“Look!” I showed Rachel what they were doing. “They’re donating money!”
“How many people are in the band at our school? It’s over a hundred, isn’t it?”
“I think so.” It looked like Rachel was doing the same calculation in her head that I was.
“And there were ten schools out there. That could be like ten thousand dollars!” We started jumping up and down.
The drum majors climbed down from their platforms and marched over to the guitar case. Then they closed it and lifted it up together carrying the case full of money high over their heads.
I couldn’t wait to go see Charlie. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me before. Now, more than ever, I hoped that he would want to see me, too, like he did the day of the barbeque.
I kept watching the roped off section in the bleachers for any sign of his school’s blue and silver colors. Slowly, the stands were filling up but I still couldn’t see him.
“Do you see Maron or Jenna?” Rachel asked.
“No.”
“There they are!” She pointed further up in the stands. Then she looked at me. “You were looking for Charlie, weren’t you?”
I didn’t have to answer—she could see the wistful look in my eyes. I finally spotted him standing near the fence, talking to his parents and sister.
I leapt up from my seat and hurriedly stepped around all the people in my row until I could get to the steps leading down to him. I didn’t stop, and barely took my eyes off of him except occasionally looking down at the steps so I wouldn’t trip.
“Charlie!” I shouted when I knew he’d finally be able to hear me. He stepped away from his parents and walked towards me and then gave me a hug so big that he lifted my feet off the ground.
“I can’t believe you did that. It was amazing!”
“You liked it?” He smiled.
“I loved it.” By now, Rachel had made it down to us and I introduced her to Charlie.
His sister came up to me and reached for my hand and I realized she was handing me a ten dollar bill. “I think what you’re doing is so great. I really hope it works,” she said as her parents had moved toward us.
“Thank you,” I told her.
“Good to see you, Kaylin,” Charlie’s dad said.
I nodded, saying, “Nice to see you, too.”
It wasn’t really that nice, since he hadn’t done anything to help with the research—not like Charlie did.
“I’ve been watching you have a go at this,” he said to me. I could only imagine what was coming next. Don’t get your hopes up. What could be worse than that?
But instead, something about him changed. He seemed softer. Kinder. Maybe I even saw a little sorry in his eyes.
“There may be something I can do,” he said. “I can’t promise you anything about the money, but there’s a call I can make that just might help.”
twenty-two
“Do you have any idea what your dad was talking about?” I asked Charlie the next day over the phone.
“No, he just asked me to find out if you’d be home tonight. Keep your cell on, okay?”
My parents let me bring my phone to the dinner table as long as I wouldn’t answer it if one of my friends called. I could hardly eat wondering what Charlie’s dad might be up to.
After dinner, I nervously kept checking my Project LetUs website, practically giving up on my phone ever ringing.
But then it did.
“Hello?”
“Is this Kaylin?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, it’s Trip.” Did I know a Trip? “From Suki5. Charles Tomlin told me about what you’re doing and I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.”
I couldn’t believe it. I leaned back against the pillows on my bed, speechless. “Um . . . wow . . . I can’t believe it’s really you. Are you feeling better?” Kaylin—what are you doing?! He offers to help you and all you can think of is to ask if him he’s still sick. Think of something else! Fast!
“What?” he said. “Ohhh . . . yeah. Um, well, that’s sort of why Charles called me, I think. I wasn’t sick. I just didn’t want to do it—the commercial and everything.”
I couldn’t believe I was talking to Trip from Suki5 like he was just someone from school.
“Not too many people know this but I get really bad breakouts sometimes,” he said. “I’ve tried everything—I’ve even had injections before photo shoots to try to get the swelling down. It’s awful.”
“I never noticed,” I said.
“They can do a lot with make-up and digital effects.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to do the video. Because of your skin?” That would be terrible. Even when my skin is broken out, I never let it hold me back from doing things I like to do.
“Oh no, that wasn’t it. It’s just that I tried Clearagel Cool. I said I wouldn’t do the commercial unless I tried it first. And I didn’t really think it did anything. I thought it was kind of stupid. No offense to Charles or anything, I just didn’t want to do a commercial for it. I’d only do that for something I really believed in. Like the research you’re trying to raise money for.”
I understood the significance of what he said. If Trip from Suki5 made some kind of video about the research, it could potentially be seen by millions! I had raised close to ten thousand dollars so far, but this was what I needed to break out beyond San Diego and reach kids all over the country.
“Do you think you could make a video or something about why this is important?”
“Yeah, I could do that,” he said. “I’ve been working on a new song that might be good for this. So maybe I could say something about the research and then play the song.”
“That would be so amazing!” I said. “I still can’t believe it’s really you. And that you’d do this for me!”
“I guess you’ll know when you see the video,” he said. “I’m doing it for me, too. For all of us.”
The next morning, I got up early to check if Trip’s video was up.
No video yet.
And still no word from the yogurt store.
If it really was Trip, and he really was going to make a video, it would be so much better if there was a place where kids could go drop of their donations.
I looked at the contact information again for FroYo4ever’s public relations department. New York. They were three hours ahead so it was already ten there. If they weren’t going to email me back, I’d just have to call.
“Can I please speak with the public relations department?” I said. “It’s Kaylin Bidwell. It’s very time sensitive.” Jayla used to always say that—but this time it really was!
I was put on hold and then the next person who picked up said that the woman I needed to speak with was in a meeting but she could take a message.
