Held A New Adult Romance(5)

"I don't know exactly," says Mom. "There was some scandal. An accident. Probably drugs. You know what these kids are like - too much money and not enough sense."

"I'll give you the too much money part," I say. "She has her own swimming pool."

"I bet she can't cook." Rebeca's voice floats through from the other room, and I know where this is going. Emily, Emily, Emily - it's all she's talked about lately. Emily is the greatest cook, the greatest dancer. She has the blackest eye, the whitest smile and the cutest figure of all the girls in the room at any given time. Sometimes I feel like asking Beca if she loves Emily so much why doesn't she date her, but I know I'd just get slapped.

After dinner I go to my room and try to imagine having the kind of space the Gillespie girl has. Empty rooms. When I was growing up if you wanted space you hung your head out of the window. Now it's only me and Jo at home.

I type in a quick Google search for 'John Gillespie daughter' - it's like the third auto-complete. I hit the image search button and get a bunch of gross pictures, the kind that the paparazzi have to literally lie in the gutter to get. You can see her whole inner thigh and her black panties. Her face is hidden - she's raised her glittery purse to cover it - and her long hair part screens her face anyway. Blonde hair, natural, I'm guessing. It's the kind of blonde that has more than a little red in it - strawberry, I think they call it.

The pictures make me feel queasy. She looks like a hunted thing, a breakable doll in the hands of heartless, greedy children. No. This is none of my business. Scandal or no scandal, she's the daughter of my new employer, a man who has been nothing but nice to me so far.

I close down the windows, blurring my eyes against the type. But one thing slips by. Her name.

Amber.



The next day I drive across town and up into the rarefied world of the hills. Even the names here are fantastical - Wonderland, Olympia, Zeus. Like in moving up here you really could become a God. Even the smog looks good from up here. On some evenings when the sunset is extra red the moon rises neon pink. Pollution, Jo says, like when Krakatoa went boom and there was so much ash and crap in the air it streaked the sunsets blood red in Europe, half a world away. I tease him for being a nerd but there's no getting away from it - my little brother is definitely the brain of the family.

The house is kind of modern adobe style, off-white stucco and earth tone mosaic. From outside it looks kind of ugly from certain angles, but the inside is nuts. It's the kind of place you can't imagine anyone would really live - it's too much like a magazine photoshoot.

Uncle Steve leads me through the giant office/playroom. There's a pool table and a giant aquarium floor to ceiling in the middle of the room. "Wait here a second," he says. "Don't touch anything."

I feel like I shouldn’t stare either, but I can’t help it. There are famous faces all over the walls – John Gillespie with Ewan McGregor, Sir Patrick Stewart, Julianne Moore. There’s one of him with his arm around a grinning Daniel Craig, and beneath the photo hangs a gun – either real or a prop, probably a memento of John Gillespie’s stint as a Bond villain. He played a Russian assassin who always shot people straight through their left-eyes – like a calling card thing.

I watch the fish for a moment and then I realize there's something weird in the tank. It looks like a decorative shell - a curly one, wound round like the shell of a snail, but it's floating. It's hanging there, suspended in the water, and I don't see a wire or anything. Then there's like a weird little pfff out the back of it and it moves.

I think I said 'what the fuck' under my breath because the next thing I know there's a hand on my shoulder. "Nautilus," says a British voice at my ear. "Cool, innit?"

Shit. I straighten. "Mr. Gillespie - I'm sorry. I didn't see you there."

"No," he says. "You were looking at the fish. I know." He has a towel around his neck and over his shoulder I can see the open door of a workout room, an exercise bike. His bare upper arms are impressive and he has one of those old-fashioned barbed wire tattoos around one bicep.

"Not the fish," I say. "The thing. The what did you call it?"

"Nautilus," he said. "You never see Two Thousand Leagues Under The Sea? Wasn't it the name of Captain Nemo's sub?"

"Oh. Oh. Yeah. I think so." Why does my brain escape my head every time I speak to him? I've gotta stop acting so starstruck. He must find it really annoying. "I've never seen anything like that before."

"Living fossil, that," he says, peering into the tank. "Apparently they've been floating about like that since the fucking Cretaceous period or something. Haven't evolved, didn't need to. They got the design right first time. Kind of like sharks. Do you like sharks?"