Emancipated (31 page)

Candace frowned. “Why it happened? Because he's into her.”

“I can see why it happened
last night
,” Maya corrected herself. “It's obvious that Lucy is pretty shaken about John-Michael.”

“We're
all
upset.”

Maya pursed her lips briefly. “Really?”

Candace eyed her sharply. “You think we're not?”

“It's just . . . I'm not sure that
Grace
is upset about John-Michael.” Maya chose her words carefully. “She seemed to think that assisted suicide was something he
should
do time for.”

“What?! She was arguing that we shouldn't
assume
he did it!”

Maya was silent for a few seconds. “But maybe he did, Candace. And if he did, I think we should show some understanding.”

“You know Grace. She thinks all killing is bad.”

Maya raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

Candace came to a halt. “Hey, we passed the coffee shop already.”

Maya pointed to a wide spread of tables where the street vendor's display began. “I actually wanted to stop there. Help me find a DVD of
Jelly and Pie
.”

They spent about ten minutes perusing the solid collection of DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, and audio cassettes until finally Candace unearthed one at the bottom of a box labeled
TV
. She showed it to Maya. The cover photograph was a group shot of the cast, goofing around just as they had in the few episodes of
Jelly and Pie
that Maya had seen. Lucy was almost unrecognizable. A pint-sized little nine-year-old, slightly chubby, cinnamon-colored skin, and a wide, toothy grin.

“Lucasta Jordan-Long,” Maya said. “
Lucasta
. That's why you couldn't find her online.”

“Jeez. Lucasta! Yeah, that sounds like a stage-brat name. Dear God,” Candace continued, “check out these cast photos. It's a cheese factory. Now this we
have
to watch.”

They hurried to the house, brandishing the DVD and some cans of Diet Sprite and Mountain Dew.

“You think that's appropriate?” Lucy fumed. “John-Michael spent last night in jail. Now we're supposed
to reminisce about our childhoods?”

But Paolo seemed genuinely taken by the DVD cover photo. Despite Maya and Paolo cooing about how cute she'd been, Lucy stormed upstairs in a black mood. Paolo seemed torn as to whether he should follow, but the show's theme song was already running.

“I'll just take a look at the first five minutes,” he conceded.

Maya watched Grace enter the living room just as Lucy was leaving. Grace stared at the TV for a second, confused and not a little annoyed.

“Guys—the benefit begins in almost four hours,” she said. “Seriously. I need you to start helping me fix things up down at school. You promised.”

Candace yawned. “Will you chill? It's not even noon. There's plenty of time. Didn't you already fill the freezer with all the turnovers?”

Grace visibly recoiled. She seemed on the verge of another outburst but apparently thought better of it.

Candace continued. “You're not going to believe what Maya and I found for sale on the street today. At the secondhand stall. Maya, tell her.”

Maya opened three sodas and handed them out. “So guess what—Charlie from
Jelly and Pie
has been living right under our roof.”

There was the briefest of hesitations. “You found a DVD of her show?”

“Yeah, that's why she left just now,” Maya said.

“She doesn't want us to watch,” Candace explained. “But c'mon, it's a hoot.”

“Little Lucy,” Maya said. “She was such a doll!”

A little suspiciously Grace said, “I thought you never saw the show before.”

“I didn't say that,” Maya replied a little too fast. She'd completely tripped up—again. “What I said was that I don't watch much TV. How did I know what show you were talking about? I saw
Jelly and Pie
once or twice. I just didn't pay that much attention. Hey, you've got to admit it, Lucy doesn't look anything like Charlie now.”

Candace lifted the Mountain Dew to her lips. She glanced at the TV screen. The show had begun. “Sweet fancy Moses! Is
that
the legendary
Jelly and Pie
?”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

KITCHEN, SATURDAY, MAY 23

“My lawyer got me out of jail.”

Lucy's relief was instant. She stood in the kitchen, one hand clutching the phone to her ear. She waved frantically with the other, trying to get her housemates' attention without interrupting John-Michael. They were still in the living room, gripped by the image of Lucy's younger self on the TV.

