Messy (34 page)

Max walked inside. The “walls” had been clumsily adorned with glow-in-the-dark stars and swirls and other allegedly mystical nonsense. There was a red velvet–covered table, and two ancient folding chairs that promised to numb her butt within about fifteen minutes. Max dumped out her robes with an aggrieved sigh.

“I want it on the record that I am only consenting to this because Bucky wore a turban at his wedding to Klaus on
Lust for Life
,” she said. Then she noticed her irritation had been wasted on Brie, who was gazing into space, cradling the prop crystal ball and tapping her toe.

“Why so antsy?” Max asked, pulling on the robes. They weighed approximately a thousand pounds. This boded ill for the turban. How did Bucky do it?

Brie flushed. “I’m fine.” She cleared her throat. “Um, what time is Brooke coming today?”

Max shivered involuntarily. “You’d know better than I would.”

“I haven’t talked to her much lately,” Brie said, twirling a blonde curl around her finger in an agitated way.

Max studied Brie curiously. The girl did look more and more like Brooke every time Max saw her, right down to the clothes: Somehow, Brie had hooked herself a Pucci mini and sparkly Manolos. Her teeth were unnaturally white, and she also had a necklace with a script
B
around her neck that reminded Max of the logo that hung off Brooke’s doorknob. They were one meat hook away from a horror movie that ended very badly for Brooke.

“Madame Esmerelda senses that you’re nervous about running into Brooke,” Max said, plopping the turban on her head and waggling her finger to try to lighten the mood.

“It was just really fun to step into her shoes,” Brie confessed, tapping the crystal ball with her flawless greige manicure (also a Brooke Berlin favorite). “And so I kind of…
really
stepped into her shoes. All of a sudden I’m taking yoga with Ari.”

“Madame Esmerelda sees why you might worry,” Max said. “You have sort of turned into Brooke’s clone.”

Brie smoothed her hair. “I just feel more in
charge
this way. But Brooke does
not
like people horning in on her territory.”

“Tell me about it.” Max snorted.

Brie checked her watch. “Okay, the doors are opening right now,” she said. “I should go check on everyone else.”

She pulled open the velvet curtain and came face-to-face with Brooke, whose folksy outfit for the day made her look like the world’s most impossibly chic country bumpkin (apparently in her mind, carnivals were the chief export of America’s farmlands).

“Oh… my God,” Brie squeaked.

“Good, Anna told me you’d be here,” Brooke said. She glanced around the room, her eyes flickering over Max briefly, dismissively.

So that’s how it’s going to be. I should have known.

“Is everything… okay?” Brie asked. She began gnawing on a hangnail that Max knew she didn’t actually have.

Brooke looked Brie up and down, then walked around her slowly, in an appraising circle.

“Brie,” she began, “when I put you in charge of the carnival, this is the last thing I expected.”

“I’m sorry,” Brie said, her shoulders slumping with disappointment.

“Why? I am seriously
so impressed
with you right now.”

“Really?” Brie squeaked.

“You have shown initiative
and
excellence in personal grooming,” Brooke said. “I have to say, after a year of you never even so much as bookmarking Shopbop.com, I had assumed this day would never come.”

“I just wanted to make you proud,” Brie said hopefully.

“You are everything I had hoped for when I plucked you from freshman obscurity,” Brooke said proudly. “I mean, there are some rough spots—I would never have worn those shoes with that skirt—but we are making such progress. It’s reassuring to know that I have a mini-me who can represent my interests at school while I am busy with my craft on set.”

Brie was as red as the cloth under Max’s crystal ball. Max stifled a yawn. She was happy for the kid, but
Single White Female
was way more entertaining on a Saturday morning than what was effectively an episode of
A Makeover Story
.

“How’s it looking out there?” Brie asked, more confidently. She threw open the curtain again. The grounds of the Rose Bowl were already packed, and Mental Hygienist was doing its sound check on the main stage. Mavis Moore was manning the cotton-candy stand across the way, having artfully shaped all her sugary swirls to look like animals. Magnus Mitchell had been roped into selling his mother’s wooden bracelets nearby, but he kept gazing at Mavis and her edible zoo as if she were Brett Favre. A huge group of chattering students swarmed the area, obscuring the rest of their view.

“It’s a hit and it only just started,” Brooke said. “I am a genius.”

