Spoiled (8 page)

“I just don’t trust this person,” she continued. “The girl obviously hasn’t had a manicure in weeks. Nobody is that
regular
.”

“So you think the tragic dead mom is a scam?” Jennifer asked, her interest in melodrama overpowering the perceived insult
to her résumé.

“Not really. But look how far Daddy’s pity has gotten her. She has to be up to
something
and I bet she won’t stop at crashing my party.”

“So what now?”

“I have a plan. Don’t I always?”

“You
are
an evil genius,” Jennifer agreed.

“Right? If only that were a section on the SATs.” Brooke sighed. “Okay, I have to run; I think the stress of dinner gave me
crow’s feet that I should moisturize.”

“Stay strong,” Jennifer urged.

Brooke hung up the phone and threw it onto the pile of gossip magazines that sat on her floor. Brick’s face grinned up at
her from the corner of one of the covers. She kicked at his expensively whitened mouth, creasing his incisors.

“Take that, Sperminator,” she muttered.

She’d exaggerated her confidence with Jennifer. It had taken considerable effort to be friendly to Molly at dinner, and Brooke
wasn’t sure how long she could maintain the facade, even for Brick’s benefit. Sooner or later, lines had to be drawn. This
was Brooke’s domain and she refused to cede territory to a dusty visitor from Planet Yawn.

Brooke needed to recharge, which meant spending some
quality time in her sanctuary: her walk-in closet. She perched on the velvet stool next to her vanity and stared at the racks
of designer dresses, gleaming pumps, and towers of archived shoe boxes. Bliss. She caught her own eye in the nearest of her
four full-length mirrors and cocked her head. Usually, Brooke loved what she saw: tall, thin, naturally golden blonde. Being
her mother’s clone had definite perks. But it hadn’t escaped her that Molly seemed to share Brick’s athletic build, bits of
his smile, maybe even his hair color. No matter how long Brooke studied herself, she couldn’t find any trace of Brick except
that they used the same shade of bronzer. Her prickles of resentment became full-on stabbing pains.

She shook her head. Negative thoughts wouldn’t do. She had to focus. If Brooke played these next few days right, her graceful,
generous attitude would have Brick and Molly so thoroughly in the palm of her hand that they wouldn’t notice the knife in
her other fist.

Buoyed, Brooke fluffed her hair and allowed herself to smile. She could do this. After all, she was Brooke Berlin, dammit.
She was an actress—no, an Actress, capital A—and she
would
nail this role.

“
HEAVEN.
Heaven.”

“Seriously, this one is, like, a religious experience.”

“I totally just saw God. I’m not even kidding.”

Molly wished she could see what the three willowy stylists buzzing around her were talking about, but their light-speed tugging
and pulling and tweaking—not to mention their enthusiastic spiritual visions, and the accompanying wild skyward gestures—made
it impossible to get a glimpse of herself in the mirror. How did such scrawny women have so much energy? Obviously that half-consumed
case of Red Bull in the corner had been put to good use.

“Let me see!” Brooke chirped from a couch across the room. “I bet this is the one!”

Molly returned her sister’s smile. From the feel of the
skintight bandage dress crisscrossing her hips, Molly wasn’t entirely sure she shared Brooke’s optimism, but she was having
too much fun to care. Never in all her years of reading her mother’s
Vogue
had Molly imagined she’d get within sniffing distance of designer clothes. Yet here she was, just three days into her L.A.
life, with a pile of garments at her feet worth more than Laurel had spent on her car.

She had Brooke to thank, just one in a string of surprising, generous acts that had wallpapered each of the days since Molly
arrived. She’d been in Brooke’s sole custody pretty much since that first dinner—Brick was MIA, thanks to calls from his manager,
the studio, his agent, or in one case, a producer who wanted to turn
Avalanche!
into a Western—and Brooke had clearly taken to heart her task of getting Molly ready for the party. She’d insisted on making
Molly practice walking in heels, giving critiques as if they were on
America’s Next Top Model
. She’d chattered at length about what
Hey!
might ask—though Molly hoped her primer on tensions in the Middle East would turn out to be unnecessary—and she’d loaned
Molly three different conditioners that she swore would help fight frizz.

