Better You Than Me

by Jessica Brody

  Mom visibly sags in relief. “Oh. Okay. Good. Then what were you talking about?”

  “I was just…”

  Spit it out, Ruby!

  “…well, wondering…what would happen if…you know…maybe…”

  But before I can finish the sentence, Mom’s phone rings and her attention whips away from me like a dog who’s just spotted a squirrel. “Sorry. It’s Peter. I have to take this. I’ve been waiting for him to call me back.” She clicks a button on her Bluetooth headset. “Hello?”

  I sigh and continue to play with my food. Peter is our money manager. He handles all the things I’m apparently too young to understand. And it’s true. I don’t really understand how any of that works. All I know is Mom used to be a poor single mother living in a tiny house in Texas, and now she’s a rich single mother living in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. All because of me.

  “What?” Mom says into the phone, looking aggravated. “What do you mean there’s not enough? I thought you said we were fine. I thought you said not to worry about it. Weren’t those your exact words to me, Peter? ‘Eva, don’t worry about it’?”

  I feel all my hopes get sucked right out the window of the trailer. There goes Mom’s good mood. This doesn’t sound promising at all. If we’re having money problems, then I can’t tell her I want to leave the show now. I’m the breadwinner of the family. Ruby of the Lamp pays for everything—the house, the car, the clothes, Mom’s ridiculous jewelry budget. If I tell her I want to quit, what will she say?

  She’ll call me irresponsible. She’ll call me selfish. She’ll tell me I’m just as bad as my father.

  All my life I’ve listened to her tell stories of what a horrible person my father was, leaving a pregnant woman alone to fend for herself. Abandoning his family in their time of need.

  How is that any different from what I’m trying to do right now?

  My breathing starts to grow heavy and erratic. I tell myself to calm down. Take deep breaths. Relax. Maybe I’m just stressed. I always get stressed around the end of the season. I mean, my job isn’t that bad, right? I have my own trailer and three months off between seasons—although Mom usually makes me shoot a TV movie or record a new album during that time—but maybe one more season won’t be so terrible. Maybe I should just call Lesley and tell her to close the deal.

  “You need to handle this,” Mom is telling Peter in her stern take-control voice. “I’m counting on you. We all are.”

  As she says this, I can almost hear her saying the same thing to me. I’m counting on you, Ruby. We all are.

  Mom ends the call and closes her eyes for a moment, as though she’s trying to maintain her composure. When she opens her eyes, she flashes me a smile. “Sorry, sweetie. Okay, what did you want to talk to me about?”

  I swallow hard. “Nothing. I…It doesn’t matter.”

  “Are you sure?” Mom asks, and before I can respond there’s another knock at the door. This time it’s Russ, the production assistant. When he steps inside, he looks even more anxious than usual, and I soon realize why when he extends a single sheet of paper toward me and says, “Barry made a few changes to the next scene.”

  I go to take the page but Mom beats me to it. “What kind of changes?” she asks brusquely, skimming the script. Mom is always suspicious of Barry’s last-minute changes. She thinks he’s trying to pull one over on her.

  “No,” Mom says, crumpling up the paper. “Tell Barry she’s not doing this. We had a deal.”

  What is she talking about? What deal?

  I think back to the scene we’re supposed to shoot this afternoon. It’s the final scene of the episode where Miles and Ruby get back to the Jinn Academy after their trip to the Sahara Desert to find Ruby’s mother, which led to another dead end. In the scene, everyone has already dispersed into their respective classrooms, leaving Ruby and Miles alone in the hallway. Miles tells Ruby that they won’t give up. They’ll keep trying to find Ruby’s mother, as long as it takes.

  Then Miles grabs Ruby’s hand and squeezes it. It’s supposed to be some huge romantic moment. The two characters have been best friends since the start of the show, but all the fans have apparently been waiting for something more to happen between them. (Their shipping name, by the way, is Muby—pronounced Moo-bee.)

  “You know what?” Mom says, tossing the balled-up page onto the table. “Never mind. I’ll tell Barry myself.” Then she storms out of the trailer, with Russ following at her heels.

