Just Like Me, Only Better (19 page)

“You wanna watch a movie?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.

It worked. Haley shut down the computer and happily led me downstairs.

I had missed Haley’s screening room on my earlier visits. It was at the end of a long hallway, past the guest room. And it was really, really cool, with three rows of red velour armchairs (with built-in cup holders), vintage movie posters (some of them signed), and a TV screen twice the size of Darcy’s biggest set. Red velvet drapes on either side of the screen made the room feel like a miniature old-time theater, as did the glass concession stand and old-fashioned popcorn-maker.

“Twizzlers? Dots? Milk Duds? Reese’s?” Haley, perky again, stood behind the counter. “The popcorn machine’s busted.”

I accepted a box of Twizzlers, along with a can of Diet Coke from a mini fridge next to the broken popcorn maker.

“I wanted a soda machine,” she told me, popping open a Mountain Dew, the radioactive yellow liquid spraying her I JUST LOOK INNOCENT T-shirt. “But they said I couldn’t have one because there’s no water line in here. Sucks.”

“Does,” I agreed.

“I’m gonna get ice from the kitchen. You want some?”

“No, thanks.”

“How about a straw? I’ve got the bendy kind.”

“This is fine. Really.”

I half-hoped (okay, whole-hoped) that Haley would choose one of her own movies so I could see beautiful (and non-whore-like—she just said that because she’d been hurt) Brady Ellis on the big screen. Instead, we watched Jennifer Garner in
13 Going on 30
because some website said it was the ultimate slumber party movie. I had to keep reminding myself that Haley was twenty-two and not twelve.

What had Brady ever seen in her? What in the world did they talk about?

By the time the movie was over, I’d polished off the entire package of Twizzlers and was feeling mildly ill. Haley kept an icy cup of Mountain Dew in one hand and a succession of candy bars in the other.

“I wish I could meet a guy like that,” Haley sighed, as the credits rolled.

“You can probably meet that very guy,” I said referring to the movie’s romantic lead. “He probably lives in L.A. Of course, he could be married.”

“I’m not talking about the
actor
,” she said. “I’m so sick of actors. They’re so fake and full of themselves. What I mean is, I wish I could meet a real guy. Somebody normal who’s not into designer clothes and facials and all that shit.”

I took a small bottle of water from the mini fridge and tried to keep my voice casual. “Brady seemed pretty normal.” (For a superhuman sex god.)

“Oh, Brady. He’s just. You know. Whatever.”

“Right.” (You are useless, Haley. Useless!)

I fished a little more: “But I guess the two of you just didn’t quite . . . I mean, it wasn’t exactly . . .”

She looked at me with the kind of blankness that can’t be faked.

“It didn’t work out between you.” When she still didn’t respond, I moved on to more immediate concerns. “We should probably have dinner.”

“This is dinner.” Haley put her drink in her chair’s cup holder and ripped open a package of Reese’s (her fourth or fifth—I’d lost count). “What do you want to watch next? I was thinking either
Legally Blonde
or
27 Dresses
.”

“Either sounds good, but I really need some food.”

She held out the orange package. “Have a Reese’s. They have peanut butter.”

“Do you have anything more substantial?”

“Sub . . . I don’t know what that means.”

“Like—real food? I could make a sandwich, maybe.”

“No bread. Jay threw it all away. Without asking me. Because Simone said I was getting fat. Jay can be a real dick sometimes. And Simone is always a dick. She has cool accessories, though.” She shoved the rest of the peanut butter cup in her mouth and continued to talk with her mouth full. “Esperanza bought all this stuff this afternoon. I love Esperanza.”

“Well, maybe I’ll just go see what you have. I just need some real food.”

Her face lit up with excitement. “Let’s go get some Pinkberry!” She started laughing, which tipped over into hysteria.

“We can go out somewhere! I really want to!”

“But we can’t,” I said. “At least, not together.”

“Why not?”

I pointed to her face and back to mine. “People might notice a slight resemblance.”

She smiled. “I don’t give a fuck. I need my Pinkberry. It’s like, cleansing—all those micro thingies eat up all the bad stuff. Like, they cancel it out. And, you know, I’ve had a lot of junk food today.”

