Brooke. Hated her. Hated, hated, hated her. So much.
“Before I finish,” Courtney announced, “I’d like to bring up the founding members of the Church of Beverly Hills chapter of Wait/Great, to say a few words each. And no more than a few words each!”
The audience laughed. I was proud of Courtney. She’d stepped into the breach brilliantly.
“Please hold your applause until the end. Let’s start with Kiley McCann!”
Courtney summoned the girl from Wisconsin to the podium. Kiley’s image was on the monitors as she went to the mic in black pants and a red blouse with billowy sleeves. “Hi. I’m grateful for the Church of Beverly Hills. It makes me feel like I’ve got an anchor.”
Fitz was next. He wore his usual grungy jeans and plaid shirt, with his hair in an unkempt ponytail. “I’m Fitz and I’m hungry! Let’s move this along!”
Everyone laughed. Evidently, Fitz wasn’t the only one in the room with an appetite.
“Next up,” Courtney announced, “is Minister Marsha’s daughter Natalie. You read about her this morning in the newspaper. We all look up to her. Natalie shows us every day that it’s great to wait!”
Gawd. What an introduction. If Courtney only knew the truth …
I made my way to the mic, not able to look at anyone. Not at my family, not at Sean, not at Alex, and not at Brett. I did see my image displayed on the monitor as I leaned toward the mic. “I’m Natalie. I want to thank Courtney for taking over for—”
Crap. My mic had gone dead. No one had heard my last few words.
I tapped it a few times. When I did, the strangest thing happened. The audio didn’t come back to life. Instead, the social hall went dark, except for the monitors. Those stayed bright, casting an eerie bluish glow through the room.
I thought quickly and cupped my hands around my mouth. The church had a fantastic custodial staff; I knew they were already working on the problem. “Relax, everyone!” I called out, moving to the edge of the stage. “We’ll have it fixed in a minute!”
What happened next is still hard to fathom.
As some of the emergency lights started to flicker on, a grainy video began to play on the monitors. I could see it was webcam footage of some kind. As I watched, at first uncomprehending, I realized it was two people in an undetermined state of undress together on a floor. No. It was two teens on the floor. The guy had his hands all over the girl.
The audience laughed uneasily at what was obviously someone’s idea of a practical joke. “Cut it off, please!” I called.
It kept playing.
The faces of the couple came into view. Audio got added.
“Oh, Natalie. Natalie. Natalie!”
Yes. This was no ordinary sex tape. This was a sex tape of Sean and me, taken on the night I’d lost my virginity.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
People shouted. People screamed. People laughed. Some people even cried.
Standing at the edge of the stage in shock, I saw it all in a strobe-like series of images, like living photographs, as the social hall lights came back to life.
Brett. On his cell phone, then hustling out of the social hall.
Sean. Stunned, his jaw hanging open loosely.
My brother. Laughing.
My sister. Eyes wide.
Alex. Grinning slightly, waggling a few fingers at me in greeting.
My father. Trying to maintain his composure.
My mother. Glaring as she moved toward the stage.
I spun around. Mia had hands clasped as if in prayer. She came toward me at the same time that my mother reached the microphone. “Well, that was an unexpected and most unwelcome addition to tonight’s program,” my mother declared tersely over the din as Mia put a protective arm around my shoulders. “We’re going to adjourn. Please check the church website for updates on the group later this week. Good night!” She walked briskly off.
The audience filed out, buzzing about what had happened.
Gawd. I’d ruined everything.
If only, if only, if only, if only … If only I’d told my mom everything … If only I’d shared with the organizing committee … If only I hadn’t lied to the Los Angeles Times … If only I’d told Brett …
If only, if only, if only …
My mother had left without talking to me.
Alex joined Mia; my two friends flanked me as they led me offstage. I hadn’t gotten more than twenty feet before Gemma met us.
“I don’t hate you,” my sister said softly. “I just wish you’d said something.”
I nodded. My legs felt both rubbery and stiff as rebar. My stomach roiled. My heart raced. My hands were clammy and shaking. Mia took one of them. Alex took the other.
