Devon nodded in agreement. “Trust yourself,” she told Piper. “You know you’re good.”
“Totally!” I said. “I’ll help you, whatever you need to keep you calm.”
“How about bringing me those clips?”
Once I finally got Piper all the supplies she needed and everything was set for the demo, she went down into the basement to focus, which meant she must have been really desperate for some privacy. That basement was an absolute freak show. I had no proof, but I was pretty sure a colony of rats lived down there, and not like the cute ones from Ratatouille. More like oversized zombie rats.
For her demo, Piper was doing what she called messy-classic looks, like jawline pigtails that were ratted out and poufy. As people started to arrive, I showed them to their seats and brought up extra drinks. Mom was at the front greeting them and Megan was running from the front to the back, working on last-minute details. I handed Mom an extra box of pens she’d asked for.
“Thanks, Mickey,” Mom said, setting it down and shuffling through some papers at reception. A delivery guy came in with a shipment of new products and Mom showed him to the back.
Lizbeth smiled at me—we hadn’t spoken much since we got to work because it’d been so busy. Also she tended to stay in one place and I moved all over the salon. “How was last night?”
I paused—I knew she meant the inventory I’d supposedly been doing with Violet.
I tried to answer without lying—again. “It was okay,” I said. “Not so bad.” Because hanging out at the mall with Eve wasn’t bad at all.
“Did you have to stay late?” Lizbeth asked.
“Nope, not late at all.” We’d left the mall around eight thirty.
“That’s cool. How long does that take to do, anyway?”
Who was she—a reporter for TMZ?
“Oh, not too long . . . You know!” I finally got the brilliant idea to try to get the heat off me, so I asked, “How was your night? What did you and Kristen end up doing?”
“Lizbeth,” Mom said, appearing next to us after showing the delivery guy out. “Could you do us a favor?”
“Sure,” she said. I let out a subtle sigh of relief. No more questions!
“Could you answer the phones and take any messages that might come in during Piper’s demo?” my mom asked Lizbeth. “I want Megan on the floor in case Piper needs anything. I think it’ll help calm her down.”
Lizbeth’s light brown eyes widened. Standing up a little straighter she said, “Yeah, sure!”
“You can just write the appointment requests down here,” she said, turning to a fresh page in the notebook that was at reception. “Tell them you’ll have Megan call back to confirm. Make sure you get their first and last name and their phone number, even if they tell you we already have it.”
“Got it,” Lizbeth said. “No problem.”
“Hey, Mom,” I said. “Um. If you need me to help out on the floor while Piper demos I can do that. Megan can stay here.”
Fine, I’ll admit it—I was kind of jealous. Mom was letting Lizbeth work the front alone, like a real team member. Lizbeth’s star was shooting up quickly while I was still spilling stuff all over the clients. I was practically a liability.
“Thanks, sweetie,” Mom said. “But you don’t have to worry about this. Lizbeth has things under control up front.” She looked over my shoulder. “Besides, it looks like Giancarlo’s station needs a sweep.” She winked, like she was doing me a favor.
Piper had nothing to worry about. Once she got going with her demo, she was flawless. The girl she used as her model had gorgeous, straight, long blond hair that was versatile enough to be styled two different ways—elegantly swooped to the side, then pulled up in a rockin’ ponytail. By the time Piper was done, I was pretty sure I could do the style on myself or someone else. She got tons of cheers, and her beaming smile seemed to say she was happy with how it’d gone. She even did a little curtsy, fanning out her skirt. Afterward I helped clear the chairs away. Soon things were back to the steady buzz of a Saturday.
The front door chimed and Eve walked in with a huge smile on her face.
“Hey, Eve!” Lizbeth said from the front.
“Hi, Lizbeth,” she said, standing in front of the reception desk. “Hey, Micks!” she said when she spotted me. Her hair still looked cute from when I’d fixed it last night and touched it up this morning.
“Your hair looks so cute,” Lizbeth said.
