Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Theodora
Emily
Theodora
Emily
Theodora
Emily
Theodora
Emily
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Theodora
Emily
Theodora
Emily
Theodora
Emily
Theodora
TEENSCENE.COM LACROSSE TEAM DOES THE TWIST!
Theodora
Emily
Oak City High Junior Class Speed-Dating Event!
Theodora
Emily
Oak City High Gazette - A RAFFLE FOR AN UNWORTHY CAUSE!
Emily
Theodora
NEW YORK POST PAGE SIX
Emily
Theodora
Emily
Emily
Theodora
Emily
Emily
LOUDSPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT
The Theodora Twist Diet, as seen in Hot Stuffff! magazine
Theodora
Emily
Theodora
Emily
Theodora
Theodora
About the Author
Copyright Page
For my three beautiful cousins:
Peri Cohen, Francesca D’Alli, and Angie D’Alli
ASHLEY BEAN
ASHLEY BEAN TALENT MANAGEMENT
1000 WILSHIRE BLVD.
LOS ANGELES, CA 90017
Date: March 8
From: Ashley Bean
To: Theodora Twist
Re: Acceptable Answers to Interview Questions
Dear Theodora,
Please memorize the following for the Family press junket tomorrow. If a reporter presses you, repeat answers.—AB
POSSIBLE QUESTION: Are you a virgin?
ANSWER (Adopt serious, thoughtful expression): As a role model for teens, I really think it’s best not to discuss such deeply personal matters.
POSSIBLE QUESTION: Is it true that you and your mother don’t get along?
ANSWER (Adopt pained expression): Like many teenage girls and their mothers, we don’t always see eye to eye. But we always love each other.
POSSIBLE QUESTION: Is it true that you and Lara Miles hate each other?
ANSWER (Adopt reverent expression): I have the utmost respect for my costar as an actress. I learned so much from everyone while making Family.
POSSIBLE QUESTION: Is it true that you’re dating both Bellini brothers?
ANSWER (Adopt slightly embarrassed expression. Giggle nervously): Bo and Brandon Bellini and I are just good friends!
Theodora
At first the reporter is all nicey-nicey: “I loved the film—and you’re great in it, Theodora! . . . Oooh, I love your shoes—Choos, right? . . . You’re so poised for sixteen!” But then she morphs into the Devil. “Is it true that Lara Miles dubbed you the Jailbait Diva because of your relentless flirting with the very married Cash Dayton?”
Well, I wouldn’t say relentless. That’s a joke, by the way. I have two gorgeous seventeen-year-old boyfriends. Why would I flirt with anyone, especially someone more than twice my age—even if he is a mega-yummy A-lister? If I said hello to my male costar at the craft service table and he got an erection? That’s not flirting. That’s being sixteen and hot.
I’m about to say this (well, the first part) when I remember I can’t admit that Bo and Brandon are my boyfriends. One Bellini brother would be okay. Two, apparently, makes me a little too PG-13 for the tweenies. The Bellini Brothers are the new It boy band, identical twins with identically great voices, identically great faces, and identically great bodies. They’re also just identically great. Truly nice. Like me, smarter than anyone gives them credit for. And they’re mine, all mine. The three of us have been dating for a month and I’m crazy about both of them.
“Honestly, I don’t know where these kinds of rumors start!” I chirp good-naturedly to the reporter. It’s a deviation from Ashley’s memo but she’d approve.
The reporter—an anchor for a TV entertainment news show—rolls her eyes at the cameraman filming us. Does she think I missed that? She’s sitting less than a foot away from me. And people say I wear short skirts? Every time this woman crosses her legs, I get a glimpse of thigh cellulite.
“Come on now, Theodora,” the reporter says. “Rumors are running rampant. Here’s your chance to tell your side of the story.”
