooden staircases and a sharp, dusty hike down to the beach. The swatch of
warm sand was narrow, smooth, postcard-perfect, and framed by rock formations—exactly the kind of scene Molly had imagined
when she decided to leave the Midwest for California. For the first time since her flight had landed at LAX, she felt truly
relaxed. At this rate, she’d be a beach bum in about three days. Maybe she’d learn to surf. Brick would like that; it was,
after all, how the titular hero in
Rad Man
had dispensed most of his rogue justice.

Shelby stretched out facedown on her towel, then reached back and unhooked her bikini top.

“No tan lines.” She winked. “God, isn’t it just fabulous out here? I need this so bad after last week. You would not believe
how amateurish most of the students at CR-One are. Don’t they have any
ambition
?”

A Frisbee landed right at Shelby’s elbow with a soft, sandy puff.

“Sorry,” the dude said, jogging over to it while making no effort to hide his appraisal of Shelby’s bare back. “My aim is
bad.”

“Is it?” Shelby purred, gazing up at him. Molly thought she recognized him from TV, but she couldn’t be sure. Charmaine would
be so annoyed, but Molly didn’t know yet if it was kosher to gawk at the famous people or just let them be. It seemed rude
to stare.

Shelby extracted a Sharpie from her beach bag and scrawled her phone number on the Frisbee before tossing it toward the ocean.
Obligingly, the hunky actor trotted away after it.

“See? I am so good,” Shelby said with a triumphant smile. “If he uses the number,
Hey!
will bust him for pursuing jailbait. Father would be
thrilled
to get someone from
Lust for Life
.”

“I’m sure he thought you were eighteen,” Molly said.

Shelby slid her sunglasses down her nose and cocked an eyebrow at Molly. “Did you get carded in the parking lot, honey? This
is a public beach. I could be
fourteen
for all he knows. Someone in his position should really be a little bit more savvy, don’t you think?” She flicked her shades
back up over her eyes and rested her cheek on the sand. “Besides, it’s a good reporter’s duty to hold people accountable for
their flaws. For their own benefit
and
the community’s.”