The Darkest Secret: A New Adult Romance Novel

by Jessica Pine

"It's easier to find work, abuelito," says Rebeca, who was ever the suck-up of the family. "They don't hire you if you sound too Latin - who gets the most work out of Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen, right?"

  "Charlie Sheen," says Pops. "The last I heard he'd gone crazy and started yelling about tiger blood and cocaine."

  "That was years ago," says Jo, my younger brother.

  "Years fly by in a minute when you're an old man like me. You'll find out. And what are you doing with those coins at the dinner table?"

  "Magic," says Jo, turning red. "I need to practice my back-palm."

  "You need more practice," says Rebeca, fishing a dime out of the salsa. "Chuy could choke - don't you fire those things in the baby food."

  Jo's elbow lands in my ribs. "Laugh it up, Jaime - quincinearas are gonna be the new bar mitzvahs. I'll be in huge demand..."

  "...and playing Vegas by the time you're twenty-five," says Mom, sailing in with the empanadas. "We've heard it. Maybe shoot for thirty-five, baby. It's more realistic."

  "Thirty-five? I'll be nearly dead by then."

  "And he still won't have learned Spanish," says Pops.

  Jo turns to me. "You can get me in, right? You and Uncle S...Esteban."

  "What do you mean, in?"

  "Hollywood, man. You're hanging with the A-list now, right?"

  I laugh. "I've done two days at the Gillespie place. Two. I don't think I'm joining the movers and shakers any time soon."

  "You gotta have a screenplay," says Beca, hoisting Chuy out of his high chair and into her lap. His face has that squishy, red look that usually means if he doesn't get exactly what he wants he's going to bust out howling. Unfortunately none of us speak Chuy's language. "Isn't that how it goes? You're writing a screenplay or you're hustling for a test. Everyone's an actor, writer, frustrated director - kinda Sunset Boulevard only without the crazy old lady in the big house." She jiggles the baby on her lap but he's having none of it.

  "I'll take him," says Mom.

  "No, Mama - I got him. Eat. I've had mine." She carries him off into the sitting room to walk him around. Little dude's probably just full and gassy.

  "Doesn't he live up Laurel Canyon way?" asks Jo.

  "Olympia, I think."

  "Shit, dude - that area's got some spooky-ass history going on. Wonderland and the Manson murders - that whole deal."

  "Wasn't there something with the daughter?" says Mom. "John Gillespie's daughter, I mean."

  "What about her?" I didn't see her. Uncle Steve showed me her 'rooms' from the outside - a whole part of the house big enough for a family, all for one skinny little white girl. Well, I don't know about skinny, but this is Hollywood we're talking about. I was given to understand that most of those rich girls trained their gag reflexes as soon as they could stick a finger down their throats.

  "I don't know exactly," says Mom. "There was some scandal. An accident. Probably drugs. You know what these kids are like - too much money and not enough sense."

  "I'll give you the too much money part," I say. "She has her own swimming pool."

  "I bet she can't cook." Rebeca's voice floats through from the other room, and I know where this is going. Emily, Emily, Emily - it's all she's talked about lately. Emily is the greatest cook, the greatest dancer. She has the blackest eye, the whitest smile and the cutest figure of all the girls in the room at any given time. Sometimes I feel like asking Beca if she loves Emily so much why doesn't she date her, but I know I'd just get slapped.

  After dinner I go to my room and try to imagine having the kind of space the Gillespie girl has. Empty rooms. When I was growing up if you wanted space you hung your head out of the window. Now it's only me and Jo at home.

  I type in a quick Google search for 'John Gillespie daughter' - it's like the third auto-complete. I hit the image search button and get a bunch of gross pictures, the kind that the paparazzi have to literally lie in the gutter to get. You can see her whole inner thigh and her black panties. Her face is hidden - she's raised her glittery purse to cover it - and her long hair part screens her face anyway. Blonde hair, natural, I'm guessing. It's the kind of blonde that has more than a little red in it - strawberry, I think they call it.

  The pictures make me feel queasy. She looks like a hunted thing, a breakable doll in the hands of heartless, greedy children. No. This is none of my business. Scandal or no scandal, she's the daughter of my new employer, a man who has been nothing but nice to me so far.

