Theodora Twist

by Melissa Senate

  Some people have trouble telling them apart, but not me. Bo’s eyes are slightly bigger than Brandon’s; his entire face is somehow less intense. Both Bellinis are so good-looking that you just have to stare at them for a little while. I once told them that and they both said it was the same thing with me.

  I start a slow striptease, taking off the nerd glasses and blazer. “I have an hour before the party.”

  Bo shoots me a dazzling smile. “Let’s drive to the beach. It’s a skinny-dipping night.”

  It is. Hot and humid. In moments, we’re all wearing disguises—glasses, wigs, baggy shirts and pants. You’d never know what’s underneath. We slip downstairs, unrecognized, and take Bo’s Lexus to the beach, which is just the way we like it: dark and deserted. We walk until we’re around a bend. I glance up and down the beach, up in the trees, behind the dunes. Good. No people. No paparazzi. No problems.

  Bo and Brandon strip, leaving their stuff in a heap on the sand. They have the most amazing six-pack abs. Bo unties my bikini top, then twirls it around on his finger and runs into the water.

  “Come get it,” he says, laughing.

  I go running toward him, the cool water so refreshing against my skin. The last two days disappear and all I feel is me, Dora Twistler, Theodora Twist. I dive in and come up for air with nothing but the guys I love and the twinkling night sky surrounding me. Bo’s swimming toward me, holding up my bikini top, licking his lips. Brandon kisses me, then reaches under the water and tugs off my bikini bottom. And then I feel his—

  A flashbulb stops us cold.

  We all dive underwater, but it’s not like we can hide there for long without, say, drowning. The paparazzi have us trapped. We have no choice but to stay in the water, our backs to the shore, so that they can’t get our faces. But one of them already got something. And a picture of Theodora Twist frolicking naked in the ocean with the Bellini Brothers? It’s a million-dollar shot. Bo hands me my bikini top under the water and it takes me forever to get it on. Brandon puts my bikini bottom on for me. I can only hope there isn’t a photographer in scuba gear underwater.

  We surface and I back out of the ocean so that the jerks can’t get a shot of my face. There’s an explosion of flashbulbs. I grab Bo and Brandon’s pants and carry them back to them. Ever tried to put jeans on underwater? Bo and Brandon are pissed. Some goodbye. Cut short by a flashbulb.

  And worse: Ashley is going to kill me.

  Emily

  Zach and Chloe Craven are holding hands at school on Monday morning. I can’t take my eyes off their entwined fingers. Zach never held my hand at school. In fact, he didn’t talk to me much at school. Almost like . . . he didn’t want anyone to know we were a couple.

  “Duh!” I mutter into my locker. “I am such an idiot. Why didn’t I know he was totally using me?”

  “Trying to use you,” Belle points out, squeezing my shoulders.

  That’s something, at least. He tried and tried and got nothing but boring conversation. Those thirteen days were probably the longest and dullest of his life. All I wanted was sex, and not only didn’t I get it, but I had to listen to her talk. . . .

  I stare at my English notebook, contemplating cutting a class for the first time in my life. Like I want to feel Zach sitting behind me for forty-five minutes? Can I cut? I could always walk to the nurse, clutching my stomach. I wouldn’t even have to feign a pained expression. And I’d get to lie on that padded bench for the entire period. Maybe even through French too.

  To develop guts, I glance over at Zach and Chloe, now kissing by the girls’ bathroom.

  “Don’t look,” Jen says as she comes up to us and physically turns my head.

  I will not look. I will stare at my shoes. I will stare at Belle’s pigtails, which don’t really work on curly hair. Instead, I find myself focusing on Jen’s pretty necklace, a delicate silver heart locket that her boyfriend gave her for her birthday last month. “What’s so weird is that if I told Zach I’d be ready to have sex in a week or a month, he’d still be my boyfriend,” I say. “Now he’s someone else’s boyfriend.” Note to self: Learn how to tell a well-timed white lie.

  Jen slings an arm around my shoulder. “Just think of what a slime he is. That’ll help you forget him.”

