Messy

by Cocks, Heather

  “I couldn’t live here,” Max said, peering out the window of Molly’s SUV. “I would be down there all day staring at those things to see if they’re still solid. What if there’s a big storm?”

  “Okay, for future reference, I do not want my blog to be full of boring commentary about architectural safety and, like, El Niño,” Brooke said as Molly guided the car toward the party’s valet-for-hire. She was clearly feeling like herself again. “Although, actually, maybe Daddy decided to come for research. They’re already talking about an Avalanche! sequel called Mudslide?!?”

  “That can’t be. They only just finished shooting Avalanche! last week,” Molly pointed out.

  Brooke fiddled with the clasp of her silver evening clutch. “Well, I saw a script outline on Daddy’s desk, and that’s what it said. I don’t make these things up. I just report them.”

  “You seem to do a lot of snooping around that office,” Max noted.

  Brooke turned around in her seat and glared at her. “I’m just observant,” she said. “Like you’re going to need to be if you’re going to pull off being me.”

  “I think donating one percent of my working brain to the cause should cover it.”

  “Zing,” Brooke retorted sarcastically.

  “Okay, everybody, retreat to your corners,” Molly said, throwing the car into Park. “We’re here.”

  The girls climbed out, gave their names to a ponytailed blonde wearing a black shift dress and holding a clipboard, and were waved up the gravel driveway toward a large amber-lit tent that had been erected on the house’s massive side lawn. A convivial din emanated from behind the cloth as waiters bustled in and out, half of them ferrying snacks and full glasses of champagne, the others toting trays piled high with overturned plates and crumpled napkins.

  Inside, chandeliers hung from the underside of the tent, throwing a dim, flattering light over the bar, a dance floor, and white-draped round tables topped with tight bunches of hyacinths. It echoed one of the receptions Max had read about in the copy of InStyle Weddings that had been in the Fu’d break room for the last six weeks. Oh, please, can this be a surprise wedding? That was almost as trendy as a secret baby. Writing about it would be a slam dunk.

  “There he is,” Brooke said, gesturing with her chin toward a tall, handsome fortysomething man in a tuxedo sitting at a corner table drinking a low-carb beer and staring suspiciously at a tiny hamburger from which he had taken one bite.

  Brick Berlin visibly brightened and leaped to his feet. “Girls! Welcome! Group hug!”

  He pulled Brooke and Molly into a tight embrace.

  “Hi, Dad,” Molly said, but it came out muffled because her mouth was covered by his giant biceps. “Burger no good?”

  “Bad news, precious child—I tasted mayonnaise,” he said. “Even though I specifically asked if they were condimented. People are so careless. My trainer says it takes a thousand crunches to offset a mayonnaise incident, and I already accidentally ate a tub of potato salad this week.”

  He peered over Brooke’s blonde curls at Max.

  “And who is this?” he asked. “Wait! Let me guess. You’re the foreign exchange student Brooke sent away for!”

  Brooke pulled away from her father. “Daddy, that was five years ago. This is Molly’s friend. She comes over to the house, like, three times a week.”

  Recognition flooded Brick’s face. “You mean the girl who’s named after cheese?”

  “I’m Max,” said Max, wishing she had something more glamorous to offer.

  Brick rubbed his hands together. “I’m not familiar with that one—sounds like one of the more exotic Bavarian cheeses, yes?”

  In the face of his eager smile, Max felt flummoxed. Brick’s freakishly charismatic enthusiasm had a way of sweeping people up, and the next thing you knew, you had agreed to something ridiculous. This explained why anyone was even considering a fifth Dirk Venom movie, and in that moment, his charm was hypnotizing Max into nodding dumbly. And then speaking dumbly.

  “Yes,” she heard herself say. “It’s, um, Maxschtagen.” Huh? “One of the rarer wax-coated cheeses.” What are you saying? “It’s very creamy, with a fruity bite.” Stop talking. “It comes from the milk of mountain goats that are fed white chocolate and strawberries.”

  Brooke kicked the back of Max’s foot. Max gratefully closed her mouth.