“Oh, yes, well, whenever I was stumped, I just thought,
What would Brooke Berlin do?
” Brie trilled, delighted.

Brooke nodded sagely. “Exactly,” she said. “In fact, you’re officially in charge of my birthday-party planning
this year. It’s less than two weeks away, so it’s a huge responsibility. I’m not sure how you’re going to get the elephants on such short notice.”

“
Details
,” Brie said, waving her hand. “I know someone at the zoo.”

“Of course you do.” Brooke beamed. “Now, I’m looking for Max. Have you seen her?”

Brie looked puzzled. “Well, yeah.” She jerked a thumb in Max’s direction.

Brooke peered at Max intently. “Well, well,” she said, thoughtfully. “Nice turban. It’s very directional.” She turned to Brie. “Could you give us a moment, please?”

Brie fought through the heavy curtains to get outside. As soon as she disappeared, Max yanked off the robes. “I draw the line at caftans,” she muttered.

“Right? Maxi dresses are bad enough. Nicole Richie needs to stop giving people bad ideas,” Brooke said, sliding into the seat opposite Max. “So, fortune-teller, what do you see in my future?”

“Fame and fortune,” Max replied flatly.

“Duh. And what do you see in yours?”

“Why are we doing this?”

“Well, for one thing, because you didn’t answer any of my calls,” Brooke said, leaning back in her chair. “I need to return some of your stuff.”

She reached into her Victoria Beckham tote and fished out a handful of paper, which she dropped on the table next to the crystal ball. It was Max’s discarded NYU
application. There was a coffee stain on the left corner, and it smelled faintly of bananas.

“It’s good, Max,” Brooke said. “It’s really good.”

“You
read
it?”

“Don’t act so shocked. It’s not like I snuck into your bedroom and read your diary,” Brooke said, offended. “You practically threw it in my face.”

“It was in the garbage.”

“At my
workplace
,” Brooke said pointedly. “And you’re welcome for me rescuing it. I especially liked the part where you basically compared me dating Brady to Heidi Montag becoming a neurosurgeon.”

Max willed her turban to drop over her face again. It complied. “Artistic license,” she mumbled.

Brooke plucked the turban off Max’s head. “I laughed,” she said. “Seriously. You are even better at writing as yourself than you are at writing as me.”

“Thank you,” Max said, fixating on one cloudy spot on the crystal ball.

Brooke stabbed at Max’s NYU application with a red-painted nail. “I can’t believe you’re not turning this in. That’s a winning application if I ever saw one. And,” she said, brandishing a long rectangle of paper, “Brick wrote you a letter of recommendation that I don’t think the selection committee can ignore.”

Max unfolded the letter. The first line read,
This totally anonymous writer is nothing less than a preeminent
American hero of our century
. Turns out Brick loved hyperbole as much as he loved protein powder.

Brooke smiled. “He’s really impressed with what you did for me. So am I, Max.”

Max wanted to crawl under the table. She never knew how to take compliments. Mostly because she rarely got them. “I couldn’t let you get fired,” she said to the crystal ball. “You wouldn’t have even been in that position if I hadn’t written that ridiculous entry about social media.”

“And you wouldn’t have written that entry if I hadn’t swooped in on Brady.”

“That’s my fault, too,” Max pointed out.

Brooke shrugged. “It’s hard to be truthful about matters of the heart,” she said. “I learned that during the
Lust for Life
episode where Veronica goes mute after falling in love with Hedge von Henson while they’re trapped in the mine shaft.”

“Yes. This is very much like that.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” Brooke scolded. “I’m trying to have a heart-to-heart here.” She cleared her throat and the imperious tone disappeared. “I liked how it felt when people acted like I was smart. I mean, I
am
smart, but not in the same way you are, and I liked the way the blog made people treat me. Like the producers, and Daddy, and… and Brady.” Her voice cracked. “No boy ever made me feel brainy before. Hot, yes, but not brainy. So I kind of got carried away, and I’m… sorry about that. I thought you
liked him even when you denied it, but it was easier for me to decide you were telling the truth because… well.”

“It’s okay. It’s my bad.” Max tapped the turban. “Madame Esmerelda can’t expect
everyone
to be psychic.”

“The thing is, a huge part of what he liked about me wasn’t really me. It was you,” Brooke said. “Your writing did that. So it’s super lame of you to give up on NYU.”