Then there was the constant stream of cold Diet Cokes, the breathless tutorials on which colon cleanse would cause Molly to
hallucinate the least, and, of course, today’s styling session to prep them for the party. The attention was occasionally
suffocating, but also honestly touching. For all the time Molly had spent recently thinking about having a father for the
first time, she’d only considered Brooke as a
sister in the most literal, bare-bones sense of the word. Now, she couldn’t imagine L.A. without her. It was such a warm and
welcoming relief to be taken under her wing and treated immediately like family.

Not to mention the wish-fulfillment aspect of being whipped in and out of high-fashion dresses by three tiny elves in matching
skinny jeans, working just for her, and moving in such a blur Molly could barely make out their faces, much less remember
their names. She referred to them in her head as Bangs, Boobs, and Botox—the latter because no matter how much she panted
that an outfit was better than fist-bumping God Himself (a compliment that seemed diminished once Molly saw the jumpsuit that
had spawned it), Botox’s face remained a serene blank. She didn’t even wince when Boobs dropped a platter of gluten-free bagels
and vegan cream cheese all over a rack of Monique Lhuillier dresses, although she did spew such a creative string of expletives
that Molly suspected the only reason Botox was acquainted with God in the first place was because He had popped down to warn
her to watch her mouth.

“This is the exact Leger we put on Katie Heigl last week,” Botox now droned, shoving Molly at a mirror.

“You’ll
die
,” added Bangs, stepping backward to grab her Marlboro from a nearby ashtray and sucking on it feverishly.

Molly was more afraid one of the three Bs would keel over from stress. It had been three hours and a million dresses since
Stan dropped them off, and Molly still hadn’t
found the right one. No matter how many times she told the stylists that she wasn’t comfortable in anything super tight, they
trotted out ever-snugger cocktail frocks. Brooke, ceaselessly optimistic, shouted out encouraging compliments every time Molly
shuffled toward a mirror (her last: “a zaftig glory”). This hot pink bandage dress was no exception.

“You look just like Kim Kardashian!” Brooke crowed.

“You think?” Molly said, scrutinizing her rear end. “I don’t know. Does the camera really add ten pounds?”

“Asses are totally in right now!” Bangs drooled, picking at her overlong chestnut fringe.

“You look like ten pounds of sexy in a five-pound bag of awesome!” Boobs trilled.

“I can’t move my legs,” Molly said apologetically.

She felt terrible rejecting everything—it took an awful lot of strength not to fall in love with the name on the label—but
she’d be hyperventilating enough at this party without her dress cutting off her air supply.

“No, she’s right,” Botox piped up unexpectedly. “Her butt cheeks look like two balloons fighting. Get her out of it.”

Botox reclined on a brushed-metal chaise near the terrace doors, deep in thought, massaging her skull through her plum-colored
pixie cut. This was her company and her house, an art deco bungalow off Wilshire in what Brooke called “the museum district,”
despite being unable to name which museums, exactly, were nearby. Its impeccably lit living room, a combination of smartly
placed wall sconces
and natural light, was full of racks of clothes, glossy foreign magazines, shoes spilling out of Barneys bags, framed photos
of famous clients, and barely any furniture. What
was
there was so minimalist, it could not have been comfortable. Nor cheap.

“I’m getting the sense you don’t want something snug,” Botox concluded after her meditation. “Brooke, you should have told
me she wasn’t a sample size. Shitballs. Not you,” she caught herself, waving in Molly’s direction. “I just need to think.”

Boobs hurried over with another Red Bull and a bendy straw, plus a red plastic cup full of string cheese. Molly thought Boobs
should avoid hurrying anywhere: Running in a tank top that small exposed her large chest as the investment it was, rather
than a work of nature.

“Maybe high fashion just isn’t for you,” Brooke said kindly. “It takes a very special physique.”

“Would it be easier if I just wore something I brought from home?” Molly suggested. “I really appreciate all this, but—”

“No!” Botox blurted, sitting up so fast that Boobs had to fan her. “That is crazenuts. Brick Berlin asked us to come to the
rescue, and we cannot fail him.”

