Lauren Conrad - Starstruck

“Oh, hey, you guys,” chirped a voice. “What’s up?”

Kate turned back over and saw her costar Gaby Garcia approaching them, wearing a pair of six-inch strappy sandals and clutching one of her trademark spirulina smoothies.

“What is that?” Natalie asked. “It looks like you put Oscar the Grouch into a blender.”

Kate laughed, but Gaby only looked confused. “Gaby,” Kate said, “you remember Natalie. She was my roommate before I moved here. Natalie, you remember Gaby, my fellow Fame Gamer.”

“Hi,” Gaby said. She sat down on a chaise longue and sighed. Her brow twitched almost imperceptibly, which was—thanks to all the Botox injected into her forehead— her best version of a frown.

“What’s the matter?” Kate asked. “You look upset … I think.”

Gaby took a sip of her smoothie and sighed again. “It’s Madison,” she said. “I’m worried about her.” She slipped off her high heels and contemplatively rubbed at her toes. “I mean—wow. Like, I’m really worried? I just … like …”

Kate waited for Gaby to finish her sentence, but then realized that nothing more was forthcoming. “It’s pretty crazy,” Kate said.

Gaby turned her brown eyes to Kate. She bit her over-plumped lip. “I tried to talk to her about what happened with the necklace, but she totally shut me down. And I tried to ask her about my diamond earrings, too. I mean, those were totally on my dresser until her dad came over. And then he leaves, and suddenly they’re gone. I was all, Like that’s really a coincidence! But then after the whole necklace thing, I’m thinking maybe Madison took them. I mean, it was obviously one of them, right? And of course she didn’t want to talk about that, either.”

Gaby stopped and took a deep breath. It was a long monologue for her.

Kate nodded. “Yeah, well, I’m sure it’s a hard thing to talk about.”

She had tried to talk to Madison, too. In the first days after the Fame Game premiere, when it seemed like their whole world was exploding in flashbulbs, Madison had been practically invisible. She’d been a no-show at the morning-after brunch, and she’d spent ten minutes at the informal cocktail party for cast and crew before making a French exit out the back. And no one had seen her since.

Kate had figured she was just taking a break from things, lying low in Charlie’s bungalow, and ringing up quite the LAbite.com bill. But then things had gotten weird: Suddenly Madison was nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Her photo was on every celebrity website and on the cover of every gossip magazine. And they all accused her of the same thing: theft.

It was so unlike Madison to avoid attention—they’d all thought something was up. Sophia had said Madison was upset because their dad had to leave town unexpectedly. Kate could tell how much Madison adored Charlie, so that explanation made sense. But Kate, for one, certainly hadn’t expected the headlines: STARLET STEALS STONES; MADISON MAKES OFF WITH MILLIONS. Kate’s reaction had been shock, quickly followed by confusion. Really? Madison had stolen and sold her loaner necklace? Really? One could argue that Madison was a lot of things: cruel, sly, manipulative, and selfish. But an honest-to-goodness thief? It didn’t sound right. The girl had a collection of Birkins that rivaled Victoria Beckham’s. Why would she steal a diamond necklace when she had a wardrobe worth double that in value?

Gaby set her drink down on the concrete. “Between Madison and her father … well, you know what they say: The apple doesn’t fall far from the pie.”

“I think the saying is ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’” Natalie suggested.

“Whatever,” Gaby said. “Same thing.”

“I find it all really hard to believe,” Kate said. “I don’t get why she’d steal a necklace and then sell it. Did she actually think she wouldn’t get caught?”

“Who knows with that girl,” Natalie said. “She lied, slept, and cheated her way to the top in the first place. Is this really so out of character for her?”

Kate looked up at the big windows of Madison’s and Gaby’s apartment. She could see the passing clouds reflected on their shiny surface. Madison hadn’t been living there for a while now, but she still thought of it as Madison’s and Gaby’s place. Maybe she hadn’t known Madison as well as she thought she had. It wasn’t like they were good friends or anything, but she’d started to like her. She’d thought everything was cool with them. So the more Madison avoided her, the more Kate began to think she really was guilty. Maybe it didn’t make sense that Madison would have stolen the necklace, but it made even less sense that she would say she’d stolen it when she hadn’t.

Kate leaned back and rearranged the Egyptian-cotton towel she was using for a pillow. She didn’t want to think about Madison anymore. Obviously the girl didn’t want to talk, and maybe she never would. “Mad’ll be fine,” Kate said. “It will do her some good to see things from the bottom for a change.”

Gaby shot her a look of surprise. “Ouch,” she said.

Kate shrugged. She knew that didn’t sound like something that the nice girl from Columbus, Ohio—the one who couldn’t bear to pack her old teddy bear in a moving box because she was afraid she’d hurt its feelings—would say. (Instead she’d carried Paddington to her new apartment in her purse, with his legs sticking out like some furry kidnapping victim.) But she had reached out to Madison and got a whole lot of nothing in return. So, moving on.

On second thought, maybe fame had made Kate feel different. But just a tiny bit—and anyway, she didn’t have much of a choice. In this business, it was kill or be killed. A girl needed to develop a thick skin or she wouldn’t get anywhere.

“I miss her,” Gaby said softly.

Kate reached out and patted her knee. “She’ll be back, Gaby,” she said. “Madison Parker will always be back.”

“Roll that rack over to the wall, will you? And the other one can go by the doorway. You don’t need to get to your dining room anytime soon, do you, Carmen?” But Alexis Ritter, lead costume designer for The End of Love, which Carmen was due to start filming in a matter of days, didn’t wait for Carmen to answer. “Well, whatever,” she said. “Shouldn’t eat during a fitting anyway.”

Alexis clapped her hands briskly, startling her poor assistant, who nearly tripped over a pair of thigh-high leather boots decorated with fringes, buckles, and spurs. Carmen eyed them with trepidation. Was she going to have to wear those?

“Just put the rack right there,” Alexis said. “For God’s sakes, there! Come on. We’ve got a lot to do and not very much time to do it in.”

Carmen couldn’t believe the number of tunics, dresses, gowns, leggings, scarves, and capes being wheeled into her house. (Her dad was out of town, so her mom had agreed to let the PopTV cameras film for a few hours. Carmen was glad her parents didn’t see eye to eye on this whole Fame Game thing.) The costume budget for The End of Love alone must be three times what it cost to make The Long and Winding Road, the arty, indie movie that had been her first big-screen experience.

Alexis glanced at Carmen, giving her figure a once-over. “So this is you,” Alexis said. “Your size, which you plan on staying for the entire movie. No juice cleanses or carb binges, do you hear? It’s important that your weight doesn’t fluctuate, because there’s a lot of boning and corsets involved here, and they need to fit perfectly.” She ran her fingers through the white streak in her ebony hair.