Amen, L.A. Page 15

  Someone had thoughtfully put a cooler of soft drinks, beer, and champagne in the center of the gazebo. Brett went to the cooler and extracted a bottle of champagne. “You like?”

  I shook my head. “Not a big drinker.” Truth was I wasn’t a drinker at all.

  “Then let’s go with fizzy water.” He traded the champagne for a couple of bottles of Lauretana—which I found really sweet and considerate—and handed one to me. “Here’s to new friends.”

  Definitely. “To new friends.”

  We clinked bottles and drank. And then we talked. Really talked. He asked me more about Mankato. And then he told me about Beverly Hills. Growing up where each one of your friends is richer than the next? “It’s unreal.”

  He rubbed the cold bottle against his forehead. My heart beat faster when he did. I reached surreptitiously into my pocketbook and turned my cell to silent. If Sean was picking this moment to call me or text me, I didn’t want to know right now.

  “Do they get it right on TV?” I asked. “You know. Like 90210.”

  “Nah,” Brett scoffed, and tipped his head back for a long guzzle.

  “Yeah, I figured that was all exaggerated to get people to watch.”

  “No, I meant in real life, it’s worse,” he said. “Life turns into a competition, a pretty dumb-ass competition. Like, take this party.” He swept his hands back toward the tennis courts, the pool, and beyond. “How much do you think Brooke spent on it?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. A thousand dollars?”

  Brett hooted. “You have a lot to learn. Your car got parked by the valet on the way here?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s two grand right there. I’d say the total for the night, from start to finish, including the Dangerous Angels cleaning crew to come in and repair the damage—and mind you, there will be damage—twelve thou, easy. Possibly fifteen. And this is something Brooke threw together at the last minute.”

  I was aghast. “Her parents just hand her the money?”

  “Daddy’s credit card,” Brett explained. “But see now, the next time Skye or Alex gives a party? They’ll need to spend twenty thou. Just to prove they can.”

  Skye. Even though Brett had explained their relationship, I still didn’t really get it. I cleared my throat and went for a casual “So, I noticed Skye isn’t here,” adding a yawn.

  The moment I did it, I knew it was stupid, but you can’t take a yawn back.

  He looked amused and copied my yawn. “You bored?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Skye’s doing a fashion show at the House of Blues tonight,” Brett explained.

  “But you came here instead.”

  He nodded, his eyes searching mine. I felt his look all the way down to my toes. I didn’t feel that way when Sean looked at me. I never had.

  A change of subject was necessary.

  “Did you know Alex’s parents? Before the—you know.”

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and frowned.

  “I did,” he said.

  I waited for him to go on, as I suspected he would. As my mother liked to say on the radio, sometimes the best thing to do in a conversation is shut up.

  “They were great. Unlike most parents, they actually knew how to listen. They gave the best advice. Each of them, in their own way. Everyone liked Roger and Felicia. They asked us to call them that.”

  “It must have been a terrible day. The day of the crash.” I had this vision of someone—maybe a reporter—calling Alex’s house with the news, looking for a reaction, even before Alex knew about it. I don’t know if that’s plausible, but in the moment, it was what I thought.

  Brett rested his forearms on his thighs and stared at the ground. “It really sucked.”

  He looked off into the night. He stared back over several years, and when he spoke again, his voice was almost inaudible. I literally had to cup my right ear to hear.

  “There was this vigil that night,” he recalled. “At their house. In the showbiz world, Roger and Felicia were pretty famous. Everyone wanted to pay their respects. There were police cruisers blocking the road, but people brought flowers on foot up to the gate.”

  “Did you bring some, too?”

  He nodded. “The amazing thing is, we kids were allowed inside.” His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “It was like a club, where there’s a guest list, and we were on it. When we walked up to the main house—there were probably six or seven of us; I remember Brooke, Skye, Gray, a few others—we didn’t know what to do. The door was closed, and a cop stationed there said no visitors.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Someone had their Mac, and we could get a wireless signal. So we sent Alex an email. Then we hung by the pool, waiting to see if she’d come down. She didn’t. After a while, we just went home.” In the moonlight, I thought I saw tears glistening in Brett’s eyes. He turned and quickly brushed a forearm across them.

