“Whatever. Uncle Chris really outdid himself this time,” she commented.
I rolled my eyes at that. Everyone said that every time there was a White Party. My dad was known to host the best parties and he always “outdid himself” from the last one. I couldn’t really disagree with them; each party was more lavish than the last. He really thought he was The Great Gatsby or something, and that’s not even a joke. He would actually say, “This is going to be a Gatsby party.”
I was wearing a robe, waiting for the dress my mother promised me, when there was a single knock on my door, followed by it opening.
“Hey, Nina,” my mother greeted, “you look pretty.”
“Thanks, Aunt Roxy,” Nina said with a smile.
“Maybe you should let your cousin in on your little diet secret since she refuses to listen to me,” my mother went on, handing me a dress bag without even looking at me.
I snatched it from her and walked into my closet, drowning out their conversation with my humming. I would rather not listen to the discussion about how I was so fat that size two jeans were starting to look snug on me. It wasn’t my fault that my butt had a mind of its own when it came to developing. I let the robe pool at my feet as I stood in front of the mirror to look at myself. It’s not like I had a fat stomach or anything. My boobs were smaller than I wished they were, but the combination of my flat stomach and thin waist made my butt look bigger than it actually was.
I opened the garment bag and took out the dress, a short white dress that had embroidered detail at the top. I raised my eyebrows at the material, which was much like the green dress my mother had been wearing earlier that day, so I knew that meant that it would stick to me like glue. I wore it anyway, even though I felt overly exposed. My regular wardrobe consisted of loose ripped jeans and vintage band T-shirts, so anything that showed off my legs was going to feel like it was exposing me.
Nina’s words to me were: “You look pale.”
“I’m tan, Nina,” I argued.
“Yeah, but your hair is blonde, almost white, and you’re wearing a white dress. You look pale as fuck. Why didn’t you dye your hair back to your normal color?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Didn’t feel like dying it back yet.”
She shook her head. Her dark hair was cut to her shoulders and styled straight, so when she shook her head that way it would swing into her eyes. “When are you going to stop dying your hair weird colors?”
She’d asked me the same question every time she’d seen me for the past six months. Each time I gave her a different answer, usually one that I knew would shut her up. I never told her the reason I thought it did it. In the beginning I did it because I wanted a change—I was bored of the same old hair. Gradually it became more, though. It meant I could escape and become someone else for a little while, and I liked that. Mainly because obviously the person I was wasn’t good enough for anyone.
“When I figure out who I should be, I guess,” I responded nonchalantly with a shrug.
Nina, who had never been one to pay attention to detail when you spoke to her, stopped applying her makeup and looked at me, eyes wide. “What’s wrong with who you are now?”
“Everything, apparently,” I mumbled under my breath. “Nothing,” I said louder, shooting a reassuring smile at her.
She looked at me for a second longer before going back to her eyeliner.
The party was the same as they always were: loud and cheerful. There were actors, musicians, rock stars, movie directors, producers, DJs, Hollywood agents, models. Anybody with a known name was there.
“Who’s that?” Nina asked, tugging my hand just as Ryan joined us.
“Who’s who?” Ryan chimed in.
“That,” Nina said, pointing at a guy, about our age. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and dark washed jeans. His hair was dark brown and ruffled. He was thin and shorter than Ryan, but Ryan was tall for his age. It wasn’t his looks that made him attractive, though, it was just him. The way he was smiling at the pretty model he was talking to. The way his eyes lit up at his own jokes. He just had that fire in him that made you want to get to know him, and when he looked at me, I did.
“I dunno,” I mused and was about to say something dumb, like, “but I want to.” I didn’t get to finish my sentence because my mother glided up to us. She walked like she owned the world, which was something I tried to practice, but never got down. The thing was, I realized later, that my mother really did think she owned the world and everybody that walked it. Everyone was a puppet to her and she was pulling all the strings.
