Messy (17 page)

“Yes, right,” Max said, hoping she successfully restrained herself from making a face.

“It’s cool of her to do that for you,” he said. “You guys
must
be really good friends.”

“The best,” Max said through clenched teeth.

“And it’s great that you have each other,” he said, fiddling with his cuffs. “I kind of miss that. My roommates are just random actors I got paired up with by my agency. We live together out of habit.” He cocked his head as one of the guys in Kate Bosworth’s posse stood up and rubbed Clarins tanner on his left pec. “It’d be nice to have a close friend out here to help keep me from freaking out.”

“I don’t mean to freak you out more, but that chick over there who looks like Jessica Biel is checking you out,” Max noted, nodding to their left. “
Nancy Drew
is going to be big.”

“Nobody cares that much about me, though. It’s not
my
movie. I’m just… in it.”

Max looked down at her unpedicured feet, resting on
top of a monogrammed Beverly Hills Hotel towel. “I think I know how you feel.”

Brady tilted his head to the side, regarding her with… with what, exactly?

“Hey, do you like bad movies?” he asked suddenly.

“I almost exclusively like bad movies,” Max said. “I watched
Wolf Trout
on Syfy last weekend twice in a row.”

“Great, because I haven’t been able to convince anyone to go see
The Room
with me, and I heard it’s one of L.A.’s most iconic awful movies.”

“It seriously is. I saw it over the summer,” Max said. “You’ll love it. If you need company, I don’t think my brother’s seen it yet. You’d like him—he’s cool. But don’t tell him I said that.”

Brady half looked at her and then said, “Oh, great. Thanks.”

The conversation seemed to hiccup.
Did I just do something wrong?
Max wondered.

“You don’t scare me!”

Brooke’s voice sliced between them, severing the moment like an ax murderer chopping a phone line at a remote forest cabin. She gracefully lowered herself onto her chaise without spilling a drop from the two giant fruit-festooned drinks in her hand, although her cover-up slid down her tanned shoulder a little.

“See? I remembered the line. And I got you a piña colada,” she said, handing one to Max. “Coconut milk is full of electrolytes.” She turned to Brady and hit him with
a megawatt grin. “And you got
me
a costar. Want some? It’s basically medicinal.”

“I wish I could, but I have an acting class in”—he checked his watch—“damn, fifteen minutes.” He winced. “My agent told me I have to hone my craft, or something. We’re doing gender reversals. I have to read something from
The Vagina Monologues
.” He looked vaguely queasy. “There is no way saying that sentence out loud is going to help my career. Maybe acting classes are just a big scam. Like valet parking, right, Brooke?”

“What? I valet all the time,” Brooke said, blithely nibbling a strawberry.

Brady crinkled his brow. “Didn’t you say on your blog the other day that you thought all the overpriced valets in Los Angeles were part of an elaborate scheme to lure the public into parking illegally so that the city could make big bucks off ticketing them?”

Brooke gave no sign that she was flustered by having forgotten this rant. “Just making sure you were paying attention,” she said, removing her cover-up again and settling back into her chair with a grin.

She
is
a good actress.

“Always,” Brady said, then donned his aviator shades and gave them both an ironic little salute.

“That’s so
Top Gun
,” Max said. “Be careful the paparazzi don’t think you’re Tom Cruise.”

Brady straightened up. “Please,” he said. “I’m at least two inches taller than that guy.”

“I refuse to date an actor,” Brooke said, lolling back on her chaise as he strolled out of earshot, “but Brady Swift cleans up nice.”

“Aren’t you betrothed to that octogenarian at the bar?” Max asked, maybe a bit quickly. “I saw you over there. He was really chatting you up.”

Brooke rolled onto her stomach and laughed. “Ew, Max, he produced the Dirk Venom series. He’s one of my godfathers. Besides, if chatting someone up at the pool meant you were
involved
, I’d be asking when you and Brady were tying the knot.”

Max felt heat climbing into her cheeks.

