For Better or For Worse

by Robin Palmer

  At that, she came bounding over. “Hola, chicas!” she bubbled, giving us all hugs. This staying in character thing was getting really annoying. “Hola, chica!” was the way Madison greeted everyone, which, for some reason, always got her a huge laugh from the studio audience on Friday nights when she taped the show. And if for some reason it didn’t, then they just added it with the fake-laugh machine.

  “You know these people?” Cricket asked suspiciously.

  Laurel/Madison nodded. “Yeah. It’s okay. In fact, it’s…fantabulous that they’re here!” She turned to me. “What do you think? Catchy, right? I’m thinking of trying that out in the next scene.”

  “It’s great,” I said. “I can already see the T-shirt. Listen, I need to ask you something.”

  I turned my back toward Cricket, but she just moved closer. Sheesh. This wasn’t overlistening—this was plain old eavesdropping, which was very rude.

  “It’s okay, Cricket,” Laurel said,

  “You’re sure?” she asked again, just as doubtfully. “Because in addition to being a second AD, I also happen to be a self-defense instructor.”

  “Thanks, but it’s fine,” Laurel said. “You can go.”

  After Cricket walked away, I turned to her. “How could you invite Austin to the wedding?”

  She looked confused. “What are you talking about? I didn’t,” she replied. “That would be breaking rule number one on the Official Rules of the Parker-Moses Family Wedding list that says, ‘Wedding will be restricted to immediate family.’” The way she said it, kind of in her dust-is-a-silent-killer tone, was definitely not Madison-esque.

  “Yeah, well, apparently he doesn’t know that because he Tweeted that you did.”

  “What?!” she cried.

  “Did you say anything that would’ve made him think that he was coming?” I asked.

  “No. All I said was ‘Boy, it would be so great if you could be at the wedding.’” Suddenly she looked nervous. “But when I said it, he was on location in the mountains in Colorado ’cause he’s shooting Monkeyin’ Around 5 and the cell reception was really spotty, so maybe what he thought I said was ‘You should come to the wedding.’” she added. “How am I going to tell them he’s coming?!”

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “Because he’s not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t actually invite him,” I explained.

  “Well, no, but because he thinks I did, I can’t now uninvite him!” I could tell that she was trying to look concerned. From the way she was moving her weight from one foot to the other, either she was really excited or she had to go to the bathroom really bad. She let out a little squeal. “Omigod—if Vermont is half as pretty as it looks in the pictures, this is going to be so romantic!”

  “I can’t believe I finally have something interesting to tweet!’ Alice exclaimed as she whipped out her iTouch.

  I grabbed it from her. “No, you don’t. ’Cause he’s not coming!” From the second that I had found out my mom was dating Alan this had been my biggest fear—Laurel would get whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, because of who she was. And now it was happening.

  “Lucy, I really feel like you’re overreacting,” Laurel said in her best I-may-not-be-all-that-much-older-than-you-but-I’m-still-older voice. “I mean, sure, this isn’t the best way for this to have happened. But because Austin is my boyfriend, he’s almost like family.”

  “Well then if Austin is coming”—I grabbed Beatrice’s arm—“then Beatrice is, too. Because as my BFF, she’s almost like family, too. You’re not the only one who gets to go inviting people without asking.”

  “I didn’t ask him,” she said. “He misheard it.”

  “Oh, like that’s any better?” I said. What was going on here? Laurel and I barely ever fought and now, it was all we were doing.

  “Fine. Do what you want,” Laurel sniffed. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a show to shoot.”

  “That’s fine,” I sniffed back, “because I”—what did I have to do?—“have a cupcake to eat,” I said, grabbing a banana one.

  I came home later to find Mom sitting at the kitchen table looking like a character on one of those crime shows being questioned by a detective. If detectives dressed all in pink and chirped.

  Wendi turned to the camera and leaned in. “Marriage,” she said dramatically. “The biggest and most important commitment a person can ever make to another human being.”

