by Robin Palmer
I loved Beatrice, but she could be kind of bossy. Although Alan would’ve approved of what she was saying. “I think it’s okay this one time,” I said.
“Really?! That’s great!” Roger exclaimed. “Okay, so here’s my question. See, there’s this girl—”
“You should really save this for the special crush edition of the advice column,” Beatrice interrupted. “We’re targeting it for the third week of January.”
Correction: Beatrice could be very bossy.
“It’s not about a crush,” Roger replied. “As I was saying, there’s this girl, and I’d really like her to invite me over to her house but I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to get her to invite me over to her house because I don’t want her to think that I’m using her or anything. So how do I do that?”
“Why do you want to go to her house?”
“Because this famous TV host is going to be there and I want to meet her because I feel like if I’m on TV, I might be able to get a record deal for my harmonica playing.”
Roger was the president of the Harmonica Harmoners club at our school. (“Is Harmoners even a word?” Beatrice had asked the other day.) Seeing that he was the only member, he was also the vice president and secretary as well.
“So what you’re asking for is advice on how to get me to invite you over so you can meet Wendi and be discovered and become a big star?”
He looked confused. “How’d you know that?!” he exclaimed.
I sighed. I was starting to question what I was getting myself into.
Wendi Wallerstein didn’t talk. She chirped. Like a bird. Not only did she chirp, but she also hopped around like one, with tiny birdlike feet that were inside high, high heels.
“Gang, all of us at Week with Wendi—especially moi—are just sooooo excited and honored about sharing your lives for the next three weeks!” she chirped later that afternoon. Camilla, her executive producer; Nikko, the cameraman; and Siouxsie, the makeup woman, didn’t look all that excited. In fact, they looked pretty bored. The only one paying attention was her assistant, Charles. As Wendi hopped around the living room examining our framed photos and books, she reminded me of one of the detectives in those Law & Order shows that Beatrice liked to watch. That is, if the detectives wore Pepto Bismol–pink skirts and blazers.
As Wendi took one of Dad’s framed photographs from his and Sarah’s trip to India the year before off the wall and started to examine it, I watched Mom cringe. “I’d really you rather not—”
Before she could finish, Wendi dropped the photo and the sound of breaking glass could be heard.
“—touch those,” Mom finished.
“Whoops. Sorry about that. My nails are still a little wet so I don’t want to smudge them.”
I could tell that it was taking everything in Mom to not say something like, “Hey, who do you think you are going through our personal things like that?”
Wendi hopped over to a chair and settled herself in it. “So. Before we start shooting, I just wanted to go over a few guidelines,” she chirped. She pointed at Charles (“It’s spelled that boring old regular way, but it’s pronounced Sharles, with an S-h,” he sniffed after I made the mistake of pronouncing it the boring old regular C-h way) and snapped her fingers. “Charles! Charles! Guidelines!”
Laurel turned to me and gave me a look. Well, what I was pretty sure would’ve been a look if I could see her eyes through her dark glasses. In order to show Wendi how committed she was to her acting, she had decided to stay in character the whole time. Complete with tapping her cane as she walked and occasionally bumping into walls.
She thrust the pages to Alan. “Here you go, honey. Just take a look at this at your leisure—or have your attorney go over them, however you like to handle these things—and then get it back to Camilla.”
Alan began to flip through them. “Guests will answer personal questions as honestly as possible,” he read. “If said guest begins to cry because Wendi has asked a very deep personal question, said guest will not attempt to stop aforementioned crying.”
“Just how deep and personal are we talking about here?” Mom asked warily.
“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary,” Camilla replied. “Just, you know, memories of traumatic childhood events, that kind of stuff. Oh, and in this case, with the wedding coming up, any sort of fears that might be coming up about committing yourself to one person for the rest of your life.”
At the w-word, Mom started scratching the inside of her wrist again. “We choose not to use the word ‘wedding,’” she corrected. “It’s a small intimate gathering of immediate family.”
