Good for You (4 page)

Chapter 7

REID

You disgust me
. This is such an unprecedented statement that I have no idea what to do with it. If she was anyone else, I’d reject it as prejudice because I’m young, famous, rich, entitled—I’ve heard it al , or thought I had. The only other reason for unreasonable animosity is the random girl who doesn’t turn out to be the love of my life after a hot one-nighter—and is somehow surprised by this.
Please
.

Could Dori be resentful that I haven’t made an effort to get into her unfashionable shorts? I thought I had her pegged as the sort who wants nothing short of respect, though she can take a fair amount of mockery and come back curiously unperturbed. She may be the most patient person I’ve ever encountered, besides George. No matter what I do, including showing up an hour late with a massive hangover, she tolerates it. Maybe that’s her weird way of showing attraction. Maybe there’s a girl under those ginormous t-shirts who just wants attention like the rest of them.

Or maybe I’d add a sexual harassment charge to the drunk driving conviction.

Three weeks and two days to go. I’ve worked on movie sets that were way more grueling, endured costars who were ridiculously unprofessional and survived directors whose tyrannical outbursts would send Dori running for cover. Three and a half weeks and I’l be back to my life.

***

John is about to chew through my last nerve. He and some other guys want to go out tonight. There are no unlame parties, so they’ve decided to bounce through a few clubs.

And since we’re al underage, they want me along because I can usual y get us al in anywhere, plus VIP treatment.

Most nights, no problem. Happy to oblige. Tonight, I’m dead—and I already had a couple of seven and sevens to cool down after that exchange with
Dorcas
. The last thing I need is noise, people and paparazzi. I just want to stay home and flip through the channels until I fal asleep, so I can get up again tomorrow and take a hired car to a pathetic unfinished house that I’m helping to build and landscape… God, what an out-of-character inclination.

John is having none of it. “Come on, man, just a couple of hours. Why not?” He’s like a whiny toddler. A self-absorbed, ful -grown, 19-year-old toddler.

“Because I’m exhausted and sunburned and have to get up at the crack of ass again tomorrow, not that you give a shit.”

“It’s summer!”

“So?”

“Time to go out and party, not hibernate!”

“John, we live in Los Angeles. It’s never time to hibernate. Whatever. I’m dead. We’l go out Friday.”

“Fine,” he says, dejected. “If me and the guys are bored to death by then, it’s on you.”

I don’t bother answering beyond repeating, “Friday,” and hanging up. I have a backup of texts al basical y wanting the same thing. Parties I’m invited to, parties someone wants entrance to, requests to go out, people bored out of their minds and everyone wanting to score the next high to escape it. After making sure none of the texts or missed cal s are from George, I toss the phone on the table next to my bed and turn up the volume on the television before clicking it off again and walking around my room, clinking the ice at the bottom of my glass.

I’m restless, and I
never
get restless. At the first hint of it, I’m usual y out the door, not stalking around my room like a prisoner in a cel . What am I staying in for, anyway? So I don’t have a hangover tomorrow morning that
Dorcas
wil disapprove of? Why would I even give a shit what she sanctions as acceptable behavior—she’s probably at home
knitting
for chrissake.

I grab the phone and cal John, who’s on his way before I can change my mind.

A couple of nights ago I wanted to find the opposite of Dorcas Cantrel , but that didn’t exorcize her from my head.

Tonight I’m searching for her twin, as impossible as it wil be to find someone so plain in the hangouts we frequent.

Once I find her, I’l be damned if she isn’t begging me to screw her up against the bathroom wal before me and the guys take off.

*** *** ***

Dori

“Hey, baby girl. When do you leave for Ecuador?” Deb must be exhausted, but she always makes time for me. I guess she could tel in our last few texts that I’m stressed. She can always tel . It’s like she’s had a wireless connection to me since I was born.

“Twenty days.”

“Got it down to days, huh?” I hear the smile in her voice.

“Are you counting down ’til you
go
to Quito or ’til you
leave
LA?”

“Both.”

