by Robin Palmer
“Ah. So it’s happening again,” he said as he picked Ziggy up and started walking him around the room.
“What’s happening again?” I asked, confused.
Now that Ziggy was out of his cage—aka his crib—he kept lunging at the computer with his hands held out as if he wanted me to pick him up. And every time he did that, I found myself leaning forward to the computer screen with my arms flying out as if I was going to do it.
“Well, let’s just say your mother gets a little…uncomfortable when it comes to the c-word.”
“What’s the c-word?” I asked.
“Commitment,” he replied. “See, once she’s actually married, she’s fine. But that window in between the deciding to get married and the wedding can be a little…challenging for everyone around her.”
“By ‘challenging’, do you mean that she’s cranky and has no sense of humor and barely ever smiles?”
He nodded. “Yup. That would be what I’m talking about. Has she started eating sugar?”
I nodded, surprised. “Yeah.”
“What about soda? Has she started in on that?”
I thought about it. Now that he mentioned it…
“Back then she couldn’t stop downing root beer,” he went on.
Oh my God. There had been an empty bottle of root beer in the recycling can! I couldn’t believe my mother had been drinking soda. My entire life she had been going on and on about how it ruined the enamel on your teeth. Once, during the current events portion of one of our official family dinners, she had passed around an article about how when Coca-Cola was poured on the hood of a car, it ate away at the paint. (“If it can do that to a car, Lucy, just think of what it’s doing to the inside of your stomach.”) The only time I was allowed to drink soda (in front of them, at least) was very special occasions, like when they were about to tell me something that was going to change my life forever: they were getting divorced, they wanted us to move to New York, or they were about to have a new baby.
His face clouded over as he remembered the past. “It was bad, Lucy. Really bad. In fact, Deanna and I started talking about doing an intervention.”
Deanna was Mom’s BFF from Northampton. I knew from reality shows what interventions were. They were when you tried to get people to stop doing bad things, like drugs or hoarding. All the people who loved them—like their families and their BFFs—got together and surprised them and told them why what they were doing was so bad for them and they were going to die if they didn’t stop.
I couldn’t believe this was my mom he was talking about. “And then what happened?”
“Well, after the soda came the bad TV,” he replied. “She’d stay up until all hours of the night watching sitcoms, game shows…even infomercials.”
“But Mom barely ever watches TV,” I said. “She reads.” Mostly she liked magazines like The New Yorker, which had very tiny print and no pictures other than cartoons that only adults found funny.
He shook his head sadly. “Not back then,” he said. He sighed “I can still see it. All those piles of unread Newsweeks and Vanity Fairs. And when she did read, it was things like the National Enquirer.”
Okay, this was just weird. Mom hated those gossip magazines. Especially after we moved in with Laurel and she saw firsthand how they printed total lies, like how Laurel was actually an alien.
“Well, watch out for that,” he said. “That’s a sure sign she’s going to blow.”
Okay, this was not good. In fact, this was starting to sound very, very bad.
“But like I said, it’s only temporary.” He smiled. “I can tell you from experience, once the wedding’s over with, she’ll go back to being her old self.”
If we actually made it to the wedding.
“Think of it as a…growth opportunity,” he said with a smile.
I sighed. I had had so many growth opportunities over the last year I felt like I should have been seven feet tall instead of four feet eleven. “Dad?”
“Yeah?
I flopped back on the bed. “I wouldn’t mind staying this size for a while.”
He laughed again. “Yeah, well, I’m afraid that’s not an option.”
I sat up. “But what am I supposed to do about Laurel?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I mean it’s pretty obvious that she doesn’t want to be friends anymore, let alone fristers.”
“Lucy, this Change thing—it scares you a little, right?”
I crossed my arms and turned away from the computer. “I never said it scared me.”
At that, Ziggy let out another raspberry. It was crazy how smart he was for a baby. Forget about trying to pull the whole Santa Claus thing over on him in a few years.
“Okay, fine,” I said stubbornly. “So maybe it scares me a little bit.”
“Which makes complete sense,” Dad said. “seeing that you’re a human being and not a robot, and human beings are not huge fans of change. So if you’re scared, what makes you think that Laurel’s not scared, too, and that’s why she’s acting like this?”
“But Laurel’s not human,” I blurted out.
“She’s not?”
“Well, yes, she’s human, but it’s different for her.”
“How come?”
“Because she’s the most popular girl in the world!”
“Lucy, after everything you know about Laurel, is that what you really think?”
I sighed. “I guess not.”
The thing was, I didn’t know what I thought anymore. Everyone was acting so nutty around me that I couldn’t help being that way, too.
No one in the family was wild about the idea of Wendi and her crew showing up at the crack of dawn to film us getting ready for our day, but her hope was to get some footage of us “unplugged.” Laurel was already at the studio, so it was just Mom and Alan and me.
I was so tired that I poured orange juice on top of my cereal instead of milk. I had stayed up late spying on Mom, watching as she sat on the couch late into the night downing fistfuls of Reese’s Pieces while watching Celebrity Rehab Top Model Search and flipping through In Touch with Style.
