Messy

by Cocks, Heather

  Max responded by flipping him the bird.

  “Charming,” Teddy said. “Don’t strain the finger. It might inhibit your typing.”

  “You laugh,” Max said, “but that’s how I got out of picking up Brooke’s dry cleaning the other day. Told her I couldn’t risk my instrument.”

  “Trouble in bloggy paradise?” Teddy asked, watching Max paw through a pile of old shirts.

  “She’s not that bad,” Max said, holding up a gray-and-black striped tee. It had a hole in the armpit. “She doesn’t pull crap with me because I’m Molly’s friend, and also because I hold the keys to her blog empire, so if I tell her to shove it she will be up a creek without a cell signal.” She returned to digging through her clothes. “I can’t believe this. I’m going to be late. I wish I had Brooke’s closet. She’s talking about getting this thing where all she has to do is push a button and everything starts rotating like at the dry cleaner’s.”

  Teddy cocked his head. “I’m sorry, did I just hear you endorse a motorized closet? You, who once said that famous people are so dumb that you could shove a microchip in a Crisco jar and sell it to them for a grand?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Max grumbled, backing out of her closet with two T-shirts. They turned out to be identical. She dove back into the abyss. Why were all her clothes dark? It was impossible to see what was what. “I’m just saying, maybe Dad could focus on inventing that, instead of whatever his gardening tool of the week is, so he could actually make some money.”

  She reemerged with a smirk. “But maybe with all your forthcoming band riches, all those problems will be solved.”

  Teddy groaned. “We’re not in the finals yet,” he said. “We have to send in another submission tape. Bone just wrote a song called ‘Your Locker (Is Where Your Books and My Heart Are).’ Nobody is going to want to listen to that.”

  “We’ll just see,” Max sang. “You got a ton of Facebook comments after I mentioned you on Open Brooke.”

  Teddy wrinkled his nose, then picked up an unfinished crossword from Max’s bed and studied it absently. “Maybe I should go write some new songs just in case. Surely I can come up with something that outdoes the line, ‘Six left, thirteen right, nine left; when you open your locker my heart leaves my chest.’ ”

  “Good luck with that,” Max said. She frowned. “What does a person wear to a table read, anyway?”

  “Wow,” Teddy said. “We are through the looking glass. Since when do you care what you wear to anything?”

  “Since I started hanging out with a girl who’s like six feet tall and dresses like she owns stock in Prada,” Max said. “And since I started having places to go that weren’t, like, my bedroom. Since I got sucked into the vortex that is Brooke Berlin, basically. When we go anywhere together, I look like her Make-A-Wish kid. People seem disappointed when they find out I don’t have cancer.”

  This was actually half-true. The other day Max and Brooke had been on Rodeo Drive—Brooke decreed Max needed to further her education in pointy-toed heels—and a salesman took one look at them, squeezed Brooke’s shoulder, and said, “The needy are lucky to have you.”

  Teddy sat on the edge of Max’s bed, shoving aside her quilt to expose her ratty old Garfield fitted sheet. “If you’d told me last year my band would blow up because of something you wrote on a blog where you’re pretending to be Brooke Berlin, of all people, I would have told Mom to search your closet for drugs.”

  “Don’t be silly. Mom would never look in here. It’s a death trap,” Max said, trying to disentangle a button-down shirt from her hair.

  After a moment of silence, she looked up at Teddy, who seemed lost in thought.

  “Teddy?” she prompted.

  He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just so surreal—nobody had even heard of us until my sister, Fake Brooke Berlin, mentioned online that I’m dating the famously unfamous Berlin sibling. Vortex was the right word for what this is. It’s an adjustment.”

  “This whole semester has been an adjustment,” Max said. “I feel like I’m on some Oxygen show called Touched by the Berlins.”

  “No kidding,” Teddy said. “Mostly, I can’t believe Brooke’s blog scheme actually worked. Next thing you know she’ll sneeze and discover a cure for the common cold.”

  “Split ends are a cause dearer to her heart,” Max snarked. “In all honesty, though, I don’t think she can believe it, either. Not that she’d ever admit that.”