  Mom turned a little yellow as she gave a nervous laugh. “You make it sound so…serious,” she said.

  “That’s because it is!” Wendi chirped.

  “Well, yes, but it’s also…Can we change the subject and talk about something else?” she pleaded.

  Wendi stood up and began to slowly walk around the table. “Now, I’m no psychologist, but you know what I think, Rebecca?” she asked, as her heels clicked.

  “What?” Mom said nervously.

  “I think that you’re a little…nervous about this upcoming wedding,” she said as she clacked.

  “Nervous?” Mom peeped. “Why would I be nervous?! Especially because, as I keep telling anyone who will listen, even though no one is listening, it’s not a wedding, it’s a—” Just then she saw me. “Oh, look! There’s Lucy. Lucy, why don’t you come join us and tell us about your day?”

  As Nikko turned around, he caught me on tape shoving half a cupcake in my mouth. (I had taken a few for the road.) Before I could respond—although I wasn’t sure “Mmmffff” was much of an answer—Alan came rushing into the room dragging Laurel by the hand. “Oh good—you’re both here! I’m calling a family meeting STAT.”

  “Fantastic!” Wendi trilled. “I’m so glad we’re here for it. Nikko, make sure you get every second of this,” she ordered. She turned to us. “Don’t mind us. Just pretend we’re not here, okay?”

  Mom gave her a doubtful look.

  “We’re just…flies on the wall. Not making a peep.”

  “We don’t have flies,” I said, mouth safely free of cupcake. (Except, I would see, later on when it aired, not cupcake frosting—there was a big blob on the left corner of my mouth.)

  “That’s right, Lucy,” Alan said. “And do you know why we don’t have flies?”

  “Because we’re not allowed to eat outside of the kitchen.” I sighed. Back in Northampton I had been able to eat wherever I wanted. Sure, once in a while I came across a fly, or an ant, but I didn’t mind. I was going to have to ask Marissa if kids had any say in what happened during this whole Change thing, because if so, I was going to change it so that I could eat in my bedroom without sneaking around.

  “Okay, then. I’ll just…act normal, then,” Mom said. She cleared her throat. “Alan, honey, you need to calm down.”

  That sounded about as real as the one time I tried out for a role in our school play in fifth grade and was told very nicely by Mr. Richards, the gym-slash-drama teacher that I’d probably do better with something in, say, the chorus. Except Ms. Edut, my chorus teacher, had asked me to mouth the words because my singing voice was so bad.

  Wendi turned to Nikko. “Are you getting this?” she asked in a loud whisper.

  As he nodded, the camera bobbed up and down and hit Siouxie the makeup woman in the shoulder.

  “Ow!” she yelled.

  “Flies on the wall, people,” Wendi hissed. “Flies on the wall.”

  “Who says I’m not calm?!” Alan cried. Unlike Mom, he was having no trouble being himself. His very nervous self. “I’m calm. Well, as calm as a person can be about the fact that our very small wedding in a very small town is now going to be overrun by people with cameras!”

  Even though I was not a fan of the I-told-you-so look, I couldn’t stop myself from giving Laurel one. I knew I was right in thinking that Laurel’s screwup was going to be a big deal.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” Wendi interrupted, “but as you can see, because it’s very important to me to create a real sense of intimacy wit
h my subject, I make sure to only have one camera in the room—”

  Mom went from yellow to green. “What do you mean it’s going to be overrun by people with cameras?”

  Alan turned to Laurel, who now looked a lot less sure of herself than she had back on set. “Laurel, tell Rebecca what happened,” he said somewhat sternly.

  “Yeah, Laurel. Tell her what happened,” I added.

  After giving me a look, she screwed her eyes shut. “Austin kind of sort of now thinks he’s invited to the wedding!”

  I waited for Mom to go completely ballistic, but nothing happened. Not even a twitch of her eyebrow, which always happened when I brought up Operation New Kitten.

