Almost Famous, a Talent Novel (7 page)

Emily waited until Lukas was out of earshot before she leaned into Mac and whispered, “Did I do something wrong?”

“What are you talking about?” Mac asked, still smiling from her Lukas encounter. She blinked her eyes twice as if to snap away the giddiness.

“E-Tach wasn’t very friendly to me. He just blew me off.”

Mac rolled her eyes. “What do you want? A goodie bag every time E-Tach sees you?”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Emily stammered, suddenly embarrassed. Maybe this was just how Bel-Air worked. In Iowa, friends’ parents didn’t roll up a window and drive away when you greeted them politely. But here, people were always rushing off places.

Mac started to type an e-mail on her iPhone. “Have you forgotten that Elliot Tachman is
the
most important man in this town?” she said without looking up. “He has more meetings in a day than most people have in a lifetime. You’re lucky if he talks to you.”

Emily smiled and decided to act as though she felt better. Maybe then her emotions would catch up. But when she mentally rewound the memory and played it back, all she could remember was Elliot’s stony stare. It was a very negative
essence
.

As Emily watched his sleek black car glide down the redbrick driveway like a funeral car, she felt a death-knot in her stomach. Even though Emily was brand-new to Bel-Air, she didn’t need Mac or Adrienne to explain that being on Elliot Tachman’s bad side was a very bad place to be.

C
oco was still on a high from yesterday’s first dance practice as she bounded down the gray stone steps to the Clubhouse, the little café reserved exclusively for BAMS activity groups. It was a pine-colored wooden shack that served espresso drinks and homemade chocolate chip cookies. Attached was a terrace with white iron tables and a view overlooking Stone Canyon.

This morning was Coco’s first meeting as dance captain, and Coco was half an hour early because she wanted to have breakfast waiting for the girls when they arrived. She had read in the
New York Times
that people did best at meetings when there was food. Which was why Coco held baskets of Bagel Broker bagels (for the girls who still ate carbs), containers of Stonyfield Farm cottage cheese (for the girls who were off carbs), and Susina Bakery croissants (for the girls who still ate good food). Coco’s mind had been so abuzz preparing for the meeting that she’d forgotten her mini Bose speakers on the marble fireplace back home. She’d intended to use them (along with her handy little iPod nano) to get the girls pepped up despite the early hour. Luckily her mom was headed that way and was going to bring her speakers to BAMS, just in time for her meeting.

It was amazing how much could happen in a week, Coco thought, as she clicked down the slate steps in her Lanvin ankle boots. Ruby was on the injured list, and “far too busy” to come to practices, as she’d announced in an e-mail to the team—which Coco knew meant she was too proud to sit and watch Coco act as captain. But without Ruby, the team was so much happier than last year. Coco felt better not having to wonder what her archrival thought of every choice she made.

Coco couldn’t stop thinking about how great practice had been the day before: The girls seemed to be really excited that she was captain, and they’d agreed upon the routine for the fund-raiser in
twenty-three minutes
(a new BAMS record! Historically it took several hours, many meetings, and a few tear-jerking sessions for the Bam-Bams to agree on anything). The choice had been so simple because the girls wanted to use Coco’s choreography from her audition for their performance at ExtravaBAMSa. (A huge compliment!) Haylie was still being a pain, but Coco knew that no one really took Haylie seriously, and that any self-confidence the girl had was probably a temporary ego boost from her sketchy membership in the Thinner Circle.

Fund-raising Day, better known as ExtravaBAMSa, was Coco’s favorite event of the year. It was a daylong showcase of the school’s world-class athletes and artists. Mac always joked that it was just a reminder to parents why BAMS was worth the tuition—they paid a hefty sum to have their children surrounded by excellence. Because the groups really
were
excellent: The culinary club had a cook-off, the thespian society—run by Kimmie Tachman—put on a one-act play, the surf team put on an exhibition, and of course the Bam-Bams performed, all in the name of raising gazillions of dollars for the charity voted on by the BAMS student body. This year’s cause was Save Darfur.

