The California Cutie

"One." I ticked off on a single elegantly manicured and lavender-lotioned finger, "You will not talk to me at school. I want to make some friends. Two," I held up another slender, tanned digit. My god, my hands were gorgeous. "You will not talk to me after school, because I'm not here to fill your lack of social life. Three…" I paused, trailing off.

What was I going to say again? Oh yeah.

"You look like a drowned rat in that sweater. What are you, the living dead? Go get some sun." I smiled sweetly, the same grin that graced last month's Cosmo cover, before I spun smartly on my pink Jimmy Choos, clacking down the narrow gothic corridor as I left my pasty-faced cousin dangling slack-jawed in my wake. Oh baby, I think I just made my day. That was a long time coming.

Let me start from the beginning. Hi, my name is Nicole Clemens, stage name Nikki Clementine. California poster girl and-- until last month-- rising starlet on the Hollywood radar. Some shit happened, my parents got concerned, and now I'm a seventeen-year-old nobody in "family rehab" with my career in meltdown mode. My agency is having a conniption, but my doctor says I need to put on at least ten pounds before I'm allowed anywhere near a lens again.

That's why, I'm pretty sure, they sent me here instead of just locking me up at home. Obviously there are no mirrors in this crusty mansion, and no clubs in this podunk Nevada town. Cousin Mickey is testament to that. It's hard to believe we're related. Her flat, un-plucked eyebrows and lusterless ash-colored hair set off her pallid skin so wonderfully. Soul-sucking black eyes and baggy clothes over a flabby figure require immediate social quarantine before I catch her loser contagion.

My expression brightened noticeably at that. Family jokes about "Mickey and Nikki" aside, we look nothing alike. Where Mickey is pale, I'm bronzed. Where Mickey is black, I'm fucking golden. My glorious blonde layered tresses, melt-worthy chocolate stare and easily tanned skin are so far removed from Micaela the zombie that the issue might be ignored entirely. It's not like I was really worried about making friends at the school. Nikki Clementine never worries. Who wouldn't want to be my friend? I'd manage to scrounge up company for the few weeks I was here, then go home and never think about Virginia City again.

It just felt good to put Mickey in her place.

I caught a flicker in the corner of my eye as I reached the rickety staircase that leads to my third-floor room. For a second I swore that Mickey followed me, but the shadow was a good half-foot taller, closer to my statuesque 5'10''. It was Mickey's twin Mordecai. Yeah, no shit— his parents named him Mordecai.

He stood there silently with one hand on the mahogany banister and I took the opportunity to give him a subtle once-over. This was the first time I'd seen him since the night I moved in almost a week ago. He was a lot like Mickey, I guess, but I could tell he'd be almost handsome if he didn't look so damn sick. My uncle wasn't kidding when he warned me about Mordecai's allergies. A firm, classic jaw belied his weedy frame and washed-out coloring. He really looked like he'd spent most of his life in bed. I allowed myself a brief moment of pity before snapping my fingers viciously under his nose. He hadn't blinked once during our exchange.

"Yes?" I asked, ready to move on to my room and coordinate my outfit for school tomorrow.

"You can call me Kai," he said slowly. His voice was astonishingly husky. It was almost too deep for such a fragile figure. I found myself pulled to his grey, nearly metallic eyes. Where Mickey's eyes were a flat ebony, Mordecai's irises were shot with a lighter ring of silver, like light glinting off the edge of a blade. Stunning. If I were a scout from my agency, I'd snatch him up right there. The guy would be great on a black and white poster for Armani.

Outwardly, I gave no signs of my half-approval. Mordecai looked like he was about to say something else, staring past my shoulder searching for words. I waited politely for him to continue, fixing my face into my patented "And so?" expression and lightly tapping my toe.

But "Kai" only smiled, then sort of faded into the shadow of the closest doorway.

Woah. Creepy.

Off balance, I tried to calm my suddenly racing heart and rub away the goosebumps on my arms. On second thought, Mordecai could stay with Mickey in this musty house. They suited one another. I didn't wait to see if he was still there or had really gone away before fleeing up the stairs and slamming the door behind me. I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and slumped to the floor. I hit #3 on speed dial, struck by a sudden need for comfort.