  I close down the windows, blurring my eyes against the type. But one thing slips by. Her name.

  Amber.

  ***

  The next day I drive across town and up into the rarefied world of the hills. Even the names here are fantastical - Wonderland, Olympia, Zeus. Like in moving up here you really could become a God. Even the smog looks good from up here. On some evenings when the sunset is extra red the moon rises neon pink. Pollution, Jo says, like when Krakatoa went boom and there was so much ash and crap in the air it streaked the sunsets blood red in Europe, half a world away. I tease him for being a nerd but there's no getting away from it - my little brother is definitely the brain of the family.

  The house is kind of modern adobe style, off-white stucco and earth tone mosaic. From outside it looks kind of ugly from certain angles, but the inside is nuts. It's the kind of place you can't imagine anyone would really live - it's too much like a magazine photoshoot.

  Uncle Steve leads me through the giant office/playroom. There's a pool table and a giant aquarium floor to ceiling in the middle of the room. "Wait here a second," he says. "Don't touch anything."

  I feel like I shouldn’t stare either, but I can’t help it. There are famous faces all over the walls – John Gillespie with Ewan McGregor, Sir Patrick Stewart, Julianne Moore. There’s one of him with his arm around a grinning Daniel Craig, and beneath the photo hangs a gun – either real or a prop, probably a memento of John Gillespie’s stint as a Bond villain. He played a Russian assassin who always shot people straight through their left-eye – like a calling card thing.

  I watch the fish for a moment and then I realize there's something weird in the tank. It looks like a decorative shell - a curly one, wound round like a shell of a snail, but it's floating. It's hanging there, suspended in the water, and I don't see a wire or anything. Then there's like a weird little pfff out the back of it and it moves.

  I think I said 'what the fuck' under my breath because the next thing I know there's a hand on my shoulder. "Nautilus," says a British voice at my ear. "Cool, innit?"

  Shit! I straighten. "Mr. Gillespie - I'm sorry. I didn't see you there."

  "No," he says. "You were looking at the fish. I know." He has a towel around his neck and over his shoulder I can see the open door of a workout room, an exercise bike. His bare upper arms are impressive and he has one of those old-fashioned barbed wire tattoos around one bicep.

  "Not the fish," I say. "The thing. The what did you call it?"

  "Nautilus," he said. "You never see Two Thousand Leagues Under The Sea? Wasn't it the name of Captain Nemo's sub?"

  "Oh. Oh. Yeah. I think so." Why does my brain escape my head every time I speak to him? I've gotta stop acting so starstruck. He must find it really annoying. "I've never seen anything like that before."

  "Living fossil, that," he says, peering into the tank. "Apparently they've been floating about like that since the fucking Cretaceous period or something. Haven't evolved, didn't need to. They got the design right first time. Kind of like sharks. Do you like sharks?"

  "They're...pretty cool, I guess?" This is so weird. His eyes are the same chilly blue that made him such a great draw as a Hollywood villain, only now they're even bluer with the reflection from the fish tank. His scalp is shaved but when he used to have hair it was blond - red blonde. Like hers. I wonder what color her eyes are?

  "You're damn right they're cool," he says. "Amazing animals. I've done the whole shark tank thing a couple of times - with the cage and the chain-mail diving suit.
Nothing like seeing them in the wild. One of nature's grand designs - it ain't broke, so she didn't fix it. While we were evolving from little hairy monkey guys to the big hairless idiots we are now the shark didn't change much. Didn't need to. Like these little fellers."

  The nautilus moved again. It kind of puffed its way around the tank - no fins or anything in sight. "How does it do that?"

  "Water jets. Propels itself by sucking in water one end and squirting it out the other. Can go in all directions. Marvelous, innit?"

  "It's amazing," I say, honestly impressed.

  "Have fun," he says, and slaps me on the back. Next thing I know he's off, whistling as he pulls the towel from around his neck and swings it over his shoulder.

  "You ready?" says Uncle Steve, coming back in.

  "Yeah."

  "Same round I showed you yesterday. My old round. It's yours now."

