Almost Famous, a Talent Novel

by Zoey Dean

“What happened today?” Adrienne asked, slowly cocking an eyebrow at Mac. She stared at Mac in a way that meant she knew something was up. Mac felt sick to her stomach, realizing she’d also disappointed her mother in the Slumbergate disaster. “This morning Elliot’s assistant canceled our meeting. And then he didn’t return my phone call.” Adrienne glanced down at her BlackBerry. “We’re now going on seven hours and twenty-three minutes of radio silence.” No one in Hollywood waited hours, plural, to return a call from Adrienne Little-Armstrong. Not even Elliot Tachman.

  Unless there was drama. Big Drama.

  Just then Maude bounded into the kitchen, her fluffy golden curls bouncing, and taped a new Chess Champion certificate onto the cream-colored Sub-Zero refrigerator, next to last week’s Chess Champion certificate. “I won today, Mommy!” Maude exclaimed, pointing at her new prize. Mac rolled her eyes. Why did she always feel like a no-talent loser around her family?

  Adrienne leaned down to kiss her youngest child on the forehead. “Wonderful, Maudey! Your sister and I are having a private conversation and I want you to tell me all about this after we’re done, okay?” Maude nodded once and immediately walked down the hallway to Adrienne’s office. She looked like an adorable little robot.

  Adrienne turned to Mac, waiting for an explanation. “Well?”

  Mac took a deep breath. “We kind of made fun of Kimmie, but not exactly—Ruby Goldman made it look that way because she taped our iChat conversation, stalker style. Anyway, that’s probably why E-Tach called off the meeting. And now everyone at BAMS sort of hates us, too, ’cause we said some mean stuff. Ruby’s giving us a chance to redeem ourselves, but it’s humiliating, and I’m not lowering myself for anyone,” Mac said in a rush.

  Adrienne’s eyes narrowed, and she became very quiet in a way that Mac knew meant that she was upset. “Are you finished?”

  “Yep, I’m ruined.” Mac lowered her voice. “And Emily’s just destroyed.”

  “No, I meant, are you finished with this pity party?”

  “Mah-um!” Mac said, pushing up the sleeves of her Ron Herman cardigan. “Be serious!” She had expected something along the lines of how pathetic Ruby was. Something that would actually make her feel better.

  “I am being serious,” Adrienne said, cleaning her Tina Fey glasses on her Vince cashmere sweater. “Would you have said these things about these kids to their faces?

  “It was a private conversation!” Mac huffed.

  “Mackenzie, I always assume people are recording my conversations.” Adrienne put on her glasses.

  “But you’re an agent!” Mac cried defensively.

  “And that’s what you want to be, right?” Adrienne pointed out. “Always assume that everything you do on a computer could be viewed by the whole world.” Adrienne pulled out a very Post-it-noted script that she had to read for Davey Woodward. “I hate to break it to you, but that was just stupid, hon. Let this be a lesson to you.”

  “A what?” Mac screeched. She hated the word lesson as much as she hated the word curfew.

  Whose side was she on?

  As if reading her mind, Adrienne sighed. “You’ve been the queen bee your whole life. Maybe now you won’t take everyone’s respect for granted.” She reached into her Birkin bag and pulled out a call sheet, which was a list of the two hundred people whose phone calls she had to return.

  Mac’s jaw dropped. “Are you seriously saying that I should humiliate myself?”

  “Look . . .” Adrienne glanced down at the long list of names and phone numbers, scribbling on them with her silver Tiffany pen. “Obviously Ruby’s very hurt, and she wants to know that you respect her. This town is all about treating people with respect.”

  “But Mom!” Mac exclaimed. She took a deep breath to take her voice down a notch, because she knew her mom had a zero-tolerance whining policy. “You would never allow yourself to be disrespected in public!”

  “Are you kidding me?” Adrienne put a hand on her Armani-draped hip. “Do you think I just showed up at Initiative and they rolled out the red carpet and said, ‘Welcome to the biggest agency in Los Angeles, please be a partner’?”

