Spoiled (12 page)

“Brooke? I hear your footsteps. Get in here.”

A fire blazed in the hearth in Brick’s study despite it being a steamy ninety degrees outside. Brick once read on the Internet
that being warmed by the heat of a burning log was great for the pores. Brooke often thought Brick was a perfect example of
why literacy was overrated. He believed anything holistic-sounding as long as more than two posters on a message board agreed
with it.

As she closed the door, Brooke noticed Molly already there, slumped down in a chair opposite Brick’s desk and sipping from
a steaming mug of coffee.

“Good morning!” Brooke all but yelled, enjoying watching Molly wince at the volume.

“Oh, don’t you play the James Cameron card with me, Harvey,” Brick bellowed from his wing chair, which was facing away from
them. “You want him so bad? Why don’t you just flush five hundred million down the toilet and save yourself a three-year shoot?”

He tossed the phone onto the rug and swiveled around to face them, drumming his hands on the desk.

“Well, well, well. Last night was interesting,” he said.

“Wasn’t it?” Brooke bubbled. “I overheard the movie critic from the
L.A. Times
saying he thought the
Avalanche!
script was dynamite.”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” Brick said sternly. Then he pursed his lips. “But that
is
splendid news,” he added. “Remind me to send him some branded snowshoes.”

“Brick… I mean… Dad… I’m
so
sorry,” Molly blurted, sitting forward and slamming her coffee down on his antique oak desk in her urgency to be heard. A
few drops sloshed over the mug rim. “I swear I’m not usually like that. I just… I don’t know what happened.”

Brick regarded Molly for a second in silence. Then he came around to perch on the corner of the desk in front of
her chair, sandwiching her left hand between his two paws.

“Sweet girl,
I
know what happened,” he said. “You were lost, you were alone, and you did what every teenage kid does in that situation.
I asked too much of you.” He hung his head.
“I drove you to drink.”

Brooke couldn’t believe her ears. Was Brick seriously letting this troll off the hook?

“Daddy, you’re being too hard on yourself,” she began, but Brick held up a hand.

“You’re to blame here, too, Brooke,” he warned. “You practically took out a megaphone to announce that Molly was drunk. Where
was your discretion? And who were you on the phone with?”

Brooke gulped as Brick showed her a printout of the
Hey!
photo from today’s home page. The headline read
SISTER ACT?
Brooke had to admit that it looked bad—like she was kicking Molly and laughing, instead of merely prodding her sharply with
her toe to see if she was still alive. In the “win” column, though, she herself looked
fantastic.

“Why the smile?” Brick’s face was stern.

Brooke let her gaze flutter down to her hands, which she kneaded theatrically. “I wasn’t smiling, Daddy, I was hysterical,”
she said, suffusing her voice with agony. “We learned in health class last year that alcohol poisoning can kill you. So when
I found Molly passed out, it was just so
frightening
. I called Ari for help.”

It
had
been Arugula on the phone, but the call had been more focused on wondering if dragging Molly’s semiconscious body through
the yard would send too strong a message. Brooke kept her eyes down for a long period, then peeked up to see if she’d sold
the half-truth. Brick picked up the photo again, studied it for a second, then patted Brooke on the head and ran it through
the waist-high power shredder. It sounded like R2D2 eating lunch.

“Well, it’s done now,” he said. “Luckily, none of the other major magazines have decided to run with this. But a lot of the
gossip blogs are feeding off
Hey!
and its photos, and there is nothing I can do about that. At least Trip agreed to ax the cover story. I can’t even imagine
what it would have said. I had to promise him a few
Avalanche!
exclusives and I may have to date that girl from
Beer o’Clock
for a month or so, but at least we’re covered.”

Brooke widened her eyes and let her lip tremble a bit.

“Save it, Brooke,” Brick said. “You let me down, you let Molly down, and you let yourself down.”

“By staying sober?” she taunted, unable to resist.