“All Mickey,” Eve said. “But listen!” she turned to me. “You won’t believe it! That woman we met last night at the mall? The casting director? My mom checked her out and we went to see her this morning and guess what? I got cast! In the commercial! That’s shooting next weekend!”
“Seriously?” I said. The very first thing I thought was that I was excited for Eve. I couldn’t believe that someone I knew was going to be on TV. Those thoughts lasted about five seconds, though, because I realized she’d said we’d been at the mall the night before. Together. My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. Eve didn’t know I’d told Lizbeth and Kristen that I’d be slaving away on inventory here at the salon. I decided to just hope Lizbeth hadn’t heard that part. “How was the audition? What’d they have you do?” I asked.
“Oh my gosh,” Eve began. “They had me stand in these really bright lights and walk really slowly—Bunny said robotic. And then they had me throw these blue racquetballs off-camera—like off to the side—with intense anger. That’s what Bunny said. She told me to pretend they were grenades. Like I know how to handle a grenade! Anyway,” she said, taking a breath, “she told me right there on the spot that she liked the way I looked on camera and I was in! Can you believe it?”
“You’re amazing, Eve,” I said, because I really didn’t want to take away from her moment with my own ability to ruin things.
“Wait, back up,” Lizbeth said, looking at each of us. I looked down to avoid her gaze. “How did this happen?”
Eve launched into the story of how she was discovered at the food court last night while we were out shopping. The longer her story went on, the more I wondered how I was going to dig myself out of this whopper without ruining my friendships with Lizbeth and Kristen and possibly Eve. Would Eve think I was a liar then, too?
“We were just sitting there, talking about boys—you remember, Mickey?—and she was standing there all tall and slim and model-like. Oh, and get this—her name is Bunny Jenkins. Can you believe it? And she was all, ‘Have you ever modeled?’ And I was like, ‘No,’ and she was like, ‘You should.’”
All I could do as Eve told her story to Lizbeth was try not to hyperventilate while coming up with some sort of plan to save face over this white lie I had told. Oh, and avoid making eye contact with Lizbeth.
“And then I had the audition and it was just in this one room with lights and a camera, and I had to do the walking and throwing and stuff. And then that was it, and I got it!”
“Wow,” Lizbeth said as Eve tried to catch her breath. “That’s all kinds of crazy.” She looked at me, but only briefly.
“I know, isn’t it?” Eve said, still all smiles, all oblivious. “And I’m going to be an alien, but not like a green alien from some lame sci-fi, but like, an albino alien with shiny, almost metallic features. That’s what she said, anyway.”
“Well, congratulations,” Lizbeth said. “That’s really an amazing story.”
“Thanks,” Eve said. “Anyway, I came in because Bunny said I should get a deep conditioning treatment just to make sure it’s at its shiny best. So I guess I’ll need an appointment for that.”
“You got it. Looks like our first available is next Saturday. Okay?” Lizbeth said.
Eve shrugged. “That’s cutting it close, but if that’s what you’ve got, I’ll take it!”
Lizbeth wrote down Eve’s info.
“Thanks!” she told Lizbeth. “I’ll see you guys at school!” Eve ran back outside to her mom’s car.
I wanted to bail on the r
eception area before Lizbeth started asking me questions. I couldn’t escape fast enough.
“Hey, Mickey,” Lizbeth said. Panic rose up in my throat. “I thought you and Violet were doing inventory here last night?”
Don’t lie, a voice inside my head said. It’ll only make it worse. Then these words came out of my mouth: “Oh, at the last minute Mom said she didn’t need me. And, um, I ran into Eve and we just sort of made random plans on the spot.”
“So you didn’t work on Friday?” Lizbeth said. “I thought you told me—”
“Excuse me, Mickey?” Violet said from her station on the other side of Mom’s, near the front. “When you get a chance could you bring me some bobby pins from the back?”
“Sure,” I said, happy to get away from Lizbeth and her line of questioning. “I better go,” I told her.
