Zoey Dean - Girls on Film

Copyright 2004 by 17th Street Productions, an Alloy company

All rights reserved.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group, USA

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at HachetteBookGroupUSA.com

First eBook Edition: July 2008

With the exception of the mention of some celebrities, the characters in this book are fictitious, and any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. All events in this book are fictitious, including all events involving celebrities.

ISBN: 978-0-316-04164-5

If you have to ask, youll never be on

Be sure to read all the novels in the New York Times bestselling A-LIST series

THE A-LIST

GIRLS ON FILM

BLONDE AMBITION

TALL COOL ONE

BACK IN BLACK

SOME LIKE IT HOT

And keep your eye out for AMERICAN BEAUTY, coming September 2006.

Be sure to read all the novels in the #1 New York Times bestselling GOSSIP GIRL series

Gossip Girl

You Know You Love Me

All I Want Is Everything

Because Im Worth It

I Like It Like That

Youre The One That I Want

Nobody Does It Better

Nothing Can Keep Us Together

Only In Your Dreams

And keep your eye out for Would I Lie To You, coming October 2006.

A-List novels by Zoey Dean:

THE A-LIST

GIRLS ON FILM

BLONDE AMBITION

TALL COOL ONE

BACK IN BLACK

SOME LIKE IT HOT

If you like The A-List, you may also enjoy:

Bass Ackwards and Belly Up by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain

Secrets of My Hollywood Life by Jen Calonita

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.

Joan Crawford

S usan Cabot Percy was reasonably sure there was a time when shed been as innocent and virginal as her younger sister, Anna. But that time seemed long ago and far away. So long ago that it felt like a life that belonged to someone else.

Whoa! Awesome!

This from the male body next to her.

Susan tried to recall his name. Blue? Red? It was a color, that much she remembered. And the name was also associated with some old folk-rock musician, because when hed checked in that morning and introduced himself, hed made a lame joke to her about it.

Brown. Like the color. That was it. His name was Brown. Neither his hair, eyes, nor skin was remotely close to the color he was named after, so his parents couldnt have chosen it based on looks. Not that she cared why Brown was called Brown. Susan didnt really know him, didnt want to know him, and planned never to know him, except in the biblical sense. Granted, sex with strangers was risky (even with the proper precautions), but a girl had to do something with her free time.

Copious free time, actually. Because Susan was finding alcohol and drug rehabilitation at Minneapoliss famous Hazelden clinic to be excruciatingly boring. She always skipped group therapy because she had zero desire to share her personal life with the flotsam and jetsam who happened to be at the facility with her. And supervised outings werent exactly her idea of fun. They reminded her of her preschool days at the 92nd Street Y in New York City (a place impossible to get into unless your last name was Vanderbilt or Lodge. Or Percy).

Damn, I got a mean-ass crick in my neck, Brown complained, rubbing a spot just above his collarbone. He rolled over onto a stack of towels that had fallen during their tryst.

Susan knew that the linen closet wasnt exactly conducive to a relaxing encounter. But shed picked it for privacy, not comfort. It was after midnight. The housekeepers were all gone for the day. Towels and sheets for residents had long been distributed and counted, so no one was going to come looking for extras. And the linen closet was more comfortable than the basement bathroom, which had been her other option for this rendezvous.

You want a hit? Brown asked. His eyes were such a vibrant shade of green, the color was even discernable in the dim light of the closet.

Hit could refer to either the hash-filled bong by his side or the half-pint of Jose Cuervo that he was nursing. How hed managed to sneak in the contraband was another thing Susan didnt care about.

No thanks. Something about Hazelden must be working because Susan had been clean and sober since her arrival. There was no reason to ruin her record for Brown. Candy and cigarettes, however, only filled so much of the void left by the alcohol and pills shed banished from her life. And while it was prohibited, at least sex didnt make you fat or give you cancer.

Susan rolled over and regarded Brown as he torched the bong and launched into some navel-gazing story about how his overbearing parents had forced him into rehab. He was a few years younger than hermaybe even still in high schooland very cute, in a blond, surfer dude sort of way. But they were strangers in the night and she planned to keep it that way. She could have launched into her own tale of woe, of course. Poor little rich girl and the uptight, Social Register parents who had done her wrong. Been there, whined that.

Susan checked her watch and realized it was only around 10:30 P.M. in Beverly Hills, California, where her sister, Anna, was now living. Anna was the only person she felt like talking to. Anna was the only person she could talk to, about anything remotely important. But all day long shed left endless messages on her sisters cell. Anna hadnt called her back. Susan didnt want to admit how much that hurt.

So I decided to head to Maui with my buddy, and I go to take some cash out of my account, and check this out: My parents had the account frozen, if you can believe that shit, Brown droned.

God, he was excruciating. Either she had to shut him up or go back to her room. But her middle-aged roommate, Vanessa, had insomnia and stayed up all night obsessing over her stock portfolio, eschewing both laptop and PalmPilot to do complex calculations by hand in a ledger book with a fountain pen. If that wasnt freaky enough, Vanessa was one of those born-again rehabbers who felt it was her personal mission to report any infraction of the rules. The day that Susan had been assigned to clean their bathroom after Vanessas ablutions, Vanessa had evaluated her work with a ten-point checklist. Susan had told Vanessa where she could stuff her ledgers. They werent exactly bestest friends.

She could have another go at Brown Boy, she supposed. Or watch a DVD. Or try to figure out how a girl as smart and cute and rich as she knew herself to be had, at the ripe old age of twenty, gone utterly wrong. Or

The door swung open. There stood Vanessa, blue-tinged sheets in hand, one arm covered in blue ink. She took in the sight of Brown and Susan in what was an extremely compromising position.

I spilled ink, she said by way of explanation.

Yeah, fine, were cool, right? Brown asked, trying for a casual cover-up of the tequila bottle, the bong, and himself with a stray pillowcase. It failed miserably.