“So… I hear you’ve got a daily celebrity sighting at Habitat.”

I sigh heavily and moan, lying back on my bed. “Let’s not talk about him.”

Deb laughs. “Oh, come on. You don’t want to talk about him even a little? Hmm.”

“What?”

“I was eight when you were born, Dori; I know you pretty wel . If you don’t want to talk about him at al , he must be frustrating you in some profound way.”

“Trust me, there’s nothing profound about him. He’s as superficial and vacuous as you’d assume.” Great. I’m almost sputtering.

“Al right, al right, I’m just teasing.” Deb is rarely unkind.

She’s one aspect of my life that gives me the most joy and the most guilt. I have a loving and supportive family, always enough money for necessities—food, clothing, books—

while others have poverty, neglect, il ness, and the constant hunger of never enough. For some reason this line of thinking makes me think of Reid, which is absurd. He has every advantage and more, with no excuse for forcing his egocentricity on people who have so much less.

Pushing him from my mind, I ask Deb about her residency. After four years of col ege and another four years of medical school, she’s final y Dr. Deborah Cantrel .

To become the pediatrician she’s always wanted to be, she’l be working crazy long hours for the next three years, making barely enough to feed herself and begin paying back her student loans.

“You wouldn’t believe how many ER cases are drug seekers.” She sighs, frustrated. “They’re desperate for a fix, so they come in with phony symptoms. The more experienced doctors assume that everyone who gives

‘pain’ as a symptom is a fraud. We keep a list of the repeat offenders.”

I try to imagine my sister in that environment, with her social idealism and her ambition to help people. “Maybe you’re just what those other doctors need—a balance to the pessimism.”

“Wel , it’s going to be a contentious three years.”

“So… met any cute doctors?”

She laughs at my change of subject. “Yes, actual y—one of the attending physicians. But as luck would have it, he’s also the most cynical. Last night, he almost missed a possible placental abruption because the mother-to-be is a known addict. She claimed severe back pain, and he was about to send her out the door with Tylenol. I convinced him to let me do an ultrasound on her, for practice, and we had to do an emergency C-section. If she’d gone home, the baby would have died and the patient could have bled to death.”

“Wow.” I’m not sure exactly what she’s talking about, but it sounds intimidating. “You saved their lives, Deb.”

“Yeah, wel . She swore she hasn’t used since she knew she was pregnant, but to him,
once an addict, always an
addict
.” She breathes an exasperated sigh.

“We know that’s not true.” Our parents have helped dozens of people kick al types of drug addiction through the years. Though a depressing majority start using again, some stay clean. Dad says he has to keep fighting for those few, because you never know who’s capable of kicking it for good.

“Bradford was brought up in a different environment than we were. He didn’t know much about addicts or poverty until he became a doctor. I got him to talk about it a little bit today. He grew up in an upper middle class suburb, and the worst thing he encountered was other kids who smoked pot or did a little X. To him, someone who’s hooked on cocaine or meth is forever hopeless.”

I think of Reid, and how I told him he was hopeless. How angry he was that I deemed him unworthy of my time or attention. I don’t know if he’s addicted to any particular substances, though he’s certainly addicted to his hedonistic substances, though he’s certainly addicted to his hedonistic lifestyle. But is he hopeless? Maybe he’s right. Maybe my snap judgment concerning him makes me a hypocrite.

“So you’re educating Bradford about real life, eh?”

“I’m attempting to, but he’s the most opinionated, obstinate man I’ve dealt with since Dr. Horsham in second year pathology.” Deb almost quit medical school because of Dr. Horsham, until Mom convinced her to go back and prove she was made of tougher stuff than that.

After I hang up, I lie on my bed thinking about my sister fighting for an ex-addict. She was right this time, but she won’t always be. There wil always be addicts who lie to get their fixes, taking hospital resources from those who have actual need. Stil , Deb wil find the people everyone else has given up on and resolve the most unmanageable problem—assuming there
is
a solution. That’s just how she is.

