- EDIT: If you would like to see how I envisage these characters, my cast is posted (not with pictures, mind, but we'll get to that soon...) on my profile. Feel free to look, and let me know what you think. Do they match the way you imagined the characters? Also, deep thanks to everyone who reviewed! Love you all for all of the kind things you say! 3
two internalisation
It would take Massie no more than ten minutes to walk from Briarwood to her father's Beverly Hills villa - even if she were wearing her highest stilettos and her tightest Dita von Teese-style silk skirt. That timelime was irrelevant, however, because Massie would never walk to or from school; nor would any of her peers, given a choice. And most of them were able to choose.
It took half an hour for Massie to reach her home, despite her erratic bob-and-weave style of driving and her determination to speed through every yellow light in her path. Her phone vibrated, beeped and sang mechanically every five minutes, heralding the arrival of numerous messages. Apologies, she hoped, and explanations for what she'd seen.
But what had she seen? So Derrick and Alicia had snuck away from school early, lied to her about where they would be (and with whom) and worn matching looks of surprise and guilt when they'd met her eyes. So what? Did that really mean that they were sneaking around behind her back?
Her Range Rover rolled to a stop in front of the wrought iron gate that seperated Wainwright Villas - a paradise of nearly-identical villas lined up, one after the other - from the crush and noise of Los Angeles. "Massie Block," she said to the twenty-four hour guard, leaning out of the window. She fussed with her quilted Chanel wallet; struggled to slip her I.D. from the clear panel that held it.
"I wouldn't worry about that," the guard told her. "I've been working here for a year, Miss Block... I think I know who you are by now."
Massie's lips spread in a thin grimace. How could you ever really know someone - let alone after one measly year? She'd known Alicia longer than she'd known how to curl her hair, but that hadn't prepared her for the betrayal she'd been subjected to... "Thanks, Ron," she murmured, and drove through the slowly opening gates.
Her father wasn't home. His Prius was missing from it's usual place in front of the two-car garage. Massie parked hers under cover, lowered the garage door, and paused for a moment. She used the time to steel herself, and then spared a glance at her phone's LCD display.
Massie! You're not answering your phone mass. Come back, I'll explain what's happening. That was Derrick's first message. It wasn't terribly apologetic, and hinted at some reasonable explaination for why her best friend and boyfriend were creeping behind her back. He'd left several others - twelve, in fact, which were all variations on the same theme - and four voice messages.
Alicia had left two: hey, you just disappeared, lol. x,and, whatever. derrick told me about all the arguments you guys have been having lately- if you don't take care of your man, then someone else is going to. Massie's amber eyes welled with tears. She took ten calming breaths, before taking the Blackberry clutched tightly in her hands and hurling it at the nearest white-washed, wood-panelled wall. Take care of your man? What did that even mean? Massie wasn't exactly a porn star in the bedroom, but she'd helped Derrick with his English homework, cooked for him and his father when his mother was out of town, and picked up his dry-cleaning on a number of occasions. Surely all of those incidents were considerably more important that a blow job, or sex, or whatever Alicia had shared with her man?
"Bitch," Massie hissed darkly, slipping through the sliding door and into the entryway. She made her way along the hallway, the clicking of her shoes echoing off of the mushroom-colored walls. Instinctively, she paused by the open doorway of her father's office. It was a masculine room, full of mahogany wood and leather-bound books, and her father's collection of vintage cameras. It was the one room in the villa that had always intimidated her.
"Dad?" Massie called, hesitant.
A minute passed without reply before Massie felt it was safe to pass by the door and continue along the hall towards the kitchen. It wasn't that Massie didn't love her father. Massie didn't really know her father well enough to like or dislike him, and the thought of sitting through a half-hour interview with him - about why she was upset, and why she had felt the need to throw her phone against the wall, breaking it into hundreds of small pieces - made her feel even more physically afflicted than she already did.
William Block was considered by many to be the greatest photo-journalist of his time. His journalistic works were contained in the archives of great and reputable publications like National Geographic and The New Yorker. In fact, he had once been offered the illustrious position of Time Magazine Editor, but had turned it down - not because he wanted to spend more time with his young daughter, but because such a stable position would inhibit his ability to travel the world, speaking for the silent.
To put it simply: William Block could understand the suffering of all except his 'spoilt', melodramatic, privileged adolescent daughter.
