twenty

“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.

“Everyone settle down,” Perkins droned. “No parking on the sidewalk, ahem, Magnus. Lunch today is meatless meatballs and tofurritos, and smoking kills so don’t do it on campus. Now be quiet and listen to whatever this is.”

She settled behind her desk with a copy of The Secret and flicked on CR-One’s morning newscast. Shelby appeared and began droning about a recent school board meeting at which the PTA voted five to four to expand the salad bar to include bok choy.

“I saw you on Us Weekly’s website this morning,” Mavis whispered over the top of her innards. “Having dinner with Brick. Your dress looked great with that dessert.”

“Thanks, Mavis.” Molly smiled. Weird compliments were still compliments.

“And now, a more sobering story,” Shelby said on-screen. “This is part one of my groundbreaking series, ‘Children of Neglect.’ ”

A graphic whizzed behind Shelby’s head of a blonde girl in giant sunglasses, standing in front of a cartoon mansion that had been torn in half.

“Hey, that kind of looks like you, Brooke,” Magnus bellowed.

His jovial words echoed briefly, then died out as nobody else made a peep. Because it not only looked like Brooke, it clearly was Brooke. Molly’s hands went clammy as she twisted to throw a shrug in Brooke’s direction. But Brooke was applying lip gloss, studiously ignoring both gawkers and the monitor, sending her usual message that Shelby wasn’t worth her time.

“In this series, I plan to examine how inattentive parents have impacted Colby-Randall students,” Shelby continued. “To shield them from further heartbreak, I am compelled to protect their anonymity to the very best of my journalistic abilities.”

“What abilities?” Brooke said airily. Scattered chuckles broke the tension.

“Today’s subject, whom we’ll call Munich, is a particularly tragic case,” Shelby said. “Munich seems as if she has it all. But really, she has nothing. Nothing… but despair.”

The twinkle in Shelby’s eye made Molly’s breakfast bran muffin start to rebel.

“Munich’s father is a very successful, very rad man,” Shelby said, with unmistakable emphasis. “But he’s too busy to spend any time with her. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. Her mother ran off years ago without any forwarding address. So Munich longs for nothing more than the loving embrace of two committed parents, but instead she’s treated like they’ve both forgotten that she was ever born…”

Mrs. Perkins put down her book to look up at the TV.

“… and left alone to write beseeching e-mails to her mother,” Shelby said, oozing insincere sympathy. “E-mails she does not send because of the certainty of rejection.”

Oh, God, no. I didn’t even have any coffee.

Molly was too scared to look at Brooke again. From what she could tell, no one else did, either. The difference was that the rest of the class was entranced, while Molly was trying to figure out if there was any way—short of faking a seizure—that she could stop what was happening.

“I’d like to read one of her revealing missives aloud,” Shelby announced, and then cleared her throat. “ ‘Dear Mom, Dad’s been in Prague filming that movie about werewolves for six weeks. I don’t have anyone to talk to. I cry all the time. I think some of it is because I’m so bloated. Where are you? I need a mom.’ ”

Shelby shuffled some papers and leaned forward, affixing the camera with a gaze that was supposed to be full of gravitas, but came off smug.

“According to psychologists, feelings of abandonment such as Munich’s can lead to drug use, teen pregnancy, gang violence, and premature baldness. Colby-Randall, please seek help before you end up like Munich: damaged, tragic, tanorexic, and beyond help. I’m Shelby Kendall. Have an excellent day.”

The screen went black. The room was utterly silent.

“Dude,” Jake Donovan breathed.

Molly couldn’t tell if her vision was blurred or she was in shock. Two seconds later, it was both: A heavy satchel smacked her with admirable precision right in the back of her head. As she clapped a hand to the raw spot, Molly saw that Brooke had swept past her toward the door.

“Ms. Perkins, my foot hurts, I have to go to the nurse,” she said, barreling into the hallway—but not before fixing Molly with a look of agonized hatred.

In that moment, Molly knew the e-mail was authentic. Brooke’s rapid flight, without one of her customary remarks about Shelby’s mind showing the hallmarks of advanced venereal disease or something, all but proved it. Shelby Kendall had bested Brooke Berlin.

The bell rang. Slowly, the exiting students found their voices.

“I can’t believe I ever thought she was scary.”

“Who knew she was so pathetic?”

“Molly totally did this, right?”

“This looks like the small intestines.”

That last one was Mavis Moore, studying her knitting.

“It’s not that bad,” Molly said, hoping no one noticed her voice was shaking.

“It’s not bad at all,” Mavis beamed. “It is the small intestines.”

