And what’s weird is … I felt myself changing too. As the minutes wore on and I was directing people (as one does when one is the director), I felt like I was getting taller. My shoulders straightened out. I stopped caring about whether I’d say anything dumb because all of them were hanging on my every word. I felt like a director for the first time ever today. I wasn’t a silk feathered hat person, but just for that period of time, I wasn’t a groundling either. I’m never, ever going to forget this feeling.
Oh, and I found out why Sahil had e-mailed to ask me what font I liked. He, Skid, and Aaron had pitched in and gotten me a director’s chair with my name on it. They made me cover my eyes and sit on it and they kept asking me questions like “Do you feel different?” before they’d let me uncover my eyes. When it sank in what they’d done, I almost cried. I just looked at them, all of their faces smiling and sweet and friendly. They’d planned this for me, and they barely knew me.
It’s getting a treasured place in my room when we’re done with the film, a reminder that there are people who believe in me and the message I want to send the world. And then if I ever win an Academy Award, I’m thanking them onstage.
So, after we finished filming the first scene and Sahil dropped me off at home, I had a surprise waiting—an e-mail from N! Pasting it below.
This has easily been one of the BEST days of my life.
Love,
Twinkle
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: You’re not bugging me
Twinkle,
Okay, I’m convinced. Let’s meet up. How about the carnival downtown Saturday night, 8 pm? I’ll meet you by the carousel.
—N
Eleven
Saturday, June 13
Dressing room at Target
Dear Haifaa al-Mansour,
I convinced Dadi to loan me some money to buy a dress. She thinks I’m going to the carnival to hang out with Maddie. I don’t like lying to her, but if I told her I was meeting some boy who’s been e-mailing me on the Internet, she would probably keel over of a heart attack. So I’ll tell her once it’s all worked out, promise.
I’m not letting it dampen my mood because … it’s Saturday, the day I meet N at the carnival!
It’s not till later tonight, but I opened my closet, looked in there, and realized I have nothing to wear. Nothing that doesn’t make me look like a twelve-year-old, anyway. So here I am, trying on clothes.
N has to be Neil, right? I mean, fixing the meeting for Saturday at eight p.m.? He’s probably done with his swim training then.
I kept rereading his e-mails like some obsessed character from Macbeth (instead of “out, out, damn spot!” I wanted to yell, “hint, hint, one hint! That’s all I want!”), until I made myself step away from the screen. I had to force myself to remember all the other cool stuff I have going on in my life.
So, okay, my ex-bestie (extie?) and I are still fighting. She wouldn’t even fully look at me during filming yesterday. But we got one whole scene completed. And all the other actors were paying attention, especially Brij, who kept staring at me like he was trying to see into my brain or something, which was a little intense, but if that’s what he needs to do to get into character, who am I to judge? I’ve slept in my famous female filmmakers T-shirt every night this week to get into the mind-set of a butt-kicking female director. Victoria casually let it slip that she’d told Hannah I was coming to the party and then later I heard Maddie tell her that it was a bad idea to let me come. Then she saw me and her eyes got all wide and she walked off. Whatever. I’m still going. I’m the director and I was invited.
See, I have a lot going on. I don’t need to be nervous about N. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to look as beautiful and sexy and “shiny, future self” as possible. Fake it till you make it and all that. This could be the beginning of the future, non-groundling me. Tonight might be the night I look back on fondly once things have turned around for me. Shouldn’t I look my best for it? (No heels, though. That’s where I draw the line.)
Love,
Twinkle
Saturday, June 13
Car ride with Papa
Dear Sofia Coppola,
Papa’s driving me to the carnival. I would be more focused on meeting N in just half an hour, but I’m too busy being stunned by my unbelievably weird day so far.
I had no idea looking beautiful and sexyish was as complicated as solving a freaking differential equation.
It all started out pretty well. I got a cute dress at Target. It’s sleeveless and purple lace with these tiny buttons at the back and falls to midthigh. I even picked up some lip gloss and eyeliner on impulse (the dress was on sale, so I was able to get all of that for less than forty dollars, which is what Dadi had given me). But when I got home and began to get dressed (at five p.m., just to give me plenty of time), I realized I’d forgotten a big part of my outfit: my hair.
I mean, it’s long and thick and falls to just above my waist. I usually wear it in a braid so I don’t have to deal with it. But I couldn’t wear a braid to the carnival, for my first meeting with N. I looked up these YouTube videos that promised “5 EASY ways to style hair ANYONE can master!” I must not be “anyone” because I felt like I was wrestling an octopus. Or maybe I needed to be an octopus, because there is no way anyone without eight arms can do all the stuff the girl in the video was doing.
At one point I was in tears. This was not how the first night of the rest of my shiny, new, non-invisible life was supposed to start. Things were supposed to be easy and fun, but everything felt stressy and sweaty and annoying. Honestly? I kept wanting to call Sahil to vent. I longingly imagined him, Skid, Aaron, and me in Perk, just laughing and hanging out. But then I’d tell myself I was being silly. Neil and non-groundling status was what I’ve been dreaming of for so long. Maybe I’m just suffering from impostor syndrome.