"Hello? Nikki?" Scratched out a voice at the other end of the end. "What is it now?"

"Hey Robert," I smiled. Robert was my manager at the agency and my best friend in the world. He thought this whole rehab thing was bullshit too. "The offer for that Dreamworks flick is still on the table, right? They still want me, right?"

Robert chuckled. "Nothing's changed since this morning, cutie. It's still in pre-production As long as you're back in six months the contract is still good."

I smiled wider. Robert always knew the right thing to say. "You know I'll be back in six months. I went down to the convenience store today and bought a tub of Ben and Jerry's," I lied. "I think I've put on ten pounds. I can be back in L.A. by tomorrow."

I could almost hear Robert's smile over the phone. "Don't stretch it. The execs at the network want you to put the weight back on, too. It won't look good for the channel if one of their big stars has another breakdown on set. I know what I told you, and I thought you looked great for the Cosmo shoot, but they pull the strings. Don't get pudgy, just maybe eat some more meat. That can't be bad like fat and carbs, right? I really don't want you eating ice cream."

I nodded at his sage advice. "Chicken's pretty lean. They definitely serve a lot of meat here." I paused. "That's another thing, I saw my other cousin today."

"Mickey's brother?"

"Yeah," I said. "Mordecai." Or Kai. "He's in way worse shape than I am, literal skin and bones. I don't think he's a good influence. You think if I took some pictures and sent them over you might be able to convince that bitch Dr. Halloway to let me recoup back at home? The season's done filming, so I wouldn't be in front of any cameras. Can I? Please?" I was wheedling and I knew it.

"Maybe," Robert said after a pause. "She'd probably bring up the paparazzi again, but I honestly don't think it will be long before they track you down to Virginia City. It's not exactly a secret."

I scowled silently.

"Listen, cutie." Robert said. "I gotta go. Check in when you need to, but see if you can make it 24-hours before you call back. Eat your food and stay out of the saloons. Adios."

I pulled the phone away from my ear as the "disconnected" tone blared into the room's sudden silence. How rude. But that was Robert. I knew he loved me anyway. The question was what to do now? I ran my fingers through my silky blonde hair and locked my gnawing discomfort in a little mental box. I'd never really liked being left alone for long periods of time. I glanced in my closet. I'd come up to pick out tomorrow's clothes, but if I was honest with myself I was only trying to escape Mickey.

"Bitch." I mumbled to myself. I like attention, but not pity. Ever since I got here she'd been simperingly hospitable, opening doors and shadowing me like a lost puppy. Sometimes it felt like she was herding me around the house. I wasn't her damn invalid brother. I raised one hand and looked at it critically. It was lean, not emaciated. My stomach rumbled a little, but I ignored it. It seemed these days like the more they made me eat, the hungrier I felt between meals.

Too pathetic. I knew I was stronger than that.

What I needed was a distraction. Something to keep me from going stark raving mad before my next meal. Shaking off my zombie enforcer had been the first step, but why stop at trying to make my conditions more bearable when I could possibly escape them entirely?

I thought back to what I'd said to Robert about Mordecai. There was some truth to the statement. If people looked at my body, which was really just fine, and labeled it "anorexic," then he must look like he stepped out of fucking Auchuitz. If they wanted me to gain weight, there was no way they could make me live with that.

I fingered my cell phone. Take pictures and send them to Dr. Halloway. Threaten to send them to the media. It was actually a deviously brilliant idea. My only real commitment here was my pending enrolment at the local high school…but I'd had tutors in the past and it's not like I needed a diploma from the public education system to be an actress. If I could prove my so-called parents wrong about sending me out here, they'd have to bring me home. Or I'd file for emancipation.

I should have thought of it sooner instead of wasting a week moping in this dust hole.

I took a deep breath and pushed myself off the floor. The plan was a little ironic. My breakout role on television had been a sheltered Beverly Hills heiress with a cursed camera and an uncanny ability to get mixed up in unsolvable supernatural crimes. The Sherlock Holmes-slash-Scoobie Doo of tweenie–boppers. I eyed my cherry red Nokia skeptically. A cell phone camera wasn't exactly the same as Kodak film that revealed disembodied spirits, but it would suit my mundane goals just fine.

