There was no question that the slip was tight, but she got it on and it didn’t seem like it would burst open or anything. She fit into something of one of her supernaturally slim sister’s? Unbelievable. The dress she was wearing was one of the typical tent-styles she always gravitated toward, but this one had little strings sewn into the side seams that you could tie in the back. She generally tied them far too loosely and let the bow hang somewhere above her butt, mostly so the ends wouldn’t dip into the toilet when she peed and because it had never occurred to her to cut them off, but today she pulled the strings taut and gasped when she saw it: she had a waist. It wasn’t tiny like either of her sisters’, but it was definitely there and noticeable and without question smaller than her hips. Brooke could hardly contain her joy.
“Brooke, you look fantastic,” Jules said when she saw her.
“I do look better, don’t I?” Brooke asked. She felt better, too. Even a few weeks ago she’d have hemmed and hawed and insisted that it was the lighting or the dress or possibly even Jules’s eyes playing tricks on her if for some otherwise impossible reason she might look a tiny bit good to anybody.
“For sure,” Jules told her. “Hang on, wait here.” Jules ran out of the room and came back with Shawn’s camera.
“Really? Now?” Brooke said, smoothing her dress self-consciously.
“Sure, just for fun,” Jules insisted. “If you hate them, we’ll delete them immediately, okay? You really do look great.”
“Fine,” Brooke said. She posed awkwardly for a few shots and then she and Jules reviewed them together.
“That one’s not bad,” she admitted.
“Not bad? It’s gorgeous, you dork.”
“Well, I’d better be going,” Brooke told her sister. “I’ll be back around six . . . You know, so I can spy on Alexis getting ready for her date.”
“I was planning the same thing.” Jules laughed. “Hey, want to pick me up at the convention center on your way home, then? I heard parking was a nightmare so I was going to take the bus.”
“Sure,” Brooke said, collecting her purse and keys. “I’ll text you when I’m on my way. Have fun today. I’m sure you’ll knock them dead.”
“I wish I was going wine tasting,” Jules said.
Now that you mention it, so do I, Brooke thought, smiling weakly.
Brooke didn’t like lying to Jules, but what choice did she have? She couldn’t exactly tell her sister that she was off to the library to research literary agents and publishers for her. Jules would flip—especially today, when she was so nervous about the conference. Brooke was cautiously optimistic that her plan was going to work, but if it didn’t, Jules would never have to know, never have to feel the sting of rejection. It was a perfect plan when she thought about it.
She whistled as she drove the twenty minutes to the Calabasas library. There were a half dozen closer branches, but she wanted to be sure she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew—or more specifically, anyone Jules knew. As she walked up the wide entry steps, she had a flashback. Juliana had taken her and Lexi here once; she had no idea why, as it wasn’t the branch near their house with the giant claw-foot reading tub that the girls loved. Maybe Juliana had been running an errand in the area? It was impossible to know. Lexi had been working on a school project and even though Brooke was fourteen, Juliana wouldn’t dream of letting her stay home alone, so she’d been dragged along. She’d perused the shelves for a while before selecting Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and curling up in a big cushy chair.
“What are you reading?” Juliana demanded. Brooke hadn’t heard her sneak up and she dropped the book in her lap. Before she could answer, her mother snatched the book out of her lap and opened to a random page. She began reading aloud.
“‘All boys of fourteen are disgusting. They’re only interested in two things—pictures of naked girls and dirty books.’” She lifted her brows at Brooke and continued riffling through the book, trailing the words with her finger. “‘I took out a pair of socks and stuffed one sock into each side of the bra, to see if it really grew with me. It was too tight that way, but I liked the way it looked.’” She snapped the book shut, and the look on her face gave Brooke the shivers. “Your father would be so proud of your choice of reading material,” she said finally, her words heavy with something close to venom. Then she turned and stalked away with the book clutched tight in her fist.
Brooke had been flooded with rage and shame. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was for babies, for crying out loud. She’d read the thing for the first time in the fifth grade! It was a beloved classic by a popular, bestselling author. But she knew better than to try to argue with Juliana, a move that was a losing battle at best and a bloody war at worst.
She tried to shake off the memory as she scanned the shelves for Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents. The Internet had insisted that if publishing were a religion, this was its bible. She located the tome, astonished by its size. The spine was at least three inches thick, fatter than any phone book or unabridged dictionary she’d ever seen. It was a good thing she’d told Jules she’d be gone all day, because clearly she was going to be here awhile.
Lexi
Lexi flipped the cone upside down and twirled it around in the sprinkles, expertly coating the ice cream tip with a layer of colorful confetti. Then she wrapped the cone part in a napkin and handed it to the little girl, who was waiting with as much patience as any kid who was about to be given a sugary handful of heaven ever could.
“Thank you,” the golden-haired girl lisped, her face about to split open with her wide-eyed, gap-toothed grin. Lexi smiled despite herself. She truly had never felt any sort of affection for kids before this job, and she had been sure that waiting on them all day would make her like them even less. And certainly she’d had the displeasure of serving a half dozen or so kids who bore an unfortunate personality resemblance to Veruca Salt, the “I want a golden goose” girl from the Willy Wonka movie. But more often than not, the scrappy little tykes who came in for a scoop of this or that were undeniably adorable.
