Authors: Heather Cocks
Spoiled (36 page)
“No kidding.”
Molly turned around to see Charmaine walking toward her, two cans of Diet Coke in her hand.
“I thought I might find you here,” she said, handing one
to Molly. “Of course, I already looked at your house, and Starbucks, and Danny’s. And briefly at Old Navy. Turns out you weren’t
in the two-for-twelve-dollars tank top pile.”
“Danny and I broke up. Finally,” Molly said.
“So he told me just now,” Charmaine said, sitting down on the grave next to Molly. “Hi, Laurel,” she yelled into the grass.
“I’m feeding Molly all-natural organic carrot juice!”
“It’s bad luck to lie to the dead,” Molly said. “Also, if she can hear you, I bet she can see you.”
“Eh, she’ll appreciate the effort,” Charmaine said. “How are you feeling?”
Molly grimaced and cracked open her can of soda. “I don’t know. Tired. I feel like I spent the last few months running away
from everything, and then I turned around and ran away again.”
“Well, you
were
all-state in cross-country.”
“Do you think I was wrong to come back?” Molly asked.
Charmaine plucked a blade of grass and twirled it in her fingers. She held it up to her mouth and a piercing whistle sailed
through the cemetery. This was one of her favorite tricks. Molly had missed it.
“Listen, Molly, I don’t know what it was like out there, because I wasn’t with you,” Charmaine said. “But that tabloid story
was pretty much a stone-cold bitch move from Brooke, so I get why you left.”
“All I could think about was how much easier everything would have been if I’d never left Indiana.”
“Hardly,” Charmaine said. “It would have been exactly
the same. Danny still would’ve been the Mellencamp keg-stand champion. You’d still have had to deal with people coming up
to you in the produce department and bursting into tears over the oranges. It might not have been any different, but it wouldn’t
have been easy, either.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“Do you really think Brooke did it on purpose?”
“Now that I’ve had some time to process it, I’m not so sure,” Molly admitted. “I did accidentally do something similar to
her, so… Yeah. She might be telling the truth.”
Charmaine looked up at the sky, as if for inspiration. “Okay,” she finally said. “Do you want me to be supportive here? Or
do you need Get-a-Grip Friend?”
“Get-a-Grip Friend,” Molly said. “Please.”
“Okay. Well, siblings fight,” Charmaine said. “All the time. It’s just a fact. And, yeah, this is a pretty big fight, but
you of all people should know how important it is to appreciate your family while they’re still around. Also, you can’t just
keep bouncing back and forth from West Cairo to L.A. like a Ping-Pong ball every time something goes wrong. This is your life.
Don’t live it in limbo with one foot here and one foot there. Pick a city and deal.”
Molly was silent for a spell. “Dude,” she said. “That was a good Get-a-Grip speech.”
“I practiced it in the car.” Charmaine grinned. “I also had a whole thing about how committing to L.A. means breaking up with
Danny, but you beat me to it.”
“So you think I should go back?” Molly asked.
Charmaine sighed.
“I don’t
want
you to go back,” she said, after a long swig of her soda. “I miss you. But I also know that you and I are going to be fine
no matter what. You just need to figure out what it really means to you to be a Berlin, because you are one, whether you like
it or not. And I say, go
be
one. If you’re here, you never really will be.” She crossed her arms smugly. “Also, if you go back one more time, you’ll
probably have racked up enough frequent flyer miles to buy me a free ticket to L.A. I’m just saying.”
Molly laughed. “Nice to see you’re unbiased.”
“I just want to see Brick’s Viking bust in person,” Charmaine said. “But I also think you already know everything I told you,
and you’re just scared to lose your safety net. Which I get. But if it were me, I’d say it’s worth another shot.”
Molly pondered this. It was true that, when things in Los Angeles were at their most cinematically cruddy, it had always been
comforting to think she could just head back to the plains. But she hadn’t been thinking about running away the whole time
she was there. In fact, before she’d seen
Hey!