I had to be honest and admit that I was getting a little too excited. It was nostalgic. I'd looked so good at this on the screen when all the right solutions were written on the next page of the script. It was a simpler age. At twelve, I could pig out on the backstage buffet and not worry about gaining a pound.

I carefully opened the door to my room and paused to flash a picture of the plaster peeling off a corner of the hallway ceiling with my cell phone. My cousins lived in an original 19th century Victorian boarding house, complete with narrow doorways, claustrophobic halls and genuine turn-of-the-century plumbing. The bathtub on the floor looked like it was made for a midget. I knew some people back in L.A. who would spend big bucks for a weekend "retreat" at a place like this. They, however, had the option of going home on Monday when the water wouldn't get hot.

Strike one for unfit guardians.

I crept down the stairs and turned right at the corner where I'd left my grossly unkempt cousin. I continued down the floor, checking unlocked rooms. Thirty minutes later I found myself alone with no new evidence, on a dusty balcony blinking at a blue sky and bald Nevada hills. From my vantage point, the scrub extended endlessly. It rolled into the distance broken only by an abandoned iron foundry and the green-grey scrabble of old mine tailings. How barren.

I wondered if I preferred this desolation to my own room's view of town on the other side of the house. My window lit up every night with the headlights of motorcyclists hanging out in the saloons on C street. Tourists' laughter woke me up in the morning. The rickety wooden boardwalk and faded hand-painted shop signs were charming but foreign. I was more comforted by the blazing reflection glinting off silver mini-vans parking up the street; a familiar intrusion of modern mass consumption in this alien relic of an idealized American past.

Not for the first time I questioned what the point was in preserving this place. It looked to me like a glorified tourist trap. I missed the palm-lined boulevards of my glittering, living city. Friends from the nightlife, older co-stars who would buy me drinks. Beyond the vendors hawking over-priced water bottles and cheap Chinese knock-offs, the "real" Virginia City was so empty and irrelevant to contemporary life.

Sighing, I admitted to myself that I had a problem. I had dismissed Mickey, but had no idea where she went. The mansion was built to house twenty families. Or so my uncle boasted. It was probably more like ten. Still, I had been living here for a week and had yet to see more than the kitchen, parlor and my room. More than ever I realized that I had been carefully guided by Mickey, manipulated away from certain corridors and closed rooms. Where did she even live? Not on the third floor with me…?

I pushed away from the balcony railing and brushed the dust from my skirt with an unconcealed sneer. Ew, ew, ew. I should have known better than to lean on it like that. I walked past yellowed lacy curtains into the shadowed house, through a mess of broken Victorian furniture and began retracing my steps to my room.

My aunt and uncle lived in a converted salon on the first floor. Mickey probably lived in one of the locked rooms on the second floor. I knew this because had never run into her going to the bathroom…and yes, the floors shared common shitting facilities. Gotta love that Victorian plumbing. By the same observation, Mordecai couldn't live on the third floor either.

I almost started banging on the locked doors along the second floor hall, when I realized something profound. I'd just left what looked like a junk room. Normally boxes and broken furniture are kept in a garage or attic. So then what was in the attic?

Mordecai!

It made soooo much sense, in a kind of pathetic cliché way. You hide the creepy, sick child unfit for society's eyes in the attic, where he moans and suffers, neglected by the family and chained by illness to an iron bed frame. I bet his mattress was lumpy. It would make great pictures.

Is it strange to be hoping your sick cousin is secretly a resentful psychopath? It would only help my case. I reserved the right to be selfish like that. I deserved it after the shit they were putting me through. I was not going to win another MTV award if I couldn't be out there in the media to promote myself and my show.

Filled with new energy, I almost sprinted the steps back to the third floor. It was a bad idea, because I was seeing spots by the end. That was nothing unusual. I told myself it was a positive sign, because it meant I hadn't eaten too much today despite my relative's prodding. I would maintain my figure! I would persevere! I paused to catch my breath, then started searching for a way to get to the attic at a more tempered pace.

