Messy (14 page)

Brooke distracted herself by blowing off school after lunch—running laps in gym class obviously would
interfere with her digestion—and spending her afternoon on some hearty self-improvement. She’d begun with twenty minutes of yoga in her bedroom before she noticed a rogue cuticle that demanded immediate attention. That sucked her into the vortex of her bathroom, where she then accidentally spent twenty minutes hunting blackheads. Now, after doing some laps in a halfhearted attempt at cardio, she was standing in the middle of Brick’s sauna in her sport bikini—she’d bought it when beach volleyball got popular for, like, half an hour during the Olympics; it made her feel like a serious athlete—trying to smoke out her pores while dry-brushing her thighs.
Cosmo
swore this would retard any lurking cellulite, but it felt weird and spartan, like some kind of Communist spa treatment. She had a moment of pause, wondering if this was too unglamorous an occupation for a budding star such as herself. However, she knew cellulite had no respect for a girl’s fame level. Two seasons of the reality-hybrid
COPS: Jersey Shore
bore unfortunate witness to that.

At least she had the blog to cling to while she waited. Brooke loved how much people responded to it; there were three hundred comments alone on the entry in which Max confided “Brooke’s” secret crush on Colin Firth no matter how jowly he was getting. Max had proved amazingly adept at assuming Brooke’s basic tone and infusing it with a little of Arugula’s braininess and Max’s own sarcasm. Brooke might not be a household name yet,
but she felt closer and closer every time someone quoted OpenBrooke.com on Twitter or UsMagazine.com linked to her in a roundup. It made her feel like a mogul—like a mini-Brick.

The door to the sauna burst open.

“You’re late, Ari,” Brooke said without looking. “Also, I think I might be giving myself a rash.”

“Sunshine, drop whatever you are doing, unless it is biceps curls,” her father boomed. “This is important.”

Brooke whirled around and saw her father wiggling his iPhone at her. He pushed the FaceTime button, seeming a bit antsy. Caroline Goldberg’s face appeared on the screen, looking—unusually for an agent—all business and no schmooze.

“Brooke,” Caroline said crisply, “we need to discuss something.”

Brooke looked from Caroline’s slightly pixilated face to Brick’s, which was drawn into an exaggerated stern expression. His lips were twitching like mad.

Oh, God. I didn’t get any parts.

Caroline cleared her throat. “I hope you—”

“—feel comfortable answering to the name ‘Nancy Drew’! ” Brick finished in a volcanic torrent of speech, as if he could not possibly contain himself any longer. The phone clattered to the floor as he folded Brooke into his arms, squeezing so tightly that she sensed a decrease in her lung capacity.

“
Really?
” she squeaked.

“Really,” Caroline’s face said, staring straight up at them from the tile floor. “You’re about to star in the biggest teen movie since
Twilight
. Can someone please pick up the phone? This is an unfortunate view.”

Brick scooped it up. “Sorry, Caroline. We just needed to unleash our joy.”

“That’s touching,” she said tersely. “Anyway, they think you’re perfect for it. I believe their exact words were—”

“—that you had the ideal mix of brains and beauty to pull off the part!” Brick crowed, doing an endearing little hopping dance. All of a sudden, Brooke felt light-headed, as if someone had punched her in the stomach.
If I pass out and crack my head open and die in the sauna before I become a movie star, I am going to be so pissed.

Brooke sank onto the cedar-plank bench and let out a breath. “Seriously?” she asked.

“Yes!” Brick said.

“Yes,” Caroline reiterated. “Apparently, it came down to you and one other girl. They told me that what finally tilted them in your favor was—”

“—how savvy you seem on your blog!” Brick finished for her.

Caroline looked mildly annoyed. “Is there anything else you’d like to add, Brick?”

“Just that I always knew my Brookie was a wordsmith and a talent,” he said fondly. “She’s a chip off the old Brick.”

“They want to get this signed quickly,” Caroline said.
“I’ll get going on the contract. Brick, you’ll need to call your lawyers, and…”

Caroline kept talking—about on-set tutors and forms signed in triplicate and blah blah blah. But Brooke barely heard her. She felt like her blood had just started swirling twice as fast through her veins. Her thoughts were completely scrambled—if she were asked to transcribe them, they’d go something like, “
Ngvk4jn99434rnfnnfsgnanyo-
hijhqwrk!!!!!1!!!
”

I got the part
.
I got
the
part. I got. The part.

