When Stars Align
Prologue
2004
At the peak of it all, when the money came easily and the crowds were fawning and their bodies were young and naturally stunning, it all felt possible. Those heady, sultry nights in West Hollywood felt like ascending to the height of a Ferris wheel in a blur of noise, color, and mystery cocktails that made your heart fly and your body feel as though you were barely hanging on to the quickly spinning Earth.
Tonight was one of those nights.
It was midnight. The three girls were on their way to the party; everyone knew it. The sudden onslaught of paparazzi signaled their imminent arrival, like pilot fish preceding sharks. Cars and motorcycles swarmed the street in front of the midcentury modern house in the Hollywood Hills, some photographers even being so bold as to sneak past the gate and enter the yard on foot. But security was lax that night—the sprawling, angular house was ablaze with color and strings of lights that adorned every inch of its gable roof. The walls of glass showed off the expensive interior, a floor littered with balloons and packed with partygoers, and a DJ at turntables that boomed bass across the teeming water of the pool in the backyard. This was a place that wanted to be seen. Ogled, even.
A final wave of paparazzi screamed around the corner, parking haphazardly on the curb and tumbling out with car doors left open. They had driven at top speed to beat the limo they’d overtaken from a private club on Sunset, and now they knelt on the pavement with cameras raised and shuttering as it pulled up.
The limo moved almost silently amid their clamor, but one of the back windows cracked open to reveal shrieking laughter and a rich interior.
The photographers followed it up the drive, pushing forward in a crush as it finally came to a stop. The doors swung wide.
One by one, three young women climbed out of the limo, teetering on sky-high heels and shimmering in minidresses that caught every flash of the cameras.
“3AM Girls!” one man bellowed. “This way! Over here!”
The girls grinned as they surveyed the crowd, slightly unfocused, too many men shouting for a single one to hold their attention for long. In three short years, they’d come a long way from their days together on the Blast Off! Network’s Kidz Klub show, acting in silly comic sketches, dancing in matching T-shirts, and belting out cheesy Broadway-style songs to a live studio audience.
They learned an important lesson from a young age: attention gets you love, gets you roaring applause, gets you adoration and money and fame. So they didn’t mind the suggestive tabloid nickname, 3AM Girls , the kind of girls you meet in humid back rooms of parties, the nocturnal kind who come alive only at night, whom you’d never bring home to your mother—much less mention in polite conversation. They flashed the crowd as they wriggled from limos, sans underwear in barely there dresses, ready to slip behind the velvet rope of a VIP room or strut around the pool of some hotshot’s mansion.
The youngest flipped her long auburn hair over a bare shoulder and showed off her gold-lamé clutch to the photographers.
“Miranda! Look at me, sweetheart! Let’s have a pose!”
And Miranda Montana did as she was told. Tall and striking at only seventeen years old, she’d garnered attention with her exuberant acting and sharp timing on the Blast Off! channel. She’d already become a fan favorite in a number of family and comedy films since then and, armed with a smattering of awards, was poised to break out at the box office. With the fame came her easy transformation into a wild child, never too far from a bottle of champagne and the arm of a handsome young actor or trust-fund boy, and ready to unleash her “spicy” temper on whichever of them wronged her.
Tonight, that boy was eighteen-year-old Zane Blue, son of a retired rock musician and his much younger Venezuelan wife. Zane tumbled from the limo, ran a hand through his mop of hair, and tugged at his oversize T-shirt as he draped an arm around Miranda. He was a somebody because of his money alone, which he spent on premium weed and the latest video games.
Miranda and Zane made such a cute couple, everyone said. The tabloids were plastered with high-contrast images of their baby faces, gazing at each other or smiling for the cameras.
Everyone also said they wouldn’t last a week.
Less eager to smile was Germaine St. Germaine-Chang as she frowned at her Motorola next to Zane, acting as though she hardly noticed the paps. Unlike the minuscule clutches the other girls carried, she had slung around her shoulder a chunky, bright-pink bag, from which a tiny pointed snout stuck out.
“Hush, Milano,” she cooed, kissing the nose of the Yorkie. At twenty years old, the daughter of international hotel moguls was rich enough to have shod Milano and his many siblings in Louboutins if she wanted to. Germaine was the best dancer on the Kidz Klub crew, lithe and acrobatic. Nowadays, however, she did more shopping than dancing, and her tastes—and whims—could make or break a hotel, club, store, designer, or restaurant. Everyone knew the story of the five-star chophouse that had mixed up her tomato bisque with another customer’s french onion soup: they had shuttered within the month.
A fresh wave of shutter clicks sounded as another person emerged—Sicily Bell, nineteen and smiling sweetly, always the last out of the limo, always tugging at her dress and laughing. Her thick blond hair curtained her face for a moment as she struggled with her heel, but she straightened and blew kisses to the photographers, ducking shyly behind the others. In her glittery pink dress and choker with the heart-shaped pendant, Sicily looked the very picture of the petite girl next door. The tabloids had been trying for quite some time to unearth dirt on her personal life, hinting at forthcoming exposés about her all-controlling, restrictive family and how they strove to rebrand her hot-child-in-the-city image.
But that family didn’t seem to mind it when she was onstage, transforming into the world’s sexiest singer. And they didn’t seem to mind that she was in tonight’s spotlight.
The girls and Zane made their way to the door of the mansion, laughing as they skirted the crowd, high on life—or maybe something else.
As if on cue, the three women stopped and threw backward glances to the cameras that surrounded them, pouting and twisting their bodies to display the right angle. That night, everyone wanted to see them. Everyone wanted to know every single detail of their lives, from the line of flared yoga pants they wore to their hair products to the brand of designer water they drank.
They were starlets, on the brink of becoming stars.
“Miranda!” one man bellowed. “Is Zane the love of your life? What do you think?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” she yelled back, and the three dissolved into a fit of giggles. The love of your life —TLOYL—they would splash that acronym over the front pages of all their tabloids. Zane only blinked into the flashing lights, smiling a lazy, wide grin, response slow from uncertainty or whatever substance he was on.
With one last pose, the women waved goodbye with manicured fingers and disappeared into the house. It didn’t matter how late they stayed out or what day of the week it was. That night was like all other nights for the 3AM Girls, riding the momentum of one party and waiting until the next started.
After all, girls just wanted to have fun.
But when you reached the top of the Ferris wheel, the only way to go was down.
Gradually, the paparazzi retreated from the yard, through the gate, and back into the steaming, shadowed streets. They had their photos. Tonight it was the 3AM Girls; last year it was someone else. Next year would bring fresh blood. This wasn’t Neverland, after all; it was Hollywood—where nothing lasts. Not fame, not youth, not friendship, not fun. Even the Hollywood sign was looking shabby lately.
No one knew it then, but that night would be the last time the three girls ever rode in a limo together to a party.
The clock was ticking ...