fifteen

“SEE? It’s true!”

Even with her confidence slowly returning as her second school week began, Molly wondered if the sound of Brooke shrieking in her direction would ever not make her seize up a little.

“Here we go,” muttered Max as Brooke headed for them. “This ought to be priceless. What did you do now?”

“I must have spiked her morning grapefruit with carbs.”

Max affected a deep, manly voice: “We’ve switched Brooke Berlin’s regular skim milk with one percent. Let’s see if she notices.”

Brooke came to a halt in front of Molly as the hum of interest from passing students grew a little louder.

“There,” Brooke wailed, pointing to Molly’s feet with the same rolled-up copy of Hey! that Shelby had brought Molly on Saturday. “It’s just like the blind item said. Those are my favorite wedges.”

Molly glanced down at her feet. She had, in fact, dug these out of the back of Brooke’s closet, from underneath a pair of jellies and a tattered set of bunny slippers. She’d been sick of all the disdainful glances her Converse got from these people, and judging from the layer of dust she blew off them, she’d assumed Brooke wouldn’t even remember she owned the wedges in the first place.

“Molly, my closet is not Saks,” Brooke announced to Molly, but at the masses. “You can’t just take stuff and figure you’ll settle the tab some other time.”

“That’s not really how Saks is supposed to work, either,” Max pointed out.

“If this bothered you so much, why didn’t you say something at—” Molly stopped herself as she processed the engrossed crowd of students clustered around them. “Oh, right. Of course.”

“Take them off,” Brooke demanded. “I wanted to wear them today.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. The wedges were black and maroon; Brooke was wearing a pastel Pucci print dress.

“No,” she said.

Several people gasped.

Brooke crossed her arms defiantly and took a step closer to Molly.

“Take. Them. Off,” Brooke repeated.

Neil Westerberg clutched at Max, who looked too surprised to do anything. “This is better than TV,” he whispered.

“You know what, fine. It’s not worth it,” Molly said, kicking off the wedges. “Plus I’d love to see these with that outfit.”

Jennifer wrinkled her nose at Molly. “So you’re going to go to class barefoot? Like you’re homeless?”

“Molly, darling,” a voice called out. Heads turned as Shelby Kendall squeezed through the crowd, shouldering a quilted Chanel bag over her leather bomber jacket.

“Out of my way, Bert,” she snapped at a wiry, bespectacled kid Molly recognized from the play. “FYI, I know what your brother did at Spago last night. Wonder how the producers of his pilot are going to feel about it.”

Horrified, Bert backed away as Shelby finally reached Molly.

“Sweetie, you left your flip-flops in my car on Saturday,” she said. “I meant to bring them over yesterday, but you know how it is—I was prepping for this morning’s broadcast all day.”

Molly bent down to scoop up the wedges. “Thanks, Shelby,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too relieved. “Let’s go get them.”

Shelby looped her arm through Molly’s and dragged her past Brooke. Molly stopped to hand over the wedges, then let them slip out of her fingers. The shoes dropped squarely onto Brooke’s sandal-clad foot.

“Oops, sorry,” Molly said. “It’s probably the shakes. I haven’t had a drink in two whole hours.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd. She and Shelby strolled toward the parking lot as bodies parted around them. It was different from the last time this happened to Molly, at that disastrous party, when people gawked and backed away out of disgust. This felt more like respect.

“Thank you,” Molly whispered to Shelby through her smile.

Shelby stopped, and they turned to see Brooke, wincing furiously and sputtering at Jennifer to pick up the wedges for her.

“You’re absolutely welcome,” Shelby said. “Anything for a friend.”

Molly’s entire Colby-Randall experience changed flavor after that. The people in Shelby’s social circle offered to partner up with Molly in classes and gave her accurate directions to whatever classroom she still wasn’t quite sure how to find; the students on Team Brooke still radiated contempt, but in a more nervous way—like the difference between volunteering to box a punching bag versus an actual person. The people who ran with neither circle, like Max, just seemed grateful to have fresh gossip.