“Are you blushing?” Brooke asked.

“No! I think I’m sunburned,” Max said, pretending to search for sunscreen.

“Uh-huh,” Brooke said, mock-toasting Max with her daiquiri glass.

It was almost dark when Max banged through her front door.

“Is that you, Maxine, or have we been invaded by elephants?”

Max rolled her eyes. “Sorry,” she said, following the sound of her mother’s voice into the kitchen. “I forgot your ears are so delicate.”

Her mother was standing at the scratched porcelain
sink in their bright yellow kitchen, running some water over an extremely depressed cactus.

“I see you’ve met Irving,” Max said.

Eileen McCormack glanced sideways at Max. “Who?” she asked, turning off the water.

“Irving,” Max said, dumping her backpack on the linoleum. “My cactus.”

“It’s dead. It’s an ex-cactus.”

“I prefer to think of him as being chlorophyllically challenged.”

Eileen smirked and put Irving back into the sink. “Sit down for a sec, honey.”

Uh-oh. Does she know I ditched Spanish?

“Is everything okay?” Max asked, sliding into the country-style wooden chairs at their kitchen table, which her father had brought home from an estate sale and repainted a funky orange. It matched their KitchenAid mixer… and nothing else. Max loved that about her father. He didn’t care about aesthetic rules.

“Everything is fine, except for the shocking state of your bedroom, as usual,” Eileen said, pouring them each a mug of hot water and carrying them to the table along with two ginger tea bags. “As a matter of fact, your father and I are really proud of how hard you’ve been working.”

“You are?” Max echoed.

“Absolutely. I always say that if you have a goal, you should stop at nothing until you achieve it, and I am very impressed with how completely you’re pursuing this NYU
program.” Eileen’s face took on a dreamy look. “You are displaying all the drive and determination of a true Colby-Randall achiever. Tutoring Brooke can’t be easy, especially on top of carnival meetings and school and working at Fu’d.”

Oops.
Apparently, she’d forgotten to tell her mother that she’d quit.

“Although I should’ve known you had it in you,” Mrs. McCormack continued, stirring her tea with a sly sidelong glance. “You were, ahem,
very
single-minded about getting the dissection portion of AP biology removed from the Colby-Randall curriculum.”

“Well,” Max said, taken aback by hearing compliments from her mother instead of promises of detentions or groundings. “It is barbaric. And gross.”

Eileen chuckled. “And you won that round. But honey, we are
also
a bit concerned about you. We think you’re working too hard.”

“Since when is that phrase in your vocabulary?”

“You’re rarely at home, Maxine. Trust me, one day you will wish you’d spent the springtime of your life enjoying having little or no real responsibilities instead of working yourself ragged.”

“I can totally quit the carnival,” Max offered.
Please, God, make her let me quit the stupid carnival.

Eileen laughed. “Nice try,” she said. “But we don’t want you to spend all your teenage years slaving away.”

“I don’t—” Max began, but her mother held up a hand.

“I know it’s been harder around here financially since your father got laid off. And despite his best efforts”—Eileen cast a despairing eye over to the white-tiled counter, on which sat the charred corpse of a hand mixer—“he hasn’t sold an invention yet. But I want you to know we’re still doing okay, moneywise. And your father has a lead on several part-time jobs to help supplement the fees for your NYU program, so you can quit working until next year.”

Max sucked in a breath. This was as shocking to her as if Eileen had announced she was ditching academia to become a Lady Gaga impersonator. And two weeks earlier, Max would have been thrilled to hear it. Even today she was tempted. No more lying, no more tagging around after Brooke.

No more Brady
, said a voice in her head.

Max shook it off. In two months he’d be too famous to talk to her, anyway, and this meant her free time and possibly NYU would be all hers. Finally.

“I really appreciate the gesture, Mom,” Max began. “I don’t know what to say. It’s seriously amazing.”

Eileen reached out and squeezed her hand. “Well, you are seriously amazing, and we are seriously serious about this.”

