Spoiled (25 page)

“Well, the thing is—” Molly began.

“Oh,
there
he is,” Brick said, gesturing for someone at the door to join them.

Her stomach sank. It was the
Us
photographer, but Molly was in no mood to smile pretty. She just wanted five uninterrupted minutes with her father. It didn’t
seem like a lot to ask.

As the flash went off, Molly thought that she’d find out soon enough whether any of Brooke’s old tips were worth
anything, since she was pretty sure she’d look super crabby in that picture. She could see it now: “
Stars: They’re Just Like Us: They Don’t Listen to Their Kids at All.”

A noise on the stairs interrupted Brooke. Quickly, she skimmed the rest of the e-mail. She hadn’t missed a
thing—it crammed in every nice detail Molly had provided about Danny, plus a few Brooke had embellished just for fun. She
was a genius.

The photo took forever to attach, so when Molly walked in, Brooke pulled the laptop closer to her body and tilted the screen
away from her sister’s view. But Molly didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Brooke at all. Strange. After a private meal
with Brick, Brooke would be gloating at full volume. A victory that wasn’t rubbed in your rival’s face was hardly worth winning.
Molly had a lot to learn.

“You have butter on your skirt,” Brooke told her. Apparently, How to Use a Napkin was lesson number one.

Molly absently brushed at the spot. “Thanks.”

“What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you
bond
enough with Daddy?”

“It’s hard to bond when you’re getting interrupted every fifteen minutes by people asking Brick to sign their boobs.”

Brooke felt an empathetic pang. Last time she went somewhere with Brick—Gelson’s, to grab Vitamin Water before a hike at Runyon
Canyon—it had taken them an hour to buy two bottles because Brick kept glad-handing people, and by the time they’d left, it
was too dark to hike anymore.

“Nasty,” she said, trying to maintain an aura of disaffected cool.

“It
was
nasty. The woman even gave him her number.”

“That happens all the time,” Brooke said. “Daddy has
three People’s Choice Awards and a Golden Globe. I’m
so sure
he’s going to date some tragic skank from the Valley with giant boulders for implants.”

“That’s
exactly
who it was,” Molly said as she sat down and unbuckled Brooke’s Manolos.

“Daddy has a huge fan base of women who seem to think if he just sees them, he’ll fall madly in love,” Brooke said, warming
up to the topic; after all, she
was
the world’s leading expert. “They have this whole crazy website called the Brickhouse. One lady actually threw herself in
front of his car.”

“Well, between the ladies and the phone calls, it was hard to get a word in edgewise,” Molly confessed, pulling on her pajamas.
“I don’t even think Brick was listening to me half the time.” She sighed. “I’m sure you’re happy to hear this, so… you’re
welcome.”

Brooke hesitated. Unlike her occasional, detached pity about Molly’s dead mother, Brooke knew this loneliness intimately,
because she’d lived through it so many times herself.

She looked up from her desk to see Molly gazing at her with a quizzical expression.

“What?”

“I was just waiting for you to say something victorious,” Molly said.

“It’s like Brick always says, ‘Gloat rhymes with bloat, and both are the enemy of an upstanding citizen.’ ”

Molly snorted as she climbed into bed with a magazine.

“Since when has that ever stopped you?” she asked. “Be careful, I might start thinking you feel bad for me.”

“I do feel bad for you,” Brooke heard herself say. “Um, mostly just because of your bangs. But Brick can be disappointing
sometimes, I guess. I’m used to it by now, kind of, but I know it sucks the most the first time.”

Wait, what am I doing?

Molly gave Brooke an appraising look, as if she was wondering exactly the same thing. On the bedside table between them, Molly’s
cell phone buzzed. Brooke could see Farm Boy’s face pop up on the screen. Molly appeared to go through a mighty internal debate
before ultimately ignoring it.

“It does suck,” Molly continued their conversation. “But I guess it’s been sucking for you for a long time. I’m sorry about
that.”

“Don’t feel
sorry
for me,” Brooke huffed. But Molly bypassing a call from her boyfriend in favor of saying something nice to
her
made her feel very guilty about the e-mail to Ginevra sitting open in front of her. She closed her laptop.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Molly said, picking almost aggressively at the seam of her duvet cover. “It’s like that old
saying, where you try to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes….”

“Can’t have been too hard—you
were
wearing my shoes.”

Molly let out a small chuckle. “True. And I still almost fell over in them. But it was… illuminating.” She paused.
“My mom would be so proud. She always loved that particular cliché.”

Her face turned distant. Brooke felt something bubbling up inside her throat.

“Is it totally awful?” she blurted. “I mean, your mom… is it bad?”

Brooke could tell that her question had caught them equally by surprise. About three different emotions flitted across Molly’s
face.

“It’s getting better,” Molly began slowly. “On a good day, I make it to lunch before I really start to miss her again.”

Brooke didn’t know what to say. For all the times she had melodramatically told herself that Kelly Berlin was dead to her,
she couldn’t imagine what it would be like if the words were actually true.

“I catch myself talking to her in my head all the time,” Molly said, a pained smile playing at the corners of her mouth but
not quite making it all the way across.

“I write my mom letters. Sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

This would be a good time to shut up,
a voice in Brooke’s head told her.

“I write her e-mails. About everything.”

I said shut up!

“Oh, well, she must enjoy that,” Molly said.

“Maybe. I mean, she might, in theory,” Brooke said, ignoring her inner voice and wringing her hands a little. “I’ve never
actually sent any of them. It’s just been so long, you know?”