“Look, it’s fine. It doesn’t really matter anymore anyway,” Max said. “The application deadline is Monday. I’ll never write something new between now and then.”

Brooke crinkled up her nose. “And why would you do something dumb like that? I just told you, this is good,” she said. “And everyone knows the truth now, so what’s the problem?”

“Wait,
what
?”

“The truth about the blog. I told it. After you left,” Brooke said impatiently. “Didn’t Teddy tell you?”

“No!” Max gasped, wanting simultaneously to hug Brooke and throttle her brother. “He must’ve wanted to make me hear it from you.”

“Well. That was bossy of him,” Brooke said. “Well played, Teddy.”

Max straightened up in her chair. “But everything was going to be fine! Why did you do that? You’ll get annihilated on the Internet!”

“Well, we’re going to say that the whole blog thing was illustrative of the undue pressure the Internet puts on Young Hollywood to be one hundred percent accessible to
the world,” Brooke said, as if reciting a press release (which she probably was). She scratched at a sticky spot on the velvet tablecloth. “But the real answer is, because you made yourself look totally crazy to help me out, and you didn’t have to. I don’t think I would have done that for me, if I were you.”

Max snorted. “Apparently, all that green hair dye didn’t blitz my conscience like I had hoped.”

“Well, I think I got a taste of how you felt all this time,” Brooke said. “Everyone was screaming about how
happy
they were that Brooke Berlin really did have a brain, and I just thought,
I
do
have one, and it’s perfectly fine the way it is.
It must have sucked having everyone treat you like you weren’t important when actually everything they liked came from you. So I couldn’t let everyone think you were a nutball.” She paused. “Well, not for
those
reasons, anyway.”

“Thanks?”

“So I reamed them in this seriously inspired speech,” Brooke said dreamily.

Max chuckled. “I can’t believe I missed it. I hope someone was taping it for YouTube.”

“Maybe Carla Callahan was,” Brooke said mischievously. “They found out she was writing that pathetic parody blog, and Zander was
not
happy.”

Max straightened. “Did she get fired?”

Brooke’s lip twitched. “George is going to die in the latest rewrite, and then they’re going to leak that they killed
her off for performance reasons. Kyle said that would be more satisfying. But he used different words. There was a rubber-band snap involved.”

The girls exchanged smiles. Max reached out her hand.

“Thanks, Brooke,” she said. “For… well, all of it, really. It was good for me.” She gulped. “When I went back to
not
having something to care about, I kind of missed it.”

Brooke shook her hand. “So would you say I changed your life?”

“Yes,” Max deadpanned. “Because of you, I once wore boots with an actual heel.”

“Excellent!” Brooke chirped. “I wonder if I can fit ‘life-changing spiritual force’ onto my résumé.” She turned to leave.

“Brooke,” Max blurted. “Congratulations. I’m glad you got everything you wanted.”

Brooke paused and smiled. “Well, not everything,” she said. “But I’m working on it.” She clapped her hands. “Okay, get to your customers,” she said. “It won’t do to keep people from their futures.”

Max lightly touched the application on the table. It
wouldn’t
do, and for the first time in a long time, there wasn’t anything keeping her from her own.

AFTER FOUR HOURS
manning the fortune-telling booth, Max was almost tempted to write
Lust for Life
an angry letter: Bucky made wearing a turban look hilarious and fun, but on Max, the stupid thing would not stay put, and it was so heavy that it was giving her a head-
and
neck ache. She ended up pulling it off and sitting on it to give her chair some much-needed extra padding.

Turban woes aside, after Brooke’s visit, Max felt light. She was touched that Brooke had told the truth, especially knowing what that could have cost her. (Although, being Brooke, she seemed to have emerged unscathed
again
. The girl was Teflon.) Max’s ensuing good mood allowed her to sit back and make the best of her afternoon, which actually ended up being pretty fun. People
seemed to enjoy her dramatic made-up fortunes—like Anna Fury, who seemed weirdly pleased when Max predicted she’d become a pro on
Dancing with the Stars
and get paired with one of the Winklevoss twins, and the girl in her English class who was delighted to hear that Jennifer Parker was doubtless going to burn off her lips in a tragic hair-straightening accident. Max would rather eat toham than tell her mother this, but… maybe Eileen McCormack had been right. Doing high school stuff wasn’t
always
a drag.