Fame Game 03: Infamous (8 page)

Carmen felt the cushions sink down beside her. Reluctantly she opened her eyes. Kate was right there, biting her lip.

“The Boring One is really sorry,” she said.

Carmen was still annoyed, but she tried not to be for Kate’s sake. It wasn’t her fault, after all. She had a beautiful voice and a sweet personality—of course people would love her, some to unreasonable degrees. “You’re not boring,” she said. “You’re
trouble
.”

Then she smiled, and Kate smiled back. Still friends.

14

THE TIME OF MY LIFE

The red velvet ropes parted and a smattering of cameras flashed as Madison and Gaby approached the entrance to Blok. Gaby smiled and waved, but Madison gave a single, coy over-the-shoulder glance. Five paparazzi were there, and by now Madison practically knew them by name.

Gaby teetered in her stilettos and reached out to Madison to steady herself as they stepped into the dim room, eyes still adjusting from the flashes. Gaby hated being so short, which was why she always wore such ridiculously high heels. Madison dreaded the day Gaby learned about surgery to lengthen shinbones. As awful as that sounded, she was sure Gaby would jump at the chance.

The PopTV camera followed them as they entered the loud club. Madison sighed immediately, because she knew that every word she spoke tonight would be unintelligible and would have to be dubbed over in a sound booth. There went half her Saturday.

The girls made their way to the table in the VIP section, where another camera was already set up and recording the two guys they’d come to meet: Jay and . . .
whatshisface
? Madison almost laughed; she’d already forgotten her date’s name. All the dating reels she’d watched had blurred together. Was he Connor? Trey? Paul? Well, this was clearly going to go
great
.

He was blond and handsome (like most of the guys Trevor and Laurel had dug up; there’d been a few brunets and one authentically ugly, rich dude), and he stood as they approached the table, smiling. “Hey, I’m Drake,” he said, and then leaned in, forcing her into an awkward half-hug.

“Nice to meet you,” Madison said, thinking,
Drake? Is that his real name or his stage name?

“Totally,” he said, nodding happily. “I’m so stoked.”

Stoked
. Well, that was a bad sign.

Jay called out a greeting, which Madison ignored. He slung his arm around Gaby and said, “I missed you, babe.”

Gaby fluttered her eyes at him. “I missed you, too,” she whispered, snuggling up against him.

Madison knew she could live to be a thousand years old and she’d still never understand what Gaby saw in Jay. She was reaching for the bottle of Dom, but Drake stopped her. “Allow me,” he said, expertly filling her flute.

He must be a bartender
, Madison thought. She wondered why Trevor never found her an actual professional. Someone who was already something, instead of still trying to
become
something. A lawyer, say—or maybe a dermatologist, because it’d be nice to get a friends-and-family discount on her next microdermabrasion. . . .

Of course, she knew why these people were never options on her dating reels. They would be too old. Too serious. Too unlikely to show up to a party in shorts and combat boots, or to crack lewd jokes, or to try to belch the entire alphabet—all things that fan-favorite Jay specialized in.

“Babe, I brought you something,” Jay said, his voice artificially loud. He handed Gaby a small velvet bag.

Gaby nearly squealed with delight. “What is it? Is it jewelry?”

Jay thrust his chin out. “Open it,” he said, his voice proud.

Madison and Drake watched as Gaby clawed at the bag, and eventually pulled out . . . a spark plug.

Gaby frowned. “What is it?”

Jay grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “It’s a spark plug, babe.”

Gaby looked at him in confusion. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Nothing! It’s, like . . . how do you say it? It’s a symbol.” He reached out and took it from her. Then he held it up above the table, as if they were all supposed to admire it. “The spark plug, see, is part of the internal combustion engine. Without it, the engine won’t run. And so here’s the cool part. Like, the internal combustion engine is my heart, right? And you’re the spark plug. If I don’t have you, I don’t work.”

“You
don’t
work,” Madison said. But Jay didn’t hear her.

Gaby held her hands up to her reddening cheeks. “Oh, Jay, babe, that is so sweet.”