  “That is fascinating, Max!” Brick boomed, clapping her on the back. “I feel enriched! Now, pardon me, but I have to go speak to someone about this condiment problem. You girls have fun. The rest of the kids are down in the guesthouse.” He pressed his hands together. “But be on your guards. Trans fats lurk like a cat burglar.”

  “Goats fed white chocolate and strawberries?” Molly quoted as they exited the tent. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know,” Max said defensively. “He thought I was Brie. I got all flustered.”

  “You are hideous under pressure,” Brooke noted as they clambered down candlelit brick steps toward a giant guesthouse that was easily larger than Max’s own home. “Although I appreciate the attempt to improv. Unfortunately, he’s probably going to go home and try to order that cheese, and then I’ll have to have a talk with him.” She sighed. “Brick has loved exotic cheese ever since those three weeks he was on Atkins.”

  “Why is there a separate kids’ party?” Max asked as they neared a set of French doors. “This feels like Thanksgiving at my grandmother’s.”

  “That other one is for Moxie’s parents, really,” Brooke said. “An excuse to network and stuff, plus they can pretend to be chaperoning. This is the real thing.” She stopped and grabbed Max’s arm. “Are you ready? Maxine, this is important. I don’t want you to be overwhelmed.”

  “Brooke, I’ve watched Lust for Life since the womb,” Max said. “Nothing fazes me.”

  Brooke shrugged, then threw open the doors. A wall of sound hit them in the face—a mixture of aggressive hip-hop blaring from the deejay’s deck and a thousand drunk, screaming conversations. If the event outside looked like a wedding reception, then this was the bachelor party, complete with a stripper pole mounted in the corner of the dimly lit open-plan space. Max needed eight-inch leg extensions just to have a prayer of seeing through the crowd, but she could make out at least three teen stars in a twenty-foot radius alone, and—grossly—several actors well into their thirties. Nearby, a coffee table was chockablock with magazines Moxie had been in over the last two years, one of which bore a cover photo of her in a gingham blouse and the headline WHY I’M WAITING FOR MY WEDDING NIGHT.

  “Whoa,” Molly said. “This is… bold.”

  “This is awesome,” Max corrected her. “I knew that whole ‘Jesus is my talent manager’ shtick was bogus. Seriously, I’ve never read an interview with her where she didn’t use the word amen.”

  Brooke, totally unmoved, was idly filing a wayward nail.

  “Where is Moxie, anyway?” Molly asked, craning her neck over the crowd. “I can’t see her.”

  As if on cue, the place went dark. “Thanks for coming, everyone,” Moxie Stilts’s voice said from the vicinity of the sky. “I’ve got a treat for you.”

  As the moody piano strains from Moxie’s hit song “Metaphor” played—it was a ballad about growing up that, ironically (and possibly unintentionally), was composed entirely of similes—a spotlight popped on and illuminated a swing hanging from the ceiling. Perched atop it was Moxie Stilts, wearing a bustier, fishnets, platform stilettos, and hair extensions so robust it looked like she’d scalped Ke$ha.

  “Whoa. She’s gone full Burlesque,” Max breathed.

  “I’m like a sapling busting open and trying to take roooooot,” Moxie crooned, wriggling coyly as the swing began to descend to the floor.

  “Boring,” Brooke said, yawning.

  Molly and Max exchanged grins.

  “What?” Brooke said. “If you’ve seen one repressed kiddie-TV starlet crack under pressure, you’ve seen them all.”

  “Well
, I haven’t seen it yet,” Max said, as the backing track kicked into a club remix of “Metaphor.” Moxie landed on the floor and slinked over to the stripper pole. “Not in person, anyway. What is she thinking?”

  “Probably that she’s not going to get a whole lot of work when she’s twenty-five, if all she’s ever known for is playing a teen clothing designer with a talking sewing machine,” Brooke said, as Moxie bent over and swung her butt from side to side in time to the music. The crowd went nuts.

  “Oh, my God, I can’t look, but I can’t not look.” Molly grimaced.

  “Fresh as a dewdrop, like a lie turning true, I am finding my meaning, baby, and the metaphor is you,” Moxie panted. She really should’ve lip-synched, Max thought with uncharitable glee. As if in agreement, one of Moxie’s stockings snapped in half across her thigh.

