Emancipated (8 page)

Maya knocked on the door. Grace looked up swiftly. Her instant guilty expression gave way to confusion. After a second or two, she managed a veneer of welcome. Grace pulled away from the laptop and yanked the earbud out of her ear.

“You must be Maya. I didn't know you'd already arrived.”

Maya smiled, apologetic. “I was upstairs. Sorry, I only just heard you guys get home.”

Grace gave her a welcoming hug. Over her shoulder, Maya glanced down at the laptop on the bed. The video of Lucy continued to play. The image of Lucy strumming her guitar, smiling gently through her lyrics at the unseen witness.

There was no obvious reason to be suspicious exactly, but Maya couldn't help being struck by the image of Grace watching Lucy on the screen. There was a connection there that wouldn't have been obvious to everyone, perhaps.

But then, Maya had inside information.

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

SUNDAY, JANUARY 4

“Hey,” Ariana exclaimed. “Good to hear from you! You all settled in?”

She put down her grilled cheese and sat in the brand-new reclining chair in her living room. The chair was a gift—more compensation for keeping up the “friendship” with the child actor she'd first known as “Charlie.”

“Getting there.” It was a cheerful response.

Ariana decided to push it a little. “Good to be back in LA? Been checking out your old haunts?”

“Old haunts?”

Ariana dropped her voice. “You know what I'm talking about, hon.”

“Oh.” The tone changed. There was a long pause. “You mean the place where it
happened
.”

“Yeah. You ever think about it?”

A halting reply, slow. “I remember the house. It was up in the hills somewhere. A twisty, long drive. Big clumps of bright pink bougainvillea on the walls. When it got dark you could see the city lights down below spreading out like a sparkly picnic blanket.”

Ariana interrupted. “Mulholland Drive.”

“Excuse me?”

“That's probably where the party was,” Ariana said with easy confidence. “It's a long road in Los Angeles. Plenty of movie and TV people live there. Goes up, all twisty, just like you said. And down into Beverly Hills.”

The response was doubtful. “I don't know. I was just a little kid, I got used to jumping into a limo with a driver and one of our chaperones. Most times, I didn't know where I was going.”

“Who was your chaperone?”

“Different people. They looked after all the kids on the network's shows.”

Ariana changed tack. “Did you go to a lot of those parties?”

“With the Hollywood folk? A few. If it was someone from our TV show, they usually invited us, but we'd leave at around nine.”

“The other kids from the TV show?”

The voice grew colder at the memory. “Yeah. They'd set up some special table for us, you know, real party food that kids actually eat. Not the fancy-schmancy bits of seafood crap they'd feed to the adults to impress them. They'd hire some kids' entertainer to keep us happy. And then come nine o'clock—
vámonos
!”

“They'd kick you out?”

“They'd escort us to our limos.”

“But not that night?”

“No.” A pensive silence. “No. That night the chaperone got sick. She didn't want to get in the car for that twisty ride. She begged the hosts to let us kids stay over. They found us a room, put a cot in there for me, next to the couch where the chaperone slept. They sent me to bed around nine.”

“The chaperone didn't wake up?”

“Someone gave her some medicine. I guess it made her sleepy. She was snoring after an hour. I slept for a bit. Sometime in the middle of the night, I got up to pee.”

“You should have woken the chaperone.”

The girl released a deep sigh. “Yeah. You don't know how much I wish I had.”

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VENICE BEACH, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27

“We should totally have a party.”

John-Michael had been the first to say it, but Paolo knew it was on everyone's minds. When they'd first discussed the idea, they'd been living in the Venice Beach house for almost a month, but hadn't had a chance to truly celebrate their freedom.

Paolo dropped a cushion onto the checkerboard-patterned rug between the green futon and red easy chair. He rested his feet on the cushion and put his Diet Dr Pepper on the round coffee table that occupied the space between the sofa and the French windows.

“I'm in,” he said.

Maya had been the only one who didn't look excited about the idea. But then again, since she'd settled into the routine in the house, Maya hadn't done much except eat, go to school, and disappear behind her computer screen, forever working on the code for her app.