“By vanishing,” he said. “Where were you when Molly needed a shoulder, and a friend? Where were we
both
when she needed a hand to hold instead of a beer bottle? Where were our minds, when she needed our hearts?” He got a faraway
look in his eyes, which Brooke knew meant those words would eventually turn up on the big screen being uttered by a young
heartthrob boasting an excess of hair product.

“No, I screwed up,” Molly interjected. “It’s my responsibility. I didn’t mean to do this to you.
Either
of you,” she added, looking pointedly at Brooke.

“I don’t want it to happen again,” Brick said. “But I don’t blame you for it happening now. And I am going to make this right.”

He stood up again and crossed over to gaze into his fireplace. “You are my daughters,” he said. “You, and Netflix, represent
my legacy on this planet. So I will not rest until my early work on
Cop Rock
is available on DVD, and I will not be satisfied until you are the true support system for each other that you
both
deserve to have. Expecting either of you to adjust to all these changes alone was a mistake. Fate tied you together. And
that is exactly how you’ll cope with this.”

Brooke blanched. “You’re going to tie us together?”

“No, no. Although that might make a fantastic Nickelodeon movie,” he mused. “Billy Ray Cyrus could… well, hang on, let’s not
get ahead of ourselves. We’re discussing you two. And what I’m about to do, I do only out of love.”

Brooke groaned inwardly. She recognized that self-satisfied expression from
Tomorrow’s Really Yesterday
, right before Brick’s character announced that the only way to stop global climate change was to time travel to 1987 and
freeze the equator.

“You two,” Brick said, “are going to be roommates.”

The entire room moved. At first Brooke thought it was because the ground was dropping out from under her feet, but then she
realized she’d leapt from her seat.

“Is that… really necessary?” she croaked.

“Ladies, it’s about to get real,” Brick said, clearly thrilled with himself. “We will move a bed into Brooke’s room. You will
drive to school together, do homework together, work out together, do
everything
together. Brooke, you will be the helping hand that Molly needs, and Molly, you’ll be the sister Brooke’s always wanted.
Closer
than sisters.”

Brooke felt herself sway. She
had
wanted a sister… when she was eight, and needed to learn how to French-braid hair. But now it seemed pointless, superfluous.
Like Solange Knowles.

“And what do you plan for us to drive to school in?” Brooke asked, trying to keep her voice from inching into dog-whistle
territory. “You said taking limos everywhere makes us look ostentatious.”

“I was just getting to that,” Brick said.

He dropped a set of keys on the desk. They bore the Lexus logo.

“Molly, those are for you,” he said.

“She got drunk and she gets a car?” Brooke squeaked.

Brick raised an eyebrow. “Last time I checked, Brooke, you don’t have a license.”

“I do, too.”

“A preordered personalized license
plate
doesn’t count,” Brick said.

Brooke thought she heard a snicker coming from behind Molly’s coffee mug, and shot her a look so sharp it could
dissect a frog. Molly at least had the good grace to seem chastised.

“Fine, Daddy. I accept this,” Brooke said, grasping at one last straw. “You’re absolutely right, and I bow down to—”

“Sucking up to me isn’t going to get you the car,” Brick said, amused.

“Well. I am offended that you think I could be so shallow,” Brooke said through clenched teeth.

She turned on her heel and sailed out of there with all the grace she could muster. Then she broke into a mad sprint. Time
to lock up her Louboutins. The enemy was on the move.

“
IS THIS THE BATHROOM?
”

Brooke didn’t bother looking. “No, it’s the Kodak Theater.”

“And this is my phone line?”

“No, it’s a wet bar.”

“Did this broken heel come from your Valentinos?”

Brooke’s head snapped up so fast she gave herself whiplash.

“Just kidding,” Molly said with a tentative smile.

“How fun for you,” Brooke grunted.

Without Brick around, Brooke had lost interest in being nice. The idea of keeping up appearances 24/7 was too much to bear.
She didn’t appreciate her personal space being cruelly invaded, especially when she’d done nothing but alert her father—okay,
a bit loudly, but still—to a
dangerous piece of misbehavior on the part of their crass new tenant.