  Wendi gasped. “Austin Mackenzie?!”

  Laurel nodded. “It’s not like I invited him,” she went on. “It was this misunderstanding because he was on top of a mountain and—”

  Wendi clapped. “Ooh—this is juicy. In fact, this might make this the highest-rated Week with Wendi ever!” She turned to Camilla. “We’re holding this for sweeps.” I knew from Laurel that sweeps was considered the most important time of the television season. It was when all the Very Special episodes and the ones with the big guest stars were on. Wendi turned to Laurel. “Honey, you don’t know who his agent and publicist are, do you? Because I’m thinking I should get in touch with them and see if I can tape him, too.”

  Laurel’s right eyebrow shot up. “I thought this was MY Week with Wendi.”

  She smiled. “Oh, sweetie, it is! It is!” She turned to Charles and gave a snap. “Find out who the agent is,” she whispered.

  I leaned in to Mom and squinted to see if I could see anything that showed how mad she was that Laurel would do this without asking. A frown. A sigh. Even just a blink. But there was nothing.

  Laurel sighed. “You know what? This is just going to end up getting messy.” She walked over and picked up her iPhone. “I’m going to call Austin and tell him that he can’t come—”

  Mom shook her head and sighed. “No, you’re not. It’s fine. He can come.”

  Wait—what?!

  “But it’s your guys’ wedding,” Laurel said. “I don’t want it to become all about Austin and me.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. Whoops. Had I said that out loud? I hadn’t meant to.

  “It’s all of our wedding,” Mom corrected.

  “Well, if she gets to invite Austin, then I get to bring Beatrice,” I said.

  “Lucy, we’ll talk about that later,” Mom said firmly. She shot a look at Wendi. “In private.”

  “But it’s only fair!” I cried.

  “Lucy,” she said sharply as her right eyebrow shot up.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you!” Laurel cried as she threw her arms around her. “You’re the best mother in the entire world!”

  Wendi pushed Nikko forward. “You better be getting this,” she ordered.

  “I am!” he said.

  There were so many things wrong with this situation I didn’t even know where to start. First there was Marissa being right about this Change business. Who knew how long I was now going to have to listen to “I hate to say I told you…but I told you so.” Then there was the fact that Mom had just totally given in to Laurel and was shushing me.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it—it was Laurel using the word mother that had really freaked me out. Sure, I felt beyond awful for Laurel that her mom had died when she was six. I honestly couldn’t imagine anything worse happening to a person. Even when Mom was completely embarrassing me by talking about how big my boobs were getting in a voice so loud that people in India could hear her, just thinking about the idea of her not being on this planet to do things like that made my stomach get all rumbly like the way it did right before I was going to start crying. And even though Laurel and I had made fun of all the self-help books that Mom and Alan had bought about how to mix and stir your way into a happy blended family, I had to admit it had worked. We were a family, and I loved Laurel like a sister and Alan like a dad.

  But even though I was probably doing serious damage to my karma for even just thinking it, I guess I hadn’t thought that Laurel would actually think of my mom as her mom, too. As a frother (that was friend + mother, which was the term we had come up instead of stepmother), sure, but as a mother? As excited as I was about the wedding the idea of really, really sharing my mom—like in an official way—suddenly felt a bit scary. What if, as part of The Change, she started loving Laurel more than me?

  Alan walked over and got in on the hug. “I’m really proud of how you two handled that,” he said. “That was excellent conflict resolution!”

  As I stood off to the side, I couldn’t deny that The Change was happening. To the point where I was now totally left out.

  Dear Dr. Maude,

  I’ve been thinking a lot about this and I’m worried that the reason you’re not writing back to me is because you think that I have a bit of a girl-who-cried-wolf thing going on. Looking back at my e-mail file where I keep all of the e-mails I sent you (I may not be organized in other areas of my life, but I’ll have you know that when it comes to my friendship with you, I’m VERY organized), I noticed that more than a few times I mentioned that whatever it was I needed advice on was VERY, VERY important—like, more important than anything else I had written to you before—and therefore I really, really, REALLY needed you to write back to me right away.

