What Remains of Me (12 page)

“
What you don't know can't hurt you.
” Kelly's mother used to say that. Kelly's mother, who had driven Catherine out of the house and to her death with her rage and then Kelly, two years later, to a different type of death . . .

Kelly thought about calling Shane. She imagined herself tracking him down at Bellamy's house and banging on the door, demanding to see him. But then she looked at the text again. The words he'd chosen. Not just
time away
, but
time away from you
.

Another one. Gone
.

She started up the car, so lost in her thoughts she didn't feel anyone approaching, didn't notice the passenger door opening until it slammed. She turned fast to see Sebastian Todd, vulture-slumped in the passenger seat as though this were a planned meeting.

“What are you doing here?” Kelly said.

“Apologizing.”

Kelly stared at him, barely noticing the paparazzi rounding the corner and making for her car. “
Apologizing?
” She pulled away from the curb but kept her eyes fixed on his face. “For what?”

Sebastian Todd gave her a weak smile that had nothing to do with anything that was going on around them. “I know you didn't kill John McFadden.”

STERLING MARSHALL'S SON GOES WACKO AT A STRIP CLUB!

Less than 24 hours after his movie star father's brutal and mysterious shooting death, Sterling Marshall's son Shane went completely CRAY CRAY at Teaserz on Pico, terrifying the dancers and leaving fellow patron Cary Wurst with a broken jaw and black eye. “I've never seen anything like it,” Cary's friend Dave Farnsworth told TMZ. “The dude was like a wild animal!”

Farnsworth told us that Shane Marshall, 40, arrived at the club alone and blotto. “He was hammered on something,” said one of the club's dancers, who goes by the name of Bliss. “Definitely he has anger issues and was looking to pound somebody to a pulp!” Other patrons told TMZ that Shane's eyes were half closed, and his head was “lolling,” in a really drugged-out way. “Looked like meth to me,” said another eyewitness, who thinks it also could have been bath salts. Whatever Marshall was on, it wasn't pretty. After leaping onstage and mauling a
dancer as she tried to perform, Marshall was approached by Cary Wurst, who politely told him to keep his hands off the girls. “Shane Marshall made this growling sound, like an animal,” Bliss said. “Then he dove on poor Cary—he just started tearing him apart.”

The scariest part was, Marshall spoke to Wurst throughout the entire, vicious attack. “You could only make out a little of it but it was weird,” said Wurst's friend Dave. “A bunch of times, I heard him say, ‘Kelly.'”

Marshall's wife, convicted murderer Kelly Michelle Lund, could not be reached for comment. But regardless of what he was saying to his victim about his wife, Marshall clearly wasn't behaving like a loving, loyal husband on the night of his father's shooting death.

“It would almost be sad,” Dave Farnsworth continued, “if that guy hadn't broken Cary's jaw and nearly killed him!” Cary Wurst—a 35-year-old accountant from Arcadia—is currently being treated for his injuries at Cedars-Sinai hospital.

Added another witness, “Murderer or not, I feel sorry for Shane Marshall's wife. That guy is a hot mess and a ticking time bomb for sure!” Took the words right outta our mouths . . .

UPDATE: Shane Marshall has been arrested for assault and drunk and disorderly conduct. He has been released on bail—TMZ will provide additional updates as they happen. A spokesperson for the LAPD says Shane Marshall's blood has been tested. Toxicology results will be available in two weeks. The investigation continues into Sterling Marshall's death. When contacted by TMZ, Kelly Michelle Lund hung up on our reporter.

                                                                                
Lead story, TMZ

                                                                                
Morning of April 22, 2010

T
hey just drove, Kelly, Bellamy, and Vee. Drove with no destination, no plan of action other than escape. Windows down, cigarettes lit, Bellamy's music blasting—Joy Division, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees. British bands Kelly had never heard of until Bellamy announced them but still felt as though she knew in a way, those melodies so sad and haunting, those singers, all of them with voices like ghosts. Kelly leaned against the locked door, her hair blowing out the open window, warm air all over her, warm smoke in her throat, easing past her lips, warming them too.