Mom was pul ing twelve-hour shifts in the maternity ward when she found out she was pregnant with me. She spent the last two months of her pregnancy on doctor-ordered bed rest, so her intention to fix up the nursery was wrecked.

My sister’s old crib, unearthed from the attic, stood pathetical y in the center of the otherwise bare room until Deb and Dad took over nursery decoration. Mom had a lamb-based theme planned, but that idea was tossed.

Thanks to the Discovery Channel, Deb was on a marine life kick, infatuated with the Great Barrier Reef. She insisted on decorating my room with fish.

Dad says I lucked out—her next fascination was lizards.

Deb and Dad painted the room turquoise. Twisting up from the floorboards were sections of coral created from orange posterboard, and twenty-two fish were strung from the ceiling, cut in Dad’s woodshop from a pattern and al painted the same iridescent blue-green. Mom had suggested that they be multihued, but Deb refused anything that wasn’t identical to her
National Geographic
images of damselfish.

The posterboard coral is long gone, and Mom and I repainted the room a lighter blue just before I started high school. The fish, though, remain. Attached to strands of transparent fishing line hooked to the ceiling, they swim in a school from my bedroom door to the window. My earliest memories are of those fish. As I lie with my head at the foot of my bed, they sway fluidly in the A/C-generated breeze, forever passing through.

Chapter 8

REID

“Supermodel checking you out, two o’clock.” I glance one direction and then the other. “John, dude, that’s ten o’clock.”

Aside from his inability to remember how to tel time on the face of an actual clock, my wingman is correct. Actual supermodel. Actual y checking me out. And now that I’ve noticed, she’s walking over. Stick-figure thin, she swings non-existent hips, her body and face al planes and angles, a long way from any Dorcas Cantrel doppelganger.

“Hey there,” John says.

“Hel o,” she offers me her hand. “I’m Dorika.” Of course she is. And the only reason I’l remember her name tomorrow is because it’s ridiculously close to that of a girl she doesn’t resemble at al , who I can’t stop thinking about for some insane reason.

“I’m Reid.” In her heels, we stand eye-to-eye. Makeup flawless, dark eyes half-mast and ringed with amethyst, she smiles when I graze her knuckles with my lips.

“Yes, I know. Reid Alexander.” She knows who I am.

Better and better.

“And I’m John.”

Her gaze never wavers from my face; John doesn’t even register with her, though he’s
not
a bad-looking guy. He might be a little short for her, unless she’s barefoot—but she’s got to be used to that. She’s tal er than the majority of the guys here.

I motion to the waitress to bring her another drink.

“Where are you from, Dorika?” Her accent is eastern European.

“I am from Budapest.”

“So what brings you to LA?” I couldn’t care less about her answer; it’s just part of the game.

“The handsome men, of course,” she laughs, tossing waves of dark hair over her shoulder. Her look is calculated, and I chuckle along with her to confirm that I’ve grasped her insinuation. “Also I am doing, how do you say it, a
spread
for
Elle
magazine.” I sense a vulgar comment coming from John and flash him my shut-the-hel -up face. To my amazement, he complies.

The waitress removes the near-empty glass from Dorika’s fingers and deftly hands off a fresh drink. “It is rather loud here,” she says, sipping.

“Wel , this
is
a nightclub.”

“I know a quiet bar nearby,” John interjects, but he might as wel be mute, for al the attention she’s paying to him.

“My hotel is a few blocks away. It is more comfortable.

Less noisy. You wil come with?”

I regard her for a moment longer. There’s no reason to say no. No reason at al .

*** *** ***

Dori

I pul the stirring stick out of the paint to test the consistency, dribbling a spiral onto the smooth white surface, where the liquid squiggles disappear almost instantly. Perfect. I take a satisfied breath, the chemical aroma something I’ve never disliked, even while it singes my nostrils.

Identical to the past three days, work slows to a standstil when Reid arrives. Now that he’s acquainted with the layout of the house, I’m determined not to go looking for him.

When the scent of espresso mingles with the odor of the paint, I know he’s found me. I close my eyes for a count to three and a breath of composure before I turn, straightening.

