Fame Game 03: Infamous

  She pulled open the door, already imagining Laurel’s stressed, over-caffeinated voice. Oh, sure, no problem! You’re late because you had to come all the way from Topanga, because you pissed off your roommate so much that you had to spend the night at your parents’. No big deal! And then Luke told you that maybe his pal Eric should watch his plants, since you were so busy kissing other guys. Sure, Carmen, I get it! Great! Come on in and get your hair and makeup done, sweetheart!

  She hurried toward the studio at the back of the warehouse, praying that someone else—Gaby, maybe—was even later than she was.

  The shoot was for the May cover of Seventeen magazine, so the giant, high-ceilinged room had been filled with flowers, potted trees, a picnic table, and fake birds. If something was even vaguely springy, the prop guys had brought it. (There was even a wheelbarrow—what were they supposed to do with that?) The air smelled like a florist’s shop, and also like dirt.

  Laurel came right up to Carmen, her expression dark.

  “I’m so sorry—” Carmen began.

  Laurel held up a hand. “Let’s just get going, shall we? Follow me, you’re down this way.” She led Carmen to a small windowless room in which a makeup girl sat, thumbing through Vogue. “Have a seat,” Laurel said. “We shoot in an hour.”

  She was already leaving when Carmen called after her. “Where’s everyone else?” Carmen had the stupid, momentary hope that she, in fact, was the first one to arrive.

  Laurel paused for a moment. “They’re getting ready, too . . . in a different room.”

  Carmen drew back in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Kate would rather not be around you at the moment, and we only have two dressing rooms to work with. So they’re in one, and you’re in the other. I’m sorry, but it’s the only way we could get Kate to agree to show up today.”

  Carmen’s jaw dropped. “Really? You’re putting me in solitary?”

  Laurel sighed. “Don’t overreact, Carmen. You’re getting your makeup done.”

  “Fine, I’m being quarantined then.”

  “Would you rather we put Kate by herself? She’s what most would consider the wronged party here.”

  “I didn’t wrong her,” Carmen nearly yelled. “I made a mistake, a tiny mistake, and I don’t know why everyone has to act like it’s the end of the world!”

  When Laurel didn’t reply, Carmen flopped down into the makeup chair. “Make me look slutty,” she told the girl. “Since that’s the message I’m getting from my producer here.”

  The girl looked toward Laurel, who shook her head grimly. “Make her look like she’s not totally overreacting,” she said. “Peachy cheeks, false eyelashes—but not a lot of eye shadow—and a warm, glossy lip. I’ll have them send in some of the inspiration photos they’re working off of.”

  Carmen rolled her eyes. “Laurel,” she said. “We talked about this. I told you what happened. How it wasn’t anything—”

  “I know,” Laurel said, her voice gentler now. “And honestly, I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as everyone is making it, except in that it makes my job a lot more difficult today. But Kate seems to think it’s a big deal, and since she is a bit more fragile than you, she’s getting some extra attention.” She gave Carmen a tired smile, then hurried down the hall.

  Carmen let out a frustrated sigh. It was all such a stupid, stupid mistake—why did the whole world have to know about it?

  Because she left her mike pack on, that’s why. But it wasn’t Trevor or Laurel who’d talked to the press. They hated it when the tabloids broke stories they could have broken on the show; they wanted that privilege. Sure, a blind item or a teaser never hurt, but giving away the entire story line didn’t do much for their ratings.

  The party had been packed, so in a way, it could have been anyone. But Carmen was certain it was Lily. And unlike the lie about Carmen’s roving eye, Carmen had no plausible deniability for the kiss. She was mad at everyone today—including herself.

  The question was, why was Lily doing this to her? She’d thought they were friends.

  “Okay, I want Gaby over there by the fern with the pruning shears. Madison, you sit in the deck chair with the bottle of tanning oil. Kate, you’ll have the pitcher of lemonade and be pouring it for Carmen, who’ll be here at the picnic table.”

  Kate muttered something, and the photographer, who’d been the one giving the directions, said, “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not pouring her a drink,” Kate said, louder this time.

