God, it even sounded like her. Sort of. As far as Holly could remember.
How had she not seen this before?
Lexi was . . . Lexi. Shit, what’s her last name?
“Whose?” Lexi asked.
Holly hadn’t realized she’d asked the question out loud. “Yours,” she said. Then she smiled, trying to make the question less creepy. “You look familiar.”
Lexi gave her a blank look. “Henderson.”
Oh, of course. Of course. It was Lexi Henderson.
The girl who had been the source of so much of Holly’s preteenangst. A girl she had confronted over and over again in her imagination, for years.
Now, here she was, right in front of her.
As pretty as ever.
Holly felt ill. “I’ve got . . . to go. . . .” She couldn’t think. Couldn’t come up with a coherent excuse.
Part of her felt compelled to be polite, but part wanted to slap Lexi across the face and leave.
Neither part won.
She just left.
“Ma’am?” Lexi called behind her, like some crazy echo of her former self. Not real. “What about your stuff?”
“I don’t need it,” Holly tossed over her shoulder, quickening her pace. This couldn’t be real.
She went out into the mall, feeling like she could breathe only when she was lost in the anonymity of the crowd in the food court.
Lexi Henderson waiting on Holly at Sephora? It just didn’t compute. It was just too weird. And on top of that, she’d been nice. Or she’d seemed nice. She probably had to—it was her job.
But since when did someone as rich as Lexi Henderson need a job at all, much less one in sales?
Holly bought a lemonade from Pretzel Time and paced back and forth, trying to decide what to do. She wanted to leave, but if she did, she’d lose this chance—such as it was—to make some sense of that old chapter in her life where one girl had bullied her into feeling insignificant.
Drawn by an instinct she couldn’t quite name, Holly went back to Sephora and peered in the window from the side, out of sight. It took a couple of minutes, but she saw Lexi in the back corner, with her manager and the smug salesgirl who had tried to interrupt the sale earlier. Garda.
Lexi looked upset.
Holly made her way into the crowded store and casually got as close as she could to the scene without being noticed.
“She’s trying to say you’re driving customers away,” Garda snapped at Lexi. “Two in one night! First there was that one you told not to buy the new Desia moisturizer because it was overpriced—”
“Garda,” the manager cautioned. “Alexis, I’m just not sure this is a good fit for you. Why don’t you go home for the night and come for a meeting with me before opening tomorrow? We’ll talk about it then.”
“But I need the hours tonight,” Lexi began, then stopped. “Fine. What time should I be here?”
“Nine.”
Lexi nodded and headed into the back room.
“She told that woman to go to Target,” Garda said. “I heard her. She said this stuff cost too much and that she wasn’t getting a commission anyway so she didn’t mind telling the truth.”
The manager frowned. “You heard that?”
Garda nodded.
Holly felt like she should step in and set the record straight, but she didn’t know if Garda was talking about Lexi or not. This didn’t seem like a situation Holly could fix.
Lexi swept out of the back room before Holly even had a chance to think everything through. She stepped back, looking down at the Urban Decay products intently until she knew, from surreptitious glances, that Lexi had left.
So she followed her.
Holly had never been stealth in her life—as Lexi herself could attest—so she couldn’t say exactly why it seemed like a good idea to try it now. All she knew was that she couldn’t stop.
Lexi went to the McDonald’s counter at the food court. Luckily, Holly blended easily into the crowd. Lexi wasn’t looking for her, had no idea who she was, so there was little danger of being spotted.
As she got closer, she heard Lexi ordering a couple of items off of the dollar menu. A double cheeseburger. Fries. A Coke.
It was far from extravagant.
But a few seconds after she handed her credit card over to pay, the kid at the cash register said, “Your card was declined.”
“What?” She honestly looked like she couldn’t comprehend this. “Can you try it again?”
“I ran it through twice.”
“But I just put money in after the last—” She shook her head, defeated, and took the card back. The useless card.
