Spoiled (20 page)

Molly glanced down at her feet. She had, in fact, dug these out of the back of Brooke’s closet, from underneath a pair of
jellies and a tattered set of bunny slippers. She’d been sick of all the disdainful glances her Converse got from these people,
and judging from the layer of dust she blew off them, she’d assumed Brooke wouldn’t even remember she owned the wedges in
the first place.

“Molly, my closet is not Saks,” Brooke announced to Molly, but at the masses. “You can’t just take stuff and figure you’ll
settle the tab some other time.”

“That’s not really how Saks is supposed to work, either,” Max pointed out.

“If this bothered you so much, why didn’t you say something at—” Molly stopped herself as she processed the engrossed crowd
of students clustered around them. “Oh, right. Of course.”

“Take them off,” Brooke demanded. “I wanted to wear them today.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. The wedges were black and maroon; Brooke was wearing a pastel Pucci print dress.

“No,” she said.

Several people gasped.

Brooke crossed her arms defiantly and took a step closer to Molly.

“Take. Them. Off,” Brooke repeated.

Neil Westerberg clutched at Max, who looked too surprised to do anything. “This is better than TV,” he whispered.

“You know what, fine. It’s not worth it,” Molly said, kicking off the wedges. “Plus I’d
love
to see these with that outfit.”

Jennifer wrinkled her nose at Molly. “So you’re going to go to class barefoot? Like you’re homeless?”

“Molly, darling,” a voice called out. Heads turned as Shelby Kendall squeezed through the crowd, shouldering a quilted Chanel
bag over her leather bomber jacket.

“Out of my way, Bert,” she snapped at a wiry, bespectacled kid Molly recognized from the play. “FYI, I know what your brother
did at Spago last night. Wonder how the producers of his pilot are going to feel about it.”

Horrified, Bert backed away as Shelby finally reached Molly.

“Sweetie, you left your flip-flops in my car on Saturday,” she said. “I meant to bring them over yesterday, but you know how
it is—I was prepping for this morning’s broadcast all day.”

Molly bent down to scoop up the wedges. “Thanks, Shelby,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too relieved. “Let’s go get them.”

Shelby looped her arm through Molly’s and dragged her past Brooke. Molly stopped to hand over the wedges, then let them slip
out of her fingers. The shoes dropped squarely onto Brooke’s sandal-clad foot.

“Oops, sorry,” Molly said. “It’s probably the shakes. I haven’t had a drink in two whole hours.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd. She and Shelby strolled toward the parking lot as bodies parted around them. It was different
from the last time this happened to Molly, at that disastrous party, when people gawked and backed away out of disgust. This
felt more like respect.

“Thank you,” Molly whispered to Shelby through her smile.

Shelby stopped, and they turned to see Brooke, wincing furiously and sputtering at Jennifer to pick up the wedges for her.

“You’re absolutely welcome,” Shelby said. “Anything for a friend.”

Molly’s entire Colby-Randall experience changed flavor after that. The people in Shelby’s social circle offered to partner
up with Molly in classes and gave her accurate directions to whatever classroom she still wasn’t quite sure how to find; the
students on Team Brooke still radiated contempt, but in a more nervous way—like the difference between volunteering to box
a punching bag versus an actual person. The people who ran with neither circle, like Max, just seemed grateful to have fresh
gossip.

“It’s like when
Lust for Life
got a new head writer,” Max said between classes on Thursday, as about five different
strangers called out greetings to Molly. “For years it was all brain tumors and boring love triangles, but as soon as the
new guy showed up, sewage lines exploded during weddings and a princess got pregnant with twins who had different fathers.”

“Am I the sewage line in this metaphor?” Molly asked with a grin.

“Actually, you might be the sewage,” Max cracked. “Seriously, though, you know what I mean. Yesterday, Mavis Moore was telling
me that ever since you got here…” her voice trailed off.

Molly followed Max’s eye line across the hallway, where Jake Donovan was standing in front of his locker, in the middle of
changing out of his polo and into a T-shirt.

“Yes?” she prompted.