Madison eyed the bottom of her empty glass. Wow, where had all her Champagne gone so quickly? She reached for the bottle again and glanced over at Gaby: That
was
seltzer she was drinking, wasn’t it?

Madison turned to Drake. “Do you have a screwdriver to give me or something? Maybe a socket wrench?”

“Uh . . .” Drake patted his pockets, and after a moment produced a packet of wintergreen Life Savers. “Um, okay. So these Life Savers are my
very
special gift to you. They are symbolic of our relationship, which began approximately five minutes ago. Without you, Madison, my breath would never have such minty freshness.”

Madison laughed and helped herself to a Life Saver. It was possible that Drake wouldn’t turn out to be such an awful date after all, which would be nice. Besides, thanks to Jay, the companion bar hadn’t been set very high. And then maybe she and Drake could go on a second date—not because she thought she’d actually
like
him, but because she’d like a break from meeting guys for the first time on camera and having to pretend like she was enjoying herself. At this point she’d given up on compatible. She’d settle for tolerable.

(Because if she couldn’t have Ryan—and she couldn’t—what was the point?)

Gaby had the spark plug back and was stroking it like a pet. “Isn’t Jay sweet?” she asked Madison, her dark eyes shining.

Jay knocked back a glass of amber liquid and cleared his throat. He began to address the table (and by extension, the cameras). “I’ve been thinking about how, like, your feelings have no mass, or energy, or whatever, but they totally control what you do, right? It’s like they only exist in your mind. But no one’s going to tell you that they’re not totally real. Which is why I don’t care when scientists say that ghosts are only in your mind, because that doesn’t make them not real. Just because something’s in your mind doesn’t make it fake or made up. Do you know what I mean?”

Madison had no idea what to say. Why on earth had Jay started talking about ghosts?

But Gaby nodded. “
I
know what you mean,” she said. “Science is all in your mind, too, right? Like numbers and things. But numbers are totally real.”

Jay said, “Yeah. Ghosts and numbers, man, ghosts and numbers.”

Madison could feel the camera focusing in on her for a reaction shot, and she knew she was expected to look dumbfounded. (Which, actually, she was.) She widened her eyes, and then let a tiny smirk play in the corners of her mouth.

Drake leaned forward. “Are they serious?” he asked.

Madison nodded. “Oh yes,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

Drake looked over at them as if wondering what stupidity they’d think of next. “Do you want to dance or something?” he asked.

Madison turned around to scope out the small dance floor. It was mostly empty still, though the retro disco balls sparkled and spun while the DJ played catchy mashups.

“No thanks,” Madison said, offering Drake a small, apologetic smile. “Not right now.” She hadn’t been to this club before and she was starting to suspect it was lame. Who’d scouted this location—that idiot new producer, Stephen Marsh? She really had to do something about him. . . .

“Okay, negatory on the dancing,” Drake said, shrugging. “Maybe later.”

He looked a little nervous, Madison thought. Of
course
he wanted the date to go well. If it did, they’d go on another one, and maybe he’d have a shot at being a regular. Like Jay. And then he could quit his bartending job.

Madison missed Ryan with a sharp pang right then. He was about the only person in her life who she
knew
wasn’t using her for fame. In fact, he wanted nothing to do with her fame.

Not that Ryan was really in her life at the moment. But they’d finally talked the other night, when Madison made the mistake of answering her phone without looking to see who was calling. (She
did
want to hear Ryan’s voice, but she’d decided it was better if she didn’t—so until that particular fumble, quick texts had been their only means of contact.)

He’d told her that he missed her, and that all the animals at Lost Paws still missed her, too. His sisters had asked about her, he said, and when he and his mom had had lunch at Rosa’s Café, he’d thought of the date they’d had there.

“Sometimes I wonder if we made a mistake,” he’d said. “Do you ever think that?”

Madison had managed to dodge the question. For one thing, there was no “we” to discuss:
He
was the one who’d broken up with her, so if there had been a mistake, he’d been the one who made it. For another, she still wasn’t really sure how she felt.

Ryan was saying all the right things to her. How good he’d felt when he was around her. How he still wanted to call her twenty times a day. But Charlie had said all the right things to Madison, too, and look how well
that
turned out. He’d abandoned her all over again. Who was to say Ryan wouldn’t do the same thing?