Once I dried my tears I tried to recruit Dadi, who said she’d be happy to help and then braided my hair into two braids that were horrifyingly stuck to the side of my head. I looked like I belonged on the hills of Switzerland with milk pails. It was already well past six o’clock at this point and I was beginning to hyperventilate when it hit me: I had the number to an expert hair-doer-upper. Sure, this wasn’t strictly why she’d given me her number, but I was desperate and ready to try just about anything. So I called Victoria Lyons.
At first she thought I was telling her that I had a wig I needed help with for the movie, but when she got that it was my hair that was in dire need, she immediately said, “Oh! Okay, gimme your address.” She showed up twenty-five minutes later with—I am not even kidding—a little suitcase on wheels.
I stared at it because I thought she’d misunderstood and thought I’d asked her over for a sleepover or something. “Um … is that a suitcase?”
“It’s a travel case of all my hair supplies,” Victoria explained. Then, pointing to her luscious red hair, which was in a high, bouncy ponytail, the kind I could never pull off, she said, “Do you think all this magic happens without some serious tools?”
She walked in and looked around at my tiny living room and the attached kitchen. “Oh. This reminds me of this cute little cabin I stayed at in Amsterdam over last winter break. They misrepresented the picture online when I booked! My dad almost sued the pants off them.” She beamed at me, and I realized she didn’t mean any of that to be insulting.
“Um, my room is this way,” I said, walking down the tiny hallway. Once we were inside and she’d had me sit on my desk chair, facing the floor-length mirror on my wall, I said, “Thanks for coming over, by the way. I know you must have stuff to do.”
Victoria smiled slyly. “I figured this had something to do with a boy. And that adorable dress on your bed and this makeup here tells me I’m not wrong.”
I felt my cheeks get warm. Thank goodness for dark skin; Victoria probably couldn’t see it. “No, you’re not wrong.”
I hitched in a sharp breath. Victoria watched me curiously in the mirror. “Ah, no,” I said. “Not Sahil.”
She nodded. “Okay. Well, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. We’ll just make sure you sweep him off his studly feet. Deal?”
I grinned. “Deal.”
She paused with her hands in my hair. “Although … can I tell you something?”
I looked at her in the mirror. “Sure.”
“You don’t need all this stuff”—she gestured to her suitcase—“to sweep him off his feet. You’re kind of cool in a weirdly quirky way. It draws people in.”
I almost choked on my spit. “No, I’m not.” Had Victoria not noticed that people were so not drawn to me that I, in fact, seemed to repel them? Especially the silk feathered hats?
She smiled a little. “Yes, you are. You just can’t see it. Sit up straighter.”
I did as she asked, feeling warm and happy. Victoria, one of the silkiest, featheriest hatted, people thought I was cool and quirky? And she’d come all this way to help me. I felt the little bud of our friendship beginning to bloom, and I smiled to myself.
Victoria got into it. She began to pull sections of my hair this way and that and then she told me to close my eyes because she wanted me to wait to see the final product at the end. And then, when she was done with my hair, forty-five minutes later, she told me she’d brought makeup in her traveling suitcase and wanted to slather that on my face too. I asked her what was wrong with the Revlon stuff I bought at Target, but she just said, “No offense, Twinkle, but everyone knows NARS is where it’s at.”
“What’s that?” I asked, grimacing while she dusted something on my face that smelled like roses. I kept my eyes closed though. “A club?”
Victoria snorted. “Never mind. Just keep your eyes closed.”
She kept muttering things like, “No, no, plum is definitely her color, but I wonder if I have something with a little gold in it” and “Firecracker Copper is so you,” and finally, just when I thought I couldn’t take the suspense (and Victoria’s not-very-gentle ministrations) anymore, she told me to open my eyes.
“That is not me” is the first thing I said. Victoria laughed.
I looked … like some magical fairy version of myself. My hair was in these long, loose curls that looked effortless (but obviously weren’t), and one side was clipped back. My eyes were huge and expressive, dark brown popping against the copper-colored eyeshadow. I had dangerously sharp cheekbones that looked like Maddie’s, and my acne scars—even the deep one on my nose—had been covered up.
“Concealer,” Victoria said when I ran a finger over it. “I have a kind that works for most skin tones.”
Something dawned on me. The reflection in the mirror? It was her. The future Twinkle I’d always dreamed about, the one who had ideas that other people listened to, the one who was cool because she made movies, not nerdy because she was always hiding behind a camera.
“This is … I don’t know what to say, Victoria,” I said, standing and facing her. “I feel … like a glossy version of myself, if that makes sense. Like I could go places the old me would never have been allowed.” Like your social circle, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Actually, I didn’t even know if that was strictly true anymore. Things were shifting somehow. Victoria was here, in my house, being a friend to me. She’d invited me to her parents’ cabin. Maybe the movie was magic, somehow doing what I’d never been able to do for myself.
“Makeup can do that,” Victoria said, nodding knowingly. “But, Twinkle, you don’t need it. It’s not a golden ticket. You could’ve gone to the carnival in sweats and I’m sure you’d still be able to charm this guy, whoever he is.”
I smiled. “Thanks. That’s sweet.”