“The cops don't have enough to charge me,” John-Michael was saying. “And it's not like they didn't try. They kept me up half the night.”

“John-Michael—that's awesome!”

“That detective woman, Ellen Winter, finally signed off on my release. But I kinda got a sense that she's expecting to see me again.”

“You're being too negative.”

“You didn't see the look she gave me.”

Moments later, Lucy planted herself on the checkered rug in front of the three-seater gray sofa. Sometimes the only way to get her friends' attention was to block the TV.

“I just spoke to John-Michael. He's doing some paperwork, then he'll start back from Carlsbad, but it's going to be a few hours. He's taking the bus. Bad news is, he's not sure he'll make it in time for the start of the benefit. And he was supposed to be arranging the ride for his buddy who was gonna play drums. With all the drama, I forgot to find someone else. Looks like it'll just be me playing guitar.”

The sympathy was universal.

Lucy nodded, hiding her disappointment. She'd have to play alone until John-Michael turned up. She wanted to blame Paolo, but he'd only promised to arrange the band's transportation and electricity supply. They hadn't planned for the possibility of the rest of the band ditching Lucy at the last minute.

She could tell Paolo didn't like disappointing her. He clearly still wanted to impress her with a sweet setup at the benefit: a drummer, a bass player, a great sound system. Now they had the setup and no other musicians.

“You're pretty calm about this,” Paolo observed.

Lucy paced over to the sound system, which stood beneath the wall-mounted HDTV screen. Her acoustic guitar was on a stand next to the wall, inside a hard case. She popped the case open and removed the instrument. “Learned a long time ago, a good entertainer plans for every contingency. I could walk into a kid's birthday party right now if I had to.”

“Really?” Maya perked up from her spot on the sofa. She sounded impressed. “What would you sing?”

Everyone in the living room stared at Lucy, waiting. It was a good feeling, all that hopeful expectation. Especially when she knew she could deliver. Lucy strummed a couple of chords and sang:

With a few good friends and a stick or two
,

A house is built at a corner called Pooh
.

The housemates burst into laughter.

“Carly Simon,” Lucy said with a grin. “I got it covered.”

Paolo said, “You should sing that today.”

“JM and I were thinking more along the lines of Green Day, Rancid, Operation Ivy.”

“Even better,” Candace noted. “All the songs from our childhood. Plus Winnie-the-Pooh.”

Paolo continued to stare at her, smiling. He looked as though he was about to say something else, but whatever it was, he kept it buried. Lucy liked the way he looked at her. It was impossible not to think back to how surprisingly sweet he'd been with her in his room. She'd told herself that the experience wouldn't be repeated, that it wasn't fair to let him think that they had a chance of a relationship together.

But maybe all the changes that were needed to make him more irresistible were superficial. She imagined his chest and arms covered in tattoos, maybe a piercing in his ear. Clothes that were a little less J. Crew. Yeah. She could see that working.

They left for the benefit an hour later, Paolo as Lucy's roadie. Candace, Grace, and Maya followed with a trunk loaded with food.

Candace and Grace's school, Hearst Academy in Malibu, was based around a sunny campus of green lawns and mission revival-style buildings of white stucco and terra-cotta-tiled roofs. The flower beds were tight with brightly colored hibiscus; the walls crawled with violet and pink bougainvillea.

Grace had managed to persuade the school's administration to let them use the central quad for the Amnesty International benefit. Lucy reflected that it didn't hurt that Candace's quasi-stepfather, the Dope Fiend, was a generous benefactor of the school. They'd probably have let the Deering girls organize an acid-fueled rave on the school grounds, so long as their coffers kept bulging. Lucy would certainly have enjoyed a rave a lot more.