“Huh. Okay. But that’s a very long-winded way of saying ‘wedding,’ don’t you think?” Wendi asked. She turned to Charles. “I’m never going to remember that. Write that down.”
“Ms. Wallerstein—” Mom began.
“Oh, honey, what’s with this Ms. stuff—it’s Wendi, sweetie!” she chirped.
“Okay, Wendi,” Mom said. She gave her best fake smile, which, because Mom hated fakeness, wasn’t very good. “Now I fully understand that part of the success of your show has to do with the way that you—”
“—are able to make her guests get to a deep emotional place that they’re usually only able to get to after years in therapy?” Camilla suggested. “Which accounts for our last four Emmy awards?”
“Well, I guess that’s one way of putting it,” Mom said. “And while I’m sure some people find the idea of having that happen on national television very healing, our family is a little more…private about that stuff.”
“Oh, I completely get that, honey!” Wendi chirped. “I’m a very private person myself.”
Laurel tapped me on my leg with her cane. “If she’s so private, how come she’s written three books about herself?” she whispered.
I shrugged. I hadn’t read them, but apparently Wendi!: The Early Years, Wendi!: The Late Early Years, and Wendi!: The Early Middle Years had all been big bestsellers.
“It’s just that research has found that the reason my show has consistently been the top-rated interview show on television for the last three seasons is because viewers consider me the perfect best friend,” Wendi said.
I’m sorry, but if she was a middle schooler instead of however old she was (it was hard to tell on account of the fact that her face was very plastic-looking), she’d have as much trouble as Marissa did finding a best friend. And when she did, it would be someone equally annoying as that Cass girl.
“And when I’m with my guests, because I’m so best friend–like, they end up feeling safe enough to open up and confide in me and really let their hair down.”
I reached back and grabbed a hunk of my own hair. I knew I had been looking forward to America seeing how long my hair had gotten, but suddenly I thought it might be safer to wear one of the many hats from my hat collection every time I was on camera so that this letting-my-hair-down thing didn’t happen.
She turned to me. “Like, say, you…I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”
“Lucy, Lucy B. Parker.”
“Right. Right.” She snapped at Charles again. “Charles, write that down. I’m never going to remember that.” She turned back to me and smiled. “I want to know how it feels to live with the most famous girl in the world. I mean, that can’t be easy.”
I shrugged. “Actually, it is.” Other than when she would sneak into my room and wipe down my blinds. That was annoying, but I wasn’t going to embarrass her by bringing that up.
Her right eyebrow went up. “Really. Well, we’ll see about that.”
She turned to Laurel and smiled. “And Laurel, as someone who is obviously so committed to her art—”
Laurel beamed and moved her cane around a bit.
“—it must be difficult, being surrounded by so many…how do I put this…non-creative people—”
At that, the anxious smile that had been frozen on Alan’s face shriveled up like Miss Piggy’s head when I tried to pet
her. “Excuse me, just because we’re not performers doesn’t mean we’re not creative. This isn’t something I advertise, but I’ll have you know I write poetry.”
Mom turned to him, surprised. “You do? I didn’t know that.”
“See what I mean about my ability to draw things out of people?” Wendi announced.
“I do. In fact, I’m working on something right now to read at the wed”—At Mom’s look, he stopped himself—“small intimate gathering of immediate family.”
I turned to Wendi. “And I get to give the toast,” I said. “Because I’m class president, I’ve got a lot of public- speaking experience now and—”
“Fascinating,” Wendi said, cutting me off before turning back to Laurel. “So, Laurel, as I was saying, how does it feel to be a creative person in a non-creative world?”
That was so not okay for her to treat me like I was some annoying little kid. And what was also not okay was the fact that Laurel didn’t stick up for me and tell Wendi that. Instead she just sat there with what I had come to call her Superstar Smile (not fake, exactly, but very, very big and the kind that said, “There may be tons of people mobbing me at this moment, but as far as I’m concerned you’re the only person in this room and all my attention is on you and if I were a regular person instead of a ginormous star, then we’d totally hang out all the time”).