“I got the paaaaaaaaart!” she screamed. Then she covered her mouth, embarrassed.

“Yes, I’m glad we’re clear on that,” Caroline said curtly.

“You knocked ’em dead, Sunshine!” Brick trilled, wrapping his arms around Brooke again, his phone still clutched in his hand.

“This is indeed a tender moment, but can we be done here?” Caroline said impatiently. “I have things to do that do not include a FaceTime chat with Brooke’s rear end. Although I see you’ve been dry-brushing your thighs, Brooke. Don’t. You’ll get a rash.”

Brick turned the phone upward. “Thanks for giving us the news, Caroline,” he said, beaming. “And the grooming tips.”

“No problem. Congratulations again, and be sure to keep that blog going, Brooke,” she said.

Brick punched End and let out a whoop, then picked up Brooke and twirled her around the sauna, over and over,
like she was seven again and he’d just returned home from shooting a movie on location. It was the best moment of Brooke’s life. She closed her eyes and inhaled his familiar smell of chlorine, Brut, and a whiff of carrot juice, and wished this moment would never end.

MAX THREW HER SHOULDER
into her mirrored closet door and pushed. It didn’t budge. The damn thing never properly lived inside its plastic track, so it kept dragging against the carpet, making it almost impossible to get to the clothes on one side. She was due at a table read for
Nancy Drew
soon, her closet was a barely penetrable mess—not unlike her room—and she couldn’t find anything to wear that wasn’t dirty or suddenly totally horrible. She wished Molly would answer her phone. She needed advice. So far the only thing she’d unearthed was a relatively untarnished black denim skirt and a huge navy blue V-neck sweater that she was pretty sure she stole from Teddy.

Why do I even care? Maybe whatever makes Brooke so obsessed with her looks is contagious.

“What are you doing in there?” Teddy asked, nudging her in the butt with his toe.

Max jumped and glared at her brother. “Can you please announce yourself next time?” she said, annoyed. “What if I concussed myself on something?”

“I thought that
was
announcing myself,” Teddy said. “But next time I’ll have Jeeves make sure Milady is ready for visitors.”

Max responded by flipping him the bird.

“Charming,” Teddy said. “Don’t strain the finger. It might inhibit your typing.”

“You laugh,” Max said, “but that’s how I got out of picking up Brooke’s dry cleaning the other day. Told her I couldn’t risk my instrument.”

“Trouble in bloggy paradise?” Teddy asked, watching Max paw through a pile of old shirts.

“She’s not that bad,” Max said, holding up a gray-and-black striped tee. It had a hole in the armpit. “She doesn’t pull crap with me because I’m Molly’s friend, and also because I hold the keys to her blog empire, so if I tell her to shove it she will be up a creek without a cell signal.” She returned to digging through her clothes. “I can’t believe this. I’m going to be late. I wish I had Brooke’s closet. She’s talking about getting this thing where all she has to do is push a button and everything starts rotating like at the dry cleaner’s.”

Teddy cocked his head. “I’m sorry, did I just hear you endorse a
motorized closet
? You, who once said that famous
people are so dumb that you could shove a microchip in a Crisco jar and sell it to them for a grand?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Max grumbled, backing out of her closet with two T-shirts. They turned out to be identical. She dove back into the abyss. Why were all her clothes dark? It was impossible to see what was what. “I’m just saying, maybe Dad could focus on inventing that, instead of whatever his gardening tool of the week is, so he could actually make some money.”

She reemerged with a smirk. “But maybe with all your forthcoming band riches, all those problems will be solved.”

Teddy groaned. “We’re not in the finals yet,” he said. “We have to send in another submission tape. Bone just wrote a song called ‘Your Locker (Is Where Your Books and My Heart Are).’
Nobody
is going to want to listen to that.”

“We’ll just see,” Max sang. “You got a ton of Facebook comments after I mentioned you on Open Brooke.”

Teddy wrinkled his nose, then picked up an unfinished crossword from Max’s bed and studied it absently. “Maybe I should go write some new songs just in case. Surely I can come up with something that outdoes the line, ‘Six left, thirteen right, nine left; when you open your locker my heart leaves my chest.’ ”

“Good luck with that,” Max said. She frowned. “What does a person wear to a table read, anyway?”

“Wow,” Teddy said. “We are through the looking glass. Since when do you care what you wear to anything?”