“Ugh, don’t call me that,” Victoria said, making a face. “Speaking of makeup, I’m leaving the eyeshadow, blush, and lip gloss I used on you here if you ever want to try this stuff on your own. They don’t work on me anyway, and don’t worry, I always use disposable applicators, so it’s all hygienic.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling shy all of a sudden. I know I’ve always been all about the groundlings and the silk feathered hats, but right then Victoria didn’t seem like a snob and I didn’t feel like a groundling. We were just two girls hanging out and bonding. “You’re like my teenaged fairy godmother. Only with makeup and hair spray.”
Victoria laughed. “Hey, I like that! I always knew I was special.” She winked and began packing up her stuff. “Now, get that dress on and go wow that boy, whoever he is.”
“I will. And, um …” I wasn’t going to say anything, but if there was ever a time, now was it. “I know you invited me to Hannah’s party, but Maddie—”
Victoria turned to me. “Don’t worry about Maddie. She’s just paranoid.”
“Paranoid?”
“Yeah. She thinks because Hannah doesn’t want you there, it’ll be weird or something. But it won’t. You’re my guest.”
“I don’t think she’s afraid it’s gonna be weird,” I said, trying not to let my hurt show. “I think she just doesn’t want me mixing with her friends.”
Victoria put her hands on her hips. “Well, she doesn’t get to make that decision alone.” After a pause, she said, “Besides, Hannah just needs a chance to get to know you. In fact, I always thought you were this mousy, weak girl with nothing to say—”
“Thanks,” I said, raising a combed and powdered eyebrow.
Victoria held up her hands. “—but you’re this cool, creative, film genius person! Hannah just needs to see that too. Don’t worry.”
“Okay. Thanks for real then.” I grinned at her. “I mean it. You’re pretty cool too.”
She smiled. “I know, right? Anyway, I’ll get out of here now so you can go meet Prince Charming.” Blowing me a kiss, she rolled her suitcase out into the hallway and was gone.
Holy crap, we’re here.
Love,
Twinkle
Saturday, June 13
One fantabulous Ferris wheel ride later
My room
Dear Sofia Coppola,
I know, I know. You’re probably dying to know who N is. But first, I must set the stage to tell the story.
So Papa dropped me off at the carnival. Right before I got out of the car, he looked at me and his eyebrows got all furrowed and he said, “Just you and Maddie? No boys?” I almost confessed everything right then and there because Papa was paying attention and he’d thought to ask, unlike another parent I have.
But if I told Papa the truth, he’d follow me around all night with that giant flashlight he keeps under his seat, and somehow I felt that might kill the atmosphere. I promised silently to tell him everything once N and I made it official instead.
After he was gone, I bought enough tickets for one ride and walked in. It was the usual hazy pink sky as dusk fell, the smell of fried stuff smothered in powdered sugar, people laughing and hooting and pushing past me. But it still felt magical. I felt different, like tonight all things were possible. Like every facet of my life would finally shape up and become clear.
For instance, the thing with Victoria showed me that not all non-groundlings are the arrogant, judgmental beasts I’d always thought them to be. (I never thought that about Neil, of course.) And maybe finally seeing N would put the Sahil problem to rest. Maybe I’d finally know what to do with my foolish heart.
It was weird, too, because as I walked, random boys kept looking at me. First I didn’t understand what that was about, but after the fourth one I realized: THEY WERE CHECKING ME OUT. This has never, ever happened to me on such a large scale before. Am I “hot” in this outfit, makeup, and hair?? Weird, especially considering not a single thing about me has changed. I just have some paint slapped on me.
I wound through the crowd and found the carousel. (It was hard to
miss because of the music and also because the entire top hooded part of it had been covered in these twinkly lights.) I checked the watch I’d borrowed (read: stolen) from Mummy’s drawer: 7:50 p.m. I still had ten minutes. Was it uncool to get there ten minutes before my secret admirer? Probably. I thought about ducking into a nearby stall and waiting behind the stuffed animals, but decided that would be too weird, even for me. So, instead, I watched the little kids on the carousel.
It was pretty cool. Most of them had their eyes closed in total delight, like they were imagining themselves flying or something. Some of the more anxious ones kept their heads turned so they could see their parents at all times. I wondered which one I used to be when I was a kid. I had a feeling I was in the nervy group, constantly reaching for Mummy even if she didn’t want me to. That’s okay, though. Dadi always took her place.
Anyway, do you know they don’t just have horses and pumpkin carriages on carousels now? This one had some Pokémon and Adventure Time characters.
I glanced at my watch again. Only three minutes had passed. This was torture. My palms had literally begun to sweat.
“Get ready, folks!” a voice said on the loudspeaker, startling me. “In just a few minutes, we’re going to blow the horn and open the gates to the rides in this park for a full sixty seconds! That means you can ride for free, noooo tickets needed, as long as you get on the ride before the horn stops blowing! Once again, this is for every ride in the park!”
Huh. That might be fun. Maybe once N got here, we could do that. We could ride the spinning teacup ride thing and maybe he’d kiss me in it, setting my non-groundling future into full force.
From Twinkle, With Love Page 12