Before long, the earlier part of the day—that awful phone call at school, that woman laughing at her when she'd asked for Len, not to mention Len himself, his fake phone number—all of it slipped away like a passing thought that hadn't been important to begin with.

Vee's full name was Vincent Vales. He was just sixteen but had already passed the GED. He was a professional actor and lived in his own apartment like a grown man. The apartment was on Gower, near the studios, and it had been built as a place to house starlets back in the 1940s. “It looks sorta like the Sleeping Beauty castle at Disneyland,”
Bellamy said. “Only a lot smaller.” Bellamy was the one who told Kelly all about Vee. Vee didn't seem like much of a talker. But that was okay, since Kelly wasn't much of a talker either.

“You want to know how Vee and I met?” Bellamy said as she pulled into the Mobil self-serve station on Robertson and Sunset and turned the car off, Siouxsie's ghost voice going silent.

“Yeah.” Kelly imagined the two of them shopping side by side at Fiorucci, slam dancing at The Whisky, sipping champagne with Jack Nicholson on a Mulholland Drive balcony, making out . . .

Bellamy turned off the car. “He was in a movie with my dad.”

“Which one?” Kelly said.

“Would you know it?” Bellamy said. “It's a western.” She turned around in the seat to face her, Kelly's blurred reflection swimming in her Ray-Bans. “Oh no, wait. Let me guess. Your mom would, right, because she's seen all his movies? She's a big fan?”

“Umm . . .”

“Everybody's mom lusts after my dad. It's kind of gross.”

“Actually,” Kelly said, “my mom lusts after bankers.”

Bellamy tilted her head to the side and regarded Kelly for several seconds, as though she were trying to figure out whether or not she was joking. “Good for her,” she said finally. “Movie actors are dicks.”

“Hey,” Vee said.

“Present company bla bla bla.”

As Bellamy got out of the car, Kelly looked down at her hands.
What would Mom say if she knew I was here right now, ditching school with a movie actor and Sterling Marshall's daughter?
She didn't want to know, didn't even want to think about it.

Bellamy started pumping gas and Vee turned around in his seat—the first time she'd seen his face head-on, not in a mirror. He was startlingly handsome—shiny black hair, full lips, eyes blue as gas flames set against
caramel-tan skin. He almost didn't seem real—more a piece of art than a person. Kelly forgot whatever it was she'd been thinking about, and just stared at him. Against her will, her face stretched into a goofy smile.

“
Defiance
,” he said.

“Huh?”

“
Defiance
was the movie I was in with Bellamy's dad. I was just eleven years old. I played Sterling's son, and I was killed in the first act.”

She forced herself to stop smiling. “Was that hard,” she said, “pretending to die?”

“Nah, I just had to lie there.” He grinned. His teeth were pearly. “During most of the takes, I fell asleep.”

Kelly laughed.

“Anyway, Bellamy would come to the set—she was there a lot. She was the only other kid my age, and so we got to be friends. Since I was playing her dad's son, she started calling me her ‘pretend brother.' The director would let us sit in his folding chair. John McFadden. Ever hear of him?”

Kelly shook her head.

“He's kind of well known.” He didn't say it in a mean or snooty way. Just like someone making conversation.

“Pretend brother,” she said. “That's cute.”

He shrugged. “That's Bellamy. She's still my pretend sister, I guess. When you're not in school, it's harder to find friends, so the few you have wind up being pretty important.”

They're just friends
. Kelly's heart leaped a little, surprising and embarrassing her at the same time. She felt her cheeks flushing and hoped he didn't notice. Why did her face keep doing things she didn't want it to do? “Do you have any real sisters?”

“Nope. I'm an only child.”

“Me too.”

Vee's smile faded, and he looked at her, really
looked
at her, those gas flame eyes lasering into hers. “But not always. Right?”