“Since I started hanging out with a girl who’s like six
feet tall and dresses like she owns stock in Prada,” Max said. “And since I started having places to go that weren’t, like, my bedroom. Since I got sucked into the vortex that is Brooke Berlin, basically. When we go anywhere together, I look like her Make-A-Wish kid. People seem disappointed when they find out I don’t have cancer.”

This was actually half-true. The other day Max and Brooke had been on Rodeo Drive—Brooke decreed Max needed to further her education in pointy-toed heels—and a salesman took one look at them, squeezed Brooke’s shoulder, and said, “The needy are lucky to have you.”

Teddy sat on the edge of Max’s bed, shoving aside her quilt to expose her ratty old Garfield fitted sheet. “If you’d told me last year my band would blow up because of something you wrote on a blog where you’re pretending to be Brooke Berlin, of all people, I would have told Mom to search your closet for drugs.”

“Don’t be silly. Mom would never look in here. It’s a death trap,” Max said, trying to disentangle a button-down shirt from her hair.

After a moment of silence, she looked up at Teddy, who seemed lost in thought.

“Teddy?” she prompted.

He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just so surreal—nobody had even heard of us until my sister, Fake Brooke Berlin, mentioned online that I’m dating the famously unfamous Berlin sibling.
Vortex
was the right word for what this is. It’s an adjustment.”

“This whole semester has been an adjustment,” Max said. “I feel like I’m on some Oxygen show called
Touched by the Berlins
.”

“No kidding,” Teddy said. “Mostly, I can’t believe Brooke’s blog scheme actually
worked
. Next thing you know she’ll sneeze and discover a cure for the common cold.”

“Split ends are a cause dearer to her heart,” Max snarked. “In all honesty, though, I don’t think she can believe it, either. Not that she’d ever admit that.”

Max had heard about Brooke’s movie role after school the previous Friday, while she and Molly were browsing the stacks at Amoeba Music. Brooke’s voice had caught a little when she recounted Brick’s happy reaction to her big news, and it made Max think of Brooke’s attempts not to sound lonely whenever she talked about never getting to see much of her father.

“So what now?” Teddy asked. “Are they going to let you hang around the set, or do you have to, like, skulk around the rafters?”

“She said something about getting me in the budget as her assistant,” Max said with a grimace. “Honestly, I have no idea why I’m coming tonight—it’s not like I can live-blog it while they sit there and read through the script.
Ugh
,” she moaned, brandishing another shirt. This one was black-and-gray
plaid
. “I want to burn this entire closet and start over.”

“It’s just a reading. At a table. Don’t go crazy,” Teddy said, hopping up and heading for the door. “You’re a good
writer. I know it’s not your ideal gig, but the blog is a fun read.”

“I swear, you are so mushy now that you’re all in love and stuff,” Max scoffed, though she couldn’t help feeling a little warm. “I liked you better when you were repressing your feelings. Now go away so I can get dressed.”

“Okay.” Teddy shrugged. “I guess I’ll go make out with my girlfriend for a while.”

Max balled up the offending plaid shirt and heaved it at him. “Ew, Teddy,” she groaned. “Your tongue is not my business.”

Teddy thudded down the hallway. Max resumed staring mournfully into her closet. Being the right hand of a self-proclaimed It Girl was a lot more stressful than she’d imagined. Nobody at school cared if she wore the same thing twice in a given week—half of them probably expected it. But now that she was spending so much more time outside her hovel, the usual rotation of jeans, black skirts, cargo pants, and T-shirts felt so stale and samey and depressing. She’d actually found herself idly browsing J.Crew’s website the other day, as if she would ever wear an item of clothing called “café capris.” Max decided to blame this on a fevered state brought on by writer’s block, which itself was brought on by her evil NYU application essay that as of now contained only the words “Bob really
hated
peas.”

Glancing at her watch, she realized that any other Tuesday, she’d be at Fu’d already for the dinner shift, getting a
lecture from Dennis on how to clean the blender without using a lot of soap. And that she should’ve left two minutes ago if she wanted to get to Warner Bros. in time. Except she was still wearing sweatpants cut off at the knees and a tank top that read
WANTED
. Not good. Max sighed and grabbed her standby combat boots, some purple tights, a leather-looking skirt she’d found at Target for eleven dollars, and a striped tank top under a gray cardigan. It would rock nobody’s world, but at least she wouldn’t be naked.