Max took in her mother’s earnest, warm eyes—identical to hers in shape and color—and saw the gray streaks shooting through her ash-blonde bun. Eileen looked tired. Max suspected she was sugarcoating how easy it would be to bring in extra cash and felt a wave of appreciation. The
offer meant more to her than she could say. Which was precisely why she had to do the right thing and say no. Max knew she’d never be comfortable taking the help under false pretenses, not when it might make things harder for her family. Besides, for once, the right thing was also the easy thing. Posing as Brooke online had turned out to be not just profitable but…
fun
. She couldn’t abandon OpenBrooke.com now.

“Thank you, but it’s actually okay, Mom,” Max said slowly. “I’m doing fine. I’ve almost got enough saved.”

Eileen frowned. “Are you sure?”

Brady’s face floated into Max’s mind. She couldn’t abandon him, either. He needed her. For eye-rolling purposes.

“I’m sure,” Max said. “I promise. I’ve got this.”

“THIS IS NANCY’S BEDROOM,”
Brooke said, pulling her father by the hand toward a pile of garbage bags. “One of the first scenes we’re doing tomorrow is the one where she’s trying to read
Les Misérables
by candlelight but she keeps hearing gunshots.”

“Powerful!” Brick intoned, squatting and running his hand over the bags, which were fluffed and rolled to look like a mattress with a pillow and a comforter. “In every slum, there is a hero.”

He paused and fished around for one of his many phones, this time the BlackBerry. As he made a note of his brain wave, Brooke heard a snort from Max’s direction—she was sitting in a chair in the corner of the soundstage
actually
reading
Les Misérables
, so that she could brief
Brooke on the specifics—but Brooke ignored it. The
Nancy Drew
script
was
a little bizarre in spots, but it had everything: tears, drugs, crime, love, dirt, and even a professionally choreographed nightclub scene. She would rock it. More important, Brick thought it would be a blockbuster, and he’d never been wrong (unless you counted that one astronaut film back in the early nineties,
Jupiter’s Eye Needs Glasses
, although Brick always tersely insisted it was
supposed
to be funny). Brick had even cleared his schedule for a personal tour of the set. Brooke couldn’t remember the last time he’d rearranged his agenda on the spot.

“And
this
is the Nickerson mansion set,” she said, parading Brick toward a large makeshift living room, connected to a foyer and a double front door. “I’ll be here for the scene where Nancy realizes there’s cyanide in the carpet fibers because it triggers her rare skin allergy.”

“Disease is an actor’s greatest platform!” Brick boomed, following Brooke through the old soundstage. “Does it come with welts? Welts can be very evocative.”

“I hope so!” Brooke said. “That reminds me, one of the producers has been dying to ask you something about prosthetic ears. Let me go find him.”

Giddily, Brooke all but skipped away, leaving Brick to inspect the staircase in the Nickerson entryway that went only as high as the camera needed it to go. Today was the most fun she’d ever had, leading him around this fictional world that was all hers. He looked to
her
for information,
he wanted to discuss
her
project, and he read and talked to her about
her
blog. When she’d told him that she got a hundred thousand hits the other day, he’d actually wiped a tear from his eye, handed her his last Clif Bar, and said she was turning into everything he’d hoped she’d be.

Except that Clif Bar should have gone to Max.

Brooke did not regret hiring Max. But every time her bosses praised Open Brooke or told her it was a key part of her getting hired, a super-annoying voice in her brain spoke up and reminded her that, technically, all of her happiness was based on a lie.

A very minor lie, though.
Really quite small in the scheme of things. Max’s writing was based on Brooke’s experiences, after all. Lifetime movies were based on true stories, too, and nobody minded that the serial killers didn’t write the scripts themselves. Brick himself had used a ghostwriter for his official autobiography,
Brick by Brick.
So Brooke decided OpenBrooke.com was simply ripped from the headlines of her own life the way
Law & Order
was ripped from the
New York Post
. Everything else was a tiny technicality. So her brain voice could shut its piehole.