Almost Famous, a Talent Novel (11 page)

“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.”

“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 follow 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.

B
ecks 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:

In fact, it made
negative
sense. Becks had replied HUH? and assumed Ellie would call to explain that it had all been a typo and she had meant to write CU AT THE BEACH @ 415 and then they would go surfing in Malibu.

But no
.

Instead the reply was:

C U @ QUIKSILVER STORE AT 415!

As if the added exclamation point made it make so much more sense. How would meeting at the mall help Ellie learn to surf? And why was Ellie suddenly obsessed with surfing? Becks arrived at Quiksilver at exactly four fifteen, only because she knew the other girls were upholding their ends of Pax Rubana.

Becks scanned the giant store, her eyes moving from the brown stone floor, to the racks of bikinis and wind-breakers, to the blown-up pictures of happy athletic models. Becks shivered—she always felt like a fish out of water in stores, even if they sold things she would wear. If Becks had free time, she spent it surfing, not shopping for things she could
wear
surfing.

Then her eyes landed on Ellie, waiting by a row of sandals with a perky smile and a Coffee Bean Iced Blended. She promptly threw away her barely touched drink the second she saw Becks.

“Hey, Becks, way to be on time!” Ellie said. When she wasn’t speaking in baby talk, she had a loudmouth voice, and sort of sounded like she was making fun of people.

They stood there while tanned girls passed by in velour sundresses and flip-flops. Becks was so disoriented that she barely noticed Zac Efron exiting the store clutching a huge white shopping bag.

Becks hung her hands in the front pocket of her baby blue Maui & Sons sweatshirt. “So I don’t get why I’m here,” she said slowly, trying not to sound witchy, since there was no point in making the experience even more brutal.

“I know, it’s totally weird,” Ellie giggled. It sounded like she said
tolly weir.
“I was going to meet you at the beach and then I was like . . . I can’t go surfing!” She paused as if reenacting her lightbulb moment. “I have nuh-thing to wear!” She tugged her white terry-cloth miniskirt so that it hung below her hipbones.

Becks wanted to be a team player for the Inner Circle, but this was
ridiculous
. Sure, she could surf, but what did she know about
shopping
? And then, as if Ellie had ESP, she giggled. “You sooooo don’t want to be here right now.”

Becks shrugged.

Ellie smiled condescendingly, as if Becks’s discomfort was adorable. They walked past the shoes and the sundresses, and Ellie began looking at the racks of miniskirts. She held up a Roxy T-shirt and then, as if remembering she was there for surfing, she giggled and put it back. “For reals, Bexy, I want to look cuuute. I don’t want to look like some lame poser! Ugh.” She stuck out her tongue.

“Ellie, I can’t advise you about clothes.” Becks said. She was not about to admit that she e-mailed Mac photos every night of her next day’s ensemble. “When I surf, I just wear whatever feels right.”

“Don’t worry. I know what looks good on me. Duh.” Ellie pointed at herself. In addition to the miniskirt, she was wearing a tight white tank top that showed off her C-cups, and cream-colored Ugg boots, even though it was 82 degrees outside. She reached for a shiny metallic bikini.

“I just don’t know what’s surfer-y and what’s not. You need to tell me what are killer surfing clothes.” She flashed a bright white smile at Becks, who winced at the word
killer
and the term
surfing clothes
and especially their appearing right next to each other in a sentence, said aloud. But Becks didn’t correct Ellie and trailed behind her, glancing around the store, hoping they at least sold surf wax so something productive would come of this trip.

“Why do you want to surf so badly?” Becks asked as they moved toward a rack of tropical-print bikinis.

“I think it’s rad that you do,” Ellie said, without thinking. In fact, her reply came so quickly that for a second Becks thought she had to be serious.

“Really?” Becks asked. She had always suspected Ellie was just trying to get close to Austin.