Messy

by Cocks, Heather

  “Exactly,” Brick said. “And it got me to thinking, there are worse things in the world than being known for someone who does not stand for baloney. Plus, you saved me a fortune in a contract buyout, since we don’t want Kamikaze Dad associated with someone who doesn’t wear pants.”

  “That’s… great,” Brooke offered.

  “It can be a killer to get a reputation as someone who won’t play the game of sweeping the ugly stuff under the rug,” Brick said. He reached over and took her hand. “But I will not be killed. Instead we will battle for the truth. For justice. Sunshine, your writing is going to take the town by storm! No, the world! This could be huge!”

  Brooke winced as a Brick gestured dramatically and took her arm with him. “Well, I’d rather simply be an example to others,” she said, casting her eyes down modestly, “but of course if fame should come…”

  “My daughter, an essayist!” Brick continued, as if he hadn’t even heard her. “A freedom fighter!”

  “That’s true,” Brooke said, feeling herself glow. “I don’t like to use the word heroic, but…”

  “Who’s heroic?” Molly asked, bouncing into the kitchen and grabbing a Naked juice from the fridge.

  “Your sister,” Brick said. “She has an Internet blog!”

  “It’s just called a blog, Daddy,” Brooke said.

  “Ah, yes, the blog,” Molly said. “It has like seventy comments now.”

  “It does?” Brooke squeaked. “I mean, it does. Of course it does.”

  “I sent it to all my buddies at the gym, and the guys who mix my bronzer,” Brick said. “You would not believe their client list. You’re going to be huge! A star who’s a scholar!” He raised his smoothie glass. “To Brookie. Celebrity role model of our time.”

  Molly did a near-perfect spit-take of her juice. Brooke’s phone buzzed. Seventy-five. She felt a frisson of excitement shoot through her veins.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Brooke sang, with a confident, radiant smile.

  eight

  “SCOOT OVER. You are not going to believe this.”

  Max looked up from her lunch table at the lush Colby-Randall outdoor cafeteria and squinted into the glare. Either she was getting sunstroke, or Brooke Berlin was towering over her, waving that infernal iPad like she was signaling to a plane. Has she had that thing surgically attached?

  When nobody moved, Brooke thwacked Teddy’s shoulder with her hip and squeezed onto the small bench. “I’m serious, this is way more important than your taco salad,” she said, shoving Teddy’s lunch off to the left. “Also, I don’t know how you can eat that.”

  “With a fork,” Teddy responded mildly, taking a bite. Across from him, Molly reached over to scoop some for herself.

  “Are you… having lunch with us?” Max asked, before she could help herself. Working for Brooke was about the limit of what she could handle in terms of changing the status quo.

  Brooke furrowed her brow. “No,” she said. “This is business. Max, your last couple entries got us into the big time. Look.”

  She shoved her iPad under Max’s nose. Her browser was on something called Site Meter, and it showed that they’d already gotten more than fifty thousand visitors over the past week.

  Holy shit.

  “And there have only been ten comments calling me a she-male stank ho,” Brooke said triumphantly. “The rest are all totally glowing. They want more insider dirt.”

  “How is this happening?” Max asked.

  “People with desk jobs like to procrastinate,” Brooke said gaily. “Plus, I posted several different links in the comments of one of Perez Hilton’s entries. I am brilliant.” She squinted at her tablet. “Also, according to this thing, Gawker and The Hollywood Reporter both linked to me.”

  “Damn. It’s been, what, four days? You’re going viral,” Molly said.

  Holy double-shit.

  Max shoved her sandwich into her mouth to hide any of her potential facial expressions. Everything seemed to freeze. She was two parts terrified—what if Moxie Stilts did sue them?—and one part exhilarated. She’d done it. She’d put words out there and people were reading them, and liking it, and she hadn’t spontaneously combusted. Maybe all those authors who used pen names were on to something.

  “This is even better than I’d expected,” Brooke said. “Ari’s mom has already gotten three calls from casting directors and producers wondering if I’d like to come in and read for things.”

  “Really?” Molly asked. “That fast?”

  “Apparently, an attractive, articulate, well-groomed celebrity child with buzzworthy things to say is a desirable employee,” Brooke said, glowing. “I hope you’ll all acknowledge now that this idea was genius.”

