First Stop, New York

THE
SHOW

Pilot Episode

by Jordan Cooke

Grosset & Dunlap

Big thanks to Judy Goldschmidt for her endless patience, her constant support, and her pretty hair.

I’d also like to thank Matthew Pond for his hospitality in Sydney, where I attempted to complete this book during Mardi Gras (rather distracting).

Thanks, too, to my nieces, Erin and Kate, and my nephews, Jack, TJ, Dylan, and Zachary. They’re all really cute and very smart.

Finally, I’d like to thank my friends Kevin Kane and Maura Tierney. Whenever I got stuck writing the book I’d think, “What would Kevin and Maura like to see happen next?”

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Five

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Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

The 405—9:17
A.M.

Corliss Meyers was having a breakdown at 65 miles per hour. She’d just caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror and what she saw was not pretty.
Ohmygod, could I be any paler? My complexion is the color of Toaster Strudel!

This would not do on the most important day of her life. Which this was. Up to this point, anyway. She looked around the car for something—anything—that might help. But there was nothing—except for a salad from Whole Foods, which sat in a plastic container on the passenger seat. Something about it inspired hope…

Then it came to her in a flash—an article she’d read in
CosmoGIRL!
It said that if you rubbed fresh beets into your cheeks you could produce a natural, rosy glow that would do in a pinch if you ever forgot your blush.

Luckily for Corliss, the salad was chock-full of beets. Of course, they were smothered in vinegar and onions, but
what could she do? People judge you more on appearance than smell, right?

Corliss dug her hands into the plastic salad container and got a tentative grip on three slippery beets. That’s when the car in front of her stopped suddenly. Which caused Corliss to stop suddenly. Which caused the beets to slip out of her fingers and slide down the front of her shirt.

Now she was exiting the 405 with one hand while using the other to search her top for missing beets. She didn’t have to search far.
This area doesn’t cover a lot of landmass,
she thought as she plucked big wads of beet pulp from her shirt and tossed them out the window.

Thank goodness she was wearing a red shirt. The magenta splotches left by the beets blended in perfectly. Almost.

And to think she’d been having a close-to-acceptable physical appearance day.

Her skin was ninety-eight percent zit free, which it hardly ever was. Her strawberry blond hair had only about thirty percent split ends—which was totally a record. And the recurring rash on her forehead seemed to be disappearing. Yes, Corliss was one of the rare fortunate ones to be cursed with two different afflictions of the skin. The first, a common condition associated with puberty; the second, a common condition associated with neurosis. (She’d diagnosed herself as neurotic when she took up reading Abnormal Psych textbooks for fun during the second semester of her junior year.)

Corliss pushed the pulp that remained on her fingers into her cheeks—but then she had to make another sudden stop. As she did, her fingertips slid across her face, creating
four magenta streaks under her granny glasses.

Then she heard a siren.

Is that going off in reality, or am I having
a psychotic breakdown?

When a state trooper appeared next to her on his motorcycle, she had her answer. She thought for sure she’d been doing the speed limit. But as the cop approached, Corliss knew exactly what her traffic infraction had been: pelting an officer of the law with beet pulp. He was covered in it.

Corliss took this beet fiasco as a sign that the transition to LA wasn’t going to be easy. Everything about Los Angeles was completely different from Indianapolis—or Indiana-no-place, as she liked to call it. In fact, her world had changed in so many ways, she sometimes felt like she was in one of those movies where someone’s soul gets transplanted into another person’s body.

If only it were a body with boobs and cheeks that didn’t require the help of root vegetables.

“I’ll let the assault with the salad items slide,” said the officer as he wrote her ticket, “but running that red light back there will cost you.”

“What?!”

She tried not to cry as she accepted a $350 traffic ticket. Or think about how on earth she would pay for it. There wasn’t any time. She was already running late—and she’d just lost another fifteen minutes. Getting off the grounds of her uncle’s estate took ten minutes all by itself.

Uncle Ross lived in a mansion in Holmby Hills with the longest driveway in the world and two sets of gates that required passwords and PIN codes and above average hand-eye
coordination in order to navigate them. Inside there was an actual planetarium for parties and something called the “Great Room.” As for Corliss’s setup, she had a private bath, a dressing room, and a walk-in shoe closet that played “Hollaback Girl” whenever she opened the door. Uncle Ross had this put in as a welcome gift.

But that was the least of it. Her bedroom overlooked a garden straight out of a Marie Antoinette fantasy. There was a pool, of course, and it was decorated with six marble cherubs who cheerfully peed into the deep end. There was also a lemon grove, a Japanese rock garden, and a pool house that looked like the Parthenon.

The entire compound was staffed with people who didn’t talk. They silently made sure that pitchers of cucumber water were positioned everywhere, and that all the towels were fresh and warm. Corliss often caught sight of this small army of quiet people as they polished away, making sure every visible surface sparkled like Missy Elliott’s bling.

Uncle Ross told Corliss she should be nice to the staff, but she didn’t necessarily have to learn their names.
But of course I will,
thought Corliss, who never wanted to appear rude.

Corliss had come to live with her uncle Ross because of her excellent school record. She’d already finished all her requirements, and she’d taken so many AP courses that her guidance counselor decided a little preemptive kick into the real world would do Her Royal Awkwardness some good. When her uncle caught wind of this, he decreed that Hollywood, the center of the entertainment industry, was the place for Corliss.

“But I’m interested in
psychology
, Uncle Ross,” she’d
protested. “It’s going to be my major next year when I go to Columbia, and someday I want to work in a mental hospital.”

“Then Hollywood is the
perfect
place for you,” her uncle had proclaimed.

Corliss wasn’t sure. But there was one thing she
was
sure of: She didn’t want to be parked on her butt in Indiana obsessing over why no one was asking her to the prom. So she’d said, “Okay, Uncle Ross—you win. Hollyweird, here I come!”

Uncle Ross was a famous screenwriter—his six Golden Globe awards had been made into a chandelier—and that’s how he had been able to arrange for an ultracool internship for her as a production assistant on an exciting new television show. The show was called
The ’Bu
—the local nickname for Malibu, California. It was a dark and sexy look at the legendary coastal town, and word was that it had the potential to be the hottest new series in years. The pilot episode had just gone into production—it hadn’t even been shot yet. But the minute Uncle Ross told her about it, Corliss was sure:
The ’Bu
would be the kind of turbocharged hit that would totally rock TV Land. It had the perfect mix of fun, skin, reckless partying, and tears.

Corliss could predict such things. She was a little witchy, in fact. Her mom used to shudder whenever Corliss had her “premonitions.” Not “the earth will end on Saturday” kind of premonitions, but “I give you and that hairy veterinarian two more weeks” kind of things. And Corliss had been right. Fourteen days after that particular prediction, all that was left of her mother’s sorry relationship was a can of Puppy Chow, four Narnia chew toys, and a clump of wet Kleenex.

As Corliss finally approached the legendary lot that
housed the UBC network, she vowed that such a pathetic life would never be hers. Not that she wanted to be a star herself. How could she? She was so nondescript looking, people she’d known forever often walked right past her. Once, she’d shown up at her grandfather’s unexpectedly and when he’d opened the door he’d said, “Sorry, I don’t donate to religious organizations.”