Starstruck

Awkward, Kate thought. Suddenly the already-small room felt claustrophobic.

The exchange had quickly put a damper on whatever goodwill the girls had managed to build up, and now no one was saying anything. Well, if tense silence was any interest to Trevor Lord, he’d have plenty of it, Kate thought. Maybe he’d have Carmen do a voice-over. We were all supposed to go out and have fun, but Kate and I weren’t talking, and Madison certainly wasn’t in a party frame of mind…. At least we had Gaby to lighten the mood.

If the whole thing weren’t suddenly so uncomfortable, Kate would have smiled to herself. Who knew what this night would look like when it appeared on the nation’s television sets? All she knew was that right now it was pretty unpleasant.

Kate didn’t understand, really, why it had to be like this. Sure, Madison had been sort of snubbing her. But she obviously had a lot on her mind. It wasn’t like Kate ignoring Carmen’s texts—Kate knew she hadn’t done anything to upset Madison. And Carmen was probably exhausted from filming, which was why she was being sort of bitchy. But what, really, was Kate’s own problem? What did she have to complain about? She had a hit TV show and a hit song: She ought to feel a little better! Why in the world couldn’t she just relax and enjoy herself? Tell a joke or a funny story?

She cleared her throat and started to say something, but then stopped. The fact was, she had her own anxieties to worry about, besides making pleasant small talk. For one thing, Trevor had told her that she was going to have to play some real shows one of these days. “Open mics aren’t for people with top-selling singles,” he’d pointed out. “We’re getting you an actual gig.” Thinking about that made her feel sick.

And for another thing, this whole interpersonal stuff was tricky. It seemed like all of her castmates had secrets and touchy spots. Skeletons of various sizes rattling around in their walk-in closets. With Natalie, everything had been so easy. They trusted each other implicitly. But with these girls, Kate felt like she never knew what they were really thinking.

“So, have you gone on any hot dates with Luke lately?” Gaby asked Carmen.

Speaking of skeletons and secrets! Kate rolled her eyes (but subtly, and not so the cameras could see it). She was getting pretty good at guessing how these scenes would go.

Carmen shifted uncomfortably in her seat, while Kate had to pretend like she wasn’t anxious to hear Carmen’s response.

Then she felt a hand on her shoulder, and she smelled a pungent essential oil that was perhaps best described as a combination of lilac, cinnamon, and … mud? Kate didn’t even have to look up to know that Madison’s sister had arrived. But she did look up, and she saw golden-haired Sophia beaming at all of them, silver bracelets clinking noisily on her arms and peacock-feather earrings brushing against her toned shoulders.

“Namaste, chicas,” Sophia said warmly. “What are we talking about?”

“We weren’t really talking about anything,” Carmen said quickly. “Have a seat.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Sophia said. She made a beeline for the spot Carmen already occupied—at Laurel’s instructions, perhaps?—which meant that Carmen had to scoot over so that she was sitting inches from Kate.

“Hi,” Carmen said quietly.

Kate didn’t answer for a moment, and she then said, with a bit of an edge to her voice, “Hi yourself.” She wasn’t going to offer anything more.

It seemed to Kate as if she could feel the camera’s devilish red eye boring into the side of her skull. So far, this evening out had been about the longest night of her life (and they had only been at the Roosevelt for twenty-three minutes).

Sophia leaned forward, removed her sandals, and flexed her bare toes. “So you are not going to believe who came into Kula Yoga this afternoon,” she said.

“Are you seriously taking off your shoes?” Madison asked, sounding horrified. “What are you? An animal? We’re in public!”

Sophia ignored her sister and took a delicate sip of what Kate hoped was seltzer. “Rob Schappell! You should see the abs on him. He’s got, like, a twelve-pack.”

“I thought you were too enlightened to notice that sort of thing,” Madison said.

“Oh, sis, you’d have to be a nun not to notice. Honestly, it disrupted everybody’s practice.” She giggled. “Not that I’m complaining.”

She fingered a large crystal that hung on a chain around her neck. She looked, Kate thought, lovely and healthy and impossibly statuesque—maybe there really was something to this yoga business. Kate herself had no experience with it. Yoga hadn’t been big in Columbus; it was more of a Zumba kind of town.

“What’s so interesting about yoga, I’m finding,” Sophia said, “is that the simple things are the most challenging. Breathing correctly, for one. You think, how hard is it to breathe? We do it all the time! But the fact is, it’s extremely difficult to do it right. And Savasana—corpse pose?”

“I always fall asleep in Savasana,” Carmen offered.

Maybe, Kate thought, Carmen was trying to make up for being mean to Madison by being nice to her sister. Though considering Madison’s and Sophia’s rocky past, it wasn’t clear whether that’d be an effective strategy. But maybe that was the point? She sighed. Once again, interpersonal stuff: tricky.

“Well, it’s so important that in addition to quieting the physical body, you must also pacify the sense organs,” Sophia said.

