Catch Me by Claire Contreras

and stand, walking over to Shea.
    “What about Shea? What is he?” Nick asks, his question stopping me from walking further.
    I look over my shoulder and smile. “He’s my best friend.”
    Nick’s eyebrows rise as if he wasn’t expecting that answer and I can see the disbelief written all over his face. I wish I could take Whiteout and go to town on it, but I would hate to erase any of his gorgeous features.
    “Shea,” I whisper, shaking him. “You have to wake up so you can eat something.”
    Shea mumbles and groans something about not getting enough sleep.
    “Just let him sleep,” Nick suggests. “I’ll just keep setting up as many songs as I can to record on.”
    He shrugs as if it’s no big deal for him to do this, and maybe it’s not, but to me it is a huge deal that he would act so nice about it. Most of the “big time producers” that I’ve met are eye-roll worthy. They’re all so nice in interviews and so humble in front of cameras, but you get them in a studio and they’re all about work no play, as they should be. Anybody else would have gone all diva over Shea taking a nap during his recording time and Nick hasn’t.
    “What’s your deal?” I ask, walking back to sit beside Nick. “Why are you so nice?”
    The side of his lip turns up. “You think I’m nice?”
    I shrug. “Well, yeah.”
    His eyebrows raise as he shakes his head. “You really haven’t heard much about me, have you?”
    “You haven’t heard much about me either,” I reply.
    “True … so let’s remedy that. Tell me more,” he says, shifting in his seat and crossing his ankle over his leg.
    I laugh. “There’s not much to tell. I just meant because you didn’t know I was Hendrix’s sister.”
    Nick nods. “What else are you?”
    I shrug. “Chris and Roxana Harmon’s daughter,” I mutter, exhaling loudly and turning my head to look away. I hate having people know who my parents are. I wish it were something I could be proud of. I guess it should be since they both work hard and are so successful at what they do, but I can’t bring myself to be happy for any of it. Most of the time when people find out whose daughter I am, they leach on to me to better their own agenda.
    “I didn’t ask who your family is, Brooklyn. I asked you who you are. I don’t give a fuck about who your parents are.”
    I look back at him, stunned. Not because he doesn’t care about who my parents are but because it gives me nostalgia about the last person who said that to me.
    “I have to go,” I say, standing quickly.
    “You okay?” Nick asks, visibly confused.
    “Yeah,” I whisper. “I just remembered something I have to do.”
    I walk out before tears pool in my eyes.

 
     
     
    It was a hot summer day and I was lying out by the pool of my parents’ Beverly Hills house waiting for my cousin Nina to wake up. Nina was staying with us for the summer, which I loved because nobody was ever home. My brother was seventeen at the time and wanted nothing to do with hanging out with thirteen-year-olds. I couldn’t blame him. I knew how annoying we could be sometimes. My mother had just fired the longest nanny I’d had, Mildred, saying that she was trying to seduce my father. Mildred was fifty-five years old and my mother was delusional. I had a feeling that the real reason she let her go was because she heard me refer to her as my mother one night. To me that was what Mildred was, though. She was more of a mother to me than my own. She had been ever since she started looking after me when I was six years old. Roxana, on the other hand, gave birth to me. But giving birth doesn’t make you a mother, much less a good one.
    When Nina woke up, she found me by the pool, dozing off as I let the rays hit my back.
    “What are we going to do today?” she asked. “Mall?”
    “Okay,” I replied sleepily.
    I told my driver, Todd, that we needed to go to the mall to shop for a party we were attending that night. One of the kids in