  Max had heard about Brooke’s movie role after school the previous Friday, while she and Molly were browsing the stacks at Amoeba Music. Brooke’s voice had caught a little when she recounted Brick’s happy reaction to her big news, and it made Max think of Brooke’s attempts not to sound lonely whenever she talked about never getting to see much of her father.

  “So what now?” Teddy asked. “Are they going to let you hang around the set, or do you have to, like, skulk around the rafters?”

  “She said something about getting me in the budget as her assistant,” Max said with a grimace. “Honestly, I have no idea why I’m coming tonight—it’s not like I can live-blog it while they sit there and read through the script. Ugh,” she moaned, brandishing another shirt. This one was black-and-gray plaid. “I want to burn this entire closet and start over.”

  “It’s just a reading. At a table. Don’t go crazy,” Teddy said, hopping up and heading for the door. “You’re a good writer. I know it’s not your ideal gig, but the blog is a fun read.”

  “I swear, you are so mushy now that you’re all in love and stuff,” Max scoffed, though she couldn’t help feeling a little warm. “I liked you better when you were repressing your feelings. Now go away so I can get dressed.”

  “Okay.” Teddy shrugged. “I guess I’ll go make out with my girlfriend for a while.”

  Max balled up the offending plaid shirt and heaved it at him. “Ew, Teddy,” she groaned. “Your tongue is not my business.”

  Teddy thudded down the hallway. Max resumed staring mournfully into her closet. Being the right hand of a self-proclaimed It Girl was a lot more stressful than she’d imagined. Nobody at school cared if she wore the same thing twice in a given week—half of them probably expected it. But now that she was spending so much more time outside her hovel, the usual rotation of jeans, black skirts, cargo pants, and T-shirts felt so stale and samey and depressing. She’d actually found herself idly browsing J.Crew’s website the other day, as if she would ever wear an item of clothing called “café capris.” Max decided to blame this on a fevered state brought on by writer’s block, which itself was brought on by her evil NYU application essay that as of now contained only the words “Bob really hated peas.”

  Glancing at her watch, she realized that any other Tuesday, she’d be at Fu’d already for the dinner shift, getting a lecture from Dennis on how to clean the blender without using a lot of soap. And that she should’ve left two minutes ago if she wanted to get to Warner Bros. in time. Except she was still wearing sweatpants cut off at the knees and a tank top that read WANTED. Not good. Max sighed and grabbed her standby combat boots, some purple tights, a leather-looking skirt she’d found at Target for eleven dollars, and a striped tank top under a gray cardigan. It would rock nobody’s world, but at least she wouldn’t be naked.

  Remember, nobody cares, Max told herself as she studied the outfit in the mirror. This is what you wanted. An audience and anonymity all in one. Best of both worlds.

  Max sprinted as fast as she could across the Warner Bros. lot. It wasn’t really that far from her house, but she’d had to stop for gas, and in that time, apparently everyone in L.A. with a car hit the road. Max’s fist had red marks on it from beating her horn so much, partly because a lot of people needed to be encouraged to use the accelerator, but mostly because her horn only worked about ten percent of the time.

  She sped breathlessly around a corner onto the suburbia set—a curving road lined with a few all-American two-story clapboard houses. Max had seen at least ten
episodes of television over the last month alone that used this outdoor location, but apparently one of the buildings was the Nancy Drew production office.

  “All the houses are secretly offices,” Brooke had told her. “They filmed bits of Tequila Mockingbird here, and Daddy said the staff of Pals ruined one of his takes because they were having a screaming fight over whether Rochelle and Ricky would ever get a parakeet.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t, obviously,” Max had said. “But it must be hard to get anything done with people shooting scenes in front of your window. I would totally be the writer who snapped and started dumping water balloons on the set.”

  “Somebody did throw a ham sandwich out the window,” Brooke said. “One of the extras ate it.”

  Max hadn’t known what to say—it rendered her mute that she and Brick shared a past of being molested by lunch meat. Now, she gazed up at the blue house Brooke’s text message had directed her to and tried to catch her breath. She didn’t want to go inside heaving like a low-rent phone-sex operator. Or even a high-rent one.

  “Max?”

