six

“HEAVEN. Heaven.”

“Seriously, this one is, like, a religious experience.”

“I totally just saw God. I’m not even kidding.”

Molly wished she could see what the three willowy stylists buzzing around her were talking about, but their light-speed tugging and pulling and tweaking—not to mention their enthusiastic spiritual visions, and the accompanying wild skyward gestures—made it impossible to get a glimpse of herself in the mirror. How did such scrawny women have so much energy? Obviously that half-consumed case of Red Bull in the corner had been put to good use.

“Let me see!” Brooke chirped from a couch across the room. “I bet this is the one!”

Molly returned her sister’s smile. From the feel of the skintight bandage dress crisscrossing her hips, Molly wasn’t entirely sure she shared Brooke’s optimism, but she was having too much fun to care. Never in all her years of reading her mother’s Vogue had Molly imagined she’d get within sniffing distance of designer clothes. Yet here she was, just three days into her L.A. life, with a pile of garments at her feet worth more than Laurel had spent on her car.

She had Brooke to thank, just one in a string of surprising, generous acts that had wallpapered each of the days since Molly arrived. She’d been in Brooke’s sole custody pretty much since that first dinner—Brick was MIA, thanks to calls from his manager, the studio, his agent, or in one case, a producer who wanted to turn Avalanche! into a Western—and Brooke had clearly taken to heart her task of getting Molly ready for the party. She’d insisted on making Molly practice walking in heels, giving critiques as if they were on America’s Next Top Model. She’d chattered at length about what Hey! might ask—though Molly hoped her primer on tensions in the Middle East would turn out to be unnecessary—and she’d loaned Molly three different conditioners that she swore would help fight frizz.

Then there was the constant stream of cold Diet Cokes, the breathless tutorials on which colon cleanse would cause Molly to hallucinate the least, and, of course, today’s styling session to prep them for the party. The attention was occasionally suffocating, but also honestly touching. For all the time Molly had spent recently thinking about having a father for the first time, she’d only considered Brooke as a sister in the most literal, bare-bones sense of the word. Now, she couldn’t imagine L.A. without her. It was such a warm and welcoming relief to be taken under her wing and treated immediately like family.

Not to mention the wish-fulfillment aspect of being whipped in and out of high-fashion dresses by three tiny elves in matching skinny jeans, working just for her, and moving in such a blur Molly could barely make out their faces, much less remember their names. She referred to them in her head as Bangs, Boobs, and Botox—the latter because no matter how much she panted that an outfit was better than fist-bumping God Himself (a compliment that seemed diminished once Molly saw the jumpsuit that had spawned it), Botox’s face remained a serene blank. She didn’t even wince when Boobs dropped a platter of gluten-free bagels and vegan cream cheese all over a rack of Monique Lhuillier dresses, although she did spew such a creative string of expletives that Molly suspected the only reason Botox was acquainted with God in the first place was because He had popped down to warn her to watch her mouth.

“This is the exact Leger we put on Katie Heigl last week,” Botox now droned, shoving Molly at a mirror.

“You’ll die,” added Bangs, stepping backward to grab her Marlboro from a nearby ashtray and sucking on it feverishly.

Molly was more afraid one of the three Bs would keel over from stress. It had been three hours and a million dresses since Stan dropped them off, and Molly still hadn’t found the right one. No matter how many times she told the stylists that she wasn’t comfortable in anything super tight, they trotted out ever-snugger cocktail frocks. Brooke, ceaselessly optimistic, shouted out encouraging compliments every time Molly shuffled toward a mirror (her last: “a zaftig glory”). This hot pink bandage dress was no exception.

“You look just like Kim Kardashian!” Brooke crowed.

“You think?” Molly said, scrutinizing her rear end. “I don’t know. Does the camera really add ten pounds?”

“Asses are totally in right now!” Bangs drooled, picking at her overlong chestnut fringe.

“You look like ten pounds of sexy in a five-pound bag of awesome!” Boobs trilled.

“I can’t move my legs,” Molly said apologetically.

She felt terrible rejecting everything—it took an awful lot of strength not to fall in love with the name on the label—but she’d be hyperventilating enough at this party without her dress cutting off her air supply.

“No, she’s right,” Botox piped up unexpectedly. “Her butt cheeks look like two balloons fighting. Get her out of it.”