At least she’s keeping me awake. It’s eight p.m., and I’ve been in this chair—in this tiny, airless meeting room in a swank L.A. hotel, the revolving door of reporters spinning every fifteen minutes—since nine this morning (and all day yesterday). Just to wake myself up (I have a hot date in an hour with Bo and Brandon—but we’re just good friends!), I think about saying Lara Miles is a jealous shriveled prune with bad breath!
But you can’t say that at a press junket. If there isn’t a television camera capturing your every facial expression, there’s a tape recorder picking up everything you mutter under your breath. The whole point of the thirty-plus interviews I’ve given over the past two days to newspaper, magazine, and television journalists and reporters is to promote my new film, Family. From the title you can tell it’s not a teen flick. Which is why I’m sitting here in a dress I’d normally reserve for a funeral, trying to be good, as Sasha, my personal stylist, and Assholia, the film’s stylist, hover around me, sucking all the air out of the room. (Okay, that isn’t her real name, but believe me, it fits.) You should have heard their cat fight over my dress. I’m contracted to wear House of Ruchioux for all non-red-carpet TV appearances. But their designs are way too risqué. Ruchioux doesn’t do demure. So Family’s stylist got creative with sticky tape and a clothespin and voilà—no cleavage!
Anyway, Family is my third movie, but my first major film. Meaning: the first in which I’m not running around in a tube top, shaking my tits so that everyone with a Y chromosome will shell out ten bucks for a movie ticket. Granted, there is a bikini scene, but what else does a teenager wear at the beach?
The first thing I told Ashley when she signed me as a client was that I wouldn’t even test for one of those stupid teen flicks about a supposed geek (take off her glasses and guess what—she’s gorgeous!) battling Miss Popular. I consider myself a serious actress, and thanks to Family, so will American audiences, and the world, when the film opens internationally in a few months. Ashley supports my “vision” one hundred percent. Her mantra is “Start as you want to continue,” which means no “why don’t those mean girls like me?” scripts. She doesn’t even bother sending them to me.
My goal? An Oscar. Yeah, I know I have to learn my craft and all that, and I am. I pay attention. I spy. I listen closely. I work my ass off. Sometimes I surprise myself by how good I am, and sometimes I wake up in a sweat, wondering when this dream that’s become my life is going to poof! disappear. Ashley tells me not to worry about that. I’m hot right now. And if I work hard, if I’m “smart about my career,” I’ll be thanking the Academy within five years. She’s been right about everything so far, so I listen to her.
Family premieres next week, which means I’ll have to do the talk show circuit. I hate doing talk shows. I’m supposedly on your television screen as me, Theodora Twist, but it’s not me. Take the past two days, for example. Everything that has come out of my mouth has been scripted, except for hi.
Question: What was it like working with Family’s Academy Award–winning director?
What I say: Great. One of the most amazing experiences of my life.
Real answer: Napoleon complex. Total dictator.
Question: What was it like working with t
he greatest living actress working today?
What I say: Amazing. I learned so much from her!
Real answer: I thought I was the greatest living actress. (Just kidding—though I did win a Golden Globe for my first film.) Real, real answer: Is it my fault Lara Miles hated me on sight because she’s not twenty-five anymore—which I won’t be for another nine years? And can’t the greatest living actress afford breath mints?
Question: What’s Family about?
What I say: It’s a powerful and moving examination of life and love for one extraordinary family ripped apart by adultery, by divorce, by scandal. For me, as a sixteen-year-old, it’s about what happens when your parents have affairs—how does that affect your own relationships with friends and boyfriends? It’s a film every teenager and their parents should see together.
Real answer: It’s about nothing. If I wasn’t in it, I wouldn’t see it. No sex, no car chases, no violence. Just a lot of weepy people talking about their feelings. In other words, it’ll be up for awards.
Question: You’re only sixteen—do you have an on-set tutor?
What I say: Yes. Nothing is more important than an education.
Real answer: No way.
Question: Is it true that you and your mother don’t get along?
What I say: That’s so silly! (Then I smile appreciatively at my mom, who was flown in yesterday for the junket—thankfully for only one day—so that we could be photographed and interviewed together as part of the Family publicity machine.) My mom and I are so close. We’re friends and mother and daughter.
