Spoiled (21 page)

Stifling a giggle, Molly turned, grabbed her backpack, and plowed out of the lounge.

“Nice,” Teddy McCormack said as she smacked into him and knocked him back a few steps.

Molly clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asked, retrieving the knap
sack that had dropped off his arm. “I thought all the girls in school planned their days around bumping into me after band
practice.”

“You’re in band?” Molly asked.

“I’m in
a
band,” he corrected. “And we’re terrible, but between you and me, that’s mostly Bone’s fault. Every song he writes has a
parenthetical in the title.”

“You’re in a band with a guy named
Bone
,” Molly said as they eased into a companionable walk toward the stairs, “but your mom won’t let Max pierce her nose?”

Teddy grinned. “I made her promise I could do it if we came up with a name she liked. She bet me twenty bucks that wouldn’t
happen.”

He pointed to his T-shirt. “Mental Hygienist,” he said smugly. “Mom left the money tucked into my guitar fret.”

“Nicely done,” Molly laughed. She didn’t know what it was about Teddy, but somehow, he made her feel like whatever conversation
they’d been having, they’d been having for years.

“Yep. I’m a rich rock star,” he said. “Are you
sure
you didn’t mean to bump into me?”

“I was totally spacing out,” Molly said. “This girl Emily just told me I look like Brick, and I swear, Brooke almost choked
on her rage.”

Teddy’s face darkened a bit. “I was hoping your good mood meant all that crap was running its course.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “It’s not a head cold, Teddy,” she
said. “I doubt it’s going to be that easy. Frankly, I’ll just be happy if Brooke stops telling everyone I’m on the waiting
list for a liver transplant.”

He let out a blast of laughter. “Damn, you’re so demanding.”

“I know, right?” Molly said. “Too bad Brooke is completely unreasonable. She cut off one of Shelby’s pigtails during an earth
sciences lab freshman year, for no reason.”

“I don’t think that happened,” Teddy furrowed his brow. “Max would have told me.”

“Shelby said she got extensions, like, immediately afterward, so maybe Max didn’t know.”

“Maybe,” Ted said doubtfully. “Or maybe Shelby just made it up.”

“Why would she need to?” Molly asked. “I’m the last person she needs to convince that Brooke is crazy.”

“Okay, let me preface this by saying that I swear I’m not trying to be an ass,” Teddy said, throwing up a hand. “But Shelby
is bad news. If you’re not going to stay away from her, then you at least need to be really careful.”

“I think you’re exaggerating,” Molly said. “She’s been very supportive. And it’s driving Brooke
out of her mind
. She told me once she’d rather wear a jumpsuit than eat processed snack foods in public, but she just inhaled a bag of Doritos.”

Teddy ran a hand through his hair and pursed his lips. “Congrats?” he offered.

“It’s not like
that
,” Molly insisted. “But don’t you think she deserves it? A little bit?”

“She definitely screwed up big with you.” Teddy nodded. “But I’ve known Shelby a long time, and she is her father’s daughter,
through and through. She always has an ulterior motive.”

They headed down the stairs to the main hallway. The rain pounding on the domed glass ceiling was so loud, Molly had to raise
her voice to say, “I can look out for myself, you know. I didn’t get a head injury when I fell off the turnip truck.”

Teddy didn’t even crack a smile. “That’s not what I was saying,” he argued, stopping on the steps. “But I’ve seen years of
back-and-forth drama between those two. If nothing else, it seems like a waste of energy to get in the middle of it. Isn’t
there other stuff you’d rather be doing?”

Molly felt a flash of anger. “Maybe this is
exactly
what I want to be doing,” she snapped. “If I’m finally having fun and feeling better about myself—or at least not rotten
about myself—who are you to judge?”

She stormed off to her locker to try to collect herself. She heard footsteps approaching quickly on her heels, and then Teddy
grabbed her arm.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s not my business,” he said as his hand fell to his side. “You’re a cool girl, is all, and I
don’t want you to end up hurt.”

Molly jerked open her locker. “And I do appreciate that,”
she said, softening a little. “You and Max have been awesome to me. But the last six months really, really sucked. Like, epically
sucked.” Her voice was low and hard, as she fought to keep frustrated tears out of it.
“I’m so tired of trying to figure out how I’m supposed to be acting, you know? I just want to… I just want to
be
. Does that sound dumb?”