  I cover the perimeter for a couple of hundred yards and then I come round to the private pool and the rooms where his daughter lives. The pool is oval with the same tan and brown mosaic tile edging as the gatehouse. There are potted cacti and succulents all around but there’s nothing to suggest anyone really lives here. The patio umbrella is folded and I don’t think it’s ever been opened – it still has the plastic on it from the store.

  I do the rounds all morning and well into the afternoon. I keep wondering what I’d say if I ever saw her, so much that when I do see her I’m not sure if she’s a figment of my imagination or the real deal.

  She’s sitting with her feet in the water, smoking a cigarette. Her head whips round fast as a deer’s when she hears my footsteps. I can’t quite make out her face – her hand’s shading her eyes – but her hair looks like gold fire in the late afternoon light. They named her just right. Amber.

  "¿Donde es Esteban?" she says, catching me by surprise. I’m not used to hearing it from a white girl, and her accent is weird – European, maybe. Like she learned it in Madrid or Barcelona.

  "¿Habla usted Inglesé?" she asks. A reasonable question, since I’m standing here like a moron.

  I hear Pops’ voice in my head – “White girl speaks better Spanish that you, Jaime,” – and automatically correct him. She doesn’t. She’s got her forms of address all wrong. Even I know that.

  "Usted?" I say. "Isn't that kinda formal?"

  She does this funny little one-shouldered shrug. I still can’t see her eyes for the shadow of her hand but her mouth is thin lipped, bow shaped. Her chin and jaw look like her old man’s – strong, maybe too strong for a girl. "I was being polite,” she says, and I can’t place her accent.

  "Technically, I'm your servant,” I explain. “So a tu will do. I think."

  "You think?"

  "I don't speak much Spanish,” I say. She kind of rears back from me and I see the tip of her tongue touch her lower lip. The water is moving in tiny ripples, like the breeze was stirring it. But there’s no wind. I realize for the first time that she’s breathing way too hard.

  “You must be Amber, right?" I say.

  She swallows and scrapes her hair back from her face with her hand. For the first time I see her full face. She has wide, high cheekbones that perfectly balance her jaw. Her eyes are deep set and frightened. "Where's Esteban?" she says, with a kind of breathless desperation that makes me afraid for her.

  "He's moving on,” I say. “Got a new job. I’m replacing him."

  Amber closes her eyes like she’s been gut-shot, her hand on her ribs below her breasts. She draws her breath in a long, shuddering gasp and then sinks back onto the tiles. Her feet are still in the water; she’s the one making the ripples. She’s shaking that hard.

  I don’t think. I should have thought twice, but I’m here to protect her, right? I lean over her. For a moment she’s looking right up at me and I see her eyes are blue. She’s incredibly pale, like one of those Goth kids who never opens the drapes.

  "Are you okay?" It was just a touch on the shoulder. That was all. I swear.

  I’ve never heard a woman scream like that before or since. And I’ve heard a lot of screaming women. My female relatives are not what you’d call cool-headed. But the sound that comes out of her is just...panic. Total fucking terror. Like she can barely force the air out of her lungs she’s so frightened.

  She leaps away from me like I’m on fire. I hold my hands up where she can see them. Holy shit. What the hell happened to her?

  She draws in another couple of shuddering breaths, closes her mouth. The effort of breathing through her nose makes her nostrils flare.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, swallowing. “I’m so sorry. I get these...um...it’s...ah....panic attacks.”

  “Oh. Shit. Sorry. Those can be nasty, right?”

  Amber nods. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need to. Her eyes say No shit, Sherlock.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I ask.

  For a moment she shakes her head, her long hair swaying, but then there’s a different light in her eyes, a kind of calculation, maybe. “This is gonna sound so stupid,” she says, and I realize why I couldn’t place her accent. I was expecting her to sound British like her Dad, but she’s all American. “Could you get me some cigarettes?” she asks.

  Huh. I’m sure I heard somewhere that nicotine increased the heart rate. Last thing you’d need during a panic attack, surely? “Do they...help?” I ask.

  She looks at me in weary desperation for a long moment. “I’m crazy,” she says, like it explains everything from the Big Bang onwards. “Crazy people love cigarettes.”