Whatever that means, thought Kate.

Madison rolled her eyes. “I never imagined I’d have such an evangelist for a sister,” she said drily.

Sophia turned to her. “You really should try it. It would help you process some of your rage.”

Madison burst out laughing. She laughed so long and so loudly that Kate began to wonder if she was faking it. “You’re killing me,” Madison finally gasped.

Sophia raised a knowing eyebrow but said nothing.

“Can we go back to the part about the twelve-pack abs?” Gaby asked.

“If he’s single, I already called dibs,” Sophia said. She nudged her sister playfully in the ribs. “Though I might lend him to Maddy. There are other ways to work out rage besides yoga….”

At this, Madison’s laugh was definitely sincere.

What do you know? The sisters actually seem to be getting along better lately, Kate thought, watching them with a tiny glimmer of envy. (Jess, her own sister, was great, but she was just so damn sporty—all she wanted to talk about was her free-throw percentage and how many crunches she’d done.)

Kate had never realized how much Madison and Sophia looked alike, too—like twins, but with radically different senses of style. Madison had poured herself into a scarlet bandage dress, while the maxidress that hung loosely off Sophia’s shoulders resembled a tie-dyed tent. If Mattel ever made a Hippie Barbie, they should look to Sophia for inspiration.

“I’ve got a celebrity story for you, too,” Kate offered. Because she really should give the camera something, and she didn’t want to talk to Carmen. And because she needed to at least look like she was having fun.

“Oh, goody,” said Gaby, rubbing her hands together. “Please tell me it’s about that British guy who just starred in Infinite Action. He is so hot! I mean, not that it matters to me—I’m totally in love with Jay.”

“Of course you are,” Kate said. “How could you not be?” It was hard for her to say this with a straight face. Jay spent his days playing video games and his nights drinking cases of MGD. He was a cretin. It was impossible to understand what Gaby saw in him, except for maybe his washboard abs. “Anyway,” Kate said brightly. She quickly took another sip of her drink and then proceeded to tell them about how, when working at Stecco the other night, she had had the “privilege” (according to her boss) of waiting on Gemma Kline and Carson Masters, who had flown in from London for some megastar charity event. “So Gemma—who, when she says she doesn’t do Botox, is lying—said to me, ‘I have numerous allergies. When I’m exposed to certain inflammatory foods, my adrenal cortex goes haywire.’ And I’m picturing some cartoon robot, you know, where steam starts coming out of its ears and then it explodes? So I’m like, ‘Great, that’s fine, we can deal with that. What can’t you have?’ And she lifts up a pale, bony hand and starts ticking off fingers. ‘Dairy, wheat, gluten of any kind, soy, yeast, nuts, garlic, and anything that’s acidic. Tomatoes, for instance. Or lemons and other citrus.’ And I’m like, ‘Um, okay, what can you eat?’ And Carson—who also totally Botoxes—sort of rolls his eyes and says, ‘Lettuce. Lettuce and steamed fish.’ So that’s what Gemma gets. Fish poached in vegetable broth and a pile of wilted spinach. It tastes awful, you can just tell, and she gets charged seventy-five dollars for it because it’s a special order. I know I’m not from this town, but why would you go to a fancy L.A. restaurant if you can’t eat anything they serve?”

Madison smiled gently, as if this were a very stupid question. “To see and be seen,” she said. “Think of all the girls on juice cleanses who still show up for lunches on Melrose. They just push their salad from one side of the plate to the other. But they’re there, Kate, and so are the paparazzi.”

“Point taken,” Kate said. “But she could just go get coffee somewhere if she wants to be seen. Or, like, walk anywhere along Robertson.”

“You act like wasting seventy-five dollars matters to her,” Madison reminded Kate. “When in fact it means as much to her as a grain of sand does to the Sahara.”

“Right. I forget that kind of thing because I’m not rich and famous.”

“Well, you might be one of these days,” Madison said. And then she winked at Kate. “Almost as famous as me.”

Kate laughed. Madison suddenly seemed like she was warming back up again. Maybe, thanks to that pink cocktail she was sipping, she’d magically hit a turning point in her personal emotional drama. Then maybe she’d stop with the whole weird and cagey act she’d been working for the last few weeks. Maybe there was hope for her and Kate to be friends.

Gaby piped up with some sort of inanity, and Kate was trying to decide whether it was worth paying attention to her or not when she noticed that Carmen’s best friend, Drew Scott, had arrived.

He loomed in the doorway, dwarfing everything around him. He was wearing a pressed blue Oxford, but Kate could see a tattoo peeking out near his wrist, right above his vintage Casio watch. He caught her eye and winked.

“Ladies,” he boomed, striding toward them with a giant grin on his face. “Is anyone here drunk enough to kiss me yet?”

Kate and Carmen both laughed as he plopped down right between them and put an arm around them both.

“Gaby is, I’m sure,” Madison said under her breath.