“I don’t mean it judgmentally. I really want to know. How are you so—”
“What?” I cut in. “Emily, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, so now’s your chance.”
“Comfortable,” she finishes, sitting up against her headboard. “How are you comfortable about sex? Why is it so easy for you? And it can’t be because you’re a movie star. You were like this when you still lived here.”
I fold my hands under my head and stare up at the iridescent stars on the ceiling. “When I’m fooling around or having sex, I feel amazing. I forget about everything. It’s like magic.”
“But how do you forget everything?” she asks. “That’s what I don’t get. When Zach would stick his hand up my shirt, I’d start to sweat and feel like I had to barf. How did you get from that to magic?”
“Because I was never a sixteen-year-old virgin, Em. I was a thirteen-year-old slut. Thirteen-year-olds are kids. They don’t have much to think about when they’re on their knees giving a blow job or getting squashed underneath some hairy thirty-year-old man. Now, when I see some of the middle school girls around here, I try to imagine any of those skinny, gawky little things doing the things I did, and I can’t.”
Her cheeks are red. “So why did you?”
“I guess I felt like I had to. And because being wanted like that made me feel powerful. I know what powerful is now. I have power because I’m Theodora Twist. But at twelve, when I first started fooling around, I didn’t.”
“So why do you have sex now if you don’t need to anymore to feel good?”
“Because now sex takes me away,” I say. “It makes me forget everything.”
“What could you want to forget?” she asks. “You have everything anyone could possibly want.”
“Yeah, like a dead father. A mother who thinks I belong in some juvenile detention center. I get to remember for the rest of my life that I lost my virginity to some coked-out older guy. I’m pretty sure there was another girl in the room too.”
Dead silence.
“You’ll feel comfortable when you’re ready,” I say, wanting this conversation to be over. “There are some things you just know.”
“Thanks, Theodora,” she says, her fresh-scrubbed face worry free now.
I, on the other hand, roll over onto my stomach and stare at the wall. I have no idea how three people in a relationship get more serious.
Emily
Blair is driving us all crazy. She and her assistant are here to direct us at the mall on Monday after school. Since Theodora lost a week, Blair wants to make a few events happen. Such as a fight between me and my friends. Belle and Jen are supposed to pretend to be worried that they’re losing me to Theodora’s glamorous pull. We’re supposed to have a fight in front of the music store and reunite with “you’ll always be my best friends no matter what” in the juniors department of Macy’s. Then we wrap scarves around our necks and pull each other into hugs. Nothing like staged and scripted reality.
At first Belle and Jen refused. But then Blair asked if five hundred apiece would cover their afternoon of emoting, and they both shrieked and said yes.
“Come on, kids,” Blair says as we all pile out of Stew’s minivan. “We’re on the clock.”
Belle and Jen prove to be such awful actresses that Blair gives up on the staged fight. I try to explain that we’re such good friends that we can’t pretend to hate each other, but Blair has moved on to the window of Dress Me Up. She wants us to ooh and ahh at the prom dresses in the window, talk about how excited we are for the speed-dating event, and then ooh and ahh more.
After an hour of fake oohing and ahhing, we head home so that Theodora can be fake-grounded for some imaginary infraction. A missed curfew. She was supposedly hanging out in town at the diner with some new friends from school and was having so much fun she didn’t realize it was nine o’clock.
“Nine o’clock?” Theodora says, her expression incredulous. “Like anyone besides Emily would believe a nine o’clock curfew. We’re sixteen, not eight.”
Well, that makes me feel good. Blair ups the pretend curfew to ten. A half hour later, she tells Theodora to call her mom and arrange a time to talk. Blair wants a touching phone scene. A cameraman will shoot at Theodora’s mom’s house.
Theodora says no.
“Theodora, you’ve refused to call your mom since you’ve been here. We need to shoot you and your mother talking on the phone at least twice for the show—and we’ll need a long conversation so that we can use it for bits on each episode to show how family-oriented you are and how you and your mom have your moments and arguments and disagreements just like everyone else. Tweens and their moms will like that.”
“I though this was a reality TV show,” Theodora says—not for the first time.
Blair ignores her. “You and your mother will both say how much you miss each other, she’ll ask if you’re eating enough and minding the Stewarts, you’ll have a tiny disagreement, which you will resolve. A five-minute call. Dial.”
“I’m not calling her. You can film us pretending to be talking to each other. Script it and I’ll say it.”
“I’d really rather capture the honesty of the call,” Blair says. “I can script it, but I’d like to see what we get live.”
Theodora takes cotton balls from my manicure/ pedicure set out of the bedside table and shoves one in each ear.
“Prima donna,” Blair mutters, and huffs out.
Theodora pulls out the cotton balls. “Loser,” she says toward the door.
“What is the deal with you and your mom?” I ask.
“There is no deal,” she says. “I’m emancipated. My mom couldn’t control me anyway, and didn’t even bother raising a fuss when I filed the paper—as long as I ‘compensated’ her for her lost position as ‘mother.’ Do you believe that crap? We worked out a deal—she gets ten percent until I turn eighteen, ‘for nurturing and enabling’ my ‘potential as an actress.’ ”
“I’m sure she misses you, Theodora,” I say.
