2:51 A.M., PST
Camilla Birnbaum. Camilla Babette Birnbaum. Mrs. Ben Birnbaum.
Cammie remembered how just last year, she’d sat cross-legged on her bed like a fifth grader and doodled variations of her fantasy future with Ben on the back of her science notebook, then crossed them all out lest anyone see. Because if anyone had seen, she would have had to kill them.
Most people thought her relationship with Ben had been just this physical thing. They’d been right. But it had been more, too. Cammie knew him, she was sure, in a way that no other girl had. She knew all his dark and nasty secrets. She knew how to make his fantasies come true. From what she heard, many a Beverly Hills marriage had been built on less.
That he’d gotten to her heart was a secret she kept from everyone, often even from herself. But she’d been so sure—was still so sure—that on some level Ben felt the same way she did. So why did he want to fight it?
Except there she was, offering herself to Ben on a goddamn plate, for chrissake. And he’d rejected her.
Rejected her. She was easily the hottest girl her age in 90210 and 90211 and probably even 90402. But when she’d kissed him in the fun house, Ben had barely blinked. He must really care about that upper-crust Upper East Side New York bitch on his arm.
Excuse me, but the girl is practically flat. And hello, a little makeup would help. Or are cosmetics too gauche for a girl with her breeding? She probably has permanent chafe marks on her thighs from keeping them squeezed together.
A New Year’s Eve fending off assholes at a back-lot Warners party hadn’t been what Cammie’d had in mind for the night of Jackson Sharpe’s wedding. Yet there she was, still at the party with the dregs of humanity, long after her friends had left. She’d danced, drunk too much champagne, spurned three guys who invited her to their cars to do some blow and two others who’d invited her home to do them. It wasn’t that she didn’t like blow, and one of the guys was actually quite tasty. But she had something important, private, and very personal to do this evening, and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to drive back to Beverly Hills and then return to this side of the hill to accomplish it.
Cammie sighed and downed the last few sips of champagne in her glass. Her plan had been to invite Ben to share this mission with her. What a joke. She blinked in the direction of the band. She was seeing double of the lead singer of … what the hell was the name of the band again? Something that started with a D, one syllable. Dick, maybe? Right. Dick. She was seeing double Dicks. Not good. Too much champagne. She had zero desire to risk a DWI. If Ben had been with her, he could have driven. But fucking Ben was fucking someone else, somewhere else. Cammie decided she would walk.
“Hey, don’t leave, baby!” some guy was calling, but Cammie gave him the finger as she walked out of the party. And kept walking. Out of the Warner Brothers lot, then east on deserted Riverside Drive. Past Disney’s fucking Mickey Mouse-eared fence and the building crowned by seven gigantic stone dwarfs.
When she reached NBC Studios, Cammie removed her shoes—you’d think you’d be able to walk in twelve-hundred-dollar Blahniks—and carried the stiletto heels.
Fifteen minutes later she reached the high fence that surrounded the huge Forest Lawn Cemetery complex. Obviously the place was officially closed at this hour. Not that such a minor detail would dissuade her. It had been closed every New Year’s Eve. Every New Year’s Eve, she’d found a way inside.
She followed the fence up the steep hill, searching for a certain spot where the fence was in minor disrepair. When she found it, she pushed hard on the chain links until they separated from the retaining pole. The fence gave way just a few inches, enough for Cammie to slither inside.
Shit. She’d dropped one Blahnik on the far side of the fence. To hell with it. She hurled the other one over the fence in the general direction from which she had come. If the shoes were there when she came back, fine. If not, whatever.
Once she found her bearings in the dark cemetery, it was only a five-minute trek to her destination. The grounds were well manicured; the close-cropped grass tickled her soles as she walked. Almost before she knew it, she was standing at the burial plot.
“Hey, Mom,” Cammie said. “Happy New Year.”
Cammie took her keys from her purse and shone the attached miniflashlight on the headstone. All it bore was her mother’s name, Jeanne Reit Sheppard, followed by the year of her birth and death. No inscription, no Bible passage, no “beloved mother, wife, and teacher.” Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Cammie trained the flashlight on the rest of the plot, saw a bit of crabgrass that had sprouted near her feet, and cleared it away. There was a dirty straw wrapper, too, which she stuffed in her purse. Would it kill the ghouls who worked these grounds to keep them up the way they were getting paid to do?
She crouched down by the headstone, lost her balance, and stumbled to the ground. Sufficiently inebriated not to feel the cold earth under her ass, she just brought her knees to her chin and circled them with her arms. This alcohol-soaked pilgrimage had been an annual event for her since she’d turned fourteen. But she’d never been quite as wasted as she was this time. Which, she would later muse, was probably why she asked what she asked. Aloud, that is.
“Was it really an accident, Mom?”
She waited, as if she actually expected her mother to psychically contact her from beyond to tell her the truth.
“It’s the part about Daddy not calling the police until the next morning that’s always bugged me,” Cammie went on. “He said he’d taken a sleeping pill. Is that really what happened? Or maybe you jumped overboard. Maybe you wanted to die. I’d just really, really like to know once and for all, Mom. Now would be a good time to tell me.”
Nothing.
“I could use a little help here!” Cammie called into the darkness. “Hey, John-psychic-what’s-your-face-with-the-TV-show, where are you when I really need you?”
More silence.
“Shit,” Cammie mumbled. “Oh, sorry for saying shit, Mom. I curse a lot, which is really fucked up. It’s just … there’s this boy, Ben Birnbaum. He was my boyfriend—remember I told you about him last year? Well, he broke up with me before he went away to college. Right before he dumped me, I was planning to bring him here to meet you. Dumb idea.”
Cammie sighed and rummaged through her purse. “Anyway, I brought you something from the party.” She took out a small square of Belgian chocolate, wrapped in a Happy New Year! napkin, and placed it on the headstone.
“Perks of being dead: You don’t have to diet anymore.” She picked absentmindedly at the dirt that was now embedded in the pale green leather of her dress. “Tonight I tried to get Ben back. What a joke. I thought he really cared about me. Only he doesn’t. Maybe it’s genetic. You know what would really suck, Mom? If it turns out that my taste in men is as bad as yours.”
Cammie wobbled onto the plot itself and lay down on her back, arms splayed. She stared up into the starry, starry night. “It’s so beautiful out, Mom. I wish you could see it.” Tears leaked out of Cammie’s eyes and ran into her ears. “Happy fucking New Year.”