twenty-one
“TERRIBLE. I look like a tornado. Get it out of here.”
Brooke flung a swirling gray Calvin Klein gown in Brie’s direction. Her assistant caught it with a nimble swipe of her arm.
“Are you keeping the red-and-black one?”
“And look like a dying zebra? I don’t think so.”
“How about the floral maxi dress?”
“Ew. It makes me look like a Wordsmith poem.”
“Wordsworth,” Brie corrected.
“Wordsworthless,” Brooke snapped. “I would stomp all over his stupid dancing daffodils if it would make one decent outfit appear in this mess.”
Brooke surveyed the Alps-size heaps of clothes on the floor of her closet and swallowed her fury. Jeans from two months ago? What was she, a hobo? How had she allowed her wardrobe to get in such a passé state of disrepair? Not once had Brooke gone in there and emerged anything but clearheaded and balanced. Yet today, her sanctuary had betrayed her. Just like everybody else.
“It’s getting late, Brooke,” Brie said. “We’ve been at this for eight hours. I skipped a Latin quiz.”
“So? I blew off rehearsal. Are you saying that is not as important as some dumb dead language?”
“No, well, I mean—”
“Don’t worry, it’s fine,” Brooke said, her voice rising an octave. “I just got humiliated in front of the whole school and am in tremendous psychic pain, so my play will probably fail, and instead of becoming a famous actress I’ll have to move to Montana and take up ranching and smell like hay and rabbits. But don’t you worry about me.”
Brie blinked and said nothing. Brooke smacked the wall with her palm. She knew she shouldn’t take out her frustration on Brie. She just couldn’t believe she’d run away instead of standing her ground. This upset her almost more than having her privacy invaded (and having to spend thirty minutes hiding out at Café Munch waiting for a cab). But she’d lost all control over anything but the flight impulse.
Brooke forced herself to do some yoga breathing.
“You may go when I say it’s time,” she said.
After a beat, she checked her watch.
“Okay, Brie, we’re done here. I have several hours of Lust for Life to watch. Francesca is getting her dead grandfather’s hand sewn on today so that she can still play the accordion.”
The bedroom door opened and Molly sidled in, her face even paler than usual. A lump rose in Brooke’s throat and she quickly turned her back and started rummaging through the piles again.
“Are you sure you don’t need me to stay?” Brie asked. “Keep an eye on your stuff, maybe booby-trap your laptop so that nobody can use it for evil?”
Sneaking a peek over her shoulder, Brooke saw Brie level a ferocious glare at Molly, who gritted her teeth and sat down on the bed. Brooke felt a surge of pride in Brie.
“No, you’d better have Stan take you home to your parents,” she said.
Brie scooped up all the offending garments Brooke had rejected and scurried out of the room.
Alone now with Molly, Brooke didn’t know what to do, mostly because she didn’t know at whom she was madder: herself, for letting down her guard the night before, or Molly for beating her at her own game. Summoning all her acting skills, she pasted an expression of confidence onto her face and turned around to deal with… well, with whatever it would be.
“Brooke,” Molly began, sounding a bit wobbly.
“Gosh, what’s wrong?” Brooke mocked her. “Did you dent your halo?”
“Brooke, it wasn’t me,” Molly said. “I swear.”
“Why are you even here? Aren’t you meeting Shelby for a celebratory cocktail?” Brooke continued. “Be sure to put it on Brick’s card.”
“Would you please just listen—”
“Why? You win. You ruined my life. Gold star.”
“Wait, I’ve ruined your life? Are you that delusional?” Molly’s mouth hung open slightly. Like the mouth-breather she was.
“Nobody else knew about those e-mails. Nobody in the world,” Brooke said, her volume rising. “And then after one night where you tricked me into opening up to you, suddenly the entire school knows? And you expect me to believe you didn’t do it? Now who’s delusional?”
“For the last time—”
“You think you’re so untouchable because your mother is dead,” Brooke said. “But you’ve been out to get me since you clomped off that airplane.”
Molly threw up her hands. “Right! Because this whole situation is only about you.”
“Name one thing in my life that hasn’t been shot to hell since you got here,” Brooke countered.
“I’d never have talked to Shelby if you hadn’t tried to turn me into an outcast. And I wouldn’t be living in your room or working on your play if you hadn’t pissed off Brick by ditching me at the party,” Molly listed, violently ticking off a finger with each item. “Yeah, you know what? It is all about you. Because you are the messed-up one here.”
Brooke’s heart started beating so fast against the back of her ribs that she thought it might actually burst through her chest wall. She imagined this was how girls who got hooked on diet pills must feel.