  “Take it off!” shouted a guy Max was pretty sure had a daughter with one of the Pussycat Dolls.

  Brooke looked pointedly at the part of her arm where a watch would live, if she ever cared whether she was on time to anything. “How long is this going to go on?” she complained. “Downward spirals are so passé.”

  As if on cue, Moxie’s music faded out and the latest hit from Justin Timberlake’s new album came bursting over the speakers. Moxie took a distracted, sweaty bow.

  “Finally!” Brooke said. “Okay, I see a guy from The Wolf Pack who almost certainly deserves to meet me. Don’t forget to come find me, Max. Remember, this is work.” And with that, she disappeared into the crowd.

  “I don’t know how she can see anything in here except a bunch of civil misdemeanors,” Max said, gesturing at the writhing crowd. “I can’t believe this is your life.”

  Molly pulled a face. “This isn’t my life,” she said. “I mean, I guess tangentially, because of Brooke and Brick, but not really. My actual life is, like, school and my family and you and Teddy and worrying about getting into college and stuff. Thank God you’re here, or else Brooke would be forcing me to talk to that actor’s grody wingman.”

  Max watched, a tad lost, as a clutch of revelers passed around a tray of brightly colored shots. Even at Colby-Randall, where Max belonged about as much as those thirtysomething pervs did at this party, she had never felt this out of her depth. High school was just something everyone did for a few years until their real lives started. But this madness was some people’s real lives. How was she supposed to relate to this the way Brooke did? Brooke grew up with a pony, for Pete’s sake. The only pony Max ever owned was Dallas, Barbie’s Palomino, who eventually perished in a tragic weed-eater incident.

  A good writer ought to be able to inhabit anyone else’s brain, Teddy had told her earlier. The only problem was, Brooke’s brain was across the room trying to get digits from a guy who’d just spent five episodes in a time-traveling coma that taught him life lessons, and Max didn’t particularly want to go there.

  “Don’t freak out,” Molly said, watching Max’s face.

  Max exhaled. “How could you tell?”

  Molly smiled. “Your nostrils get all flare-y.”

  “I just want to do a good job.” For the money. And because if I can’t manage to write a blog about someone whose only thoughts are about shoes, maybe I’m not cut out for NYU.

  “You’ll be fine,” Molly told her. “Don’t think about what Brooke would want you to write. Think about what would make a fun read, and go from there.”

  “Well,” Max said, “I guess the bathroom is as good a place to start as any. If people aren’t debauching themselves in there, then this party is officially a failure.”

  Molly perched on the edge of a nearby leather sofa. She waved her phone. “I’ll be right here, texting Teddy words that rhyme with leggings. I guess Bone wants to write a song about some girl he met at American Apparel.”

  Max tried to make herself as narrow as possible and plunged into the immense, noisy crowd, hoping it would carry her in a helpful direction. Instead the sea of bodies bounced her around as if she were caught in a riptide.

  “—and then he said he couldn’t date me because his boyfriend wouldn’t like it. And I was, like, but it’s the Golden Globes,” Max overheard as she people-surfed past two tiny actresses she recognized from HBO. “It’s not like I was going to have sex with him. Probably.”

  Next, she was whipsawed toward where Moxie had made her entrance, thus getting jostled by people scrambling to get a photo with the actress, and then past a woman in giant square glasses screaming into her phone about how childbirth was an unacceptable excuse for missing a script deadline. Max was dumbfounded at how many people were inside the guesthouse. It had to be violating the fire code ten times over, although maybe it just felt crowded because she kept somehow getting shoved back past the same crazy people.

  “… But if I did sleep with him, do you think I could get him to change teams?”

  “… Oh, please, you can still type, why do you think they invented C-sections?”

  Max couldn’t take it. Parties like this were why Valium was invented. She gave up on delicacy and barreled in a straight line until she couldn’t feel flesh anymore. The mob spit her out near the kitchen, where an industrial-looking door was labeled MEN’S ROOM. Max cursed under her breath. But nobody was anywhere near it, so—after a look back at the suffocating crowd, and no sign of the ladies’ room—Max decided this was the hand of fate at work again, this time giving her bladder a nudge. She yanked open the heavy metal door, found nobody in any of the three stalls (just how many guests did the Stilts family usually have, anyway?), and was in and out in a flash, drying her hands on her pants as she hurriedly threw her shoulder into the door. This time, instead of opening, it smacked into something squishy and soft. Surprised, she stopped dead halfway through the doorway, which promptly swung back at her and banged into her face.