Teddy studied her face for a long moment. “No, Indiana,” he finally said. “It doesn’t sound dumb.”

Molly stopped rummaging in her locker and looked up at him. His brown eyes were warm. He did look sincerely sorry.

“But you’re in a band with a dude named Bone,” she said. “Can I really trust your opinion?”

He threw back his head and sighed, relieved. “Let’s just start this whole conversation over again, okay? Hey, Molly, what’s
up?” he asked her, with excessive cheer.

“Hemlines!” she chirped back. “How are you?”

“Completely mentally hygienic!” Teddy squealed. They giggled. Molly noticed one of his front teeth was ever so slightly crooked,
and his eyes had the same amber glints that Max’s did, giving them an almost golden glow whenever he was happy. Like right
now.

“Can we hug it out?” he asked, tilting his head sideways to grin at her.

“Yes, doofus,” Molly said, and stepped into his open arms.

“Our first fight,” Teddy said, over her head. “I can see the
Hey!
headlines now. ‘Has Berlin Daughter…’ ” he trailed off.

“ ‘Has Berlin Daughter’ what?”

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing.” He chuckled, patting her back as he gave her a harder squeeze. “Turns out I should leave the headlines
to Shelby.”

Molly smiled and rested her cheek on his shoulder, relaxing. It felt nice to be hugged by someone who wasn’t genetically obligated
to do it. The hand that had been patting her back now just rested there, warm and comforting, his thumb rubbing her shoulder
blade almost absently. Her eyes fluttered closed. She realized dimly that she and Teddy were past the point where a normal
hug would have ended, but she was enjoying it too much to mind. She squashed a voice deep in her subconscious that wondered
if Danny would.

Then two things happened at once: Her cell phone buzzed in the front pocket of her bag, and someone yelled Teddy’s name.

They jumped apart, blinking hard as if being woken up from a deep nap, to see Arugula popping out from around a corner.

“Still up for some bonus time in the lab?” Arugula asked. “One can never reach too soon for academic ascendancy.”

“Oh, uh, sure, Ari,” Teddy said, falling backward against the lockers and looking slightly as though he’d been caught shoplifting.
“I forgot we’d talked about that.”

Molly’s phone buzzed again.

“You’d better get that,” Arugula said. “It might be your boyfriend.”

Molly felt Teddy’s eyes on her but couldn’t quite meet them.

“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” he said.

“Kind of. I mean, not… It’s complicated,” Molly heard herself say after a longer pause than Danny would have appreciated.

“No, that’s great for you,” Teddy said, overly casual. “The long-distance thing takes guts. I bet it’s hard.”

“I’m sure it is for some people, but Brooke says those two are on the phone all the time,” Arugula said, tossing her hair.
“It’s so romantic, don’t you think?”

She squeezed Teddy’s arm possessively. Teddy stared down at Ari’s hand, then back up at Molly. He looked like he wanted to
ask her something.

“Come on, our borax crystals are looking disconcertingly anemic,” Ari said. “May I steal him, Molly? Are you two finished?”

Molly heard an explanation bubbling in her throat, how she was on the phone with Danny’s voice mail more than with him lately,
but out of loyalty to Danny she killed it.

“I guess so,” she said instead.

Ari beamed and pulled away with Teddy, but not before he shot Molly a perplexed look over his shoulder.

Her phone buzzed again. Molly dug it out of her backpack. A text from Danny: It contained no words, just a close-up photo
of a sunflower propped against one of his mother’s garden gnomes.

“Perfect timing, Molls,” Danny said when he answered
her call. “We were just about to go bourbon bowling.” His voice indicated half of that favorite outing had already begun.

“I got your text. I just… I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Glad you liked it,” Danny said. “I figure, this move is just challenging me to come up with more creative ways to give my
girlfriend flowers.”

Girlfriend.
There it was.

So why did the word spawn more questions than it answered?

“
I’M GETTING ONE
just like it tomorrow,” Julie Newman whispered to the girl playing Mrs. Pearce. “I mean, it’s waterproof! The rain ruined
my Dooney & Bourke.”

