6:24 P.M., PST
At the main entrance to the planetarium ushers escorted the guests to their seats along aisles strewn with rose petals—real ones this time. The seats had all been reupholstered for the occasion in gold silk hand-painted with curlicues of red roses.
Cammie Sheppard took all this in with little reaction. She sat with her parents in the tenth row, scratching a French-manicured nail against one of the painted roses on her seat cushion. “If this shit comes off on my dress, I’ll sue them,” she told her father.
Clark Sheppard proudly patted her knee. “That’s my girl.”
Her stepmother, Patrice, shot Cammie an evil look. That was nothing new. Cammie knew Patrice loathed her. Which was fine with Cammie, who loathed Patrice right back.
Cammie’s real mother had been an elementary school art teacher who died in a mysterious boating accident when Cammie was only eight. That night Cammie had been at Dee’s house for her very first sleepover. When her father had come to Dee’s the next day and broken the terrible news, Cammie hadn’t believed him. How could her mother be there one day and gone forever the next? They’d been painting a Charlotte’s Web mural on her bedroom wall together; surely her mom would come home to finish the project.
But the mural was never finished. Cammie would never let anyone touch it, either. The half-completed panorama still adorned one of her bedroom walls. She never spent the night at anyone else’s house, either. She was embarrassed to admit it because she knew it was irrational: She feared that if she spent a whole night away from home, her father would die.
When Cammie’s mom died, her father had been a junior agent at William Morris. The family was living in an area called “Beverly Hills adjacent,” meaning in the shadow of true power and wealth without actually possessing it, which galled the hell out of Cammie on a regular basis.
Two years later her father married Patrice Koose, a has-been actress on the William Morris roster who longed for a comeback. Her father had finagled Patrice the role of Natalie Portman’s mother in a low-budget indie flick about a mom who fought for her daughter after she’d been sold as a sex slave to Russian gangsters, which won her a Golden Globe nomination. After that, it seemed to Cammie that every has-been in Hollywood flocked to her father for representation. It began with the oh-my-God-I-thought-she-was-dead has-beens, followed by the please-she’s-over-forty-for-God’s-sake has-beens, followed by the thirty-year-old-on-the-verge-of has-beens. And after that, Creative Artists Agency, otherwise known as CAA, the most powerful talent agency in Hollywood, had wooed Cammie’s father and his clients away from William Morris with an offer of a corner office. The big bucks started rolling in, and Clark Sheppard moved his little family to a mansion in the zip code of good and plenty, 90210.
Cammie had wanted to move, since compared to that of every kid she knew, her house was a piece of shit. However, she’d wanted the Charlotte’s Web mural that still adorned her wall, the last tangible evidence that her real mother had existed, even more. So she threw an impressively operatic screaming tantrum. Her father had responded by insisting that the builders of their new home incorporate the mural into her new bedroom, and they had.
The night that Patrice told her new husband she hated children and the best she could offer was to stay out of Cammie’s way, Cammie happened to be listening to their conversation through a bathroom vent. So in essence, Cammie was raised by a string of nannies. The upside to this was that she never had to study in Spanish 1, 2, 3, or 4. Cammie decided that if Patrice was going to ignore her, Cammie would do likewise. In her mind, Patrice was just that bitchy woman who lived in her house.
Cammie had kept her end of the bargain. Her step-mother, on the other hand, had taken every opportunity she could to make Cammie’s life a thing of misery. Nothing was off-limits: the guys she saw, her brains, grades, clothes.
Patrice eyed Cammie’s cleavage and sniffed. “A little obvious for a wedding, Cammie. You look like you’re peddling it at Hollywood and Vine.”
Jealous cow. Cammie made her wrist limp and quickly shook it back and forth. “What’s this?”
“I have no idea,” Patrice replied coldly.
“Your neck wattle. Time for a little touch-up, Patrice. But I’m sure you’ve got Dr. Birnbaum on speed dial.”
“You’re a bitch, Camilla.”
“Takes one to know one.”
Clark Sheppard chuckled. Typical. Cammie knew her dad liked to pretend that their sparring was all in fun. Cammie crossed her arms and turned away from her stepmother. A couple of rows in front and a little to the left, she could see Ben and Anna seated together. Ben’s mom and dad, Dr. and Mrs. Dan Birnbaum, had joined them. Ben and Anna were deep in conversation, and Ben cut his eyes back toward Cammie for a moment. She gave him a slow, sultry smile.
