Bad to the Bone (13 page)

Chanis—who used only one name—was a personal shopper to the Hollywood elite. Tall, very slender, and Asian American, she had her photo in the gossip rags nearly as often as the stars she dressed. Chanis had finished working with Platinum on her dress for the RMAs, and today the “star” she was dressing was eight-year-old Serenity.

Kiley found this insane. She hadn't even known that famous designers made dresses for the prepubescent set. Well, it turned out that some did. It also turned out that there were designers who made clothes only for this market. Chanis had brought a selection of outfits by both types for Serenity to consider. It would be entirely the girl's choice, too—her mother was missing in action.

Serenity sat cross-legged on her bed as Chanis and a flunky guided a clothing rack into her white-on-white bedroom, which followed the same noncolor scheme as the rest of
Platinum's estate. As they entered, Serenity was casually painting her nails midnight blue, as if having adults bring designer clothes to her room on a rolling rack was an everyday thing.

“Why don't you put the nail polish away now?” Kiley suggested.

Serenity added a blob of blue to the nail on her pinky finger. “When I'm done.” Her eyes flicked to Chanis and the flunky, a more diminutive carbon copy of the personal shopper who didn't offer her name. Neither did her boss. Kiley found that very rude. “Which gown did my mom choose?”

“None of them,” Chanis replied, shaking her waterfall of inky hair off her face. “Christian Siriano designed something for her and she's going to wear that.”

“The guy who won
Project Runway?
I
love
him!” Serenity squealed. “He's fierce. I want him to design something for me, too.”

“It's already Tuesday and the awards are Saturday night,” Chanis pointed out, unzipping a garment bag. “Not enough time to go from scratch. Next year, assuming your mom is nominated.”

“She will be,” Serenity declared.

Chanis nodded, probably in the hope that she'd be invited back next year, too. “Okay, you ready to try stuff on?”

“Who'd you bring?” Serenity asked diffidently.

“Flowers by Zoe, Lipstik Girls, cach
cach
,” Chanis rattled off.

Serenity sighed. “Whatever.”

She capped the nail polish bottle and slid off the bed, then pulled her white tank top over her head. She wore a lacy silk training bra, though there was absolutely nothing to train. Meanwhile, Kiley screwed the top on the nail polish. “I need
to go check Sid's homework,” she told her charge. “Are you good in here for a while without me?”

“Sure. I'm with Chanis. It's not like
you
have taste.”

Kiley bit back everything she wanted to say things like:
stop being so rude; remember that you're only eight; how about working on those manners?
But she didn't say a word. She tried to pick her moments with all three of Platinum's kids. She knew any kind of chastisement in front of Chanis would embarrass Serenity, and that there was nothing worse than public humiliation.

When they were in private, though, she'd have a lot to say. What she couldn't say was “I'll tell your father.” She didn't know who Serenity's father was, and Platinum's three children each reportedly had a different dad. Not that any of them ever showed up.

“Okay, I'll check back with you in a little while,” Kiley said. She nodded at Chanis. “Just send Serenity if you need me.”

She went down the hall to Sid's room—Sid was short for Siddhartha. Like Serenity's room and the entire house, it was all white. Sid, who was now in fifth grade, was sitting at his desk in front of his iBook, with papers and notebooks spilling out of the backpack he'd thrown onto the tufted quilt on his bed. He was wearing jeans and an old Bruce Springsteen concert T-shirt. That was ironic, considering that Springsteen had once—despite any shred of evidence—been rumored to be the father of Platinum's older son, Bruce.

Kiley glanced at the computer screen. Sid was Instant Messaging a friend. He'd recently buzzed off his pale blond hair, much to his mother's displeasure. Around the house, he tended to wear music-oriented baseball-style caps. Here in his room, his skull gleamed.

“Hey, Sid,” Kiley greeted him. “Finish up with your friend and get to your homework. Need any help?”

“I'm already doing my homework,” Sid said. He kept clicking away at the keyboard.

Kiley sat on his bed and began to put his school stuff into his backpack. “Doesn't look like it.”

“I'm working with my friends.”

“Oh, you got some kind of group project?” Kiley wondered.

“We got questions on this novel we're reading in class. It's called
Zink
. It's about a girl who has cancer and zebras who can talk. It's really stupid.”

Kiley saw the book on the bed and picked it up. The cover was beautiful: a girl gazing into the distance, with zebras and the African plains spreading out behind her. “What page are you on?”

Sid shrugged.

“Come on. You must know how much of it you've read,” Kiley persisted.

“I read the first chapter, but that's kinda all I had to read. Reading the whole book, that's not how we do it.”

“What do you mean, that's not how we do it? Traditionally, when you're assigned a book for school, the idea is to actually read it.”

Sid laughed. “That's so last century. My friends and I, we have a homework ring. Didn't you?”

“No. And maybe you could fill me in, because I've never heard of one.” Kiley folded her arms. She knew this was going to be rich.

What followed was Sid's explanation as to what a homework ring was, and how it worked. Essentially, it was a way to
cheat. If there were five questions, Sid and four of his friends were each responsible for answering one question. Then they all e-mailed each other their answers, but changed them enough on their own answer sheets so that the teacher couldn't tell they'd copied off each other. They were all careful to make different small mistakes on different questions, so their teacher never got suspicious.

Kiley was appalled.

“You think it's cheating? No it isn't,” he insisted.

“Yes it is; you're copying each other's work.”

Sid finally turned away from the screen. “So? We save a lot of time.”

So?
Had the kid really just said
So?

“You're supposed to do your own work, at home. That's why they call it homework.”

Sid shot her a baleful look. “Only losers do that.”