“Brooklyn,” my mother said cheerfully, wrapping her arm around my shoulder and pulling me into a hug. I remember wishing I could go to a party every day so that she would hug me. “Let me introduce you to a couple of people. Excuse us, Ryan … Nina,” she said, giving them each a pointed look.
I walked off with her, catching their baffled looks when I shot them my own confused glance over my shoulder. My mother handed me the drink she had in her hand, I figured for me to hold.
“Drink it,” she insisted. “You’re at home, might as well enjoy the party properly.”
It’s not like I hadn’t drank alcohol before. I was sixteen years old, living in Beverly Hills. I’d gotten drunk a handful of times. Hanging out with child actors at adult parties will do that to a kid. Still, I’d never been given permission from my own mother to drink. I took it and brought it to my mouth, wondering where she was going with this whole thing. I smelled it first; it smelled fruity, much like the drinks I’d had before, so I took a cautious sip. As fruity as it smelled, it went down heavily, burning my esophagus, but I liked it.
“What is it?” I asked curiously, watching her delighted face from the corner of my eye.
She stopped walking and turned to me, fake smile still plastered on her face. “Liquid courage,” she said. “Just drink the damn thing and don’t eat any of the fried food.” Her eyes did a swift take of my body. “The dress looks perfect on you. Much better than I thought it would. Don’t mess it up,” she snapped, smile still in place, but her light brown eyes were drilling into me.
I nodded, taking a bigger sip of her liquid courage. “Yeah, God forbid I don’t look good enough to be your daughter.”
“Exactly,” she remarked. She either missed my sarcastic tone or chose to ignore it. Probably the latter. “Mind your posture, walk with your head held high, not looking at the floor. If it’s below you, it’s not worth looking at.”
I rolled my eyes inwardly and let her lead me through the crowds of people, introducing me as we went.
“Oh, she’s beautiful,” some said in reference to me. My mother especially liked the “She’s as beautiful as her mother” comments. My favorite was, “You’ve raised her well.” That made my empty stomach turn.
We circled our way around until we reached the “cute guy” Nina pointed out earlier. He was speaking to my father, who looked at me, his big green eyes smiling warmly when he caught sight of me walking with my mother.
“Hey, baby girl,” he greeted.
“Hey, Dad,” I responded, leaning into his arms for a moment. My mother was now holding my hand and pulled me away from him quickly.
“Chris, I was just about to introduce Brooklyn to Shea,” my mother explained.
My father narrowed his eyes for a quick moment before nodding. “Shea, this is my daughter, Brooklyn,” he said, turning toward the guy who was indeed a little taller than me in my heels.
His messy hair fell into his eyes when he tilted his head to appraise me and I was done for. One tilted head, charming smile, twinkling eyes look was all it took for my platonic crush on Shea to set.
Then he opened his mouth and spoke. “So good to meet you, Brooklyn,” he said, his voice velvety and silky. I just wanted to bathe in it for days. His greenish-brownish eyes were set on mine. They were the oddest color, like green grass with patches of mud on it. Muddy green, I would later call them. “Chris, if you would’ve told me
you had such a pretty daughter, I would’ve gotten here sooner.”
Done. For. It. That’s what I was.
You can’t really blame a girl, though. I was sixteen years old with hormones spurring out of control. I got no attention from anybody in my house, the only people I could count on were: my brother who was never there, my cousin who lived in New York, and my gay best friend who was battling his own demons at home. I thrived for attention the only way I knew, which was by going to parties and being the party girl. The “it” girl everybody wanted to be friends with, but not real friends, just friends on the weekend. They didn’t give a shit that I was hurting; they didn’t give a shit about my life. All they cared about was getting invited to parties, getting drunk, and being able to say they knew Chris and Roxy’s daughter.