As Coco’s patent leather ankle boots landed on the last step to the terrace, she was thinking about where she could get her little speakers set up so they wouldn’t get drowned out—she was excited to play “Umbrella” for the girls and talk about ways to tweak her routine for a group show. She looked up to check the status of the gazebo and then gasped—all eight dance team members were already there, sitting at the white iron tables in their black Lululemon workout pants and navy dance team hoodies. They stopped talking when Coco arrived. In eerie silence, she observed the scattering of mostly empty glasses of orange juice and a few scraps of toast on people’s plates.

Coco checked the time on her iPhone. It was definitely twenty minutes
before
the meeting was supposed to start.
So why were they already finishing up?
Coco set the ginormous baskets of food on the ground. She stood there, wondering what was going on and how long it would take for someone to acknowledge her. This was definitely not a good sign.

“Oh, hiyeee, Coco!” Haylie Fowler baby-talked. She always sounded like she was delivering bad news. Haylie pushed back her white iron chair, stood up, and walked over to face Coco, her rectangular body blocking the view of the canyon and the sunlight. She was wearing a trucker hat turned sideways and an ill-fitting wifebeater. Somehow she’d missed the memo that the Tara Reid look was so 5Y (five years ago). And even then it hadn’t worked.

Coco gulped, feeling like an animal about to be killed. The fact that Haylie Fowler, aka SSD, was about to tell Coco what was going on with the Bam-Bams, in front of the whole dance team, was beyond a bad sign.

“I guess we forgot to tell you. . . .” Haylie trailed off. She cocked her head to the side and looked at Coco with a fake pout, as though that explained everything. “Oh?” Coco said, pursing her lips. She couldn’t bear to look at Haylie’s squinty eyes. She looked around the terrace, scanning the faces of her friends. Lucia, Maribel, and Taylor’s lips were pursed, their faces stony. They looked massively uncomfortable, like they were staring at smog over the Hollywood Hills in August. Eden twirled her fork. They all looked guilty. The knot in Coco’s stomach tightened. “What did you forget to tell me, Haylie?”

“Oh, just, you know . . . that we changed the time and stuff.”

Changed the time?
Without her? “Actually, Haylie, I’m the
captain
. I need to know about this,” Coco said, trying to hit that note between scolding and making a point. “Someone needs to call me next time.” She spoke calmly but her heart was doing pirouettes.

There was a long beat of silence during which Coco could feel everyone looking at her. The only sound was the chirping of black parakeets in the canyon. She took a sip of her Voss water to calm herself down.

Haylie scrunched her face up as though Coco had just picked her nose. “Um, actually, Coco, you might want to go easy on that?”

“Go easy on what?” Coco asked, taking another sip. The other girls giggled. Coco wondered if she’d accidentally spilled on her shirt. She looked down, but it was all clear. She wiped her nose to make sure there was nothing gross hanging out.

Haylie shook her head. “Never mind. We all have our issues.” She took a deep breath. “Actually, Coco, what I really wanted to say is that, due to creative differences, we kinda had a re-vote,” Haylie whined. Coco’s heart beat wildly.
Re-vote?
Haylie’s pale face was scrunched, like she’d bitten into a lemon. “And, long story short, um . . . I’m kind of the captain.”

“Is this
kind of
a joke?” Coco glanced around the terrace frantically, trying to lock eyes with Lucia and then Maribel, and then Taylor or Eden. Lucia was stirring her coffee, her legs and arms crossed so that she looked like a pretzel. Maribel stared into her lap, her head hung low in shame. Eden looked out at the canyon. Taylor was robotically coating her lips in Burt’s Bees. The other girls were looking down into their empty water cups, pretending to be fascinated by the clear plastic.

Coco felt like someone had squeezed the air out of her. She knew it would be too unkind to scream what she was thinking, which was
BUT YOU ARE THE WORST DANCER ON THIS TEAM. WE CALL YOU SEVEN-SECOND DELAY!
Instead she decided the only safe choice was to stare until SSD said something that made sense.

Haylie played with the yellow Lance Armstrong bracelets on her chubby arms, shying away from eye contact. “I’m sorry, Coco,” she said, tilting her hat even more sideways, and sounding not at all sorry. “But there’s a bright side. Even though you’re no longer captain, we’ve discussed this.” She put her hands on her hips. “You can still totally be on the team. As alternate.” She smiled, a little too gleefully. Coco felt as though she’d been hit with a stun gun. Everyone—and
especially
Haylie—knew alternates didn’t perform. Coco might as well have had one leg: That was all you needed to be an alternate.