“Huh?” Max said, turning back to her only after Jake walked away.

“So how long have you had a crush on him?”

“Spending all this time with Shelby has got you thinking like a reporter,” Max said lightly. “But I’m afraid I have no idea
what you’re talking about.”

Shelby had all but adopted Molly since Monday’s wedge-sandal showdown, taking special care at lunch to make room for her—and,
reluctantly, Max, whom Molly refused to ditch. She’d even shown Molly the second-floor girls’ lounge, an out-of-the-way unrenovated
corner of the school that the upperclassmen had appropriated years earlier and turned into a teacher-approved hangout space
for whenever it was too hot or too rainy to dash off campus to Café Munch.

Molly headed there now, having promised to help Shelby with their algebra homework during their shared free period. Last week,
even if she’d known about it, Molly never would have had the nerve to hang out in the lounge, but being friendly with Shelby—like
her black Amex—had its privileges, one of them being increased social ballsiness.

She pushed open the door and scanned the room. In the mansion’s heyday it had been a dressing area with a massive en suite
bathroom, gilded crown molding, and padded brocade wallpaper. But the toilet had long ago been converted into a planter for
geraniums, and the entire area was teeming with antique chairs, couches, and other furnishings that had been evacuated from
various Colby-Randall rooms, deemed too chipped, torn, or timeworn to sell, yet too pricey to restore. Today, the rain dribbling
down the thick glass windows made the room feel extra cozy, as did the fact that it was crammed with students chewing on pen
tips as they frantically tried to finish last night’s homework. Or, in the case of Brooke—whom Molly noticed sitting on a
peeling velvet chair left of the makeup mirrors—nose-deep in Lauren Conrad’s latest novel.

“Over here!” Shelby chirped.

Molly spied her at the center of the old sunken marble bathtub (closer in size to a shallow swimming pool, really), which
had been stuffed with silk pillows. As she made her way over, Shelby elbowed the girl to her right, who was
short and a bit squat, with a thick white-blond ponytail nearly the circumference of the silver-dollar pancakes Miltie used
to make on NFL Sundays.

“Make room, Spalding,” Shelby said. “Besides, sweetie, you really should go jog the stairs a few times if you have any hope
of making the tennis team.”

Spalding glanced down at her legs, then nodded and hightailed it out of the lounge.

“I’m trying to look out for her,” Shelby explained as Molly sat down next to her. “Spalding’s father was a big-time tennis
player, and he’s dying for her to follow in his footsteps. Alas.” She spread her hands in a “what can you do?” gesture. “Father
reported he only named her that for sponsorship money.”

“He sold naming rights to his
kid
?” Molly gaped. “I guess it’s a good thing he wasn’t a NASCAR driver or she might be named Valvoline.”

Shelby studied her for a second then smiled. “Hilarious,” she said. “You’re so folksy.”

“I don’t know why
Vogue
seriously thinks I’m going to wear booty shorts in public,” a nearby senior snorted, more to the magazine in her hand than
anyone else.

“Dude, this issue of
Hey!
has a whole spread of celebrities in hot pants,” her redheaded friend said. “I actually think these ones are kind of cute.”

“No way. You’re cracked out,” the first girl said, taking the magazine and flipping to the next page. “Oh, my God,” she breathed.

Molly saw both of them look down at the magazine and then up at her. The red-haired one’s mouth hung open slightly.

“What?” Molly said.

“Your picture is in
Hey!
See?” the girl said, pointing at a small photo of Molly. It was one of the ones that had been snapped in front of Nobu. Molly
was pleased and surprised to notice that she didn’t look nearly as bedraggled as she should have: Somehow, the wrinkles on
her T-shirt looked purposeful, her mussed hair came off like artful bedhead, and she seemed relaxed and happy waving at the
cameras, rather than apologetic and awkward. It was a total miracle.

In the reflection of the mirror above the tub, she noticed Brooke start drumming her fingers on her book’s hard cover.

“You look super cute,” the senior girl said. “How’d you get those leg muscles? Kettlebells? Yoga Booty Ballet?”

