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So Bent said nothing, and the door stayed shut.

  Mercedes must have finally given up waiting for permission to come in, because eventually the door creaked open. “Hi,” she said meekly.

  Silence.

  Bent hit REFRESH and stared at the screen. A kitten twitched in its sleep.

  Mercedes slowly ventured into the room—deeper and deeper—and finally sat awkwardly down on the foot of the bed.

  Bent ignored her, keeping her hand on the kittens and her eye on the clock in the top corner of her laptop screen.

  Mercedes laid her hand on her daughter’s forehead. It was a supportive gesture implying familiarity and family—the kind who touched each other. The kind you found on scripted television, with parents and grandparents played by people like Roma Downey or Stacy Keach.

  In other words, it was not something Bentley had ever felt before. Not from Mercedes.

  Not for years.

  “I’m—I guess—really.” Mercedes drew a breath and tried again. “I’m sorry.”

  Bent shivered beneath her mother’s hand.

  “I can tell something’s on your mind. Do you want to talk about it? You know you can tell me anything, Bentley.”

  Bent didn’t know what to say.

  Tell you what?

  That I’m not going to get into college and that it doesn’t matter because you’re not going to let me go anyways?

  That Porsche is falling in love with a TryCycle instructor pretending to be a music mogul, and I’m the only one who knows it?

  That Bach has a gambling problem the size of Texas and nobody seems to care?

  That I’m tired of Being Bentley, and tired of being told what to do?

  That maybe growing up means coming up with my own story lines?

  That you can’t ground me and lecture me and expect me to suddenly take you seriously as a parent, after seventeen years of you not letting me call you Mom?

  Should I tell you that?

  That I don’t feel like you love me, and that I hate myself for letting it get to me the way it does?

  Do you really want to know, Mom?

  Bentley sat up and looked at her mother. Really looked at her. Her expression was concerned. Her eyes were sad. The touch of her hand was gentle. But there was something else, something Bentley couldn’t put her finger on.

  It wasn’t just her face that seemed different.

  The way the collar tucks up from the soft gray V of her sweater. The small pearl studs. The pointed Tod’s loafers. The neatly tailored, pressed pants.

  Then Bent realized why she was confused, because she realized what look it was that her mother was going for.

  The word was normal. Practically conventional.

  Almost—and this was most frightening of all—maternal.

  These were not observations Bentley Royce had ever had about her own mother, not even once that she could remember. This was a development both strange and new—and beyond that, terrifying.

  None of this was in the approved Mercedes Royce character bible. This was a character arc taken from the wrong network, maybe Family Programming, or some kind of Thanksgiving special.

  If you believed it.

  No, no, no—

  There was no way to know what part of Mercedes Royce could be trusted. Jeff Grunburg didn’t call her Mercenary Royce for nothing.

  Bent thought about the family chessboard hidden under her bed.

  Was it just another move? Could any of it be real?

  Does she ever feel anything at all?

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Mercedes said.

  Bent didn’t answer as her mother stood up, crossed the room, and pulled the door quietly shut behind her.

  She nuzzled the two sleeping kitten heads with her face, holding still until she could feel their tiny hearts beat in a regular rhythm beneath their downy fur.

  Bent looked back at her computer and refreshed the screen.

  She couldn’t wait another day to get out of the House of Royce, this house of insanity—this hall of mirrors. She was so crushed from the weight of pretending all the time that she could hardly breathe.

  The Royces had rolled right over her, just like they did everyone. That was the problem with the Royces, especially Mercedes.

  They just kept on rolling.

  Even when the ground beneath the red carpet gave way to nothing at all.

  YOUNGEST ROYCE GAMBLES WITH ADDICTION—WILL TROUBLES SPREAD AS SISTER WEDS?

  AP: Reseda, California

  Via Celebcity.com

  Bach (Maybach) Royce, the youngest son in the titular Rolling with the Royces clan, is reportedly facing legal troubles, according to numerous sources familiar with the teen’s current situation.

  Security footage recorded at a local area casino clearly shows Maybach Royce using a fake driver’s license to access the facility’s poker tables.