, Molly had honestly been… happy. Brooke’s vivaciousness was entertaining—when she was using it in the service of good, anyway.
Brick’s warmth and welcome had been genuine, if scattershot. And then there was Max. And Stan. And Teddy.
Teddy.
“Don’t just go back for the guy, though,” Charmaine said, as if she’d read Molly’s mind. “He’s cute and everything, but I
think we all learned from what happened to
Bobbie Jean on
Lust for Life
that making a decision based on a boy is hardly ever a good idea.”
“I really don’t think Teddy is going to give me a face transplant.”
Charmaine rolled her eyes. “Bobbie Jean would’ve appreciated the advice.”
Molly laughed, resting her palms against the grass and leaning back until her shoulders shrugged up to her ears, her fingers
twining with the grass on Laurel’s grave as if they were holding hands. She could stay here, with Charmaine and the ghost
of Laurel and small pieces of Danny, but also with the stigma of being the girl who came crawling back because she couldn’t
handle Hollywood. Or she could go back and face down Brooke, Brick, and the shark tank of Colby-Randall Preparatory School,
and do it better this time. There was a certain injustice in having to suck it up and go back to them with her tail between
her legs, but maybe that was a part of growing up that she needed to learn—a punishment for not facing her problems head-on,
the way she should have. If Laurel’s death was going to teach her something, maybe it was to never leave a question unanswered,
or a fight unfought.
Molly stood up and brushed the grass off her jeans.
“Where are you going?” Charmaine asked, looking up at her.
“I think I have a phone call to make,” Molly said.
She bent down and hugged Charmaine, squeezing her cheek to her friend’s head.
“Thank you for being my other sister,” she said. “And for having the guts to tell me to get over it.”
“No problem,” Charmaine said. “Besides, in the movies, everyone loves the Get-a-Grip Friend. Now get out of here and go pack.
Again.”
The sun peeked through the clouds for the first time that day. Molly tipped her head back and closed her eyes against the
light. It felt like validation from her mother that she was, at last, doing the right thing.
“A family is what you make of it,” Laurel had said two days before she died, her knitting needles churning out one final scarf.
And it was time to make something real out of hers. It was time to go back to Bel Air, back to the Berlins, and make it right.
For good.
“OUT WITH IT, BROOKE.
I’m not going to wait all day.”
Brooke sighed. This was harder than she’d thought.
“Young lady, I do not want to hear attitude from you.”
“Fine, fine,” Brooke grumbled. “Um, Nebraska.”
“Alaska!”
“Arkansas.”
“Wyoming!” Brick crowed.
“Arkansas ends in
s
, Daddy, remember?”
Brick clapped his hands together, then swiftly clamped them back down on the wheel of the RV.
“You’re right, of course,” he said. “That Colby-Randall education is worth every dime. See, isn’t this fun? On the journey
to fix the past, we’re giving each other a present.”
He reached for his phone.
“Do
not
type on that thing while you’re driving,” Brooke crabbed. “Last time you did that, you almost ran over a VW Bug.”
“Punch buggy orange!” Brick crowed, smacking Brooke in the arm. “God, I’m so glad we decided to drive!”
We?
This little trip was the opposite of what Brooke had envisioned when she’d suggested going to Indiana to beg Molly for a second
chance. In Brooke’s mind, they’d zip over there in a leather airplane seat, nibbling spiced nuts and drinking Champagne. Instead,
Brick got a starry look in his eyes—always a harbinger of doom—and started waxing poetic about seeing America and connecting
as a family. Well, first he’d made Brooke repeat the whole sordid story of the tabloid three times, delivered a stern lecture
on trusting strangers, and spent ten minutes on the phone with his lawyer wondering if they could sue Trip Kendall. But once
he accepted her apology as sincere and berated himself (dramatically) for not being more of a presence during Molly’s first
weeks there, Brick had consumed himself with how to get her back in the most normal, non-Hollywood way possible.