Lizbeth nodded, but I knew she was suspicious. And more than being mad, she looked hurt at what I’d done—pushing her out of my plans and then lying about it. I didn’t like myself for what I’d done, even in the exact moment I was doing it. I knew I’d have to fix it, but once those words had left my mouth, I felt stuck.
For the rest of the day Lizbeth was, I don’t know, professional toward me or something. Not exactly cold, not exactly friendly, either. I, on the other hand, practically fell all over myself trying to be nice—throwing extra smiles her way and rushing to get her the extra diet sodas we ran out of. None of it seemed to matter, though, because just as she was leaving, I practically yelled good-bye from halfway across the salon. She didn’t turn back to say anything.
Maybe she just didn’t hear me.
CHAPTER 13
As the school day started on Monday, I dreaded seeing Lizbeth. She had to know I’d lied about the mall; now I just wondered if she’d also told Kristen and, if so, whether or not Kristen hated me, too.
As I walked through the halls I heard little keywords buzzing around the air. Words like discovered, actor, and famous. By lunchtime everyone in our class knew Eve had been cast in a commercial.
“What’s this about you shooting a commercial this weekend?” Kristen asked Eve at lunch as she arranged her tray just so. Lizbeth hadn’t said a word to me all day, which was basically all the proof I needed that she knew I’d lied.
Eve retold the story. She seemed to enjoy the attention. As she recounted the part about Bunny saying she looked like an alien, I wondered why I hadn’t given Eve the heads-up about what I’d told the girls. The last thing I needed was for Eve to dig me further into the mess I’d created by telling our mall story again and again.
Kristen nodded at every detail Eve told, said she loved Bunny’s name, and told Eve how lucky she was to have been in the right place at the right time.
“But wait,” Kristen said. “When did this happen again?”
I have to say that there was something about the way she asked—and the way she looked through narrowed eyes at Eve—that said she already knew the answer.
“This weekend,” Eve said, glancing over at me.
“You guys were together?” she asked, looking straight at me and Eve.
“Yep,” Eve said. My heart picked up the pace.
Kristen looked at me and said, “Why didn’t you get an audition?”
“She didn’t want me,” I said. “She wanted Eve.”
“Right,” Kristen said, pulling her tray toward her and stabbing a chicken finger with her spork. “And this was on . . . Saturday night?”
“Kristen,” Lizbeth said. “Come on.”
“I’m just curious about their weekend,” she said in a way that was so overly innocent that it seemed fake. Which meant she knew. She totally knew.
Lizbeth darted her eyes at me before looking down at her hands. As the silence fell heavier and heavier over our table, Eve said slowly, “Not Saturday. It was Friday.”
“Oh, Friday?” Kristen said. She looked at me and continued, “The night you told us you couldn’t come over because you had to work? That Friday?”
“Kristen, give it a rest,” Lizbeth said in a low voice.
“I’m just asking questions.”
“Guys, what’s going on?” Eve asked.
These gross little nervous sweat bubbles started forming on my upper lip, I could just feel it. Don’t lie, that voice said. You’ll only get in deeper! “Okay, so I was supposed to go into the salon on Friday night. It just didn’t work out that way so, um, Eve and I just sort of decided to go to the mall.” There. The truth, mostly. Except the part about going to Hello, Gorgeous! Friday night in the first place. Eve looked at me, confused about my revised version of events. Thankfully she didn’t say anything, though.
“If you had to work, that’s cool,” Kristen said. “I get it. But if you didn’t have to work and you lied, then that’s really not cool. If you don’t want to hang out with us, you can just say so.”
“It’s not that at all,” I said. I felt awful, but I knew that trying to explain would make matters worse, especially since there was no good explanation. “Look, I’m sorry.”
“Do you think they’re still doing auditions for the commercial?” Kristen asked Eve.
“I’m pretty sure it’s all been cast,” Eve said.
Kristen looked down at her lunch. “Figures. I mean, how many times does a commercial shoot in our town? Like, never,” she answered. “I feel like I’m being left out of everything.”
