Spoiled (32 page)

“Yes, it’d make a perfect Lifetime movie,” Brooke agreed. “I can hear the preview dude now: ‘Her secret burden… was ruining
her posture.’ ”

“Well, I think it’s great,” Molly said. “And you never know—she might even write back.”

Brooke snorted. “I’m not holding my breath.” She paused. “Molly… thanks,” she said. “I think… whatever happens, I think it’s
better that I did it.”

Molly just smiled and flipped open her biology textbook, turned on the TV, and cued up that day’s
Lust for Life
.

Brooke unplugged her laptop to carry it to her bed, the better to get a good viewing angle of the wedding of fashion magnate
turned bar owner Klaus Wiggins and his loyal college roommate, Bucky. According to
Soap Opera Digest
, there would be elephants. But before she scooped up the computer, a new message popped into her in-box.

No way. She did not write back that fast.

Brooke crossed her fingers for luck, then loaded the mail screen.

The message was from Ginevra McElroy, that
Hey!
reporter itching for a story. But Brooke was done with all that now. She made a move to delete the message without even reading
it, but then she noticed the subject line. It read, “RE: Molly Update.”

Brooke frowned. She hadn’t sent Ginevra anything since right after the party, and it definitely didn’t have that subject line.

She clicked on it.

Brooke’s heart froze.

Oh, shit.

As if floating above herself, she watched her finger click over to her Sent Mail folder and scroll down to the newer stuff.
There it was, nestled between her “Dear Kelly” letters: a note to Ginevra McElroy, titled “Molly Update,” all about Danny,
the sunflowers, and Teddy. With Arugula’s stealth photo attached.

Double shit.

“What’s wrong?” Molly asked. “Don’t you want to watch this? Klaus and Bucky are wearing matching fur turbans.”

“Oh, just… Jake and Jennifer, you know,” lied Brooke. “Be right there.”

But for the first time ever, fur turbans didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except how the hell she was going to get out of this
one.

BROOKE HUNG UP
her
cell phone and looked around the quad. She had just left her sixth message for Ginevra—one for each day since her potentially
disastrous e-mail snafu—and was pretty confident that Ginevra planned to ignore this one, too, just as she had the first five
calls and three e-mails Brooke sent, in which she claimed everything from the photo being doctored to temporary insanity.

Thanks to a frenzied final week of play rehearsals, it seemed like Molly hadn’t noticed anything awry about Brooke’s behavior,
or at least, nothing she couldn’t ascribe to nerves. She was also wrapped up in her own drama, having spent the last couple
of days playing phone tag with Danny.
Still.
If Brooke were Molly, she would have dumped the guy over voice mail just for that. Brooke appreciated
that Molly was taking her relationship seriously and everything—even if it was kind of boring from a gossip standpoint—but
she hoped her half sister realized that she risked snoozing and losing where Teddy was concerned. Other people’s hearts ran
on their own schedule, like a train; if you found a ride you wanted to take, you had to hop on while it was at your station.
Brooke learned that from Brick’s character in
Tequila Mockingbird
, right before he strangled a drug lord with a shoelace.

Plopping down on an isolated bench within view of the theater, Brooke stared at her phone and shivered—partly because, as
they inched into October, the last of the September heat had on cue given way to mild nights, and partly because the damn
thing just wouldn’t ring. However, a new issue of
Hey!
had come out since the Incident, and nothing had appeared in it, nor on its website. Maybe Ginevra, meek intern that she
was, believed Brooke’s outright lie about the photo being fake. Or Trip Kendall just decided there wasn’t really any story
there and had decided to devote
Hey!
’s resources to something more important, like whether Bieber Fever was a real medical affliction. Maybe, just maybe, Brooke
was going to get away with this. She
had to
. Didn’t she? Surely the universe wouldn’t punish her for one tiny wee mistake, just when she and Molly were finally friends.
At the very least, she must have been owed some karmic brownie points for going seventy-two hours without saying a word about
how bad Molly needed a hair appointment.

So, the further away from that fateful accidental e-mail Brooke got, the more she was able to concentrate on the task at hand:
It was finally
My Fair Lady
’s opening night, and she was certain—well,
mostly
certain—that Brick would be there to witness it. Caroline, Brick’s agent and Arugula’s mother, had called to reiterate that
she would be bringing Brick to the theater personally, along with Ari’s botanist father, Phil—the source of Arugula’s name,
interest in science, and disdain for iceberg lettuce (he called it nature’s packing peanuts). Brooke was confident that Caroline
would deliver, if only because Brick never passed up an opportunity to talk to Phil, the only person as fascinated by nutritional
information as he was.

“What are you doing out here?” Ari asked. “Shouldn’t you be in hair and makeup?”

Brooke looked up to see her friend dressed to the nines and holding her chemistry textbook.

“I thought you were driving over with your mom,” she said, shoving her iPhone into her pocket. “Did something go wrong? Are
they not coming?”

Ari put down the book and patted Brooke’s arm.

“Relax,” she said. “Brick is still coming. When I left the house, he was getting a lecture about the zucchini-daffodil hybrid
my dad is working on. Brick told him to call it a zucchodil, but I think that sounds like something for your prostate.”

“There’s a reason Brick doesn’t work in marketing,” Brooke said. “What’s with all the cleavage?”

“Am I not allowed to engage in exceptional ablutions in honor of my best friend’s debut?”

“Don’t all those syllables ever make your jaw tired?”

“The play is going to be great, Brooke,” Ari said, apparently mistaking Brooke’s bad mood for preshow jitters. “Trust me.
I know quality. Your dress rehearsal last night was seamless.”

Brooke stood up and brushed off the seat of her jeans.