Yes, Lexi had grown to love her job, and no one was more shocked by this fact than she was. It had turned out that Benji was totally cool, just like Rob had promised. After only a few weeks he’d presented her with her very own key so he wouldn’t have to meet her there to open and close the place, and he was even training her on hiring practices. Summer was nearly over and they were going to lose their home-from-college crew, which meant they would need to hire two or three new employees and get them up to speed. Lexi couldn’t believe that somebody was going to trust her with that kind of responsibility. She felt grown-up and capable and trustworthy. Still, this particular day had crawled by, probably because she was so excited about her date with Rob. Finally it was almost time to shut down for the night. She started in on her closing duties, praying no last-minute stragglers wandered in. She wanted to be out the door at six o’clock sharp.
It was with envy that Lexi watched the little girl and her mom, who seemed riveted by every word out of her daughter’s mouth. She wondered what their life was like at home, if there was a dad in the picture or any other siblings. She hoped for the little girl’s sake that her mom would always be like this, and would always make time to sit with her and listen to her and take her out for ice cream. The pair left the shop hand in hand and Lexi locked the front door behind them. All she had left to do was start the dishwasher and take out the trash.
She hummed her favorite Old Crow Medicine Show tune as she carried two huge garbage bags through the back office, then pushed the back door open and used her foot to move a mop bucket into the doorway to hold it open; she’d learned the hard way that if she didn’t, it would shut and lock behind her. She set one of the bags on the ground and had just swung the other one over her shoulder, ready to launch it into the Dumpster, when she heard a voice.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”
Lexi dropped the bag and spun around. She was face to face with a man—or was he a kid? It was hard to tell. He was rail thin and covered in tattoos and piercings, and Lexi thought he looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t pinpoint where or how they’d met.
“Can I help you?” she said, taking a step backward. He smelled like booze and smoke, and his eyes were glazed and red and very, very angry.
“Yeah, you can,” he said. In one swift move he grabbed her around the neck and put his other hand over her mouth. “You can pay me back the fucking money you stole from me, cunt.”
Lexi tried to scream, but his hand was clamped down hard over her mouth. She looked frantically around the back alley, but it may as well have been a ghost town. The Inside Scoop stayed open later than any other shop in the little strip mall, and she was all alone. Her heart was pounding in her chest as he dragged her into the back office and kicked the bucket out of the way. The door slammed behind them.
He kept his hand over her mouth as he pushed her into a chair. When he did, she got a better look at his tattoos and piercings, and she realized who he was: the guy she’d taken a lousy sixty-five bucks from in that house the night she’d gone out with Brad and Ry. That seemed like another lifetime now, and she cringed at the knowledge that she’d probably fucked this disgusting guy, among other things. He put his face just inches from hers and stared at her with those wild eyes. When he did, she brought both knees up and tried to kick him in the balls, but he was amazingly strong for such a skinny guy. He caught her knees with his free hand and pinned her down.
“You fucking fight me and I will kill you,” he hissed, spraying her face with spit. He grabbed both of her hands and yanked them behind her back, where he tied them to one of the slats of the chair with a rope he pulled from his back pocket. She was screaming but she knew it was useless; nobody would ever hear her in here. He grabbed a bandana out of another pocket and shoved it into her mouth, tying it behind her head. Then he pulled out a switchblade and flipped it open, waving it in front of her face. For a junkie, he was remarkably well prepared.
“Where’s the fucking key to the cash register?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Lexi said, her words muffled by the bandana. She braced herself for the blow she knew was coming. This wasn’t her first rodeo.
At first she felt nothing; then a tingly numbness, then warmth. Blood.
“Let’s try this again,” he said, shaking the hand he’d just used to pound her face with. Lexi stared at the huge skull ring on it. “Where’s the fucking key to the cash register?”
“Let me think,” Lexi sputtered through the blood-soaked bandana. “Did you check your asshole?” This time when he hit her, she passed out.
Jules
Jules was completely and totally overwhelmed, and her head was spinning. She had sat in on seminars on digital marketing and international rights, and attended workshops on blogging and self-publishing and writing children’s books. All she could think of now was how true that old saying was: ignorance was bliss.
She would feel like a moron admitting it out loud, but until today Jules hadn’t had the vaguest idea of all that went into producing a book and then actually getting it into someone’s hands. She’d always considered writing a creative endeavor, a baring of the soul, and unequivocally something you did alone. Sure, she may have envisioned herself sitting behind a table stacked high with her books, meeting eager readers and signing their freshly purchased copies with a fancy pen and a beatific smile. She might even have allowed herself to imagine being interviewed on TV, chatting with the ladies on The View about her approach to the craft in general and her content in particular. But the harsh reality was, authors weren’t just artists; they were also commodities. As such, they had to be packaged and promoted and, most important, sold. And Jules wasn’t convinced anyone on the planet was going to want to buy what she was peddling.