Botox reclined on a brushed-metal chaise near the terrace doors, deep in thought, massaging her skull through her plum-colored pixie cut. This was her company and her house, an art deco bungalow off Wilshire in what Brooke called “the museum district,” despite being unable to name which museums, exactly, were nearby. Its impeccably lit living room, a combination of smartly placed wall sconces and natural light, was full of racks of clothes, glossy foreign magazines, shoes spilling out of Barneys bags, framed photos of famous clients, and barely any furniture. What was there was so minimalist, it could not have been comfortable. Nor cheap.

“I’m getting the sense you don’t want something snug,” Botox concluded after her meditation. “Brooke, you should have told me she wasn’t a sample size. Shitballs. Not you,” she caught herself, waving in Molly’s direction. “I just need to think.”

Boobs hurried over with another Red Bull and a bendy straw, plus a red plastic cup full of string cheese. Molly thought Boobs should avoid hurrying anywhere: Running in a tank top that small exposed her large chest as the investment it was, rather than a work of nature.

“Maybe high fashion just isn’t for you,” Brooke said kindly. “It takes a very special physique.”

“Would it be easier if I just wore something I brought from home?” Molly suggested. “I really appreciate all this, but—”

“No!” Botox blurted, sitting up so fast that Boobs had to fan her. “That is crazenuts. Brick Berlin asked us to come to the rescue, and we cannot fail him.”

She snapped her fingers. “Bring me the Marchesa.”

Boobs and Bangs gasped in unison. The room fell silent, as if they were in church and the sermon was about to begin. Bangs reverently walked over to a dress bag, unzipped it, and lifted out an intricately ruffled violet cocktail dress. She touched it as if God really had just appeared in the bodice and asked her to go easy on the fingernails.

Molly noticed Brooke had gotten up from her seat and started pacing the room and gnawing on her lip.

“That dress is amazing,” Boobs panted.

“Major,” Bangs breathed.

“Radcakes,” Botox agreed. “The detailing is insane, and it’s, like, a normal size.” She shoved it into Molly’s hands. “I pulled it for Annie Hathaway, but who cares? Just don’t tell her.”

Molly took the dress and shuffled back into the dressing room. She heard Brooke whisper something about a big responsibility, and inexplicably thought she made out the words wheat combine, but she tuned it all out in favor of slowly zipping up the snug Marchesa, centimeter by centimeter. Having Brick Berlin’s DNA didn’t mean she’d morphed overnight into a person who could wear a $3,500 cocktail dress without having a panic attack about ruining it.

She returned to the living room. Bangs now had two cigarettes, one in each hand, and Boobs was holding a giant binder in front of Botox and turning the pages for her. Brooke was typing furiously on her iPhone.

They all looked up when Molly appeared.

“That is freaking unbelievable on you,” Botox barked enthusiastically, without any kind of assist from her forehead.

“It’s so heavenly, I totally just died and went there,” exclaimed Bangs.

Boobs: “Omigod, I fully got there an hour ago and saw Jackie O.”

“I am also there,” Brooke said, although her face was oddly wan.

In the light of Botox’s living room, at the large three-way mirror, Molly could tell the purple hue of the dress was extremely flattering. She touched the intricate work on the skirt, then wiggled around in it, throwing her hands in the air. The strapless bodice didn’t budge an inch. Molly’s heart leapt. Yes, it was a lot of dress, but when else would she have an excuse to wear something like this?

Botox crossed the room and placed her hands on Molly’s shoulders. That close, Molly noticed that the stylist was wearing an excess of Chanel No. 5 and dark purple eyeliner. Her breath smelled of spearmint gum and raisins.

“You look like Jessie Biel’s twin,” Botox said very seriously. “As a professional stylist, it would be criminal of me to let you turn this down. I’d literally get arrested.”

“As a professional stylist, I’m shocked you can’t see the truth, which is that she looks like a giant grape-scented loofah,” Brooke said haughtily.

Molly’s spirits crashed with a thud. Boobs and Bangs gasped in the background.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Positive,” Brooke said. “You don’t want to end up on E! News with some stand-up comic making a crack about using you with shower gel. Can you imagine? Seriously, ladies, this simply won’t do.”

Boobs, Bangs, and Botox were agape. Molly got the impression nobody ever turned down a Marchesa.

Outside, a horn honked.

“There’s Stan!” Brooke chirped, noticeably relieved. “Hurry up and change—that color is making me crave a Jamba Juice and I can’t spare the calories.”

She steered Molly back into the dressing area.

“You are fully harshing my buzz, Brooke,” Molly heard Botox say. “What is your damage?”

Molly, back in her jeans, looked down at the dress in her hands. She resisted the urge to hug it good-bye, and for a second she thought maybe she didn’t have the strength to give it back. But if Brooke thought she looked like a loofah… Surely, she knew what Molly ought to wear, and after three hours, she wouldn’t have let Molly walk out empty-handed unless the situation demanded it.