  Shit. She’d been spotted. Max straightened up and came face-to-face with a grinning Brady Swift, a laptop bag slung across his body and a thick script in his hand.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he said, giving Max a light hug. It was over almost before Max registered that it was happening, although she did catch a whiff of Right Guard deodorant and peppermint. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Hi, Engelbert,” Max said, suddenly feeling a bit clammy. This was why sweating was for suckers. She nodded at his script. “I’m guessing that’s not for Psychic Lifeguard.”

  “You are wise,” he said. “You’re looking at Ned Nickerson, the earnest young student who discovers Nancy Drew huddled at a bus stop, falls in love with her, and then lets her help investigate his father’s murder.”

  “No way! That’s awesome!” Max said, spontaneously smacking him in the chest with the back of her hand. “I mean, not the plot. The plot is terrible. You would never let a homeless girl whose father makes meth poke around in your business.”

  “Idiocy,” Brady agreed.

  “And Ned was kind of a drag in the books,” Max said. “I read them as a kid. He was like a tree with a mouth.”

  “The worst,” he said amiably.

  What are you doing? You need a rudeness alarm.

  Max shook her head hard. “Sorry, I don’t mean that you are a tree with a mouth. It’s a great part,” she amended. “This is a huge movie. You made it sound like you’re just some schmo putting himself through school with glorified extra work.”

  “I am. Or, I was. I only got through one quarter of school before this happened,” he said, sticking his hands deep into the pockets of his well-worn fleece pullover. “My agent called in a favor, so I read for this part about a month ago and never heard anything. Then they called last week and told me I was in.” He lowered his voice. “I heard they had picked a big name but he wanted twenty million bucks, and they were like, ‘Sorry, kid, but Wall Street 2 should’ve gone straight to DVD.’ ”

  “It’ll be better with a cast of unknowns, anyway,” Max said. She stopped and knocked on her forehead with her fist. “God, that sounded terrible.”

  “It’s okay.” Brady laughed. “I am a total unknown, except to psychotic fans of that episode of Ghost Whisperer where I got to yell at Jennifer Love Hewitt from the Other Side.”

  “Oi, mate, is this the Nancy Drew office?”

  The accent was strange—faintly British, mostly weird—but the voice was unmistakable. As Carla Callahan drew closer to them, Max tried to picture the blonde beanpole she’d known in elementary school, but her memory wouldn’t cooperate. It was like trying to draw somebody’s portrait from a photocopy of a photocopy of a picture. Carla’s chestnut pixie cut was an obvious attempt to copy Emma Watson’s from the summer she wrapped Harry Potter, and she was clad in jeans tucked into shiny flat boots, a longish military-style blazer with giant brass buttons and epaulets, and a black fedora, like the Artful Dodger after raiding Neiman Marcus.

  “Hi, Carla,” Brady said pleasantly. “Brady Swift. We met a few years ago.”

  “Indeed! You read for a part on iNeverland and they decided you were too American-sounding,” Carla Callahan beamed, rather too smugly for someone who Max knew had been born in the Valley. Apparently Carla was so Method she forgot she wasn’t actually Wendy Darling, wasn’t actually British, and wasn’t actually still on that show, which itself wasn’t actually even on TV anymore.

  “Chuffed to see you again, love,” Carla cooed, giving Brady two air kisses while putting a hand on his shoulder—no, almost putting it on his shoulder, but in fact leaving a sliver of air between it and her skin. “I never forget a face.”

  “So you’re in this thing, too, huh?” Brady asked.

  “Right-o, mate,” Carla said. “I’m Nancy’s best friend, George. Really knocked their blocks off at the audition.”

  Yeah, which must be why I saw you sobbing when you left the room, Max thought.

  “George is ever so much more interesting than Nancy and Ned,” Carla continued in her fake accent, which probably worked on people who didn’t know she was born up the street. “She’s just ripping, honestly. So nontraditional.”

  She’s also the one the books say looks like a boy. Max was curious what would happen to Carla’s voice when she started playing George, who was written as a hard-as-nails Bostonian running a girl gang.

  “That’s great, then,” Brady said evenly. “Got what you wanted.”

  “Aces,” Carla affirmed. Then she appeared to notice Max. “And you are?”

