Back in Black
Copyright © 2005 by Alloy Entertainment
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
hachettebookgroupusa.com
First eBook Edition: September 2005
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-04158-4
Contents
Outside the Well-Bred-East-Coast-WASP Box
If you have to ask, you'll never be on …
THE A-LIST
Be sure to read all the novels in the
New York Times
bestselling A-LIST series
THE A-LIST
GIRLS ON FILM
BLONDE AMBITION
TALL COOL ONE
BACK IN BLACK
SOME LIKE IT HOT
AMERICAN BEAUTY
HEART OF GLASS
And keep your eye out for BEAUTIFUL STRANGER, coming September 2007.
HOW FAR WILL ONE GIRL GO TO BECOME …
the it girl
Be sure to read all the novels in the
New York Times
bestselling it girl series
the it girl
notorious
reckless
unforgettable
And keep your eye out for
Lucky
, coming November 2007.
A-List novels by Zoey Dean:
THE A-LIST
GIRLS ON FILM
BLONDE AMBITION
TALL COOL ONE
BACK IN BLACK
SOME LIKE IT HOT
AMERICAN BEAUTY
HEART OF GLASS
If you like THE A-LIST, you may also enjoy:
Bass Ackwards and Belly Up
by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain
Secrets of My Hollywood Life
by Jen Calonita
Haters
by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
and keep your eye out for
Betwixt
by Tara Bray Smith, coming October 2007
For Princess Roz and Princess Bella
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
—Elizabeth Taylor
“W
elcome to the Academy Awards,” Samantha Sharpe told her friend Anna Percy. She gestured with a flourish toward the endless red carpet that led to the front of the palatial Kodak Theatre. “Or, as I like to call it,
The Young and the Desperate.”
“They don't look desperate,” Anna observed, taking in the paparazzi snapping photos of the early arrivals, the reporters shoving microphones into the practiced smiles of perfectly coiffed celebrities. From bleachers on both sides of the carpet, fans who'd camped out for days to get seats waited with anticipation for their favorites.
“But they do look young, and most of them so aren't,” Sam replied over the noise. “Thus proving that it's all smoke and mirrors.”
“And plastic surgery,” Anna added.
It seemed as if every other person Anna had met since she'd moved to Beverly Hills had had work done, including a lot of her classmates at Beverly Hills High School. None of them admitted it, of course. But showing up after vacation with a different nose (“I had a deviated septum; that's the only reason I did it”), sudden cleavage (“I just developed late”), or newly toned former thunder thighs (“I'm doing South Beach, plus I found this amazing cream that melts cellulite”) was so commonplace as to be banal.
Anna had not been a part of this world for very long. In some ways it was completely different from the tony life on the Upper East Side of Manhattan into which she'd been born and bred. And in other ways it was nearly the same. Plastic surgery abounded on both coasts, certainly: the pressure to look young and thin. But what impressed people on one coast made those on the other either yawn or roll their eyes. For example, in Anna's former world, a gallery opening by an artist no one had discovered yet, or a book reading by an author who had been, say, a former political prisoner, was considered the height of hip. In this new world, such things were barely comprehended. It was all about TV and movies, glitter and glitz. And the pièce de résistance of it all was the Academy Awards.
Sam shook her newly highlighted chestnut hair off her shoulders. “Trust me, under the Botox and the couture, they're sweating bullets—at least, they would be if they hadn't had their armpits Botoxed, too.”
Anna laughed. “No one really does that, do they?”
“You'd be surprised,” Sam confided.
Anna had dined with royalty, but tonight she'd rub elbows with royalty of an entirely different sort, thanks to her friendship with Sam Sharpe. That was how she had come to be strolling the most famous red carpet in the world—the one laid down on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, the one that led directly into the Kodak Theatre—on Oscar night.
Well, Oscar afternoon. Sam had explained it all to Anna as they'd prepared for the event. In order to meet the requirements of international television—the world's most important motion-picture awards ceremony was seen by a worldwide audience that reputedly reached a billion—the preshow broadcasts kicked off while the sun was still high in the late winter sky.
