Messy

by Cocks, Heather

  “I hope you had the tiiiime of your liiiiives,” she could hear Moxie Stilts rapping from the guesthouse, in a megaloud, mega-misguided cover of the Green Day high school graduation favorite.

  With a bolstering nod, Max shoved her way back into the drunken abyss. Whatever she was going to write, it was probably going to start in there.

  OPENBRKE.COM

  MARCH 12

  If you’ve found this blog, chances are—unless you were looking for information on German bodies of water and you’re really terrible at Google—you already know a few things about me: I’m Brooke Berlin, I’m sixteen, my father is in at least one movie that’s airing on TV right this second, and my mother is a hand model who ran off and left us without a word when I was a kid (no point in pretending you didn’t see the People article). What you may not know: My mother is going to regret that; unlike half my peers in this town, I’m perfectly content to act sixteen and not twenty-six; I can pick exactly the right shoe to go with every outfit; I’m an actress; and even though I am naturally blonde, I also know how to use a semicolon.

  I can also use hyphens—like, technically, I am a “student-actress”—but I chose not to mention that up top because the hyphen is the most overused punctuation mark in this entire town. I don’t mean by the over-30 set; I am, after all, the offspring of a hyphenate. But my father worked as an actor for years before he added “director” and “producer” to it. In his case, I approve of the hyphen. He earned it. There is sweat on that hyphen, as opposed to the ones worn by most of Young Hollywood. They’re all in a huge hurry to stuff their résumés and claim that they’re model-actor-designers, or reality star-author-singers—or in the case of Moxie Stilts, an actress-singer-call girl, or at least I assume that’s the message she was sending at her party this past weekend. Why else would she writhe around in lingerie, letting men twice her age do shots of Cuervo out of her collarbone? (Memo to God: Despite what she tells the magazines, Moxie is cheating on You with half of Southern California. I assume You’re aware, but she sure had the rest of the world fooled.)

  So, my message to the junior hyphenates is: Chill out. You’re so busy cramming your résumés to the breaking point—paranoid everyone will forget you exist unless you do everything, everywhere, all the time—that you’re losing what there is about yourself that you actually want us to remember. Like, does any little kid wake up one morning and think, When I grow up, I want to have a really cheesy eponymous fashion line at Kmart? No. They want to be baseball players or rock stars or actors. But my peers are all so obsessed with being famous that they don’t care anymore what they’re famous for; they just want attention. Case in point: Name Moxie Stilts’s last movie. Now name her last TV commercial. I bet you remembered her bacne-cream endorsement first.

  People like that are the reason you’re probably reading this blog thinking, Great, another idiot wants her fifteen minutes. But I don’t want to be tarred with that brush. I want to work. I am capable of showing up on time, learning lines, arriving early and leaving late, and getting in and out of cars without flashing my underwear. (Somebody else at Moxie’s party was not so lucky. I don’t want to tell you who it was, but let’s just say I saw more pieces of her than my retinas could handle.) And so I’ve started this blog to try to prove that we’re not all alike. Let my fellow teen and twentysomething peers overextend themselves, act the fool, or peddle some false saintly image and then bust out of their petticoats as soon as they’re legally able to seduce a backup dancer (ahem, Ms. Stilts). I just want to do me, and do it right. I’d rather have respect, self- and otherwise, than infamy. Why nobody else seems to feel that way is a mystery. But I’m coming. You’re on notice.

  And so are these people:

  1) Confidential to HBO girl: HE’S GAY. ABANDON SHIP.

  2) To the Cuervo lickers: Seriously? Half of you are married. I know this because a) you are recognizably famous, b) you left your rings on, and c) HELLO? WHAT PART ABOUT BEING RECOGNIZABLE DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? Hope your prenups are airtight.

  3) To Hollywood’s divorce attorneys: Pursuant to the above, you might want to increase your hourly rate.

  4) To Moxie: In addition to everything else, cool it with the eyeliner. You look like you face-planted into the La Brea Tar Pits.