This was enough to galvanize Molly to get out of that classroom.

“Way to go, Molly!” shouted Spalding, bouncing so hard her ponytail whacked three people in the nose.

“You are a disgusting semihumanoid,” Arugula hissed, jostling past her in the hallway with a sharp elbow.

“You are going to get killed,” suggested Neil Westerberg with a sympathetic face.

Shame flooded Molly’s veins. Of course everyone thought she was behind this. The whole school knew she and Brooke didn’t get along, and Molly had made no secret of palling around with Shelby. She felt like a coward, and a rotten sister, for not running after Brooke. But what could she say? Hey, Sis, sorry everyone thinks your mom doesn’t love you. I didn’t do it. Want a fat-free scone?

“Wasn’t it brilliant?”

Shelby hooked arms with Molly and smiled with great satisfaction, the way Danny did when he ate his first Big Mac after swim season ended.

Molly recoiled. “Don’t touch me and don’t talk to me,” she said. “We are done here.”

Shelby narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”

“I can’t believe you just did that.”

“Did what? Took Brooke down about thirty pegs, just like you asked?” Shelby said, smiling coldly as any sweetness evaporated from her tone. “You might want to watch your tone, Molly.”

“I had nothing to do with this, and you know it,” Molly snapped. “And I’d certainly never use her mother—”

“Oh, give the mommy issues a rest, little girl.” Shelby sneered. “What did you think was going to happen when you started whining to me about Brooke needing a taste of her own medicine?”

“When Brick hears—”

“When Brick hears what, exactly? That I was in his house, and using a computer, with your permission?” Shelby said, running her tongue over her canines in an alarmingly wolfish way. “And when exactly will you tell him? Has he even bothered to come home yet?”

“You are disgusting,” Molly breathed. “What kind of person—”

“Oh, please. You wanted this just as much as I did, sweetie. Your hands are as dirty as mine are. Maybe dirtier.” Shelby examined her nails, then added with dangerous calmness, “And don’t you ever disparage me in public or you’re next. Okay, princess?”

Molly simply stared at Shelby for a second. Suddenly, her flawless, painstakingly crafted face no longer seemed stunning, but cold and carved and cruel.

“Shelby?” Molly said loudly, making sure to enunciate. “Fuck. Off.”

The gasps of her fellow students rang in Molly’s ears as she shoved past Shelby and out onto the quad. It wasn’t until she paused to catch her breath that she noticed Teddy and Max jogging at her heels.

“That was intense. Are you okay?” Teddy asked.

Molly’s knees wobbled and she leaned against the nearest solid object, which happened to be a tree with very prickly bark. She straightened abruptly.

“That was all Shelby, I swear,” she said. “Except it may have been my fault. Inadvertently. Oh, my God.”

“What did Brooke do?” Max asked eagerly. “Turn green? Start yelling obscenities? Thank God these bitches keep this place so interesting.”

“Max, shut up and be a good friend for a second.” Teddy frowned.

“I am a good friend,” Max said. “But guys never get all the details so I figured I ought to.”

Teddy had already turned his attention back to Molly. She couldn’t read his face.

“Seriously, Teddy,” Molly insisted. “I would never, ever have signed off on that.”

“I know,” Teddy said. “I was just trying to decide whether it would be piling on to say that I told you so. But you look miserable enough as it is.”

“Brooke hates me now. And I don’t blame her. I’d think it was me, too. I don’t know what to do.”

“You know, for all Brooke’s faults, she’s not stupid,” Teddy said. “She’ll see how upset you are and then she’ll have no choice but to believe you.”

“I don’t know, Teddy,” Max said. “I think she’s more likely to go slash and burn.”

Molly walked in a tight circle, wriggling her hands as she tried to breathe.

“I can’t calm down,” she panicked. “I can’t go back in there because every time anyone looks at me, it’s obvious that they think I did it, and it reminds me that Brooke is off putting my stuff through a shredder, or whatever. I have a history test after lunch, but I don’t think I can make it that far without throwing up. I might throw up now.”

“I have a better idea,” Teddy said. “Have you been to Griffith Park yet?”

It took a second for Molly to realize this wasn’t just a random non sequitur. “You mean… ditch?”

“Damn.” Max pouted. “Principal Mom is proctoring my fifth-period study hall. She’ll go postal. I’m out.”

“Won’t she get mad at you, too?” Molly asked Teddy.

Teddy shrugged. “I can take the heat. Besides, I’m the good child,” he said.

Max sighed. “I’ll just tell Perkins you started projectile vomiting or something.”

“Come on, Indiana,” Teddy said. “No point in waiting around here for things to get worse. Let’s go.”