  While the youngest Royce admits to playing poker socially, he has vigorously defended himself against media allegations of any degree of gambling addiction.

  As mother Mercedes Royce and sisters Porsche and Bentley Royce are increasingly occupied with Porsche’s upcoming wedding, some are speculating that Bach is in for harder times ahead.

  “It could just be a case of falling through the cracks,” said Los Angeles psychiatrist Dr. Barbara Kleinman-Weiss, who has not treated any of the Royce siblings, and who is not familiar with the show. “Or of a child wishing he could fall through the cracks. Or being afraid of cracks, generally. Or, of course, crack.”

  “A significant percentage of family members do admit to feeling some sort of mild depression attributable to being a member of a family,” agreed Sarah Burnes, a research scientist at California State University, Northridge. “Beyond that, a significant percentage of nonfamily members do admit to feeling a certain degree of mild depression attributable to not being a member of a family. Either of these factors could be relevant here.

  “Or the subject could just really like poker.”

  No representatives of the Royce family were available for comment.

  (Disclosure: Celebcity is a fully owned subsidiary of the Lifespan Network, which is itself a fully owned subsidiary of DiosGlobale.)

  Follow @celebcity for breaking details, or www.celebcity.com.

  Fifteen

  FIFTY SHADES OF PINK

  March 2018

  Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills

  (Sunset at Coldwater Canyon)

  Bentley had been fake working on fake planning her sister’s fake shower for more than a month. Since she’d been grounded by her fake mother, there hadn’t exactly been much else to do to fill her off-camera hours, aside from going to the shrink and AA—and thus the library.

  Every Wednesday at five, she wanted to tell Venice the truth about everything she was going through. Instead, she told him about the kittens. About how they slept on her bed and used a litter box in her bathroom. How they played with water bottle tops and shoelaces and paper. How they didn’t want anything except the basics—food and water and scratches, so many scratches. (She didn’t tell him she groomed them with the $150 Mason Pearson69 hairbrush Mercedes had given her, or that it was especially satisfying.)

  Venice had nodded and listened—he got it. “They get you out of your head.” She’d smiled. If he’d known what was in her head, he’d also have known how impossible it was to escape it.

  Every Wednesday at six she went home to proof enough of that: the House of Royce was still crazy, and her sister was still marrying the fraud that was Tomme/Whitey. Bent tried to tell herself she’d been wrong to worry. She tried to think of the engagement as job security; sure, Porsche was marrying a fraud, but that was good television, wasn’t it? The show would stay on the air, and her family would survive. And wasn’t that all anyone cared about, anyway?

  Bent wasn’t so certain anymore.

  Season six rolled onward, and Porsche’s wedding sped toward them—and the shower that Bentley herself had helped fake plan was s
uddenly upon them, as the official start of it all.

  Now, as she descended through the press gauntlet waiting in the driveway outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, Bent wondered if it would ever really end.

  Bentley! Where’ve you been? Bentley, over here! Bentley, how’d things work out with your sister’s fiancé? Come on, Bent? Where’s the smile, gorgeous?

  Porsche, who was all too aware that the bride was generally the center of attention at a bridal shower, hissed at her—“Don’t speak, move!”—and Bent had been grateful to run ahead.

  That was where the bridal aesthetic assault began.

  There had never been so much pink—which Bentley had quickly learned was not the correct word—in one city block. The hotel, historically famous for its coral blush (and sea-foam-green) grandeur, was already the most retro pink hotel in Los Angeles on any normal Saturday. This was not one of those.

  On this exceptional Saturday, the hotel was awash in an entire rainbow composed specifically of various gradations of rose-colored splendor. Porsche’s combination Valentine’s-themed bridal shower plus RWTR shoot plus product launch for Lippies by Porsche had demanded nothing less, and Lifespan had obliged.

  When Bentley stepped through the golden doors that opened to the sunken ballroom occupying a large part of the hotel’s lower floor, she was immediately confronted by an enormous pair of reflective electric-fuchsia lips that parted around a furry red-carpeted tongue, leading into the rest of the space.

  Whoa. I don’t remember fake planning that. . . .

