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Pop Tart
Kira Coplin
Julianne Kaye
She was America's sweetheart. Until the love affair ended with a bang…Young make-up artist Jackie Reilly has always dreamed of making it big in TinselTown, concealing the flaws of the rich and famous. Stuck in a rut with a crazy boss, she thinks her big break will never come - until she meets a girl who guarantees her life will never be the same again…16-year-old Brooke Parker is bubbly, vivacious, charming - and about to become the world's most famous teenager. A pop singer on the verge of superstardom, Brooke instantly takes a shine to Jackie and draws her into a world of white-stretch limos, screaming fans and invitations to VIP events.But as Jackie quickly finds out, fame has its dark side. Forced to juggle the various egos of Brooke's entourage - from bitchy stylists to over-eager publicists and a manager that serves his own interests before all else - all preserving the golden girl image of brand Brooke.Caught in the tight grip of the P.R machine, Brooke starts to rebel, taking Jackie along for the ride. At first her bad girl antics are a blast, earning her even more column inches, but when her heavy partying brings Brooke's demons to the surface she begins to fall apart and soon, she is taking Jackie down with her.When Jackie is forced to learn the rules of showbusiness the hard way, her friendship with Brooke is put to the ultimate test - will she be yet another casualty of Brooke's increasing quest for fame?Or can she save herself - and Brooke?
KIRA COPLIN AND JULIANNE KAYE
Pop Tart
Copyright (#u4cbd8aad-95aa-55b8-b4fe-31e649f64b19)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) A Paperback Original 2009 First published in the USA by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009
Copyright © Kira Coplin and Julianne Kaye 2009
Kira Coplin and Julianne Kaye assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847561206
Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007331451
Version: 2018-06-13
For Ruth Waller, my grandmother, who always encouraged my silly dreams …
–K.C.
To my son, Jack, and my husband, Eddie, for inspiring me every day …
–J.K.
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u799bc7de-821b-5f55-9b8e-1ea0725a74cf)
Copyright (#u4bd55bbd-300d-5782-8328-2ec90681ccaa)
Prologue (#u086049b9-9fbd-554d-845d-6f016e1337f3)
Chapter One (#ub6d82a81-8e7b-56e8-a2c9-eb2658c96999)
Chapter Two (#uef290ca3-e837-5ad4-a688-67644a8aa727)
Chapter Three (#uf8cc63af-1811-50df-801e-4589b3e3aef9)
Chapter Four (#ufc924524-45a9-59e1-a9f5-7a2a32209339)
Chapter Five (#u54940f7d-267c-5c3f-973e-e1a1cb1a99e7)
Chapter Six (#u023d9671-f5ed-5cd0-87b6-c68f9b24cfd4)
Chapter Seven (#uee8ea434-e087-5c5b-91df-5394ddbb53bd)
Chapter Eight (#u0fefd0ac-b04c-53d6-a048-75d705a89a3e)
Chapter Nine (#u91a0a0ba-9805-541d-b34b-32bbeb664aaa)
Chapter Ten (#u0950f5ad-7901-5146-a8de-bd13a64b61d5)
Chapter Eleven (#ub32ef8ac-c485-5734-9cc9-5c88b183f6de)
Chapter Twelve (#uc9948e2a-d2b5-5814-90a7-4617789ad9ab)
Chapter Thirteen (#u21ea3c83-733e-50b7-8002-6b3e123a624c)
Chapter Fourteen (#ua5bb2674-a941-5672-a369-599470cb7b32)
Chapter Fifteen (#uac074819-35d3-5d58-8662-2e35e71536d7)
Chapter Sixteen (#u1c959b86-908c-5b97-9015-ec2840707f46)
Chapter Seventeen (#u34dfe7d5-8a73-5714-bcbe-639a1fbee675)
Chapter Eighteen (#u32a4bd6d-7e3c-571a-bc54-feb9593de909)
Chapter Nineteen (#u4bc4a4dd-51a6-511c-ba01-d805591e7521)
Chapter Twenty (#u4b267a7a-463e-5179-ba4d-02d2e4590c86)
Chapter Twenty-One (#uc26a0e81-a609-5457-8077-5b8e18a2af24)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#u6ff7d5e9-7eb9-5c09-9d56-6cced62142dc)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#u25d1b093-b6a1-5108-9ae7-1d095c58b192)
Acknowledgments (#ue32071c5-9165-5c7a-8128-256c0f4390dc)
Are You Hungry For Fame (#udefbcfe0-1f17-5e73-801b-423bd8532cda)
About the Author (#u6b4057d5-dec2-53ca-9897-f1e9d5c748a1)
About the Publisher (#u2ec9567a-9c38-5cc8-8866-2cfe0c1272cd)
Prologue (#u4cbd8aad-95aa-55b8-b4fe-31e649f64b19)
What can you say about a society that says
God is dead and Elvis is alive?
