Spoiled (9 page)

It rained on Friday, so Saturday dawned clear and bright. Even after a week in Los Angeles, Molly still hadn’t quite acclimated
to the West Coast, instead taking advantage of waking up three hours too early every day by hitting the pool for some laps.
Brooke was appalled when she heard about it—apparently her own hair had a rare chlorine allergy—but Molly found the rhythmic
smack of her arms against the water helped clear her head.

Molly was
so close
to being excited about the party. Charmaine certainly was; she had offered to fly out and live-blog it. And Brooke’s enthusiasm
was contagious. The previous night, they’d had Tex-Mex delivered while Brooke went over Famous Sibling Pairings in Tabloid
History and how they found the optimal flattering angles when posing for pictures together. Apparently, Jessica and Ashlee
Simpson had much to teach. Sometimes it felt like these first few days in Los Angeles had conspired to turn her into an alternate-universe
Molly: someone who had a moderate spray tan (courtesy of Brooke), her own black Amex, and a social calendar that involved
the words
red carpet
. Oh, and a private Olympic-size lap pool. Every morning, no matter how amazing it was to be experiencing all this, Molly
felt a little more foreign to herself.

But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Isn’t that partially why I came here, anyway? To leave sad West Cairo Molly behind?

But Molly still didn’t feel quite ready for her big Hollywood debut. What if she tripped at the party and fell into the pool,
in front of all of those reporters? What if she said something stupid? What if she got the name of one of Brick’s movies wrong?

Brooke seemed either uncomfortable discussing Molly’s nerves, or unable to relate; whenever Molly broached the subject, Brooke
would digress into surprisingly impassioned tirades about things like the importance of nasal contouring. So Molly used her
peaceful morning swims to work through her anxiety. There was no way she was going to allow
Hey!
to write some story about her mother wasting away on a bed of rats and cockroaches, or whatever—Laurel would have died of
embarrassment, if she weren’t already dead. This party had to happen, and Molly simply had to deal. The idea of being presented
to Southern California like Zuckerman’s Famous Pig from
Charlotte’s Web
definitely made her uneasy, but it wasn’t like Brick was making her give him a kidney.

Post-swim, Molly wrapped herself in the spa robe that had been hanging on the back of her bathroom door and went out on the
balcony to eat her toast. It had taken her two days to work up the guts to send up for anything, but Stan promised her the
cook was just happy to have something to do besides make protein shakes. She waved down at Brooke, who stood by the pool in
a skimpy bikini and sarong, trailed by a mousy girl with a clipboard and directing the placement of rented tables. She smiled
as Brooke’s
enthusiastic return wave almost knocked the glasses off her tiny friend. As intense as Brooke’s fawning interest could be,
she was at least an
amusing
handful.

“She’s so
chirpy
,” Molly said to Charmaine during one of their late-night phone sessions.

“Maybe she’s a bit mentally ill,” Charmaine opined.

“I think she’s just lonely,” Molly said. “Brick’s never around and I have no idea where her mom is.”

“Not even Google knows,” Charmaine said, awed by the all-powerful Internet’s failure to inform. “But I did find an old article
on
People
’s website about how Brick married Brooke’s mom at her father’s house in the Palisades. They had two peacocks as ring bearers.”

“Weird.” Molly shuddered.

“And bad luck, because they got divorced a couple of years later,” Charmaine continued. “Kelly told
People
it was time for her to find herself.”

“I guess she’s still off looking,” Molly had said.

“Maybe she’s not trying very hard.”

Molly had obligingly giggled—if Laurel had known Brooke, she’d have called her a Piece of Work in the kind of tone that implied
the capital letters—but she also felt guilty maligning her half sister when all Brooke wanted was to make sure Molly felt
comfortable and prepared. Just yesterday, in fact, backed up with countless photos of Charlize Theron, Brooke had insisted
that looking bitchy would make Molly’s cheekbones appear more prominent, and then she swore posing with your legs crossed
would
streamline the thighs and hips. None of this made a ton of sense to Molly, but the starlets in the tabloids who did it all
looked skinny and hot. Molly was beginning to suspect that Brooke was some kind of superficiality savant, whom she might be
well served to obey.