  I hear the unmistakable giggle of Chloe Craven. You wouldn’t expect one of the smartest girls in school to giggle—and in such a high-pitched, nasal way. Out of the corner of my eye I catch Zach yanking her by her pink suede belt to Couples Corner under the stairwell. Teachers are always pulling liplocked students out of there. “I’m cutting English,” I tell Belle and Jen. “I suddenly have a really bad stomachache.”

  “I do too,” Belle says, grimacing. “Must have been those runny scrambled eggs the three of us ate at the diner before school. It’s probably food poisoning. I don’t think I can make it to history.”

  “We didn’t eat at—” I can see the lightbulb pop up over Jen’s head. “Oh. I think I’m gonna hurl,” she says, dramatically covering her mouth with one hand and clutching her stomach with the other. “We’d all better get to the nurse and lie down for a while.”

  My ex-boyfriend is super slime, but my friends are the best.

  Belle and Jen let me mope for a week. They come over every day after school. They make sure I’m booked on the weekend. They carry around tissues. On Sunday night, they arrive armed with the Plan.

  “What you need now is a nice guy,” Jen says, flopping onto my bed. “A good guy. The kind of guy you normally wouldn’t fantasize about for two years because you were too busy being in love with one of the best-looking, most popular guys in school, who turned out to be a jerk.”

  Belle flips through our yearbook. “I’ve made a list of six single guys you’ve overlooked. Here’s number one,” she says, pointing at Todd Tuttle’s black-and-white photo.

  Belle is a matchmaker. She’s famous for it. She’s in many after-school clubs and on the volleyball team, so she knows tons of different people. A few weeks ago she fixed up one of the biggest jock girls with one of the biggest burnout guys. They’re totally in love. Belle’s success rate is amazing. I’ve never taken her up on any of her suggestions because I’ve been in love with Zach for as long as I’ve been interested in guys.

  “He looks like a Q-tip,” I say, sitting down next to her. Tall, skinny. Poufy hair.

  Belle laughs. “Once you’re his girlfriend, you’ll direct him to Supercuts. Look at those eyes,” she adds, holding up the yearbook. “Gorgeous and twinkly!”

  “And the point is that the guys on Belle’s list aren’t necessarily cute,” Jen says. “They’re either really smart or really nice or really funny or something else that should matter.”

  I glance at Todd’s photo. He does have nice eyes. And he’s in a lot of service-oriented clubs, so he probably is a decent person. He’s in two of my classes, but I don’t really know him.

  “Did I think Stephen was remotely cute before I started seeing him?” Jen adds. “He was such a good friend to me last summer at camp when my parents were splitting up that one day I looked at him and thought, Wow, Stephen is hot!”

  If Stephen, of the bug-eyes and wrinkled shirts, can become hot, maybe there’s hope for Q-tip.

  I take another look at Todd’s picture, then at all the guys on Belle’s list of They’ve Got Everything but Looks and Popularity. There’s Michael Fishman (very short, but stylish). There’s Ray Roarke (president of chess club, student council, and future entrepreneurs club). I’m trying to imagine finding them hot.

  “Waaaah!”

  That’s not me. It’s Sophie.

  “Coming, sweetie!” my mother calls from down the hall.

  My mom apologized three times for not being more empathetic about Zach dumping me. I didn’t mean it. . . . I’m so sorry I snapped at you . . . just really wiped. . . . Sophie’steething. . . . Sometimes I think I should hire a nanny and go back to work. . . . But I’m really happy being a stay-at-home mom. Argh. Why am I dumping this on yo
u. Kiss. Hug. I love you, Ems.

  Maybe a nice guy is exactly what I need right now. A very nice guy. A guy I can talk to about wishing things were different. A guy who won’t dump me because I won’t sleep with him. A guy who I’ll find hot because he’s a great guy, not because he’s great looking.

  I take the list of names. “You’re going to set me up with all these guys?” I ask Belle.

  She shakes her head. “Nope. I think you should ask them out yourself.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m supposed to just go up to these guys, one by one, and say ‘Wanna see a movie sometime?’ I’ve never asked anyone out. Forget it.” I make an airplane out of the list and fly it away.

  “These aren’t regular fix-ups,” Belle says. “This is a Zach-busting mission. If I arrange the dates, you’ll show up, say two words, and later tell me you’re not interested. If you fix yourself up, you’ll be more involved from the get-go.”