Coco scanned the terrace again, hoping for a friendly face, but everyone was quiet. The team’s silence hurt the most, since apparently they had all
discussed
her moments ago. It was never, ever a good feeling to know that you had been
discussed
. She rubbed her lucky Macedonian sun necklace, a gift from her father when he’d opened his Athens hotel, summoning her courage.

“I joined this team to
dance
,” Coco said carefully. “So if I can’t do that, I quit.” She spun on her Lanvin heels, willing herself not to cry. Without another word, she ran up the stone trail to the BAMS driveway, past the new bonsai trees dotting the path.

At the top of the stairs, she spotted her mom’s pale blue Bentley with its super-tinted windows. Coco’s mother was waiting for her in the driveway, and Coco had never been so delighted to have forgotten something at home. Behind the car was a cluster of paparazzi on motorcycles. Two years earlier, Cardammon had been given a strict warning from the BAMS headmaster about bringing reporters to school. But she’d agreed to stay away from campus during school hours to keep BAMS tabloid-free.

Except for emergencies, like when Coco forgot mini speakers.

Coco grabbed the car door handle, emblazoned with all of her family members’ initials, CK, in bright gold. She slunk inside the car and leaned against the tan leather seat, shutting her eyes.

Cardammon removed Coco’s little speakers from her Yves Saint Laurent snakeskin satchel. “Luvvy, here you go!” she said proudly, as though she’d helped deliver a newborn baby. With her tan face, high cheek-bones, and perfect ski jump nose, Cardammon looked more like Coco’s older sister than her mother. She handed over the device, her sparkly orange fingernails glittering in the sunlight. The orange polish perfectly matched Cardammon’s tight satin jumpsuit and her orange feather-brimmed fedora. She looked like a sexy astronaut.

Coco stared at her mother, baffled by the latest ensemble. “Mum, are you going somewhere?”
Like the moon?

“Not at all,” Cardammon said, sounding surprised at the question. For a second Coco forgot her pain and laughed to herself at her mother’s free-spiritedness. No wonder people around the world loved her.

“Thanks for this, Mum,” Coco said. She sank down into her seat so that the paparazzi couldn’t see her. Even though the windows were tinted, she couldn’t take any chances that they’d get a shot of her looking the way she felt that moment.

Cardammon’s thin lips curled into a smile and her coffee-colored eyes twinkled. She always looked a little naughty. “Luvvy, I just want to say that I am so proud of you, my little captain.” She looked like she was about to pinch Coco’s cheeks, but Cardammon was
not
that kind of mother.

The second Coco heard the word
captain
, her pain pounced back on her. She quickly wiped away her teardrops before her mother could notice them slipping onto her cheeks. She did not want to have to explain any of this drama to her mother, who wouldn’t understand. Megastardom came so easily to Cardammon, and Coco couldn’t even stay on her
middle school
dance team. Had she gotten all the bad genes?

“I was worried that I’d been pushing too hard with the record deal,” Cardammon said, rubbing her slender hands with Fresh sugar-blossom hand cream. “And then you go off getting elected captain by your friends. And really—what’s more important than the respect of your peers? My Grammys mean more to me than my MTV Awards or my platinums,” she sighed.

Coco cringed. There was no sense in pointing out the colossal difference in their situations, namely that Cardammon was a huge success and she was a total loser. “Mom, you weren’t pushing me too hard. I wanted to be a pop star,” Coco said. It was the truth. “And about the dance team—”

“Shushie, luvvy! You just focus on your team. I can’t wait to see you dance at the fund-raiser. We’ll raise lots of dosh for those Africans! Even your father’s coming!”

“Dad’s coming?” Coco squeaked. It was unusual for Charles Kingsley to stay in the same country for more than two weeknights, and now she’d have to disappoint
two
parents. That news flash zapped any remaining strength to explain that she’d been booted out of her captainship. She scooted even lower in her seat to make sure that the paparazzi couldn’t get a glimpse of her.