  “Ummm . . . okay. Do you have a problem with the creative direction or . . . ?”

  Kate walked over to Gaby and took the shears away. “I’ll be the gardener and Gaby can deal with . . . her.”

  Carmen opened her mouth to offer a snide retort, but then thought better of it. No sense in pissing off Laurel even more by getting into a fight with her costar, even though Kate—who looked like freaking Tinkerbell in that lime-green mini and those weird ankle boots—was acting insane.

  She glanced down at her own dress, a gauzy, persimmon-colored stunner by Marchesa. She might have gotten a bum deal on the dressing room, but she definitely had the best dress.

  “I can pour,” Carmen said. “I can play waitress.” Though Kate’s the one with the experience in that arena, she thought.

  Laurel whispered something to the photographer, whose eyes flicked between them with cold appraisal.

  “Let’s have Kate and Madison side by side,” he said. “Gaby and Carmen can take turns playing hostess. Can someone please move that bluebird? And that idiotic wheelbarrow? Let’s not have this look like a set from Sesame Street, all right?”

  The “story” for the shoot was that the girls were throwing a garden party. Ideally, they ought to be laughing and talking together while being photographed, which would give the fanciful, purposely artificial set an air of real fun, real life. But Kate would hardly acknowledge Carmen’s existence. Madison seemed normal enough—she was never the picture of warmth to Carmen—but Gaby had that glassy look Carmen remembered all too well. Was it possible she was taking pills again? Had she spiked her lunchtime smoothie with a couple shots of Patrón?

  “Gab,” she whispered when they were switching spots, “are you okay?” Carmen handed her the pitcher and got ready to position herself at the picnic table, which was set with bright, cheerful place settings, complete with fake salads and a baguette that looked like it had been shellacked.

  Gaby smiled hazily and nodded. Then she stumbled in her heels and dropped the pitcher on the floor, splashing water all over her dress.

  “Wardrobe! We need you on set,” yelled the photographer.

  “Okay, we need a costume change or a hair dryer,” Laurel said, appearing at Gaby’s elbow and steering her back toward the dressing room. “We’ll be quick,” she said to the room at large.

  Madison and Kate began whispering to each other. Carmen, feeling angry and left out, wished she had her iPhone to pull out. At least then she could scroll through email rather than sit here like the reject in the high school cafeteria.

  She stood up. “I’m going to—”

  “Please sit back down,” the photographer said. “I’m reframing. And reconsidering.”

  Reconsidering what? Carmen wondered. Taking the job of photographing such rank amateurs in the first place? Because that’s what they were acting like—you’d think they’d never been at a photo shoot before, when in fact it was probably their fiftieth.

  It took everything in Carmen not to lose her cool, but she knew better. On a cover shoot, the writer who was doing the accompanying article was almost always present. An on-set blowup would overshadow anything positive the magazine would have to say about her blossoming career. And CARMEN CURTIS THROWS PHOTO-SHOOT HISSY FIT was not a headline she was interested in reading. She’d had enough bad press lately.

  She picked idly at a potted hydrangea bush and tried not to wonder if Kate and Madison were talking about her. Carmen had attempted to t
alk to Kate about the kiss, but Kate had made it very clear she wasn’t interested in explanations. Drew, too, was ignoring her. First she couldn’t breathe without the two of them in her face. Now they were both avoiding her like the plague. After failing to respond to about five million of her texts, he’d finally written to say that he was really busy with work and school, and maybe they should take a short communication break.

  That had hurt—even more than knowing that she had, in a moment of drunken stupidity, betrayed her friend and roommate. She and Drew had never taken a “communication break.” Sure, there were times when they talked less often—like when she was filming The End of Love eighteen hours a day—but she always knew Drew was out there, only a phone call or a text message away. She had counted on that, and she hadn’t even known how much.

  “Okay, let’s get this thing started up again,” Laurel said, escorting Gaby to her place.