“I have to trust Brooke on this one,” she said, coming out of the dressing room and handing the dress to Bangs, who looked as horrified as if someone had just told her the health food store was out of flaxseed oil. “But thank you so much for all your help.”

“Don’t worry, Molly,” Brooke said with a huge smile. “Fashion may have failed you today, but now that I know your tastes, I have several vintage classics at home that’ll be totally perfect. Trust me.”

It rained on Friday, so Saturday dawned clear and bright. Even after a week in Los Angeles, Molly still hadn’t quite acclimated to the West Coast, instead taking advantage of waking up three hours too early every day by hitting the pool for some laps. Brooke was appalled when she heard about it—apparently her own hair had a rare chlorine allergy—but Molly found the rhythmic smack of her arms against the water helped clear her head.

Molly was so close to being excited about the party. Charmaine certainly was; she had offered to fly out and live-blog it. And Brooke’s enthusiasm was contagious. The previous night, they’d had Tex-Mex delivered while Brooke went over Famous Sibling Pairings in Tabloid History and how they found the optimal flattering angles when posing for pictures together. Apparently, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson had much to teach. Sometimes it felt like these first few days in Los Angeles had conspired to turn her into an alternate-universe Molly: someone who had a moderate spray tan (courtesy of Brooke), her own black Amex, and a social calendar that involved the words red carpet. Oh, and a private Olympic-size lap pool. Every morning, no matter how amazing it was to be experiencing all this, Molly felt a little more foreign to herself.

But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Isn’t that partially why I came here, anyway? To leave sad West Cairo Molly behind?

But Molly still didn’t feel quite ready for her big Hollywood debut. What if she tripped at the party and fell into the pool, in front of all of those reporters? What if she said something stupid? What if she got the name of one of Brick’s movies wrong?

Brooke seemed either uncomfortable discussing Molly’s nerves, or unable to relate; whenever Molly broached the subject, Brooke would digress into surprisingly impassioned tirades about things like the importance of nasal contouring. So Molly used her peaceful morning swims to work through her anxiety. There was no way she was going to allow Hey! to write some story about her mother wasting away on a bed of rats and cockroaches, or whatever—Laurel would have died of embarrassment, if she weren’t already dead. This party had to happen, and Molly simply had to deal. The idea of being presented to Southern California like Zuckerman’s Famous Pig from Charlotte’s Web definitely made her uneasy, but it wasn’t like Brick was making her give him a kidney.

Post-swim, Molly wrapped herself in the spa robe that had been hanging on the back of her bathroom door and went out on the balcony to eat her toast. It had taken her two days to work up the guts to send up for anything, but Stan promised her the cook was just happy to have something to do besides make protein shakes. She waved down at Brooke, who stood by the pool in a skimpy bikini and sarong, trailed by a mousy girl with a clipboard and directing the placement of rented tables. She smiled as Brooke’s enthusiastic return wave almost knocked the glasses off her tiny friend. As intense as Brooke’s fawning interest could be, she was at least an amusing handful.

“She’s so chirpy,” Molly said to Charmaine during one of their late-night phone sessions.

“Maybe she’s a bit mentally ill,” Charmaine opined.

“I think she’s just lonely,” Molly said. “Brick’s never around and I have no idea where her mom is.”

“Not even Google knows,” Charmaine said, awed by the all-powerful Internet’s failure to inform. “But I did find an old article on People’s website about how Brick married Brooke’s mom at her father’s house in the Palisades. They had two peacocks as ring bearers.”

“Weird.” Molly shuddered.

“And bad luck, because they got divorced a couple of years later,” Charmaine continued. “Kelly told People it was time for her to find herself.”

“I guess she’s still off looking,” Molly had said.

“Maybe she’s not trying very hard.”

Molly had obligingly giggled—if Laurel had known Brooke, she’d have called her a Piece of Work in the kind of tone that implied the capital letters—but she also felt guilty maligning her half sister when all Brooke wanted was to make sure Molly felt comfortable and prepared. Just yesterday, in fact, backed up with countless photos of Charlize Theron, Brooke had insisted that looking bitchy would make Molly’s cheekbones appear more prominent, and then she swore posing with your legs crossed would streamline the thighs and hips. None of this made a ton of sense to Molly, but the starlets in the tabloids who did it all looked skinny and hot. Molly was beginning to suspect that Brooke was some kind of superficiality savant, whom she might be well served to obey.