Drake reached out and lightly touched her arm. “You all right?” he asked.

Madison nodded. “Of course. What are the rocket scientists talking about now?”

Jay leaned forward across the table and tapped Madison’s wrist. “Mad, you look mad,” he said. “Get it? Mad’s mad?”

She rolled her eyes and pulled her arm away. “I’m having the time of my life, Jay. Can’t you tell?”

Jay shook his head earnestly, apparently incapable of picking up on sarcasm. “Not really. You know, it’s like I’m always telling Gaby. Your mind is your most powerful organ, right? And it can totally control your emotions. So let’s pretend you’re not having fun, because right now you are. You can be, like, ‘Mind, you better shape up,’ and poof! it will. Your mind is the boss of your mind, if you know what I mean.”

“Wow,” Madison said. “I’ve never heard such profundities.”

“Now, I don’t know what that word means,” Jay said, “but I’m just saying, you can be happy if you want to, Madison.”

She felt herself stiffen. Was there actually some truth to what Jay said? Was she capable of not worrying so much about her father if she simply
decided not to
? She didn’t want to ponder that now. “I am happy,” she snapped. “I am ecstatic, in fact.” She reached over and grabbed Drake’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s dance.”

The cameraman lumbered after them, and she knew that anything she and Drake might say would be incomprehensible thanks to the thumping bass. Well, whatever, Trevor could throw in subtitles or not, she didn’t care. Right now she needed a break. Even if it meant dancing in public.

She smiled at Drake, relieved to be away from Jay and glad that for a moment, conversation wasn’t necessary. He misread her look as flirting and put his arms around her waist, and ever so delicately—politely even—Madison removed them. She tossed her hair and gave a little hip shake.

Drake was a nice guy; he really was. He probably looked good on camera, too, and maybe they’d date some more if Trevor asked her nicely. And if he agreed to reinstate the white flowers provision in her rider (not because she cared about alabaster peonies—because she cared about winning). But Madison didn’t want Drake getting the wrong idea. He would do, but he was no Ryan Tucker. Her body and her heart were both off-limits.

15

SPICING UP A STORY LINE

Carmen, wearing the coppery silk dress Laurel had picked out for her and a pair of Giuseppes (from last year, but still fabulous), eyed the raucous party from the balcony above. She’d braved the crowds around the wet bar, and then picked her way through knots of girls in tight dresses and guys in fitted deep-V’s before deciding to step away from it all. The place was a total meat market, and while Laurel would obviously love it if Carmen found someone to flirt with, Carmen wasn’t feeling it.

Although, considering what she’d read about her “roving eye” on
D-Lish
this morning, she’d probably be accused of flirting with any guy she happened to walk past.

It was tiresome, but Carmen could handle lies like this—they were just part of being famous. What bothered her far more than being called “boy crazy” was her suspicion that she had finally figured out the identity of the blog’s source. Too bad Carmen had invited her to the party before that particular lightbulb switched on.

“Hey, Carm,” Sophia yelled, gesturing for her to come down. Sophia had on some sort of Pocahontas costume: beads, a bikini top, and a fringed leather skirt. If anyone on
The Fame Game
needed a stylist, Carmen thought, it was
that
chick.

Carmen shook her head and pointed toward the stairs, as if they were simply too difficult to climb down at this particular moment. Sophia shrugged and immediately turned her attention to some guy with a long, gelled-back ponytail. She was an even bigger man-eater than her sister. Carmen had even heard rumors that Sophia was hooking up with someone in PopTV production, but she couldn’t summon the energy to care who. Besides it wouldn’t be the first time someone hooked up with a crew member.

Carmen knew that Kate and Madison had gone out to the pool area, where the hosts had set up tents strung with white lights and clusters of tables, as if the event were an upscale wedding instead of an enormous rager. Gaby, who seemed pretty tipsy (red flag!), was out there somewhere with Jay, and Fawn had texted a while ago to say that she and Lily had arrived and they were in search of some friend from high school that Fawn was dying for Carmen to meet.