“And I’m sure she’s too busy living off my money with her jailbait boyfriend to even notice I’m gone.”
I have no idea what to say to that. But just when I decide to broach the topic about her dad, she grabs her iPod off her bedside table and sticks her headphones in her ears.
GIRLBUZZ.COM
Theodora Twist talks about family life!
A GirlBuzz.com exclusive!
Me and My Mom by Theodora Twist
I’m three thousand miles away from my best friend—my mom. Yeah, I can IM her. I can pick up the phone. But it’s not the same as being there.
When I’m offered a role, when I’m reading a script, when I’m dating a guy . . . I always turn to my mom for advice. I know I can count on her to see the big picture that I sometimes can’t see because I’m starstruck or because I’m blinded by how cute the guy I’m seeing is. My mom always sets my head straight. She’s the one person in the world who I know loves me just because. That’s pretty powerful.
If you think you can’t talk to your mom about something, about a fight with your BFF or your BF or that you’re failing algebra or hate taking ballet—maybe you can talk to her. Maybe you just think you can’t. And maybe giving it a try will make two people really, really happy.
Theodora
“Why did you write this bullshit?” Theodora asks me, waving a printout of the GirlBuzz article at me.
Huh. She really looks mad. “Ashley e-mailed me and told me to write an essay about how your mother is your best friend, blah, blah, blah. So I did, and she rewrote most of it.”
She crumples it up in a ball and throws it at me. “Well, next time, show it to me first.”
“I thought you didn’t care,” I remind her. “You didn’t want to see the last one.”
“Just show the next one to me,” she says. “I’d like some control of what I supposedly think.”
“I’m glad,” I tell her.
“How am I going to get thr
ough another week and a half?” she says directly into the camera, then leaves the room.
She can’t escape me for long because my mother and Stew are taking us out to dinner to celebrate her return, no cameras allowed. Vic and Nicole will be back in two hours to shoot Theodora, Belle, Jen, and me hanging out and talking about the speed-dating event, which is tomorrow after school.
At the restaurant—a low-key pizzeria—a little girl, around eight years old, comes over to us and asks to touch Theodora’s hair. Theodora bends down and lets the girl run her sticky fingers over her long braid.
“Are you two best friends?” the girl asks.
“The very best of friends,” Theodora says with a huge smile that’s gone when the kid turns around.
I have no idea why things have gotten so weird between us. For a while we were friends. And now I’m not even sure I like her. Then again, I don’t even know her. I don’t know what’s real. What’s scripted and what’s not.
After dinner, Belle and Jen arrive and the four of us sit around making fake chitchat about how excited we are about wearing paper bags over our heads to talk to guys with paper bags over their heads. When Vic and Nicole leave, Theodora eats a VegeFood protein scramble wrap, then escapes to the back porch with People.
I almost wish I could sit across from her for five minutes without knowing it was her.
Emily
Ding!
I hear the shuffling of feet. Then I smell someone’s overpowering cologne. I peer out of the tiny eyeholes and see a brown paper bag.
“Hi, I’m Potential Date Number Twelve,” he says, sitting down in the chair across from me. I don’t recognize his voice.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m Potential Date Number Forty-four.
Silence. I hear chattering around us. Some laughter. More talking. More laughter. Everyone’s talking but us.
“Um, so . . . ,” I say like an idiot.
“I don’t think we have anything in common,” says Potential Date Number Twelve.
“But we haven’t even said anything yet.”
“If there was anything to say, wouldn’t we have said it?” he asks.
It’s hard to think of something to say when all my senses are gagging on your disgusting cologne, I want to yell.
Ding!
Class advisor: “Okay, everyone, please write down your potential date’s number on your sheet and yes or no if you would like to know more about this person.”
Potential Date #12: No.
Potential Date Number Six is great. He’s smart, funny, and nice.
“I think this speed-dating thing is a really great idea,” he says. “You can’t be superficial this way.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “And even if you’re not necessarily attracted to the person, you could end up with a really good new friend.”
“So you think you might not be attracted to me?” he asks.
“No, I meant—”
“You seem really superficial to me,” he says. “This date is over. Ding.”
No, wait! But Potential Date Number Six is already on his feet.
“Potential Date Number Six,” says Mr. Opps, “Please remain in your seat until the bell rings.”
Ding!
“So what’s your type?” asks Potential Date Number Two.
“I don’t really have a type,” I tell him.
But that’s not true. My type is—was—Zachary Archer. What type is he? I have no idea, really. He’s tall, cute, dark-haired, smart. On the serious side. Is that a type?
“I like hot girls,” Potential Date Number Two says. “Especially petite blondes. Are you blond?”
“No. Not even close.”
“Oh.” Silence. “Well, are you hot?”
“Ding,” I say.
“Guess not,” he says. “Ding, ding!”
Theodora
“So guess what my bra size is,” I say to the paper bag sitting across from me. I can tell from his cool sneakers that he’s got potential.