Holly watched her go through the automatic door and out onto the sidewalk. There were fewer people out there. Holly couldn’t go out without being spotted, and what could she say?
So she stood, frozen, next to the Panda Express counter and watched as Lexi lowered her head into her hands, and her shoulders started to shake.
She was crying.
Holly swallowed a lump in her throat. What had happened to Lexi? How had she gone from being the spoiled rich girl to someone who couldn’t pay three dollars for food?
It was sad. No matter what she’d ever done, it was sad.
And if any part of this was because of her, she had to do something. She moved tentatively outside.
“Excuse me,” she said, moving closer to Lexi’s back as if approaching a potentially hostile dog.
Lexi looked up, wiping at her eyes. They were red and puffy. “Yes? Oh. It’s you.”
“Yeah, look, I’m sorry I had to go earlier. I had . . . something.” This was graceless. She didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lexi said. “You weren’t obliged to buy anything.”
“Well, no, but I left because I was a little . . . disconcerted. I think we might know each other. That is, I used to know a Lexi at camp.” This was tricky. “Well, I didn’t really know her, but we were in the same cabin.”
“Maybe. I went to camp,” Lexi said, then looked at Holly more closely. “For years. Until I was, I don’t know, thirteen.”
“Camp Catoctin?”
Lexi sniffed and stood up, wiping her hands on her pants. “Yes.”
There it was. If there had been any lingering doubt, it was gone now. “I think we were in cabin Seven together when we were thirteen,” Holly said. “With my friend Nicola, and Tami . . .” She tried to remember Tami’s last name. “Something. And another friend of yours.”
“Sylvia,” Lexi said immediately, then gave a halfhearted laugh. “Ugh. She was no friend of mine, believe me. She was such a bitch.” She frowned, still blotchy from crying. “Can I say that now about a thirteen-year-old without sounding like a bitch myself?”
Holly certainly hoped so, for all the times she’d thought of Lexi that way. “I thought you guys were pals.”
Lexi gave another short laugh. “I had to act like that or risk being on the wrong side of her wrath.”
This was a point of view Holly would never have anticipated. “Really?”
Lexi nodded. “Oh, God, yes. You should have seen some of the things she did to the other girls there.”
“I can only imagine.” Except she didn’t have to imagine; she knew exactly the kinds of things Sylvia and Lexi and Tami had inflicted.
“My mom had just died, my father married that witch”—Lexi made a face—“my life was a mess enough without having Sylvia torment me in front of everyone at that stupid dance or something.”
Holly looked at Lexi, really studied her, to try to find some sign of the person she’d spent twenty years believing her to be. But all she saw was a girl who was as screwed over by the Mean Girls as she and Nicola were. Maybe worse. At least she and Nicola had each other.
“So what’s your name?” Lexi asked. “Because, I’m really sorry, you just don’t look familiar.”
It was hard to believe someone Holly had given so much thought to in the years after camp had completely
forgotten her. In a way, it was a relief. “I’m Holly. Holly Kazanov. We were thirteen. It was the last year before we were too old to go there.”
“But . . .” Lexi hesitated. “That summer it was me, Tami Ryland, Sylvia Farelle, and I do remember there were those other two girls. The tall skinny one and the—” She stopped.
Holly raised her hand. “Short fat one. I know.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean . . .” Lexi grimaced, then sighed. “Well, you know I did. I’m not going to lie. But, wow, you look fantastic!”
“Thanks to your makeup.”
Lexi waved the idea away. “You look good. Not like the awkward thirteen-year-olds we all were at the time. So what ever happened to your friend? The tall skinny one? I was so jealous of you two.”
Holly couldn’t believe her ears. “You were jealous of us?”
“Of course. I think we all were. You two were the only ones who had a real friend at camp. Everyone knew it. Even Sylvia.”
“Ironic, since the only reason we needed each other was because you guys were so awful to us.”