She snapped her fingers. “Bring me the Marchesa.”

Boobs and Bangs gasped in unison. The room fell silent, as if they were in church and the sermon was about to begin. Bangs
reverently walked over to a dress bag, unzipped
it, and lifted out an intricately ruffled violet cocktail dress. She touched it as if God really
had
just appeared in the bodice and asked her to go easy on the fingernails.

Molly noticed Brooke had gotten up from her seat and started pacing the room and gnawing on her lip.

“That dress is
amazing
,” Boobs panted.

“Major,” Bangs breathed.

“Radcakes,” Botox agreed. “The detailing is insane, and it’s, like, a normal size.” She shoved it into Molly’s hands. “I pulled
it for Annie Hathaway, but who cares? Just don’t tell her.”

Molly took the dress and shuffled back into the dressing room. She heard Brooke whisper something about a big responsibility,
and inexplicably thought she made out the words
wheat combine
, but she tuned it all out in favor of slowly zipping up the snug Marchesa, centimeter by centimeter. Having Brick Berlin’s
DNA didn’t mean she’d morphed overnight into a person who could wear a $3,500 cocktail dress without having a panic attack
about ruining it.

She returned to the living room. Bangs now had two cigarettes, one in each hand, and Boobs was holding a giant binder in front
of Botox and turning the pages for her. Brooke was typing furiously on her iPhone.

They all looked up when Molly appeared.

“That is freaking unbelievable on you,” Botox barked enthusiastically, without any kind of assist from her forehead.

“It’s so heavenly, I totally just died and went there,” exclaimed Bangs.

Boobs: “
Omigod,
I fully got there an hour ago and saw Jackie O.”

“I am also there,” Brooke said, although her face was oddly wan.

In the light of Botox’s living room, at the large three-way mirror, Molly could tell the purple hue of the dress was extremely
flattering. She touched the intricate work on the skirt, then wiggled around in it, throwing her hands in the air. The strapless
bodice didn’t budge an inch. Molly’s heart leapt. Yes, it was a lot of dress, but when else would she have an excuse to wear
something like this?

Botox crossed the room and placed her hands on Molly’s shoulders. That close, Molly noticed that the stylist was wearing an
excess of Chanel No. 5 and dark purple eyeliner. Her breath smelled of spearmint gum and raisins.

“You look like Jessie Biel’s twin,” Botox said very seriously. “As a professional stylist, it would be criminal of me to let
you turn this down. I’d literally get arrested.”

“As a professional stylist, I’m shocked you can’t see the truth, which is that she looks like a giant grape-scented loofah,”
Brooke said haughtily.

Molly’s spirits crashed with a thud. Boobs and Bangs gasped in the background.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Positive,” Brooke said. “You don’t want to end up on
E!
News
with some stand-up comic making a crack about using you with shower gel. Can you imagine? Seriously, ladies, this simply
won’t do.”

Boobs, Bangs, and Botox were agape. Molly got the impression nobody ever turned down a Marchesa.

Outside, a horn honked.

“There’s Stan!” Brooke chirped, noticeably relieved. “Hurry up and change—that color is making me crave a Jamba Juice and
I can’t spare the calories.”

She steered Molly back into the dressing area.

“You are fully harshing my buzz, Brooke,” Molly heard Botox say. “What is your damage?”

Molly, back in her jeans, looked down at the dress in her hands. She resisted the urge to hug it good-bye, and for a second
she thought maybe she didn’t have the strength to give it back. But if Brooke thought she looked like a loofah… Surely, she
knew what Molly ought to wear, and after three hours, she wouldn’t have let Molly walk out empty-handed unless the situation
demanded it.

“I have to trust Brooke on this one,” she said, coming out of the dressing room and handing the dress to Bangs, who looked
as horrified as if someone had just told her the health food store was out of flaxseed oil. “But thank you so much for all
your help.”

“Don’t worry, Molly,” Brooke said with a huge smile. “Fashion may have failed you today, but now that I know your tastes,
I have several vintage classics at home that’ll be totally perfect. Trust me.”