Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change (15 page)

“Beautiful, beautiful,” the photographer said in a flat tone. She was expecting someone with a European accent, because didn’t they all have European accents? This guy didn’t, though. He sounded like a Valley boy, all flat and dude-bro. Kat kicked water per his command, and the camera clicked a dozen times. “Yes, yes, that’s it—attitude. Give it to me.”

Before she’d come to LA, she’d always thought of photo shoots as a thing that happened quickly, but all the ones she’d been on took hours. Hours of costume changes, of make-up and wardrobe, of posing in the least comfortable, most unnatural ways, ways that crimped your muscles afterward and required a damned Valium to get the damned knots out.

“Let’s take a breather,” Valley Boy said, and Kat froze where she stood in the lake, her legs a little chilly after an hour in the water. “Don’t go to wardrobe, though. I want to reconsider, think for a bit, maybe blaze a J for some inspiration.” He handed his camera off to a waiting assistant and walked away without another word.

“You taking five?” Sienna asked, hovering closer to the concrete edge of the lake now that the kicking of water was done. She was wearing a black suit with white shirt like she was dressed up herself, playing one of those Secret Service agents she’d sicced on Kat just last night. She was standing upright, arms folded in front of her stomach, black sunglasses reflecting Kat’s own cold and nearly shivering image back at her. It was the perfect Sienna pose; looking down smugly from on high with her guard up.

“Maybe,” Kat said, throwing her hair back. At least she hadn’t gotten her hair wet yet, though that was almost certainly coming. “Why?”

“Because I’m bored, obviously, and was hoping you were done with this stupidity on parade,” Sienna said from behind a pair of way-too-small sunglasses. Didn’t she know that big frames and lenses were the in thing now?

“You don’t have to be snotty about it,” Kat sniffed, sloshing water around. The sun glared overhead.

“Umm, excuse me?” A young woman, probably no older than twenty, came wandering up, a streak of bright blue coloring half her otherwise dark hair. She shuffled closer, a pad of paper and pen in hand. “I was just …” The girl reddened. “Can I have an autograph?”

Sienna watched her out of the corner of her mirrored sunglasses, arms folded in front of her, so serious she looked like she should be in New York, not LA. “I fear for our future.”

“Sienna, relax,” Kat said, laughing. She looked right at the girl. “Let me just—”

“Umm, I meant from her,” the girl said, blushing, looking straight at Sienna. “You …” she said in a tone of poorly concealed awe, “… are such an amazing badass.”

Sienna did not stir behind the mirrored glasses, but Kat suspected she was blinking furiously, flattered. She would be. “Maybe there’s some hope for the future after all.”

Kat felt her face twitch around the eyes, in a place she had thought was immune to twitching for at least a few more weeks. Apparently her meta powers had eliminated the botulinum toxin. So sad. “Well … isn’t that nice?” she asked as Sienna took the paper and fumbled to sign it with one hand for some reason, keeping her right—which is the one she always used to write anyway—out of the whole process. It looked awkward, like she was trying to slight the girl, and Kat was sure it left her with a really sloppy autograph.

“There you go,” Sienna said, still looking out from behind the mirrored glasses. “Uhh … don’t do drugs.”

“What?” the girl asked, looking up at her, perplexed.

“I don’t know,” Sienna said, shrugging, “I was trying to think of something inspirational.”

“I’ve got a pharmacy card, though,” the girl said, looking crestfallen. “It’s medicinal. For my—”

“Whatever,” Sienna said. “Party on, then.”

“You’re a really inspirational figure,” Kat jeered as soon as the girl had wandered out of earshot.

“We can’t all slop in around in concrete lakes all day while people take pretty pictures of us,” Sienna shot right back in a meta whisper. “Some of us protect people too stupid to defend themselves. Also, the world.”

“Which part of that included beating Rick Gerasimos to death with his own chair?”

“Well, I sometimes take breaks to have a little fun,” Sienna said, deadpan.

“You
would
think murdering people is fun,” Kat spat at her.

“According to your TV show, it’s one of my strengths,” Sienna replied coolly. “I assume that’s why you had Scott call me, because you didn’t want to subvert the California trees to do your murdering for you.” She looked around. “Although … I guess I’m not convinced that palm trees would be as effective at that as … y’know, trees with branches that can deal out a good whacking …”

“What do you know about dealing out a good whacking?” Kat taunted.