  Gaby’s new dress was yellow, with eyelet trim. It was sweet and innocent-looking, which Carmen supposed Gaby had been, too, before Hollywood got its hands on her.

  “Sorry,” Gaby whispered.

  Carmen shrugged. “No worries,” she said. “You want me to pour?”

  Gaby nodded. “That’s probably best.”

  The rest of the shoot was uneventful, if uncomfortable. Carmen hoped their smiles would look genuine. And if they didn’t, that there was someone on the Seventeen staff who was really good at Photoshop, and could give them the aura of warmth they lacked.

  When they finally broke for the day, Carmen ducked her head and hurried to find her clothes. She prayed that Laurel wouldn’t follow her to berate her some more, and thankfully, she didn’t.

  Carmen felt her spirits lift a little as she exited the building. She was relieved to be back in her worn-in, beloved Rag & Bone jeans and out of that airless studio. She might have felt almost happy, had she not stumbled into a small crowd of fans who were waiting in the parking lot. And unfortunately, they were not alone. In addition to the people grasping small stacks of glossy prints, Sharpies, and digital cameras, there were several paparazzi, one of whom held a video camera.

  “Oh. It’s just Carmen,” someone said, sounding disappointed. “Where’s Madison?”

  “Boyfriend stealer,” someone else yelled.

  Carmen felt a pang of embarrassment. It was one thing to be insulted by a stranger; it was another to have it filmed. Who were these people, and why were they yelling at her? How had they known she was here?

  She turned around to look at the building and saw Madison Parker make her exit, already waving adoringly to the crowd. Carmen gritted her teeth. Obviously @missmadparker had tweeted her location in one of her fantastically self-serving tweets. Photo shoot with the girls at Siren Studios! Can you say glamour???!!!! XOXO.

  Carmen could have strangled her. But she wouldn’t—of course. For one thing, she wasn’t into violence, and for another, the last thing she needed right now was another enemy.

  19

  DON’T WORRY, BABE, I STILL LIKE YOU

  Kate couldn’t believe the mess her life had become. Less than two weeks before her showcase, which was basically the most important day of her life, her roommate and her boyfriend decide to make out at the house party of some Silver Lake heiress. And apparently they’d done it without caring who was looking; whereas some people knew how to keep their indiscretions hidden, others were seemingly too drunk to bother. It was infuriating; it was humiliating; it was everything that she did not want to deal with right now.

  Kate didn’t want to process it. She didn’t want to think about it or talk about it. She wanted it Never to Have Happened.

  But it had, of course, and now it was a Thursday evening that she normally would have spent with Lucinda, and instead she had to film a pickup scene with Carmen “I Kiss Other People’s Boyfriends” Curtis.

  Laurel had arrived early to make sure Kate was wearing the correct outfit for the scene. She rattled off pieces she had noted in her notebook, expecting Kate to find them amidst the general mess of her closet. It was an annoying new Trevor-enforced policy, and they had to do it every time they shot a pickup scene. Everything from their clothes to their nail polish color was documented, and the girls were instructed to throw out nothing. That way, when they needed a scene to take place directly after one that had already been shot (meaning, according to TV time, they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to change their clothes, hair, or nails), they could easily replicate the look. Now Kate was sitting on the living room couch, in an outfit that frankly looked a little rumpled, emotionally preparing herself to play nice.

  “Are you sure that’s the same polish you had on before?” Laurel called from the kitchen.

  “I mean, it’s red. Do you really think anyone is going to be able to tell the difference?” Kate responded, examining her ruby nails.

  “Trevor will notice, and I’ll be the one to face his wrath if we have to color correct. It’s expensive and takes forever.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Kate assured her.

  To add insult to injury, Kate was not only going to have to smile through this scene acting like Carmen hadn’t just pulled the ultimate girl betrayal, she was going to have to do it in a wig. A good wig, yes—one that looked remarkably like her former strawberry-blond waves—but still. Someone else’s dead hair. It was sitting there on the coffee table, waiting for her to put it on. She nudged it with her foot and scowled.