The radio had broken somewhere around Barstow, so Brick had made her play every corny road-trip game he’d found on the Internet,
forced her to eat Tater Tots at a Sonic Drive-In, and hopped off course in Kansas to visit the famous six-legged steer at
Prairie Dog Town. Brick even insisted on reading aloud three pages of Jack Kerouac
over breakfast each day, because he thought it would help him “be one with the road.” One night, they’d slept at a Holiday
Inn that Brooke was pretty sure hadn’t seen housekeeping since a murder happened in its bathtub. The whole thing was horrifying.
She would never feel clean again.
Even more annoyingly, Brick was constantly delighted by these horrors, as if anything located outside Beverly Hills were the
most hilarious alien oddity.
“Great news, kiddo—I decided to detour us up the 29 to see the world’s largest ball of stamps!” Brick said, as if to prove
her point. “Now there’s a Facebook photo for you!”
“Yeah, a lot of good that’ll do me. I still can’t get any reception on this thing,” Brooke complained, shaking her cell phone
as if that would jar loose a few bars. “And the air-conditioning is jammed.”
Brick balled his hand into a fist and banged on the dashboard’s air vents. One of them cracked.
“Oops,” he said. “Gotta talk to my trainer about cutting back on the supplements.”
Brooke crossed her arms in a huff and stared out the passenger window, which was pocked with dead bugs and a thin film of
dust. Brick had picked up this hideous RV on craigslist, figuring that was more authentic than buying one new and having it
customized with plasma screens. “Besides,” he’d said, “if we do that, we might as well just take my
Avalanche!
trailer!”
He’d laughed, like this was the most ridiculous idea ever, but Brooke had seen the trailer Brick used on set. It
had a hot tub, and DIRECTV. It was paradise compared to their current monstrosity, which was beige with a metallic magenta
stripe on the side that made it look like a really boxy Nike shoe on wheels. Brooke refused to sleep in it, because it smelled
like cigar smoke and feet (although the Hitchcockian Holiday Inn wasn’t much better), and no matter where or how she arranged
her body in any of the seats, her knees hurt and her butt went numb. If this was the Great American road trip experience,
Brooke saw no reason not to fly private jets for the rest of her life.
“Shouldn’t we at least find a phone that
works
and tell Molly we’re coming?” Brooke asked.
“No, Sunshine,” Brick said. “Surprise is our greatest weapon. We’re going to sweep her off her feet. She’s going to be thrilled!”
She’d better.
Because if this tremendous act of self-sacrifice didn’t prove how sorry Brooke was, nothing would. Indiana could not arrive
soon enough.
“Oops,” Brick said. “We’ve been going the wrong way on the 29 for about an hour.”
Brooke clenched her jaw. A tiny car passed them on the left. She made a fist and threw all her weight behind jamming it into
Brick’s shoulder.
“Punch buggy white,” she said, her lips curling into a grin.
We’d like to thank our friends and families for their endless patience, love, and ability to pry us away from our computers
when we need a little sunlight—especially Jim and Susan Morgan; Elizabeth Morgan; Kevin, Dylan, and Liam Mock; Alan and Kathleen
Cocks; Alison, Mike, Leah, Lauren, and Maddie Hamilton; Julie, Colin, and Nicholas O’Sullivan; and the amazing Maria Huezo,
without whom no words would’ve been written at all. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Scott Hoffman, superagent and oenophile
extraordinaire; Ed Labowitz, the best lawyer and lunch date in town; and our fearless editors, Cindy Eagan and Elizabeth Bewley,
for their gifts of faith, trust, and brilliant guidance. We’re so grateful you all helped us bring
Spoiled
to life.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons (living or dead) is purely coincidental. Although some celebrities’ names and real entities and places are mentioned, they are all used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2011 by Well Played, Inc.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.