  I don’t want to be involved. At all.

  “You might not even get to Guy Number Two,” Jen points out, flying the airplane back to me. “Todd might be your dream guy under all that fluffy hair. And a set of free weights will give him some definition.”

  Belle cracks up. “Not that that’s funny,” she says fast.

  I give Todd’s photo one last look. “So tomorrow after school, I’m going up to Todd’s locker and asking him out? Just like that?”

  Belle nods. Jen nods.

  I won’t be dating; I’ll be Zach-busting. Getting him out of my system for good. I will ask Todd Tuttle what he thinks of Mr. Mathers, our math teacher, and instead of staring at me blankly and then unsnapping my jeans, he’ll think deeply about my question and say, He gets a little too excited about angles and proofs, but I like him. What do you think?

  I nod too and unfold the airplane.

  Theodora

  Someone is pressing insistently on the video buzzer at the gate to my house. No doubt it’s Ashley, who tends to ignore the fact that she works for me. I’m about to yell to Larissa to respond with a “she’s not here” when I remember that she came down with strep yesterday. Good thing she hadn’t breathed on me or I’d have to cancel this week’s TV appearances. You can’t do Leno or Ellen or Oprah with a throbbing throat and croaking voice.

  I drop the script I’m reading (a decent romantic comedy) on my chaise lounge and head inside to view the security monitor that captures the front door. Yup. Ashley. She’s fuming in her tiny black BMW, screaming into her cell phone. Sorry, Ash, no one’s home.

  But then my mother drives up behind her in her huge Hummer and opens the gate. Great. Thanks, Mom. And look, there’s my mother’s twenty-eight-year-old boyfriend sitting beside her, wearing his usual dopey expression.

  I watch my mom drive up the hill to the main house, where she lives. Ashley turns into my driveway—I live in the guest cottage. Taking the little house was Ashley’s idea; she thought the paparazzi would stake out the main house and she was right. Three years later, they still haven’t figured out that I live in the two-bedroom stone getaway surrounded by trees instead of a wall.

  “Open up!” Ashley orders, pounding on the door. “Your mother told me she saw you through the window.”

  Thanks again, Mom. I open the door, and Ashley steamrolls in, veins popping in her neck.

  “For such a smart girl, you’re an idiot!” she screams.

  At least my mom isn’t around to hear this. Since I never listen to a word my mother says, she’s developed a bad habit of throwing what Ashley says in my face. Ashley said starts just about every conversation my mother and I have had for the past three years.

  Ashley Bean is usually primped to the max, but now her poker-straight glossy dark hair is under a baseball cap, and her love for tiny jackets and superlong flared pants and pointy shoes is all replaced by Juicy Couture sweats and sneakers. She’s much less intimidating this way.

  She rants on and on. A half hour ago, she was watching my “exclusive” prime-time interview with the TV reporter from the press junket, expecting to find the reporter’s weeklong “shocking revelation caught on camera” promo to be nothing more than the spin I assured her it was. Instead, she saw me confirming that I’m getting it on with Bo and Brandon. The reporter turned her fifteen-minute interview with me into a half-hour special titled “Teen Celebrities Out of Control.” I was saved for last.

  “That reporter tricked me!” I shout back. “She said she knew it was all a publicity stunt, that I’m not dating either one of them.”

  “And you fell for it?” Ashley yells, looking at me as though I’m a total moron. Her cell rings—playing the theme from Mission: Impossible—and she disappears into the kitchen, which means it’s another of her clients. Ashley reps several A-list actors. A minute later, she’s back in my face. “You knew sweeps week was coming!” She shakes her head and slams her twelve-hundred-dollar Marc Jacobs handbag (I gave it to her for Christmas) on the coffee table. “Your answer to her question should have been, ‘As I’ve said, we’re really just good friends!’ ” She pulls magazines out of her bag. “Oh, but it gets worse,” she adds, waving People, Us Weekly, The National Enquirer, Star, and four newspapers at me.

  First, Theodora Locks Lips with Bellinis on TV—Now They’re Caught in Wet Ménage à Trois is just one of the headlines. Ashley is furious. Her face is red.