  Mac shook her head, but Adrienne was already on a roll, like an army vet having wartime flashbacks. “Do you know how many months I spent pushing a mail cart before I had the privilege of answering people’s phones?” Adrienne waved her pen passionately. “Or how many peanut butter shakes I had to order before I had the great honor of attending a staff meeting? Or how many years it took me before I got my own e-mail address with my own name? Every day I had to order a chicken salad and then take the chicken out of the chicken salad!” Adrienne sighed and leaned closer to Mac, lowering her voice. “I even had to change my name because my boss, Adrian, didn’t like that he had the same name as a girl. So everyone in the company had to call me Audrey!”

  Mac laughed despite herself. Her mother would never agree to something like that now. “But I don’t want to kiss Ruby’s butt just ’cause she’s social chair,” Mac said, staring seriously into her mother’s steely blue eyes.

  “I’m not saying you kiss her butt—and don’t talk like that, it’s trashy.” Adrienne flicked a crumb off her sweater. “I’m saying you show respect instead of expecting the world to kiss your butt, as you so eloquently put it.”

  Just then Adrienne’s cell phone buzzed. She picked it up excitedly. “Bleh. Clooney,” she groaned. “When is Elliot going to get over it and stop ignoring me?” She took a deep breath and then snapped into her I’m so happy to hear from you voice as she popped the phone to her ear: “Talk to me, Gorgeous!”

  Mac waited until her mother had gone down the hallway to her office before she picked up her own phone. Ruby’s number was still in her call log. She typed a text as quickly as she could before she changed her mind:

  OK YOU’VE GOT A DEAL

  Ruby’s response came seconds later.

  GR8. LET’S DISCUSS.... HAVE A FEW OTHER POINTS

  Mac cringed, feeling like this story was not about to end well. She took a deep breath and dialed Ruby, remembering she had nowhere to go but up.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  coco

  Thursday September 10

  8 AM Begin life as loser

  12:15 PM Meet at or-gard

  3 PM Get out of BAMS!

  4:30 PM Dance class at the Edge

  Coco walked briskly on the dirt path leading to the BAMS organic garden, better known as End of the World. It was at the farthest corner of the school, past the tennis courts, past the eighteenth hole of the golf course, and past the teachers’ parking lot. It reeked of compost and alterna-kids. Cell phones didn’t even work there. It was like being in Tijuana, which was why Mac’s Wednesday night text to meet there had been such a mystery.

  Not that Coco wanted to be in a high-traffic zone. She’d already been humiliated twice that day: first when she’d arrived at school and found a giant diaper Scotch-taped to her locker. Then, when she arrived in homeroom, she’d found a handwritten note on her desk that said, Coco, I Depends on You atop of a fresh box of Depends. Both times she had calmly dumped the offending material in the trash and pretended like it never happened. And like she couldn’t hear the cackles of laughter from people she’d previously considered her friends. But she was on a steady diet of pretending, and it was starting to make her sick.

  Coco literally felt nauseated. She hoped it was just the smell of compost.

  She trudged onto the dirt path, hoping she didn’t get any soil on her pastel pink Luella skirt or crisp white blouse. She tiptoed around tomato plants and cilantro beds until she arrived at the avocado tree where Mac, Becks, and Emily were already waiting. Becks had dark circles under her eyes, and Emily’s face was puffy, like she’d been crying. Only Mac looked oddly alert, like she was in an alterna-universe where they still had lives.

  Mac stood in front of the avocado tree, wearing a yellow and white Loeffler Randall cotton canvas dress. The girls gathered in a semicircle around her, list
ening devotedly.

  “Good news, girls. I’ve got a plan,” Mac said, clasping her hands together. Her wooden bangles clacked against each other. “I call it ‘Pax Rubana.’”

  Coco arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. She wanted to believe this was her first double shot of hope in a very hope-free day. Then again, she’d known Mac long enough to be wary of any Mac schemes that had names. Seventh grade’s Mission Meet Suri Cruise and Take Public Transportation to Palm Desert came to mind.

  “I did some peacekeeping with Ruby yesterday, and we worked out a deal,” Mac explained. “Basically, we help Ruby, and then she helps us.” Mac smiled proudly.

  “That’s so great!” Emily said, her brown eyes widening.

  Coco sighed for Emily’s naïveté. She’d been friends with Mac long enough to know that Mac could spin better than DJ Aoki. “Okay, so what’s the pitch?” Coco put her arm on her hip and twirled the Inner Circle ring that dangled from her neck.