Leaning back in her desk chair, Brooke looked at the carcass of her room. The NordicTrack had been evicted, as had the couch,
a chair, and a coffee table, all replaced with Molly’s queen-size bed. Its tasteful Calvin Klein bedding was sullied by a
giant Notre Dame throw pillow and a blanket that looked like someone blindly sewed together a bunch of knitted scarves. Muddy
running shoes were tucked near the door, and in her beloved closet, two drawers hung half-open while Molly flung bras, underwear,
and T-shirts inside.

“Can I put this here?”

With a huge sigh, its heft equal to the extreme effort she wanted Molly to know it required to feign interest, Brooke turned
and saw Molly looking for a place to put a silver picture frame.

“No.”

“What about over there?”

“I just don’t see any room. It’s cramped enough in here as it is,” Brooke said flatly, gazing at the spotless forty feet between
her bed and Molly’s.

“Would you mind if maybe we moved this and I hung some—” Molly reached for the framed Vaseline advertorial.

“
Don’t touch that
,” Brooke bellowed, hopping up with the speed of a lynx to protect her wall art. “That is my
mother
.”

Molly paused.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize. I would never… Here, this is mine.”

She handed Brooke the photo she’d been looking to place. Against her will, Brooke looked down at it and was greeted with a
friendly, open smile, a freckled nose, and long, straight, center-parted hair with a daisy-chain crown.

“My mom was kind of a hippie,” Molly said. “She’s fifteen in that photo.”

The eyes were warm, and the moment—Laurel was running barefoot along a beach, laughing—seemed so perfect that it could’ve
been one of those unrealistic prop photos on a movie set, the kind men moon over en route to winning an Academy Award for
not being afraid to cry. Brooke derived some meager satisfaction from seeing that her own mother was technically more of a
looker than Laurel, but she had to admit that Laurel was more natural. And she had very pretty hands.

I guess Brick has a type.

“How wholesome,” Brooke said. “There might be space on the bookshelf near my pictures of Mr. Pickles.”

Molly nodded and offered a timid smile. Brooke let fly another aggrieved sigh and plopped back down at her desk, staring at
the e-mail she’d begun. After two hours, she’d managed to churn out only “Dear Mom.” As a tiny act of rebellion, she cracked
her knuckles. Kelly and her prizewinning hands would’ve hated that.

Brooke’s restless gaze landed on the cluster of pictures Molly was sliding onto the bookshelf. One was of a hunky, apple-pie-American
blond boy, arm in arm with Molly, who was wearing a floor-length blue gown. The bodice was
covered in delicate, expensive-looking pleats that were repeated on the hem. It was a surprisingly pretty dress.

“Where’d you get the gown?”

“My mom made it.”

It was a predictably tacky dress.

“Who’s the boy?”

“My boyfriend. Well, maybe. I think. No, I guess he is. We—”

Brooke yawned. “I don’t need your life story. Thanks!”

She returned to her e-mail just in time to notice the arrival of a new one. The subject line was, “Is this
the
Brooke Berlin?” and it was from some person called Ginevra. The name sounded familiar.

Of course. The reporter. Brick would be annoyed if he knew she was in touch with anyone in the media, so by instinct, Brooke
made a move to delete the e-mail. Nothing
good could come from being aligned with the one major magazine eager to take down Brick’s happy family charade.

But her hand faltered. Maybe if she was cordial, she could get in the magazine’s good graces, which would make
everyone’s
lives easier. And really, wasn’t it impolite to ignore a thank-you note? Wouldn’t Brick prefer that his daughter exemplify
good breeding and proper etiquette?

She hit Reply.

Brooke double-checked it; clearly, she’d written nothing false or inflammatory. Molly
did
need to walk better in heels.

As she clicked Send, Brooke glanced over at Molly folding a pile of track pants. Brick could bunk them together like some
lame
Parent Trap
sequel, but make them best buddies? Not in this movie.