“Your boring clothes will be home and all tucked in by eleven,” Lexi promised.
“Hot date?” Jules asked, trying to sound casual.
“Rob’s taking me for ice cream,” Lexi said, rolling her eyes.
“You’re dressed awfully nicely to be going for ice cream,” Jules said. In actuality, her sister was dressed more appropriately for a job interview or an actual job, but Jules didn’t dare say that out loud—or even hope it was the case.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t have any other clean clothes.” Lexi shrugged.
“Tell Rob I said hello,” Jules said.
“It’s not a date,” Lexi said.
“I never said it was.”
“Well, quit acting like it is.”
Jules smiled but said nothing. Worse things could happen than her sister going out with a cop, that was for damned sure.
Brooke
“Hey, what time is Alexis coming home, do you think?” Brooke asked Jules, trying her best to sound casual.
“She’s wearing my clothes and I told her they had to be home by eleven,” Jules said with a smile. She turned and began pulling food from the refrigerator, methodically checking expiration dates. It was something Juliana had done when she was creating her own shopping list, Brooke recalled now. She’d never thought to do it herself, although she wasn’t surprised that Jules had picked up the habit.
“Clever,” said Brooke. “So Shawn’s home tonight, right?”
“He should be here any second,” Jules said, squinting at a milk carton. She looked so much like their mother when she did it that for a split second, Brooke thought she was seeing a ghost.
“I’d like to take you guys out to dinner,” Brooke said, shaking off the eerie feeling of déjà vu. “Well, actually, I’d like to send you guys out to dinner. My treat. It can’t be anywhere crazy, because I only have forty bucks right now. But I want you to have it.” She’d been living with Jules for three months, but she’d been using the money she’d saved by not paying Jake’s rent to pay down some of her credit card bills. She’d been surprised at how good it felt, actually being able to put a dent in that ominous number. Still, forty dollars seemed a small price to pay for all Jules had done for her—not to mention, to get her out of the house.
“Why? Are you trying to get rid of us or something?” Jules asked.
“Not at all,” Brooke said in a rush. She grabbed her bag off the counter and began rifling through it for her wallet. “I just, you know, want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. And you and Shawn could probably use some time together somewhere fun. You haven’t been out or even alone in months, and I feel bad. I want to do this, Jules. Please let me.” She held out two twenty-dollar bills.
Jules hesitated and Brooke gave her a pleading look. “It’s rude to refuse someone’s gift,” Brooke added. It was something Juliana used to say.
“That’s really generous, not to mention unnecessary,” Jules said. “But if you’re going to insist, I guess I have no choice. I hope Alexis left me something clean to wear!” She looked giddy as she kissed Brooke on the cheek and dashed to her bedroom.
As soon as the Honda was out of sight, Brooke pulled Lexi’s notebook from the bookshelf. For the first time, she was grateful that Jules’s house was so tiny that there was nowhere for Lexi to hide it. She flipped through it for the hundredth time, as blown away now as she had been when she’d first laid eyes on her sister’s remarkable sketches. She closed the notebook and tucked it gently into her messenger bag, careful not to bend any of the pages. Then she grabbed her car keys and locked the front door behind her.
She drove the familiar route to Little Me Preschool, watching needlessly in her rearview mirror. Who would have any reason to follow her? Still, it wasn’t in Brooke’s nature to be breaking into her place of employment, although it wasn’t technically breaking in if she had a key, was it?
She parked around the corner from the school’s main entrance and made her way to the side door of the teachers’ lounge. Her hand was shaking as she slid her key into the lock. She wished now that she’d brought a flashlight with her, and smirked at the realization that if she’d brought Lexi with her, her impish sister surely would have thought of that detail. But she hadn’t said anything to Lexi for the obvious reason that it was easier to ask for forgiveness later than permission first. She locked the door to the teachers’ lounge behind her.
Inside the pitch-dark room, Brooke felt her way toward the copy machine and turned on the tiny desk lamp that sat on the metal table next to it. Then she switched on the copier. It took forever for the thing to warm up, and Brooke stared at the locked door the entire time, reciting preemptive Hail Marys in her head even though she hadn’t set foot in a church in more than two decades.
Her first few copies were terrible; too dark, too light, too crooked, too blurry. She adjusted the settings and tried again and again until the machine spit out a perfect, crisp copy. Brooke repeated the process over and over for dozens of sketches until she had a warm, thick stack of papers. Satisfied, she switched the machine off, lifting the lid one final time to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind. After triple-checking that the door was indeed locked, she darted into the shadows and raced—marveling at the speed her own stout legs were indeed capable of—back to her car. It’s going to be so great to get back in shape, she thought as she huffed and puffed and willed her heart rate to go back to normal.
Brooke nearly wept with relief when she got back to Jules’s house and nobody was there. She snuck into the office and sat down at Jules’s computer, unsure where to start. What went into an artist’s portfolio? She had no idea. Lexi didn’t have anything to put on a résumé, so Brooke typed up a page of basic contact information, including their address along with her own phone number, as Lexi still didn’t have a phone. She went to her drawer and took out the fake-leather art portfolio she’d bought at the craft store that gave teachers a discount. The real leather ones had been far more striking and had price tags that reflected their cachet. The fake-leather one was good enough, she told herself now, as she carefully slipped each copy of Lexi’s artwork into a sleeve of its own. The contact sheet went inside the front cover.
