Accidental It Girl (6 page)

“What?” I ask dumbly.

“I don't ever want to see you in my jurisdiction again.”

“Yeah, sure.” I never liked New Jersey anyway.

I now have the great honor of paying two hundred dollars to spend an hour with a tow truck driver who smells of diesel fuel and decomposing tofu.

On the bright side, I have sixty solid minutes to sob quietly and plot the most effective ways of exacting revenge on Ethan Wyatt.

I
woke up to the sweet smell of coffee wafting into my bedroom, but have spent the last ten minutes trying to deny its siren call. Brooke was asleep when I finally made it home last night, so she doesn't know about the whole “movie star wrecking my dad's car” incident, or the less traumatic but still disturbing Todd-wrapping-up-a-toothbrush fiasco, and I really don't feel like discussing either. Brooke, being more detail oriented than Martha Stewart on a knitting bender, will want to break the whole night down into nanoseconds. There are great blocks of nanoseconds I'd prefer not to relive.

I am now carless, nearly jobless (as my work requires a car), on the verge of being broke (as 1979 Camaro parts don't come cheap), and incapable of taking a picture of Ethan Wyatt. All I really want to do is crawl under the covers and forget that last night ever happened.

I pull the comforter over my head and try to push every thought from my mind.

Not working.

My dad loved that car, and it's the only thing of his that made it through the bank auction. He vacuumed and waxed that Camaro every Sunday, an exercise that was more ritual than cleaning, as it always sat under our rickety aluminum carport and Dad never ate in it or casually tossed trash into the backseat like I do. He would have hated that, and he
really
would have hated this. He would be disappointed in me—for having wrecked his car while doing…what I was doing. And disappointing my dad was the absolute worst.

The words seem so innocuous: “I'm disappointed in you.” But there was something in the way that he said it. His big, tired, almond-shaped eyes would bore into me, they'd blink and appraise. He'd wring his rugged, blistered hands and languidly shuffle his feet. He'd shake his head and scratch at his prematurely gray hair. As the word
disappointed
trickled over his lips he gave the distinct impression of a man who'd had a tiny little piece of his heart ripped out and stomped on.

I can see that look now, as clearly and vividly as if he were still alive and boring his weary eyes through my duvet—guilt from beyond the grave.

And Ethan Wyatt came out of this with nothing more than some tedious insurance paperwork to suffer through, paperwork that I'm sure someone else will fill out for him.

I clutch at my aching chest, rip off the covers, and pad directly into the kitchen—driven by the promise of caffeine.

 

Slumping against the wall, I watch Brooke prepare cereal made of what appears to be twigs. She always eats right, and actually goes to the gym—daily. I'm a “better slimming through chemistry” girl myself. In other words, I much prefer potions to Pilates. The closest thing to a workout I get is fighting my way from Sephora's anticellulite lotion section to the cash register.

“I knew the coffee would get you out here,” Brooke chirps happily.

I groan and shuffle over to pour some coffee. I'm not sure my foul mood can handle her pep.

She turns around, mixes up her twigs with soy milk. “How was your date with the macho man?”

I lift the coffee to my lips, anxiously anticipating its wondrous effect. “Before or after I dumped him and he sent me to track down a member of the Osmond family?”

I gulp some coffee and am about to launch into the whole story when Brooke interrupts me with a shocked gasp. “Jesus! Sadie, what happened?”

“We broke up,” I say, confused by the look of absolute horror on her face. “I mean, his ego might be a little deflated but it wasn't that bad.”

“I'm talking about
that
!” she says, ogling my chest—her eyes wide with concern.

Looking down, I freeze. My stretched-out old tank top reveals that I am black and blue, pink, green, and yellow. The center of the bruise is about four inches in diameter and located just above my heart. From there it stretches out toward my left shoulder and down over my left breast like a pastel spiderweb. It is gigantic…and ugly.

“Oh,” I say softly—startled.
“Oh!”

Brooke's eyes continue to widen and examine the bruise. I can almost see the thoughts bouncing around in her head. She's wondering whom she's going to have to beat up.

I start, “I'm okay. I think my camera just—”

Brooke is incredulous. “You don't look okay. Who did this to you—Donny or Marie?”

Before I can begin my twisted tale, the door buzzer hums loudly.

“Luke's been out all night. He's stopping by for breakfast before he crashes,” Brooke says distractedly. Luke
technically
has his own apartment, but
practically
lives with us. He keeps his own pillow in the hall closet because he sleeps on our couch so much that the cushions were getting, according to Brooke, “that nasty, sleepy
boy
smell.”

The same front door that Brooke and I can never seem to unlock swings open with no problem for Luke.

“What day is it?” Luke asks, striding toward the kitchen with a smile.

“Friday,” replies Brooke. While I chime in, “Saturday.”

Luke looks at us, waiting for a definitive answer. I never know for sure what day it is without consulting the calendar on my cell phone. I defer to Brooke.

“Friday,” she says. “I have the day off. Definitely Friday.”

“Damn, that means I have to work tomorrow,” grumbles Luke. “Oooh, coffee.”

He heads for the coffee, but stops short when he sees me. “Sadie, what happened to you?” he whispers.

The concern and compassion in his voice tug at some deep part of me. My eyes fill with unwanted, ridiculous tears. “Ethan Wyatt wrecked the Camaro.”

I am lying on the couch with the remote control in hand and a plastic sandwich bag full of ice on my chest. I think it's too late for the ice to do any good, but I let Brooke do it anyway.