The kitchen was sparkling and smelt of citrus, just as it always did. The pantry was empty but for bottles of Chianti and of whiskey, and a few packets of sliced almonds. The fridge was empty, too, except for the crisper which contained several nectarines and a jar of gourmet-style pesto. Neither discovery surprised Massie, because her father had been ordering in food every night for the past twelve years. The fridge was only stocked if Massie stocked it; the pantry only full if Massie did the shopping.
Massie let go of the door, and it closed itself as it was designed to do. A note, written on William Block's monogrammed 'WJB' one-hundred per cent recycled paper, had been sticky-taped to the sleek silver front of the power-efficient machine.
M -
New York Magazine commissioned a historical piece on New York's oldest families. I departed at 11am, and won't be home for two weeks. Call Kendra should problems arise.
Best wishes, darling,
- W
She crumpled the note in her hand, and tossed it in the general direction of the garbage disposal. It landed on the granite bench top, completely missing it's mark. Massie wasn't her usual organised self today, it seemed. The pieces of her phone were still lying on the concrete floor of the garage, where they'd landed, because the thought of touching that heinous piece of machinery disgusted her.
Massie found a small container of gelato buried deep in the freezer (white chocolate and Frangelico, her favorite), and took it to her second-floor bedroom where she opened the French doors that led out onto the balcony, lit the clean cotton candle sitting on her bedside table, and fell backwards onto her overstuffed mattress.
Her hand stretched out of it's own accord, reaching for a battered and dog-eared copy of Love in the Time of Cholera (just one infinitesimal part of her twelfth birthday gift from William: second-hand copies of 'the classics', each with loving forewords penned by fathers and sisters and cousins and friends and lovers much more tender than any Massie had ever known). Massie flipped through it idly, but for once she found herself disillusioned with the way her life was panning out.
She wasn't an unhappy person. She never had been, and she'd assumed - once upon a time - that she never would be. Now, she found herself deeply unhappy.
Her one and only friend was a traitor and a giant bitch; her boyfriend, a manipulator and a liar (and how dare he try and lure her back with assertions like, 'it's not what it looks like' and 'I can explain'? Could he? Could he really? Or was he cooking up a semi-plausible story right now about how Alicia was the liar/traitor/manipulator/all of the above, on the odd chance that she would pause to hear his pathetic excuses?). These were the cold hard facts of her life.
She was an average student - certainly not comparable to the ruthless Alicia or the dedicated Derrick - who excelled only in Creative Writing classes. Her father found her to be a hindrance. Clearly, she wasn't very adept at picking her Inner Circle of Trust.
Massie groaned loudly, tossed her book limp-wristedly towards the floor, and rolled over so that her face was pressed into a memory foam pillow. "I'm a failure!" she groaned, but her aspirations of lying face down, as she was at that moment, and crying into the Smart Tech hyper-dense foam of her pillow, were cut short.
"Mass?"
Massie's head flew up.
"Mass?" the voice repeated.
Massie pushed herself off of the bed and padded towards her open bedroom door. From the landing, she could see a head of perfectly tousled chestnut waves and the shoulders of a muted fuschia Karen Walker suit. "Kendra," she called back, eyebrow furrowed deeply. "Up here."
Kendra took a careful step back and looked upwards. "Oh! There you are! Sweetheart, I just came in through the garage and - " She held up a shard of greyish plastic, jagged at one end. "Accident with your phone?"
"Anger management issues."
"You've heard the expression 'don't shoot the messenger', haven't you? No wonder I couldn't reach you. Is something wrong?"
After taking one calculated step backwards, so that Kendra wouldn't notice her fuzzy unkempt hair or her rumpled shirt (provided that she hadn't already), Massie responded. "Nothing at all," she said breezily, as if it would convince her that there really was nothing wrong.
"Well, why don't you get changed and come downstairs? I have some important news to tell you."
Kendra Ryan was a Hollywood power broker. She forged iron-clad contracts, aligned project (be it movie, script, or endorsement) with artist, and struck fear into the hearts of heavyweights worldwide - all while wearing to-die-for shoes. She was also William Block's literary agent, and an old friend from Columbia. Kendra was the closest thing to a mother that Massie had ever known. Her own had passed away giving birth to her only child, leaving behind a broken husband and a doppelganger daughter. When Massie was faced with a problem, Kendra was usually - usually, but not always - the first person Massie contacted.
"So," Kendra said, tightening her death grip on her mug. "How was the last day of school?"
"Adequate. You said you wanted to talk about something?"
Kendra nodded. "How do you feel about Claire Lyons?"