  Her apartment felt cold and empty, even with Laurel and the crew shuffling around her setting up, and the security guy sitting in the corner, playing Angry Birds on his iPhone. Carmen had been staying at her parents’ house, and Drew had booked a quick and conveniently timed trip to New York with a couple of other Rock It! interns.

  Kate wasn’t mad at him anymore, and in fact she missed him, though it’d only been twelve hours since they last saw each other. Of course she’d been furious at first, though Drew swore up and down that the kiss was nothing and that he’d stopped it immediately.

  “That’s what they all say,” Madison had noted when Kate told her. “Does a man ever say, ‘Oh yeah, I kissed someone else and it was totally awesome. But don’t worry, babe, I still like you’? Drew’s a good guy, I know. But still. You should ask Laurel. She’ll know what happened.”

  Kate still couldn’t believe the kiss had been caught on audio. She had to wonder what would have happened if no one at the party had seen it. If it hadn’t gotten leaked to D-Lish, would Trevor have wanted to use the audio on the show? Would he have engineered a terrible surprise for Kate—say, somehow have her find out about it on camera?

  Kate was glad that Trevor hadn’t been given that option. Because she realized that the situation could have been even worse than it was.

  When Kate asked Laurel what she knew about the kiss, Laurel had assured her that it really was one-sided. And considering that it was basically an unwritten part of Laurel’s job to stir up drama, Kate realized she had no reason to lie. “Drew was, like, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’” Laurel told her. “You don’t have to worry about him.”

  But Kate had worried. She couldn’t help thinking about how Carmen and Drew had known each other for so many years. Their friendship was deep and probably complicated, as most old relationships tended to be. (Look how long it had taken her to free herself from Ethan the underminer!) Compared to Carmen, Kate was the new kid on the block, and she didn’t like feeling that way at all. Which was why she’d finally made Laurel play her the audio from the Silver Lake party.

  Her heart pounded as she listened. Through the speakers in the PopTV editing bay, she could hear the thudding bass from the party host’s top-of-the-line stereo system. Then came Carmen’s voice, full of laughter, and Drew’s deeper tones. They were reminiscing about some awesome experience they’d shared back in high school, something about the beach and hot cocoa, and Carmen sounded like she might simply melt from the wonderful Norman Rockwell nostalgia. Kate gritted her teeth. (And all the while Kate
had been outside by the pool, obliviously eating shish kebabs with Gaby and Jay!)

  Then she glanced over at Laurel. “Now,” Laurel had whispered.

  First there was silence, broken only by the background music—Rihanna singing “Like an actor on a movie screen / You played the part with every line.”

  Kate stiffened, knowing what the silence on the tape meant. Carmen is kissing Drew right now, she thought. I can’t believe I’m hearing it.

  But then came the moment she’d been waiting for. Drew’s voice, shocked. “Whoa, Carmen,” she heard him say. “What are you doing?” Pause. “You kissed me.”

  Laurel had clicked off the sound. “See?” she’d said. “I told you.”

  Laurel made Kate swear that she’d never tell anyone that she had played her the tape. It had made Kate feel better, definitely. But she’d had to have a minor fight with Drew anyway, because he’d waited a full twenty-four hours before telling her.

  At dinner she’d confronted him. “You sat there next to me in the studio, knowing that the night before you’d kissed my roommate, and you didn’t say anything to me? Is that why you were acting so weird that day? Your guilty conscience?” she’d demanded.

  Drew hunched his shoulders. “I didn’t want Carmen to kiss me. I didn’t ask her to kiss me. I didn’t do anything wrong, Kate.”

  “But you should have told me,” she insisted.

  “And have you get all upset when you were supposed to be focusing on your career? I was trying to do the right thing. I didn’t want to distract you.”

  Kate understood that this made sense. But she was still upset. “You and Carmen have known each other forever. She’s had plenty of time to make out with you before now. So why is she doing it when you’re my boyfriend? Why does she try to take everything away from me?”

  Drew had reached out and taken her hand. “She’s not, Kate. She’s not trying to do anything like that.”