We all sat stiffly, Eve and I staring wide-eyed and frightened at Kristen’s narrowed and angry eyes. Lizbeth didn’t look at us when she said, “Hey, K, want to eat outside?”
“Definitely.”
As they left, Jonah and Kyle finally made it through the lunch line and plopped down with their trays at the end of the table.
I felt like even Eve was shooting dirty looks at me. There must have been some heavy tension in the air, because once Jonah settled into his lunch, he looked down at us and asked, “What’s wrong with you two?”
Instead of explaining what was really going on, I said, “Eve got a part in a commercial. It’s shooting this weekend.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jonah asked, sticking a spork in his chicken fingers. “If they need a leading man, let me know. I might be able to fit it into my schedule.”
“Hilarious,” I said.
“What’s the commercial for?” Kyle asked.
“Oh, just some alien thing,” I said, knowing that Jonah was going to flip when he found out. “Something called Warpath of Doom. Heard of it?”
“Dude,” Kyle said.
Jonah just about choked on his chicken. “No way.”
“For real,” Eve said.
“I’ve been hearing about this place in online forums for months,” Jonah said. “It’s like the video game, but you get to play inside the game, like in a building. They’re calling it The Experience. And then when you play you get to be a character, wearing this sensor vest and carrying a weapon that lasers the targets, and you move through rooms that are the different levels, trying to stay alive to get to the next one. And it’s like . . . and you . . . it’s only the best . . .” His head shook in little jerks like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. I guess he couldn’t. “You’re going to be in the commercial for it? That is so freakin’ cool.”
A smile finally cracked Eve’s face. “Yeah, I’m pretty excited. We get to go through the game on the shoot. I’ll basically be one of the first ones to try it out.”
“Whoa,” Jonah said, staring at her in awe. “Do you get free passes for when it opens?”
“I don’t know,” Eve said. “Maybe I’ll ask Bunny Jenkins. I guess everyone wants something from this.” She muttered that last part, but I was the only one who heard.
“That’s so cool,” Jonah said, staring at Eve with that familiar look once again—all googly-eyed, like he thought she was the greatest creature in the known universe. Okay, fine—it was actually kind of cute. Still, I could hardly think about anything other than the fact that almost all my friends were mad at me, ex
cept maybe Eve. And yeah, I noticed Kyle looking at me throughout the whole convo, but I didn’t even care. I was messing everything up with my friends, and that’s all that mattered right then.
CHAPTER 14
“Okay, Mick. What was that about?” Eve said as we left the cafeteria.
“It’s my fault,” I sighed. “Last week, when they asked if I wanted to hang out on Friday night, I lied. I told them I had to work.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t want to invite them to the mall since you said it should be just us, and I didn’t want them to be mad that we were doing something without them,” I said and shrugged. It sounded so lame.
“Well, they’re mad now,” Eve said. “You could have just said you had plans and left it at that. Then you wouldn’t have been lying, and you wouldn’t have hurt their feelings, either.”
“Believe me,” I said. “I know that now.”
“Mickey, you have to fix it,” Eve said.
I knew she was right. I just had no idea how.
“For the most part, great job on these reports,” Ms. Carter said from the front of the Little Theater the next afternoon as she held up a stack of papers.
I wondered who she was talking about when she’d said for the most part. Was she aiming her laser eyes at me? Sure, I’d struggled a bit to write the required five pages, but I was pretty sure I’d pulled it off in the end. Hopefully.
I sat beside Eve. Kristen and Lizbeth sat two rows behind us. I’d saved them seats and tried to wave them over when they came in a bit late, but they hadn’t seen me. I think. It’s also possible that they completely and purposely ignored me.
When Jonah arrived with Kyle, he moved my bags from the seats and plopped down. “Thanks for saving,” he’d said, and I didn’t correct him.
“Before we hand back your papers, we have a special speaker today,” Ms. Carter announced. “Joyce Clemens is from the human resources department of Briggs & Meyers. Now, when you go in for a job interview . . .”
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