“I hate to eat and run,” Mom said as she finished off a Skinny Cow mint ice cream sandwich. For breakfast. (Even I didn’t do that.) “But I really need to get through the episodes of Shipwrecked! I DVRed. The finale is tonight and I want to be all caught up.”
Okay, not good. Shipwrecked! was the lowest of the low when it came to reality programs. They took a group of people and put them on a fancy boat only to then sail them into a storm somewhere until they got shipwrecked and were forced to live on a desert island for one month, with weekly weigh-ins. There were contests about who could make the most creative meals out of berries and plants, and who made the best outfits out of stuff they found washed up on shore. Even Alice, who loved reality programs (the cheesier the better), didn’t watch that one.
“Honey, what are you doing watching Shipwrecked!?” asked Alan, baffled.
Mom reached into her back pocket and took out a York Peppermint Pattie and unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. Again, even I tended to stay away from chocolate until at least nine a.m. “What’s wrong with Shipwrecked!?” she asked defensively. “You know, Alan, there’s more to life than just news programs and documentaries about World War Two.”
“I know that, honey, it’s just that it’s so not…you,” he replied. “And what are you doing eating junk food?”
“Why is everyone getting on me about what I’m eating?” she cried. “I’m allowing myself a little treat—is that really so bad? So what if I have to fit into a dress in”—she looked at her watch—“six days, twenty-two hours, and forty-three seconds. It’ll be fine!” she cried. “Or you know what? Maybe it won’t be fine and I’ll just wear…a caftan!” She shoved another pattie in her mouth. “Maybe you should try eating some junk food once in a while,” Mom went on. “Maybe it would help with that little scheduling problem of yours.”
&
nbsp; “Scheduling problem? It’s not a problem,” Alan said. “It’s…a lifestyle choice.” His faced dropped. “I thought you liked it.”
Mom snorted. “I think the ‘choice’ part was gone a long time ago.”
“Someone in this family has to be a little organized and come up with a schedule,” Alan said. “Otherwise, we’d be living in complete…chaos.”
“Oh, so what you’re saying is that I’m not organized at all?” Mom demanded.
“If we’re talking about the fact that every time we try and leave it takes an extra three to five minutes because you can’t find your keys even though the first thing I did when you moved in was put up a little hook by the door with a sign that says ‘Rebecca’s Keys,’ then, yes, I’m saying that maybe that’s something you want to look at,” he snapped.
“You know, back in Northampton, there was no hook and I got through life just fine!” Mom cried.
Wendi turned to Nikko. “Please tell me you’re getting this,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Oh yeah.”
“I didn’t realize you were so much happier in Northampton,” Alan said.
“I didn’t say I was happier in Northampton,” Mom corrected.
“Well, you sure are acting like it lately!” Alan said angrily.
Okay, whoa. Alan barely ever got angry. Nervous, yes. Stressed out, absolutely. But angry?
“And you sure do sound angry!” Mom retorted.
“Maybe I am,” he snapped.
“Maybe I am, too,” she snapped back.
He stood up. “Maybe this breakfast should be adjourned so everyone can take a time-out!”
“Maybe that’s a good idea!” she agreed, standing up as well.
“Fine!” he said, stomping toward his office.
“I was going to say that first,” she said, stomping toward the bedroom.
That left me and Dr. Maude (lapping up the orange juice left in my cereal bowl) sitting at the table with a very surprised TV crew.
“So, ah, I could go get my advice notebook and read you guys some more advice, if you want,” I said, trying to save what seemed to be a completely unsavable situation.
From the way the crew started to pack up their stuff, I was going to take it as a no.
“Or not,” I said as they left the room.
“I don’t know why we’re even bothering to do this,” I said to Blair that afternoon as we sat in his room while he pushed a lot of buttons on his computer that took the photo files I had sent him and started to make them into a slide show.
“How about…because slide shows don’t just magi-cally appear?” he asked. “Especially ones that resemble award-winning music videos.”
I rolled my eyes as I reached for one of the fried plantains that I had smuggled out of my apartment. I was always telling Rose that they were so good she totally could’ve opened a store, or at least one of those food trucks, and sold them all over Manhattan. “You know what I mean. Because this whole wedding might not even happen after this morning!”
He shook his head. “You girls. You’re such…drama queens.”
“I am not!” I cried. “Alice is, and my friend Marissa definitely is, but I’m like the opposite of one.”
“Oh yeah? Then how come you’re all Oh no! This wedding is totally not going to happen and Laurel hates me and my life is over!” he cried in a very high-pitched, very non-me voice.
“Well, all of that is true,” I said calmly.
Now he was the one who rolled his eyes. “I rest my case.” He pointed to a picture on the screen of Laurel and me from our day at the Holyoke Mall when we had played The World’s Ugliest Outfit. “This sure doesn’t look like two people who hate each other,” he said.
He clicked on another photo, this one taken in one of our IBSs to the Target in Riverdale, which was way up on the 1 train in the Bronx. “She sure doesn’t look like she hates you here.”