  “Ow!” Max said, stumbling backward, as a sharp pain shot through her sinuses, accompanied by fireworks behind her eyelids. She sank to her knees, holding her face.

  “Holy crap,” a male voice said from behind the door. Then he pulled it open and extracted Max while rubbing his own nose. “You okay?”

  “Blurgh,” was all Max could manage. Her vision was blurry. Can you knock yourself blind?

  “Let me see your face,” the man said, leading her into the kitchen. “Are you bleeding?”

  Max leaned against something that she hoped was solid, since she still couldn’t see very well. She gingerly touched her nose. “I don’t think so.”

  The man hoisted himself up onto the kitchen counter and wiggled his own face. “Well, that cleared my sinuses.”

  Max blinked the last bit of water out of her eyes and looked up at him. To her surprise, he was actually not a man, but a boy about her own age—he had gray eyes and dark hair and was sort of on the short side, for a guy (although he still had several inches on Max).

  “Can you breathe?” he asked.

  Max took a deep breath.

  “I meant through your nose,” he clarified.

  Duh. Maybe I have a concussion.

  “Here, let me look,” he said, pulling her toward him and prodding at her nose a little. He pressed on it carefully. “Does that hurt?”

  “No, actually,” Max said.

  “Does it feel like your nose is stuffed up all of a sudden?”

  “No.”

  The guy threw out his hands in a “ta-da” motion. “Excellent! I think you’re still in one piece,” he said.

  “Are you some kind of boy-genius doctor?” Max asked. “How do you know so much about broken noses?”

  He grinned. “This is Hollywood. I’m just acting like I know about broken noses. Also, I had mine broken at drama camp three years ago when part of the set for Platoon: The Musical fell on my face.”

  “Wow. War is dangerous.”

  “Apparently, so is going to the bathroom.”

  “I couldn’t figure out where the ladies’ room was,” Max explained, nodding out the kitchen window toward the still stagna
nt queue. “And I couldn’t handle the crowd anymore. I kept getting shoved up next to this pathetic actress who’s trying to sleep with her gay friend.”

  The boy shook his head. “Actors are so irritating.”

  “Tell me about it,” Max said. “I go to school with a girl who actually entered our Speech Day contest with a monologue about flutes that her character delivered in The Pied Viper.”

  His mouth fell open. “You go to school with Jennifer Parker?”

  “You know her?”

  “I’ve seen that movie like three times,” the boy said. “It’s what I watch if I’m depressed about my life. So that I know things could always be worse.”

  Holy crap, it’s like I’m talking to myself. “I’ll be sure to tell her you said that.”

  As they smiled at each other, Max became aware of the longish silence that had descended.

  “I guess I should get back to my friend,” she stammered. “I ditched her as soon as the pole-dancing wrapped up.”

  “At least you didn’t abandon her in the middle of it,” the boy said. “I’m only here because Moxie and my roommate share a manager. He ran up to her as soon as the spotlight came on. I spent the whole time wondering where I was supposed to look.”

  “What did you land on?”

  He wiggled his iPhone. “Angry Birds,” he said. “But I should probably go back to being a wingman. It was nice to meet you… um…?”

  “Max,” she said, sticking out her hand.

  “Max,” he repeated. “Explains why you were in the men’s room.” And with a wink, he hopped down and jogged outside, knocking into the door frame a bit on his way.

  Max chuckled to herself and gave her nose one final, gentle squeeze. It seemed to be in working order, or at least it hadn’t fallen off. Apparently this was a night of firsts for her: first insane Hollywood party, first time passing herself off as the namesake of a rare dairy product, first potential broken nose, first encounter with someone who similarly appreciated the awfulness of Jennifer’s résumé. All that was left was her first Brooke Berlin blog entry. If only she could figure out how the hell to pull it off.