  Well, as much as you probably don’t believe me at the moment, this time I’m not kidding when I say that this time it IS very important that you get back to me. We’re talking more important than ever.

  And the reason for that is that things with Laurel and me are bad. Like, really, really, REALLY bad. Probably worse than they’ve ever been. I don’t have the time to go back and see if I’ve ever written that exact sentence to you in the past, but trust me when I tell you it’s true.

  And it’s not just Laurel—it’s this whole Change thing, and the way that Mom didn’t even get the tiniest bit mad when she found out that Austin thought that Laurel was inviting him even though he just heard her wrong because he was on top of a mountain. And then how when I said, “Well, if Austin gets to be there, then I’m bringing Beatrice,” she said, “Lucy, we’ll talk about it later.” And then it took TWENTY-SEVEN HOURS for me to pin her down to do that. (She did say yes, which is good.)

  I thought that officially becoming a family was going to make things better, but, frankly, if things are going to continue to go like this, then I don’t think it is. In fact, they might even get WORSE.

  Not only that, but as hard as I try, I can’t seem to get into the mood to work on my video toast for the wedding—the thing that was going to prove that Laurel isn’t the only talented person in the family. It’s like I have toast block or something. So if you have advice for that, too, that would be great.

  Thanks in advance.

  yours truly,

  Lucy B. Parker

  “Did you get knocked on the head and get amnesia or something?” Blair asked later as he slumped on our living room couch crunching on some chocolate-covered pretzels I had smuggled out of the kitchen. “I mean how hard can it be to come up with a few examples of fun times you’ve had with your sister? Even I can come up with some and I can’t stand mine.”

  It used to be that I couldn’t not think of fun times I had had with Laurel because there were so many of them. But for the last hour my mind was totally blank. I stopped pacing and turned to him. “I’m just…it’s just…” I sputtered before plopping down in a chair. “You wouldn’t understand.” My brain was so exhausted from all the wracking I had been doing that when I saw Blair drop half a pretzel in between the cushions I didn’t even say anything. I figured if things kept going the way they were and Laurel kept being everyone’s favorite, I could just move back to Northampton and no one would really care. And by the time the pretzel was discovered between the cushions I’d be long gone.

  “Try me,” Blair said.

  “It’s just that
ever since my mom and Laurel’s dad chose a wedding date, everything’s different.”

  “Ohhh. You mean The Change.” He nodded. “Yeah, that stuff is rough.”

  How was it that everyone in the world except me knew about this Change business?

  He reached for more pretzels and promptly dropped a few on the rug without even noticing. “My friend Sam?” he said with his mouth full. “Things got so bad between him and his stepsister that his parents tried to convince him he was crazy and sent him away to a mental hospital.”

  “Really?” I gasped.

  He shrugged. “No, but it sounds good.”

  I threw a pretzel at him. “Well, I read a script once for Laurel where the character got sent to a mental hospital against her will and it was awful,” I said. “Her parents told her that they had a surprise for her and then—bam—they threw her in there. Although because it’s a hospital she got to eat dessert before dinner, which was pretty cool.”

  “Pre-dinner desserts are the best,” Blair agreed.

  I was glad that I had picked a local crush with whom I was very in sync with on the food front.

  Just then my phone beeped with a text from my mom. I paled.

  “What’s the matter?” Blair asked.

  “It’s from my mom. Can you come meet me at the corner of 72nd and Columbus? I have a surprise for you.”

  We looked at each other.

  Usually I loved those words. But today? Not so much.

  Just to be safe, before I left the house I packed my laptop, two changes of clothes, all my savings ($22.57), a healthy supply of maxi- and minipads, and my passport. I didn’t know what Mom’s idea of a surprise was, but I wasn’t taking any chances in case I found myself having to make a run for it.