“It’s like when Lust for Life got a new head writer,” Max said between classes on Thursday, as about five different strangers called out greetings to Molly. “For years it was all brain tumors and boring love triangles, but as soon as the new guy showed up, sewage lines exploded during weddings and a princess got pregnant with twins who had different fathers.”

“Am I the sewage line in this metaphor?” Molly asked with a grin.

“Actually, you might be the sewage,” Max cracked. “Seriously, though, you know what I mean. Yesterday, Mavis Moore was telling me that ever since you got here…” her voice trailed off.

Molly followed Max’s eye line across the hallway, where Jake Donovan was standing in front of his locker, in the middle of changing out of his polo and into a T-shirt.

“Yes?” she prompted.

“Huh?” Max said, turning back to her only after Jake walked away.

“So how long have you had a crush on him?”

“Spending all this time with Shelby has got you thinking like a reporter,” Max said lightly. “But I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Shelby had all but adopted Molly since Monday’s wedge-sandal showdown, taking special care at lunch to make room for her—and, reluctantly, Max, whom Molly refused to ditch. She’d even shown Molly the second-floor girls’ lounge, an out-of-the-way unrenovated corner of the school that the upperclassmen had appropriated years earlier and turned into a teacher-approved hangout space for whenever it was too hot or too rainy to dash off campus to Café Munch.

Molly headed there now, having promised to help Shelby with their algebra homework during their shared free period. Last week, even if she’d known about it, Molly never would have had the nerve to hang out in the lounge, but being friendly with Shelby—like her black Amex—had its privileges, one of them being increased social ballsiness.

She pushed open the door and scanned the room. In the mansion’s heyday it had been a dressing area with a massive en suite bathroom, gilded crown molding, and padded brocade wallpaper. But the toilet had long ago been converted into a planter for geraniums, and the entire area was teeming with antique chairs, couches, and other furnishings that had been evacuated from various Colby-Randall rooms, deemed too chipped, torn, or timeworn to sell, yet too pricey to restore. Today, the rain dribbling down the thick glass windows made the room feel extra cozy, as did the fact that it was crammed with students chewing on pen tips as they frantically tried to finish last night’s homework. Or, in the case of Brooke—whom Molly noticed sitting on a peeling velvet chair left of the makeup mirrors—nose-deep in Lauren Conrad’s latest novel.

“Over here!” Shelby chirped.

Molly spied her at the center of the old sunken marble bathtub (closer in size to a shallow swimming pool, really), which had been stuffed with silk pillows. As she made her way over, Shelby elbowed the girl to her right, who was short and a bit squat, with a thick white-blond ponytail nearly the circumference of the silver-dollar pancakes Miltie used to make on NFL Sundays.

“Make room, Spalding,” Shelby said. “Besides, sweetie, you really should go jog the stairs a few times if you have any hope of making the tennis team.”

Spalding glanced down at her legs, then nodded and hightailed it out of the lounge.

“I’m trying to look out for her,” Shelby explained as Molly sat down next to her. “Spalding’s father was a big-time tennis player, and he’s dying for her to follow in his footsteps. Alas.” She spread her hands in a “what can you do?” gesture. “Father reported he only named her that for sponsorship money.”

“He sold naming rights to his kid?” Molly gaped. “I guess it’s a good thing he wasn’t a NASCAR driver or she might be named Valvoline.”

Shelby studied her for a second then smiled. “Hilarious,” she said. “You’re so folksy.”

“I don’t know why Vogue seriously thinks I’m going to wear booty shorts in public,” a nearby senior snorted, more to the magazine in her hand than anyone else.

“Dude, this issue of Hey! has a whole spread of celebrities in hot pants,” her redheaded friend said. “I actually think these ones are kind of cute.”

“No way. You’re cracked out,” the first girl said, taking the magazine and flipping to the next page. “Oh, my God,” she breathed.

Molly saw both of them look down at the magazine and then up at her. The red-haired one’s mouth hung open slightly.

“What?” Molly said.

“Your picture is in Hey! See?” the girl said, pointing at a small photo of Molly. It was one of the ones that had been snapped in front of Nobu. Molly was pleased and surprised to notice that she didn’t look nearly as bedraggled as she should have: Somehow, the wrinkles on her T-shirt looked purposeful, her mussed hair came off like artful bedhead, and she seemed relaxed and happy waving at the cameras, rather than apologetic and awkward. It was a total miracle.