Paolo could understand. He'd become seriously addicted to World of Warcraft when he was twelve years old, and ended up heading a guild and sitting on a pile of WoW gold. He'd done it by playing day and night, often without his parents' knowledge. He was soft and flabby in those days, still waiting for the final push into puberty. WoW had given him another life, one in which he was powerful and gave orders—probably to adults. That thought he'd enjoyed even more. When his parents found out, they'd forced him to quit cold turkey and increased his tennis lessons from one hour a week to five. The weight had dropped off him; he'd thrown all that frustration into his tennis game. Since then, Paolo hadn't let himself near any
kind of computer game. It was just too risky.

He understood the kick that came from creating something on a screen. It wasn't real and yet it
was
.

They'd delayed the party awhile. The first three weeks, Candace's mom had made a habit of dropping by unannounced to check up on the house. Lucy and Maya were particularly wary—probably worried that they were one phone call away from being dragged back home.

The housemates had agreed to let things settle down, prove themselves capable of getting to school every day, not starving to death, and not letting the house get too untidy.

The not starving to death bit had been easy enough—everyone in the house seemed to know how to make a sandwich or a salad. Paolo and Maya were pretty good with eggs. Maya made
huevos rancheros
and Mexican omelets that had the others begging for a taste. John-Michael, however, turned out to be an amazing cook. He never ate the same sandwich twice and would create combinations that made the others go
ewwww
—until they tried them.

Keeping the house tidy was harder. If Paolo hadn't been a neat freak, it might have been impossible. He'd persuaded the girls and John-Michael to operate a rotating system for chores. Only Lucy had been reluctant to take part.

“You're my mom now?”

“He's nicer than my mom,” Candace had warned. “She threatened me with pop-ins.”

They'd had less than fourteen minutes' notice of the first spot check—a breezy text from Katelyn about a casual swing-by.

Everyone in the house had launched into action with orange-scented kitchen spray, pine toilet cleaner, and lemon-scented wooden-floor wax. Ninety seconds before she'd walked through the door they'd ditched the clothes and mops in the kitchen cabinet and thrown themselves onto the sofas in the living room, glued to the TV as if nothing would ever shift them.

They set a date for the party—the end of their eighth week in the house—and assigned all the party jobs.

The night of the party, Paolo was sent to fetch tacos from a taco van. He'd phoned in the order and was going to pick up a trayful of chicken, fish, and char-grilled steak tacos. Lucy decided, last minute, that they didn't have enough booze. Half an hour before Paolo was planning to leave, he heard her telling John-Michael that she was going to try to get a couple of bottles of vodka. So he decided to leave a little sooner.

Ever since that awkward first encounter in her room, Paolo had found it increasingly difficult to stop thinking about Lucy. Within a few days he was waking up from dreams of her. He hadn't obsessed like this over a girl since he was thirteen. Soon he realized that six weeks had gone by since he'd last had sex. The beautiful twentysomethings at the country club were getting used to seeing Paolo leave the minute their lesson was done, not even bothering to shower.

Paolo caught up to Lucy outside the house. “Hey! So, do you have a contact? At the liquor store?”

Lucy turned to him with her customary amused smile. “No. But I usually find a way.”

“We should just get some fake IDs.”

She gave him a look that said
Who me?

Paolo was silent for a moment. He idled slightly as Lucy walked ahead so that he could watch the backs of her toned legs.

“You checking me out?”

“Totally.” There was no point lying. She was onto him at every level. Yet it would be all the sweeter when he finally won her over.

“Paolo.”

“Yes?”

Lucy stopped walking, closed her eyes for a second as if weighing up a multitude of thoughts. She turned to him slowly. “It's never going to happen.”

Paolo forced himself to grin. He raised the tip of a finger to her nose and touched it lightly.

“Life is long . . . Lucy.”

“Sugar, it ain't that long.”

When Paolo arrived home with the tacos, there were already about forty people at the party. At least fifteen were outside on the balcony, smoking cigarettes. The smoke trailed in the air as far out as the paved path.