“No,” she said slowly. “Not always.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“How do you know?”

“I knew Cat. She was your twin sister, right?”

Kelly squinted at him, thinking about all the times she'd spied on Catherine, all the boys she'd seen her with. She'd never seen Vee. She would have remembered Vee. “Wow . . .”

“She used to talk about you,” he said.

“She did?”

“She always said you were a better person than her—the good twin,” he said. “It stuck in my mind because, you know . . . Cat was a really good person herself.”

“Wow,” Kelly said again. Such a dumb thing to say. It made her sound like some spaced-out fan, but she couldn't help it.

Not many people at school had known Catherine—mainly because she'd barely gone to school. She'd wanted to be an actress, a
real
one, she used to say, and only life can teach you that. Not school, not books.
Living life up to its bendy edge, pressing against that edge, hard as you can . . .

So the people from school who came out from under rocks in the weeks after her body was found, the kids who talked loudly in the hallways, bragging that they'd known “that dead freshman”—those kids called Catherine lots of things, but “good” was never one of them.

It was as though she'd become something else in death—“the wild girl,” “the slut,” “that chick who partied way too hard”—a character in everyone else's story, reduced to just a few, wrong words. Because they
didn't
know her, not really. She may have been going through a wild phase, sure, but more than that Catherine was good. She always had been.

“She was just two minutes older than me, but it always felt like a lot more,” Kelly said. “You know . . . she taught me how to swim.”

Bellamy was in the kiosk now, paying. Vee glanced at her as she settled up. “I bet you taught her a lot too,” he said. “You just didn't know it.”

Wow . . .
Kelly stopped herself from saying it out loud again as Bellamy swung open the car door, bangle bracelets jangling as though to announce her presence. “Why the long faces? Jeez, I leave you two alone for five minutes.”

Kelly forced a smile. “Yeah, well.”

“What did I miss?”

“Acting,” Vee said. “We were talking about acting. And how you used to call me your pretend brother.”

“Can you blame me? You're a hell of a lot more fun than my
real
brother.” Her gaze settled on Kelly. “That doesn't explain why you both look like your dog just died.”

“Wellll,” Kelly said slowly, drawing the word out.

“Yeah?”

“Vee knew my sister.”

Bellamy's face went still. “Oh,” she said. “Oh Kelly.” Bellamy opened the car door and leaned into the back, where she was sitting. Kelly wasn't sure what she was going to do at first, but she pulled her close and hugged her with a strength that surprised her. “I'm so sorry.”

Tentatively, Kelly hugged her back. “I . . . Um . . . I didn't . . .”

“I knew her,” she said. “Not well but . . . Everybody knew her. She went to the parties.”

“I introduced you guys,” Vee said.

“Right.” Bellamy pulled away. She looked at Kelly. “I didn't know whether or not to bring it up.”

“It's okay,” she said. “It was a long time ago.” It wasn't. It had only been two years, but neither of them pointed that out.

Bellamy tilted her head again, watching her, Kelly wishing she'd take her sunglasses off until finally, she broke into a smile. “Hey, you know what, if you want to act, Vee can get you a screen test.”

Kelly swallowed. She had never thought about acting before, not even once. Catherine had been the actress, while Kelly had been the . . . what had she been? The actress's sister. “I don't know if I'm movie material,” she said quietly.

“Are you kidding? You're a babe!”

Kelly blushed—her face betraying her again.

“You are,” Vee said. Her cheeks burned purple now. Her heart thrummed.

Vee said, “I can get you a screen test with John.”

“John?”

“John McFadden. The director I was telling you about.”

“You know him that well?”

“Yep.”

Bellamy slipped back into the front seat, sighing dramatically. “He's Vee's
dad.
”

“Oh,” Kelly said. She looked at Vee, who had turned around again. He was sitting perfectly still, the tips of his ears a deep red.

“His last name's different because of nepotism,” Bellamy was saying as she started up the car. “He wants to make it on his
own
. Of course, he doesn't mind his big shot daddy casting him in his pictures. And paying his rent.”