  The lips were momentarily so off-putting that Bent had trouble recalling the theme of her own sister’s party—even after having sat through all the fake planning meetings. When Bent realized she was actually looking at a blown-up image of Porsche’s own roseate plumped and pricked and primed lips, she almost couldn’t bring herself to stumble through them at all. (Bach used the back door.)

  Kiss the Bride, Valentine!

  That was the theme. It also happened to be the name of the particular color of Lippies by Porsche Slick Stick that was launching today, in her own honor. RWTR’s set decorator had outdone herself.

  With the help of a thousand strawberry princess–petaled peonies, a neon-raspberry step and repeat (bearing the Lippies by Porsche logo), watermelon afternoon–hued heart-shaped linen table rounds, salentine rosato heart-dotted netting chair covers, and oversize bubblegum-and-berry weather balloon hearts that had put Production back more than a hundred bucks a pop—the room looked like a four-year-old girl’s dream prom, only if it were sponsored by Pepto-Bismol.

  Plus, hearts.

  As many as Bentley had been able to track down, from every online crafting site known to man. (Dr. A. would have been proud.)

  Porsche herself, in a woven azalea bloom–toned sheath that had cost more than some normal citizens’ cars, was absolutely magnificent. Nobody could argue with that, Bent thought. She wore her curls in a cascade to one side, her magenta laquered-and-clipped hair almost as glossy as her sunlit coral Kiss The Bride, Valentine! by Lippie’d lips. Bentley herself had accepted the salmon-kissed tunic her stylist had picked out for her with relatively little complaining (aside from noting that nobody had probably ever kissed a salmon), and even Bach had eventually managed a warm flush tie. (“Warm flush? Is that a card trick or an Arizona toilet?”)

  Not Mercedes, though.

  She wore her winter morning all-white suit as if it were her battle armor, which Bentley knew it was. It wasn’t clear that Mercedes was going to even make a cameo at Porsche’s shower until that morning. While Porsche blamed Bentley for throwing herself at her fiancé, Porsche blamed her mother even more for not blaming Bentley too. But Mercedes had never recovered from the canoodling headlines, and even now rarely acknowledged Whitey in public. So, while the fighting between bride and bridesmaid was bad, the fighting between bride and mother of the bride was worse. Much, much worse. Poor Bach just tried to keep his head down as he dodged the bullets.

  “Stay by my side,” Mercedes said as soon as she spotted Bentley.

  “Where are you imagining I would want to go? The Lippies Testing Table? Or the Here Comes the Bride Makeover Tent?” Bent rolled her eyes. Ever since the grounding, she was never allowed out of her mother’s sight, especially not in public.

  “Very funny,” Mercedes said, grabbing a glass of rosé champagne from a passing waiter. When Bent reached for one, she slapped her hand away. “Nice try.”

  Bach and Bent looked at each other. They’d been sneaking champagne since season one, and nobody had ever said a word.

  Mercedes’s new approach to motherhood had been a hot topic between them lately. Bach had tried to shrug it off. “What if it’s legit? What if she’s, I don’t know, changing?”

  Bent didn’t buy it. “Mercedes? You can’t fall for this parenting shtick. It’s like Charlie Brown and the football thing. The minute you let your guard down and start thinking she’s going to actually let you kick the football, she’ll yank it away. That’s what Mercedes does.”

  Now Bach had his cards in his hand. “I’m going to hide out on the patio. Less pink out there.”

  “No you don’t,” Mercedes said, grabbing him by the arm. “We have to do forty minutes. Right here where everyone can see us. That’s what Pam said.” She gritted her teeth. “Not a minute longer.”

  It was true; if Pam and the RWTR producers hadn’t stepped in with a color-coded line graph that vividly detailed the potential impact on production costs of her nonattendance (as Mercedes was technically an executive producer on the show, these all impacted her profit-sharing percentages as well) she might not have come at all. Which didn’t mean the next forty minutes were going to be pleasant.

  Bach looked at Bentley, panicked.

  Bentley pointed at a nearby waiter. “Mercedes, isn’t that the fried chicken you love? Chef Ludo?”