That the event was called Oscar
night
was hardly the most dishonest thing about it. The intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, where the Kodak Theatre was located, was normally a very seedy place, but it had undergone a makeover for the television audience's viewing pleasure. The tarot card reader shops, tattoo parlors, fast-food joints, and Hollywood tchotchke storefronts had been wrapped in enough fresh cotton fabric to make Christo proud. Potted plants and shrubbery had been imported to line the red carpet, along with dozens of oversized replicas (hollow, of course—people had to lift the damn things, after all—but correctly proportioned) of the coveted Oscar statue itself. Once the celebrities stepped out of their limousines, they were inside an artificial Oscar world.
Anna gave her friend an encouraging smile. “Hey, we're the observers, not the observed,” she pointed out. “We can relax.”
“Yeah, right, with all these photographers around?” Sam scoffed. “And I swear, if my father doesn't win this year, I'm gonna kill someone. That'll make a great picture for tomorrow's
Los Angeles Times
.”
Anna nodded. She had conventional (albeit long-divorced) rich parents by East Coast standards—her father was an investment banker and adviser; her mother came from the oldest of old-money families and mostly spent her time getting to know intimately the young wunderkind artists whose work she loved to acquire. Sam, on the other hand, came from a Hollywood family. Her father was Jackson Sharpe, one of the most beloved movie stars in the world. An action hero in the mold of Harrison Ford but quite a bit younger, Jackson was pure box-office gold. Put him in one of those films where a lot of shit got blown up and the script didn't call for much character development, and a movie studio basically guaranteed itself a franchise.
“I should, you know,” Sam argued. “This is his third nomination. It's getting worse than Martin Scorsese. Of course, the assholes in this town are probably rooting for him to lose.”
“Sam, hi!” Sheryl called as she got out of her limo.
Sam waved. “My dad did a huge fund-raiser for cancer research with her,” Sam explained to Anna. “Be right back.”
As Sam went to chat with the singer, Anna peered down the carpet toward the huge white theater—actually, a complex that housed the theater. The carpet itself covered the entire street and was divided down the center with a red velvet rope. An event security person was positioned every few feet. On either side of the walkways the event organizers had erected tiers of bleachers. The seats were already filled with photographers, studio employees, and obsessed movie fans who could both pass a background check and were willing to wait in line long enough to get an up-close-and-personal glimpse of their favorite stars. Sam had brought Anna reasonably early so that she could get the full gestalt of the event.
It had actually been tremendous fun, getting ready for the awards. The week before, Anna had purchased a new evening gown for the occasion—something she rarely did, because she preferred the vintage Chanels and Diors handed down from her maternal grandmother.
But Sam had insisted that they shop together. “Shopping” in this case had meant that a stylist had brought a selection of gowns over to the Sharpe compound, size four for Anna, size … well, larger than size four for Sam. When Anna had suggested that it might be easier to visit some of the boutiques on Rodeo Drive or Melrose Avenue, Sam had informed her that dresses for the Oscars definitely did not come off the rack.
Anna had ended up with a strapless white satin Vera Wang, with an elegantly simple neckline that was modest in the front but dipped down to just above her butt in the back. With it, she wore her maternal grandmother's perfect pearls and the diamond stud earrings her paternal grandmother had given her on her sixteenth birthday. Her blond hair hung straight and shiny to her shoulders.
Sam, who always worried about her weight—by Beverly Hills standards, she was a long way from thin (read: she took a size ten or twelve)—had insisted on wearing black: an Oscar de la Renta with a low-cut neckline lined in lime chiffon. It matched her lime-and-black polka-dot Charles David pumps with black patent leather stiletto heels. She was dripping diamonds loaned to her by Harry Winston, as befitted the daughter of a famous star. The twenty-thousand-dollar diamond Cartier watch on her left wrist was her own. It was a gift from her father after the birth of his and Sam's new stepmother Poppy's baby, Ruby Hummingbird.
Oscar day—well, Oscar morning—had been a frenzy of preparation, Beverly Hills style. Anna and Sam had started at the Thibiant day spa on North Canon Drive, with contouring clay wraps, which included twenty-five-minute lymphatic-drainage massages followed by full-body clay masks to eliminate any surface toxins. These were followed by papaya-pineapple-enzyme exfoliations, which themselves were precursors to add-on collagen masks. Following longer massages, manicures, and pedicures, the pair had exited onto the sunny streets of Beverly Hills utterly transformed.