American Girls(23)

“I can work a credit card,” I said, giving her a smile like I could own the crazy when the time was right.

“Perfect. See you laze-balls later.”

I should have checked with Dex first. Jeremy gave me a look like, “You’re really going to just walk out the door with my insane sister?” And I tried to let him know, telepathically, Yes, because it’s going to be about a million times more interesting than walking out the door with my own insane sister. “The devil you know” may be the saying, but crazy is always a million times more interesting when you’re just getting introduced, shaking hands, and deciding whether or not you’re going to give your real e-mail address.

Even exiting the building, a man who looked like he was casing the parking lot pulled out a camera and started snapping pictures. Pictures of me and Olivia Taylor. I could be the blacked-out square in a trashy magazine in a grocery store checkout line. The question mark over the head on a gossipy Web site. I had arrived.

“Good luck getting five dollars for that,” she said. “Shit-sniffer.”

The man made a motion like he was tipping his hat, then kissed the air at her.

“Disgusting,” she said. “They won’t be happy until I’m dead and they’re first on the scene to take a picture.”

She ushered me to an SUV the size of small house. I climbed into the passenger seat like I knew exactly what we were doing next, like driving around with movie stars was something I’d been doing my entire life. That I did not pee my pants was probably a miracle. Olivia’s laptop was open on her seat, and she fired it up after she sat down. She handed it to me so that I could see the pictures that were so offensive—three shots of her passed out at a party next to a half-eaten birthday cake, with her basically nonexistent belly hanging ever so slightly over her too-tight snakeskin pants, and her head angled so that it looked like she had the tiniest of double chins.

“Who would do this?” she said, and pointed at the screen. “An * of biblical proportions, right? The party was totally closed. Now I have to go all Agatha Christie on my five best friends and my brothers to see who murdered my career. And look at that cake. Grocery store cake. Assholes.”

So these were the pictures she was so angry about. Not ones that made her look like a druggie, or a racist, or a naked druggie-racist, but the ones that made her look just a little closer to regular. The only shock was that it really wasn’t all that shocking.

“Maybe you can pretend they’re not of you,” I offered. “They don’t really even look like you.”

“Tell that to the next casting director running a Web search.” She closed the computer and tossed it behind her, then started the car and drove us off the lot. I was thinking about how much it would have cost to replace the computer if it had missed the backseat, when I felt the craziest sensation, like heavy rainfall thumping up my arm—but without the rain. The feeling traveled from my right shoulder and onto my head, and I panicked. Something from the backseat was attacking me. I must have let out a totally for-real scream, because Olivia almost drove us into a streetlamp by the side of the road.

“Are you completely psycho?” she asked. What I could now see was a large green lizard had jumped from my head and onto her lap. “You’re going to give Iggy a nervous breakdown.”

“Iggy?” I said.

“It’s okay, Iggyyyyyy.” She kissed the lizard on the head. “This is Anna. She didn’t mean to scare you.” The lizard perched on her leg, and she stroked its head delicately. I checked the backseat for more reptiles and tried to quiet my heartbeat. Olivia pulled the car into a parking space marked “Employees Only” behind a strip mall, and tucked the lizard under her arm.

“You have a lizard,” I said.

“An iguana,” she corrected me. “Did you know they can live as long as people? And unlike people, they never, ever f*ck you over.” She gestured for me to get out of the car. “You do have a credit card, right?”

The way she was looking at me, I seriously thought that she might leave me in the car if I answered wrong.

I had a card from my dad, just for emergencies, and there was a good bet it was still working since I hadn’t heard from him since he went to Mexico last month. I could hear his voice while Olivia was still talking: I can’t take the time I need to get away with Cindy? Not even a weekend? This is what happens? Why doesn’t anyone tell me anything? And then my mother, who’d probably look on this as an opportunity to remind him just how much he sucks at being a dad: It’s a month you’ve been gone, not a weekend. And you are still technically her father, so you could tear yourself away from your pi?a coladas, blah, blah, blah.

“It’s just for emergencies,” I said.

“Well, this is an emergency.” She’d led me to a hole-in-the-wall boutique with a thick glass door and spare, headless mannequins in the windows. “You’ll buy with your credit card and I’ll pay you back. It has to look like we’re shopping for you.” After we entered the store, one of the women who worked there locked the door behind us. Olivia put her lizard on the ground, and he ran underneath the sale rack. The normal rules no longer applied. We had entered a parallel universe where her arrival meant that some whole other secret set of rules went into effect: Iguanas, good. Other customers, bad.