  “It’s very easy.” Mac looked down at the dirt and inhaled. And then, like a roller-coaster ride at Magic Mountain, she let her words free-fall: “Becks-you-train-Ellie-Parker-to-surf-Ems-you-help-Kimmie-and-Coco- you’re-the-water-boy-for-the-dance-team-Basically-we’re-all-just-assistants-for-two-weeks-And-that’s-it-It- will-be-easy-and-maybe-even-fun.”

  But Coco had heard everything. And she was totally over hiding her true feelings. “Is this a joke?” she cried. “Are you for serious? Did you just say water boy? The only Waterboy I know is an Adam Sandler movie from like a million years ago that I didn’t see,” Coco said. Once people saw you as the water-fetcher, they would never see you as a dancer. She glanced at Becks, double-checking that they were both not on board.

  “No way, dude!” Becks said, shaking her head vigorously. She pulled down the sleeves of her sweatshirt so it looked like she had no hands. “I’m not helping Ellie!”

  Emily looked down at the ground, making the letter E in the dirt with her checkerboard Vans. She looked like she was ready to cry, and Coco thought she heard a sniffle. She felt bad for Ems, who was so far from home. Bel-Air was hard enough when you were from here.

  Mac looked down at the tomato plant, as though it could tell her how to convince her friends. Finally she said, “It’s not like I’m asking you to do things I wouldn’t do.”

  “Then what do you have to do?” Coco asked, crossing her arms over her chest. She couldn’t imagine Mac stooping to any fate as low as water boy.

  Mac clenched her teeth: “I’m Ruby’s assistant.”

  Coco and Becks laughed. Mac working as anyone’s assistant, let alone Ruby’s, was not something that could happen in her lifetime—it was as likely as Jessica Simpson winning an Oscar.

  “Wait, Mac!” Coco warned, her tone suddenly serious: “She’s Barry Goldman’s daughter. Are you insane?” Ruby’s father was notorious for being one of the most cold-blooded bosses in town.

  “He fired some kid on Pacific Coast Highway and made him walk home carrying a flat-screen TV. For twenty miles,” Becks said, shaking her head in horror.

  “He threw a stapler at his assistant,” Coco added in a fierce whisper. “That assistant now has a staple permanently embedded in his eyebrow.”

  Emily looked frozen in horror.

  “You guys, please!” Mac begged, smoothing her dress. “It’s only for nine days, until ExtravaBAMSa blows over. And I’m not working for Barry. I’m working for Ruby. Remember: We insulted the entire school. They think we’re all conceited snobs,” Mac said, the closest she’d come to pleading. “So now we humble ourselves and show respect.”

  “I don’t see what that does except embarrass us.” Becks shrugged.

  “Girls, if we meet her demands, Ruby is going to tell everyone that the video was just a big joke. And if we don’t, then she is never going to let BAMS forget about this. And besides, it’s only for, like, nine days.”

  And that was nine days too many.

  “Mac Little-A, I love you, but no.” Coco looked down at her D&G watch. “I gotta go. I still have to dance today.” She had signed up for private classes at the Edge Studio since quitting the team. It wasn’t quite the same as being the elected captain of the Bam-Bams, but it was a start.

  “Yeah, and I just gotta go,” Becks muttered, not even bothering to say why. Emily looked back and forth between Mac and the other girls. Then she mouthed, “Sorry,” to Coco and Becks and stood by Mac, who was staring at Coco and Becks in disbelief.

  Coco grabbed Becks’s hand and they stepped over a flower bed and back onto the dirt. When they had reached the end of the garden, almost back into the working cell-phone zone, they spotted the wannabe goth twins, Jaden and Slate Shean, sitting on the white picket fence blocking their exit. They were wearing black skinny jeans and black pseudo-vintage Ramones T-shirts. The brothers Shean were frail, pale, and generally annoying to girls. They thought they were so out there because they wore all black (even though they shopped at Urban Outfitters) and had weird bowl hair-cuts. Really they were just Pete Wentz, minus the music talent and famous wife.

  “Hey, Becks!” said Jaden. “Want some Pinkberry?” He pantomimed licking frozen yogurt. His tongue looked freakishly long.

  “We got extra!” yelled Slate. Or was it Jaden? Coco could never tell them apart. She squeezed Becks’s arm and accidentally stepped on an overripe Japanese eggplant. It squirted something gross on her Tory Burch ballet flat.

