Free Sugar and Spice by Lauren Conrad Page A

her blackmailer had been living in this particular hotel since Tuesday and was hanging out with a touring rock band with the extremely lame name of Dead White Boyz. According to a bellhop Chris had spoken to, she was in the habit of drinking in the hotel bar this time of day, alone.
    Madison checked her watch. Three p.m. Hmm, great time of day to be boozing it up. Not that she was averse to an occasional afternoon cocktail, but still.
    Luckily, Madison’s new faux boss didn’t seem to care about her comings and goings, which gave her the freedom to skip out of work early and engage in these tedious stakeouts. And also to squeeze in interviews at Us and People and a photo shoot to benefit a trendy animal-rights group that was whining about fur. Yesterday, unfortunately, the blackmailer had never turned up—plunging Madison into a deep funk relieved only by her boyfriend Derek’s surprise visit later that night. (His wife had her book club, and the brat was with the nanny.)
    Madison set down her magazine, adjusted her shades, and stirred restlessly. A group of Japanese conventioneers walked by, followed by a harried-looking woman with a little girl and a screaming toddler. The girl reached over and offered her baby sister a bite of her ice cream cone, obviously trying to placate her. In response, the toddler took the ice cream cone and threw it on the ground. Nice. Madison reminded herself never to have children.
    The revolving doors spun around noisily, and a girl, late teens, sauntered in. She was in full black goth uniform: mesh top, lace choker, jeans with metal rings, and platform boots. Her hair hung unevenly to her shoulders, as though hacked by a meat cleaver.
    She looked crazier than she had in her mug shot.
    The girl headed for the bar, just off the lobby. Madison got up and followed her, observing from a distance as she sat down on a barstool and ordered a shot of vodka from the bartender. The guy barely glanced at her, even though she was clearly not twenty-one, and reached for a bottle of Smirnoff from the shelf.
    Madison, grateful that the place was so deserted at this hour, sidled up to the bar. “Hey, Soph. Didn’t know you were in town. You really should have called,” she said sweetly.
    Sophie whirled around and stared at Madison in shock. Up close, her little sister looked even more freakish, with her bruise-colored eye shadow and plum lipstick. Still, underneath the getup, she was the same, infuriatingly beautiful Sophie from five years ago. (She had always been partial to fads, even as a kid; obviously, she was going through her goth fad now.)
    Without a word, Sophie turned away from Madison and tipped back her drink, which the bartender had set down in front of her. “Another one,” she told him gruffly.
    “What’s the matter, Soph? You’ve never been the quiet type before,” Madison said.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “I’m here to find out why you’ve been trying to make my life miserable these last few months.”
    “ I’ve been trying to make your life miserable? You’re the one who left me alone in Armpit Falls, bitch.”
    Madison sat down next to her and waved away the bartender. “What do you mean, alone? What about Mom?”
    Sophie snorted. “Yeah, that’s hilarious.”
    “How is she?”
    “She’s awesome, thanks for asking. I can’t wait to get home so I can go back to picking her off the floor every night and cleaning up her vomit. And lying to those bill collectors on the phone because she’s too wasted to keep a fucking job.”
    Madison winced. She remembered their mother’s drinking binges all too well. And she felt a stab of sympathy for Sophie, dealing with it all by herself. But the feeling vanished as soon as she remembered why she was here. “Yeah, so your solution was to blackmail me?” she said.
    Sophie narrowed her eyes. “You left us. You disappeared, and the next thing I know you’re on TV making millions. Yeah, I recognized you. Maybe nobody else