In the reflection of the mirror above the tub, she noticed Brooke start drumming her fingers on her book’s hard cover.

“You look super cute,” the senior girl said. “How’d you get those leg muscles? Kettlebells? Yoga Booty Ballet?”

“Running,” Molly said, still a tad nonplussed.

“Running,” repeated the senior slowly, as if the word was in Urdu. “Right. Retro.”

“How come you didn’t say anything about this?” Molly asked Shelby.

“Oh, I’ve been far too busy with my own work to check in with Father,” Shelby said, peering at the magazine over her shoulder. “This must have been taken after I went inside. Which I prefer, obviously. Being in Hey! would taint my objectivity.”

Molly ignored her in favor of reading the blurb:

HAPPY AFTER HEARTACHE: Brick Berlin’s bereaved daughter, Molly, is bouncing back! The baby Berlin, 16, had Hollywood tongues wagging after she overindulged at a recent party, but Molly looked bright-eyed and breathtaking at Nobu Malibu this weekend with a friend (not pictured), where spies tell us she smartly passed on the sake. Conspicuously absent? Half sister Brenda Berlin, with whom Molly does not get along. Is Brick too busy with his new girlfriend to notice? (See here for more on Brick’s rumored romance!)

“Who’s Brenda?” the girl asked. “How many kids does your dad have?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Justine, they mean Brooke.” Shelby smirked, taking the magazine out of Molly’s hands. “I’ll have Father fire that fact-checker, obviously. Unless Brooke just got bumped from the database. That’s possible. So many real celebrities to keep track of, you know.”

Molly saw Brooke lower her book and open her mouth. No sound came out. She stuck her book back in front of her face.

Justine shrugged and took back her magazine. “I like that shirt, Molly,” she said pointing at the T-shirt Molly was wearing in the picture, with the round neck she’d snipped open with nail scissors. “It’s so deconstructed. You should wear it to school instead of all this preppy junk.”

“Right, thanks,” Molly said, looking down at herself. Since when was a plain black tank top preppy?

“Okay, are you coming, Emily?” Justine asked, climbing out of the tub. “If we want to make it to pole-dancing, we need to blow off the next two periods.”

One of the other seniors—a willowy Japanese girl—gathered their magazines and followed, but not before stopping to examine Molly closely.

“You really do look like Brick,” Emily announced. “It’s kind of weird.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Molly saw Brooke’s hands clutch her book cover with white knuckles.

“You know my dad owns Nobu, right?” Emily added. “Next time you come in, just tell them we’re friends.”

“Oh, Molly didn’t have any problems getting us a table,” Shelby said. “She’s a natural at name-dropping.”

“No! Well, I didn’t—”

Emily just smirked. “Whatever. Come by sometime and we can hang out.” She banged out the bathroom door, her vintage penny loafers ringing on the tile floor.

Shelby smiled, catlike. “Emily Matsuhisa is a great contact,” she murmured. “So many celebrities go to her dad’s restaurants. Get me something juicy from her, and I’ll make sure you get partial unofficial credit.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll—” Molly started. Shelby held out a hand. Molly felt like she hadn’t completely finished a thought since this free period had started.

“Ugh, that reminds me, I can’t do the math homework now—I have to interview Jake Donovan about the football team’s silent auction,” Shelby said. She pouted prettily. “I don’t know when we’ll get to the algebra. Father will be furious if I don’t bring up my grade.”

“Why don’t we do it tonight?” Molly said. “If you can wait an hour after school while I do some costume fittings, we can head back to Brick’s—um, I mean, my house.”

Shelby brightened. “Perfect!” she trilled. “I only need the help because I’m so busy on my next exposé, about whether children of celebrities are more or less likely to be institutionalized if their parents’ movies have exclamation marks in the title.”

“Obviously,” Molly said. “Well, I’m happy to do it.”

“Can’t wait! Love you lots!” And in a flurry of air kisses and jasmine perfume, Shelby was gone.