“Oh,” I said. “My.”
Think, think, think
. “Oh, wow—look at the time. It’s too late! They’ll be closed.” It was probably true, too, thank God.

Her face twisted with disappointment, but she recovered fairly quickly. “Let’s go for a ride, then!”

“I don’t know if—”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” She grabbed my hands and jumped up and down. “We’ll take the truck up the hill and look at the stars! No one will see us! It’ll be fun! Fun, fun, fun!”

“Maybe we should check with Jay.” Maybe Jay had a tranquilizer gun.

She stopped jumping. Her smile fell. She squeezed my hands until they hurt and looked me in the eyes. “Jay doesn’t pay you. I do.”

 

 

The night was cold. I shivered in my denim jacket. Haley hadn’t changed out of her pajamas. Instead, she just slipped into a pair of worn Ugg boots, threw on a pink velour hoodie, and grabbed the keys.

Mulholland Drive was dark, and Haley drove too fast. The big yellow truck lurched through the potholes and around the sharp curves. Beyond the edge of the road, city lights twinkled far, far below us.

At a turnout, she pulled over. The truck’s headlights illuminated a sign: NO PARKING AFTER 9 P.M. It was after ten o’clock, but there was no gate, no one to make us leave. She turned off the ignition and turned up the radio, fiddling around until she found a country station.

She hopped out of the truck, leaving the keys in the ignition and the door open, the
ding-ding-ding
just audible over the music. I followed her to the guardrail, hoping to God we wouldn’t be out here long enough for the car battery to run down. In front of us, a dark, brush-covered ravine plunged down to the wide, flat, sparkling valley floor.

“You like country music?” I asked. We hadn’t said much on the drive.

“No.” She slurped some Mountain Dew from her travel cup. “But when I was little, my dad used to take me and my brother camping. We’d pile into his truck and drive out to the middle of nowhere. If it was dark, he’d leave the car running for a little while, with the headlights shining on our campsite and country music blasting on the radio.”

She tilted her face up to the night sky, which wasn’t black so much as murky gray, the stars a pale reflection of the city lights below. “When I come here, I can almost believe I’m back in Montana. I mean, as long as I don’t look down.”

“Aren’t you cold?” I said. Her velour hoodie was no warmer than my jacket.

“I like being cold. I’m from Montana.”

“We should probably be heading back.”

Something rustled in the bushes below us. She peered over the railing. “Do you think it’s a fox?”

“Maybe. Or a rat or a snake.” When she didn’t say anything, I added, “The battery’s going to run down if we’re not careful.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m going to wait in the truck.”

As I turned to go, she stepped over the guardrail and began scrambling down the ravine.

“What are you doing!”

“It’s too bright up there,” she called. “I want it to feel dark. And woodsy. Where do you think the fox was? I want to find it.”

“It might not be a fox.”

“Maybe I can find a clearing. Maybe we can camp here. Wouldn’t that be fun? To spend the night?”

“It’s not safe,” I said. “And we’re not even supposed to park here after nine o’clock.”

“Do you always do what people tell you to do?” Her voice was getting fainter.

Now I was angry. I climbed back into the truck and shut off the radio, plunging us into a silence that made the night seem even more ominous. Stupid Haley. She didn’t even care if we ran down the battery.

I grabbed the door handle, prepared to shut myself in until Haley came to her senses, only to realize that such a thing might never happen. My mother instincts kicked in. I couldn’t just leave her out there.

Back outside, I slammed the door shut and went back to the railing. My gut clenched when I didn’t see her. Finally I made out her dark shape, lying in a clearing.

I thought she was asleep until she raised her arms over her head and stretched like a cat. She pulled herself up in one smooth motion, climbed back up the hill, and stepped over the guardrail. She paused to brush leaves and grass off of her cloud-patterned pajama pants.

At the truck door, she turned around, “You coming?”

 

 

 

S
aturday morning, I was exhausted, still drained from an evening spent trying to keep Haley from going over the edge, both literally and figuratively. I was deciding whether to go back to sleep or get out of bed when someone knocked on the guest room door.

