by Robin Palmer
I didn’t even like Connor enough in that way to have him as my celebrity crush, let alone my long-distance/vacation one. Even though, given all the trouble I was having coming up with crush ideas, being able to use him in both categories would have been very helpful for the log.
When Marissa heard about the Triple S’s she did this whole “Ooh! Ooh! I loooooove that soooooo much!” thing before texting me five times a day saying, “I want to have a Triple S, too! Can we? Please? Please? Let me know IMMEDIATELY.” I ignored her for two days until I couldn’t take it anymore and finally caved and said yes.
With Connor the Triple S’s were fun (except when he played his guitar, which he liked to think he was really good at, but actually was not), as were the ones with Ziggy. You’d think that Skyping with a baby would be boring on account of the fact that they pretty much just lie there and try and eat their toes. Even though he couldn’t talk yet, I was pretty sure that from the little noises he made throughout our conversation Ziggy totally understood what I was saying.
But the Triple S’s with Marissa were beyond painful. Part of it was because she was a very loud eater, which meant that I could hear every crunch of every SunChip, her favorite snack (at least I couldn’t smell it, which was good seeing that she liked the French Onion flavor the best). And part of it was because every few minutes she would lean into the computer camera and yell, “YOU CAN REALLY SEE ME THROUGH THIS?” and I’d say, “Yes, Marissa, I can see you.” And then she’d yell, “AND YOU CAN HEAR ME, TOO? ARE YOU SURE? BECAUSE IF YOU WANT I CAN SPEAK LOUDER?” And I’d say, “That’s okay, Marissa. You don’t need to speak louder. In fact, you might want to speak a little softer so that I’m only a little deaf rather than completely.” And then she’d say, “WHAT DID YOU SAY? I CAN’T HEAR YOU. OMIGOD—DO YOU THINK I’M LOSING MY HEARING?” until I wrote on a piece of notebook paper Try unmuting the Mute button and held it up to the camera. And then sometimes, depending on what kind of mood I was in, I ended up “accidentally” disconnecting the Skype thing for a few minutes because a person can only deal with someone so annoying for so long.
“OMIGOD, I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE THEY FINALLY SET A DATE!” Marissa shrieked into the computer as she crunched on SunChips.
“Yup. They did,” I replied for like the tenth time as I turned the volume down so it was almost off.
“THAT IS SOOOOO COOL!” she shrieked again. She was so loud that Miss Piggy looked up from the floor where she was grooming herself and glared at the computer before hissing at me.
I looked at her. “What did I do?”
“You know, Lucy, I hate to point this out because it will probably hurt your feelings, but Miss Piggy never really liked you,” Marissa said. “Even before you moved in with Laurel and she started sleeping on Laurel’s bed because she wanted to, not because she was being forced to because the door was locked and she couldn’t get out—”
“Can we talk about something else?” I said.
“Sure. Let me think. Ummmmmmmmmmmm…”
I cringed. Marissa could draw an umm out for MINUTES.
She began to jump up and down in her chair. “Oh! Oh! I know!” she cried. “We can talk about me coming to the wedding!”
I shook my head. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s family only.”
“But I’m kind of family,” she said. “You know, because I’m Ziggy’s babysitter.” I don’t know what my father had been thinking when he finally agreed to let Marissa watch Ziggy. He said that she was very good at the job because she really paid attention to Ziggy, unlike other babysitters who just zoned out in front of the TV and let the baby cry until a commercial. But, still, exposing Ziggy to that much annoying behavior at such an early age could cause permanent damage. “That makes us almost related,” she added.
Yeah, about as related as I was to Mr. Kim, the Korean guy who owned the deli down the street. “Nope. Mom’s being really strict about all this,” I replied. She really was. It was kind of weird.
“And there’s also the fact that I used to be your best friend before you moved away and Cass became my best friend,” she added. “By the way, I know we’ve never talked about this, but I hope me being best friends with her didn’t hurt your feelings too much. At one point Cass and I talked about maybe you joining us in BFFdom, but Cass didn’t think it was a good match.”