“Running,” Molly said, still a tad nonplussed.

“Running,” repeated the senior slowly, as if the word was in Urdu. “Right. Retro.”

“How come you didn’t say anything about this?” Molly asked Shelby.

“Oh, I’ve been
far
too busy with my own work to check in with Father,” Shelby said, peering at the magazine over her shoulder. “This must have
been taken after I went inside. Which I prefer, obviously. Being in
Hey!
would taint my objectivity.”

Molly ignored her in favor of reading the blurb:

HAPPY AFTER HEARTACHE: Brick Berlin’s bereaved daughter, Molly, is bouncing back! The baby Berlin, 16, had Hollywood tongues
wagging after she overindulged at a recent party, but Molly looked bright-eyed and breathtaking at Nobu Malibu this weekend
with a friend (not pictured), where spies tell us she smartly passed on the sake. Conspicuously absent? Half sister Brenda
Berlin, with whom Molly does not get along. Is Brick too busy with his new girlfriend to notice? (See
here
for more on
Brick’s rumored romance!)

“Who’s Brenda?” the girl asked. “How many kids does your dad
have
?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Justine, they mean Brooke.” Shelby smirked, taking the magazine out of Molly’s hands. “I’ll have Father
fire that fact-checker, obviously. Unless Brooke just got bumped from the database. That’s possible. So many
real
celebrities to keep track of, you know.”

Molly saw Brooke lower her book and open her mouth. No sound came out. She stuck her book back in front of her face.

Justine shrugged and took back her magazine. “I like that shirt, Molly,” she said pointing at the T-shirt Molly was wearing
in the picture, with the round neck she’d snipped open with nail scissors. “It’s so deconstructed. You should wear it to school
instead of all this preppy junk.”

“Right, thanks,” Molly said, looking down at herself. Since when was a plain black tank top preppy?

“Okay, are you coming, Emily?” Justine asked, climbing out of the tub. “If we want to make it to pole-dancing, we need to
blow off the next two periods.”

One of the other seniors—a willowy Japanese girl—gathered their magazines and followed, but not before stopping to examine
Molly closely.

“You really do look like Brick,” Emily announced. “It’s kind of weird.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Molly saw Brooke’s hands clutch her book cover with white knuckles.

“You know my dad
owns
Nobu, right?” Emily added. “Next time you come in, just tell them we’re friends.”

“Oh, Molly didn’t have any problems getting us a table,” Shelby said. “She’s a natural at name-dropping.”

“No! Well, I didn’t—”

Emily just smirked. “Whatever. Come by sometime and we can hang out.” She banged out the bathroom door, her vintage penny
loafers ringing on the tile floor.

Shelby smiled, catlike. “Emily Matsuhisa is a great contact,” she murmured. “So many celebrities go to her dad’s restaurants.
Get me something juicy from her, and I’ll make sure you get partial unofficial credit.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll—” Molly started. Shelby held out a hand. Molly felt like she hadn’t completely finished a thought
since this free period had started.

“Ugh, that reminds me, I can’t do the math homework
now—I have to interview Jake Donovan about the football team’s silent auction,” Shelby said. She pouted prettily. “I don’t
know when we’ll get to the algebra. Father will be furious if I don’t bring up my grade.”

“Why don’t we do it tonight?” Molly said. “If you can wait an hour after school while I do some costume fittings, we can head
back to Brick’s—um, I mean, my house.”

Shelby brightened. “Perfect!” she trilled. “I only need the help because I’m so busy on my next exposé, about whether children
of celebrities are
more
or
less
likely to be institutionalized if their parents’ movies have exclamation marks in the title.”

“Obviously,” Molly said. “Well, I’m happy to do it.”

“Can’t wait! Love you lots!” And in a flurry of air kisses and jasmine perfume, Shelby was gone.

Brooke had put down her book and was mowing through a minibag of Doritos. Molly glanced over at her own reflection. She’d
gotten a bit of color at the beach that weekend, and Emily was right: She
did
look like Brick.
I bet Brooke doesn’t like that at all. Excuse me, I mean Brenda.