Lexi looked ashamed. “Are you two still in touch?”
“Yes.”
Lexi smiled. “That’s really cool. You two did everything together, as I recall. I never had a friend like that. Ever.”
It was amazing to Holly how Lexi could say the saddest things about her life without a trace of self-pity, even after what Holly had just witnessed. It was like she was just reporting on the misfortunes of someone else.
“So where is she now?” Lexi asked. “What did you say her name was? Nicki or something?”
“Nicola. Nicola Kestle.”
“No kidding. Like the girl in that movie.”
“Duet. That was her.” Holly felt pride in saying it. She always had—my friend Nicola, you know, the star of Duet—but never more than right now when she could reveal the connection to someone who had known Nicola Back When.
Lexi’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding? I loved that movie!”
“I know! Me, too!”
“Wow.” Lexi shook her head. “That’s really something. You’ll have to tell her I said hi.”
“She’ll be astonished,” Holly said, but the words sounded flat. “So . . . listen . . . are you okay?” She floundered for a better way to say it but came up short. “I mean, you seemed kind of upset.”
Lexi looked at her dead-on and gave a small but distinctly gracious smile. “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.” She left no doubt at all that the topic wasn’t up for discussion.
“Well. Cool.” This was so awkward. “I guess I’ll be on my way, then. Do you need a ride anywhere?”
She gave a laugh. She knew what Holly was thinking. “Thanks, but I have my car.”
“Well.” Holly shrugged. “It was good to see you again.”
“You, too, Holly. Really.”
Holly walked away, half wishing she hadn’t witnessed any of this. Wishing she didn’t have to feel this way now. Because it wasn’t her responsibility. It wasn’t her problem. And there wasn’t anything she could do to help if Lexi was broke and out a job—
That’s when she remembered the one most important thing about her history with Lexi.
It wasn’t how Lexi had laughed at her when her boat went down in the little lake at Camp Catoctin, or the way she’d flounced in and out of the cabin as if she were better than anyone else.
Holly didn’t care about any of that stuff anymore. It wasn’t the details that had affected her afterwards; it was the way it had all made her feel.
And even that didn’t matter now.
What mattered was that twenty years ago, she and Nicola had stolen from Lexi the one thing that might help get her out of the situation she was in now.
That ring.
That huge diamond ring.
It was still out there in the woods somewhere.
17
Nicola pressed the accelerator of her BMW Roadster and whipped around a curve on the PCH, narrowly missing a car that was doing the same in the opposite direction.
Evidently Friday evening was a popular time for the depressed to become reckless.
What was she doing? At thirty-three, she was a washed-up has-been. Or maybe just a sorta-was. And that should have been fine with her; she had invested pretty well, spent cautiously, hell, even the Roadster had been her agent’s hand-me-down after his 007 phase had passed.
She should have been content to have had a hit and been set up so well financially.
That was what really got to her right now. She’d gotten further than 99 percent of actors did, and she should have been satisfied with that. Instead, she kept subjecting herself to one bad fit of an audition after another until eventually she had made the critical mistake of trying to make herself fit into those bad-fit roles.
Then today she’d heard that Ed Macziulkas’s casting director—after asking for her specifically, to work on that script that had been written with her in mind—had passed on her, saying that she had “fucked her face up” and was “no longer interesting.”
Oh, she’d fucked up all right. She’d finally given in to the pressures of society’s demands for female attractiveness, and she’d lost what might have been her Comeback Role.
On top of that, the only seeming benefit of her nose job—getting a date with good ol’ Trick—had backfired so enormously that she wondered why she’d ever wanted to run with the pretty people.
“Shit!” She pounded her hands against the steering wheel. “Shit shit shit!”
Hindsight was 20/20, of course, but it did suddenly seem painfully obvious that she’d never heard any great success stories about actresses who changed their look via irreversible cosmetic surgery.
