American Girls(43)

“No,” she said. Lying. “I lived with a girl once who had one while I was filming in Canada. She failed to mention that it was on her list of plans. Let’s just say that I found some of the evidence in the laundry room when I got back. I Lysoled the place and kicked her out the next week.”

“So it is gross.”

Delia ignored me. I knew she thought it was nasty, deep in her heart, but she never liked to admit that anything scandalized her.

“She was being dishonest.”

What’s that saying? “We always hate the things in others that we see in the mirror”?

“I’m starting to despise auditions,” she said. “They won’t call me back. I think I was the oldest woman there anyhow.”

“Seriously? How young was the youngest?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Nineteen?”

“Did they ask her about orgies?”

“I have no idea, I wasn’t in her audition.”

“Can we drop it with the orgies?” Dex said. “Maybe you can both forget that we have a child in the room, but I’m having some trouble.”

“I’m not a child,” I said. “Besides, I read about orgies most of this afternoon. Did you know the youngest Manson girl was, like, thirteen? That’s younger than me. I’ll bet she did more than hear about orgies.”

“Great,” Dex said. “I feel better already.”

“Can I ask a weird question?” I didn’t even know I had a question about orgies, but what the heck. “Do you think that people actually like having orgies, or do you think they just like being able to say that they were in an orgy?”

“And, scene,” Dex said. “You sure you don’t want some ice cream? A lollipop? To go roller-skating?”

“Ice cream,” I said. “Definitely ice cream.”

My sister shook her head and narrowed her eyes.

“Sex talk for ice cream. Kids today can work the system.”

I shrugged my shoulders and smiled, but I was actually being serious with the question. One of the funny things, reading the Manson family members talk about all the crazy sex, is that they were all like, Yeah, that sex thing, kind of overblown, kind of didn’t really happen like that. It was almost like people wanted the crazy sex thing to be true even if it wasn’t. Mostly, when you read what the Manson family really said about those weeks before the murders, they were short on food and hungry, not horny. But talking about the sex was evidently more interesting than the actual sex. Not that I knew anything about sex myself, but sex with a bunch of dirty hippies not being awesome seemed totally possible. The story was better than the stinky, hungry truth.

It’s not like that would have been a first.





13

Dex said one of the fastest ways to make money in LA was to be an extra on a sitcom—totally legal for minors, and the unions made sure the pay was sweet. He wrote me into a Chips Ahoy! episode, where I played the quiet half of a nerdy sister pair whose boat comes across the Chips’ yacht just before a hurricane hits. I got to wear glasses even bigger than my regular ones, and some crazy plaid miniskirt and kneesocks, and my one line was “Does not compute, buttercup,” which I tried to say like a computer, but I think I just sounded like the nervous lunatic I was. Dex said I was great, and even Josh gave me a high five when the scene was over. “I love those socks,” Jeremy said. “And the glasses. Classic.”

“Yeah,” Josh said. “A few more cameos and you’ll be the next Olivia Taylor.” He was cracking himself up.

“Shiiit,” Jeremy said. “I forgot about Olivia.”

“Lucky you,” Josh said without a touch of humor.

“I’ve gotta get out of here.” Jeremy looked at the time on his phone and then at me. “Want to come with?”

Jeremy and I hadn’t talked much since the day we went to the cemetery, so I assumed that he had written me off as a terrible, possibly pitiful human being best kept at arm’s length.

“Sure,” I said, trying hard to sound cool, but I think I accidentally used my computer voice instead.

“I have an idea,” Jeremy whispered. “Top secret.”

I pretended to lock my lips and gave him the Chips Ahoy! salute. If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was keep a secret.

*

Once we were in the car, Jeremy told me his sister was leaving town for Vegas, where she was sponsoring a series of parties on the strip. He was supposed to feed the snake and iguana while she was gone. The way he saw it, I could get back the purse I’d bought her and return it for cash, right a wrong, and the best part was that she was so loaded up with crap and unopened swag that she wouldn’t even miss it.

“Have you seen her place?” He signaled and practically stopped driving as he rounded the corner to her street, but then he picked up speed. “I’m just warning you, it’s not what you think.”

“Okay,” I said. But what ever was?

Olivia Taylor lived in a super-posh subdivision with a friendly but armed guard who greeted us at the gate before we drove to her bungalow. It wasn’t a mansion, which I guess I had been expecting, but was definitely too big for one human being. The outside had a rock garden with benches, a small, squarish fountain, and an atrium with a clogged pond and a few sluggish fish bobbing on the surface.