He glanced around, hoping that it wouldn't cause a problem. They had some pretty precious neighbors who liked to walk, jog, and cycle along the boardwalk—the kind who liked to shop at Whole Foods. Lucy had once slyly referred to them as the “SoCal offenserati” on account of how easily they took offense. The nickname had stuck.

John-Michael had been waiting anxiously for him in the front yard. He snatched the tray of tacos out of Paolo's hands and took them straight to the kitchen. Through the window, Paolo could see Lucy emptying a bottle of vodka into a large glass punch bowl full of ice cubes and pinkish-red liquid.

He was about to go inside for round two of their bout, when Maya appeared beside him, clutching her MacBook. She looked a little frustrated.

“Candace and Grace are saying I can't have more than two drinks. They won't let me into Lucy's room, on account of the sketchy stuff goin' on in there. And obviously the hookup room is out-of-bounds.”

“Good for them! They're looking out for the baby of the house.” Paolo paused. “We have a hookup room?”

But Maya just scowled. “Okay, so I need you to let me use your room. I might as well work on my coding.”

Paolo stared, disappointed. “Oh, come on, Maya, don't be that way.”

She looked a little red-faced, almost teary. “Just let me, okay? If I'm too young to join in the fun then at least don't make me waste my time.”

Reluctantly, Paolo let her into his room and then stuck a sign that said
Private
on the outside of the door. As he left, he spotted Candace behind the yellow spiral staircase, unsteady on her feet and blinking. She looked as though she'd had a flashlight shone into her eyes and was leaning on the staircase for support. In one hand she held a cell phone.

“You okay?” he asked.

Candace suddenly focused on Paolo. “Omigod. I don't believe it.”

“What?”

Her eyes lit up. Slowly but surely an expression of pure wonder spread across her face. She raised both hands to her mouth and gasped.

“I got the show. I'm gonna be on TV. Paolo!”

“Really? How? Did you go for another audition?”

“No . . . it's . . . I can't take it in . . . I was one of the alternates. For the part of Gina, in
Downtowners
.”

“You were an alternate? I didn't know that.”

“I didn't know it, either! My agent decided not to get my hopes up. But the girl who got the part was in some kind of accident. She broke her leg. The other girl they called isn't available.”

“So—you're in?”

“Yeah. I mean, kind of a bummer for the girl who first got it. Obviously. But she's on crutches for eight weeks. And filming starts tomorrow morning. So,
hell yeah
, I'm in!”

“Jeez, Candace. That's amazing!”

Candace did a little jump for joy. She threw her arms around Paolo's neck and squeezed.

“I got it! I mean, I know it isn't a big part or anything. But that's good, right? Too much and I'd have problems with school.”

“It's awesome!”

She held her breath, smiling at him. “It really is, isn't it? And the beauty of it is that the other girl's agent had already convinced them to let her have hair.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, originally Gina was going to rock the shaved-head look.”

Paolo made a face. “Not a good look for a girl.”

“Obviously.”

“We should go inside and tell everyone. Yeah, Candace! Yeah, TV!”

A few minutes later everyone was raising a glass to Candace's news. She herself, however, was apparently finding the news increasingly hard to absorb. She grew noticeably quieter. After a while, she disappeared into her room.

The energy level inside the house soared as the alcohol began to flow even faster. Paolo wandered through the house, picking up discarded plastic cups and plates, cleaning occasional stains from the walls with a kitchen wipe. In his other hand he carried a glass of the cocktail that Lucy had mixed.

It was the first party he'd ever hosted. Hosting really wasn't as much fun as attending. He couldn't relax. He remembered getting totally wasted at parties when he was fourteen. But lately, tennis had dominated his existence. He wasn't supposed to drink too much. Calories. He glanced at the trickle of people going into Lucy's room. She'd promised to get hold of some weed. There was a bong party going on in there. Maybe he could risk just a few tokes without getting too bad a case of the munchies. Uncomfortably, Paolo watched the kids waiting to get their chance to go inside. It wasn't difficult to see the difference between him and them. Everything about their clothes, hair, tattoos, and attitude screamed rebellion.