Okay, (a) Marissa and I were never best friends, even after my BFFs Rachel and Missy dumped me right before sixth grade started and she and I were the only ones in our class who didn’t have one and she kept nagging me about it every day. And (b) I had met this Cass person when I was back in Northampton over the summer and she was right—we were definitely not a match. I didn’t even want to be friends, let alone BFFs, with that girl.
Plus, the fact that she and Marissa had decided like five hours after meeting each other that they were BFFs (“It was like love at first sight—but with friendship!” Marissa had cried) seemed awfully fast to me. In fact, if Beatrice and I ever got around to writing the guide to BFFdom that we kept talking about, I was going to make sure to include something about how you had to be friends with someone for at least six weeks before having the BFF talk, which was the amount of time me and Beatrice had waited.
“So the ex-BFF thing also makes us kind of related,” Marissa said.
“Yeah, kind of but not really,” I replied. “Listen, Marissa, I hate to do this but I just remembered I have to go”— I looked around the room as I tried to come up with a good excuse until my eyes landed on Miss Piggy, who was still glaring at me. Although I was very careful not to actually discuss Operation New Kitten in front of her, it seemed to me that, recently, she had been giving me more dirty looks, which had led me to believe that she might be psychic —“feed Miss Piggy.”
“But Miss Piggy doesn’t get fed until eight,” Marissa said. “Remember? Because if you do it earlier, then she gets really bad gas and ends up farting all through dinner and then everyone loses their appetites?”
At that, I could have sworn that Miss Piggy raised her eyebrow at the computer. At least I wasn’t the only person she got annoyed with. I sighed. That’s what I got for lying to someone who had taken care of my cat whenever we were on vacation. “Right. Well, then I have to—”
“So has The Change started?” Marissa asked as I wracked my brain for a non-lie excuse.
“The what?”
“You know—The Change. The thing that happens in blended families after the wedding,” she replied. There’s a lot that Marissa says that you can’t believe because she has this way of always messing up the facts. (Marissa: “Did you know that an elephant is only pregnant for twenty-two days before she has the baby?!” Me: “Um, it’s twenty-two months, Marissa. Which makes it the longest gestation period for any mammal. I saw that special on Animal Planet, too.”) But because Marissa’s parents had gotten divorced a few years before mine and then her mom married this guy named Phil who spent most of his time sitting in a recliner drinking beer and watching TV, she had more experience with the blended family stuff than I did.
Marissa had been the one who had explained to me that when a parent was dating someone and they said, “Things are getting serious,” that meant it was only a matter of time before they became engaged to that person. Which was exactly what happened with Mom and Alan.
“But they haven’t gotten married yet.”
“Yeah, I know. But because Alan’s so organized I thought it may have started early.”
“Yeah, but what is it?” I asked as a family of Mexican jumping beans began to dance in my stomach. “You never mentioned this Change thing before.”
“I didn’t? Huh. That’s weird. I’m surprised. You know, “cause it’s such a big deal and all.”
The jumping beans turned into trapeze artists. I leaned in closer to the computer. “Marissa—what’s The Change?!” I panicked.
Marissa moved back. “Gosh, Lucy. You don’t have to yell.”
“Okay, sorry. But you need to tell me wh
at The Change is!”
“And by the way, because we were once best friends, I feel like I can tell you this,” she went on. “You have something hanging from your nose. I don’t think it’s an actual booger, but it’s booger-like.”
I swiped at it. “Marissa, if you don’t tell me what The Change is right this second I’m going to have to—”
“Tell people that I stuff my bra?” she asked anxiously. “You wouldn’t do that, would you? Because that would be really mean. Plus, ever since I started using socks instead of toilet paper it looks a lot more real,” she babbled. “And when I use knee socks instead of peds, my boobs are almost as big as yours!”
I rolled my eyes. “No, Marissa. I won’t tell people you stuff your bra.” When it came to boob stuff, I was very sensitive to other people’s feelings on account of the fact that my mother was not and had no problem announcing in front of anyone how much mine had grown and how many times I had already outgrown my bras since getting my first one almost a year ago.