  As soon as she’s gone, I grab the piece of paper and smooth it out.

  INT. JINN ACADEMY HALLWAY — DAY

  Ruby and Miles stand by the lockers. Miles won’t meet Ruby’s eye.

  RUBY

  What did you want to say?

  MILES

  I just wanted to say that we’ll find her. I promise. I’m not giving up and neither should you.

  For a moment, Ruby looks disappointed by his answer.

  RUBY

  Is that all you wanted to say?

  MILES

  (uncomfortably)

  Yes…no…um…well, actually…

  But Ruby doesn’t let him finish. She leans in and silences his nervous rambles with her lips.

  Bile starts to rise up in my stomach as I read the scene again. I flip the page over to see if there’s anything written on the back, but this is it. The last page of the script. The last scene of the episode. Barry is ending the fourth season of the show with this!

  Which means sometime today, I’m going to have kiss Ryder Vance.

  I can hear the first-period bell ringing in the distance as I run all the way down the block until I’ve reached the bus stop. I plop down on the bench and dig out my phone. I click on Daniella’s feed.

  And there it is. It wasn’t a dream. It’s real.

  There I am, standing on the stage during my botched film club audition, with my fuchsia leggings and leopard-print skirt and I’m hiccupping into the dark auditorium. But of course, it doesn’t sound or look like a hiccup. It sounds and looks like a burp. The clip is obviously set to loop because it plays over and over and over. The Ellas filmed my most embarrassing moment ever and posted it online for the entire world to see.

  My watery eyes scan down to the read the caption.

  Welshman or Belchman?

  Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? I can’t ever go back inside that school again! I can’t walk down those hallways and sit in those classrooms and eat in that cafeteria while the entire student body laughs in my face.

  No. No way. I’m not going back there. I’m going straight home and hiding in my mom’s closet until this school year is over and we can go back to cold, gray Amherst, where I belong.

  I used to do that when I was little. I would hide in my mom’s closet when I was scared or after I’d had a fight with Leah. It always felt safe in there. Like I was protected by a fortress of clothes and shoes and comforting smells. The rest of the world couldn’t reach me in there.

  But I’m older now. I know that’s not true. Viral videos still exist within the walls of my mom’s closet. The mean Ellas don’t stop being mean just because I’m crouched under a rack of shirts.

  HUUUGHHUUP!

  Great. And now my hiccups are back. The very thing that got me into this mess.

  After the horrifying burp clip replays for the twentieth time, I finally gain some sense and switch over to Ruby Rivera’s feed instead. In Ruby’s world, there are no mean girls. There’s just glitz and glamour and red carpets and movie premieres and the adorable face of her costar, Ryder Vance. Ruby is one of the most talented actresses in Hollywood. She’s won like seven Tween Choice Awards in every category. Well, except Best Actress, but that’s only because that annoying, talentless Carey Divine keeps stealing it from her every year. But don’t get me started on her.

  Ruby�
�s profile says she’s up to eleven million followers now.

  That’s like a whole other level of popular that the Ellas can only aspire to. Daniella has three hundred followers, and I’m pretty sure almost all of them go to our school.

  I scroll through Ruby’s latest posts. There’s a picture of her from the set of her show yesterday. She’s wearing an exotic-looking tunic dress and flashing a thumbs-up to the camera. The caption says, “Filming the second-to-last episode of the season! Are you guys as excited as I am?” The pictures from the set are my favorite. Ruby always looks so thrilled to be there. And why wouldn’t she be? She has the perfect job and the perfect life. The picture already has over three hundred thousand likes, and the comments are all sweet and enthusiastic. I’ve never seen a single mean comment on her feed.

  Ruby, you are the cutest! I <3 YOU!

  Love the outfit, Ruby!

  OMG! I CAN’T WAIT FOR THIS EPISODE!!!

  I sigh and look away from my phone. My life will never be that amazing. I’ll never have eleven million followers. At the rate I’m going, I doubt I’ll have eleven, period.

