Chapter 2
Harvey Laden at home: find out what he’s really like!
I’m lying in a coffin.
It’s lined with cushiony white silk. There’s even a little pillow for my head.
Somehow, I can see myself, and that’s probably because I’m dead and a ghost. My corpse is dressed in a suede suit and has powdery, rose-colored makeup applied to my cheeks.
The people who are there aren’t paying much attention to my dead body and instead chat amongst themselves. I don’t recognize any of them.
People talk about me, but they don’t have much to say, other than I was the son of Pete Laden, and I got into fights and crashed cars.
“He was a real Bad Boy,” I hear one of them say. “He was like the devil on your shoulder, whispering lies.”
The preacher gets up and says as much. My eulogy is short, blunt, and unkind. Then he steps down because it’s time to close the coffin on my face.
No one seems troubled or saddened by this, and no one has anything else to say.
In fact, everyone is shrugging and talking about the next thing; the next task that won’t concern the likes of me.
People begin to leave, and I panic, staring down at my body.
Are they really going to close me up in that box just like that?
My spirit wills my stiff, lifeless body to move to stop them, to ask them to please say something good about me.
I begin to feel my spirit being pulled hard, right back into my body so I can speak.
My stiff limbs start to move and tingle as if they’ve been numb and the blood is finally returning…
I open my eyes and the lounge chair nearly flips over as I sit upright.
I squint at the sunshine and pull my shades down from my head over my eyes.
I blink and take in the calm lapping of the pool water, the copy of Variety in my hands, and the radio beside me playing Shaun Cassidy.
My heart rate slowly returns to normal as I realize that I’m not lying in a coffin at my own funeral.
I’m at the Great Pete Laden’s mansion in Bel Air.
I’m sweating, and it’s not even that hot out. I wipe my arm across my forehead. It grazes the jagged scar I got from the glass shards of the Jaguar’s windshield.
I had Variety open to a Broadway show review. I flip through pages of an exclusive interview with Captain and Tennille, more reviews, and snippets of LA gossip. Weeks have passed now, and so far, there’s been nothing about my accident. It looks like Pete and his lawyers worked some magic.
Well, enough magic to keep me out of the papers. Not so much anything else.
The sliding glass door opens, and I look over to see Sunny stepping onto the pool deck.
She’s wearing Tamar’s sunglasses and flip-flops, both too big for her.
She has on somebody’s bathrobe over her bathing suit, and it drags across the concrete behind her as she shuffles over to me.
In one hand, she holds a rolled-up piece of the newspaper, and in the other, a cup of grape juice with a little umbrella.
I watch her walk over. “What are you up to, Sunny Side Up?”
She sits in the lounge chair beside me and puts her cup of grape juice on the table between us. “I just need a little time to myself,” she says primly, kicking off her flip-flops and shrugging off the robe. “Tamar’s being a witch with a B.”
“Hey, that’s a quarter,” I say, flipping through more pages.
“I didn’t really say it.” She frowns at me.
“Still. You owe me.”
“Fine.” She opens the paper and lays back in the lounge chair, which is also too big for her because she’s only eight.
Sunny looks every bit of her name—blonde hair so yellow it looks dyed and big blue eyes.
She’s the spitting image of her mother, which is good for Sunny because she looks nothing like Pete.
But Sunny’s attitude doesn’t match her name.
I don’t see how it could, growing up here. Tamar should have named her Fiery.
I glance at her. “You got on your sunblock, Sunny Side Up?”
“Yes, and it smells like bananas.”
“Maybe that’s why they call it Banana Boat.”
She pulls her sunglasses down and cuts her eyes over to me. “Ha. Ha.”
“What’s eating you?”
She pushes the shades back up her nose. “Peach was here. Seth and Laura are hogging the TV.”
I glance at the glass doors leading to the kitchen and wonder what they’re doing here.
Peach is my former stepmom, and Seth and Laura are my other half siblings.
Peach’s actual name is Holly, but everyone calls her Peach.
It might have something to do with the Playboy spread she did a few months before meeting Pete.
She doesn’t bring my half siblings over much.
They were here last Fourth of July. I wasn’t, but I heard about Seth throwing up in the pool after sneaking some Schnapps, and drunk Tamar letting Laura have cigarettes.
They’re fourteen and twelve, respectively.
Peach lost her shit, nearly ripped Tamar’s hair out, and hasn’t brought them back here since. Something’s up.