“Brooklyn,” my mother cooed, facing me to her and holding me at arms’ length so she could look at me. “You know what would be great? If you could show Shea our studio. Why don’t you introduce him to your friends?” She pulled me close to her again and placed my face on top of her chest. I was shorter than her, so that’s where my head landed anyway. But it was such an intimate gesture, the way she held me there and ran her fingers through my hair the way she did when I was a child. I remember thinking in that moment that I would do anything for her. Anything to have her hold me like that. Anything to have that smile on her face when she looked at me and her approval when she touched me. So when she asked me to be nice to Shea, listen to his music and to please report back to my father about anything he said to me, I agreed.
I often wondered if she knew the destructive path I was already treading at that point, and whether or not she would have ignited the gallop, had she sensed how serious it was. I wondered if she knew what Shea’s friends were most likely carrying around in their pockets when she handed me to the wolves that night. I wondered if she even cared.
Ryan and I walked to the studio hand in hand, Nina following not far behind, already talking to one of Shea’s friends. He was shady, that friend of his, his name was Drew. I’ll never forget the way his dark eyes looked at you like you were already dead. It was an odd look he had, a dazed one.
“So, this is the studio,” I said, flipping on the light switch and letting everyone walk in before me.
“Nice digs,” Drew commented. He sounded like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. He kind of looked like him too.
I nodded my agreement. “Yep. There’s only one booth, but the system is the best of the best.”
After a while of standing around awkwardly, everyone took a seat. Ryan and I were on one of the black couches, Nina and Drew on another, and Shea sat on the seat directly in front of me. We made small talk about normal things like school. Drew and Shea both went to a local public school I was familiar with, mainly because I’d heard horrible things about the fights there. Anytime I’d been around kids that went to worse schools than mine, I felt weird talking about my own sheltered upbringing. I knew sheltered wasn’t the way most people described my crazy life. They threw around poor little rich girl, whenever I complained about my parents never being home or having time to talk to me. Poor little rich girl was right, though. I wasn’t blind to everything I had at my fingertips. I had everything a newly sixteen-year-old girl could possibly want, and everything I didn’t need.
The only thing that kept me from being completely reckless was my own conscience, which Nina hated. “Where’d you learn to be so responsible, anyway?” she’d ask when she was pissed that I didn’t go along with her getting drunk and sneaking out of the house schemes. She always wanted to sneak out of her house, which I hated. She had a good mother, an attentive one, one that set rules and boundaries for her. I didn’t have to sneak out of my house. I could walk out the front door at two in the morning and nobody would stop me or care to ask me where I was going. Maybe my dad or Hendrix would if they were home, but they weren’t. So again, poor little rich girl with a closet full of purses and shoes and nobody to give a shit about what she does with her life.
Shea took out a little bowl and started packing it with marijuana. I’d seen every drug in the drug pyramid by that time, so I knew what it was even though I’d never tried it. Ryan was into that kind of stuff, he would smoke with some other friends, but he never wanted me around it. His hand squeezed mine when he saw where it was going. He knew Shea would offer it to me, and he knew I was already caught up in impressing him so I would take it and try it. I shrugged and let go of his hand, taking the bowl in my hand when Shea handed it to me.
“You sure you wanna do that?” Ryan asked.
I looked over at him, his green eyes worried, and I shrugged. “Why not? You do it all the time. How bad can it be?”
Ryan shrugged back. “It’s not like drinking though.”
I didn’t care. The only reason I got drunk was to escape my own mind for a while. This was just another form of escape. I put it up to my lips and smiled at Shea, waiting for him to light it for me.
“First time, huh?” Shea asked playfully. His muddy green eyes were looking at me with so much interest, I wanted to take the bowl away from my lips and just kiss him.
“Yep,” I said coyly.
“Oh, hurry up, Bee, puff-puff pass already,” Nina whined.
I rolled my eyes and Shea laughed, shaking his head at her as he lit up the green grass for me and signaled for me to inhale. And I did. I inhaled and reveled in the burn it left in my throat. I let out the air, going into a coughing fit because I clearly took too much in. I had no clue what I was doing and it wasn’t properly explained to me. I passed the bowl. It came around two more times before I started to finally feel the effects of it. My eyes began to feel heavy, and my smile was a little wider on my face now. I was laughing at every single stupid thing anybody said. Even Drew was hilarious to me at that point.