Brooke had put down her book and was mowing through a minibag of Doritos. Molly glanced over at her own reflection. She’d gotten a bit of color at the beach that weekend, and Emily was right: She did look like Brick. I bet Brooke doesn’t like that at all. Excuse me, I mean Brenda.

Stifling a giggle, Molly turned, grabbed her backpack, and plowed out of the lounge.

“Nice,” Teddy McCormack said as she smacked into him and knocked him back a few steps.

Molly clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asked, retrieving the knapsack that had dropped off his arm. “I thought all the girls in school planned their days around bumping into me after band practice.”

“You’re in band?” Molly asked.

“I’m in a band,” he corrected. “And we’re terrible, but between you and me, that’s mostly Bone’s fault. Every song he writes has a parenthetical in the title.”

“You’re in a band with a guy named Bone,” Molly said as they eased into a companionable walk toward the stairs, “but your mom won’t let Max pierce her nose?”

Teddy grinned. “I made her promise I could do it if we came up with a name she liked. She bet me twenty bucks that wouldn’t happen.”

He pointed to his T-shirt. “Mental Hygienist,” he said smugly. “Mom left the money tucked into my guitar fret.”

“Nicely done,” Molly laughed. She didn’t know what it was about Teddy, but somehow, he made her feel like whatever conversation they’d been having, they’d been having for years.

“Yep. I’m a rich rock star,” he said. “Are you sure you didn’t mean to bump into me?”

“I was totally spacing out,” Molly said. “This girl Emily just told me I look like Brick, and I swear, Brooke almost choked on her rage.”

Teddy’s face darkened a bit. “I was hoping your good mood meant all that crap was running its course.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “It’s not a head cold, Teddy,” she said. “I doubt it’s going to be that easy. Frankly, I’ll just be happy if Brooke stops telling everyone I’m on the waiting list for a liver transplant.”

He let out a blast of laughter. “Damn, you’re so demanding.”

“I know, right?” Molly said. “Too bad Brooke is completely unreasonable. She cut off one of Shelby’s pigtails during an earth sciences lab freshman year, for no reason.”

“I don’t think that happened,” Teddy furrowed his brow. “Max would have told me.”

“Shelby said she got extensions, like, immediately afterward, so maybe Max didn’t know.”

“Maybe,” Ted said doubtfully. “Or maybe Shelby just made it up.”

“Why would she need to?” Molly asked. “I’m the last person she needs to convince that Brooke is crazy.”

“Okay, let me preface this by saying that I swear I’m not trying to be an ass,” Teddy said, throwing up a hand. “But Shelby is bad news. If you’re not going to stay away from her, then you at least need to be really careful.”

“I think you’re exaggerating,” Molly said. “She’s been very supportive. And it’s driving Brooke out of her mind. She told me once she’d rather wear a jumpsuit than eat processed snack foods in public, but she just inhaled a bag of Doritos.”

Teddy ran a hand through his hair and pursed his lips. “Congrats?” he offered.

“It’s not like that,” Molly insisted. “But don’t you think she deserves it? A little bit?”

“She definitely screwed up big with you.” Teddy nodded. “But I’ve known Shelby a long time, and she is her father’s daughter, through and through. She always has an ulterior motive.”

They headed down the stairs to the main hallway. The rain pounding on the domed glass ceiling was so loud, Molly had to raise her voice to say, “I can look out for myself, you know. I didn’t get a head injury when I fell off the turnip truck.”

Teddy didn’t even crack a smile. “That’s not what I was saying,” he argued, stopping on the steps. “But I’ve seen years of back-and-forth drama between those two. If nothing else, it seems like a waste of energy to get in the middle of it. Isn’t there other stuff you’d rather be doing?”

Molly felt a flash of anger. “Maybe this is exactly what I want to be doing,” she snapped. “If I’m finally having fun and feeling better about myself—or at least not rotten about myself—who are you to judge?”

She stormed off to her locker to try to collect herself. She heard footsteps approaching quickly on her heels, and then Teddy grabbed her arm.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s not my business,” he said as his hand fell to his side. “You’re a cool girl, is all, and I don’t want you to end up hurt.”