Before I could open my mouth to say, “Who says the rest of us aren’t creative?!” Laurel got hers open first. “Well, Wendi, as an artist, I try and use real life as the basis for my work—”
Oh, now she wasn’t even an actress, but an artist? Laurel hated when actors called themselves artists. She called it “pretentious,” which was a fancy word for stuck up.
“Now, in this case, for my new movie Life Is What Happens When You’re Making Other Plans, I’ll be playing a girl who’s blind—”
“And you are so believeable I almost can’t stand it!” Wendi cried.
“Oh, you’re so sweet, thank you,” Laurel said. “And if we were looking at that metaphorically, then it would be like the girl was cut off from her family—”
The rest of her family—meaning me, Mom, and Alan—looked at each other nervously.
“—which, obviously, in this situation, is not the case,” Laurel continued. “Because my family does understand me. But in the case of my character in my new movie Life Is What Happens When You’re Making Other Plans—”
I cringed. Why did I have the feeling that this whole thing was going to be one giant ad for Laurel’s new movie?
“—she doesn’t feel understood. And the blindness—the blindness just externalizes her internal conflict.”
“It sounds like such a meaty role,” Wendi chirped.
“Oh, it is,” Laurel agreed.
“Well, I am so looking forward hearing more about it,” Wendi chirped as she stood up and smoothed her skirt. “But right now, before I leave, I think we need a big group hug!”
As for me, what I needed was to disappear into my room and watch today’s episode of Dr. Maude’s show, Come On, People—Get with the Program.
“Come on, come on!” she squealed when no one got up. She looked over at Nikko. “Is the camera on? Turn it on and get this on tape,” she ordered.
After we didn’t move, she click-clacked over in her high heels and threw her arms around us, smooshing us together. For someone so little, she sure was strong. “Hug, gang! Hug!”
“Ufff,” I said as the hug got tighter and my nose ended up somewhere near Mom’s armpit. Luckily, she had remembered to put on deodorant that morning.
“This is what I’m talking about!” Wendi chirped, close to my right ear. “Nikko, are you getting this?”
“I’m getting this,” he replied in a bored voice.
“Make sure you get my right side. You know that’s my better side.”
“I’m getting your right side,” he said, just as bored.
“Okay, enough of the hugging,” she said as she let go and we all ricocheted back like slingshots. “Wasn’t that nice? Don’t you all just feel warm and fuzzy and sooo much closer?” Before we could respond, she clapped her hands. “We’re going to have so much fun together over the next few weeks!”.
I didn’t have to look over at Mom to know that she kind of thought differently.
Dear Dr. Maude,
I was wondering whether you’ve heard about The Change. And I’m not talking about the “change of life,” which is what kept coming up when I Googled “The Change.” In case you didn’t know, the “change of life” means menopause, which, when I Googled that, is what happens when you get really old and stop getting your period. But you probably already know that because (a) you’re really smart and a doctor even though you’re not a real doctor but only a shrink one and (b) you’re old so for all I know that may have happened to you already. (Wait. That came out wrong. I didn’t mean you were old-old. I just meant…You know what? Just forget that last part.)
The Change I’m talking about is the thing that happens after adults get remarried and start showing their true colors. Marissa told me about it. As I may have mentioned, you can’t believe a lot of what Marissa says because she has what Dad calls an “overactive imagination” and tends to exaggerate. But when it comes to stuff having to do with divorce, you kind of can believe her. So I’m worried she might be right.
Anyway, without exactly knowing whether this Change thing is real or just something that Marissa made up, I will say that there’s definitely something weird going on. First of all, whenever anyone brings up the wedding—like Mrs. Chin at the cleaners—Mom starts to scratch the inside of her wrist, and even though she tries to sound all polite, you can hear her voice get all high as she tells people that she really doesn’t understand why they’re making a big deal about it because it’s just a regular day like any other.