I smiled sadly as I looked at the way she had her arms thrown around my neck and was leaning in to plant a big kiss on my cheek. “Of course she doesn’t,” I said. “That’s because I had just showed her Target’s Merona line. They have awesome stuff.” I thought it was pretty cool that a huge star like Laurel, who could afford anything she wanted (even though she was always being given free clothes by the biggest designers anyway), now preferred clothes from Target.
Blair wrinkled his nose. “You girls and your clothes. I will never understand that.”
I shrugged. “What? It’s like the female equivalent to computer stuff.”
“I guess you’re right,” he said. “Look, here’s the deal—sometimes you just have be the bigger person—”
Again with this bigger person stuff?!
“—and just suck it up because some people are, you know, not as cool as you,” he went on. “Believe me, I have to do that all the time.”
“How can you say Laurel’s not cool?” I asked. “She’s on the top of every cool list in every magazine.”
He shrugged. “So?” He looked down at the ground. “She’s not as cool as you.”
Although it took everything in me, I managed to keep my jaw semi-shut even though it wanted to flap open really, really wide. Had Blair Lerner-Moskovitz just said that I, Lucy B. Parker, was cooler than Laurel Moses? I almost asked him to repeat it but stopped myself.
“I’m sure Laurel’s somewhat cool or else you wouldn’t have pictures like this,” he said, pointing to one of us on a red carpet.
I smiled. “That was from a movie premiere in L.A.” I left out the part that it also happened to be the night I had my first kiss, with Connor Forrester, in the parking lot of a hamburger place.
He squinted. “Why are you wearing that weird-looking scarf on your head?”
“It’s a turban,” I replied. “They happen to be very hip in some fashion circles.” I also left out the part that I had had to borrow it from Lady Countess Annabel Ashcroft de Winter von Taxi, a famous actress, because she turned my hair blue as she was helping me get dressed.
“Whatever,” he said. “But even if Laurel’s famous and has her own TV show, that doesn’t mean she’s any better than you. She’s just a human being.”
Had he been talking to my dad or what?
“So what you’re saying is that I should go apologize even though I didn’t do anything?” I asked.
“I’m not saying you should apologize,” he said, “I’m just saying that maybe if you just go in and talk to her like things are normal, then they can be again.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you have to lose?” he asked. “It’s not like your way is working.”
He did have a point.
It was a good thing that Blair had said that he wasn’t going to help me until I at least went up and gave it a try, because when I did get back up to Laurel’s room, she needed some serious help.
“So Laurel,” Wendi was saying as she clicked and clacked her way across Laurel’s floor, “are there any.…regrets about becoming famous as such a young age?”
I could see Laurel sit up straighter. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, when you’re famous, it takes away any ability to be a normal person.”
Uh-oh. Laurel had a lot of issues about missing out on being a normal person. Just recently she had gone on this normal-person kick and insisted on doing all these normal-person things like go to American Girl Place. Which, when you’re a huge star instead of a normal person, means you get mobbed by crowds and the manager gets mad because a lot of dolls end up getting beheaded in the process.
Laurel shrugged. “I don’t know. I like to think I’m pretty normal.” She sat up straighter. “I’ve been to American Girl Place and everything,” she said proudly.
I cringed. She had just admitted that on national television? Seriously?
“Oh. How cute,” Wendi said. “But even when you’re around other kids your age don’t you always feel like…I don’t know…there’s a pane of glass
between you and them?”
I could see Laurel’s bottom lip begin to jiggle a bit. “No.”
“Really? You don’t feel as if…I don’t know…as glamorous as all the premieres and award shows may be, at the end of the day, when you get into your bed to go to sleep, you’re acutely aware that although you may play a regular girl on TV, you’re just…not normal?”
With that, Wendi got what she wanted because Laurel’s eyes began to get misty. At the moment, she didn’t look like a superstar, or a know-it-all older sister, or even like some midlevel popular girl in some junior high in Illinois. She looked like I had felt on my first day of school in New York when I was the New Girl and didn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch. Or the day when my ex-BFFs Rachel and Missy dumped me right before sixth grade started. Which is to say, she looked totally and completely…alone.
It was so hard to watch that it almost made me cry, too. Sure, we hadn’t been getting along lately, but for better or worse, Laurel was and always would be my frister—whether our parents got married or not. And the number one rule for fristers is that they stand up for each other—even when they’re technically kind-of, sort-of in a fight.
“She is, too!” I cried, barging into the room. “Maybe she’s on the super-organized end of the normal scale, but speaking as someone who is abnormally normal, I promise you—Laurel Moses is definitely more normal than superstarry.”
Laurel turned to me. “You really think so?” she asked shyly.
“Totally,” I replied. I turned back to Wendi. “Cristina Pollock is more superstarry than Laurel!” I blurted.
“Who’s Cristina Pollock?” Wendi asked.
Whoops. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. “She’s um…actually, maybe you can cut that last line…anyway, who she is is not important. What is important is that Laurel is funny and nice and likes to shop at Target and eats the frosting off her cupcakes before taking a bite of the actual cake part—just like any normal girl,” I said. “And to say that she’s not normal would be a total lie, which means you might get sued.”