L. A. Candy by Lauren Conrad

that it was only fair that Penny get an upgrade as well.
    “I can’t believe we live here.” Jane looked around the apartment. “It’s so much less depressing than the other one.”
    “Hey! You said it was ‘charming.’”
    “I was just trying to keep a positive attitude while we lived there.” Jane reached for the champagne and took a sip. “But now that we’re here…well, it was charming. A charming piece of crap.”
    Scarlett laughed. “Yeah. It was pretty bad.”
    Jane’s cell began buzzing and vibrating next to her. She picked it up and checked the screen.
    Her face lit up. “It’s Braden!”
    “Oh, really? You mean, the same Braden who texts you like a hundred times a day? Or a different Braden?” Scarlett teased her.
    Jane had started typing. “Huh? What did you say?”
    Scarlett shook her head. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, was going on between Jane and Braden. She knew they were friends. She knew he had told Jane that he and Willow were on-again, off-again. But in her experience, “on-again, off-again” usually meant that the guy was not available for a relationship—or at least not a real relationship, beyond an occasional hookup that never went anywhere because the on-again, off-again girl was always waiting in the wings. She and Jane had been living in L.A. for more than a month now, and Jane hadn’t been on a date yet. Scarlett wondered if she was holding out for Braden, which would be a huge mistake, with Willow in the picture. She had told Jane as much—not that it had done any good.
    “You told Braden the news about the show, right? What did he say?” Scarlett asked Jane.
    “He’s really happy for us,” Jane replied. “I get the feeling he’s not that into reality TV, though.”
    “Sour grapes,” Scarlett said. “He’s just jealous becauseyou got an acting job before he did.”
    “It isn’t an acting job, Scarlett. It’s reality,” Jane reminded her.
    “Whatever.”
    While Jane exchanged text messages with Braden, Scarlett glanced at the piles of boxes in the living room. Trevor had asked them not to move anything for a few days. The TV crew was coming over at some point to film the girls unpacking their things.
    She spotted a basket near the top of an open box and dug it out. It contained bottles of nail polish, nail polish remover, cotton balls, emery boards, nail clippers, and a cuticle kit. She set it down on the chrome coffee table and chose a purple polish.
    “Can you hand me the pale pink?” Jane said, barely glancing up from her phone.
    “Sure.”
    As she began painting her nails, Scarlett’s thoughts wandered to the events of the last month. So much had happened so fast. First, the move to L.A., then starting school, then L.A. Candy… and now this new apartment. It almost seemed too good to be true. Sure, school wasn’t perfect. Her classes seemed pretty interesting, so far. On the other hand, she was sometimes haunted by that familiar old feeling that she was smarter than everyone else in her class, that she was… different. And as for L.A. Candy —well, Trevor had hooked them up with this gorgeous place. And it was going to be a crazy experiencebeing on TV. But there was also a big, huge question mark hovering over everything. As happy as she was with Trevor now, today, she didn’t totally trust him. You weren’t supposed to trust Hollywood producers, right? You were supposed to let lawyers, agents, managers, and people like that advise you about them. The problem was, Scarlett didn’t have anyone to ask for advice about this whole business. Forget about lawyers, agents, and managers. She didn’t even have a kind, wise dad or a business-savvy mom to ask about stuff. When she had called her parents to tell them about L.A. Candy, their response had been to ask her if the show was going to interfere with her studies and affect her grades. Her father had added something about the harmful effects of reality TV on teen self-image and society in