Carmen, who’d learned a thing or two about avoiding parties thanks to early experiences at her parents’ house, had simply swiped a nearly full bottle of wine from an end table and brought it along with her upstairs, and now she was over halfway done with it. She was doing a terrible job of spicing up her story line at the moment, but she just needed a minute or two away from the spotlight.

She told herself that by the time she got a little further into the chardonnay, she’d feel inspired. She just hoped the producers wouldn’t find her before then. She knew Laurel was somewhere in the crowd searching for her; she’d gotten the text. But Laurel could play Find Carmen a little bit longer.

“Look at you, up here all by your lonesome,” Drew said, appearing by her side. He eyed the wine bottle. “Drinking alone?”

“Not anymore,” she said with a smile.

He settled in beside her and took a sip of his Sierra Nevada. She noticed a patch of gauze on his arm, right below his elbow.

“Did you get
another
tattoo?”

He nodded. “A bass clef.”

“Nerd,” she said affectionately, giving him a gentle poke in the ribs with her elbow. It was nice to see him. By himself. (When was the last time she’d seen him without Kate secured to his side?)

“I’m a nerd like Flea’s a nerd.”

Carmen frowned. “Who’s Flea?”

Drew looked shocked. “Oh, only the bassist for a minor band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You might have heard of them?”

Carmen shrugged. “Never liked them that much,” she said.

“Well, he’s great. And bassists—”

“Are the unsung heroes of rock ’n’ roll, I know,” Carmen said. Her dad had an entire speech about Paul McCartney’s bass playing, but Carmen very rarely listened to it. “So, where’s your other half?” she asked. Just to be polite.

“She and Madison had some deep secrets to discuss on camera or something,” he said.

“Madison’s probably giving her the numbers of all her plastic surgeons,” Carmen said.

Drew pulled back. “Whoa,” he said. “Kate would never.”

“Well, she did just bleach her hair almost white,” Carmen pointed out. “So you never know.”

“That’s a totally different thing,” Drew said. “And she looks great.”

“I know, I know,” Carmen said. “But Mad is all about surgical enhancements, in case her bra size doesn’t make that blatantly obvious.”

“Didn’t I see an item about
you
getting something done?” Drew said. He grinned and squeezed his pecs suggestively.

Carmen was
so over
people bringing up things they’d read about her online or in
Gossip
. But she kept her tone light. “That was last month’s news, Drew. But, no, I didn’t, in case you had any doubts. You should know, you practically live in my apartment.” Then she bit her lip, wondering if she should go on. Should she talk to Drew about her suspicions? She knew that he didn’t like being in the middle of a conflict. But he was her best friend, even if they didn’t spend that much time together these days, and wouldn’t he want to know? How she’d seen something she’d really hoped she wouldn’t?

Besides the whole boy-crazy accusation,
D-Lish
had quoted “a source close to the actress” saying that she “definitely isn’t pining for Luke Kelly. In fact, she says she’s keeping her dating options wide open, and she might have her eye on a certain hot young rocker.”

It was
exactly
what Carmen had said to Lily a few days ago in Venice, but so far she hadn’t been able to bring herself to confront her (so-called) friend. She’d talked to Fawn about it, and Fawn had told her to keep the information to herself for a while. “Let’s wait and see,” Fawn had said. “Honestly, if you confront her she might say more stuff about you. It’s better to phase her out.”

So Carmen had been quietly worrying about the situation ever since, which might have been why she wasn’t really in a party mood.

“So,” Drew said. “How’s tricks?”

“Remember how Luke told me that I should feed fake information to my friends?” Carmen blurted.

“Yeah. Didn’t he want you to say you were considering Scientology? Did you? Because I didn’t read that, but I would have liked to. ‘Carmen Curtis works to uncover her thetan, the omniscient, non-material core capable of unlimited creativity. . . .’” He snickered.

“It’s not funny, Drew,” Carmen said. “And it’s
weird
you know their lingo. But anyway, it’s annoying to have lies printed about you all the time. Even if they’re small ones. What if you saw your picture tomorrow on the web and the caption was like, ‘Drew Scott covers up his new One Direction tattoo’?”

He grinned. “Now, that
would
be funny. Can you plant that somewhere, too?”