“Exactly the issue,” she lied. “A good dress rehearsal means a bad performance.”

“That’s a myth.” Ari sniffed. “Come on, let’s get you in hair and makeup. You need to focus.”

Brooke closed her eyes. Ari knew her so well. Nothing was more calming than false eyelashes.

Relax
.
Ginevra has obviously fallen off a cliff somewhere, and I am going to be the most beautiful Eliza Doolittle the world has
ever seen.

Still, just to be safe, Brooke superstitiously crossed her fingers.

Molly climbed out from underneath Julie Newman’s hem and surveyed the girl’s costume. It was perfect. They were all perfect.
It had taken a tremendous amount of work, including considerable neglect of her homework. But it had been worth it: She’d
done Laurel proud.

“This looks great,” Julie said, leaning over to examine her lace hem. “You’re really good at this.”

“Thanks,” Molly said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Okay, take it off again real fast. I need to steam it.”

Julie trotted off to change, and Molly looked around the room. The vast wardrobe area was as neat as her sewing basket—the
one that used to be Laurel’s, and was therefore arranged with a military precision—but in twenty minutes, it would be full
of students in thick pancake foundation and seven coats of mascara. Everyone’s wigs and accessories were neatly set out next
to masking tape stuck to the Formica table with the corresponding actors’ names written on it. Once Brooke finally stopped
trying to murder her costumes, Molly had grown to enjoy the camaraderie of the theater. It was like being part of a highly
dysfunctional, deeply dramatic family. Not unlike her
actual
family, when it came right down to it.

Molly glanced out the window in the cozy nook where her sewing machine lived, which overlooked the back parking lot. There,
next to her Lexus and Neil Westerberg’s beat-up red Vespa, was Teddy’s 4Runner. She wondered if she had time to find him and
give him the Danny update: They had a date to talk the next morning, after nearly two weeks of missing each other—or “missing
each other,” since surely nobody was that dense about basic math. It felt like he was doing that irritating boy thing where
they act all obtuse until the girl breaks down and does the ugly work. Danny
had
to be avoiding the Talk again, just as much as she’d been,
but it was time to face it. Molly wondered how Teddy would react: sympathy, supportiveness… excitement, maybe…

As if summoned by her thoughts, Teddy came into the window’s view, looking adorable in a sport coat over one of his usual
tees. Then a tall figure in a tight dress emerged from the shadow of the theater and threw its arms around him. It was Arugula,
and Molly had never seen her flash so much cleavage. Teddy returned the hug, then threw back his head and laughed at whatever
she said, causing Arugula to flush in a way that meant she had been trying to impress him. She hugged his arm to her ample
chest, stroking it as they walked away, smiling.

Molly’s heart plummeted to her knees—an involuntary reaction, like her body had already made an executive decision about something
without consulting her. But she knew she had no right to feel disappointed. Technically, she had a boyfriend.
If Teddy is happy, that’s all that matters. Right?

There was a rustling behind her, and a door slammed. Max emerged from the dressing room area holding three lighting gels.

“What were you doing back there?” Molly asked, arranging her features in what she hoped was a calm expression.

“When the UPS guy delivered my gels, they put the package up here with your shipment of theatrical makeup.”

“Cool,” Molly said. “Um, so, hey, have you talked to Teddy?”

Max rolled her eyes. “He’s coming
with Arugula.
Can
you believe it? She actually corrected my grammar in English the other day. Gross.”

She smacked her hand against her head. “Oh, my God, I almost forgot the other reason I came in here! Jake. His shirt won’t
stay buttoned,” she whispered. “So he’s just walking around in there half naked. Can you please avoid him for a while? For
me?”

“Molly!” Jake cried, bursting out of the dressing room. “My clothes keep falling off and I need your help!”

“Please no,” Max mouthed behind Jake’s back.

“Come here, Jake.” Molly grinned, grateful that she had something to distract her. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Awesome,” Jake said, struggling with his sleeves. “This feels so
big
.”

“The shirt?” Molly asked, pinpointing a loose button and a missing one. She retrieved her beat-up cardboard box full of extras
from under her sewing table and fished around for a decent match—slowly, though, for Max’s benefit.

“No, the play,” Jake said. “I’m so nervous. This is way harder than football. There, my face mask is my mask. I mean, like,
literally
and
metaphorically.”

“You’ll be fine,” Molly said, threading a needle. “Hold still.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Jen said—”

Max snorted. Jake swiveled to look at her.

“Sorry,” Max said.

“Hold
still
,” Molly warned.

There was an interminable pause, during which Molly
could tell Max was fumbling for a way out of her faux pas. Then her friend took a long breath and actually made eye contact
with Jake.

“I’ve been at all the rehearsals, and I think you’ve improved so much. You’re a natural,” she said. “So ignore Jennifer. You’re
going to be great.”

Molly wanted to applaud. Jake shot Max a smile that would’ve tempted the angels to book a table in hell.

“That’s totally what I needed to hear,” he said. “Thank you, Max.”

At the sound of her actual name, Max threatened to turn purple again.

“No problem,” she managed. “It’s all true.”

She grabbed her gels and turned to go.

“By the way, I like your hair,” Jake called out. “You remind me of those badass little mushrooms on Super Mario Brothers that
give you extra lives.”

Max flashed him a wide grin, her eyes glowing amber in the light, then practically skipped out the door.

“She’s cool,” Jake said to Molly.

“She’s very cool,” Molly agreed. “And your button is fixed. You’re all set. Break a leg.”

Jake recoiled. “Why would you
say
something like that? I need these legs for football!”

He trotted back to the dressing room. Molly giggled, and bent down to stow away her button box.