  As I wait for the bus—the one that goes to the UC–Irvine faculty housing—I decide to distract myself with one of my favorite Ruby of the Lamp episodes, “Hearts and Crafts,” the finale of season 3.

  It’s the one where Miles is hiding in the art supplies closet, trying to escape Headmistress Mancha after he accidentally crashes his magic carpet into a tree. Then Ruby goes in there looking for more string for the genie beads she’s making as a gift for her grandmother, who raised her after her mother mysteriously disappeared. Anyway, the two bump into each other in the dark and almost accidentally kiss! Their lips come this close to touching. It was the most romantic episode ever.

  I stick my earbuds in and press play. The “Be Your Genie” theme song comes on. Although it does nothing to cure my annoying hiccups, the familiar sound of Ruby’s voice calms my pounding heart. After the song, I fast-forward to the closet scene. It’s toward the end.

  I remember the first time I saw this episode. Leah and I watched it together in the basement of my Amherst house. I remember how we both squealed and clasped hands when Ruby walked into that closet, certain this would be the moment we’d been waiting for: Ruby and Miles’s first kiss.

  Then, just when their lips were about to touch, Mrs. Mancha turned on the light in the supply closet, and Miles and Ruby jumped apart. Leah and I both shouted “NO!” at the same time and stared numbly at the TV.

  I hear a bus rumbling up to the curb right as the episode comes to an end on my phone. I glance up and see it’s the number 72. I stand up and am about to shut off my phone when something on the screen catches my eye. It’s the last line of the closing credits of the show. I know I’ve seen it before—thousands of times—but this time it seems to have more meaning than ever.

  FILMED ON LOCATION IN BURBANK, CALIFORNIA.

  Burbank, California.

  Isn’t that just north of here? When Mom first told me about her visiting professor job at UC–Irvine, she mentioned we’d be living less than two hours from the Xoom! Studios and promised me she’d take me on the studio lot tour so we could see where the show is filmed. Although we still haven’t been.

  The number 72 bus pulls to a stop and the doors hiss open in front of me. My heart is suddenly pounding again.

  Can I do it?

  No. Mom would kill me.

  Maybe I can go and come back before she finds out.

  No. It’s crazy. I’d definitely get in trouble.

  But it’s Ruby Rivera…and Ryder Vance…and the Jinn Academy! It’s everything!

  “Are you getting on, sweetie?” the friendly female driver asks me from behind the wheel. It’s then I realize I’m just standing there, staring into the bus with my mouth hanging open.

  Then, before I can second-guess myself, I ask, “Is there a bus that goes to Burbank?”

  She nods. “Number fifteen, transfer in Hollywood to the number eight.”

  I repeat the directions in my mind over and over, like a spell. The doors close and I watch bus 72 pull away from the curb. I stand there in a trance for ten minutes, the bus driver’s words still echoing in my head.

  Number fifteen. Hollywood. Number eight.

  When the number 15 bus pulls up to the curb and the doors open, I feel like my heart is going to beat right out of my chest.

  I’m doing this. I’m actually doing this. I’m going to see Ruby Rivera!

  I dig my transit pass out of my pocket and, with another loud HUUUGHHUUP, I step uncertainly onto the bus.

  When I walk into the hair-and-makeup trailer with Life of Pi tucked under one arm, Ryder is already seated in his chair, his perfect light brown hair being blow-dried into its famous silky soft swoop. I almost want to laugh every time I see him in one of these chairs, being made up like a doll in a five-year-old’s make-believe beauty parlor. If only his millions of screaming fangirls could see him now.

  “Hey, Rubes,” he says in a low, husky voice. It’s the voice he puts on when he’s talking to one of his doting fans. He thinks it makes him sound suave. I think it makes him sound like he has the flu. “Did you see the rewrite yet?”

  He catches my gaze in the mirror and closes his eyes, miming a tender, romantic kiss. He looks like a monkey making kissy faces to the people at the zoo.