  Until next time,

  B.

  seven

  MAX WOKE UP TO the sound of her cell phone buzzing somewhere near her left foot. She hadn’t even realized she’d taken the phone to bed with her, the mystery of which was explained when Max figured out that she technically hadn’t—she’d just left it in the pocket of the jeans that she never took off the night before. Blearily, she stared at the screen.

  BROOKE BERLIN, it said, 6:24 AM.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Max muttered. I am so not on the clock, she thought, and hit Ignore.

  She flopped onto her pillow. Despite Brooke’s earlier assurance that Max could just e-mail her the entry, somehow they’d spent hours at the Berlin house the night before, poring over every last comma splice. But every time Max felt herself getting irritated by Brooke’s nitpickery—and occasional insistence on dangling participles—she reminded herself how much cash Brooke was forking over on a weekly basis. Max had always been disgusted by artists she thought were sellouts (people who agreed to have their music in a tampon ad, for example), but now that she herself had secretly sold out, she realized a fat paycheck really did make an irritating job much easier. Dennis might’ve had a happier workforce if he’d paid above minimum wage.

  The phone buzzed again. BROOKE BERLIN, 6:26 AM.

  I am not on call. I don’t care how much you’re paying me. I am keeping regular business hours.

  She rolled over and tried to go back to sleep for the last sad thirty-four minutes before her alarm clock would sound. But behind her eyelids, Max was wide awake. And kind of nervous. She thought her blog entry was good. Molly had laughed out loud at it. But it was the first thing Max had ever written that might be seen by someone who wasn’t biased in her favor, or contractually obligated to grade her. Strangers might read it. And hate it. And then leave rude comments telling her to shut her dumb face. Max groaned, remembering the many comments she herself had made on a variety of blogs in which she did things like correct the bloggers’ grammar or wonder why anyone thought she might be interested in reading about, say, Jessica Alba’s birthing plan. In retrospect, this all seemed karmically dangerous.

  Her phone buzzed a third time. Max grabbed it angrily, but this time it was Molly.

  “What the hell is going on over there?” Max answered. “It’s practically still the middle of the night!”

  “I knew you were awake!” Brooke said.

  “I never would have fallen for that trick if I were really awake,” Max groaned. “Does Molly even know you have her phone?”

  “Of course not,” Brooke said. “I snuck into her room and stole it. She sleeps really soundly. I’m worried she might have some kind of medical condition.”

  “I wish I had a medical condition. I would have loved to have slept through this.”

  “Whatever,” Brooke said. “Anyway, do you think we should have given Moxie Stilts a fake name?”

  Max flopped backward onto her bed. “We talked about this for six hours last night,” she said. “To the point where I thought I was having a nightmare where all you did was stand in front of me and yap, and then I realized it was real.”

  “I had a dream that she sued me for calling her a fire-breathing ass-clown.”

  “We didn’t call her a fire-breathing ass-clown,” Max said, closing her eyes. Maybe she could snooze through this conversation.

  “But—”

  “Oh, my God, Brooke,” Max groaned, almost involuntarily. “You have said more words to me in the last twenty-four hours than you have in five years.”

  “I don’t know if you understand this, but my reputation is on the line here,” Brooke said huffily.

  “We didn’t say anything that was
n’t true,” Max said, “and I doubt she’s even going to read it.”

  “But—”

  “Also, do you really think Moxie Stilts is going to sue Brick Berlin’s daughter?” Max asked. This was her last-ditch argument. “She’d never work in this town again. I’d be more worried about having publicly insulted someone your dad wants to cast in a TV show.”

  She instantly regretted being so glib. There was a long moment of silence on the other end of the line. Max began to hope that Brooke had hung up on her.

  “He won’t care. Brick always says that the truth is the most powerful weapon we have, besides the P90X DVDs,” Brooke said, although she sounded a bit wobbly. “Anyway. I’ll see you at school. Go back to sleep, or you’ll look like a puffer fish.”

  Max punched the End button and hurled her phone at the floor.

  Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Kevin and Bean, the morning guys on KROQ, came on her clock radio braying about something that had happened on American Idol the night before—apparently one of the contestants had sung an R. Kelly song while wearing a toga.

  “Why, God?” Max wailed at her bedroom ceiling. About all of it.

  God didn’t respond, so Max rolled out of bed and went to school. Unfortunately, Brooke was no easier to avoid there: She was waiting by Max’s locker, impossible to miss in a brightly printed Peter Som minidress and clutching her iPad like a life preserver.

  “We have three comments already,” Brooke said softly by way of a greeting.

  “How many of them are your aliases?” Max asked, twirling her padlock.

  “None!” Brooke said, turning the tablet around so Max could see OpenBrooke.com’s pink-themed home page. There were, as promised, three comments. The first one said, “Resplendent!”

  “That’s clearly Arugula,” Max pointed out. “Doesn’t count.”

  “But look at the other two! LOLWHATEVER98 wrote, ‘You’re a tar pit.’ ”

  “I don’t think that’s a compli—”

  “And then right after that, Anonymous wrote, ‘Nip-slip, please!’ ”

  “Congratulations. You’ve really won over the heart of America.” Max opened her locker and dumped her schoolbooks into a messy pile, on top of another messy pile.

  Brooke hugged her iPad to her chest. “Everyone knows you’re not really famous unless half the world wants to see you naked, and the other half hates your guts,” she explained cheerfully. “So we’re off to a good start. Don’t forget, I’m expecting your pitches for my next three entries by noon today. You can e-mail me.”

  “ ‘Don’t forget’? You never told me that in the first place! We just finished this one,” Max said, her voice rising a few notches.

  “Shh, you’re going to blow my cover,” Brooke hissed. “And what did you think, we’d do one entry a month and be done with it? A successful blogographer’s work is never done.”

  “Successful already, huh?” Molly asked, appearing at Max’s side.

  Brooke tapped her head. “Never doubt an evil genius,” she said, setting off toward her class with a smug smile.

  “Three comments and no lawsuits after being live for like twenty minutes,” Max said, turning to Molly. “Does that sound successful?”

  “Better than no comments and three lawsuits,” Molly pointed out over the ringing of the first bell. “See you at lunch?”

  “If I don’t have to work,” Max groused.

  “Oh, you love it,” Molly said, swinging past her toward homeroom.

  Max looked down at her clean fingernails. Three comments and counting. Well, it was better than toham.

  Brooke refilled her glass of almond milk and slid back onto the brushed metal stool. The Berlin family kitchen was like a showpiece from a brochure, with Granny Smith apple–colored subway tile on the walls under the cabinets, white granite countertops, and modern metal furniture that complemented both the stainless-steel appliances and Brick’s dizzying array of gadgets. They had an exotic coffeemaker whose nozzles and protuberances made it look like a Hindu deity; a machine that only existed to halve giant things, like butternut squashes or watermelons; a jar opener, a somewhat sarcastic gift from Brick’s new trainer; and about ten things she knew Brick had bought from infomercials, including something called the Bacon Genie. The refrigerator was covered in calendars and diet plans, because Brick tried almost every fad diet known to man, including one that mandated eating nothing but homemade Fig Newtons. Brooke liked hanging out in the kitchen while the cook was on break before dinner, mostly because she enjoyed imagining herself as a young Gwyneth Paltrow, possessed of unforeseen culinary talents that would delight and amaze her soon-to-be-legions of fans, should she ever learn how to turn on the stove.

  Today she didn’t take any joy in imagining herself truffle-hunting with Mario Batali, though, because she was there waiting for Brick. He’d told her he wanted to talk, and it had to be about the blog, which she had maybe sort of forgotten to mention to him. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. She had in passing expressed an interest in online self-publishing, and used the word empire, and Brick had made approving noises that she’d decided to consider a full endorsement. In truth, though, bringing it up while he was trying to grate a Pure Protein bar over his granola was a strategic move: It absolved her of any perceived lies of omission, but it also virtually guaranteed he hadn’t heard or absorbed the words and therefore he wouldn’t say anything to her that she didn’t want to hear. Like her least favorite word, No.

