Theodora Twist

by Melissa Senate

  Ashley smiles at me. “Showing America she’s really just a regular teen with regular worries, regular dreams, and a regular life outside of her not-so-regular job as an actress.” She smiles at me. “Any questions?”

  “Well . . . why us? Why me?” I ask.

  “Your family is our first choice for a number of reasons,” Blair says. “First of all, you’re representative of the new American family—Mom, stepdad, teenager, new baby. Second, you live in the house that Theodora grew up in, which adds a wonderful sense of nostalgia and poignancy. As if this is the life Theodora would have led had she not been discovered. And third, you and Theodora were friends before she became a star. That’ll add a completely new dimension to the show.”

  I have no idea what to say. TMI overload. I need to think.

  “Take some time to discuss it as a family,” Ashley says, as though she read my mind. “It’s a big decision; you’re going to be on national television, on a reality TV show, your every move filmed. It could very well change all of your lives. As discussed, you would receive a very handsome compensation package for your participation. I will need your answer by Wednesday. If you say no, we’ll need to line up another family.”

  My mom smiles at me, then turns to Ashley, Blair, and Baseball Cap, whose name I forget. “Well, Stew and I have talked long and hard about it, and we’re on board. But it’s got to be Emily’s decision—if she’s uncomfortable with the idea, it’s going to be a no.”

  My mom and Stew are willing to have their every move filmed for national television? My mom walking around in the same stained sweats day after day and Stew “I Don’t Change Diapers” Stewarts emerging from his study only for pretzels? Are they out of their minds?

  Jen and Belle both freeze in the middle of pouring maple syrup on their Belgian waffles. The three of us are in CoffeeTawk, a popular coffee lounge that serves amazing waffles. I’ve just told them about Theodora’s People.

  “You’re going to be famous,” Belle says. “Omigod. You’re going to be on a TV show!”

  “Wait a minute. That means we’re going to be on a TV show,” Jen says. They suddenly look at each other and shriek.

  Belle’s hands fly up to her hair. “I have to get this frizzpuff straightened. And I have to lose five pounds. I have to go shopping!”

  “Nope, you can’t,” Jen says. “You’re supposed to be as is. That’s the point, right, Em?”

  I hold up a hand. “Wait. First of all, I didn’t say yes yet. It’s crazy! If I get a zit, a camera will zoom in on me putting on Clearasil. This is going to be a hit TV show?”

  “I think it’s more like Theodora putting on the Clearasil that’ll bring in the viewers,” Belle says. “Not that she’s ever had a zit.”

  “Okay, backtrack,” Jen says. “You and Dora Twistler were friends in seventh grade for what—five minutes? What happened again? Why did you stop being friends?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

  When Dora was twelve, her father died of a heart attack. One minute he was alive and well, and the next he was gone. Because I was the only other kid in our middle school whose father had died, my guidance counselor called my mom and asked if I’d be willing to talk to Dora about her loss. I said okay, and the next day, my mom drove me to the Twistlers’ house—the very house we live in now. I didn’t know Dora well; she was a little different even then, listening to music I’d never heard of, wearing twenty bangles on each arm, talking about film noir, whatever that is. She was cool. I was . . . not.

  When I walked into her house (my house now), she was sitting on her bedroom floor, huge headphones on her ears and huge tears dripping down her cheeks.

  “Dora,” her mother called. No response. “Dora. Dora!” No response. Her mom walked over to the CD player and shut it off.

  “What the hell?” Dora snapped, taking off the headphones and swiping at the tears.

  “Watch your mouth, please,” her mom said. “You have company.”

  Dora eyed me. Her expression didn’t change. Her mom started to leave and my heart started booming in my chest.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, turning the CD player back on.

  “I’m really sorry about your dad,” I said. “My father died too, seven months ago. So, uh, I guess the guidance counselor at school thought you might want to talk to me.”

  “Well, I don’t,” she said, flipping through her CDs.

  “Well, if you ever do,” I told her, “I know what it feels like, okay?”