  I shudder and try to fight back the wave of nausea that rolls over me as I plop down into the chair next to him.

  “I know how long you’ve been waiting for this day,” Ryder teases.

  I groan. “Gross. No.”

  “Come on, Ruby. How could you not want to make out with this?” He takes out the latest issue of Star Beat magazine, which of course has his face on the cover, and shoves it toward me. I pretend to gag and throw up on it. He turns it back around and puckers his lips, like he’s actually going to kiss it himself. “Every girl in America wants to be in your shoes right now.”

  “Every girl in America can have my shoes,” I tell him sullenly.

  Gina finishes styling his hair, spritzing it with shine spray. “You’re all set.” Then she moves over to my chair, covers my jeans and T-shirt with a plastic cape, and begins combing out my hair. It’s all part of my normal morning routine. Gina sets my hair in obnoxious giant rollers; then Cami spends approximately an hour making up my face, after which Gina takes out the rollers and spends another half hour teasing my hair until I get my signature chocolate-brown wave. Then Sierra dresses me in whatever Mom-and-Barry-approved outfit has been selected.

  Ryder hops out of his chair and heads toward the door of the trailer, but not before making another round of obnoxious kissing noises. I try to lean forward to slug him in the arm, but he moves away too quickly and I start to fall toward him. Fortunately—or unfortunately—Gina has hold of a giant chunk of my hair, which she’s preparing to wrap around a roller, and it keeps me from falling into Ryder. But it also feels like it’s being ripped out of my scalp.

  “Ow!” I scream, sitting upright and rubbing the aching spot on my head.

  “Well, sit still,” Gina says with an impatient sigh, giving my hair another firm tug.

  “He started it,” I cry, pointing at Ryder.

  “Hey! I can’t help that she’s so in love with me she simply can’t stay away.”

  “Yeah, right. In your dreams.”

  “No,” Ryder says, catching my gaze again in the mirror and licking his lips. “In less than an hour.” And with that, he struts out of the trailer, leaving me to fume in my chair.

  “Don’t let him get to you,” Gina says, her voice softening. “He’s just another boy who got too famous too young. Sadly, it’s what happens.”

  Gina secures the roller in my hair with a clip and lets out a heavy sigh. I have a feeling when she signed up to be a hairstylist in Hollywood, she didn�
�t envision having to babysit preteens all day.

  An hour and a half later, once my makeup is done and Gina is just putting the finishing touches on my waves, Mom bursts into the trailer, looking like she’s come back from battle. And in a way, she has. She’s been arguing with Barry about the kiss scene for the past hour. I glance up from my book to hear what compromise has been reached. I’m half wishing she’ll tell me she’s gotten me fired from the show, but so far, that wish has never come true.

  “You’re still doing the kiss,” Mom says, “but it’s going to be two seconds instead of five, and they’re rewriting the scene so he kisses you instead of you kissing him.”

  Gina continues to fluff my hair in silence. She’s smart not to get involved.

  “Great job, Mom,” I commend her with a smile, knowing it will calm her down. Even though what I really want to say is What difference does it make who kisses who?

  Mom lets out an exhausted sigh and collapses into Ryder’s vacant chair. “Thanks.” She turns toward her reflection in the mirror and starts fussing with her own hair. “And you’ll thank me later when you still have an acting career at age twenty.”

  I close my eyes for a brief moment as my breath catches.

  Please don’t let me still be doing this at age twenty.

  But I realize that’s exactly where I’m heading. Unless I can get the guts to talk to my mom and tell her how I feel, I’ll be doing this job that I hate for the rest of my life.

  “All done!” Gina announces cheerfully, pulling the protective plastic cape from my clothes.

  Russ peeks his head in the trailer and gestures to his all-mighty clipboard. “They’re just rewriting the scene now and changing a few camera setups. Barry says to tell you it’ll be another hour until the first shot is up.”

  He glances uneasily at my mom, presumably waiting for her to explode again, but she just flashes him a smile in the mirror, clearly in a good mood now. “Thanks, Russ! You’ve been super helpful in all this.”