  “Coco, maybe you can fertilize it!” the other twin yelled. They high-fived like it was the greatest thing ever in their not-really-alterna-lives. Then, spotting Emily, they made cat paws with their pale hands.

  “Go apply eyeliner!” Emily screamed from behind them, shocking both Becks and Coco.

  If the Shean twins were mocking her, then Coco had hit rock bottom ages ago and was now somewhere near China. Mac was right: She really didn’t have any other options—she had to make this situation better soon.

  Coco grabbed Becks’s hand and stormed back to Mac. “I can’t take this anymore. I’m in!”

  “I guess I am too,” Becks said glumly, tying the strings on her sweatshirt.

  “Ditto,” Emily said shyly.

  “Nice!” Mac smiled. “Trust me—this will be a cake-walk!” She sounded confident, but Coco knew her friend’s turquoise eyes were hiding anxiety.

  Coco imagined fetching water for her friends while they danced. But it was only for a short time, and it would get her back on the team. “Okay, if I’m gonna go be water girl, then I gotta bounce!” She blew an air kiss at the group and raced off.

  She was about to walk toward school, but then, spotting the twins perched on the white picket fence like alterna-guard dogs, Coco thought better of it and walked all the way to the back of the field to take the south exit, just to avoid the Shean brothers.

  Twelve minutes later, and totally out of breath, Coco darted into the dance studio, which was almost as big as her private studio. There were gold-framed pictures of the Bam-Bams, a surround-sound system, and shiny wood floors. The room smelled like sweat and pine wood cleaner with a hint of lavender room spray. Haylie was leading the group in stretching at the bars, which lined the mirrored walls.

  “What are you doing here?” Haylie asked, standing on her right leg, her left leg balanced over the bar. She wore a purple leotard and purple American Apparel shorts and way too much makeup for a practice (lip shimmer, eyeliner, mascara, and blush). The other girls, who were stretching on the bar behind Haylie, turned and faced Coco, like an army of one-legged robots. They looked like a Capezioed centipede.

  “I’m the water boy.” Coco forced a smile, her cheeks burning. Coco was never good at faking her feelings: She was as see-through as chiffon.

  The other Bam-Bams looked surprised. Near the front of the ballet bar, Lucia leaned in to face Maribel and they giggled. Coco stiffened, wondering why so many smart girls (who, up until Wednesday, had been her friends) had turned against her so easily. What made even less sense was how they could so blindly fol
low Haylie “Seven-Second Delay” Fowler, who was the only person who didn’t seem surprised by Coco’s odd grand entrance. Ruby had obviously filled Haylie in on the plan already.

  “Glad to have you here,” Haylie said, as though she and Coco were total strangers meeting for the first time. “Water’s over there.” She pointed toward a giant cardboard box of Fiji waters in the far corner of the studio. “The bottles should really be in a pyramid formation.” She went back to stretching.

  Coco stepped out of her muddy, eggplant-stained flats and dragged her feet over to the corner of the studio to begin her first task. She settled down on the glossy blond wood floor and started stacking Fiji bottles one by one. The girls moved away from the bar, toward the middle of the studio.

  It was quiet in the studio. Peaceful, even. At least no one could make fun of her here. And at least she’d get her place back eventually. Maybe this wasn’t so bad?

  “Umbrella” started playing over the sound system, and Coco’s heart thumped sadly as she watched the girls take their first position and hit their steps—her steps. Maribel bumped into Taylor and they all had a giggle break while the song played. They looked like they were having so much fun.

  Coco forced her gaze away from her ex-teammates and back to her water bottle pyramid-in-progress. It was bad enough to be made fun of by the entire school, and it was even worse to have to be the water boy, but to have to miss dancing her own routine . . . That hurt most of all.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  becks

  Thursday September 10

  2:55 PM School’s out

  4:15 PM Meet Ellie for TBL (Torture Becks Lesson) #1

  WHY WHY WHY WHY

  Becks entered the Grove by Morels French steak-house just as a giant wood-paneled trolley packed with tourists passed. The Grove was like the Disneyland of outdoor malls, which was why it had a trolley and a footbridge and fountains and its own souvenir memorabilia. Becks felt so totally confused and frustrated that she had to stop and sit on a bench because she was staring so intently at her phone. It was official: Becks hated text messages. They were never good news. The last one from Ellie had made no sense:C U AT THE GROVE @ 415.