Good, she thought. Very, very good.
The truth was that Ben Birnbaum was the first boy Cammie had really, truly, deeply fallen for. Not that she’d ever told him that. He’d never said “I love you” to Cammie, and she wasn’t about to say it first. But she did love him. She’d even come close to breaking her never-wake-up-away-from-home rule for him because he made her feel so safe. She’d never let on to her so-called best friends that Ben was more than hot sex, either. Cammie wasn’t about to give anyone that kind of power over her.
She snuck another look at Ben’s pickup chick. Frankly, after the public humiliation that record producer asshole had just put her through, Cammie was amazed she’d stuck around for the ceremony. That could only mean that the girl had some balls and that Ben really was into her, even though they’d only just met. Shit.
“Hey, Cammie.”
She turned to the friendly male voice behind her and saw Adam Flood slip into a seat his parents had been saving for him. The year before, Adam had been the new guy at school. Loose-limbed and cute in a Ben Stiller way—if Ben Stiller had been about six inches taller and habitually dyed his hair different bizarre colors—Adam was so funny and nice and nonthreatening that he’d effortlessly worked his way onto the school A-list. It didn’t hurt that he quickly became point guard on the varsity basketball team, spoke Russian, and was a nationally ranked chess player. Since the last time Cammie had seen him, Adam’s hair had gone from Elvis black to semiblue.
“Nice ’do,” Cammie told him, smiling.
“It’s awful,” Mrs. Flood commented, though she had a loving look on her face when she said it. Adam had once told Cammie that his parents had met in law school at the University of Michigan. A couple that had met in law school, gotten married, had kids, and lived happily ever after? To Cammie, it seemed like some kind of fairy tale.
The Floods had moved from Ann Arbor to Beverly Hills, and Adam’s parents had joined a prestigious entertainment law firm. They handled Jackson Sharpe’s legal work and lived a few blocks from Cammie. Cammie figured they had to be reasonably wealthy, yet they were utterly unpretentious—almost unheard-of in Cammie’s social circle. Their home was quite a bit smaller than Cammie’s. Mr. Flood drove a Prius. His wife drove a Saturn. As for Adam, he didn’t even have his own car, which was completely unheard-of for a teenager in Beverly Hills.
Cammie liked to spend time with the Floods; it was like studying prehistoric relics from another age, where families stayed together and actually seemed to like each other.
Adam gazed around at the planetarium. “Hey, if only I’d known, I’d have gone with a Star Trek thing.”
Cammie laughed. “You probably would’ve done it, too.”
Adam’s mother nudged him. “Who’s that blond singer who writes poetry that you like so much? I saw her right over there.”
“Nice, Mom,” Adam said.
“Have you ever seen so many movie stars in one place?” his dad asked.
Adam hitched a playful thumb at his parents. “They’re still starstruck,” he told Cammie. “So, where is everyone?” Cammie, as usual, was fully up-to-date on the matter and at the ready with a comprehensive list of names, in descending order of importance. “Well, you know where Sam is. Last time I saw Dee, she was with some zit in a suede tux. Knowing Skye and Parker, they’re probably on the roof smoking the hash she brought back from Morocco. Krishna’s parents paid her to come, so she’s somewhere with Damian. Ashleigh and Jordan are in Vail—”
“Hey, there’s Ben Birnbaum.” Adam cocked his chin in Ben’s direction. “Looks like he brought a date. Wow.”
For Cammie, no translation was necessary. Obviously Adam had just seen the girl with Ben, and “wow” was his considered opinion of her. This was not going to do. Ben simply could not possibly be with another wow-inducing babe.
In the far reaches of the planetarium a string quartet began a classic love song. The ceremony, a bit late in starting, would begin any minute now; Cammie was sure it wouldn’t be very long. People in Beverly Hills knew how fleeting an institution marriage could be, so they expected a short ceremony followed by a long, lavish party. Which meant Cammie didn’t have much time to figure out how to deal with Ben’s date. Something had to be done, but what?
Her only requirement: something that wouldn’t necessitate jail time.