  She stood up and brushed off the back of her short printed Alice + Olivia skirt. “And Max, tick tock, I need your ideas for my next entry ASAP. Seriously,” she said in a low voice before scurrying off to her own, more centrally located lunch table. Jennifer Parker looked passionately annoyed. Arugula just looked right at Molly and scratched her nose with her middle finger. Apparently she was still bitter about losing out on Teddy.

  Max’s legs felt rubbery. “I will pay you both a dollar if we can get through the rest of this lunch break without mentioning blogs or Brooke Berlin.”

  “Sold,” Teddy said.

  “I’m fine with that,” Molly agreed, taking a bite of her turkey sandwich. “Teddy has news, anyway.”

  Teddy cracked his knuckles. “It’s seriously nothing,” he said. “Bone entered Mental Hygienist into some kind of Facebook contest that MTV is having, that’s all. They’re looking for a theme song for some new reality show.”

  “About teenage bullfighters,” Molly interjected.

  “They’re saying it’s like Laguna Beach, but with a slightly higher potential for someone to get gored,” Teddy said. “Anyway, he entered us in the contest on the sly, but we made it into the semifinal round and now he thinks we’re going to win.”

  “That rules!” Max crowed. “Maybe you will.”

  “We absolutely won’t,” Teddy said. “MTV will never use a song called ‘Heat Me Up (Love Microwave).’ ”

  “You don’t know. These are the people making a show about teen bullfighters,” Max pointed out.

  Teddy snapped off a piece of his taco salad’s shell. “There are a lot of great unsigned bands in Los Angeles, and I am okay with the fact that Mental Hygienist is not one of them,” he said, scooping up some guacamole. “Bone has his hopes up, though. He told me yesterday that he really wants a Lamborghini.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Now, give me my dollar,” he said. “That didn’t have anything to do with You Know Who.”

  “Lord Voldemort?” Max asked, grinning.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time she’s been called that,” Molly noted. “Probably not even this week. But lunch isn’t over yet.”

  It was the only time all day Max got a break from the words Brooke Berlin. People whispered incessantly, fervently, about Brooke’s blog. It took all Max’s inner fortitude to keep her poker face in place. She had just texted Molly that she was ditching the carnival meeting in favor of a nerve-soothing nap when—of course—her mother’s head poked out the door of the main office.

  “Maxine! You are headed in the wrong direction.”

  Max shuffled to a stop and reshouldered her backpack. “You mean, like, in a spiritual sense?”

  “Cute. Mr. Kemp’s room is that way.”

  “Mom, can’t I skip this one?” she pleaded. “I was up so late working with Brooke on her bl—um, biology.”

  To keep her parents from asking questions, Max had told them she was tutoring Brooke in… well, everything. By the time her mother got wind that Brooke’s grades were exactly the same—and, in fact, not sufficiently bad to require tutoring (the great surprise about Brooke was her solid GPA)—this whole blogographer thing probably would be over and Max would have enough cash to get out of Dodge for the summer.

  �
��I am very proud of how industrious you are,” Mrs. McCormack said. “And I am also totally unmoved. Go to the meeting. You will never get this wonderful high school time back.”

  Max just looked at her. Apparently, her mother’s formative years were one big glossy picnic, where nobody threw elbows in the hallway, or thought “budget shopping” meant buying only one Issa dress, or got a huge zit on their noses that ended in half the grade calling them Mount Kermitmonjaro (Chaz had been so pleased with that one). Max loved her mother, but she suspected that she would love her mother a thousand times more when the woman wasn’t up in her grill every single day. Like when I go to New York. If I go to New York.

  But all she said was, “Fine,” then spun around on her boot and stomped toward Mr. Kemp’s classroom.

  “And so it is with deep regret that I must step down as the head of the Spring Carnival Planning Committee,” she could hear Brooke saying. Max leaned against the doorjamb to watch. Anna Fury looked thrilled, and Jake was sitting with his back to Jennifer and texting someone, apparently not having heard a word of it.

  “Oh, my God! That’s just so sad for us!” Anna said, clicking into sycophant mode. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve never been better,” Brooke said. “But, as I said in my statement, I simply have too many professional and creative obligations on my plate to give the Spring Carnival the attention it deserves. That being said, I am confident that I’m leaving you in good hands.”