“Why can’t you just go away?” she choked. “We never wanted you here.”
“You think I wanted this so bad myself? I’m only here because my mother died.”
“Yeah, well—”
“No,” Molly said, her voice low but strong. “You are not talking right now. You need to listen to me.”
Brooke stepped backward a bit in surprise. Molly never spoke this forcefully.
“Do you think this has been fun for me?” Molly asked, visibly fighting tears. “I watched my mother waste away, and then I rearranged my entire life so I could get to know my father. So I could even have a father. Someone I didn’t even know existed, for practically my entire life! Did you ever stop for one second to think about how that felt?”
Brooke said nothing. Of course she had. She was human.
“Of course you didn’t,” Molly said. “Because I don’t think you’re human. The only real emotion you ever feel is self-pity.”
“Because you know so much about me!” Brooke shouted. “Don’t get all worked up about me not feeling your pain. You didn’t exactly come here and try to feel mine!”
“And what’s that? The unbearable heartbreak of not having your driver’s license? Cry me a river. Your mother is alive.”
“You’d never know it.”
“It’s not my fault you don’t have the guts to talk to her.”
“I don’t talk to her because she doesn’t give a shit about me!”
The words hung between them like skywriting, dissolving only at the air’s slow mercy. Molly backed up to her bed and sat down, weaving her hands into her hair. She looked at a loss for words. Whereas Brooke suddenly found that she had too many.
“She knows where I am. It’s not like we moved. She just hasn’t bothered with me,” Brooke said bitterly. “But at least she only left once. Brick leaves me every single day, whether he means it or not. One of my parents is supposed to want me, and if I don’t send those e-mails, at least I can pretend it might be her. But if I do try to reach out to her and she ignores me anyway, well, then I’ve got nothing.”
Molly opened her mouth but Brooke held up her hand.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she insisted. “That I’m making this all about me, me, me, and I’m selfish and I’m a jerk, and my parents aren’t dead and Laurel is, so I’m full of crap. If that’s what you think, that’s fine. But don’t shout about how I don’t have feelings, because I do. You just never bothered to ask.”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” Molly said softly.
Brooke rolled her eyes. “Great, then, this ought to be classic. Let me have it.”
But Molly didn’t say a word. Instead, she got up, crossed the room, and—to Brooke’s everlasting shock—pulled her sister into a tight embrace.
And then Brooke started to cry.
The way Brooke sniffled and snorted, Molly wondered if it had been years since this floodgate was last opened. She hung on tight, as if to try to rein in the heaving, glad her instinct had been correct.
After a few minutes, the shuddering petered out and then stopped; all that was left was some muffled sniffs. Sensing a return to calmness, Molly released Brooke and backed away, rubbing her face with emotional exhaustion.
“Well,” she said, flopping down on her bed. “We kind of made a mess of things.”
Brooke scraped a mascara stream off her face and nodded.
“What do we do now?” Molly wondered.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m tired.”
“Me, too.”
“This isn’t what I wanted,” Molly said quietly. “I just came here to have a parent again.”
“Well, there aren’t any around here,” Brooke muttered. “But it’s not your fault, no matter how much I wanted it to be. Daddy means well. He just can’t see past his own damn veneers.”
“Well, they are pretty blinding.”
The girls swapped tentative smiles. For once, Molly didn’t see a spoiled, painted brat; just a kid trying to be seen. By anyone.
“Look, I want you to know that I wasn’t lying when I said that I didn’t leak that e-mail,” Molly said. “But… really, I might as well have.”
Brooke crawled onto her bed and rested her cheek against her pillow, runny makeup making a Jackson Pollock painting out of the frilly case.
“Shelby was over, and she wanted to use a computer, and I was too busy complaining about you to notice that she was using yours,” Molly confessed. “I thought she’d done it by accident.”
Brooke just snorted.
“I know, I know. Now,” Molly said. “And in truth, I probably knew it then, but I didn’t care. And I should have. I’m sorry.”
Brooke wiped her eyes again and sat up.
“It really hurt,” she admitted. “I always act like I don’t care that my mom is gone, because I don’t want anyone looking at me as anything but an awesome force of nature. And until up today, they did. All of them.”
Molly covered her mouth to hide a smile. Brooke will be Brooke.
“But none of this started with you,” Brooke added. “It’s about Dad and Shelby and—”
“It’s about all of us,” Molly said. “Things just went a little too far.” She paused. “And you did act like kind of a lunatic.”
Brooke grinned. “I have to say, I have never seen anything funnier than people’s faces that day I ignored you in the theater. If I hadn’t been so freaked out I would’ve been cracking up. Neil Westerberg seemed convinced I was about to snap and murder everyone.”