“Less than you do, apparently,” Sienna taunted back. “But, seriously, though—Taggert? Really?”

All the mirth vanished from Kat’s face in a hot second. “How did you …?”

“He was going to try and get us in a three-way last night,” Sienna said, her mouth twisting in disgust. “I let him know in no uncertain terms that I was not interested. Also, if I were you, I would get my hands on some sulfuric acid and apply a generous dose to all the places he touched you, and maybe bathe the spots where he lingered or happened to leave behind drippings—”

“Shut up,” Kat hissed, her voice still in a whisper. “We can’t all be Sienna Nealon, who gets her job handed to her along with enough ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards to put Parker Brothers out of business.”

“Hey,” Sienna said, looking only mildly annoyed, “at least I didn’t have to sleep my way to my current levels of success.”

“What success?” Kat hissed. “I think you mean failure, because that’s what you are. I read the news—”

“Gawker does not count as news in any civilized society. Maybe in LA, but not—”

“You’re what?” Kat asked, rolling her shoulders, the straps of her dress moving along with them. “One last good screwup away from a nasty firing? And then who’s going to hire you?”

“Maybe I’ll get my own hit reality show.”

“You wish.” Kat looked down her nose at her, smiling sweetly. “Do you know how hard I’ve had to work to make this happen?”

“I can imagine. I mean, just the thought of sleeping with Taggert makes me need anti-nausea meds. I can’t even fathom how brave you had to be to actually go through with it, and more than once—”

“I work twenty-hour days,” Kat said coldly, ignoring her. “Bust my ass trying to get every ancillary business deal I can. Have to work with the producers to try and come up with viable storylines for my show, things that will interest the viewers—”

“I like how you call them ‘storylines,’ even though it’s
supposed
to be reality TV, like you don’t even waste your time with the pretense that anything real happens on camera for your show.”

“You have no idea how much work goes into this,” she finished, “the sacrifices I’ve had to make.”

“You mean beyond sleeping with Taggert?” Sienna watched her through those reflective lenses, unamused. “And, of course, completely shitting on me with that phone call.” She looked to either side. “Yeah, no one has suffered like you have. Starving kids in third-world countries all say to each other—you know, before they go to bed at night with empty bellies— ‘At least we’re not Kat Forrest! Now that girl has it rough.’”

Kat felt her hands shake, her face redden in the heat of anger. “You have no idea.”

“About sleeping with Taggert?” Sienna pursed her lips in disgust. “You’re right. Don’t share, and let’s keep it that way. Some things are best left to the imagination.” She paused for comedic effect. “On the other hand, maybe the imagination is worse than reality.”

“You’re always so smug, so smart, so sure you’re better than everyone,” Kat said. “I’ve watched you get away with murder, things that would land any of the rest of us in jail—”

“Or on reality TV, sleeping with that slug of a producer—which, honestly, I think is constitutionally in the realm of cruel and unusual punishment. I mean, I’m no lawyer but I feel like you may just have a case—”

She wanted to scream in frustration, but instead she plastered the practiced smile across her lips. Even now, Kat couldn’t let her feelings show, not here, not in public. “This is just how you are.”

“Yeah, this is me,” Sienna said, without a care in the world.

“Nobody likes you,” Kat said.

“Uhmm, hey.”

Kat wheeled at the sound of the familiar voice to find Steven Clayton standing there. With his boyish good looks, his jeans-and-t-shirt style, and general hotness, he looked as earnest and well put-together as if he’d spent the morning in wardrobe. It was just the right amount of devil-may-care, but the hair was perfectly done, which meant he’d
prepared
for this encounter—

“Steven,” she said, feigning surprise. Of course he hadn’t wanted to leave it like he had last night, rushing away from her before the party had gone all to hell. “How did you find me?”

He looked slightly taken aback by her question. “Uhm … everyone on Twitter knows where you are. You tweeted ‘Behind the Scenes’ pictures of the shoot. I saw Anna Vargas RT them.” He held up his phone. “She called you ‘So Brave.’” He turned his head to look at Sienna. “And I saw you in the background on one of them, figured I’d stop by.”

Sienna stared behind her sunglasses, the top of her eyelids twitching like she was blinking. She did that a lot. It was really annoying.

