Where It Began

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.

And you have to figure, Billy must have more than a little something to do with this given that even though Agnes is saving my life, you can tell she hates my guts, my parents, my house, and all our purple highball glasses, matching straws, and ugly furniture.

You have to figure that Billy has somehow charmed her into the car and down the hill with my address and instructions to save me.

And you have to figure that even if I have to stay away from him until he charms the hell out of his probation officer or whatever it takes to get me out of the Probation Violation category and back into the Girlfriend category, he must still kind of want me.

My plan is to plow my way through the fastest rehabilitation in the history of mankind so I can give Billy Nash what you have to figure he still kind of wants.

XXVI

BILLY NASH.

I am in a haze of total adoration.

More than usual, to the extent it is possible for my mind to be any more hazed over than it already is. And then, in one of those perfect moments of perfectly fulfilled wishes, when I am staring at the screen of my computer and playing auto-solitaire trying to calm down and wishing he was there, there he is.

pologuy: r u feeling better now G?

gabs123: ur a god and your mother is, damn, i don’t even know what she is. seriously. i don’t even believe this.

pologuy: believe it. how do u think a dangerous guy like me is still walking around?

gabs123: well thanks for sending her my way.

pologuy: my pleasure

gabs123: exactly nash. i’d like to thank u in person. In the interest of ur pleasure. i was thinking the door by my laundry room might have some potential.

pologuy: sorry juliet. might not get out of this house until the princeton letter is bronzed. fml. she went berserk when i was at the castle. she bribed the guy at the guard gate and kap’s housekeeper to rat me out if i show up there after 6 p.m.

gabs123: too bad the KGB went out of business. she could run it.

pologuy: thx for the fun fact. will it b on AP euro?

gabs123: u know what i mean.

pologuy: i know. it’s child abuse. i’m in rooster shack withdrawal. among other things

gabs123: what things would that b, nash?

pologuy: u know what things

I do know what things.

And I know where I have to be to have the slightest chance of getting a crack at those particular things.

Unfortunately, the prospects for my glorious return to Winston School, where I could actually be somewhat near Billy without sneaking through someone’s abandoned shrubbery on Via Hermosita, close enough so he could actually figure out what things he still kind of wants in person, are looking kind of grim.

Unfortunately, the Agnes Nash plan for avoiding all consequences of bad behavior entails meetings with a cast of thousands of helpful professionals who have to sign off on my every move, and going back to school is apparently on the bottom of the juvenile delinquent to-do list.

Something it is difficult to explain to Anita and Lisa.

“Okay,” Anita says, sitting on my bed eating the carrot cake Lisa made. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but do you know when you’re coming back? I mean, you’ve already missed two weeks of school, not even counting break. Everybody wants to know how you are.”

Lisa has actually collected my books from my locker, a get-well card organized by Sasha Aronson and signed by everyone in permission-only advanced painting, and horrifyingly detailed assignment sheets from all my teachers. My math teacher, Miss Lewin, had written, “No pressure. Just do what you can and we’ll deal with makeup work as soon as you get back,” as if the concept of no pressure makes any kind of sense in co

“I have to see a bunch of people first.”

“Neurologists?” Anita asks.

It is all just so embarrassing.

“Do you have a good lawyer?” Anita asks.

“I haven’t seen him yet.”

Lisa and Anita exchange looks. “I’m sure your parents are totally on top of this and it’s all going to work out,” Lisa says. “But do you want me to ask my uncle? He’s a lawyer in San Francisco.”

“My mom knows some law professors,” Anita says. Her mom is an ethnomusicology professor at UCLA and an expert on South Asian percussion, so unless there are some law professors drumming up a storm and banging gourds together down in Westwood, this doesn’t sound like much of a plan.

“Thanks for the thought, but I’m pretty sure my guy is decent. Billy’s mother found him.”

Lisa and Anita exchange more looks, as if the first a

Anita clears her throat. “Are you sure this is smart?”

“Of course it’s smart!” I say. “Why wouldn’t it be smart? Billy has a lot of experience getting out of this kind of stuff.”

“Yeah, but don’t you want to get a lawyer just for yourself?” Lisa asks.

No.

What I really want is for this whole thing to go away and never have happened and for Lisa and Anita, who have never so much as shoplifted a peanut butter cup and whose entire knowledge of the criminal justice system comes from watching Law & Order reruns, to stop giving me legal advice.

XXVII

I HAVE MY HANDS FULL WITH LEGAL ASSISTANCE from Vivian, which turns out to be one of those hideous life lessons in the Be Careful What You Wish For category.

Vivian is so enthusiastically down with Agnes’s directives, you would think she was gearing up for a shopping trip to the fashion capitals of Europe. Apart from the fact that she keeps coming back from Barneys with the world’s ugliest clothes and forcing me to put them on, such as a bottom-of-the-unwashed-bowl-of-oatmeal-colored cashmere sweater Amish women would wear if they happened to shop Wilshire Boulevard.