I finally found it behind a small door at the end of the hall. It looked like a broom closet, but opened to reveal a steep, narrow set of stairs. Kind of like a secret passage. I was reminded of a scene in the second season of my old detective show. There of course, the "house" was only a plywood construction on a studio soundstage, and the "secret stairway" led to a low-hanging catwalk with light riggings, but it created a mood and I'd truly fallen in love with acting.

Amazing that shit like this existed in real life. My twelve-year-old self spent hours fantasizing about exploring a house with a real secret passage after that episode, but now I could only feel apprehensive. Would Kai get mad at me for taking his picture, for using it to defame his family? And why the fuck did I care?

I slowly crept up the stairs, ducking low to avoid being seen. They were dark, but light was coming through the open doorframe at the top and I could see enough. As I neared the top, I prepared myself to give an ad-lib excuse about wanting to take Kai's picture for personal record, or some other bullshit. If he didn't buy it I'd snap the picture anyway and run away. Maybe come back in the morning when he'd be changing and I could get every one of his gloriously malnourished ribs.

I pulled myself to eye level with a dark, well-swept hardwood floor. The edge of a thick, oriental-print cloth hanging like a tapestry obscured most of my vision. I stood up taller and looked around expectantly. Aside from the cloth and a rolled up gym mat in the corner, the room was otherwise completely empty.

What the hell? The edge of my lip ticked and twisted into a scowl. The attic was clean but completely empty. I had wasted my stealth. Now I felt like a fool. I climbed out from the stairway and wandered to the center of the room.

At least I was finally getting the grand tour of the house. My eyes slid to the intricate fabric next to the stairway. It was actually hanging over something. I strode over and pushed the heavy covering aside. The material felt strange, thick and stiff like canvas, but as smooth as silk. The pattern was oriental in design, but with a strange hieroglyphic motif woven around the borders. They looked more like Native American rock carvings…horses and suns dancing above some man with a spear stabbing a creepy swirling spiral. It was like an optical illusion that seemed to move the longer you stared at it.

I shook my head and pulled the cloth up completely. My breath caught in my throat. Behind the hideous fabric, lying deceptively cool and smooth and silver, was the most magnificent item I had yet to see in this whole cursed house. A mirror.

A mirror!

I had not been joking when I said earlier that there were no mirrors in this house. I hadn't really understood my uncle's explanation, but it seemed to be linked to my cousin's illness. I thought he was anemic, but maybe he was mental too. At any rate, it was one reason my parents decided it would make an ideal home for a recovering anorexic.

The bastards had me misdiagnosed. I wasn't one of those deranged skeletons in the pamphlets on anorexia who looked in the mirror and saw themselves as fat. I eyed my reflection appreciatively. Trim and chic, size two skirt clinging alluringly to a pert and cellulite-free butt. I was beautiful. Perfectly happy with the way I'd gotten myself to look right now. Anorexia was a deceptive term for people who didn't have the willpower to be as conscientious of their diet. Dieting was like preventative medicine. The only thing removing mirrors did to me was make it impossible to do my makeup.

I smiled secretively. There was at least one mirror in the house after all, and I'd found it. Why they kept it covered up in the attic was irrelevant. My whole outlook on this "family rehab" situation was looking better. If only I could find some vodka.

I had just leaned in to examine my skin for an overdue blemish inspection when I caught voices drifting up from downstairs. One was Mickey's voice, gruff and unfeminine. The other was too low to make out, but must have been Mordecai. I let the cloth fall back over the mirror as I contemplated how to get out of here without them knowing that I'd found a mirror. They'd surely lock me out or take it away. I needed it to get ready for school properly tomorrow. I needed it for my sanity.

I breathed a sigh of relief as the voices faded down the corridor. I crept lightly down the stairs, and peered out around the corner. I saw Mickey slip into a room just across the hall from mine. They hadn't noticed that the door to the attic was open. I wondered what they were doing on my floor.