The sights and smells from where Molly lay sprawled on lush green grass more than made up for the zero she was going to take on her history test. In front of her: the exotic, blooming gardens of the Getty Center, a sprawling steel and warm stone museum nestled high in the rolling Santa Monica Mountains. Beyond that: a 180-degree view of Los Angeles stretching clear out to the gleaming blue Pacific. And directly to her left: Teddy McCormack, holding a giant Jamba Juice with an immunity boost.

“Better than class, right?” he asked.

“Amazing,” Molly agreed.

When they’d left school, she and Teddy had gone straight up to the Griffith Park Observatory, where Teddy had pointed out the downtown skyline (a surprisingly small cluster of skyscrapers poking at the smog layer) and gestured in the vicinity of the Capitol Records building and a few of the major studios. Then he whizzed her down Sunset, first to browse the vinyl collection at Amoeba Records—where he’d been delighted to find William Shatner’s spoken-word album, which he swore would provide great inspiration for his work with Mental Hygienist—and then past the Viper Room, where River Phoenix died.

“Who?” Molly had said.

“Joaquin Phoenix’s brother? Who OD’d really young and died on the sidewalk there? He was in Stand by Me?”

“Stand by Me… doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Oh, come on, that’s the one where they’re kids and Jerry O’Connell is fat, and—”

“Jerry O’Connell, one of the great actors of our generation, was fat?”

Teddy gawked at her for a second until he noticed Molly biting her lip to keep from laughing, at which point he dove his hand into the bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos that sat between them and threw a handful at her head.

“Cute, Indiana,” he said. “For a second there I thought we were going to have to send a humanitarian shipment of movies to your hometown.”

Teddy rattled off other landmarks they passed—the Playboy mansion, the courthouse where Winona Ryder was tried for shoplifting—as he navigated his rickety old 4Runner toward the Getty. They’d whipped through a couple cool photography exhibits before collapsing on the beautiful sloping lawn.

“Sometimes on the weekend, I come here and read for hours,” Teddy explained. “It’s free to get in, and it’s so peaceful.”

“This is the kind of place that makes me want to hide until closing, and then camp out and spend the night,” Molly said. “Like in The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.”

“I loved that book,” he said. “But security here is a bit tighter. And I don’t think handcuffs go with your outfit.”

“Honestly, if the choice is between going to prison and having to face Brooke again, bring on the pokey,” Molly said, sighing.

“You’re pretty upset about this, huh?”

“She didn’t even fight back,” Molly said. “She could’ve said it was a lie. She could’ve said anything, but she just ran. She must be really, really hurt.”

“Who knew her mother was her kryptonite?” Teddy mused.

“And the worst part is that last night, we kind of bonded,” Molly fretted. “I was going to tell Shelby that we couldn’t hang out as much anymore. And I actually felt bad about that. Can you believe that? You were totally right about her. I wish I’d listened to you.”

Teddy shook his head, blushing a little. “It was none of my business. Afterward, I actually felt really guilty for sticking my nose in it like that.”

“You were just trying to be a good friend,” Molly said.

Teddy looked at his feet. “Yeah. A good friend.”

The air between them became electric. Molly remembered the other day at her locker and felt a sudden urge to explain herself.

“So, about Danny—” she began.

“So, um, tell me about your boyfriend,” Teddy said, at the same time.

They both looked startled and then laughed—to Molly’s ears, a tad awkwardly. Molly noticed Teddy’s hands twitch a little on his jeans. He must have also, because he grabbed his right hand and cracked a knuckle.

“It was kind of weird that he’d never come up before Ari mentioned him,” Teddy said, trying to sound light but not entirely succeeding. “You know, since we’ve been hanging out a lot. You and me and Max, I mean.”

Molly sighed. “I know I just brought it up, but the truth of the matter is, I’ve kind of been avoiding the topic, even with myself.”

“Denial?” Teddy asked over his juice.

“I am a very experienced practitioner,” Molly affirmed. “But when you’ve dated the same guy basically your whole life, and he held your hand at your mother’s funeral, and now you’re three thousand miles away…”

She shrugged and shot Teddy a rueful smile.

“So you’re, like, childhood sweethearts,” Teddy said, flicking at his straw with his forefinger. “That’s tough to compete with.” His ears reddened. “For L.A. to compete with, I mean. Like, it must be hard to focus on being here. Or something.”

His stammering made Molly feel oddly warm. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with that feeling, so she pressed on: “The problem is, when I left, he didn’t want to have the Talk, and neither did I. So we ignored the issue, and now we can’t even seem to talk on the phone.”