He’s holding two Starbucks cups, one of which he extends towards me. “Truce?”

I take the cup, confused.

He’s smirking, having anticipated my reaction. “It’s a double-shot soy latte. If you hate it, my driver can go back and get something else…”

Blinking, I wonder what kind of stalking he did to know my favorite coffee drink.

Right. Because a celebrity is going to stalk
me
. “No, this is… fine. Thank you.”

He glances around the smal bathroom, takes a sip from his cup. “Second coat on the cabinets and trim today, right?”

“Um. Yes, that’s right.”

“You finished the tiling? How late did you stay?” He looks impressed, his fingers reaching towards the wal and curling back. “Is it okay to touch it?”

I nod. “Sure. It’s dry.”

Stroking one finger across the glossy white squares, he says, “They’re so even.” His laughter is unlike the derisive chuckle I’ve become accustomed to over the past few days.

“If I’d done this, it would look like a shitty optical il usion.” His half-grin dares me to disagree.

My mouth pul s up on one side, involuntarily. “Um, thanks.”

***

When I finish caulking the master bath shower, I check to see if Reid is on task with the cabinets in the second bathroom. I hear Gabriel e’s voice before I round the corner, so I hover just outside the door, listening.

“I just want to live my life, you know? I don’t care about col ege. I’ve been in school long enough.” From what I remember of a conversation with her mother, Gabriel e spent the past six weeks in summer school after having floundered her way through tenth grade, more interested in boys and partying than keeping up with her assignments.

“Mmm-hmm.” He’s noncommittal, when I would be trying to discourage such a foolish decision.

“I want to be a model. And then an actress, you know, later. After I’m too old to do, like, swimsuit shoots and stuff.”

“Gabriel e?” They both start at the sound of my voice, which echoes in the smal room. I pretend not to notice their matching reactions. “I thought you were working outside with Frank today?”

She glares at me, petulant. “I was just taking a break.”

“Ah,” I say pleasantly, leaning a shoulder on the doorjamb and pointedly waiting for her to leave.

She huffs a sigh and rol s her eyes, turning back to Reid.

“See you at lunch?”

“Sure.” His eyes flick to her and straight back to the cabinet, stroking the brush downward with the wood grain, remarkably straight. As he dips the brush into the paint, he looks up at me. “Need something, boss?”

“She’s only sixteen, you know.”

The brush stil s and he crooks an eyebrow, eyeing me.

“I’m aware of that.”

“
Are
you?”

“What’s it to you?” His voice is pure chal enge, his eyes narrowed.

I straighten, running my finger along the groove in the door trim. He should have primed this when he primed the cabinets. Doing al of the priming first is more efficient.

“She’s the daughter of the people for whom we’re building this house. I feel a responsibility to them where she’s concerned.”

“A responsibility to what?”

I glance at him and know he’s uber-aware of what he’s doing. Making me spel it out. Fine. I can do that. “A responsibility to make sure the court-ordered ‘volunteer’

understands that he needs to keep his distance from the underage girl while on this property.”

He stares at me for a moment. “So if I run into her off property, for instance—”

“
No
. That’s not what I mean. I mean… just stay away from her, period. Why would you even—I don’t get why—

don’t you ever want to be a better person?” My breath catches. I can’t believe I just said that.

“Okay,
what
?” he says, taken aback.

That was
so
out of line, but before I can backtrack, he slams the brush down, surrounding it with a halo splatter of paint on the plastic sheeting. He stands up and glares down at me. “What I choose to do or not do is none of your business.
Who
I choose to do or not do is
also
none of your business.
Shit
.”

Shouldering past me, he goes straight out into the back yard. I should fol ow him and apologize, but I doubt he wants to hear anything I have to say. Besides, I’m right about Gabriel e. She’s young and she’s starstruck. In no way are they on an equal playing field. I may think she’s a little twerp, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to keep her from ending up emotional y damaged by a guy like Reid Alexander.

So much for that truce.