Carmen drained her glass of wine and sloshed some more in her cup. “The thing is,” she said, “I told Lily that I had my eye on someone besides Luke, which of course I
don’t
, and it showed up on
D-Lish
.”

“But anyone could have offered up a lie like that. It’s too generic.”

Carmen shook her head. She was glad that Drew always assumed the best about people, but he couldn’t
always
be right. “I gave Lily a name, though. And then I basically see it in print. That’s pretty specific. It’s always the same writer, too. Like there’s some reporter who has it in for me.”

“The reporter’s only printing what he’s being told.”

“By Lily,” Carmen repeated. “So what I’m thinking is, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Drew grinned his goofy, familiar grin. “And where there’s wine, there’s a party. Why are you not sharing?”

Carmen handed him the bottle and he took a sip right out of it. For a moment she was annoyed at him—for not taking the gossip thing seriously, and for drinking the wine she had begun to think of as her personal bottle.

But then Drew put his long, tattooed arm around her shoulder. “Oh, CC,” he said. (He was the only person not related to her who was allowed to call her that.) “I’ve missed you. We never hang out anymore.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” she said.

She sighed. She was willing to drop the Lily subject. And she wouldn’t let herself say
anything
about Drew walking around her apartment in a towel. Or how she had come to refer to him and Kate as Krew. She was only going to focus on the positive.

So she drank her wine and thought about how loyal he had been to her, all through high school. How he had been her chauffeur and protector and confidant. How he’d thrown her a surprise party on her fifteenth birthday, and taught her how to drive a stick shift, and taken her to the prom when her stupid boyfriend dumped her the week before. Drew had always, always been there for her. He was her rock.

But now he was there for Kate.

Carmen felt her spirits sag. She noticed that the edges of the room seemed slightly warped and fuzzy: Either she’d suddenly developed nearsightedness or she was getting a little drunk.

Thank God she wasn’t down with the rest of those people, having a camera focusing in on her face. She was so glad to be hiding out with Drew on the balcony, above it all.

“Remember the night my car broke down and you came to rescue me on PCH?” Carmen asked.

“And then we went down to the beach and sat on the sand—”

“—and it was totally freezing, but you rolled up your pants and went in anyway—” she said, feeling better already.

Drew threw back his head and laughed. “—and then when I splashed you and you got so mad at me, and then you made me buy you a burger and a shake at Mel’s Diner even though it was, like, two a.m. by then—”

“—and my parents about
killed
me when I came in the door, but when I told them I was with you they weren’t mad anymore. And they made us hot cocoa and we all sat in the kitchen and talked. . . .” She was almost giddy, remembering.

It occurred to Carmen in that moment that being friends with Drew was one of the few decisions she’d ever made that her dad hadn’t questioned.

Drew had loved her so much then. Why hadn’t she ever loved him back?

She felt achingly nostalgic for the time before all this, when they were inseparable. And then nostalgia made her suddenly wild and reckless. “Drew,” she said softly. He turned to her, the smile still on his face. And she leaned toward him and kissed him on the mouth.

Almost immediately, he recoiled.

“Whoa, Carmen,” he said, backing away from her. “What are you doing?”

Her heart was hammering in her chest. She had no idea what to say.

He held his hand over his lips. “You
kissed
me,” he said.

As if she didn’t know that! “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” she said, instantly full of regret. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I
wasn’t
thinking.”

Drew was shaking his head. “It’s really weird,” he said. He looked at her sternly. “And totally inappropriate.”

She wanted to crawl under the Turkish kilim rug covering the polished wood floor. Or dive over the railing into the party below.

Drew stood up abruptly. “I think I should go,” he said.

Carmen didn’t say anything at all. She only nodded. And then she watched him walk away and disappear into the crowd.

She could only hope he wouldn’t tell Kate. She could trust him, couldn’t she? He wouldn’t want to cause conflict between the two of them, especially now that they lived together. He knew Trevor loved fights and he wouldn’t give him the pleasure of airing one.

Carmen had managed to convince herself that it was no big deal—no harm, no foul—when she put her hand on the waistband of her dress and felt something.

Her mike pack.

It was still on and recording every word.