Something Real Read Online Free

larger, sip to drown the image that comes to mind of Tessa waiting for me at her house.
    “Wasn’t that fun?” I ask.
    “What?”
    “Having friends.”
    Benny twists the bracelet his boyfriend made for him last summer. “Yeah,” he says, so softly I barely catch it.
    I can hear Dad just like it’s yesterday: No more cameras. I promise, Bon-Bon. Just please don’t hurt yourself again. I’ll even come home, if that’s what it takes.
    He didn’t, though. Come home. Instead, Mom got full custody, moved us to the other side of the country, and married the contractor working on our new house. Dysfunction meets function. Or something like that.
    Benny kicks a clod of dirt, and it bursts against a tree trunk. I feel like that’s what just happened to my life in the past three hours.
    “Dad’s gonna flip his shit when he finds out,” he says.
    “Not like we would ever know,” I mutter. His condo in Florida might as well be on Mars.
    Benny flicks the ash off his cigarette and takes a long drag. “Oh, I’m sure the media will tell us what he has to say about the whole thing.”
    Yeah, that would be how we’d know his reaction. A celebrity gossip blog, a segment on Entertainment Tonight . Though I haven’t spoken a word to him in four years, it’s fairly easy to keep up with his B-list-celebrity self. Last I heard, he was doing some lame-ass charity golf thing in Hawaii.
    I shiver and gaze at the tree branches overhead. I used to play this game where I’d look up at the sky and imagine that I was somewhere else in the world—Rome, maybe, or Thailand. And I would marvel at how the sky looks the same wherever you are on the planet, give or take some pollution. If I didn’t look down, I could be anywhere but here.
    Benny shakes his head. “It’s gonna be so much worse than before.”
    “That bitch,” I say, throwing a rotting apple down a path of trees. I rub my arm where Mom had grabbed me. “I can’t believe she’d do it without telling us first. Not after…” I trail off, not wanting to actually talk about It . “Why didn’t they tell us sooner?”
    “Why did they make us be on this crazy fucking show in the first place?”
    Suddenly, a lot of things start coming together: Mom’s insistence last month on my getting that expensive haircut and the hour-long consultation at the department store makeup counter. That recent family portrait that she’d had us all take and Kirk’s frequent business trips to Los Angeles. They’d been planning this for a while.
    Benny takes another huge swig of bourbon. The bottle’s only half full now.
    “Okay, Dionysus, lay off the booze.” I put the cap back on and start pulling him toward the car.
    He stumbles over some roots in the path and nearly falls flat on his face, but he catches himself and looks up at me, his cigarette clamped between his two front teeth.
    “Oh, my, what would the bloggers say if they saw me now?”
    I give him my best look of disapproval. “You have to quit smoking, you do know that?”
    “What, and take away an opportunity for Beth to show off her parenting skills?”
    “But she’s just a regular mom,” I say, doing my best Beth Baker-Miller impersonation.
    “Yes, and we can read all about it.” He holds up his phone. “Preorder for only $24.99.”
    I look at the web page he’s pulled up. “No.” There’s my mom’s famous shaggy bob, her red hair vibrant against a plain white background. “ Recipe for a Happy, Healthy Family .” I look up. “She wrote a cookbook?”
    “ Au contraire . This, my dear sister, is a tell-all. Convenient that it’s coming out just a few weeks before the show starts up again, isn’t it?”
    He grabs his phone before it slips out of my hands.
    *   *   *
     
    Lexie™ picks us up, a ride I know comes with about five thousand strings attached.
    “This is the last time I play chauffeur to your two drunk asses,” she says by way of hello.
    Benny struggles into the backseat, singing through