“Oh.” Molly chewed on her bottom lip. “So they’re kind of like diary entries.”

“Yeah, sort of. It just helps me work through stuff, even though we’re not
really
talking,” Brooke said. “And hey, she’s a better listener than Brick.”

“Why don’t you send them?”

“Because they’re no big deal,” Brooke lied, feeling twitchy. “It’s just a habit.”

Molly stared at one of her pictures of Laurel. “My mother would have loved hearing about all of this,” she said. “School,
all those stylists, the beach, tonight’s crazy skanky woman. I can practically hear her reminding me that a woman’s best friend
is her bra.”

“That would make her the only person my dad’s ever dated who has that opinion,” Brooke cracked. She couldn’t believe herself—now
she was cracking jokes? About their
parents
? Had she suffered a head injury during gym class?

Molly laughed, then grabbed her phone to read an incoming text.
Saved by the buzz
. Brooke mumbled something about tweezers and bolted into the bathroom, closing the door behind her and rolling her forehead
sideways against the cool wood.

Something was changing. It felt a bit like… having a sister. And God help her, Brooke kind of liked it.

“
ARE YOU SURE
she wasn’t just screwing with you?” Max asked, handing Molly a thick stack of canary yellow flash cards.

Molly accepted them gratefully, then plopped down on the blue and green bench—Colby-Randall’s school colors—that sat outside
the main doors. Last night, while Brooke snored robustly across the room, Molly had lain awake rehashing their conversation
over and over, watching the words float through her head until they suddenly looked completely foreign. It wasn’t until 3:15
a.m. that she remembered she had a history test in the morning.

“Pretty sure,” she said, running a tired hand through her wet hair. She’d been too exhausted to blow-dry. “Even
when Brooke was being all nice to me before, there was something kind of manic under the surface. But last night she was…
I don’t know how to explain it. Human?”

“Curious,” Max said, tapping her fingers thoughtfully against the bench. “I would have bet that I’d go blonde before you guys
called a truce.”

Molly just shook her head, dazed. Brooke’s actions certainly implied making peace: This morning she’d said Molly could borrow
those old black and maroon wedges anytime—“since I know you like them”—and told her that her bangs were really coming into
their own. She’d even offered a smile and a “see you later” when she got out of the car. It was so miraculous, Molly considered
reporting it to the Vatican.

Well, if she’s come to her senses, then so will I
.

Apparently, Brick was an accidental genius: His harebrained sibling-bonding scheme had worked, if only because his ADD frustrated
them both into submission. Actually, maybe none of it was accidental at all. Maybe it was just the world’s longest acting
exercise.

“Hey.” Max snapped her fingers. “Wake up. Last time Perkins caught me nodding off during a history test, she made me do an
oral report on Rutherford B. Hayes. Do you know how boring Rutherford B. Hayes was? All those letters and no good anagrams.”

“Awful,” Molly yawned. “God, I just don’t know how to process this.”

“What, my anagram thing? It’s not
that
weird.”

“No,” Molly said. “Like, am I friends with Brooke now? Or are we just… not enemies?”

Max shrugged. “You may not figure that out right away,” she said. “First, you should probably deal with your bigger problem.”

She nodded in the direction of the parking lot, where Shelby’s silver Mercedes screeched into its usual spot. Shelby leapt
out at top speed, wearing an oddly mature red cashmere pencil skirt, complete with matching blazer; the whole thing screamed
“newscaster power suit.” She hightailed it toward the small beige outbuilding that served as CR-One’s headquarters.

“Oh, crap,” Molly said softly, rubbing her eyes.

Being on good terms with Brooke assuredly meant ditching Shelby, and Molly didn’t like that idea. Regardless of her many quirks,
Shelby had been welcoming to Molly when she needed it most, and it seemed like a jackass move to drop her now just because
of some feud that had nothing to do with Molly at all.

“Maybe I can be friends with both of them,” she attempted.

“Nice try, Switzerland,” Max said. “But we’re talking about years of animosity between those two. They make the Middle East
look like a Girl Scout jamboree.”

Molly buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know if I can deal with this on three hours of sleep.”

“Just tell her you need Brooke’s kidney or something,” Max suggested.

“Are you kidding? Shelby would cut it out herself and call it philanthropy.”

The bell rang. Molly groaned. She and Max scooped up their stuff and fell in step with the masses heading to homeroom, Molly
gazing absently at her feet the whole way. The top of her right Converse was getting a hole over her pinky toe. Suddenly,
a pair of purple Pradas appeared. It was Brooke, and they were in a bottleneck trying to get into the classroom.

“God, move. What, does your tractor need a jump?” barked Jennifer Parker from somewhere behind Brooke’s silk-covered shoulder.

“Shut up, Jen,” Brooke said, giving Molly the “after you” arm wave.

“Thanks,” Molly said, squeezing inside the door and pretending not to notice the people gaping at their politeness.

As Molly took her seat next to Mavis Moore—who was knitting something that looked like small intestines—Molly spied Jennifer
giving Brooke a suspicious look.

“Are you okay? Did she drug your Red Bull with one of her stolen prescriptions?”

“I’m seriously fine, Jen,” Brooke replied, in a normal tone. “You’re the one who left the house without washing the toothpaste
off her zit.”

Jennifer gasped, and clapped a hand to her forehead as Magnus Mitchell burst into braying laughter and the second bell rang.