Brooke set her jaw and tried to ignore this. It was the third such comment she’d heard that day. Colby-Randall students seemed
to have crowned Molly the flavor of the week, and were therefore willing not just to embrace, but purchase, the grungy backpack
that always dangled from her shoulder like she was about to set up camp in a tree. Brooke abhorred camping. It was dusty,
there were no bathrooms, and trail mix had, like, four thousand calories.

She returned to the task at hand.

“Jake,” she began. “Your character definitely wouldn’t wink at Eliza.”

“What if he puts his hand on her knee?” Jake asked. “I mean, where is his mojo? I’m just trying to get a handle on this.”

“Tank tops are totally on sale at Fred Segal,” Mrs. Pearce—Brooke couldn’t remember her real name—hissed back at Julie. “I
want a red one. It’ll match my new sneakers. Did you know how
comfortable
Converse are?”

Brooke shifted on the sofa that was the centerpiece of the set. She tried not to seethe.

“Jake, Freddy is from a different era,” she attempted.

“I’m going to go see if Molly’s done with my costume,” Julie said to Mrs. Pearce. “I kind of want to ask if she’ll sign my
copy of
Hey!
anyway. It’s so fun to be going to school with someone so famous!”

“Julie, if you don’t shut up and let us focus, I swear to God I will recast you,” Brooke snapped.

Julie clamped her mouth shut, her eyes bulging.

Brooke closed her eyes and exhaled. It was bad enough that Ginevra’s pleasantly nasty little shoe-related blind item had been
canceled out by Molly’s popular appearance in the latest issue of
Hey!
Between the fact that her actors were operating at straight-to-DVD levels and all the gushy comments she’d heard lately about
Molly’s eyes, or her clothes, or that heinous backpack, Brooke’s nerves were as frayed as a pair of tights on Taylor Momsen.
She’d even been seen eating chips in public. Like a commoner. She took one more deep breath.

“Jake,” she said firmly. “Freddy is simple. A bit repressed. He doesn’t wink at Eliza. He is not going to grope her. And
you don’t need to worry about what he’d tweet about her, because none of that had been invented yet.”

He hung his head sheepishly. “I was just trying to relate to him.”

Brooke pondered this, then grabbed Max, who was passing by lugging a spotlight that was almost as big as she was.

“Think of Freddy as Max here: wussy, with lots of feelings nobody asks to hear,” she said. “So whenever he’s not onstage,
he’s sitting up in an attic writing in his diary and then, like, staring out the window.”

“Oh. Like a blogger,” Jake nodded.

“And what does any of that that have to do with
me
?” Max huffed.

“You figure it out,” Brooke said. “Now run along. Jake, you’re also going to need to stop flexing in the background of all
your scenes. It’s distracting.”

“But if people get bored, they need something to look at,” Jake protested.

“Works for me,” muttered Max as she heaved the light into her arms.

“Thank you, Magda.” Jake beamed.

Max almost dropped her cargo.

“Sure,” she stammered, bolting offstage.

“Try this, Jake: Listen to your instincts,” Brooke said. “And then do the opposite.”

Brooke got up and left the set. “Let’s take it from the top of the scene, please. Everybody, take your places. Wait, where
did Julie Newman go?”

Her Mrs. Eynsford-Hill rounded the corner wearing a very large straw bonnet.

“What the hell is that?” Brooke snapped.

“It’s half of my costume,” Julie said, looking wounded. “Isn’t it cute?”

“I specifically told that girl no bonnets,” fumed Brooke. “And Bert, what is going on with your coat?”

“It’s Professor Higgins’s plaid suit,” Bert said.

“Professor Higgins does not wear plaid, he wears tweed!” Brooke yelled, her voice nearing dog-whistle levels. “I will not
allow that girl to sabotage my play just because I’m keeping her from happy hour!”

Brooke tore the jacket off Bert’s back and stomped toward backstage.

“While you’re back there, could you tell Molly my pants are too tight in the crotch?” Jake called after her. “I think she
measured my inseam wrong.”

“You let her measure your inseam?” Jennifer gasped, jealous. “How could you?”

Brooke didn’t hear the rest. She was on a mission.