  She didn’t respond, so I just left. The next day, a Sunday, she knocked on my front door.

  “So, are you doing okay?” I asked.

  “I really don’t feel like talking,” she said. And she didn’t. She didn’t say a word for the two hours she sat in my room, reading People and Seventeen. I asked if she wanted something to eat and she shrugged, so I went downstairs and got a bag of Milanos and two bottles of Snapple iced tea, and when I came up and handed her the cookies, she burst into tears. She was sobbing, her entire body shaking. I had no idea what to say, what to do, and I started to cry myself. Then she got up and flung the bag of Milanos against the wall and ran out.

  The next day she was back.

  “I’m sorry I freaked out,” she said, handing me a new package of Milanos. “It just sucks.”

  “I know,” I said.

  We hung out every day after that for just over a month, mostly at our houses. We didn’t talk much and we never talked about our dads, but I found her company comforting (and a little scary, to tell the truth) and I think she felt the same. But then one day she didn’t show up. She didn’t answer the phone—or return my messages. When I saw her at school, she totally ignored me. Finally, when I cornered her outside school one day, she screamed at me: “Take a hint! Get the hell out of my face already.”

  And that was the end of my friendship with Dora Twistler.

  “Are you going to say yes?” Belle asks, forkful of waffle halfway to her mouth. “How could you not?”

  Which reason should I start with?

  “Do you think you’d get along with her?” Jen asks. “I mean, would your friendship be scripted?”

  “The producer said no scripts,” I say. “So if I do say yes and she still hates me, I guess the entire world will know.”

  That night, my mom comes into my room to tuck me in.

  “You’re confusing me with Sophie,” I say, but I like it. I miss it. My mom used to tuck me in every night; it was our ritual.

  She sits on the edge of my bed and holds my ratty Winnie-the-Pooh that according to her I carried around everywhere until I was four. “Do you want to know why I think the show is a good idea for us?”

  I nod.

  She traces a finger down Pooh’s belly. “Having cameras following us around will force me and Stew to make some necessary changes. I’m tired of racing around like a lunatic with spit-up in my hair and wearing the same sweatpants for three days because I don’t have five minutes to take a shower. And Stew has to start finding a balance between his work and being a dad. Being a stepdad.”

  I smile at her and she smiles back.

  “Who knows?” she says, squeezing my hand. “Maybe nothing will change. Maybe nothing big will come from it. Maybe things will be different for only a month and then life will go back to what it was before. But I doubt it. Any changes will be for the better. In any case, you’re going to be in the limelight, Emily. I know you can handle it—you’ve certainly dealt with quite a lot these past few years. But you have to want to handle it. Famous people pay a high price for fame.”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “Like no privacy,” she says. “Like not knowing if someone is kissing your butt because they like you or because you’re famous or because you could do something for them. High school is tough enough without those kinds of issues. If you don’t want to do this, Em, we’ll tell Ashley and Blair no. Sleep on it, sweetie.”

  “Okay,” I say, and she kisses me on the for
ehead and leaves. I take Pooh off my bedside table and hug him against me.

  Whenever I see Theodora Twist on TV or read an interview she’s given, she looks thrilled. She doesn’t seem to be paying a high price for anything. If she can handle real fame, why couldn’t I handle a month of minifame? A month of popularity? A month of people wanting to know me? A month of guys who’ll want to date me for me, not because they think I’ll put out?

  Right now, if you asked a random sample of twenty kids at my school who Emily Fine is, maybe one would know. To be in the spotlight for a month at school sounds more than good. And to have things change at home—for even one month—sounds really, really great.

  Bring her on.

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  CONTACT: ASHLEY BEAN

  ASHLEY BEAN TALENT MANAGEMENT

  1000 WILSHIRE BLVD.

  LOS ANGELES, CA 90017

  ABEAN@ASHLEYBEANMANAGEMENT.COM

  THEODORA TWIST TO STAR IN HER OWN REALITY TV SHOW!