Molly jerked open her locker. “And I do appreciate that,” she said, softening a little. “You and Max have been awesome to me. But the last six months really, really sucked. Like, epically sucked.” Her voice was low and hard, as she fought to keep frustrated tears out of it. “I’m so tired of trying to figure out how I’m supposed to be acting, you know? I just want to… I just want to be. Does that sound dumb?”

Teddy studied her face for a long moment. “No, Indiana,” he finally said. “It doesn’t sound dumb.”

Molly stopped rummaging in her locker and looked up at him. His brown eyes were warm. He did look sincerely sorry.

“But you’re in a band with a dude named Bone,” she said. “Can I really trust your opinion?”

He threw back his head and sighed, relieved. “Let’s just start this whole conversation over again, okay? Hey, Molly, what’s up?” he asked her, with excessive cheer.

“Hemlines!” she chirped back. “How are you?”

“Completely mentally hygienic!” Teddy squealed. They giggled. Molly noticed one of his front teeth was ever so slightly crooked, and his eyes had the same amber glints that Max’s did, giving them an almost golden glow whenever he was happy. Like right now.

“Can we hug it out?” he asked, tilting his head sideways to grin at her.

“Yes, doofus,” Molly said, and stepped into his open arms.

“Our first fight,” Teddy said, over her head. “I can see the Hey! headlines now. ‘Has Berlin Daughter…’ ” he trailed off.

“ ‘Has Berlin Daughter’ what?”

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing.” He chuckled, patting her back as he gave her a harder squeeze. “Turns out I should leave the headlines to Shelby.”

Molly smiled and rested her cheek on his shoulder, relaxing. It felt nice to be hugged by someone who wasn’t genetically obligated to do it. The hand that had been patting her back now just rested there, warm and comforting, his thumb rubbing her shoulder blade almost absently. Her eyes fluttered closed. She realized dimly that she and Teddy were past the point where a normal hug would have ended, but she was enjoying it too much to mind. She squashed a voice deep in her subconscious that wondered if Danny would.

Then two things happened at once: Her cell phone buzzed in the front pocket of her bag, and someone yelled Teddy’s name.

They jumped apart, blinking hard as if being woken up from a deep nap, to see Arugula popping out from around a corner.

“Still up for some bonus time in the lab?” Arugula asked. “One can never reach too soon for academic ascendancy.”

“Oh, uh, sure, Ari,” Teddy said, falling backward against the lockers and looking slightly as though he’d been caught shoplifting. “I forgot we’d talked about that.”

Molly’s phone buzzed again.

“You’d better get that,” Arugula said. “It might be your boyfriend.”

Molly felt Teddy’s eyes on her but couldn’t quite meet them.

“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” he said.

“Kind of. I mean, not… It’s complicated,” Molly heard herself say after a longer pause than Danny would have appreciated.

“No, that’s great for you,” Teddy said, overly casual. “The long-distance thing takes guts. I bet it’s hard.”

“I’m sure it is for some people, but Brooke says those two are on the phone all the time,” Arugula said, tossing her hair. “It’s so romantic, don’t you think?”

She squeezed Teddy’s arm possessively. Teddy stared down at Ari’s hand, then back up at Molly. He looked like he wanted to ask her something.

“Come on, our borax crystals are looking disconcertingly anemic,” Ari said. “May I steal him, Molly? Are you two finished?”

Molly heard an explanation bubbling in her throat, how she was on the phone with Danny’s voice mail more than with him lately, but out of loyalty to Danny she killed it.

“I guess so,” she said instead.

Ari beamed and pulled away with Teddy, but not before he shot Molly a perplexed look over his shoulder.

Her phone buzzed again. Molly dug it out of her backpack. A text from Danny: It contained no words, just a close-up photo of a sunflower propped against one of his mother’s garden gnomes.

“Perfect timing, Molls,” Danny said when he answered her call. “We were just about to go bourbon bowling.” His voice indicated half of that favorite outing had already begun.

“I got your text. I just… I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Glad you liked it,” Danny said. “I figure, this move is just challenging me to come up with more creative ways to give my girlfriend flowers.”

Girlfriend. There it was.

So why did the word spawn more questions than it answered?