  Brooke nervously snuck a Soft Batch cookie out of the bag tucked away on the shelf by her knees and shoved it into her mouth. This conversation might not go as smoothly as that one had. It hadn’t even occurred to Brooke until Max said something that maybe the blog’s candor was a problem—that the observations about Moxie Stilts, however funny and accurate, would mess up Brick’s project in development or make him an enemy he didn’t want. Brooke hated it when her father was mad at her, not least because he had a bad habit of coming up with punishments that he considered creative and groundbreaking and Brooke considered social homicide.

  Her phone buzzed. It was an alert letting her know she had five more comments on the blog. That made thirty today. On Day One. Surely Brick couldn’t be upset if her blog turned into a raging success.

  “Brookie,” her father’s voice boomed, on cue. “Are you in there? It’s time for us to have that talk.”

  Brick bounded into the room (there was no door, but he had an energetic way of bursting through empty space, as if he were always two seconds away from yelling, “Ta-da!”). Opening the fridge, he grabbed a milk carton and a pre-portioned Ziploc bag that contained fresh berries, some powder, what looked like lawn clippings, and a melon baller–size scoop of peanut butter, all of which he scraped into the blender.

  “How was school today?” he asked.

  “Fumf,” Brooke said, through a mouthful of cookie that stubbornly wasn’t getting any smaller.

  “Having a healthy snack, I hope,” he said, pulsing the blender.

  Brooke closed her eyes, chewed hard, and swallowed. “Took too big a bite of bran–acai berry muffin,” she lied. “It was just so delicious.”

  Brick beamed and poured his smoothie into a glass. “Honey, I could talk about the mighty acai berry all day, but let’s not beat around the bush,” he said. “Caroline Goldberg showed me your blog.”

  Brooke took a deep breath and decided to meet his eyes. “I should have told you about it,” she began.

  “I also got a call from Travis Stilts telling me that Moxie is furious and doesn’t feel she can work on Kamikaze Dad under the circumstances.”

  Brooke snorted before she could help herself. “Maybe she should’ve thought of that before she basically gave the entire room a lap dance.”

  “That is true,” Brick said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that what you do reflects on me.”

  Her phone buzzed. Brooke chanced a peek. Fifty comments. She swallowed her excitement and tried to focus on defusing the matter at hand.

/>   “You’re right, Daddy, and I didn’t think about that,” Brooke said, then took another deep breath and launched into her prepared speech. “But you have to understand, I can’t sit idly by while my peers grapple with the trappings of fame. As a uniquely well-adjusted child of the industry, thanks to your sterling parental efforts, I think it’s my duty to shine the light of truth on their struggles. It might heal them, and, more important, help others.”

  She finished this by leaning slightly forward, her hands spread on the countertop as if drawn there by the intensity of her do-gooder message. If there was one thing Brooke Berlin could do, it was monologue.

  “This town only likes brutal honesty when it’s behind people’s backs,” Brick said, sipping his smoothie. “You should have prepared me. I didn’t like hearing about this from Caroline. And I didn’t like even having to consider apologizing to Travis Stilts. That man was an athlete, and he accepted a canned-biscuit endorsement! Do you know how many calories are in those things?”

  “I know, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

  “Luckily, Travis Stilts is a desperate washed-up baseball player who just let his daughter parade half-naked in front of most of Hollywood,” Brick continued. “Who is he to question our integrity? I have three People’s Choice awards. How’s that for integrity?”

  Brooke nodded vigorously, with a twinge of relief, as Brick took another swig of his shake. If Brick was speechifying, it meant he wasn’t brainstorming an elaborate punishment.

  “So, instead of trying to make amends, I told him I had no interest in doing business with someone who is more interested in what my child is doing than his own,” Brick said, after he swallowed.

  “Also, I didn’t lie,” Brooke jumped in. “She did all that stuff. I was just telling the truth.”