  I flop on my down sofa. “What is the big deal? So what? I am sleeping with the two of them. It’s the truth! And I’m not ashamed of the truth.”

  “The big deal is that Pepsi called fifteen minutes ago and backed out of the endorsement deal,” she says through gritted teeth. “The big deal is that my negotiations with Disney for three films are probably going to fall apart too.” She was so angry she was shaking. “Theodora, if you want to sleep with five brothers at the same time, go right ahead. Just do it privately. Meaning not on a public beach! It’s one thing for the American people to think you’re a teenage bad girl. That’s fine. It’s another for them to think you’re a skanky slut.”

  Before I can tell her to screw herself, Mission: Impossible interrupts us again. When she comes back into the living room, I grab her phone out of her hand.

  “So now I’m a skanky slut?” I yell, my cheeks burning. “Just because I have two boyfriends doesn’t make me a slut.”

  “Uh, yeah, it does,” she says, snatching her phone from me. “At first it was cute and wholesome. You were just dating twins and didn’t know which one you liked. Everyone thought it was adorable. It got you on every teen magazine. Then we had to spin it that you couldn’t choose between them so you all decided to just be friends. And now you blew it. I am so disappointed in you. I expected so much more than this.”

  “I’m sorry, okay?” Could she make me feel like a bigger loser?

  She rolls her eyes. “Oh, your apology solves all our problems, Theodora.” More head shaking. “I almost got myself killed driving over here because I was having a conference call with your legal team and your publicist instead of paying attention to the road.” She slams the magazines against the wall. Subscription cards flutter to the floor. “I’m going to have to come up with something brilliant to get you back into the public’s good graces. I have no idea what, but trust me, I’ll think of something.”

  Well, that’s what I pay you a hundred thousand dollars a year for, isn’t it? I want to yell, but I don’t. There’s a line you don’t cross with Ashley, and that’s probably it. And learning lines is my business.

  Emily

  “Go get your nice guy,” Belle whispers into my ear the next morning as Todd heads toward his locker.

  I’m staring at locker number 345, an ugly gray metal rectangle three down from Todd’s that I spent thirteen days standing by.

  “He’s a creep,” Jen whispers into my other ear. “King of the Creeps.”

  I just have to get past the pouf, I tell myself, then notice that one side of Todd’s head is poufier than the other. And that for a smart guy, it takes him a little too long to g
et his locker open—

  So much for my chances with Todd Tuttle. Decorating the inside door of his locker are at least twenty photos of Theodora Twist, cut out from magazines and her calendar. If Theodora Twist is his ideal girl, he’ll never be interested in me.

  In another town, another school, Theodora would be just another mega movie star. But in Oak City, guys feel like she’s attainable—because she grew up here. They remember her as Dora Twistler, the gawky too-tall girl with braces and boobs and serious attitude at age thirteen. Dora Twistler was taller than most of the boys in eighth grade and wore high heels, even to gym class, which got her detention just about every day. She wasn’t interested in boys. She was interested in guys. High school guys. She particularly liked flirting with guys who worked in the mall or in stores, like the supermarket we went to for sleepover munchies. Not that we had many sleepovers. Two or three. Once I asked her why she liked fooling around with different guys, and she glared at me and said, “The lame-o shrink my mother’s making me see has a few idiotic theories. Why don’t you ask her?” End of that conversation.

  See, I used to be friends with Dora Twistler, right when she became really weird and wild, just a year before she morphed into Theodora Twist, superstar. We were friends for five weeks and then she dumped me without an explanation and never spoke to me again, except to tell me to “get the hell out of her face.” When I’m watching one of her movies (a new one, Family, is coming out this weekend), I don’t see Dora Twistler. I don’t think, Wow, I actually admitted to that person that I couldn’t figure out how to use a tampon. (I was twelve and had just gotten my period). Or Wow, I now live in the house she grew up in until she moved to L.A. to seek her fortune (a piece of trivia that made me very popular for ten minutes late in my freshman year after her first film came out). I can’t really connect the Dora I knew and the movie star. They don’t look alike, even when she’s not made up to look like she’s twenty-five. How is that possible? I look like me no matter how much blush and eyeliner I slather on.