Molly was mentally running through Brooke’s list of tips an hour before the party as she planted herself in front of her bathroom
vanity. To avoid acknowledging the din emanating from the ground level, she turned up her iPod and fixated on following
Glamour
’s advice to achieve the perfect smoky eye, giving the makeup under her lower lash an extra vigorous smudge. Brooke had said
with a supportive shoulder-squeeze that this technique would diminish the appearance of eye bags. Molly had never thought
she had eye bags before, but if she did, she’d better deal with them now.

“All righty, sister-friend, the moment of truth is
here
! Aren’t you so, so excited?” Brooke squealed, sauntering in without knocking. “Daddy wants us downstairs in five minutes.
Everyone we know is here. I think everyone in
town
is here. I can’t wait to introduce you!”

Molly took a deep breath. “Almost done,” she said. “How’s my makeup?”

“You did it
yourself
?” Brooke said, a hand fluttering to her chest. “But Daddy paid for a hair and makeup artist! I told you about it this morning!
She didn’t come in here?”

Molly turned and noticed Brooke’s expertly arranged blonde curls bouncing around a face that had been painted
to perfection by a professional. She shook her head. She was pretty sure Brooke hadn’t said anything to her about that. But
it was possible she’d just tuned it out during one of Brooke’s speeches about hair extensions.
That’s what I get
, she thought.

“That bitch will spend the rest of her career doing infomercials,” Brooke fumed, squeezing Molly’s shoulders with a fervor
that conveyed either sympathetic anger or homicidal mania (it seemed like a genuine toss-up). “I cannot
imagine
where she went. And it’s too late to do anything about your face now.”

“It’s okay,” Molly assured her. “The last thing I need to worry about is whether my false eyelashes are coming unglued, right?”

Brooke ran an eye over Molly. Then she smiled brightly. “I adore your optimism! And your dress is a marvel. I am a genius,
if I do say so myself.”

“Marvel” was right. Molly had never seen a Marc Jacobs with so many flowers and ruffles. She felt like a blooming topiary.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Molly finally said, patting a ruffle in what she hoped was a show of affection. If she’d known this was
the “classic” Brooke had in store for her, she’d never have let go of that Marchesa. But by the time Brooke had produced it,
there’d been no time for a plan C. Besides, maybe she was being too harsh. Brooke kept insisting “florals are
so
three-months-from-now,” and that the dress itself had been a personal gift from the designer.

Brooke clapped her hands. “Enough! We have to go downstairs. Bad things happen when Brick is left alone with the press. He
almost married that one girl from the
National Enquirer
, can you imagine?”

Molly bit back a smile and followed Brooke out the door. As she wobbled her way to the ground floor—Brooke had loaned her
sky-high Manolos—Molly peeked out the window at the enormous lawn. Flotillas of pink tulips and white pillar candles bobbed
lazily in the pool, and tiny twinkling lights hung from every tree, approximating the stars L.A.’s smog layer sometimes obscured.
The yard had been turned into a giant outdoor living room, with huge cream couches and oversize pink velvet square ottomans
clustered around low, glass-topped coffee tables, each of which bore a bucket filled with tiny splits of pink champagne. A
raised stage was tucked at the back of the yard, presumably for Fall Out Boy, and buffet tables and wet bars framed the lawn
like a subtle barricade, as if to note that while the budget here clearly had no boundaries, the guests certainly did.

The grounds were choked with people: cater-waiters in
Avalanche!
T-shirts under sport coats; girls wearing too much foundation and boys in popped-collar polo shirts, whom Molly assumed were
her future classmates; bored-looking beefcakes lugging camera equipment and the scrawny, overtanned women they were trailing;
stressed agent-types juggling four phones in the same hand; and at least three clusters of folks who were actually eating
the
hors d’oeuvres, and who therefore must have been gate-crashers.

Brooke led her to the shaded French doors separating the peaceful, silent living room from the mob outside, then paused and
threw Molly a sly smile.

“I’ll be next to you the whole time, so just look for me when you feel lost,” she said. “Oh, and one last thing—make sure
you stare
right at them
.”

Then Brooke flung open the doors and pushed Molly out onto the patio. Her smile was the last thing Molly saw before she went
blind.

“Molly! Molly, over here, sweetie! Give us a smile!”

