Where It Began(35)

“All right, then,” she says. “Let’s roll up our sleeves and make this whole thing go away. I’m going to say the same thing to you I said to Billy when he started down this trail. You have a problem: Deal with it.” She starts ticking things off on her fingers until it becomes clear that if she makes any more points, she’ll use up so many of those fingers she’ll have to put down drink number three.

“There is a tried and true way to make this go away,” she says, staring at me. “You have to take this seriously or it could seriously derail . . . well . . . whatever path it is you’re on. You need a lawyer who knows what he’s doing. Oh, and you’d better find her some really good psych treatment pronto or she could end up in a group home in South Central. Or out of state, God forbid.”

It’s surreal.

“I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen to you,” Agnes says, noticing that I am about to die. “Thank God we were able to keep Billy out of rehab and get him some nice psychotherapy with Dan Jackman out in Malibu this time.”

My parents are just standing there nodding their heads like bobble-headed dashboard dolls.

“We’re so sorry about the car,” my mother says, cringing some more.

“The car is the least of our problems,” Mrs. Nash says. “That’s what insurance is for, that damned blue car. Had to be midnight-blue. We’re certainly not going to make a fuss about it. You just keep doing what you’re doing and as far as I’m concerned, he gave her the keys and that’s that.”

That’s that? That’s that! You have to give the boy credit. He is a parental manipulation god. And I am semi-officially the not-a-car-thief drunken girlfriend.

Sort of.

More squinting and peering from Agnes. “All right? Are we on the same page?”

But college, my mother moans. College college college. How will Little Thug Girl ever get into college?

Mrs. Nash sighs some more. “Oh puh-lease,” she says. “Let me help you with this one. College loves a good sob story. Just make sure her grades improve a little afterward and then make sure she counsels others. Not now. Not yet. As soon as she deals with it, though, pronto. With her Problem, I mean.”

“Are you sure, Agnes?” I swear, anyone with nice accessories offers Vivian a crumb of hope and she’s all over them, kissing the hem of their garment and sniffing around for more crumbs.

“I paid through the nose to be sure,” Agnes says. “We hired a consultant. Damage control for college. Mid-five figures. No reason for you to reinvent the wheel here. I’ll get you his info; just run the essay past him.”

“But Billy doesn’t have to counsel others,” I say. It just slips out of my dry, sleepy mouth.

Mrs. Nash gives me the same look she gave the nasty gin and tonic. “Hel-lo. At the Youth League shelter. He most certainly does.”

Well, not exactly.

Student Council decorates the Santa Monica Youth League shelter for holiday parties. Billy, who is not exactly into crepe paper and plastic turkeys, doesn’t even show up.

You can picture him standing around on the boardwalk under the pier in Santa Monica getting high while me and the rest of the Student Council are laying on the masking tape and festive poster-board snowflakes. I mean, the only helpful counseling he could possibly be doing would have to be arriving by astral projection via the psychic cat that’s always out there on the Third Street Promenade in a wizard hat making money for his half-zonked owner.

Still, it is always reassuring to be reminded that you aren’t the only person in the Three B’s whose parents aren’t exactly familiar with you or what you do in your spare time.

Agnes whips out her BlackBerry and a little pad of paper and starts writing in a terrifying frenzy. Lawyers, doctors, people for the lawyers and doctors to contact at the LAPD and the DA’s office, the college consultant, an army of people who are going to help me, by which she means people who can be pushed around to cooperate in the secret plan to get me out of the consequences for everything I can’t remember.

And I keep thinking, she can’t actually hate me that much if she’s doing all this stuff for me, or why would she be doing it, right?

But then I see her looking up from the BlackBerry and glancing over at me and I see the expression on her face and I think, Yeah, well, she actually can.

Agnes leaves and my parents have another drink and sit there, hunkered down in the living room, staring out at the view, faint lights and the night-black ocean, streetlights and stars, completely awestruck and wiped out with drunken relief.

I sit there stirring cranberry juice and just the smallest drop of vodka with a suddenly tacky purple glass straw in a suddenly tacky purple glass tumbler, and Vivian says, “Gabby, don’t clink,” so she and John can take in what just happened in stewed silence.

“Are you going to get me a lawyer like she said?” I ask.

“You are going to do exactly what she said,” Vivian says, as if this is what she’s wanted all along and I’ve been holding out on her for no apparent reason.

I don’t say anything.

What do I care if she’s drunk and delusional, as long as she’s going along with the Agnes Nash plan to save my ass?

It is as if every small suspicion I’ve ever had that the mega-rich of the Three B’s know the Secrets of the Universe and can therefore get anything they want is confirmed, now that Agnes has swept down from the gated manse on Mulholland trailing the very secrets I need to get out of this situation, get back to Winston School, and (sorry, Agnes) get back with Billy Nash.