  Max blinked. She wished she were better at this stuff—what exactly was she supposed to do when confronted with someone totally annoying from her youth who didn’t even have the courtesy to recognize her? If this were Lust for Life, she would probably reach into her pocket and pull out a test tube of disfiguring acid. If it were Dr. Phil, she’d be expected to blather about her feelings and then give Carla a hug. Door No. 1 sounded more fun.

  Luckily, Brady came to the rescue. “This is Max,” he said. “She’s, like, the top person in the Berlin empire. I heard from Brooke that she and her father wouldn’t trust anyone else with, um, you know, all this… stuff.”

  Carla squinted at Max’s face. “You look familiar.” She snapped her fingers. “You were one of the autographs I signed at Comic-Con, right?”

  “Close,” Max said dryly. “We sat next to each other in art class a long time ago.”

  “Blimey, that’s bonkers, Bob’s your uncle,” Carla said nonsensically, as if one could be British simply by blurting out random slang. “Max McCormack. You look… so…” Carla’s voice faded.

  Max caught her own eye in the window. Her green hair had gotten a bit matted from the sprinting, and her fair skin was flushed beet-red. She looked like Christmas in the rain. “I had to run here,” she said lamely.

  Carla cast her eyes over Max’s outfit. “Actually, you look quite the same,” she said, squeezing Max’s arm like the two of them were sharing a little secret. “Can’t think why I didn’t spot you. Don’t think you had green hair then. Go easy on the box dye, pet!”

  Carla threw back her head and laughed. Max contemplated punching Carla in the neck.

  “I think I hear someone calling for you,” Brady said suddenly. “You’d better get upstairs. Oh, and don’t listen to what anyone says—I think you totally have the right masculine essence to play George,” he added in a tone of deepest support.

  Carla turned as pale as she could underneath her suntan. “Lovely. Well, must dash…” she sputtered, gesturing vaguely toward the house before scurrying off.

  “Wow,” Max said under her breath. “So you’re not just an actor; you also do pest control.”

  “And I might also be your stalker,” Brady noted. “At this point, the only people I see more often than you are my three roommates and that homeless guy who lives in our Dumpster.�
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  “Thanks for getting rid of her.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I know her from the audition circuit, but I’ve never seen her be that… poncey.” He shook his head. “I told you actors are lunatics. Run away while you still can.”

  Max grinned and caught sight of her reflection again. Her skin had finally returned to its normal color. “Too late, I’ve got a job to do,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet Brooke.”

  “For the table read?” he asked, confused. “That’s dedication. They don’t usually let people in for that.”

  “Brooke must have pulled some strings. I’m her… moral support.”

  “Right. I mean, are you… You’re not, like… are you two…” Brady seemed caught up in making a series of complicated, vaguely suggestive hand gestures.

  It suddenly dawned on Max what he was trying to ask. “We are dating, yes,” Max said. “We are so precious to each other.”

  Brady stopped at the house’s front door and peered at Max’s face. Then he broke into a grin. “Liar.”

  “I believe it’s called acting,” she said. “Really, I’m just her assistant. And her, um, friend. No benefits.”

  “Oh, good,” Brady said, pulling open the door. “I mean… not that there’s anything wrong with… if you were… never mind.”

  He looked slightly flustered. Max felt a weird ticklish sensation in her toes.

  “I’m sort of curious to meet her, actually,” Brady recovered, holding open the door so Max could go inside. “Her blog is something else. I love it when people surprise me.”

  “Thanks!” Max chirped. Then she caught herself. “For holding the door, I mean.”

  The blue house’s ground floor was musty and barren, except for a back room that held office supplies, printers, and some computer equipment. But there was a din emanating from upstairs, and as Max and Brady trudged toward it, she saw that the top floor was all bustle: people passing out stapled papers, shaking hands, posing for pictures, and zooming in and out of rooms. There were a couple tiny white-walled offices, whose doors were ajar enough for Max to see messy couches, half-eaten bags of Cheetos, and wastebaskets overflowing with crumpled paper failures (Max knew the feeling), and a room with a large conference table and a wall of headshots—Brooke’s and Brady’s included—near several whiteboards covered in frantically scribbled phrases like “Act One: End at crack den?” and “Nancy = no dairy” and “Carson: Gay or just nice?”