I pushed myself up against the pillows. “Yeah?”

Jay poked his head through the door. “Coffee?”

“Oh! Hi.” I tried to smooth down my masses of hair.

He had two paper cups. “Simone’s going to be here at eleven-thirty, and she usually sets up her racks in this room.”

I rubbed my eyes. “What time is it?”

There were no clocks in the guest room, just a queen-sized log bed, a bent willow Adirondack chair, and a bunch of wildlife photographs (two bears, an eagle, and a fish).

“Almost eleven.”

“Wow. Really? I never sleep this late.”

I adjusted the covers around my lap. My night clothes were nothing exciting: a pale blue T-shirt and drawstring pants. Suddenly, I wished I were wearing a strappy nightgown or maybe some silk pajamas. Some Hollywood vanity must have rubbed off on me.

It had yet to rub off on Jay. Today he wore faded black jeans, black high-top sneakers, and what looked suspiciously like a white undershirt.

He said, “Simone will have one of her assistants with her, but she’s already signed a nondisclosure agreement, so it’s okay if she sees you.” He held out the cups. “Skinny latte or plain black coffee?”

“Which do you want?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You must have a preference.”

“Either’s fine.”

I raised one eyebrow.

He grinned. “I told you to stop doing that.” He looked younger than usual today—something about the way his hair was falling in his face. Plus, he’d shaved. If I didn’t know him, I would have pegged him at about twenty-three.

“I’ll have the latte,” I said. “But only if you really don’t care.”

“Of course I care. I’d rather have the plain coffee.”

Since there was no night table, Jay handed me the cup. It was extremely warm, even through the corrugated cardboard cuff. When I pulled off the plastic top, steam rushed up to kiss my face.

I blew gently, and the froth trembled. “No supersized caramel macho whatever?”

“It’s already been delivered and ignored.”

Haley got her coffee first. Of course she did.

He snorted. “Though what she really needs is a Bloody Mary.” He sipped his coffee. “Ow, this is hot.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean—a Bloody Mary?”

He sighed. “Haley got smashed last night. And now she’s hungover. Which is really bad timing since Simone is only available till one, which means that Haley has got to get her ass out of bed.”

I shook my head. “That’s not possible. I was with her all night.”

“And how did she seem to you?”

“Kind of . . . bipolar. Normal one minute and then just totally insane. I thought it was because of her medications or even that it was just her personality. I didn’t think there was any booze allowed in the house. I didn’t smell anything.”

“Vodka,” he said.

The big bottle of Gatorade. The Mountain Dew in the travel cup. Of course.

“I’m sorry.”

He sighed. “It happens. Unfortunately, it happens a lot. There wasn’t much you could have done, even if you’d known.”

“But where did she get it?”

“Rodrigo, Esperanza—who knows? She could be getting it from the pool boy or the gardener. Pretty much anyone.”

I thought back to when I was her age and well-acquainted with every bar in Fullerton. “She is over twenty-one,” I said. “As long as she’s not driving . . .” I remembered our ride into the hills and shuddered.

“Haley can’t drink,” he said flatly.

“Because she can’t control it?”

“Because another
Kitty
movie is set to begin filming in June. But the insurance company has made it perfectly clear: unless Haley stays sober, they’re pulling out. With no insurance, there’s no movie, and no TV show, either. Which means there’s no CD, there’s no T-shirts and lunch boxes and dolls. There’s no money.”

That seemed pretty extreme. “Just because of that thing that happened in Starbucks? And the, um, incident with the Escape?”

He pulled the top off his coffee and blew. He checked my face. “
Kitty and the Katz
stopped shooting two months early because of Haley’s behavior. It was . . . erratic. To say the least. It wasn’t just because of the alcohol, but that certainly didn’t help. Some days she’d be so hungover that she couldn’t remember her lines. Other times, she’d get in her yellow truck and disappear for two, three days at a time. The first time it happened—” He stopped.

“What?”

“I thought something had happened to her. An accident or—something.”

“Did you file a missing persons report?”