“That was so uncomfortable.” Molly half-groaned, half-laughed. “It wasn’t until right then that I was, like, Oh, my God, she really hates me.”
“It was more…” Brooke faltered. “Look, this does not extend to your bangs, which we have got to fix, but I think maybe I was a tiny bit jealous.”
“Because of Brick?”
“In part. But more because of your mom,” Brooke said. “You have photos, you have stories. She thought you were the greatest. Mine doesn’t even know what I look like now. And then Brick slobbered all over you worse than the time he found kale-flavored protein powder. So I sort of… snapped.”
“Sort of? You stabbed a bonnet.”
“Accessories are always the first to suffer.”
“Ha! You kind of sounded like Brick just then,” Molly said. “And I have to admit, it feels nice that I know him well enough to be able to say that definitively.”
Brooke stared off into middle distance for a spell, then cleared her throat.
“I really am sorry your mother is dead,” she finally said. “And that I made everything miserable for you.”
“It’s okay,” Molly said. “Well, it is now, anyway. Back then I was pretty excited about dropping shoes on your feet.”
“Well, at least one good thing came out of it,” Brooke said, unfurling and moving over to her laptop. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re the next big reality stars in the making. All these producers have been writing to tell me how you and I could make fifty grand an episode if we’d just let them film us.”
“You mean, like Keeping Up with the Kardashians?”
“E! is calling it Being a Berlin.” Brooke snickered.
“I will become a Kardashian over my own cold dead body,” Molly said.
“This one is my favorite,” Brooke said, opening another e-mail. “ ‘We want to capture the excitement of the Berlin Babes’ every brouhaha, as a battle over the last of the breakfast cereal becomes a hair-pulling extravaganza, or the new Stella McCartney dress is the prize at the end of the pillow fight.’ ”
“I assume that one is for the Playboy channel.” Molly laughed.
“Right? Gross. I am not that desperate, thanks.”
“Shelby Kendall would die.”
“Shelby Kendall must die,” Brooke averred, snapping her laptop shut.
Molly cocked an eyebrow.
“Of embarrassment,” Brooke amended. “I’m pissed, but I’m not homicidal.”
“I can’t always tell,” Molly said. “What is the real story with you two, anyway? Nobody will say, although Shelby did tell me she sent you hemorrhoid meds.”
Brooke cocked her head. “Did she? Interesting.”
“Half true,” Brooke said. “To be honest, I don’t actually know how this all started, either. We went to the same elementary school, so we hung out sometimes when we were little. But then one night I remember Shelby’s mom showed up here really late, and super drunk, and Dad told me I had to go upstairs.”
“Wow, soapy,” Molly said, intrigued. “Then what happened?”
“I never found out,” Brooke said ruefully. “Shelby switched schools. Then when we all started at Colby-Randall in ninth grade, she showed up with a totally new face and a really bratty attitude. From day one she was out to get me and she never said why. Like, she petitioned the student government to have my Drama Club disbanded for tax evasion.”
“That’s… creative.”
“I know, right? And then, I was about to start dating this one senior—he was so cute. His name was Brian. I think he ended up going to Princeton. Anyway, he was totally on the hook until she stole my training bra during gym and hung it on his locker with a sign that said ‘Missing: Brooke Berlin’s Breasts.’ Like I can help having small boobs. And then he asked her out instead. So I sent her the medicine. It was all I could think of to get back at her.” She crossed her arms smugly. “It worked. He bailed. And that was all just in the first two weeks of school.”
“That sounds so exhausting,” Molly said. “I don’t think I have the endurance for all that stuff. I just want to be regular again.”
“And that is exactly your problem.” Brooke tsked. “We could be on the cover of Us if you’d just warm up to the idea of being famous.”
“We could also be on the cover of Us if I set your hair on fire.”
“Touché,” Brooke said. “But can’t we just have a teeny-weeny taste of revenge? Like, retribution tapas, or something? Shelby screwed you over, too, by making you look guilty. She deserves to be punished a little bit.”
“Please don’t.” Molly groaned. “I’m sick of having a nemesis.”
“Really?” Brooke was shocked. “But on TV it gets huge ratings.”
“Really,” Molly insisted. “Promise me you won’t start anything again. You and I just need to get on with our lives.”
Brooke appeared to be fighting with herself for a second, then her shoulders slumped and she nodded. “Fine. You’re right. I promise I won’t start anything.”
The girls lapsed into silence for a spell. Molly yearned to grab her phone and text Teddy or Max or Charmaine that a monumental sea change was making her and Brooke Berlin act like sisters. Like friends.
Or she could text Danny. Him, too.
Oops.