She snaked her way through the crowded hallways, sizing up the other attendees. There were college-age guys with goatees wearing skinny jeans, and frumpy old ladies in faded housedresses; a man who looked like he had to be pushing ninety was creeping along in a wheelchair, chatting animatedly to the middle-age woman next to him decked out in designer yoga gear. All of these people want to be writers, or actually are writers, Jules thought. Instead of being buoyed by this realization—if them then why not her?—she felt overwhelmed, outnumbered and wholly out of place.
She walked slowly, wishing she had the courage to approach one of the groups of people, or even another lone straggler, and introduce herself. But since she’d come to understand how very little she even knew about the industry she so desperately wanted to be a part of, her courage had disintegrated. More than ever, she felt as if she didn’t belong—not only at this conference but in this world.
Now Jules sat in the conference center’s café, looking over the notes she’d taken in the various presentations. Her favorite by far had been the children’s book workshop, to her great surprise. She had been positively riveted. Although Jules probably hadn’t even held a picture book in more than twenty years, she’d found herself mesmerized by the colorful illustrations and the sing-songy lyrics. The workshop leader, a bestselling children’s book author Jules had never heard of, had talked about the changing landscape of the industry, and about how hard it was to compete for a child’s attention with all of the digital noise and electronic distractions in the world. Authors had to be ever more diligent in creating compelling characters and crafting fascinating story lines, she’d explained. The challenge was intriguing to Jules.
Her own childhood home had been overflowing with books, as one would expect of any family whose father wrote for a living. And yet Juliana would still regularly take Jules and her sisters to the library around the corner from their house, where they’d fight for the privilege of having the first turn in the reading tub—a claw-foot Victorian bathtub that was filled not with water but with cushiony pillows and a dozen or so velveteen blankets. The reading tub stood smack in the center of the children’s section, and it was one of Jules’s favorite places on earth. She wondered if that tub was still there. She hoped it was; she wanted to bring her own children there someday.
Her own children. The thought gave Jules chills. Would she really have children of her own one day? She couldn’t even think about it until she finished her damned manuscript. What she needed was a mentor, she realized, a professional she could run her ideas and her words by and who could give her just the right blend of encouragement and constructive criticism. She needed her dad.
As Jules sat in the middle of the massive conference center surrounded by thousands of people who would relate to her and might even be able to help her, she had never felt more lost or alone. She sipped her iced tea and stared off into space, not sure who she was angrier with: herself or her dead mother.
Brooke
Brooke looked at the fat stack of notes she’d taken and smiled. Five hours ago, she’d known next to nothing about the publishing process—heck, she still had a hard time remembering which one was fiction and which was nonfiction, because the terms had always seemed backward to her; shouldn’t nonfiction be not true?—and now she practically felt like a professional. Well, maybe not a professional, but she knew that memoir was nonfiction and that Jules’s manuscript fell into the “personal struggle” subcategory. (Did it ever.) She’d discovered that she couldn’t just go mailing off unsolicited manuscripts, but would have to send a query letter first—and only to those agents who’d indicated that they were indeed accepting submissions—along with a brief introduction. She’d drafted a rough outline of her query letter with the help of the dozens of books she’d found on the subject, and compiled a list of almost forty agents she’d be contacting. She’d gone even further, ranking each one with an A, B or C, based on their past successes sellin
g similar books as well as the other sorts of works they represented. The agents who seemed to fancy things like humor or pop culture made the C list for obvious reasons; the ones who expressed a specific interest in women’s issues, self-help or narratives sailed straight to the A list.
Brooke got up to stretch and looked at her watch. It was just after three o’clock and she had pretty much done all that she could do today. She still had several hours to kill before she picked up Jules, and she couldn’t go back to the house because she was supposed to be in the Valley chauffeuring around a bunch of tipsy preschool teachers and she didn’t know when Shawn would be home. Brooke wandered the library aisles aimlessly, pondering her options. She could go to the mall but she hated shopping even when she had someone fun to do it with. She’d gotten up early and gone for her run—three and a half miles, a personal best—so she crossed that off the list. Without really realizing it, she’d wound up in the young adult section. She scanned the spines for last names that began with B. There it was, looking exactly as she remembered it: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
She returned to her table with the book, devouring the pages like a hungry kitten attacking a bowl of kibble. She cringed rereading the parts that had upset Juliana so, and felt pangs of jealousy when Margaret’s mom took her bra shopping. Sure, the fictional character was mortified, but at least Margaret had a mother who would take her at all. Brooke had worn baggy T-shirts over layers of tank tops until she was fifteen and couldn’t take it anymore; then she’d bought her own bra—just one, which she’d hand-wash at night to keep Juliana from discovering she’d gotten one behind her back. She wasn’t sure what her mother would have said or done if she found out, but she hadn’t been willing to risk finding out. Why couldn’t she have had a mother like Margaret’s? Or like Judy Blume? Or like pretty much anyone other than Juliana?
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