Maybe I was dreaming all this? I stomped one foot atop the other to awaken. No such luck.
If only, if only, if only …
Then the church girls were upon us. Courtney and Gisela, with another girl I didn’t know well, named Claudia. Claudia was tiny—barely five feet tall—with really short brown hair.
Gisela spoke first. “Natalie. If you wanted to be a movie star, you should have said something. We all know lots of people in the business!”
Mia talked for me. “Ladies? This would be a good time for you to leave.”
“That’s rich!” Courtney laughed coldly. “It’s a good time for us to leave? It’s a good time for Nat to leave. In fact, why don’t you go lie in the hole you came from, Natalie?”
“This isn’t helping,” Alex told them.
“I know who you are.” Claudia pointed a finger at Alex. “No wonder Natalie picked you as a friend. Did you guys plan this so Nat can be on TMZ tomorrow? Like you, Alex, last year?”
Oh God. Obviously, that wasn’t true. But what everyone had seen on the monitors—Sean and me having sex—was true. There was a tape. Who had made it, and how it had been made, I didn’t know. I immediately thought of Brooke, but it seemed impossible that she could have secured it and arranged for it to be inserted into the audiovisual program that night. No. That wasn’t possible. Or was it?
No matter where the tape had come from, it did dawn on me that there surely were other copies. Had it already been uploaded to adult sites, or even to YouTube? How many people had “liked” it on Facebook? Had it gone viral?
I felt my legs start to buckle. Alex and Mia propped me up.
“Natalie had nothing to do with this. Neither did I,” Alex told them.
Courtney smiled. “As if you have any credibility. Why are you even here tonight? There’s only one reason I can think of. You came to see the show.”
Then all three of them started badgering me about how I’d ruined the rep of Wait/Great and the church. I said nothing. What could I say? They were right.
“Aren’t you embarrassed, Gemma?” Gisela stared at my sister. “How can you stand to be related to her?”
I was so upset that I said something I instantly regretted. “Leave my sister out of this! In fact, why don’t you go to hell? All of you!”
I’d opened the door. Courtney rushed through.
“Hell? Hell? You’re the one who’s going to end up in hell, Natalie. We could forgive you, maybe. But one day you’re going to have to stand in front of God and Jesus for what you did. Good luck with that!”
I could muster no words as the three girls walked away together. Not even when Courtney turned back for one parting shot.
“Don’t even think about coming back to church here. I don’t care who your mother is!”
That was it.
I felt vomit of despair rise in my throat before I even felt sick.
Forty-five minutes later, the social hall was empty. So was my stomach. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say that I wasn’t able to make it to a bathroom.
Afterward, I’d sat alone on the stage for twenty minutes, in the same seat I’d occupied for the meeting. Sean sent word through Gemma that he’d wait for me in the church entrance foyer, no matter how long it took me to
come. My father took Chad and Gemma home. I’d sent Alex and Mia home, too. I loved them and was grateful they’d stood with me, but my mom wanted to see me face to face in her office and I didn’t want them to see me when I came out.
That was the extent of my social contact in the aftermath of the tape. No word from Brett. In some ways, that wasn’t so bad. As much as I hadn’t known what to say to him before the incident, I knew less now, when the situation was a zillion times worse.
Finally, I went up to my mom’s office. I had waited in the darkened hallway for another fifteen minutes, alone with my thoughts and my self-hate, when her door opened.
“Come in, Natalie,” she told me, ushering me into the disaster area that was her working quarters. I felt a little better, since her tone was calm, her voice even.
Another mistake. The door hadn’t closed all the way before she ripped into me.
“Why did you do it, Nat? Why? Why? Why? Do you understand what damage you caused tonight? Do you even begin to get it?” This had never happened before. My mother was screaming at me. “What were you thinking all this time? What were you thinking with the reporter from the Times? What? Tell me, what?”