Real answer: Let’s put it this way—my mother’s favorite thing to say to me is “If your father wasn’t already dead, he would keel over at your behavior, young lady!”
Question: You went from being an Oak City, New Jersey, eighth grader to reading for the part in a major motion picture, stealing every scene you were in, and becoming—two films, one Golden Globe, and two Teen Choice Awards later—America’s reigning teen queen actress. How were you discovered?
What I say: I was shopping for back-to-school clothes at the mall when I was spotted by a major Hollywood talent agent, who saw me go through a whole range of emotions while just looking for cute shirts that fit. (Adopt embarrassed expression. Blush.) I got boobs early! (In other words, I can call attention to my chest if I do it the rated-G way.) When you’re going into eighth grade and wear a 36C, shopping isn’t too much fun.
Real answer: One Saturday afternoon, I took the bus into Manhattan (which my mother had forbidden me to do), got a free makeover at Saks by acting like I was going to buy some makeup (like I had twenty bucks for a tube of mascara?), and attempted to steal a lipstick, my usual Saturday entertainment. A security guard posing as a bored husband caught me, but I fake-cried my way out of it. Ashley Bean just happened to be shopping in New York City that day. She was so taken by my act that she handed me her business card and told me to have my mom or dad call her. Did my mom yell at me about shoplifting? No. Did she call Ashley Bean? That night. (She was both tired of dealing with me and hearing the ka-ching of the box office. Which I suppose is her way of saying she always believed in my abilities.)
Ashley advised me to change my name, replace my metal braces with invisible ones, have my home-bleached-blond hair professionally colored, do something about my eyebrows, and up the padding on my Miracle bra, despite the fact that I was only thirteen at the time. She sent me on some auditions and shazam, I’m a movie star making more money a month (thanks to a seven-figure spokesmodel deal with Girlie Girl cosmetics) than all the dads in Oak City combined—including my own. Theodore Twistler (Twistler’s my real last name) was the number one car salesman in Bergen County until he died of a heart attack when I was twelve. He was such a good salesman that even I would have bought a dumpy Chevrolet from him instead of the Hummer I have my eye on for when I get my license.
Only a handful of the reporters who interviewed me yesterday and today got really personal with the virginity question. I gave the scripted response. But I wouldn’t mind telling girls around the country the truth, which is: if you want to go from middle school to starring in a major film with A-list actors, don’t do what I did, because you’ll want to vomit every time you think about it, even if you don’t quite regret it.
Story in a nutshell: One of the producers of the film I was up for liked my screen test and asked for a meeting. Two minutes into it, he walked up to my chair so that my face was directly in line with his belt buckle and said, “You’ve told me how badly you want this role, Theodora. But acting requires showing, not telling. Show me how badly you want it.” I was thirteen, but a smart thirteen (or a dumb thirteen, depending on how you look at it). I smiled up at him, thanked the powers of the universe that he was young and hot, and not forty, fat, and bald, and unzipped his pants.
How did I know what to do? Practice, and lots of it, in Oak City with various members of the Oak City High football, baseball, and basketball teams. It started when a cute junior I met at the mall assumed I was also sixteen. So I said my name was Lola and that I went to private school. The way he salivated over me made me forget everything else. Made me feel powerful. My mother caught us fooling around on a chaise lounge in the backyard (why she had to pick that day to come home early from work, I don’t know), screamed like a lunatic that I’d just turned thirteen, and called the police. The guy turned white, grabbed his clothes, and ran. I changed my name for every guy—I’ve been Miranda, Zoe, Jessica, Raina, Emma, and once I even pretended to be a British exchange student named Lavinia.
