“Whatever,” she said and hung up.
I walked over to Charlotte’s house and Mr. Lidstrom had put flowers from his garden in little glass jars at each of our plates. Deidre wasn’t there yet so we went into Charlotte’s room.
“I made something for you,” she said.
She handed me a notebook that she had filled with stuff we’d done during the summer. There were pressed flowers from the walks we took, a picture of Valeria because we had spent so much time watching Charmed Lives, and pictures of book covers on one page. There was even a picture of Jack with question marks around his head saying, “Where are you?” And she had glued an envelope on the last page, and inside it was the necklace we had started to make out of gum wrappers.
“I can’t believe I didn’t finish it after all the gum I chewed,” she said. It was too small to be a necklace, so I wore it as a bracelet.
“This is much better,” I said. “And for once having skinny arms pays off.”
Deidre came over and Mr. Lidstrom dished out lasagna, which was Charlotte’s favorite. He had put vegetables from his garden in the salad, and we had little cheesecakes for dessert. Charlotte’s bus came to pick her up at four o’clock. She gave us all hugs and waved to us from the window. We watched until the bus was out of sight.
“Would you girls like to stay for a while and have a glass of soda pop?” Mr. Lidstrom asked, looking hopeful.
Deidre said she had to leave, but I stayed and he poured me a glass of orange soda and put some cookies on a plate for us. We watched TV for a while, and I helped him in his garden until my grandpa came over.
“I see you’ve put my granddaughter to work,” Grandpa said.
“She’s a big help and good company,” Mr. Lidstrom said.
“We’re going to miss Charlotte around here,” Grandpa said. Mr. Lidstrom made me promise to come back and visit him.
I was hoping Deidre might start calling me since Charlotte was gone. I even thought about calling her until I went to the beach with Aunt Faith and saw her hanging out with Pilar. I said “hi” to Deidre and she answered me, but she didn’t go out of her way to be friendly. I noticed Simone wasn’t with them, so I called her figuring she might want me around if her other friends were mad at her.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.
“I’m so bored I could die,” Simone said. “Do you want to go to the movies?”
We went to see Death Comes for the Dress Up Dolly, but she spent most of the movie sitting low in her seat and texting. I kept looking behind us to see if anyone was going to get up and yell at her for texting during the movie, but there weren’t a lot of people in the theater.
The lights came on and I asked what she thought of the movie.
“Oh, dunno.” She shrugged. “That doll was super creepy though. But guess what? Morgan and I just made up. It was all this huge misunderstanding. I feel so dumb. She is the best. So glad that’s sorted.”
Great, so I was back to hanging around the house and reading until they dumped her again.
That night I sent Nick a text before I went to bed.
Me: Hey, long time, no talk. The Tigers are doing pretty well. How are you doing? Miss ya.
But when I got up the next day, there was no message.
Chapter Fifteen
On Tuesday, I went to visit Mr. Lidstrom. His door was open and I saw him cleaning up the kitchen through the screen door. He had the radio on as he swept the floor and he invited me in and gave me a glass of root beer. He had to take some stuff up to the attic and I went up with him. Their attic was full of trunks and boxes and he said a lot of them were filled with his wife’s things. He found a box of old photo albums and showed me pictures of Charlotte’s mother and her grandmother. Charlotte resembled her grandma, but with darker hair. Mr. Lidstrom also had a stack of old supermarket tabloids.
“They’re my guilty pleasure,” he said. We spent the afternoon looking through the tabloids, and he let me keep all the ones with pictures of Jack Brogger and Josh Haven.
Clark was bugging his dad to take him to the movies when I got home. Uncle Stu gave in and asked if I wanted to come along. He said I could bring a friend since Clark was bringing three, but Simone wasn’t home, so I went alone. We were standing in line when I saw Deidre by the snack counter with Pilar and her brother. Deidre told me both their families were going to Disneyland for a week. I wondered if it meant Connor would start going out with Simone when Pilar left. I hoped Simone would invite me to do stuff with her since Pilar was leaving and because she and Morgan were always fighting.