  Los Angeles, CA—(April 15)—Golden Globe winner, two-time Teen Choice Award recipient, and star of the critically acclaimed major motion picture Family

  Theodora Twist, Hollywood’s reigning teen queen, is set to star in her own network television reality show:

  Theodora Twist: Just a Regular Teen! Theodora will spend one month living in her hometown of Oak City, New Jersey, in the house she lived in before becoming an actress.

  Theodora will stay with the family of Emily Fine, a regular teen, doing everything Emily does!

  Often misrepresented by the media, Theodora Twist will show the viewing public that she’s just a normal sixteen-year-old girl at heart.

  Theodora

  I’m looking through my gigantic customized walk-in closet for clothes that a normal teenager would wear. Girls across America would kill to have my wardrobe. Jeans, T-shirts, tank tops, miniskirts, cool sweaters, sneakers, shoes. Gowns. I own handbags of every shape—totes, satchels, hobos, clutches—and color—orange calfskin, teal and red patched suede—and texture—quilted stitching, studded hardware—imaginable. And that’s only the bottom shelf.

  My least expensive jeans cost two hundred bucks. At least, I think that’s what they go for. I get most of my clothes for free; designers send them, hoping I’ll wear their stuff and get photographed in Us Weekly. But I’m a shopaholic too.

  I glance at my Bring To Boresville pile on my bed. There’s only one item: a headband with a huge iridescent pink flower that one of my fans sent me. My Louis Vuitton Pegase suitcases—all three of them—sit empty.

  “I have nothing to take with me to Oak City,” I complain to my mother, who came over to do Pilates in my home gym because her central air isn’t working and the repair company had to special-order a part. She tried to get my trainer to give her a free session, but Declan is booked for the next two years and doesn’t get out of bed for less than four hundred an hour. “I have to go shopping for new everything,” I say, glancing at rack after rack, shelf after shelf.

  My mother is checking out her abs in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in my closet. For a forty-one-year-old, she has an awesome body. From the back she looks like a twenty-one-year-old hottie, but face-forward it’s obvious she’s been visiting Dr. Botox. She’s already scheduled a face-lift, an eyebrow lift, a tummy tuck, and lipo for next month with one of L.A.’s hottest plastic surgeons. With her earnings as consultant to my fragrance line (she has an amazing nose; I love the combo of scents she chose for Theodora, which debuted six months ago and is the number-one-selling fragrance in the country among teen girls), my mom can also afford her private six-week recuperation at the Miraval spa in Arizona.

  She glances up at my racks and shelves of clothes and shoes. “You’re kidding, right? You have hundreds of T-shirts. At least thirty pairs of jeans. That’s what regular teenagers wear.”

  I roll my eyes. “I don’t think Oak City juniors are wearing custom Sevens or Iisli T-shirts. I have to go to the Gap.”

  She reaches for my shelf of white tees (I have twenty. Thirty?) and grabs one with her sweaty paws. “This is a piece of cotton. It’s worth all of fifty cents. Trust me, no one will know the difference between this and a T-shirt from Old Navy.”

  My mother is clueless about clothes. Let’s just leave it at that.

  For an entire month I have to wear dorky clothes and take math tests and pretend that the Oak City junior prom is the event of my life? Please. Last night I went to three of the hottest clubs in L.A. with my friend Kayla (NBC soap star) and danced my ass off and I was still bored out of my mind. Because I miss Bo and Brandon. Until I met them, I wasn’t used to having a boyfriend. Now that I have two of them, it drives me crazy not to see them or talk to them or roll around on the bed with them. But I’m lucky if I even get a phone call in. They’re in a different city every night, and with the time change, it’s almost impossible to actually talk live.

  Ashley filled my mom in on the whole sorry story. I both like and hate that Ashley tells my mother everything. First of all, I’m emancipated, which means I don’t answer to my mother. I answer to myself. I control every aspect of my life, from my money to my career. (With a lot of help from my lawyers and Ashley.)