A huge red Amnesty banner hung between the windows of two classrooms and across half of the quad. Beneath it, tables were arranged. They were filling fast with aluminum trays of cakes, pizza slices, quiche, fried chicken, paper bags and napkins, and cans of soda in deep plastic trays of ice. On the opposite side of the quad, two boys from Paolo and John-Michael's school were unloading amplifiers and microphones. Lucy almost laughed when she imagined herself alone in that setup. Never mind. She'd rock it out.

“Hey—is this the place for the impromptu Lucy Long gig?” The question came from behind her, a deadpan voice. Lucy peered between the faces that were crowding around the food tables, looking for the source. When she found it, she couldn't help grinning widely.

“Ruben!”

“Hey, girlfriend,” Ruben said with an ironic grin. “Am I too late to help out?” He stood clutching a conga drum to his chest, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Congas . . . ?”

“Only just got your text. I was on the way back from a lesson. It's all I had time to bring.”

Lucy waited for Ruben to put the conga down. She hugged him tight. “Thank you, babe. I owe you.”

“You don't owe me, dude. If anything, I owe you for letting Bailey be such a nimrod.”

“I knew Bailey was gonna have a problem with me. I totally got that from him the first time we met at the audition. I just gave him the excuse he needed to ditch me.”

“Look, I've known him for years. He's a good musician and we mesh okay together but . . . way I see it, Bailey's jerkitude is all his own.”

Lucy smiled, staring down at the conga drum. “You really know how to play that?”

“Like I was Ray Barretto. This is the
conga
; I got a
quinto
in the car.”

“You think you can play along with my kinda set?”

“Babe, it's cool, we'll improvise.”

The audience was beginning to assemble. Ruben must have called some friends because several people called out to him as he began to set up his drums alongside Lucy's guitar and mike stand.

A few minutes later they were ready for a sound check. Ruben was already entertaining the gathered crowd with some conga riffs.

At the edge of her vision, Lucy could see Paolo watching them. He was pretending to help with the audio setup, but she could tell that he was mainly keeping an eye on her interaction with Ruben. It was impossible not to compare the two guys. Paolo was younger by at least two years, fresh-faced and athletic. Ruben, on the other hand, a Puerto Rican high school dropout, had ink-black spiky hair to match
his dark eyes, piercings in his ear, cheekbones you could whet a knife on, and a
Sex Pistols—Never Mind the Bollocks
tattoo across his upper right arm, always on display under the rolled-up sleeve of his T-shirt. Ruben, who as far as Lucy had seen, lived for rhythm and punk.

If Ruben ever made a move, he'd be difficult to resist.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

HEARST ACADEMY, SATURDAY, MAY 23

“Quit staring. You look like a stalker.”

Lucy and Ruben were playing a song that Paolo didn't recognize when Paolo flipped around to see Candace eyeing him with a wily grin.

“Saw you look.”

Paolo adopted a nonchalant stance. “I'm just keeping an eye on the sound equipment. It's all rented.”

“Oh, stop it. We all know you slept with her.”

For a moment, Paolo froze. He tried to brush it off with a bashful smile. The memory of that encounter was only becoming more miserable as the hours passed.

“Small house and loose tongues, Paolo.”

“There I was thinking we were a pretty closemouthed bunch. Lucy being a child star, for example.”

Candace looked puzzled. “So?”

“You don't think it's weird that Lucy didn't tell you of all people that she used to have the same job as you? I mean—a TV show. It's kind of a big deal.”

“I guess. I assumed it was because she was embarrassed about being in rehab afterward,” Candace said.

Stunned, Paolo said, “She was in rehab?”

Candace flinched, as if annoyed at herself and Paolo, too. “See, I'll bet that's exactly the kind of reaction she's trying to avoid. It was years ago and it's not like she's the only child star to go that way. Get over it.”

“
You
get over it.” Paolo could feel himself reddening in anger.

They were silent for a moment.

Paolo regarded Candace with a circumspect, almost suspicious air. There were his own secret misdemeanors, too, of course. He was fairly certain that no one in the house had a clue about those. He knew how to keep a secret. He wondered, then, was Candace concealing something, too?