  I thought about Alex inside, with her friends outside, too sad even to be with them. I’d been so lucky in my life. I had both my parents. My grandparents on both sides were still alive. On my mom’s side, they’d retired to western North Carolina, where they played golf and bridge and participated in a community theater. On my dad’s side, they ran a farm in northern Iowa, as you know. Come to think of it, I hadn’t even lost an aunt or an uncle. I hadn’t lost anyone.

  Brett shifted back to me. “Scaring you off with my eternal heaviness?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Because I am usually Mr. Cool,” he insisted, clearly trying to lighten the mood.”

  I nodded. “Duly noted.”

  “If I went through what Alex went through? I’d probably end up dead before my ass ever got to rehab.”

  I looked toward the mansion, where a heavy bass line was thumping. Alex was up there, somewhere. “It has to be hard for her, don’t you think?” I asked. “Being at this kind of party with all the alcohol?”

  “Well, the world’s not gonna change for her.” His eyes searched mine again. “But you’re still worried.” He rose and tugged me to my feet. “Let’s split up and find her.”

  As much as I would rather have stayed alone in the moonlight with Brett, I nodded. “Text me if you see her first?”

  He grinned. “Only if you do the same for me.”

  We made our way up to the concert area together, where plenty of kids milled around, even though the Sex Puppets hadn’t yet returned for their next set. No Alex. Then we went up the stairs to the pool area. That was where we separated. Brett said he’d cover the upper deck, and I told him I’d check around this level. “Text me no matter what.” I was getting concerned. Where was she?

  “Okay. But don’t worry. This is a party and she knows everyone. It’s normal.” He put a strong hand on my cheek. “It’ll be okay.”

  I wanted to stay calm, but I was worried. That I could see beer cans floating in the pool with seminude swimmers passing a joint didn’t help.

  I got more worried as I circumnavigated the pool, the diving area, and the hot tub. I’m pretty sure I saw a couple actually having sex in the hot tub, but I didn’t see Alex. Then I remembered that she’d said she was going to use one of the bathrooms in the cabanas. I thought it was unlikely she’d still be there, but I spotted those cabanas off to the left. There were four or five doors; two were marked as bathrooms, and the rest were changing areas. I checked the bathrooms. They were apparently unisex, because there were two guys in the one to the left, and a guy and a girl in the one to the right. I muttered a “sorry” and backed away. At least the girl wasn’t Alex.

  That left the changing rooms.

  The first one was empty.

  In the second one—I had to bang on the locked door about a dozen times before it finally gave way—I got another shock in a day of major-league shocks when the door swung open. I found myself confronted by Gemma’s friend Lisa Stevens. She had more clothes off than she had on.

  “What part of a locked do
or don’t you understand?” Her voice was positively caustic.

  Now, I don’t like being berated by a fifteen-year-old, particularly one standing there in a lacy bra and a matching thong. But it wasn’t Lisa’s put-down that made me upset. What she wanted to do inside a changing room at a high school party was her business, though I suspected that her father would pitch a first-class fit if he knew.

  No. Lisa’s enviable body and angry face weren’t what threw me. The other person in the changing room with her was. Lisa was not alone. She was with my brother, Chad. My thirteen-year-old brother, Chad, whose clothes lay in a heap. He wore nothing but a pair of jeans.

  My head spun. He was supposed to be sick! How had he gotten out of the house? What was he doing? Actually, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to that one.

  I pushed past Lisa into the changing room, where I saw a MacBook Pro open on a small table. My eyes were locked on my brother, who was both affecting a stance of defiance and staring down at the tile. Whether he was hoping it would open up so he could jump through, or hoping it would open up so I would disappear, I couldn’t tell.