  Anna’s grin consumed her whole head. Brooke turned around and looked at the classroom’s ticking clock.

  “She ought to be here any minute,” she said.

  Anna’s face fell. “Wait. Shouldn’t we vote on—” she began.

  “I’m here, Brooke,” said a voice from behind Max. Brie squeezed past her with an apologetic smile.

  “Excellent!” Brooke said, clapping her hands in a way that reminded Max of Brick. She gave Brie her front-and-center spot. “You all know my assistant, Brie. As of today, she is the acting head of this planning committee. Brie will be reporting back to me, so it’s not as if I’m completely abandoning you.” She stood up. “Brie, is there anything you want to say before I go?”

  Brie tapped Mr. Kemp’s desk. “Um,” she said, flushing and rubbing at the left lens of her bifocals.

  “Well, that was compelling,” Anna seethed.

  “I’ve worked for Brooke for almost two years, so I know her vision,” Brie began. “And I plan to execute the duties she set out for me to the best of my abilities. I’m sure we’ll all work together to make this the best Spring Carnival yet.”

  “Obviously,” Brooke said, pulling her glossy leather Louis Vuitton satchel out from under Mr. Kemp’s desk. “My name is still on this thing.” Suddenly she spotted Max still standing in the doorway. “Oh, Maxine,” she said loudly. “A word, please, in the hallway.”

  Max backed out of the door frame. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  Brooke held up a finger. “Maxine, we need to talk about your raging attitude problems,” she said loudly, aiming her mouth at the open door. To Max, she whispered, “Nothing. The audition requests are pouring in, so we need to get out of here. But we can’t look too chummy.”

  “I—”

  “Play along,” Brooke urged her.

  Max considered this. Maybe it would be therapeutic.

  “I don’t care what you say, Brooke. I am bored with your pointless carnival,” she practically shouted. That did feel good. In a lower voice Max added, “My mother told me I had to come. She’ll totally check in.”

  “That’s why I have a plan,” Brooke said, shaking her head. “You have so much to learn from me.” Then Brooke raised her voice. “No wonder you never have a date,” she all but yelled. “You’re married to your own smug sense of superiority. I am taking you straight to your mother’s office.”

  Max let out a melodramatically fatigued breath. “Fine,” she boomed.

  Brooke nodded briskly. “Your delivery needs work, but that should do it,” she whispered, grabbing Max’s arm and trotting off toward the main office. Max watched as Brooke stuck her head inside.

  “Is she—Oh, hi, Headmistress McCormack,” she heard Brooke say. “Groovy cardigan. I just wanted to let you know that Max and I are heading off campus to price some things for the carnival. Awesome! Thanks.”

  Brooke turned back to Max, looking self-satisfied. “See?” she whispered. “All taken care of. Now give me a ride home—we need to figure out how to run with my raging success.”

  Max felt a little buzzing in her head. It was either the fatigue or she was completely stoked. Possibly both. “Let’s go kick some ass,” she said.

  nine

  “JUST ONE MORE TIME.”

  “No, I haven’t even had any caffeine yet,” Max grunted, heaving her banged-up tan satchel onto the security table and walking through the metal detector.

  “Pleeeeease?” Brooke wheedled from the other side of security.

  A uniformed Warner Bros. guard rummaged through Max’s bag, pulling out her Blistex, a torn spiral notebook, a half-eaten Luna Bar, a pair of sunglasses missing one lens, and three socks. He cocked an eyebrow.

  Yeah, buddy? You should see my room.

  “I promise this is the last time,” Brooke said.

  “That’s because your audition is in, like, five minutes,” Max pointed out, as the guard dumped everything back into her bag and handed it over with a curt nod. Max thanked him and shuffled onto the lot, rubbing her eyes. Apparently, in Brooke’s dictionary of made-up words, blogographer also meant lackey. On this particular Saturday, she’d dragged Max out of bed at seven in the morning for a day of auditions—“I don’t want you to miss any of the action!”—and in the last week alone Max had spent every waking hour forced to rehearse as a psychic, a detective, an evil twin (sort of fun), a good twin (completely unfun), and the main detective from Bones. At first Max amused herself by deploying a series of deliberately terrible accents. But then Brooke became compelled to try to coach memorable performances out of her, and Max didn’t have the patience to morph herself into an actress on top of everything else.