As the night went on, somebody suggested we go into the house and watch Dumb & Dumber in our built-in movie theatre, so we did. I numbly led the way into the house, clutching on to Shea’s arm along the way so I could take off my shoes. He steadied me with his firm hold. He wasn’t strong looking with defined muscles, but I could tell he wasn’t a vegetable either. Later that night he told me he surfed sometimes, like a good California boy. I loved that he did. I made him promise he would take me surfing one day.
I’d seen Dumb & Dumber once before, it was one of Hendrix’s favorite movies. I hated it the first time I saw it. Hated it. But that time, with Shea’s arm around me and my head feeling so light—like a balloon, like a kite—I thought Dumb & Dumber was a classic. I’m pretty sure I even went as far as saying it should’ve been nominated for an Oscar. Really.
When the high was wearing down, Drew took out yet another little packet. This one was white powder. And again, something I had seen before but never touched. Neither Ryan nor Nina had done it either, so we were all curious enough about it. I decided that day that I would try everything once. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t tried any of it. I wish I could press the rewind button and go back to the moment where my mother hugged me and I felt whole.
We became fast friends and somewhere along the way he finally ditched Drew. Then it was Shea, Ryan and me. We were together more than we weren’t. We went to the studio with Shea every day while he recorded his first album. We went to his first show and cheered him on from the side of the stage. He would take me on to the stage and proclaim his love for me every chance he got and then take me to his dressing room and screw me senseless before we got high.
On days that I’m really feeling sorry for myself, I wish I would have never met Shea at all, and then I’m glad I did because we both fucked each other over that first summer. He introduced me to the drugs that would consume me and my best friend’s lives for the next two years, but I made him sign that contract with Harmon Records. So in the end, I don’t know who was worse: my mother for handing me over to the wolves that night, or me for constantly feeding the talent I found to the sharks in the music industry. Wolves may be ruthless, but at
least they showed their loyalty by traveling in packs and sharing their prey. Sharks are blind and scout out the weak, attacking anything that’s already bleeding. I found myself getting lost in all of it sometimes, wondering which I was—the shark or the prey? Was it possible to be a bleeding shark? And if so, how long before I got torn into?
I woke up at the crack of dawn to sort things out and make sure I packed everything in time for my one o’clock flight. I’ll only be gone for a week, which isn’t too bad, but it’s long enough to have me second guessing my wardrobe and what to take. Shea has concerts and a media tour going on at the same time to promote his single and upcoming CD release, so I’ll have to find things to keep me entertained while he’s busy. It’s insane the amount of things he has to cram into just a couple of days at each city. Our first stop is San Francisco, which I’m both scared and excited for. A part of me dreads going back there, but the other part of me knows it’s time to face the music-it’s been long enough.
My phone starts ringing just as I reach the door of Harmon, so I walk off the side to sort through my bag in search for it. As I do, my fingers touch something round, which I pull out in confusion. I smile when I see that they’re some of Melody’s gold play coins and shove them back in, finally finding my phone. Shea’s name is bright on my screen, no doubt to make sure I’m still going on the trip.
“Hello?” I respond as I begin walking back to the elevator.
“Hey, you’re still coming, right?” he asks.
I stall for a moment, letting the anxiety coursing through me settle before I respond. “Yes. I told you I’d be there.”
“Okay. Can you do me a huge favor? Stop by the studio on your way up to work or down, whatever, and ask Gia for a bag of mine that she has,” he says.
“Okay,” I respond slowly, surprised by this. “Isn’t she supposed to be touring with you?”
“Yeah, but she won’t be over there till tomorrow morning. She’s in the studio laying down a verse for one of my tracks, though, so I asked her to take my bag,” he explains.
Catch Me Page 12