  In other words, no one can tell me what to do. Except maybe Ashley. But if Ashley didn’t tell my mother my business, my mother would never know because I refuse to tell her anything.

  My mother is impossible to talk to. Always has been. Even before my dad died. If I came home from school and said, “I hate school,” she wouldn’t ask, “Why, Dora?” There would be no heart-to-heart talk, no mother-daughter bonding over a cup of hot cocoa, leading to a moral and a hug like on one of those sappy Lifetime movies. Instead, she would say, “All you do is complain.” Or another classic: “If you studied harder, you’d get better grades. Maybe you’d actually like school.” For a little while after my dad died, she did turn into a TV mom. But I was such a bitch to her that she reverted to her old self. We barely get along, but we’re all we have, which is why we live one minute away from each other. At least I don’t have embarrassing relatives selling stories about me to the tabloids.

  Anyway, one of the reasons why I’m almost glad to be living on the other side of the country for a month is to get away from here. My mom wants her boy toy to move in, but I told her if he moves in, she moves out. I own the houses. It’s not that I don’t want my mom to have a life. But while she’s living under my roof, she’ll have to live by my rules. I actually said that to her last month and she slapped me across the face.

  “This reality TV show is the best thing that could happen to you,” my mother says now, holding up one of my Marc Jacobs dresses against her sweaty sports bra and yoga pants. “You’re beyond out of control, Dora. The stupidest thing I ever did was let you live on your own.”

  “So now you believe everything you read in the tabloids? Thanks, Mom.”

  “So you’re not sleeping with two brothers?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “I suppose the photo of you skinny-dipping in the ocean with the Bellini brothers was doctored?”

  “Were we having sex in the photo?” We were—for exactly two seconds—but no one could possibly know that.

  She rolls her eyes. “Dora, you’re sixteen. You’re a baby. And when you get back to Oak City and see how sixteen-year-olds really act, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening about how you conduct yourself.”

  “Mom, I remember the kids in Oak City. Yeah, there were Goody Two-shoes—like my host-sister-to-be, Emily Fine—and there were kids who smoked pot and got drunk all the time. And there was everything in between. There are all kinds of sixteen-year-olds.”

  “It’ll be good for you to be back in that house. I think it’ll give you some closure,” she says, giving me her “you think you know it all but you don’t” look.

  I glance at her. She’s counting slowly to ten, which is what she does when she gets “overwhelmed” and needs “a moment.” She gets emotional whenever she mentions (or skirts aroun
d) my father.

  I wish I could talk to my mom about my dad. She’s the only person I want to talk to about him because she’s the only person left alive on the planet who loved him too.

  I tried the talking thing. When my dad died, a guidance counselor at school hooked me up with Emily Fine because her father had died too. But after a month, I couldn’t handle being within two feet of her, even though I actually sort of liked her. She was so earnest. So eager. It bugged me.

  I just wish life could go back to before he died. Where is Superman—with his amazing powers to turn back time—when you need him? I once said that during an interview, and the reporter asked me if I’d really give up everything—the fame, the money, the career—if it meant having my dad again, and of course I said yes. Ashley beamed at me after the interview. But for once, my words weren’t scripted.

  My cell rings—Ashley’s number. ”We Are Family” is my current ringtone. Ashley’s idea.

  When I click on and explain my dilemma, she, unlike my mother, gets it right away. “Okay,” she says, “stop packing. Start shopping—at the Grove. I’ll approve everything in your suitcase, so don’t bother packing anything that cost more than fifty bucks.”

  The only thing I own that cost less than fifty is the four-dollar leather bracelet I bought that’s now retailing for twenty-five.

  “And put away the Vuitton luggage,” she says, as if she is staring right into my window. “I’ll have a Samsonite bag dropped off tomorrow.”

  “One suitcase?” I mutter, but she’s already clicked off.

  Sighing, I put on a white Juicy polo I got in a swag bag last month, pull my hair back in a ponytail, and call Donovan, my driver. Good thing he knows how to get to the Grove, because I sure don’t.