That was it, I decided. I was going to flat out ask for a proper tour of the house and a "family picture." There was no way they could refuse without seeming weird. It might be a little awkward at first, considering that I'd just told Mickey to stay the fuck away, but if I confronted her from the angle of intruding on my floor I could probably put her on the defensive.

I tip-toed closer to the open door. They were still talking.

"Witch…" I heard Mickey mumble. I was standing right next to the doorframe, the door was open just a crack. It wasn't hard to hear. "She's so shallow and fake… just because I don't spend hours straitening my hair doesn't make me ugly. Blonde boobulous bimbo!"

Oooohh…I raised an eyebrow. How catty. I loved listening to people talk shit about me, particularly when they complimented my chest.

"Darling," Mordecai replied, "your hair is naturally straight." I snickered. So was mine.

Mickey blew an undignified raspberry. "That's not the point. I can't believe I'm asking you this, but…" There was silence for a long moment. "You don't think I'm ugly do you?"

Mordecai chuckled, then laughed. It was light, but full and masculine. Again, I wouldn't have matched the voice to his image if I hadn't already seen him. It had too much life. It didn't seem to fit.

"How can I respond to that?"

"The truth!"

"You could be beautiful."

"Oh, could." Mickey huffed. "Thanks! But you're my brother."

"And you already know what I'm thinking."

The room was silent for a moment. I was starting to grow uncomfortable. The exchange had been entertaining, but it was maybe time to make my entrance. Mickey's voice held me up short, however.

"Oh, no, Kai! We just went through that last night."

"You need it," Mordecai growled.

"You're so weak. I can't take more of your energy."

"You're snappy and flustered. I obviously didn't sate you."

"But— "

"It helps both of us. This bond, it goes both ways, remember?" Silence.

Someone shifted on a bed, and something thumped on the floor. Bug eyed, I plastered my eye against the crack in the door. Mickey's back was to me, kneeling in front of Mordecai who was on the bed. I couldn't see what they were doing, but then Mordecai's arm shifted to the side and Mickey turned, lips plastered delicately to his wrist, licking and sucking and kissing.

Holy mother of Jesus-fucking-Christ!

MOTHER OF JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

I fumbled for my cell phone to catch this on video. My cousins were having steamy illicit twincest, and I was going to be out of here by Tuesday! Blackmail hallelujah! The lens on the phone camera wouldn't quite line up with the door crack, so I pushed it open just a smidge and hit record.

Unfortunately, I'd also failed to switch from "photo" to "video" mode, and disable the sounds on the buttons. My beloved Nokia made one loud, damning artificial click, and then Mickey was preternaturally at the door, glaring down at me coldly with a little blood on her lips.

Haha, she bit him, was all I could think before I was suddenly on my adorable butt and backing up against the opposite wall. Behind her, I could see Mordecai flushing and tugging his sleeve back down over his bleeding wrist. Kinky.

"M-mickey!" I stuttered, instantly mortified at the lisp. Nikki Clementine never stuttered.

"Nikki." She growled. "What are you doing?"

"Going down for dinner?" I tried. I stood up, making use of my five-inch advantage in height. "But now I'm going to throw up in my room, thanks. I couldn't possibly keep food down after this show."

"Give me the phone."

"Fuck no."

"Give me the phone!"

"Fuck no, you incestuous freaks!"

"In…Incest!?" Mickey looked taken aback for a moment, and I exploited the opportunity slip into my room and lock the door. I also put a chair in front of it. I slid down next to the barricade and, for the second time today, eagerly checked my phone.

Blackmailblackmailblackmailblackmail…

The picture was blank. It was a big, messy blur. You could see Mickey and Mordecai, but the resolution was too low and the screen was too small to tell what they're doing. I tried not to cry.

When someone knocked on my door an hour later, I jumped. My aunt shouted something about dinner, and I heard a plate being set on the floor. I shouted a few meaningless words back, then heard her leave. I smelled the food in the hall, nauseatingly fragrant. Tender roast turkey and gut-busting buttered mash potatoes. Garbage. I needed no assistance quashing my appetite. This couldn't be the first time they'd done that, I told myself. They'd give me an opportunity again.

Mickey did not show up to make me eat my dinner.