Of course, it didn’t happen because Simone’s best friend, Asia Milanowski, came back home from her vacation. I still kept thinking Simone would call me, but she didn’t. Aunt Faith saw I was dying of boredom one afternoon, so she took Lily and me to get ice cream. Lily was fussing in her stroller so we took her out. Lily started running all over the place the second her feet hit the ground. Aunt Faith handed me her ice cream cone and took off after her as Morgan, Asia, and Simone walked into the ice cream shop. I was holding two cones and Morgan smirked at me.
“Eat enough?” she said. Simone said “hi” to me as Aunt Faith came back with Lily who was covered in chocolate ice cream.
“I’ve got to get her cleaned up,” she said as Lily flailed her chocolaty arms and got a smudge on my beach t-shirt.
Morgan found this hysterical and Simone rolled her eyes. I didn’t know if Simone was making fun of me or not, so I went outside with the ice cream to wait for my aunt. Simone came outside and handed me some napkins. She didn’t say anything and went back inside. Aunt Faith came out ten minutes later with a wet paper towel for my shirt. The chocolate stain smeared and she told me she’d put it in the wash when we got home. I didn’t even care. I had bought the t-shirt to look cool in front of Morgan and her friends, but it didn’t matter because nothing I did was going to help me fit in with them.
I went up to my room to lie down and knocked my magazine off the bed. I picked it up and flipped to the article with Valeria, and I realized she was wearing hair extensions in almost all of the pictures. Then I noticed her eyes were brown in some pictures and blue in others. I wondered if Simone knew Valeria wore colored contacts. I’d been trying so hard to look like Valeria, and now I found out even Valeria didn’t look like Valeria.
Simone called me the next day and asked me to come over. I figured she needed me to cover for her so she could go to a party, or maybe Morgan and Asia were mad at her, but they were both there when I walked into her room.
“Hi, Hadley,” Simone said. “Do you want something to drink?” I noticed Simone was back to drinking diet Coke again. Morgan was looking through a magazine and Simone stuck her finger in the magazine and flipped the page back to show me a picture of Valeria.
“I love her hair in this picture,” she said, pointing to a photo of Valeria with her hair cut like Simone’s.
“Oh my God, are you trying to copy her?” Morgan said, cracking up. “How funny! You are so crazy.”
Simone laughed it off and started picking her nail polish off. I asked if I could try her eyeliner on and she nodded.
“You use drugstore makeup?” Morgan asked, wrinkling her nose.
“All the makeup artists I worked with in L.A. used this kind,” Simone said as she handed me her eye pencil.
“Oh, you’re such an expert. I forgot what a big star you are,” Morgan said, rolling her eyes.
“Valeria Joseph uses Be Lashful stuff too,” I said.
“Well, she gets paid to say she uses it,” Simone said. “I’m not sure she actually does.”
I guess it would explain why Valeria’s skin looked dewy and perfect in the ads and mine was more on the greasy side. My hand wasn’t steady, and I smeared the liner under my right eye. Morgan snorted when she saw it, and I went to the bathroom to wash it off.
“We’re going over to my house,” Morgan said when I came back into the room. I was excited I was going to see Morgan’s house.<
br />
“Okay, great,” I said.
“Yeah, so…see ya later,” Morgan said, looking me up and down. My stomach fell as I realized I hadn’t been invited, and I made a fool of myself by letting her know I thought I had been.
“Um, I think I’m gonna stay here,” Simone said. Morgan stared at her. “I’m kind of tired.”
“Fine,” Morgan said. “C’mon, Asia.” Asia got up and followed her. After they left, Simone made some popcorn. She put a bag in the microwave, but she wasn’t paying attention and it burned.
“Ma, how long do you put this stuff on for?” Her mother came into the kitchen and opened the microwave door. Steam poured out of the microwave and her mother sighed.
“Let me do it, okay?” her mother said. Simone backed away and her mom heated up a bag of popcorn for us. We took the popcorn back to her room and she told me she had gotten sunburned yesterday.