I had no idea I was honing my acting skills—and my sexual skills—for the future. And so after no more than ten minutes in that producer’s office, without moving from the chair or removing an article of my clothing, the role was mine, pending the director’s approval. Lucky for me, the director wasn’t a slimebucket like the producer. Since I passed muster with the producer, and the director loved my screen test, I got the part. Which guaranteed that what happened in the producer’s office was a one-time thing. When I lost my virginity to the star of my first film (a hot thirtyish actor with an equally famous movie-star girlfriend), I didn’t do it because I felt I had to, but because I wanted to. After my first film came out, I was A-list myself and everyone wanted to sleep with me. The Bellini brothers are my first Hollywood boyfriends under the age of twenty-five.
“Just one more question,” the reporter says, flashing me more white underwear. “Do the Bellini brothers kiss differently?”
That’s a new one. So far I’ve only been asked if it’s true that I’m dating them. I blush, per Ashley. I giggle nervously, per Ashley. I say, per Ashley, “We’re really just good friends.”
But instead of rolling her eyes at me again and thanking me for my time, she wags her finger at the TV camera, then holds up the cover of a tabloid. “So this isn’t you and the Bellini brothers getting busy on the beach? You look like more than friends to me.”
If a reporter presses you, repeat answer. . . . “We’re really just good friends!” I chirp again.
She leans in as though she’s my buddy and says, “Who’s the better kisser? Just tell me that.” She turns to the camera. “Every teenage girl in America is dying to know! Bo and Brandon are identical twins, after all.”
Well, not identical, I want to say. Bo’s got a much bigger—
“Oh, wait a minute,” the reporter says, wagging her finger at me again, but this time in a tsk-tsk way. “It’s all a publicity stunt, isn’t it? You and the Bellini brothers aren’t dating at all.” She turns away from me to speak directly into the camera. “Viewers, you heard it here first. Hype, hype, hype. And lies, lies, lies. Studio executives and PR people concoct outrageous behavior for box-office stars to generate publicity—and box-office receipts. It’s a celebrity’s dirty little secret.”
Too bad Ashley and my publicist, a hyper motor-mouth named Stella, took off for dinner a half hour ago. They were both so happy with my “performance” all day that they left m
e on my own for the last two interviews. For the past two days I’ve been dying for them each to get a life. Now that I actually want them hovering for a little coach-me session, they’re stuffing their faces at some new vegan place.
“Tell us, Theodora,” the reporter persists. “Who actually chooses the celebrities with whom you’ll carry on your fake relationships? Your manager? The producers of your latest film? Was there another fake boyfriend celebrity you wanted instead? An actor who refused to live a lie? Do tell!”
Oh please. I reach for my purse on the side of my chair and pull out my cell phone. I press Bo’s number. Bo and Brandon are waiting for me upstairs in my hotel room, unless they got bored and left. They taped Leno earlier, and tomorrow they’re leaving for their European concert tour to promote their new CD. They’re not going to wait much longer, and I have one more interview after this. They could use a little sneak preview of what’s in store for them later. “Can you and Brandon come down to the junket for a minute?” I ask Bo. “Room twenty-three.”
The television reporter shoots a grin at her cameraman and jumps up. “Are they really coming?”
I sit back and examine my perfectly manicured nails. The reporter rushes to the door to alert security. Five minutes later, Bo and Brandon, hotter than anything anyone’s ever seen, saunter in. They’re gorgeous. Tall, built, blond, blue-eyed surfer dudes. They gleam like sunshine.
“You asked if they kiss differently?” I say to the reporter, getting up from my chair. I press myself against Bo Bellini and plant a hot, openmouthed kiss on his hot, open mouth. I mentally time it. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi, until I get to five. And then I lay one on Brandon Bellini. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. I reluctantly stop at five.
I smile at my boyfriends. “I’ll meet you guys up in my room in a few,” I say. Then I turn to the reporter. “They kiss completely differently.”
Emily
Dear Been There/Done That,
I’m a high school sophomore and I’m in love with my boyfriend, but all he wants to do is fool around. Yesterday I was telling him something important, and he stuck his hand up my shirt and under my bra. . . .
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