“That sucks,” Teddy said. “Especially because it seems, like, in a long-distance relationship, talking is kind of… it.”

“I know. But honestly, back home, we didn’t always talk, either. Not real talks,” she confessed. “We were just Molly and Danny. It didn’t always work, but it was so comfortable, and after a while that’s all I wanted. It was kind of all I could handle. But now that I’m in L.A…. I don’t know. I see us from a distance and we look so different.”

“But you are different,” Teddy said. “Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Molly said. “Maybe. I guess even if I’m not all that different, the situation is. But… Danny saw me through the worst time of my life, you know? I feel like I owe him something.” She sighed, and looked out at the garden in front of them, a riotous spiral of multicolored blossoms and spiky leaves. “Does that even make any sense?”

Teddy was silent for a long beat as he poked down all the bubbles on the plastic lid to his Jamba Juice. Finally, he looked up at her, his eyes unreadable, the amber flecks dim.

“Well, obviously, I’ve never been in this situation,” he began. “But it sounds like he’s important enough to you that you should really try to say all this to him.” His voice dipped a notch. “Like, before you rush into anything.”

“God, you’re so reasonable,” Molly teased, something in her wanting to break the strange tension between them. “I wanted you to tell me that the solution would be, like, running away to a deserted island and pretending none of this is happening.”

“Well, now, I can’t sign off on that. I saw every episode of Lost. Islands are not to be trusted.”

“I’ll protect you,” Molly said.

Teddy suddenly took such a generous slurp of his smoothie that he began to choke. Molly whacked him on the back. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Teddy closed his eyes for a very brief moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m super smooth.”

They lapsed into silence, gazing out at the city. Molly was again amazed at the sheer number of cars creeping along the road, and bodies ambling through the museum’s walkways. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one playing hooky. Though she was probably the only one with a half sister at home who was possibly, at that very moment, pouring peroxide into her shampoo bottle.

“What am I going to do about Brooke?” she asked.

“Tell the truth?” Teddy suggested. “It’s a radical concept, but I learned from Sesame Street that it tends to be the best.”

“Truth is relative to Brooke Berlin,” Molly said. “She’s probably rescripted this whole day in her head to the point where it was me on the TV screen, reading the e-mail and holding up her photo.”

Teddy looked thoughtful. “I know Brooke has her moments. But I think this whole Mean Girl thing is a front,” he said. “Like a defense mechanism. I don’t know. I’m just saying, I think she’s a human being underneath all that bullshit. So talk to her like one.”

“You are all about me talking to people.” She grinned. “I should’ve come here with Max. She’d be telling me to put sugar in Brooke’s gas tank.”

“Which would actually be your gas tank, which is why you should always pick me over Max in a crisis,” Teddy said, returning her smile. “Look, if Brooke doesn’t believe you, yeah, it’s really going to suck. But at least you’ll have done all you can.”

“Short of killing Shelby.”

“Short of killing Shelby,” Teddy agreed.

Molly laughed grimly and shook her head. “Thank you for getting me out of school today,” she said. “And for listening to me yammer. It felt good to get that all out—about Danny, I mean. I wanted to talk to you about it, you know, before, when… that day at my locker.”

Teddy looked down at his Converse. Molly noticed for the first time that they were wearing exactly the same shoes.

“You don’t owe me any explanation,” he said. “I’m your friend, remember?”

“Yup. My friend,” she said, feeling a vague pang.

He cleared his throat. “And as your friend, I advocate eating In-N-Out for dinner. Meat makes everything better.”

“Not if you’re vegetarian.”

“Oh, no, I don’t believe they exist,” Teddy said seriously. “Vegetarians are just carnivores on vacation. Be sure and tell Max I said that.”

“Well, I might have to take a rain check on the meat binge,” she said. “I think Brick said he’s getting lobsters flown in from Maine.”

“They scream in the hot water, you know.”

“Yes, indeed,” Molly said. “That’s why I’m going to name mine Shelby before the chef drops it in.”

Teddy laughed and reached out as if to squeeze her hand, then appeared to catch himself and ruffled her hair instead. He blushed a bit.

“Why are guys so into the hair ruffle?” Molly asked to diffuse things a bit. “Brick did that to me on the day we met.”

Teddy pondered this. “Maybe it’s because he wanted to do something else but he didn’t know how.”

He turned and looked at her. Molly could swear she saw a flicker of something in his eyes. Regret? Sadness?

“I should get you back to your car,” he said.

“So I can go face the firing squad.”

“Chin up, Indiana. You can figure it out. All of it.”

“Yeah. All of it,” Molly repeated, knowing exactly what he meant.