Sure, there was speculation that Angelina Jolie might have had her nose done at some point. Or maybe she’d just matured—frankly, Nicola didn’t think it was that obvious. The more applicable example was Carolina Madden, who’d Botoxed herself into a waxen statue and gotten a job . . . advertising Botox. The “Express Yourself?” with Botox might have been a success, but it was pitiful watching Carolina trying to demonstrate facial expressions, and worse still knowing that was as far as she’d go now.
What could Nicola do now?
Unlike Carolina Madden, she didn’t look anything like herself. She realized that now, even though it was painful and surreal. It was as if she would wear a Halloween costume for the rest of her life; the crazy person dressed up as Marilyn Monroe or Jason from Friday the 13th at odd times, who had to explain, “No, no, it’s really me, Nicola Kestle, under here. I just can’t take the costume off.”
Apart from finding out if Kiss had room for a nonmusical member, or joining Blue Man Group, she couldn’t imagine what job she could get in show business at this point.
And that was the most depressing thing of all. She wasn’t in it for the money; she never had been. She wanted to act. She loved the process. She’d loved being on stage in seventh grade, she’d loved singing in front of a crowd in twelfth grade, and then she’d gotten the opportunity to work in film, and she’d loved that most of all.
Now she’d blown it.
She rounded another corner, this time perilously close to the outside edge, the cliff.
Not that she was actually suicidal. She felt like shit, for sure, but she didn’t want to die.
She just wanted the adrenaline to take over and push the self-pity and hopelessness out of her veins.
By the time she got to the exit at Redondo Beach, she was a little less fiery and a little more resigned. She’d changed her face, and that had changed her life. Her career. Things would never be the same again.
Maybe no one would say she was so ugly at a four-way stop for a while, but it was equally clear that she wasn’t going to get a good job again, either.
This one she’d just lost, though—the one tailor-made for her—that was going to hurt for a long time.
Her phone rang, and the tone made her jump. She scrambled to find it in her pur
se, hoping against hope that Ed Macziulkas and the producers of the Nicola Kestle-esque Project had overridden the casting director’s initial veto and wanted her for the role.
“Hello?” she answered breathlessly.
“Oh. My God. You will not believe who I just ran into.” It was Holly.
“Hey, Holly.” Nicola’s disappointment was so great that she wasn’t sure she could be trusted to have this conversation and drive at the same time. She pulled into a shopping center parking lot. “What’s up?” She knew her voice sounded weary. She couldn’t help it.
They were probably smart not to hire her if she couldn’t even fake that she was glad to hear from her best friend.
“Don’t get too excited,” Holly said with a laugh.
Nicola wasn’t feeling jovial. “Sorry.” She didn’t mean it. She was bitter. It took this call from her friend, and her unfair anger about it, to make her realize she was really, really bitter. “I’m not having the greatest day.”
“Did something happen?” Holly was immediately soft and sympathetic. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” Nicola felt guilty for wasting Holly’s sympathy on her own piss-poor mood, thanks to something that was entirely of her own making. “Really. It’s just one of those days.” She forced joviality into her voice. “So distract me. Who did you just run into?”
“Lexi. Henderson.” There was a tense silence on the other end of the line, like Holly was waiting, and holding her breath, for some great response.
Who the hell was Lexi Henderson?
If Nicola had been at home, she might have fumbled for a minute, quietly Googling the name, but she was in the parking lot shared by a Target and a PetSmart, with no Google capability whatsoever.
“Really?” she asked noncommittally.
“Yes! Oh my God, I couldn’t believe it! She was working at Sephora in Montgomery Mall, can you believe it?”
That ruled out Lexi Henderson as a famous actress, politician, or model.
Well, maybe not model. Maybe some semifamous model had made a brief splash on America’s Next Top Model, then sank, and was now working at Sephora.
“Wow.” That didn’t sound enthusiastic enough. Nicola ratcheted up the perk. “How did she look?”
Thin, Rich, Pretty Page 21