– Irv Kupcinet
A jolt of electricity runs from Crescent Heights Boulevard to Doheny Drive – a gleaming, vibrating stretch of asphalt and neon so notorious that Sin City named its ‘Strip’ after it. It’s there on Sunset Boulevard where the rich and famous play out their scandals for the world to see – where ‘It Girls’ dance pantyless atop the oversized Monkeywood tables of Hollywood clubs, and where poolside catfights are veiled only by the thick foliage of the Marmont. And on one particular night in late November, just a stone’s throw from the glittering lights and madness of the Sunset Strip, I inadvertently became a key player in one of the most shocking celebrity dramas of the past decade. No matter how I try to put the puzzle together, to coherently map out the timeline of events, pieces are still missing and holes will always remain.
There was an unnatural stiffness in the air that night as I raced down empty boulevards typically teeming with drivers blasting their radios, or assholes laying on their horns.
Expressionless models from billboards stuccoed on the sides of shopping malls glared down on me; tonight they almost appeared menacing. The city itself felt like a ghost town at this hour, loosely woven and wrapped in nebulous unease. Waiting at a traffic light, anxiously drumming my fingers on the dashboard, I spot the only other living soul out on the street – a tall, muscular man with long brown hair falling past his shoulder blades, rollerblading in circles, wearing nothing but spandex shorts and laughing hysterically as if sending out a warning, ‘Proceed with caution, the crazies are out tonight.’
I turned onto the tree-lined street, lit up by the glow of a sign that read: Emergency Department. It was empty. Momentary relief washed over me. ‘Maybe it’s okay. Maybe no one knows.’ But I knew this kind of thinking was premature. I’d been around long enough to know the percolating frenzy: chatter from police scanners had already alerted reporters and photographers, letting them know that something was amiss deep in the Valley. I screeched to a halt in the first parking garage I could find, almost forgetting to pull the keys from the ignition. ‘Fuck,’ I muttered under my breath, wondering if I could’ve parked any further from the hospital entrance. I moved fast – the gentle summer breeze mocking my distress – time was limited, that much I knew. Up ahead, a single police car with its sirens blaring flew up to the entrance of the E.R. That’s where things get a little fuzzy. A wave of adrenaline washed over me, stimulating my heart rate and dilating my air passages, prompting me to break out into a sprint. Like an animal prepared for an attack, my footsteps echoed noisily along the pavement only to be masked by the drone of helicopters appearing suddenly overhead, circling like mosquitoes. ‘They’ve found her, this is it, get ready,’ I told myself, knowing that within mere seconds I would be submerged in complete pandemonium. I had hoped to make it inside before the throngs of people began to gather, but that hope was gone now.
By the time I made my way to the entrance, hospital workers had begun erecting screens in front of the doors to shield them from the hordes of paparazzi and news cameras on the sidewalk. No one quite knew what was going on.
‘I just got pulled out of bed by my editor,’ a disheveled tabloid reporter, still in her pajamas, complained.
‘Maybe she’s dead!’ one paparazzo yelled out, causing the crowd to erupt in laughter.
‘That wouldn’t be so bad. Then we’d finally be able to get some sleep,’ another reporter muttered to her coworker, who nodded sheepishly.
Our attention was soon directed to the motorcade that seemed to appear out of nowhere, more than a dozen lights and sounds spanning two blocks. As it moved in our direction, inhuman chaos broke out. Photographers leapt from cars stopped at red lights and swarmed the ambulance – hanging off of it as if it were a life raft – all elbows and shoulders, knuckles and dilated lenses, hoping for a snapshot of an American sweetheart in her state of distress. What had really gone on in the hours leading up to this moment, no one knew. Was she near death? Had she lost her mind? Would she emerge in a puff of stage smoke and dry ice, looking absolutely breathtaking and wave to the crowd as if the world were her stage? The only thing that was certain, not only to us outside the hospital, but to the millions of Americans tuning in to watch the drama unfold on live T.V., was that the girl who lived a life that dreams were made of, with a fistful of pop hits to boot – was being ambulanced to the emergency room, prompting people everywhere to ask, ‘How did this all happen?’
I didn’t have to ask.
I knew exactly how it had happened. I had seen it all first hand.
To the rest of the world, Brooke Parker was an immovable force. To them, she was the girl that sang happy songs with childlike abandon, who gyrated with vampy sex appeal across glittering stages and who lived in a world of feelings instead of facts – a dream, all smoke and mirrors. It was that face they’d seen so many times before – her doe eyes turned toward the camera, radiating the screen as she smiles – a smile that made them wonder what it would truly be like, how it would really feel, to be the kind of girl who had it all.
Chapter One (#u4cbd8aad-95aa-55b8-b4fe-31e649f64b19)
There are three sides to every story:
My side, your side and the truth. And no one is lying.