Wait.

Did Steven Clayton—Mr. Eligible Bachelor—
People’s
Sexiest Man of the Year—Steven FREAKING Clayton, who she’d been trying to get her picture taken with last night—did he just show up at HER photoshoot and ask for—

Kat held in the scream that threatened to burst out of lungs that suddenly felt filled to capacity and more. She kept that smile in place, that seductive look that the cameras loved, because oh, there were cameras out there, even now, a thousand people with phones seeking their brush with fame, with her, and STEVEN CLAYTON was HERE—

For Sienna.

And Sienna was just standing there, looking like he’d spoken another language to her. “What?” she asked, as though she had taken one too many hard hits to the head. Which she surely had.

“Can we … step over here and talk?” Steven asked, gesturing toward a spot a few feet away from the fountain but not quite to where the production assistants were congregating while they waited for the photog to finish getting high.

Sienna just stood there stupidly for at least ten seconds. “Okay,” she finally said, and with a glance back at Kat, she followed Steven Clayton away from the lake where Kat stood, up to her thighs in water that felt colder by the minute.

“To hell with this,” Kat whispered to no one in particular. No one in particular heard her, either.

I followed Steven Clayton away from where Kat had spent her morning (I use the word “morning” loosely, because by now my body clock was so screwed up that it felt like it might be midnight even though the sun was high in a blue, cloudless sky) frolicking in a fancy dress in a concrete reservoir that they called a “lake” while some dude with a foot fetish took pics of the whole experience. I didn’t exactly miss the grey clouds that had covered the Minnesota sky when I awoke yesterday, but the fact that over the last twenty-four hours I’d had both fight (Captain Redbeard) and flight (anything related to Taggert) instincts triggered had me feeling like I was on an uneven keel that even a shower and new clothes hadn’t been able to fix.

Also, LA, just FYI, this shit is not a lake. Minnesota has like ten thousand of them; I know what they look like.

I’d had to go with the Secret Service look, because none of the fashionable stuff in the stores I’d looked at in the ten minutes I’d allocated to finding something to wear had been the sort of thing I felt comfortable in. That dress I’d worn on my date last night? A nun would have chosen it from the lineup of the dresses I saw this morning, and she would have felt it was perfectly modest by comparison, too.

“What’s up?” I asked Steven once there was a few feet of distance between us and Kat. The photographer’s assistants were looking at us with interest, the paparazzi behind the rope line were agitating for Steven to look their way, and I heard the click of about a thousand pictures being taken—of us, which was weird—but other than that, we were totally having a private conversation.

“I wanted to see you again,” Steven said, and he looked … nervous? “I didn’t want to just … you know, leave it after last night.”

I looked around to make sure he was still talking to me, that Kat hadn’t seeped up over my shoulder like a noxious, invisible gas. “Dude,” I said, feeling very California as I said it, though I was pretty sure I’d been saying that since long before I came to this state, “what is the deal here?”

He blinked at me in surprise. “I’m … interested in you. I’d like to get to know you better.”

I pressed my lips together in amusement before I dared speak. “Look … I’ve dated some nice-looking guys in my time. Very handsome fellows. I know I don’t totally look like something … y’know, scraped off the bottom of a boot—err, some of the time,” I checked my hair subconsciously. I hadn’t flown this morning, so it was in place. “But …” I waved a hand toward where Kat was sitting sullen at the edge of the fountain, staring resentfully at me. “Objectively, she is so much prettier than me. I mean, I don’t even worry about it. She just is, she always has been—hotter, prettier, more … uhm … warm, human—”

Steven laughed nervously. “Okay, that’s—that’s a … that’s an interesting note. So here’s the thing—I’ve been in town for a while, right? Came when I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, all the dreams and whatnot—”

“Oh, a classic American story,” I said, managing to avoid sarcasm for once. It was a near thing, but I pulled it off.

“There are some really nice people in LA,” he said. “Like anywhere else. Normal people. Wonderful people. Amazing, endearing, hilarious, loyal—just great people.” He lowered his voice. “If they’re in show business, most of them are behind the camera, I’m sorry to say. Like doing the more menial stuff. Something about becoming an idol of normal America, of attracting celebrity and attention, of having people ask you your opinion about even the most mundane of things and assuming that you’re some kind of god because you have that opinion—it changes people.”