“Okay, good. Phew,” she sighed. “So what was it we were talking about?”
“We were talking about this Change thing!”
“Oh right.”
“So what is it?”
“What’s what?”
After I was done banging my head on the desk, I looked at her. “The. Change.”
Even Miss Piggy had stopped grooming herself and looked interested.
“Oh. The Change is when, after the wedding, everyone stops being on their best behavior and goes back to being who they really are,” she explained. “So parents stop treating all the kids equal and start choosing favorites. Like how, right after the wedding, both Phil and my mom started getting all ‘Marissa, why can’t you be more like your sister?’”
I didn’t say it, because it would have been mean, but Marissa would probably have a lot more friends if she had been more like her sister, on account of the fact that her sister is only slightly, rather than completely, annoying. “Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen here,” I said nervously. “I already had a conversation with my mom about that stuff back when we first moved here and she wasn’t paying attention to me and it got all figured out.”
Marissa shrugged. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She looked at her watch. “I have to go. Week with Wendi is about to start.”
Week with Wendi was Marissa’s favorite show. In it, Wendi Wallerstein followed different celebrities around for a week so that the audience got to see what they were like in their real life. It was kind of like the Stars—They’re Just Like Us! part of US Weekly but in 3-D. Because everything that Wendi said sounded like it had an exclamation point after it, it made sense that Marissa liked it. I myself would have rather watched something on Animal Planet, or, even better, Hoarders.
“Okay. Bye,” I said glumly. I looked over at Miss Piggy. “Have you heard anything about this Change stuff?” I asked her.
All I got was a hiss in return.
I sighed. Now a new kitten—that would be one change I’d look forward to.
When I first found out that Dr. Maude and I were neighbors, I thought I was set for life. Not only would I be able to get free advice whenever I wanted, but I’d also get to walk her two dachshunds, Id and Ego, through Central Park because we lived right across the street from it. Unfortunately, I was wrong on both counts.
In the whole time I had lived there I hadn’t run into her once—not even on the days when I found myself right in front of her door even though we lived on different floors. (Beatrice called it stalking, but I liked to think of it as exploring my surroundings in case I was elected fire drill captain for the building.)
Which meant that when it came to asking for advice from a non-family–related adult, I went to Pete, my doorman. From the minute he had offered me Gummy Worms—my favorite candy—when I moved in, Pete had pretty much been my BFF, adult-wise. And because he had been a doorman for so long, Pete knew a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. (“I’m a doorman—we know these things” was something he said about ten times a day.) He was also big on giving the advice to “just be yourself,” which, frankly, I wasn’t completely sold on because of the fact that it just seemed so…easy. Even though when I followed that advice—which usually didn’t happen until after I screwed things up by not being myself—everything seemed to work out.
Because he had been a doorman for so long, Pete had seen more than his share of people getting divorced and then remarried, so I figured that if anyone had witnessed The Change firsthand, it was him.
“Pete, I need to ask you something,” I said after I got down to the lobby and found him double-checking the FedEx and delivery log he kept of all the packages and dry cleaning that had arrived that day for the people in the building.
“And I need to ask you something,” he said, opening his desk drawer and taking out a package of Gummi Worms. “Worm?” he asked, holding them out.
I took a few and settled in on the couch. “Thanks. Okay, you go first.”
“So last night, on my way home, as I took the N train back into Astoria”—Astoria was in Queens, another borough of New York. I had taken the N there once, by mistake, when I had first moved here, and got totally lost. Thankfully, Laurel had come to rescue me because that’s where the studio was where she shot her TV show The World According to Madison Tennyson “—I was thinking—”
Uh-oh. I settled back into the couch. When Pete started thinking, he could go on for a very long time.
“—about how I’m not very happy that Blair Lerner-Moskovitz still hasn’t gotten it together and asked you to go do something after sending you that e-mail.”