  Chapter Three

  Amber

  I never meant to study in California. When I applied for colleges I was barely grown out of my 'L.A. Sucks' phase. I thought it was a shithole, a whiny enclave of self-regarding morons who pissed away their money on flotation tanks and plastic tits and terrible movies about dogs. My problems were the kind of rich-kid problems that most other people would kill to have, but I was too young and dumb to see that.

  From the age of about twelve I was enrolled in an exclusive private school, where we were allowed to wear our own clothes and curse and cut classes in the interests of 'free expression'. We were encouraged to learn, but only about things that interested us, which meant there were a lot of classes devoted to that one girl's erotic My Chemical Romance fanfiction, or weepy teenage poetry about black-winged angels and unfathomable pain.

  "I know it's not like people like us will ever have to work for a living," Everglade once said during one of these 'sessions' (that's what we called them – ‘classes’ smacked too much of structure) "But do you have to be so committed to turning us into morons?"

  That earned her a positive report for challenging authority, and pissed her off twice as much. Rebellion is no fun when it’s listed as an extra-curricular activity.

  She was one of the reasons why I chose to stay in California. The other was a shady but substantial impression that I might not be able to hack it anywhere else. Everglade got that. Her mother, once one of the original riot girls and the voice of the anti-establishment, was now so Hollywood that even Everglade called her Kiersten. The first time I met her she offered me a cigar and then told me - no holds barred - about Everglade's conception, in Paris on an iron-framed bed, with a now dead junkie boyfriend who was 'trying out the Jim Morrison thing'.

  "He killed himself when I told him I was pregnant," she said. "Or that's what the coroner's report said - suicide. They wanted to make it less embarrassing for his family; it was actually auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong."

  "Amazingly they managed to keep that secret for all of about four weeks," said Everglade. "Which is like some kind of record for Kiersten."

  "I'm a very open person, baby. You know I like to share."

  "Yeah - the trouble is you share everyone's shit and not just your own. Most times without asking permission." She jerked her head towards the door and I got up from the garden table where I'd been sitting. "Sorry, Amber. I guess now you not only know
my dead Dad wasn't circumcised but that he also had a Prince Albert, right?"

  I followed her back into the house where the college prospectuses waited.

  "Is she always like that?" I asked.

  Everglade pulled a face and yanked open the fridge.

  "Nope. Sometimes she's worse. You want OJ, milk or a beer? 'Cause Kiersten doesn't give a shit."

  We pored over the prospectuses for hours, learning where to get the best kimchi in San Francisco or where to find the best thrift shops in Portland. Nothing much further east than Nevada - but Everglade said if we wanted to go to Vegas we could just go. No point signing up for four years then discovering that it sucked. Everywhere else we looked at was within shaking range of the San Andreas - it was like we were rooted to the crack in the earth we called home.

  "San Diego," she said. "Wasn't that where they filmed that old movie - back when men were men and vampires were vampires?"

  "What movie?" I said, pushing aside a UCLA prospectus. They had some interesting electives but I knew if I looked into it I'd never get out of the house. I wanted to live on campus. I wanted the real world experience, outside of the celebrity bubble I'd lived in my whole life.

  "You know. Kiefer Sutherland." She took a long pull of beer and slammed the bottle down hard on the table. "The Lost Boys," she said, triumphantly. "Eighties movie; there's like a hot biker vampire gang and a giant fairground on the boardwalk." She sighed hard enough to ruffle the pages on the table. "I was so born in the wrong decade."

  "That was San Diego? I thought it was Santa Barbara?"

  "Nah. SD, I'm sure of it. We should go. Check it out."

  "All I know about San Diego is the zoo."

  "Babycakes, that's not a zoo. That's what they call the University." She grinned like an alley cat. "All the more reason to take a look, wouldn't you say?"

  The next weekend we packed our bags and headed down the coast. A quick internet search revealed that Santa Cruz was the place where they'd filmed the movie, but I'd seen a psych program I wanted to check out and Everglade grudgingly agreed the San Diego boardwalk was probably 'okay', even if it wasn't the glorious, vampire-ridden funfair of Santa Cruz.