“Extra large?” he asks hopefully.
I laugh. “More like just large. Guess what color bra I’m wearing.”
“Black.”
“Nope. Pale pink. So, are you a virgin?”
“Are you?” he asks.
“I asked you first,” I say.
“Does oral sex count?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
Ding! goes the bell.
What am I supposed to tell from that exchange? I put down a question mark.
I don’t like Potential Date Number Three’s shoes. He clearly doesn’t have a clue.
“So, what color eyes do you have?” he asks.
I don’t answer.
“Hello in there,” he says.
“You’re wearing nerd shoes.”
The paper bag bends as he glances at his shoes.
No response.
“That’s all you can come up with? I have nerd shoes, so I’m a nerd, so I’m not worth talking to?”
“Kinda,” I say. I love anonymity!
“I wouldn’t want to know someone as shallow as you anyway,” he says, and gets up and leaves.
This is fun.
“How many potential dates did you say yes to?” Emily asks during the break. I’m hot under the bag, but we’re not allowed to remove it until the event is over.
“None. They were all really boring.”
“Mine too,” she says.
“I asked one candidate if he had zits and he just got up and left. I was like, dude—lighten up.”
“Theodora, the whole point of blind speed-dating is that you don’t care about looks. You’re not supposed to ask about pimples.”
“Okay, okay,” I say. Does this girl lighten up, ever? “What am I supposed to ask?”
“Let them do the talking first. Go from there.”
“So are we friends again?” I ask.
She smiles. “We’re friends again.”
He’s not saying anything. Boring. Next. Ding. It’s hot under this stupid paper bag.
“So, what’s your favorite class?” he finally asks.
His shoes are okay. “Yoga, I guess. I take Pilates too, but yoga really relaxes me.”
“I mean at school,” he says.
“Oh. I don’t know. None. They’re all pretty boring.”
“What kind of grades do you get?” he asks.
I think back to the last time I got grades. “Cs. A couple of Ds. But that’s because I cut.”
“I’m planning to be a neurosurgeon,” he says. “We’re probably not a match.”
“What’s a neuro?” I ask.
“Ding,” he says.
Hey!
“So, do you consider oral sex sex?” I ask Potential Date Number Twenty-three.
“I don’t, but my girlfriend does.”
“Busted! You have a girlfriend but you’re trying to find a date to the prom?”
“I’m trying to get a date to the prom with Theodora Twist,” he says. “Everyone knows she’s participating in this.”
“Why do you want a date with her? You don’t even know her.”
“She’s hot. And she’s really into sex.”
“Don’t believe everything you read,” I tell him.
“She’s definitely a slut,” he says.
“No, she’s not. She has a serious boyfriend.”
“Two boyfriends,” he says, laughing. “She’s screwing brothers. Can you imagine what a skank they think she is? If a guy really likes a girl, he doesn’t want another guy to touch her.”
“Even his own brother?” I ask.
He snorts. “Especially his own brother.”
Ding!
Like I care what a guy wearing penny loafers thinks?
“Are you only doing this so you can get a prom date with Theodora Twist?” I ask Potential Date Number Fifty-four.
“I’m doing this to hook up with someone I can talk to,” he says. “Period.”
A serious one. Someone call Emily. She should wri
te down his number.
“It’s pretty hard to talk to someone wearing a paper bag over his head,” I say.
“I like the idea, though. No preconceptions. No looks, no popularity contests. Just two people talking.”
“It is nice not to be judged for a change.”
“Are you judged a lot?” he asks.
“Yup.”
“You seem pretty cool to me,” he says.
“Because you don’t know me,” I point out.
“I like what I know so far.”
“What if I’m hideously ugly?”
“Don’t care.”
“What if you are?” I ask.
“Do you care?”
“I’m not sure,” I say honestly. “I want to say no, but I think looks do matter. I’m not saying you have to be gorgeous, but I do have to be physically attracted to a guy to want to date him.”
“I think you can get attracted to someone if you really like them as a person. The more you like them, the better looking they get. That happened to me last summer with a girl I worked with. I didn’t look twice at her, but as I got to know her, I fell for her.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“She dumped me.”
I smile. “Sorry.”
“Eh, I’m over it. So are you going to write down my number?”
“Should I?”
“Yeah,” he says. “You should. I like you.”
I like you too, Number Fifty-four. But what if you’re Fred Wubble? What if you’re the guy in math who looks sort of like Yoda? Ah, but what if you’re the guy in math who’s the Maybe?
But what if you’re Fred Wubble?
I guess I could live through a few dances with Fred. I write down his number.
Emily
“Hi,” says Potential Date Number Fifteen.
“Hi,” I say. “This is pretty weird, huh?”
“Weird?” he says. “I don’t think it’s weird. Are you calling me weird?
“No, I just meant that—”
But I don’t know what I mean.
I spend the rest of the five minutes trying to explain what I mean.
“Hi,” I say to Potential Date Number Sixteen.
“Hey,” he says. “How’s this going for you?”
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