“Whatever, Bellamy.”

“Oh come on. I'm just kidding around.” She ran a hand through his glossy hair.

“Cut it out.”

Bellamy cast a quick glance at Kelly. “Let's not fight in front of the children.”

Vee said, “Just. Drive.”

Bellamy screeched away from the pump. Siouxsie began moaning again, but Vee switched it off. “I'm sick of this black-shroud shit.”

“I thought you liked it.”

“I like Jack Daniel's too. But if I drank it all day, I'd puke.” He slipped another cassette in the deck, all horns and fun, the singer shouting,
One step beyond . . .

“Madness,” said Bellamy.

It took Kelly a little while to realize that Madness was the name of the band on the tape, but she didn't let on. “I like Madness,” she said.

Vee smiled at her in the rearview. “Me too.”

And then Bellamy was pulling up to a red light, calling a Chinese Fire Drill, Vee and Kelly throwing their doors open in unison and jumping out into the street, horns blaring at them from all around, the singer shouting it again:
One . . . step . . . beyond!

“Oh my God, you guys!” Kelly shouted, but she got out too. The three of them circled the red Rabbit once, twice, three times as more horns joined in, people calling them stupid kids, yelling cuss words at them.

“One more time!” Bellamy screamed.

Off they went. Kelly laughed until her sides ached.
I'm with friends,
she thought. And a part of Kelly, a tiny spark of her, felt like Catherine was watching them, watching them and smiling.

“THIS ONE'S CALLED PASSIONFRUIT SHIMMER,” MOM SAID. “YOU JUST
want to put the slightest hint of it on your cheekbones. Any more than that, it looks trashy.”

Mom dusted Kelly's cheeks with a soft brush, her breath tickling her skin. She'd gotten a new line in today—the spring line already, even though it was just mid-February—and Mom always liked to practice with a new line before trying it out on the paying customers.

“Want to be my guinea pig?” Mom had said to Kelly when she'd slipped through the door at the normal time—four o'clock, just like every other day when she went to all her classes and took the bus. Mom had a tone to her, an urgency. Though that could have just been the way she was interpreting Mom, the way Kelly was thinking, the state she was in.

Everything felt urgent.

At any rate, yes was the only possible answer to the guinea pig question, and normally, Kelly loved it when Mom made her over—Mom so caring with her steady, cool hands, the authority in her voice as she explained each step. The attention she paid her, as though Kelly were a piece of art she was creating.

Mom was very good at makeup. She studied faces hard before she chose her shades, and she could turn anyone into a beauty, even Kelly. “Like a princess,” she would say after her makeovers were complete, both of them gazing at Kelly's face in the mirror—eyes bright, cheekbones defined, lips just the right shade. Kelly would look at herself and the way her mother was looking at her, and she would feel transformed.

Today, though. Today, Kelly already felt beautiful. Walking through the door, still in the final, glittering lap of her very first cocaine high, Kelly had replayed the car ride in her mind—a ride that had stretched all the way to Venice Beach and back with so much laughter, so much confession, so many secrets, presented like gifts. “
I've never told anyone this before, Kelly. You're just so easy to talk to . . .”

Kelly in the backseat, Vee and Bellamy in the front, turning to her. Friends. “
We're the Three Musketeers,
” Bellamy had said, “
or maybe Charlie's Angels.
”

They'd parked in Venice Beach in a spot where the ocean stretched out before them, the sun low in the sky, so many people walking by, shirtless and on roller skates, in patched cutoffs and bikinis, beach
tanned and sunburned and heroin pale—all of them beautiful and ugly at the same time. That was when Bellamy had slipped the mirror and the folded-up piece of paper from her purse, Vee rolling up a twenty, Bellamy shaking the white powder onto the mirror, cutting it into lines. Listening to the ritual click of the blade against the glass, Kelly had felt the strangest, most powerful longing—a need for a feeling she'd never known.