  “Just because you look sixteen doesn’t mean you are sixteen!” I yelled.

  He got even more interested in the floor.

  “For your information,” Lisa began, “your brother and I were busy. Why don’t you just leave?”

  I whirled on her. “Get your clothes on and get out of here.”

  “No thanks, Mom,” she snapped.

  I got right in her face, my voice low and cold. “Get your clothes and get out, or I will throw you out.”

  “You go,” Chad said softly to Lisa. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “Busted by a big sister.” Lisa laughed without a smidgeon of contrition in her voice. “That’s a first for me. Just a sec.”

  With utter insouciance, she stepped toward my brother, pulled on a black skirt and a black sleeveless silk top, kicked into a pair of flip-flops, and then had the gall to check herself out in the changing-room mirror and rearrange her hair while I steamed. Finally, she closed up the MacBook, gave Chad a little kiss and me the finger, then left.

  All thoughts of Alex were gone. It was just me and Chad.

  “You get dressed, too,” I ordered. “You’re leaving.”

  “Don’t tell Mom and Dad. Please.” With Lisa gone, he was begging.

  “What were you thinking?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I fumed as my brother pulled on his sneakers and a Junior Olympics swim team T-shirt. “Just tell me you won’t tell Mom and Dad,” he repeated.

  If he wasn’t answering me, I sure as sugar wasn’t answering him.

  “Let’s go.”

  I led the way past the pool, up to the main party level, and around to the front of Brooke’s mansion. I didn’t look at him as we took a chauffeured golf cart all the way down the hill to the valet stand. I didn’t look at him when I gave my ticket to the valet, and I didn’t look at him when we got in the Saturn.

  I think he got the message that I was pissed. Still, he didn’t say anything to me until we reached Sunset Boulevard and turned east toward our canyon.

  “I can explain,” he said weakly.

  “I can explain, too.” I kept my eyes on the road. I wasn’t supposed to be driving with anyone else in the car, and didn’t want to get stopped by the cops. “You faked being sick so that Mom and Dad wouldn’t bother you. Dad thinks you’re home sleeping and he doesn’t want to wake you. Somehow—and I’m still trying to figure this one out—you snuck out of the house so that you could come to this party with Lisa. As for what you and she were doing—”

  “We were making a video,” Chad put in quickly.

  Holy …

  “You were making a porno?”

  “Not that kind of video,” he assured me. “A video about kissing. Like, an instructional video for YouTube. About how to kiss.”

  I stopped at the red light on Beverly Glen. “Yeah. Right. I’m not too dumb to live.”

  “You can see it yourself. I’ll tell Lisa to email it to you.”

  I shot him a hot glance, then the light changed and I snapped my eyes back to the road. I was not getting in an accident over this. No way.

  “Chad? I don’t believe you. And if I did believe you, if you are somehow telling the truth, then if that video ever does end up on YouTube, you and Lisa are going to be very sorry. Am I understood?”

  “I’ll tell her to delete it,” he said, though there was little contrition in his voice.

  “Whatever it is,” I fired back.

  “It’s a kissing video.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I still didn’t believe him, and I realized that he hadn’t denied my account of how he’d come to attend the party.

  The rest of the ride home was dead silent. In fact, neither of us talked until I pulled through the electric gate and started up our own driveway.

  “I won’t do it again,” Chad promised. “I swear it. Just don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I have no intention of telling Mom and Dad. In fact, however you came out of your room without Dad hearing? Go back in the same way.” My voice was, I hoped, reassuring.

  I brought the Saturn to a stop in the driveway after turning it around. I was going to go back to Brooke’s. I wanted to find Alex. Then I wanted to hang out some more with Brett.

  Chad grabbed one of my hands in gratitude. “Thank you, Nat. Thank you. You’re, like, the best big sister ever. I swear, it was a stupid mistake and it won’t happen again.” He squeezed my hand for emphasis and then opened the car door.

  “Chad!”

  The sharpness of my voice stopped him.