Molly was mentally running through Brooke’s list of tips an hour before the party as she planted herself in front of her bathroom vanity. To avoid acknowledging the din emanating from the ground level, she turned up her iPod and fixated on following Glamour’s advice to achieve the perfect smoky eye, giving the makeup under her lower lash an extra vigorous smudge. Brooke had said with a supportive shoulder-squeeze that this technique would diminish the appearance of eye bags. Molly had never thought she had eye bags before, but if she did, she’d better deal with them now.

“All righty, sister-friend, the moment of truth is here! Aren’t you so, so excited?” Brooke squealed, sauntering in without knocking. “Daddy wants us downstairs in five minutes. Everyone we know is here. I think everyone in town is here. I can’t wait to introduce you!”

Molly took a deep breath. “Almost done,” she said. “How’s my makeup?”

“You did it yourself?” Brooke said, a hand fluttering to her chest. “But Daddy paid for a hair and makeup artist! I told you about it this morning! She didn’t come in here?”

Molly turned and noticed Brooke’s expertly arranged blonde curls bouncing around a face that had been painted to perfection by a professional. She shook her head. She was pretty sure Brooke hadn’t said anything to her about that. But it was possible she’d just tuned it out during one of Brooke’s speeches about hair extensions. That’s what I get, she thought.

“That bitch will spend the rest of her career doing infomercials,” Brooke fumed, squeezing Molly’s shoulders with a fervor that conveyed either sympathetic anger or homicidal mania (it seemed like a genuine toss-up). “I cannot imagine where she went. And it’s too late to do anything about your face now.”

“It’s okay,” Molly assured her. “The last thing I need to worry about is whether my false eyelashes are coming unglued, right?”

Brooke ran an eye over Molly. Then she smiled brightly. “I adore your optimism! And your dress is a marvel. I am a genius, if I do say so myself.”

“Marvel” was right. Molly had never seen a Marc Jacobs with so many flowers and ruffles. She felt like a blooming topiary.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Molly finally said, patting a ruffle in what she hoped was a show of affection. If she’d known this was the “classic” Brooke had in store for her, she’d never have let go of that Marchesa. But by the time Brooke had produced it, there’d been no time for a plan C. Besides, maybe she was being too harsh. Brooke kept insisting “florals are so three-months-from-now,” and that the dress itself had been a personal gift from the designer.

Brooke clapped her hands. “Enough! We have to go downstairs. Bad things happen when Brick is left alone with the press. He almost married that one girl from the National Enquirer, can you imagine?”

Molly bit back a smile and followed Brooke out the door. As she wobbled her way to the ground floor—Brooke had loaned her sky-high Manolos—Molly peeked out the window at the enormous lawn. Flotillas of pink tulips and white pillar candles bobbed lazily in the pool, and tiny twinkling lights hung from every tree, approximating the stars L.A.’s smog layer sometimes obscured. The yard had been turned into a giant outdoor living room, with huge cream couches and oversize pink velvet square ottomans clustered around low, glass-topped coffee tables, each of which bore a bucket filled with tiny splits of pink champagne. A raised stage was tucked at the back of the yard, presumably for Fall Out Boy, and buffet tables and wet bars framed the lawn like a subtle barricade, as if to note that while the budget here clearly had no boundaries, the guests certainly did.

The grounds were choked with people: cater-waiters in Avalanche! T-shirts under sport coats; girls wearing too much foundation and boys in popped-collar polo shirts, whom Molly assumed were her future classmates; bored-looking beefcakes lugging camera equipment and the scrawny, overtanned women they were trailing; stressed agent-types juggling four phones in the same hand; and at least three clusters of folks who were actually eating the hors d’oeuvres, and who therefore must have been gate-crashers.

Brooke led her to the shaded French doors separating the peaceful, silent living room from the mob outside, then paused and threw Molly a sly smile.

“I’ll be next to you the whole time, so just look for me when you feel lost,” she said. “Oh, and one last thing—make sure you stare right at them.”

Then Brooke flung open the doors and pushed Molly out onto the patio. Her smile was the last thing Molly saw before she went blind.

“Molly! Molly, over here, sweetie! Give us a smile!”

There was an explosion of light.

“Look left, Molly! Molly, hold still! Over here, Molly!”

“Molly, how do you feel being rescued by your new father?!”

Where should she look? Was she actually supposed to answer?

“Molly, who are you wearing?!”

“Is it true your mother kept Brick’s picture under her mattress?!”

Click. Where was everyone? Where was Brooke?

“Did you know gonorrhea could kill?!”

So this is what it feels like to need a drink.