“I burn fast, so I use the fake tanning stuff,” she said as she smeared some aloe moisturizer on her cheeks. “Morgan was driving me nuts this morning. She told me my hair was starting to look cheap and maybe I should have it done professionally, and Asia sat there and said nothing.”
“Your hair looks nice. Morgan’s probably jealous,” I said.
“I dunno. My mom thinks Morgan looks like a photo negative because her hair’s so light and she’s so tan. You know, she even goes to a tanning booth in the winter,” she said.
“Why would anybody want to be tan in the winter?” I asked. “All you see in the winter are your face and hands.”
“Morgan wears shorts until there’s snow on the ground,” Simone said. “Anyway, she wants me to go out on Lucas’s family’s boat with her, Nick, and Connor this weekend.”
I asked if her mom would let her go and she shrugged. As much as I would be thrilled to have Morgan ask me to go anywhere with her, I’d be scared to death to go out on a boat with three guys. Simone was only a few months older than me, yet she seemed so much older and more mature. Maybe it was because she had been on TV. I said she could say she was coming over to my grandparents’ house again if she wanted.
“Thanks. My mom would freak if she knew I was going to be on a boat with a bunch of guys, and Lucas’s brother is nineteen.” She played with the fringe on her shorts. “I don’t even know if I want to go.”
“Why not?” I asked, passing her the popcorn bowl.
“Well, Connor didn’t exactly stick up for me when Morgan and Pilar got mad at me, and he’s always trying to get me alone,” she said. “Pilar hasn’t even been gone a week and he’s already called and told me he liked me all along, but Morgan wanted him to go out with Pilar. I mean, why didn’t he tell her he liked me?”
“Yeah.”
“And Asia’s been kissing up to Morgan so bad. She’s like her shadow now.” Simone leaned back against her pillow.
“Has Nick mentioned me at all?” I asked.
“No, why?”
I didn’t want to tell her about the kiss and then find out he now had a girlfriend or something.
“He stopped texting me.”
“Boys are weird. Guess what? I found out my dad and his girlfriend are having fireworks at their stupid wedding.”
“When did you find out?” I asked.
She said her dad had called last night. He wanted her to be a bridesmaid at his wedding, but he was getting married in September and she said she didn’t think she could go.
“I’d have to miss two days of school because they decided to get married on Mackinac Island,” she said.
“It’s too bad your mom won’t let you miss school,” I said.
“Well, she said I could go if I wanted to, but I don’t think I want to.” She pulled another thread off her shorts and wound it around her finger. “They’re already talking about having kids. They’re not even married yet and his girlfriend was saying she’d love to have a baby named Dakota. Seriously?”
“It’s a pretty name,” I said.
“It’s my grandmother’s maiden name and my middle name,” she said. “Why did she even bring that up, and of all the names in the universe? She’s already got my dad, so why does she have to steal my name too?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I offered to go refill the popcorn bowl. She seemed a little calmer when I came back.
“You know the bear you have?” she asked. “I found mine last night. She was in the garage. I went out there after I talked to my dad…I didn’t want my mom to know I was upset.”
She brought her bear out and it reminded me of Jack, but with a pink tutu on. I asked what her name was and she made a face.
“I named her Glitter. She was my mom’s, but I liked her better than any of my bears. I showed her to Asia, and she said Glitter seemed kinda dirty. Maybe I should throw her in the wash,” she said, staring at the bear’s face. “But she doesn’t look dirty to me.”
Grandma called me to come home for dinner, but she said I could invite Simone over to eat. After dinner, we went up to my room. Simone loved my Jack Brogger sticker, and she said I could borrow the CDs of his I didn’t already have, which was good because my mom wouldn’t let me buy his Livin’ in Sin album for some reason. I thought about buying it here since she wasn’t around, but my mother had this way of being able to tell when I’ve done something wrong, and I knew she’d find out. Sometimes it was like my mother was psychic or something.
“I think Jack’s hot, but I’m in love with Josh Haven. He’s my favorite actor,” she said. “I loved the movie he did with Angelia Byatt.”