  Luckily it was, and so as the bride circulated the room—trailed by photographers—the mother of the bride stood by the nearest waiter, recklessly accepting paper cone after paper cone of Hollywood’s favorite fried chicken, until Bentley began to worry that the splashiest headline to come out of Porsche’s party was going to be something like MERCEDES ROYCE UPCHUCKS CLUCKS!

  “Why don’t we just find our table?” Bach finally suggested.

  Bentley caught her sister’s immaculately made-up eye as mother, brother, and sister moved through the ballroom. Predictably, the seating plan Bentley had (fake) spent the last ten days on had been abandoned. And, true to Porsche’s threat, all three of them—Mercedes and Bach and Bentley herself—not being sufficiently Team Whitey—found themselves at table sixteen, nearest the restrooms.

  Point taken.

  “How many minutes has it been?” Mercedes asked as they sat surrounded by two D-list actresses (from RWTR season two and season three), Porsche’s high school acting coach, and an alternate Death Eater from Porsche’s Beauty Team. In the last seat was Tallulah Grunburg, who held up her Shirley Temple and winked at the exiled Royces. “To family!”

  “How many?” Mercedes said again, with a slightly strangled voice. “Minutes.”

  Bent looked at her watch. “You don’t want to know.” Thankfully, forks were already clinking on glasses as she spoke. The toasts were about to begin.

  “Oh, thank god,” Mercedes said.

  Over on the other side of the room, Porsche cleared her throat and began to read off a notecard. “Thanks so much for being here to celebrate our special day. The Kiss The Bride, Valentine! by Lippies line is a very special product to me, because it’s my very first foray into Porsche Royce Bridal, not to mention Here Comes The Lipgloss, and I wouldn’t have either today if it wasn’t for my wonderful fiancé, T. Wilson White.”

  Bentley and Bach kicked each other.

  “Mazel tov,” Tallulah said, holding up her Shirley Temple again.

  Mercedes drained another champagne glass.

  Porsche held out her hand for Whitey to join her by the mic. He kissed her
fingers as he stepped to her side. She beamed and looked out at the crowd.

  “This wonderful, strong, sensitive man is not just the love of my life, he’s the like of my life. And while I’ve fallen in love before, I’m not sure I’ve ever liked someone this much.”

  Porsche’s former acting coach, a tiny woman with red glasses and a severe geometrical bob, leaned forward and tapped on Bentley’s arm. “Look at that. She’s doing love. Love is such a tricky one. Porsche really couldn’t do love at all when she studied with me. Now, look. She’s nailed it. Great progress. Huge.” The woman sat back in her chair.

  Bent nodded, but she knew it wasn’t true.

  She knew it the same way she could tell Bach knew it, sitting bolt upright in his salentine rosato heart-dotted tulle-swagged chair.

  The same way her mother knew it, even over her haze of chicken regret.

  Her sister was a terrible actress.

  Porsche wasn’t doing love. She wasn’t doing anything. She was just telling the truth. Even if the truth was the last thing anyone could ever expect from a reality show, or a reality star.

  You’ve been such an idiot, Bentley Royce. None of this is going to work out.

  You aren’t going to save the show with a season six wedding and a season seven divorce.

  Your sister’s gone, all the way gone.

  And now you have to do something—

  Across the room, Porsche was unveiling a secret project, a special Lippie that she’d designed just for her groom. “It’s called First Kiss, and I’m only going to wear it once, on our wedding day. Then I’ll retire it forever, because you only have one first kiss with your first husband. . . .”

  Awwwwww! said the room.

  “Babe,” said Whitey, sounding choked up.

  “And I’m so happy it’s you,” Porsche finished. Then the future Mr. and Mrs. T. Wilson White kissed tenderly as the room broke into thunderous applause.

  That was it.

  This had to end.

  The situation was now way beyond pink.

  Things had gone Code Red.

  Bentley threw her watermelon afternoon napkin down on the table in disgust, though she didn’t know who she was more disgusted with, herself or her sister or the idiotic fake groom who had somehow managed to take her entire family down with him.