She deliberately kicked over a pile of books stacked on the floor. They scattered like bowling pins. “Like that? Like what I did to those books? That’s what you just did to the youth group, this church, and my ministry, not to mention your own family!”
I couldn’t throw up again, because there was nothing left in my stomach. I did the other thing that I hadn’t done yet that evening. I cried. Huge, keening, wailing tears.
If you think Minister Marsha comforted her daughter in this moment of need, think again. Instead, the words kept coming—words you wouldn’t normally associate with a religious leader.
“You want to do that?” she shouted after a few expletive-laden preliminaries. “You know I can’t stop you from doing that! But doing that means owning doing that, not hiding doing that! Your friend Alex? At least she put it right out there! She isn’t a hypocrite like you are. Tonight? I’m ashamed to be your mother!”
That was the worst. I crumpled into a chair and cried some more.
My mom must have finally sensed I couldn’t take any more. She extracted forty dollars from her pocketbook, put it on her desk, and said she’d have a cab wait for me on the Santa Monica Boulevard side of the church. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She left, closing the door behind her.
I didn’t think I had any more tears left, but I was wrong.
As I made my way downstairs from my mother’s office, I hoped that Sean had given up and gone to wherever he was staying. I couldn’t imagine talking to anyone in my current emotional state.
The social hall was empty except for a few maintenance workers. The area outside it was empty, its lights dimmed. I trudged to the vestibule, hoping against hope that Sean had departed. No such luck. He was sitting on the same low marble bench as before. I noticed for the first time a discreet cross above the bench, etched into the marble wall. He stood when he saw me.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Thank goodness he didn’t try to embrace me.
“I don’t know who did it, Natalie. I’ve been on the phone with everyone back home even though it’s after midnight, and nobody knows anything. The only thing I found out is that Shelby’s parents keep a nanny cam in that room for when little kids are sleeping there. It must have been on.”
Remarkable. Sean’s first words were to reassure me that he hadn’t been the one who’d set up my humiliation. I hadn’t even thought in that direction.
He motioned at the bench. Did I want to sit down? I shook my head.
“I never thought it was you, Sean,” I said softly. “Not for a second.”
“Then who?” he asked rhetorically. “I don’t know. I swear to God I didn’t know.”
We sat in silence after that. It was so quiet we could hear the air-conditioning system in the church shut down for the night. Instantly, the temperature rose a few degrees. A bead of sweat formed on my left temple, then rolled down over my cheekbone.
Sean stared straight ahead. “That guy I was sitting with for a while? Brett? He’s your new boyfriend, right?”
I nodded. “He is. He was. I don’t know.”
“You should have just told me, Nat. You should have just told me.”
I nodded again, feeling empty inside. “I should have told a lot of people a lot of things.”
“I wasn’t surprised, you know.” Sean ran his fingers through his hair. “I kind of figured something was up, when you didn’t contact me. But in a way? It doesn’t make any difference. I love you, Nat. I love you. Brett or no Brett. Tonight or no tonight.”
“Don’t say that. Please.” My voice was sharper than I’d intended. “I don’t know how anyone could love me. Not you, not Brett, not my friends. Not even God.” I finally looked at him. “Where are you staying?”
“Pasadena. I have relatives there. They lent me their car.”
I realized this had to be humiliating for him, too. God. What was wrong with me? All I was thinking about was myself.
“Sean? I need to go. We have to leave.”
Sean nodded. “Okay. Get some rest.”
We went outside, where he hugged me. I hugged him back. At that moment, anyone who could hug me deserved a hug, too. We’d shared so much for so long. Now it was over.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I told him. “I promise.”
He walked me to my cab. After he opened and closed the door for me, I looked back at the church. I couldn’t imagine any way that I would ever set foot in it again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
No sleep that night. Or barely any sleep. Not till dawn, anyway.
I went home by cab and let myself in. Everyone had gone to bed. Or maybe no one wanted to talk to me. Whichever it was, I trudged to my room, closed the door behind me, then locked the door. The idea of a shower was too much, so I washed my ravaged face, brushed my teeth, stripped down to bra and panties, and collapsed onto my bed. With lights out, I lay on top of the covers and stared into the darkness.