I told them everything, from toothbrush to tow truck. At once they turned into doting parental figures, coercing me to lie down, force-feeding me Cocoa Puffs and raisin toast, and agreeing with everything I said. It was kind of nice, but as pity parties go, a little on the lame side. At some point I'm going to need a little less toast and a little more tequila.

“Who'd you get last night, Luke?” I ask, turning my attention from
Good Times
.

“De Niro again, Kate Hudson, Owen Wilson.”

“Not bad,” I reply, impressed.

“Eh,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “What are you going to do about the car?”

“Stop buying shoes, eat only bread and water, hope that a mysterious benefactor has upped my insurance.” Sue Ethan Wyatt for all he's worth. Crush him like a little bug.

Or…I could call Paige. She has the money.

I glance over at the corner of the room, and my eyes land on the big brown box.

No, she wouldn't help. She's always thought my job was beneath me—or more to the point, beneath
her
. I think she's intrigued by the fame and fortune aspect of it all, but the fact that I'm on the blue-collar side of the business doesn't appeal to her sense of decorum and good breeding. She tells her friends that I'm a photographer, and then quickly changes the subject.
Paparazzi
isn't part of her lexicon; it certainly isn't part of her vision of the perfect daughter. Not to mention my mother is not exactly the most reliable person to call for help. A real emergency would illicit a response like “Darling, can I call you back? I'm late for the hairdresser, and you know how Franco hates to wait. Thanks. Bye.” The follow-up would come two weeks later…. “All right, I'm here for you now. I got your message. No, no, darling—you cut the
green
wire, not the red one.”

 

The three “years of silence,” as I like to call them, went something like this: 1989 was all about feeling sorry for myself and watching Disney musicals. Then 1990 was a year of alternately hating Paige with a fury and experimenting with the latest exfoliation techniques outlined in
Seventeen
. In 1991 I wanted to be Christy Turlington and wished, more than anything, that my mother had taken me with her. Then, near Thanksgiving of 1991, gifts began trickling in.

At first they were trinkets, small pieces of jewelry, hair accessories that I couldn't use because I'd chopped all my hair off that summer (when Christy did). Then, at Christmas, a makeup kit arrived—a
Chanel
makeup kit. New Year's brought a journal. It was leather and velvet with a lock that looked to have been swiped from a medieval text. By April of 1992 I had amassed quite a collection of things, the value of which I still believe totaled more than the entire contents of my father's tiny house. The period that followed I have generously entitled “Paige's Mother-Daughter Adventure”—she began having me over for weekends.

I had just turned fourteen and was outstandingly awkward and plump. Puberty was very unkind to me. My breasts and hips emerged long before my upward growth spurt, so I resembled a lumpy apple for the first gruesome year of high school. But, as Paige used to remind me, my
hair
was so pretty—smooth, shiny, and sun-bleached to a honeyed platinum blonde.

One day, completely out of the blue, Paige sent me a note instructing me, in no uncertain terms, to proceed directly to her house Friday after school. She said she'd spoken to my dad about it and that he knew not to expect me home until Sunday evening. The kicker? The note came attached to a brand-new cashmere Benetton sweater. If I had had any inkling of what cashmere was, or what it cost, I probably wouldn't have worn it. I would have hidden it under my bed with the rest of her gifts so my father didn't know I was “cheating” on him with my mother. But as it was, when Friday came around I wore the sweater to school. I loved it—so soft and delicate and creamy white, like an eggshell. All day I got compliments on it, and all day I fanta-sized about what it would be like to hang out in my mother's enormous house surrounded by all the expensive things that I was sure would make me feel just instantaneously happier. The only thing I was nervous about was the bus.

Paige lived, quite literally, on the other side of the tracks. This meant that to go directly to her house I had to take a different bus from school. I had to take the
cool
bus, the bus that all the cheerleaders rode (well, the few not driven to and from school by their much older boyfriends). There were no band geeks or math league members on this bus. It was a bus filled with superlatives—Best Couple, Most Likely to Succeed, Cutest Butt. I was completely petrified. Though not a math league member myself, my best friend at the time (who, incidentally, was infinitely cooler than I) was first chair tuba in the marching band. But when I walked onto the cool bus, I held my head high and tried to look like I belonged. Apparently, my routine didn't quite hit the mark. The hottest, most popular guy in my grade, Marshall Holmes, tapped me on the shoulder as I passed him and said, “Uh, Sadie. I don't think you're on the right bus.”

He didn't mean it to be cruel. I honestly think it was well-intentioned concern that prompted him to speak (Marshall grew up to be a very wealthy, very gay doctor and adoptive father of four Cambodian orphans). But, nevertheless, his comment sparked a cacophony of laughter and snickering at my expense. It also caused a face-reddening cringe and the sudden desire to crawl under a seat and assume the fetal position.

Believe it or not, that was the highlight of the weekend.

I very quickly caught on that my mother had not invited me to the home she shared with Dr. Hank, DDS, so that I could be folded into the warm embrace of a happy privileged home. She had invited me as an accessory, a prop.

I was greeted at the front door with two air kisses. The only touch that came by way of greeting was a nudge propelling me inside the foyer. And even that, I think, was done with the dull, flat tips of her acrylic nails.

There were two parties planned that weekend, she informed me. “One tonight with my golf ladies, and one tomorrow with Dr. Hank's business acquaintances.” She directed me to follow her up the long, winding staircase to the second floor. “We're just so excited to have you!”