It was impressive, she had to admit. The filled portfolio was heavy and fat, and anyone flipping through its pages would have to be blown away. There was no way they couldn’t be. When she had decided she wanted to help Lexi, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do, or even what her wildest dream for her sister’s artwork was; she just knew that it was too amazing to stay tucked away on a shelf. So she’d done what anyone in her situation would do: She turned to Google.
She started with a simple query: HOW DO ARTISTS GET DISCOVERED, in all caps, because she was serious about this. As usual, Google delivered.
To be in the right place at the right time, you have to be in a lot of places.
If you’re waiting to be discovered, you’ll end up waiting tables.
The foolproof secret to getting discovered is BE MORE DISCOVERABLE.
Be more discoverable? How did one do that? In a flash, Brooke recalled a coffee shop near Little Me Preschool where they occasionally held staff meetings. The Perk had rotating art installments on the walls, and even though none of the ones she’d seen came close to Lexi’s in terms of talent, she’d heard that several now-famous artists had been “discovered” there. The best part was, Lexi would never have to know she’d set it up. It was hardly a sure thing, but probably not as unlikely as, say, getting struck by lightning or dying in a plane crash or inheriting millions of dollars—and all of those things happened in the world, at least on occasion. More important, it was the only plan she had.
Lexi
“Remember,” Rob said. “You’re new to town and you just love interacting with people, kids in particular. That’s why you’ve been volunteering all over the place and don’t have a job at the m
oment. Got it?”
“I hate kids,” Lexi said petulantly. “And ice cream.”
“Nobody hates kids and ice cream,” Rob told her.
“I do,” she said definitively.
“Well, you’d better learn to love them both.”
Lexi couldn’t get over how weird it was to be riding in the front seat of a squad car, or to be riding in one at all and not be handcuffed or shitfaced or both. Is this a date? she wondered. No, it wasn’t a date. It was a job interview, even though the interviewer didn’t know it yet. Rob had called her (on Jules’s phone of course) to say he’d talked to a buddy of his, actually his sister’s husband, who owned an ice cream shop in Northridge. The place had seen some serious turnover recently, and Benji, the brother-in-law, was in desperate need of someone mature and responsible who could come in and hit the ground running, particularly since his wife had just had their first baby and wanted him to be home more. The hours were long but the pay was above average, and Benji was willing to shell out even more for someone who could take on scheduling and payroll and other non-scooping duties.
“Benji’s a dog’s name,” is what Lexi had said when he first proposed the idea of bringing her by for an impromptu introduction.
“It’s short for Benjamin, and he’s a great guy,” Rob had insisted. “Please do not tell him that he has a dog’s name.”
“I thought you said Benji was looking for someone mature and responsible to hire,” Lexi said now. “What on earth made you think of me?”
“If I’m being honest, I was thinking of you anyway,” Rob said. His face turned pink when he said it. “But seriously, Alexis, you need a job. You’re a good person, I can tell. And I’m pretty sure you won’t screw over—or, God forbid, screw—a guy whose best friend and brother-in-law is a cop. Benji’s married, okay? Happily married. To my sister, Susie. Plus, you may not know this, but cops don’t like donuts anymore. Nope, we’re all about ice cream. You can ask any of the guys in my unit. So this way I can keep an eye on you, since I’m in there all the time anyway. It seemed like an all-around perfect solution to me.”
“You know it’s sick and perverted for you to be attracted to me, right?” Lexi said now. “Or is that another cop thing I didn’t know about?”
“I always trust my gut,” Rob said. “You may have gotten yourself into some fucked-up situations and done some things you regret in your life, but when you’ve seen the shit I’ve seen, you learn to recognize the difference between someone who’s going to hurt you and someone who’s just been hurt. I’m banking on the fact that you fall into the latter category.”
Lexi didn’t know what to say. Nobody had ever talked to her like this in her life, or gone out of their way to help her. And certainly no man had ever believed in her or shown her that she was worth putting his own ass on the line for. The feeling was dizzying.
“I’ll try not to give him a hand job during the interview,” Lexi said.
“That would be helpful,” Rob laughed. “And remember, it’s not an interview.”
“If I put on a fucking skirt and a stupid old-lady blouse, it sure as hell better be an interview,” Lexi told him. She crossed her arms over her chest for emphasis.
Rob shook his head. “What have I gotten myself into?” he said. But he was smiling, and so was Lexi.
Jules
Jules had been averaging an easy three thousand words a day. She couldn’t believe how quickly the words were coming now, or how much better she felt not lying to Shawn—and her sisters and herself—about what she did all day long. She was emotionally and mentally exhausted when she fell into bed each night, but it was a blissful sort of exhaustion, peaceful and resonant, like the feeling you’d get after a grueling workout or a good long laugh with a girlfriend. She pictured her dad, sitting at his antique rolltop desk in the corner of their living room and typing away with a distant smile on his face, and wondered if this had been how he had felt, too. She’d give anything for the chance to ask him.