My life was a nightmare. There was a sex tape of me and Sean. These things always ended up on the Internet. I’d ruined Wait/Great. I’d embarrassed myself in front of Alex, Mia, Sean, and my family. The church girls hated me. My mother was disgusted with me. I’d wrecked her new ministry. I couldn’t wait to find out what Kent Stevens had to say about me. I hadn’t heard from Brett. I’d promised I’d call Sean. To say what?
I must have dozed a little, because at some point in the night, I reached for my iPhone to check the time.
No time. Phone dead. Battery zero.
Well, that made sense, now that I thought about it. Alex and Mia would have texted me to make sure I’d gotten home okay. And Brett …
I had a little flutter of hope, like the first tentative flaps of a cabbage butterfly as it leaves its chrysalis. If Alex and Mia would have texted me, then maybe …
I grabbed my charger and jammed my phone into it. In a matter of a few minutes, it came back to life.
OMG. Fifteen texts. I scrolled through them quickly. Fourteen were from Alex and Mia, making sure that I was okay, demanding that I text them back immediately. I did, despite the hour.
And one from Brett:
N—W/YOU. CK UR VM. B
I went to voice mail. There was a slew of messages, and I suspected not all of them were going to be friendly. Fortunately, his was the first, sent as he had been leaving the church. In fact, when I’d seen him on his cell? He’d been leaving this message for me:
“Natalie? It’s me. Okay. I’m going to keep this very short because the shit is hitting the fan as I speak. I’m with you, and I care about you as much as ever. Maybe more than ever. I might even say that I love you, except that’s something that should be said face to face and not on a voice mail. I’m sure this is the worst night of your life, and you didn’t need me around to complic
ate it. That’s why I’m heading out. Text me when you have some privacy and say you’re okay. I don’t care what time. I’ll be up. Then call me in the morning. Or the afternoon. Or whenever. God. Who would do such a thing to you? Who?”
I texted him: JUST GOT VM. THANK YOU!
He was awake. He texted back simply: XO.
Whoa.
I stretched out again, my fingers laced behind my head. The situation was in many ways as bad as ever, but Alex and Mia were with me, and Brett Goldstein loved me. I didn’t feel worthy of my friends, and I didn’t feel lovable. But for Alex, Mia, and Brett? It didn’t matter. Or if it did matter, it didn’t matter enough.
In fact, all told? It was pretty miraculous.
I fell asleep when the first light of dawn broke in the eastern sky. I slept until ten. When I went downstairs in my bathrobe, uncertain of who would be home or the greeting I would get, everyone was gone.
There was a curt unsigned note in my father’s handwriting.
NATALIE—WE ARE ALL AT CHURCH. SEE YOU AFTERWARD.
He had that right. No way would I show my face in that building. Not that day. Not ever.
I poured myself some coffee, added a little milk, and contemplated the day. There would surely be a sit-down with my parents after church. I’d have to face my brother and sister again. I’d promised Sean I would call. And I definitely wanted to see my girlfriends and Brett.
What could I say to any of them? What could I say besides sorry, again?
If I ever needed God’s help, it was now. Yet I could not bring myself to ask for it. Even if he was willing to intervene on my behalf, why should he? There were kids dying of illnesses that doctors couldn’t cure. There was Alex, struggling to stay sober. There was Mia, who’d seen her mother sicken and die. There was my mother, who had tried to do the right thing by starting Wait/Great, only to have her eldest daughter ruin it.
Help them before you help me, I thought. They’re worthy. I am not.
I took my coffee upstairs, toyed with the idea of getting right to my phone calls, but decided to wait until after I’d talked with my folks. They deserved the first crack at me. Instead, I took a long shower, put on a pair of jeans and one of my dad’s collared long-sleeve dress shirts, and took out my twelve-string guitar. I winced as I did, remembering that it had been a welcome-to-L.A. gift from the church youth group. Look how I had repaid them.
Little Lies Page 17