–Robert Evans
It was unusually warm for February in Beverly Hills. Men in suits beckoned to take their lunch meetings outside while their wives trotted down to Rodeo Drive to spend their hard-earned cash on things like diamond-encrusted purse hangers. I sat at my desk facing the window, watching groups of women saunter in and out of pricey boutiques. Clean-cut boys in ties lounged outside of the Brighton Coffee Shop sipping vanilla lattes, presumably conversing about their mailroom duties at William Morris and favorite movies. As a pack of girls zipped by, arms weighed down with shopping bags from Ron Herman and Hermès, cell phone chimes peeled my attention back to life inside the office.
‘Jackie? It’s your mother.’
‘Mom, I know it’s you, it comes up on my caller I.D.,’ I said, rolling my eyes.
‘How is everything going? How’s the job?’
‘It’s great. Sheryl’s just finishing up a cover shoot for a magazine and then on Sunday I’m assisting her for another job. Not sure yet what it is exactly, it’s on a studio lot in the Valley,’ I told her, trying to sound as upbeat as possible.
‘So, you’re working on the weekends now too?’ my mother asked.
‘When I’m needed,’ I said quickly.
‘Well, this doesn’t sound like a job you had to quit school for…I mean, maybe next semester you could find one like it back in Boston,’ she said.
I inhaled deeply. ‘I didn’t drop out of school for this job. I dropped out because I wanted to take my career in another direction.’
‘Oh honey, you are so close to graduating. You only have four more semesters left…it just seems like such a waste to quit now. Why don’t you just finish and then if you still want to enroll in cosmetology school, do it then.’
‘I don’t want to go to cosmetology school. I want to work on shoots…I don’t need a degree for that, I can do it now and that’s what I’m doing,’ I told her, eyeing the overly Botoxed blond entering the side door to the salon where we rented space. It was my boss, Sheryl.
‘But you’re just an assist—’
‘Mom, I have to go,’ I said hastily.
‘Your father will be home early tonight. I think it’s a perfect time for the three of us to have a serious discussion.’
‘Sure, whatever you want–I have to go,’ I repeated before cutting her off and hanging up the phone.
Phone calls from my mother like that one had become routine during the last six months since I dropped out of Boston University, right before my junior year. Home for the summer and bored with books, I searched for a creative outlet to take my mind off of the grueling schedule that would be waiting for me once again at the end of August.
‘I think I might want to try the whole acting thing again for a while,’ I said to my parents, who were poised on chaise lounges in our house, referring to my brief stint of commercial work at the age of three. My mother grabbed at bits of her graying hair and shook her head. My father just frowned. The endless dabblings of my childhood, which they once considered amusing, had long since grown tired.
Drawn to color and music at a very young age, I spent time experimenting with various artistic undertakings. ‘I am going to learn to play the flute!’ I’d tell my parents at the dinner table, a typical outburst from me.
‘Yesterday it was ballet lessons, and the day before that you were going to learn to play the trombone,’ my mother would laugh.
‘You’re a jack of all trades, kid,’ my father would say as I performed my latest masterpiece for him, perhaps a tap dance routine along the back patio.
The older I got, the more I disliked being good at many things: I wanted to be great at something. I wanted to leave my mark on the world, and somehow an art history degree earned in stuffy old classrooms in Cambridge didn’t seem like step one. Although they had supported my creativity in little ways as a child, my parents were dead set on shipping me out East the day I had my high school diploma in hand. Both of them worked in Hollywood since as long as I could remember and always talked about how brutal ‘the industry’ could be–they strived to keep me away, far away from it. So, when I announced my newly rediscovered acting career the summer after my sophomore year, the word ‘disappointed’ is an understatement.
I spent weeks trying to make the right connections; I even tried to get back in touch with my old agent over at Gersh, only to find out that she was now retired and living in Santa Barbara with her family.
‘Is there anyone you can refer me to?’ I asked.
‘Feel free to submit a résumé and headshot and if they’re interested someone will be in touch,’ she said, as if reading from a script.
I wasn’t going to give up so easily. Instead of wielding a diverse but mediocre portfolio of skills, I wanted to shine in a more singular way. So, when a man from a generic company called Ultimate Casting responded to an email I had sent him, I was thrilled.
‘I think I’ve got something for ya,’ he said. The tone of his voice revealed too much. He called me a knockout and assured me there was a demand for a ‘redhead’ with ‘soft features’ like mine. I could just picture him: hair combed over his balding scalp, Hawaiian shirt stretched snuggly around his protruding belly, short legs kicked up on top of a beat-up old desk, sitting in a minuscule makeshift office somewhere in the Valley, flipping through a roster of numbers and promising idiots like me that he had their ‘star’ on the Hollywood walk.
‘Here’s the deal…we cast for every major network and every major production company in Los Angeles. We don’t make money until you do. I repeat–we don’t make a dime until you’ve booked your first job through us. When you do start working, our service fee kicks in–$69.95 a month…but really, when you think about it, that’s nothing. You can make up to a hundred dollars a day working on movie sets.’ Was he selling me car insurance?