Normally when those feelings of longing arose she quickly and almost mercilessly shoved them deep down into the untouched recesses of her heart and did whatever she could to shift her mental gears to something else, anything else. But now, now that she was a writer, she let the painful sensation sit. What did it feel like, she asked herself? It wasn’t the sharp sting of a blunt blow but more of an ache; a dull, relentless throbbing. She zeroed in on the feeling now, probed it, poked it, examined it from all sides. What would he look like today? What would he be like? Would they have been close when she was a hormonal, weepy teenager? Would they be close now? Would her mother be alive? Would they still be happily married? Would her life have taken an entirely different course? With each question the ache deepened. She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that were threatening to come and took a deep breath. Did every grown woman who still had a living father appreciate what a luxury it was to be able to pick up the phone any time she wanted and hear his voice? She wanted to strangle the ones who didn’t.
Use that rage, her inner writer told her now. Harness it and use it.
The words poured out of her like blood from a fresh wound, and as they did she felt as if a lifetime of sadness were being lifted off her. When Juliana died, Jules had been plagued with guilt. She’d just buried her mother; she should be devastated. Only she wasn’t. As she lost herself in her writing, she realized that she didn’t yearn for her dead mother in that moment because she didn’t have to. She’d already done that, twenty years earlier, when her father died and she effectively lost them both. She was free now to mourn not what could have been but what never was, and the relief from understanding that distinction was indescribable. Jules wrote until her eyes were burning and she could barely see the screen anymore, then she saved her document and shut down her computer.
It was after midnight, but she cracked open a beer and settled onto the couch, exhausted but also surprisingly content. It was finally looking like she and her sisters might actually all be on track. That cute cop had somehow managed to nudge Lexi into a job, one that might even meet the criteria of an “actual job” if her sister showed some initiative and took on at least some of the extra responsibilities that were available to her. Rob had even lent her his bicycle so she could get back and forth without having to take the long way around town on the bus. Lexi had saved enough money for a new cell phone and a few presentable pairs of pants, and mercifully The Inside Scoop employees wore company T-shirts on the job. Lexi hadn’t even tried to tie hers up Hooters-girl style, which Jules thought surely must be a sign of some newfound maturity. The other day, she had even caught her baby sister washing some dishes in the sink, ones she hadn’t even dirtied, and she was actually whistling as she did it. Jules had smiled to herself and not said a word.
Brooke, surprisingly, was proving to be the stubborn one. Jules had dusted off her own running shoes and offered to run with Brooke several times, but her sister insisted she was already well on her way. Jules didn’t see how that was possible. Brooke claimed she was running with some friends most days after work, but she never came home sweaty and spent. And as far as Jules could see, her sister hadn’t dropped any weight, either, which she probably would have if she were running regularly. Jules didn’t just need to light a little fire; this called for an inferno.
She racked her brain and finally she came up with what she thought was a halfway-brilliant plan. She was going to tell Brooke that the dog-walking was too much for her now that she was so engrossed in her writing; that she had to write when inspiration struck and if she had to drop what she was doing and rush out to wrangle a bunch of ankle-biters, she’d never meet her deadline. Their deadline. She needed Brooke, and Brooke needed to be needed. She had a few obnoxiously high-energy dogs in her rotation, the sort that would drag Brooke at top speeds, oblivious to any kicking and screaming on their walker’s part. She just prayed that Brooke would get bitten—hopefully mauled—
by the exercise bug.
“I know what you’re doing,” Brooke said, looking hurt, after Jules made her exaggerated plea for help. “Jules, I’ve got this. Really.”
“Brooke, you don’t have this. You watch at least two hours of TV a day, and you’re huffing and puffing when I ask you to sweep the front porch. Please. Don’t blow this for us. For Alexis. Besides, I really need your help.”
Brooke’s face flushed.
“You get to keep all the dog-walking money,” Jules taunted.
“I’m not going to need the money soon anyway,” Brooke said.
“If you can’t run thirteen miles, you will. And then what? You can’t live here forever, you know.”
Brooke looked down, ashamed. A tear slipped down her cheek.
“Brooke,” Jules said gently. “Have you been running at all?”
“Not really,” Brooke admitted.
“So you’ll walk the dogs?” Jules asked.
Brooke nodded.
“And you won’t eat chocolate-covered almonds or peanut-butter pretzels while you do it?”
“How did you know about those?” Brooke asked. She looked both shocked and pitiful.
“It’s a small house. You can’t keep secrets here.” Jules smiled at her sister. Brooke really was beautiful, as pretty as Lexi but in a softer, subtler way. Brooke was a classic beauty and Lexi was a bombshell. She was Elizabeth Taylor to Lexi’s Marilyn Monroe; Mary Ann to her Ginger.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” Brooke said. “But will you come with me the first few times, in case I have a heart attack and drop dead from the exertion? It does run in our family, you know.”
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