I hadn’t seen it because I looked too young to get into R-rated movies without my parents—it was so embarrassing, but I nodded anyway.
“You know what we should do?” she said. “We should have a Josh movie marathon tonight. We could rent a bunch of Josh’s movies, and you could spend the night.”
It was okay with her mom, and Grandma said I could spend the night but not to “make a pest of myself.” Simone and I got her mother’s rental card and we went downtown. We got three Josh movies and then stopped for slushies at the ice cream parlor. I wanted a cherry cola slushie so I put both cola and cherry flavors in my cup. Simone thought it was a good idea so she put some of each in her cup too. We walked past the pizza place and I saw Morgan sitting at a table with Asia. I hoped Simone wouldn’t notice them. She was having fun with me and I didn’t want her missing her old friends, but she saw them and rolled her eyes.
“It’s gonna be another fun school year,” she said. “I’m so sick of it. Every year is the same. Somebody gets mad at me and then they’re all mad at me. Then Morgan gets mad at somebody else and we all have to get mad at them, even if they didn’t do anything to us,” she said.
I thought she’d be depressed because her friends had gone out without her, but she seemed okay. One of the movies was stupid, so we fast forwarded through it and only watched the parts Josh was in. Josh wasn’t a great actor, but he had this sort of dumb but sweet quality about him which made me like him.
“Wouldn’t Josh and Valeria be a cute couple?” she asked. “Much better than the girl he pretends to be dating.”
“Wait, pretends to date?”
“Yeah, you know, like those photos in the magazines where he’s got his arm around that girl.”
“So those aren’t real?”
“When I was on the set everyone talked about how the studios had a deal with this one magazine to promote their stars. So the photographers from that magazine always knew who was going to be where, and everyone could look amazing in the shots.”
It was weird to know it was all fake. I felt dumb falling for it, so to show her I wasn’t super naïve, I told her I thought Valeria wore colored contact lenses and she sat up on the couch.
“For real? I never noticed. I think you’re right though,” she said. “You know what? Last week Morgan said everybody tells her she looks like Madison on Charmed Lives, but Lucas’s brother said Madison was way taller. She got so mad and I felt bad for her. Not lik
e she’s ever stood up for me.”
We slept in until noon. Simone’s mom said there wasn’t anything decent in the house for lunch and gave us some money to go downtown. Simone let me borrow a pink t-shirt and a pair of jean shorts when we walked to the hot dog stand and stopped for slushies. Nick was at the hot dog stand with another girl. I immediately shrank behind Simone when I saw him. She raised her eyebrows at me.
“Hey, Nick, what’s up?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
The girl had dark hair and wore cat eyeliner that made her look sophisticated—like a dark-haired version of Madison on Charmed Lives. The girl had an immaculate white sundress on, and I felt like such a slobby kid next to her.
“We haven’t talked to you in a while,” Simone said, squinting as she put her hand up to block the sun.
“Yeah,” he said and then turned to the girl he was with and put his arm around her. “See ya around.”
I felt like puking on the sidewalk. He had a new girlfriend and I was nothing to him now.
“What was that?” Simone asked as they walked away. “He’s normally, like, super sweet. And who’s that chick?”
“Maybe I did something wrong,” I said. My eyes filled with tears as I told her about the kiss.
“But he was fine after that?” she asked.
I nodded. “And then all of a sudden he stopped texting me, and I wrote him, but got no response, so I stopped.”
“Who knows? Maybe he got scared off. Don’t worry about it. After all, we still have one Josh movie left,” she said, putting her arm around my shoulder. “We don’t need local boys when we have our Joshie.”
Maybe she didn’t, but I really liked Nick. He was the first guy I felt comfortable with, and he seemed like he liked me too. I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong.
“Do you think that text I sent him weirded him out or something?” I asked.
She took my phone and scrolled through our messages. “I dunno, nothing jumps out at me. I don’t understand boys though, so you are asking the wrong person.”
Next Door To A Star Page 9