“Did they say anything to you?” I ask Sunny.
“Nuh-uh,” she replies. “They can go to hell.”
“Okay, now that’s a dollar.”
She huffs and gives me a mean look. “Kiss my grits.”
She’s been watching Alice, and the catch phrase from Flo is something she says all the time now. It’s her new thing, at least until she finds something else to say. Just a few months ago it was “That’s dy-no-mite!”
I flip through more pages of the magazine until I stop on a photograph of Austin Rivers leaving The Green Room the other night.
He was with Margie Thurmond. I hold the magazine closer and see they’re holding hands.
She’s walking in front of him like she’s leading him away from the paparazzos.
She’s wearing a glittery tube top and a big smile for the cameras.
His head’s down and he’s wearing sunglasses even though it was late at night.
They’ll print something about his dumbass leaving a club, but not about me crashing my car and getting arrested?
The first mistake I made was running off.
It was a miracle I could after seeing what I did to the front of that Jaguar.
But the cop whose cruiser I hit, also unscathed, chased after me.
The second mistake I made was cussing at him when he handcuffed me, so they added resisting arrest to my charges.
In all, I had four, and the other three were reckless driving, possession of marijuana, and attempting to flee the scene of an accident.
Maybe there’d be stories and gossip about me if Pete and his lawyers hadn’t negotiated with the judge. I was set to serve jail time, but they came up with an alternative.
The sliding glass door opens again. I look over.
Speak of the devil.
Pete steps barefoot onto the pool deck, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. He’s shirtless, in torn jeans, and wearing a long green kimono. His scraggly brown beard is starting to gray even though he hasn’t reached forty yet.
Somewhere between the moment he raged into the jail to post my bail and when pixie-sized Tamar had to get between us in the living room, I decided to stop calling him dad.
Pete calls over to me. “You all packed up?”
I flip to another page that doesn’t have Austin on it. “What are the Wonder Twins doing here?”
He comes over, and I can feel the weight of his glare. “That’s not really your problem, is it? Are you all packed up or what?”
“Just about,” I mutter.
“Packed up for what?” Sunny says, sitting up in the lounge chair.
I turn to her. “Just somewhere I gotta go for a little while.”
“Your flight leaves early,” Pete says. “I’m not paying for another one if you miss it.”
“Gee, thanks, Pop,” I mutter sarcastically.
Pete snatches the Variety from my hands and throws it into the pool. “Don’t give me any shit. You’re in way over your head this time.”
I haven’t looked at his eyes, but I bet they’re bloodshot and puffy. I stare straight ahead and say evenly, “Of course I am.”
“I mean it.”
Sunny stands up. “Where are you going?”
I look at her. “Not far. And I’ll be back soon.”
“Your brother’s going to rehab in Virginia,” Pete says harshly. “Because he’s a fuckup, drove high, and smashed up a police car. That I’ve gotta pay for.” He pokes a finger into his chest.
“You didn’t have to pay for it,” I mumble.
“Damn right. And you’re gonna pay me back every single solitary cent.”
“What’s rehab?” Sunny asks.
Pete’s tone changes. “Sunny, go inside.”
“No!” she yells at him and moves closer to me. “What’s rehab?”
“It’s this place like a camp,” I tell her. “Remember the man who came here last week?”
I don’t know how she could forget him. He was a big, bearded guy wearing a tie-dyed dashiki and patchwork bellbottoms. He said his name was Canyon.
Despite his get up, he reminded me of Bluto from Popeye.
If Bluto were a hippie. He had pamphlets and pictures, and he told me the place—the retreat he called it—was near the Potomac River.
He talked about the scenery, the activities, and how the retreat was almost self-sufficient.
He showed me pictures of log cabins, solar panels, guys working in a garden, going on hikes, and relaxing by the river.
He assured Pete and me that their retreat had been helping troubled young men for years and that they were private and confidential.
I don’t know how Pete found out about it, but he’d stared at me, his scowl making it clear this wasn’t much of a choice. It’s either the retreat or jail.
“Sunny, get back inside now!” Pete yells.
I look at her. “Go on. I’ll talk to you later and then you can kick my butt at Pong, okay?”
Sunny looks like she’s about to argue, but she gathers up the bathrobe in her arms and shuffles in Tamar’s flip-flops back inside.
I wait until the door slides shut before I stand up. “Don’t talk to her like that. She’s just a little kid.”