There was an explosion of light.

“Look left, Molly! Molly, hold still! Over here, Molly!”

“Molly, how do you feel being rescued by your new father?!”

Where should she look? Was she actually supposed to answer?

“Molly, who are you wearing?!”

“Is it true your mother kept Brick’s picture under her mattress?!”

Click. Where
was
everyone? Where was Brooke?

“Did you know gonorrhea could kill?!”

So this is what it feels like to need a drink.

MOLLY FELT LIKE
she was in the middle of that “stark naked at a pep rally” nightmare, minus the advantage of being able to burst into tears
or run away screaming. Or wake up. Or
blink
.

The light from the hundreds of flashbulbs seared her skin, and there were so many loud, frantic voices that Brick’s patio
sounded like a stock exchange floor. Obviously, her father hadn’t just stopped with
Hey!
It looked like Brick had invited every magazine, newspaper, blogger, and possibly anyone with a Twitter account to this party.

Disembodied hands propelled her onto a small swatch of red carpet, which had been tossed in front of a backdrop printed with
the logos for Absolut Vodka, Williams-Sonoma Home, and, weirdly, the Greater Los Angeles
Chamber of Commerce. Cameras clicked everywhere. Molly had no idea that hundreds of shutters could be so
loud
. She whirled around frantically, trying to find any sign of Brooke, but her sister had vanished.

This is so intense. I don’t know if I can do this alone.

Molly focused on Brooke’s advice. But she couldn’t cross her legs because they were shaking too much to move, and maintaining
a crabby expression just made her feel rude. The heat from the flashbulbs was as potent as her rising panic, which made her
sweaty, cold, and clammy all at the same time. She felt herself swoon.

“Mayday! She’s going down!”

Out of nowhere, Brick appeared and grabbed Molly’s arm.

“Let me be your life raft in the sea of humanity, precious girl,” he intoned. “Also, what a turnout! So many reporters from
so many magazines!
Someone
must have let them all in the back way.” He winked at her and whispered, “Trip Kendall thinks he can own my story? Not so!”

He handed her a leaflet. It was all about the many glories of being a tourist in Los Angeles, called, “L.A. Story: Starring
You
!”

“Just hang on to that for a few photos,” he said. “Makes the sponsor happy, and I’d rather you had that than a vodka tonic.”

Brick steered her toward a tight cluster of suits with slicked-back hair who were yelling his name; the cameras followed,
snapping candid after endless candid. Strangers took turns shaking her hand. Occasionally, Molly heard
herself answering softball questions about her likes and dislikes; she tried bringing up Laurel, but most of the reporters
seemed to find that too depressing and changed the subject. Mainly, she just listened to Brick natter brightly, and she calmed
down as she finally realized this story wasn’t really about
her
at all.

After about an hour of empty smiling, her cheeks began to burn. Brooke may have had a point with that tip about looking cranky.

“Cover your mouth with your hands and pretend to cough,” Brick murmured. “Then while your face is hidden, wiggle your mouth
to relax the jaw muscles. No one will know what you’re doing and your cheeks won’t hurt so much.”

“Thanks,” Molly whispered.

“You’re doing great,” he said, giving her right shoulder a supportive pat. “I’m going to find that girl from
In Touch—
once she gets a load of your dimple, she’ll have to retract that ridiculous story about me getting one surgically created
in Mexico. You go have some fun.”

“That’s okay, I—”

“I mean it, Molly. I told the press to back off unless I’m with you, because all this yada yada can get exhausting. So go
relax.” Then Brick brightened. “Remind me to tell you about the time Kiefer Sutherland and I were on a junket in Prague and
he fell asleep during an interview with the
Herald Tribune.
It was hilarious.”

He smiled wide. Molly couldn’t help but return it. She
was beginning to understand how her mother ended up embroiled with Brick. He
was
charming when you had his full attention.

But while Brick thought he was doing Molly a favor by releasing her into the wild, she felt lost without him shepherding her
from place to place. And Brooke was still nowhere to be found. Molly hadn’t realized until now how much she’d been relying
on her sister to get her through this. Sure, Brooke tended to suck up all the oxygen in the vicinity, but she was also the
only person Molly knew. Where could she have gone?