I cringed. Because of the adult BFF thing, Pete pretty much knew everything about my life. Maybe it was time to rethink that. Especially because even with all his doorman knowledge, one thing he didn’t know was how to keep his voice down when talking about crushes. “Pete!” I cried.
“What? Am I talking too loud again about your crush on Blair Lerner-Moskovitz?” he asked in just as loud of a voice. So loud that snoopy old Mrs. McDonald from 8B turned around from the wall of mailboxes to see who the crusher was. According to Pete, Mrs. McDonald was very bad news. He couldn’t prove it, but he was pretty sure that it was her who had tried to sell our garbage to one of the gossip magazines that had a “Stars—Their Garbage Is Just Like Ours!” section so she could make some money.
“(A) yes. Yes you are,” I said. “And (b) it’s B.L.M., remember?”
“Right. B.L.M. for Blair Lerner-Moskovitz,” he said.
Yup. Definitely rethinking how much to share with Pete from now on. “And (c), no he has not. Not that I’ve thought about it all that much.” Okay, fine, that was a bit of a lie. The truth was that sometimes, right before I fell asleep, I’d pop up in bed and think: Wait a minute—after I asked Blair to the Sadie Hawkins dance and he couldn’t go, he said we’d go do something. But he still hasn’t asked me to do anything, even though I’ve now run into him five times at his apartment when I was hanging out with Beatrice.
Pete shook his head. “I might have to talk to that boy,” he said. “You don’t just send a girl an e-mail asking her to do something and then not follow through.”
“I know,” I agreed. “If only because it’ll give you bad karma.”
“And if you’re Blair Lerner-Moskovitz—sorry, I meant B.L.M—you really don’t do it.”
He was too nice to say anything mean, but I knew that Pete thought it was weird that of all the boys in the world, I had chosen Blair as my local crush. It wasn’t like I wanted to have a crush on a former president of the AV Club/current member of the Upper West Side Chess Club. But out of all the boys I knew, he was the most decent choice I could come up with.
“Can I talk about my thing now?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Sure.”
“Okay. So do you know anything about this thing called The Change?”
“You mean The Change that happens in blended families after
the wedding happens and it’s all official?” he asked.
How was it that I was always the last one to know about these things?! “Yes. That Change.”
“Well, sure I do. I’m a doorman.”
“And is it really, really bad?” I asked anxiously.
“It can be,” I heard a familiar voice say behind me.
I jumped and turned around to see Blair standing there wearing a Lucky Charms T-shirt, crunching away on some pita chips. For someone who was kind of loud, he sure could sneak up without a sound. I wished he would wear a bell or something.
“You know Marc Whitby in 3E?” he asked. “The kid who goes to that special school in New Hampshire because he’s a pyro?”
I shrugged. “I think I was in the elevator with him once.” If it was the kid I was thinking of, he was really creepy. Like stringy-hair-talking-to-himself-under-his-breath creepy.
“Before his mother got remarried, he was at the top of his class at Horace Mann,” Blair said. Horace Mann was one of the many different private schools in New York. “And captain of the soccer team. And the lacrosse team.”
“He was?” When I saw him, he looked like he would’ve gotten winded just walking to the bathroom.
Blair nodded. “Yup. Rumor has it that when The Change happened, his mom stopped coming to all his games because she was too busy going to watch his stepsister ride horses.”
I knew his stepsister. She was this annoying girl named Taylor who was obsessed with all things horses and was in all these equestrian competitions. In fact, with her long face and buck teeth, she kind of looked like a horse.
“It was like as soon as the ink was dry on the marriage license, Marc just became…invisible,” Blair said.
I felt my stomach start to get wonky—was that what was going to happen? Sure, up until now Mom and Alan had done a good job at making me feel like I was just as important as Laurel even though I wasn’t famous. Was that all just an act? After things were officially official, was everyone going to start ignoring me? Laurel was already Miss Piggy’s favorite—was she going to become both Mom and Alan’s, too? I was so freaked out I couldn’t even think about the fact that yet again he hadn’t brought up getting together.