  At least the blog was going okay. Traffic was soaring. The other day Vixen.com had called Brooke the “celebutante Dorothy Parker of our time.” The hyperbole had made Max want to barf a little—it was just a blog about random crap, half of which she made up—but then Brooke had given her a bonus. Maybe, Max thought as she trailed Brooke down a wide lane filled mostly with white vans, she should stop being such a crank. It wasn’t Brooke’s fault that Max’s father had broken the coffeemaker when he’d tried to turn it into a cocktail shaker, and a sunny, crisp mid-March day rolling around the back lot of one of the biggest movie studios in Hollywood was bound to be more fun than her usual routine (sleeping until noon, picking a fight with her mother, staring at her still-blank NYU application, and then watching a crummy Drew Barrymore movie on HBO).

  “Fine. One more time,” Max said. “But just the part with your speech, okay? And you now owe me two coffees.” She cleared her throat and read aloud, in the most deadpan voice she could muster, “Nancy, this is crazy.”

  “No, Ned. Crazy is me lying shivering and hungry on a bed made of the trash bags of strangers,” Brooke replied, halting in front of a vending machine and reciting the line from memory. “Crazy is how all my bedtime stories came from the drug dealer selling crack outside my window. But finding the man who killed your father? Fighting for the truth? From where I’m sitting, Ned, that’s the only thing that makes any sense at all.”

  A tear squeaked out of Brooke’s left eye and rolled through her bronzer onto her chin.

  “Not bad,” Max offered, trying to take in the sights of the lot. She was pretty sure the parking spot they’d just passed said G. CLOONEY on it.

  “Gee, thanks,” Brooke snorted, turning away and breaking into a walk so speedy that Max could barely keep up. “Daddy always says, ‘Nothing is so bad as something that is not-so-bad.’ ”
<
br />   “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “It means that if you can’t be awesome, you’re better off being awful, because at least awful is memorable,” Brooke said from several feet down the road. “I mean, look at Keanu Reeves.”

  Max thought about the Point Break poster in her room. “Huh. I actually agree with you,” Max said. “Okay, then, you were good. Very believable.” And she meant it. “But the script is cracktacularly bad.” She meant that, too.

  Brooke sighed, and finally stopped to examine her lip gloss in the reflection of an office window. As Max caught up, a guy looked up from his computer and jumped in surprise when he saw them. I feel you, dude, she thought.

  “No, Max. It’s actually a really gritty look at the Nancy Drew mythos,” Brooke explained, in words Max suspected she’d been fed by Caroline Goldberg. “Nancy is the hot role in town right now. They’ve been trying to cast her for months.” She fluffed her hair. “It’s a lot to expect my first time on the circuit, of course. Personally, I think I’d make a wonderful Bess. She is the pretty friend.”

  “I also seem to recall them calling her fat a lot of the time.”

  Brooke brightened. “Yes! A fat suit would be so humble. I mean, Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for going ugly, and that was just a fake nose and a bun.”

  A golf cart sped past them—was that Jeremy Renner?—as they trudged across the expansive studio lot. Max had only been there once before, when she was in sixth grade and her mother had insisted they go on the official tour. Like any kid that age being forced to sightsee, Max had spent the entire time staring at her sneakers and wishing she was somewhere else—specifically, a place where nobody used perky phrases like movie magic and meant them. So this was Max’s first real look around the lot, which felt like it had been up and running for hours already, or maybe never shut down from the night before. Numbered soundstages loomed above them in endless, tidy rows, like gargantuan cream-colored versions of boxy Monopoly hotels. Their barnlike wooden doors hung open as men lugged ladders and lighting rigs through them; if she peeked inside at just the right angle, Max could see familiar living room sets and spy caves and schoolrooms, all of which looked impossibly small under the soundstages’ soaring ceilings, crisscrossed by complex wooden catwalks, tangled wires, and electronic equipment. Brooke swung left and detoured them through the lot’s semirealistic outdoor sets: fake brownstones, fake small-town America, fake big-city America. A parade of what had to be extras—on account of their animal costumes—marched toward Small Town U.S.A.’s gazebo, led by a harried girl holding a clipboard. The donkey nearest to Max carried a croissant in each hoof.