And then there’s the way that Laurel’s acting all star-like whenever Wendi and her crew are around. I know her new movie is really important to her because it’s a great role that will show the world that she can do more than be Madison Tennyson, but, still, part of what was so great about Laurel was that she was so NOT starlike. But now, whenever Wendi and her crew are here she does stuff like flip her hair and laugh really loud at the things they say that’re not all that funny.
I haven’t mentioned this to anyone yet, but what if Laurel stays like this even after Wendi is gone? What if part of The Change is that all this time I’ve known Laurel, she’s just been ACTING like she’s a normal person when in fact she’s REALLY this fake superstar? Because if that’s the case, I’m not sure I can keep living with her. I really love my life in New York City, but if I’m going to feel like the unfamous, not-as-good-as little sister of the most famous girl of the world all the time, then I’d rather move back to Northampton and live with Dad and Sarah and Ziggy. Even if that means sleeping on an air mattress in the basement.
And if that happens, you and I won’t be neighbors anymore, which would make me really sad. Not that being neighbors has mattered anyway. I mean, it’s not like it made you answer any of my e-mails.
Thanks in advance for the advice you’re finally going to give me about how to make things—and people, like Laurel and Mom—go back to normal.
yours truly,
Lucy B. Parker
P.S. I think it’s so awful that you stop getting your period when you’re old. Do you happen to know if there’s anything to do to keep that from happening? Because even though I haven’t gotten mine yet, I already know that I’m going to love it and want to have it forever.
“Sisters,” Wendi gasped dramatically the next afternoon as she paced around Laurel’s bedroom while Laurel and I sat on the bed behind her. My back was killing me from sitting up so straight. Usually when Laurel and I hung out in her room, I sprawled out on the bed, sometimes in a giant backbend with my head hanging over the foot of it almost touching her floor. Having the entire world see that—especially if something happened and my shirt fle
w up so everyone could see my bra—felt like a dangerous thing to do.
“Who else can you laugh with?” Wendi demanded as she click-clacked across the room.
I glanced over at Laurel to maybe share a can-you-believe-her? look, but Laurel was staring straight ahead with her can’t-you-tell-I’m-blind sunglasses and a movie- star smile.
“Cry with,” she went on.
I felt like crying right then and there. And if there hadn’t been a camera pointed at me, I probably would have.
“And, of course…shop with?”
I snuck another look at Laurel, who was still blind, and still smiling.
“To the world, superstar Laurel Moses has always seemed to lead a charmed life. Award-winning television and film star. Grammy-nominated singer. Over two million followers on Twitter,” she went on. “But behind the gloss and glitz of Laurel’s life was a tragic secret.”
“There was?” I blurted out. I looked at Laurel, confused. Here I was, thinking we had been BFFs all this time, only to find out that obviously we were not. Because BFFs did not keep tragic secrets from each other.
Wendi continued to slowly click-clack across the room, so slowly that each click and each clack had an almost hypnotizing-like feel. “Yes. There was,” she went on. “You see, what the world did not know was that Laurel was desperately.…lonely.”
Laurel’s face turned red. “I wouldn’t say I was lonely.”
“Of course you were,” Wendi said as she click-clacked over and wedged herself between us on the bed. “But when your father, Alan, fell in love with Lucy Parker’s—”
“Lucy B. Parker,” I quickly corrected.
“—Lucy B. Parker’s mother, Rebecca,” she went on, “both of your lives were forever changed. And do you know why they were changed?”
“Because I had to move from Northampton, Massachusetts, to New York City?” I guessed.
“No. Because both of you finally knew the joy of having a sister. Someone you can tell your secrets to.” Or, in mine and Laurel’s case, not tell your secrets. “Someone you can—”