For the briefest moment, Kiley wished that the Colonel was still around. Platinum's sister and brother-in-law had moved in when Platinum had been in pretrial detention. The brother-in-law had been a colonel in the United States Marine Corps, and treated the kids as if they were fresh recruits in boot camp. To call it culture shock was an understatement. Kiley could only imagine what the Colonel would say about a homework ring. He'd probably sentence the kids to a month in the stockade.

Just possibly, though, Platinum wouldn't approve of it, either. It was worth a shot.

“I'd really like you to get off the computer and read the novel,” Kiley said. “If you don't, I'm going to have to tell your mother.”

“Ha! I already told her. She said she wished she'd thought of that when she was in school. Hey, Daphne just sent me the answer to question three.”

Sid opened up the e-mail as Kiley realized that he was probably telling the truth about having told his own mother about the homework ring. Platinum was hardly an advocate of book learning. To her, school was nothing more than society's way of trying to stifle kids' creativity.

Kiley gave up. “I'll be in Serenity's room if you need me.”

“Cool.” Sid was already cutting and pasting Daphne's answer into his own answer sheet. “I won't. If you get bored with my sister come on back. I'll show you how it works so you can do it for me next time.”

Then he looked at her. “Wanna read the book and write me some coverage?”

“This place makes the best milk shakes,” Kiley said, briefly taking her mouth away from the straw.

It was two hours later. She and Matt had met for what was supposed to be coffee at Johnny Rockets on Melrose, but she'd opted for a milk shake instead. Vanilla, so thick you could eat it with a spoon if you wanted to, and so large that after you drained the huge sundae glass, you could pour more in from the metal shaker.

“I'm jealous,” Matt said, sipping his black coffee. He patted his abs. “I've got a photo shoot tomorrow. Every pound shows.”

Kiley wiped her lips. “The downside of modeling, huh?”

“Yeah.” Matt grinned. “But I'd be an asshole to complain about it. And let's face it, L.A. has enough assholes.”

Kiley laughed. She liked Matt. Today he wore jeans and a
sky blue T-shirt under an Italian cotton sport jacket, managing to look casually elegant and almost absurdly hip at the same time. But it wasn't just that he was easy on the eyes, almost as easy on the eyes as Tom. He was cheerful, low-key, funny, and he hadn't hit on her. She was glad for that. She was also glad that he'd mentioned some girl he was crushing on. That made it safe. Mostly.

If Kiley was going to be completely honest, Tom had a lot to do with the new friendship. They often ended up talking about him. And since Matt had known Tom long before Kiley had, she got all kinds of great information about him. Who helped him in his career when he came to Los Angeles, the companies he had modeled for—that kind of thing. Tom was way too modest to talk about himself like that, and Kiley wasn't the kind of girl who Googled and ZabaSearched just out of curiosity.

Talking with Matt was much more satisfying than moaning about how much she missed him to Esme or Lydia. Esme had much bigger problems right now with her parents, and Lydia was consumed with her new friendship with Audrey Birnbaum.

“Heard from Tom?” Matt asked, almost as if Kiley had willed him to do so.

“I did,” she replied happily. “We texted earlier today. They're still in Moscow but they start shooting in Tver tomorrow. He said he's fallen in love with Russian food.”

“Better than with Russian women,” Matt joked.

Kiley nodded. “They are
so
beautiful. Those cheekbones.”

“Oh hey, speaking of cheekbones, Marym sent me some great photos. I think Tom is in a couple.”

Marym. Not Kiley's favorite person. And the feeling was
pretty much mutual. Yes, Kiley had been part of a demonstration outside of Marym's Malibu home to protest against privatizing the beach. And yes, Kiley had assumed that Marym was a shallow snob and had treated her badly. But the Israeli super model hadn't been a princess to her, either.

“She and I didn't exactly hit it off,” Kiley said. She knew if she had any guts, she would have admitted she was jealous as hell. Oh well.

“She can seem aloof if you don't know her,” Matt explained. “But she's a total sweetheart, really.”

“I'll take your word for it.” She drank again from her milk shake.

Matt eyed Kiley over his coffee cup. “You do know she and Tom are just buds.”

“So he tells me.”

“It's true,” Matt insisted. He hesitated. “Man, I was going to show you the photos, but—”

Something inside Kiley went on red alert. “But what?”

“You know Marym's been asked to be in the movie?”

Kiley nearly choked. “Since when?”

“You gotta read the trades. Here. Wait.”

Matt spotted a copy of the new issue of
Variety
on the empty table next to theirs. One quick motion and he nabbed it. One more motion and he flipped to a small story in the middle of the issue about Tom's movie. “Look.”

There it was. In black and white. Marym had just been added to the cast, playing a Russian Jewish woman who was torn between staying in Moscow to help with the honky-tonk or emigrating to Israel.

Great. Imagine which she'd pick.

Kiley put the puzzle pieces together. “I guess she and Tom are hanging out. She sent you some pictures?”

Matt shook his head. “Look, forget I even mentioned it—”

“I'm fine,” Kiley forced herself to say. “I'd really like to see them.”

“I never should've brought it up,” Matt mumbled.

Kiley held out her hand, palm up.
Give me the photos
.

He reached into his jacket pocket, took out some photos he'd printed off his e-mail, and handed them over to Kiley. The quality wasn't so great—they were on regular paper and not photo paper, and the printer wasn't the best—but Kiley saw all she needed to see and more.

Marym with a bunch of Russian models, blowing kisses to the camera in Red Square.

Marym with two other models in a nightclub.

Marym outside a casino.

Marym and another girl eating something unidentifiable in Gorky Park.

Marym kissing Tom.

Kiley nearly dropped the photo, as if it had burned her hand. Then she tightened her grip and studied the shot. It was a close-up, impossible to tell where they were. Marym's eyes were closed, her lips on Tom's. Correction—his were on hers. The guy she loved was definitely kissing Marym back.