  “Yeah?”

  I waited until he leaned back into the car before I continued. “I mean it. I’m not going to tell Mom and Dad.”

  “I said thank you.”

  “I’m not going to,” I repeated. “You are.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  It took me twenty minutes to drive back to Brooke’s house—twenty minutes of trying to figure out how I could have been dumb enough not to see that Lisa had had her eyes on and claws in my brother almost from the moment she’d met him. I remembered that first Sunday in church, how she’d flirted with him in the sanctuary and then sat close to him at lunch. I remembered going to Kent Stevens’s place for dinner and finding the two of them together in Lisa’s room.

  How could I have been so blind? He was my little brother, that was how. I still thought of him as a kid, even if he didn’t look like one. Had I been so wrapped up in my own little universe of moving and makeovers, new friends and crushes that I hadn’t thought about anyone but myself? It was bitter irony. I had railed against moving to L.A. because I’d been so sure it was filled with people like the one I had become.

  Then I thought of my sister. She would be crushed when she found out what happened. She’d feel totally used by Lisa, with good reason. She had been used. Lisa had used her as a way of getting to my brother.

  Of course, there was no earthly requirement, and maybe not a heavenly one either, for my parents or Gemma ever to learn about Chad and Lisa. Sure, I’d told Chad that he was going to have to tell my mom and dad, but I doubted it would happen that night. My mom wasn’t home, and I didn’t see Chad making his confession twice. He’d probably wait until morning, at the earliest.

  As I drove west on Sunset Boulevard, I wondered if maybe he didn’t need to tell at all. If he outed himself, everyone would be hurt. My mom was already stressed out by her new job; my dad was happier than I’d ever seen him; Gemma would be distraught. Chad would be grounded for the rest of his life. Besides, what if he’d been telling the truth and he and Lisa really were just making a kissing video for YouTube? It was bad, yes. Chad had snuck out of the house to party. It wasn’t like he’d snuck out to have sex.

  Maybe I should just tell Lisa to stay away from my—

  Crap. As I turned up into the hills toward Brooke’s, I rea
lized I’d left my cell ringer off. What if Brett had found Alex and tried to contact me?

  At the next driveway, I pulled in and took my cell out of my bag. Yes, there was a text.

  Not from Brett, though. From Sean.

  NAT—Miss you. Lots to talk about. Word from parentals on visit? Xo Sean

  Double crap. Not tonight.

  I reset the volume, then let my forehead rest for a moment on the steering wheel. Sean. One more thing I was handling badly. I texted back a quick OK and then sent one to Brett, telling him I’d had to leave the party for a bit but was on my way back, and had he found Alex? Then I got rolling again and was at the base of Brooke’s driveway ten minutes later. I left my car with the valets and took another golf cart ride to the top of the hill.

  That was where I found Alex. It was easy this time. She was on the White House–style columned veranda, the entryway to Brooke’s house, with about ten other kids, including Brooke and Gray, but no Brett. They were partying with Jack Daniel’s and Jose Cuervo. Clearly, Jack was very popular with Alex. She tipped him back and guzzled from the half-full bottle.

  Triple crap.

  “Nat!” She greeted me effusively, throwing her arms around me. “Hey, everyone! Look who’s here! It’s Natalie! She’s so cool. Natalie, Natalie. Come have a drink with me, Natalie!”

  She thrust the bottle at me.

  I found myself slammed by thoughts.

  First thought: There goes your recovery, Alex.

  Second thought: Why did I ever leave this party? Why did I ever let her go off by herself? If I had stayed with her, this wouldn’t have happened. I said I’d have her back. I let her down.

  Third thought: It feels like I’m letting everyone down.

  “Come on, Natalie!” Alex took a wobbly step toward me. “Have a drink!”

  Brooke grinned at me, her eyes at half-mast. “Yeah, Natalie. Come on. I don’t know what you do back in Minnesota, but here in California? When a friend offers you a drink, the polite thing is to take the bottle and say thank you.”