“Is it okay if it’s kind of a long message? I sent an email, but I’m not sure if she got it since I never heard back and now Trip from Suki5 is making a video to help me raise money and I need to tell people where they can go drop of their donations.” I could tell I was rambling, but I wanted to give her enough information so that she’d know how important it was. “I really want to send them to your stores. And, you know if they go, they’ll probably buy yogurt, too. All you need to do is collect the donations for me. I can give you my website address that has more information. It’s for a really good cause—”
“Did you say Trip from Suki5?” She cut me off. “He’s helping you raise money?”
“It’s kind of a secret, but everyone will know anyway later today when he posts his video. That’s why it’s time sensitive. There could be like a million people who see his video. And I need to tell them where to go. Can they go to your stores? Do you think the stores could take the donations?”
“Let me get your number,” she said. “I’ll check into it and call you right back.”
And within a few minutes I had my answer.
Yes!!!
I raced down the
stairs to tell my parents the good news. The stores would only accept donations for two weeks, and each night they’d deposit what they collected into the online donations account. I just hoped two weeks would be long enough.
twenty-three
The day after Trip’s video went up, he already had 326,414 views. My parents took Rachel and me to the yogurt store and I couldn’t wait to see how much money had been donated.
The line out the door was even longer than normal. When we finally got to the cash register, I noticed a pint-sized yogurt cup with Project LetUs Donations marked on the front. But there were only a few dollars inside.
“I don’t get it,” Rachel said. “There’ve been so many comments from kids who had just made a donation. Those girls behind us in line were even talking about it.”
“Maybe the other stores have been getting more donations. I guess it could still take some time.”
Rachel asked the guy working at the cash register if lots of people had come into make donations. And he said tons of people.
“Tons?” I looked down in the donation cup again.
And then he pointed to a huge water jug on the floor behind the counter that was more than half-way full of crinkly green cash. “That’s just from this morning.”
My Mochi-Yogi tasted even better than normal. We were getting closer!
Charlie and I were getting closer, too. I talked to him every day, and he kept encouraging me by sending songs and saying that he knew I could do it.
The yogurt stores around the country were depositing the money into the online account each night and the number kept growing and growing. And more and more kids were watching Trip’s video and my video and then making their own videos.
Charlie was right. I was good at getting people to care. After the end of two weeks there was $430,000 worth of caring in the donation account.
I still had a long ways to go and summer was nearly over. I wished I had a little more time—time to raise more money, time to hang out with Charlie. Once we went back to separate schools, I didn’t know if things would be the same. Would he forget all about me?
Charlie always said I was good at being able to say what was on my mind and getting people to understand. And I think he was right about that.
Except . . . when it came to him.
I still had never really told him how much I liked being friends with him, and how I hoped we’d never lose that. Or maybe if we did, it would be for something even better.
I called him to tell him the latest donation total.
“Can you believe it?” I said
“Yes. You’re awesome.” He said it like he had never doubted for a second that I’d get this far. “I have a surprise for you. Can you meet me at Tomlin & Tomlin tomorrow afternoon at 3pm?”
I checked with my parents and let him know I could meet him.
It was the last day for the yogurt store to accept donations so I brought Rachel with me, and my parents stopped at a few stores along the way to Tomlin & Tomlin so we could count the donations so far. Rachel said she was doing extrapolations. She’d find out the amounts from a few stores, and then estimate what the total would be if other stores had similar amounts. “I think we’re probably close to $500,000!” she said as we pulled up to Tomlin & Tomlin.
There was a line of cars at the gate. When we finally got to the entrance, the man at the security booth recognized me and gave me a wink as he handed my mom the visitor parking pass. I texted Charlie to let him know we were there.
The guest parking spots were nearly full and there were a bunch of news vans parked at the curb.
As we were getting out of the car I saw Terry by the fountain talking to someone. It looked like Dr. Lee.
I walked towards them and then noticed Charlie and his dad coming out of the main building.
“Kaylin!” Charlie gave me a hug. “You did it!”
I looked at Rachel. I wished it was true, but by our count we were only half-way there.
Reporters with their cameras were now converging around the fountain. Charlie’s dad walked straight over to Terry and reached for his hand and then the two of them embraced. They walked together onto a small platform that was set up near the fountain.
Charlie’s dad stood behind a podium, and his voice was amplified by a microphone. “Kaylin, you’ve inspired us to get back to what really matters—to what got us in this business in the first place. Your Project LetUs has raised close to $500,000 to continue testing a vaccine that may one day cure acne, and today Terry and I pledge that we’ll put our resources into finding a cure—until we actually do.”
“No more Coolitz,” Terry said, looking directly at me instead of the cameras.
“And we’re not moving forward with Clearagel Cool,” Charlie’s dad said. “We’re going to take the money we would’ve spent on that and put it towards this research.”
The reporters started asking questions about how long it would take until the vaccine would be ready, and when would the first tests with people take place.
“You can’t always put a timetable on this type of research,” Terry said. “There’s still a lot of work to do to make sure the vaccine is safe to test with people. But we are headed in the right direction, and we’re not going to give up until we get there.”
Dr. Lee walked over to me and Charlie as soon as the questions finished and the reporters started to leave.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done, Kaylin,” Dr. Lee said. “You know you’re welcome in the lab anytime you want.”
“Thank you,” I told her. “And thank you for doing all the research.”
It was all really happening. Everything I had hoped for.
I told my parents and Rachel that I’d meet them at the car after I said goodbye to Charlie.
He was still standing by the fountain, the warm afternoon sunrays were glistening in the water. He looked so happy as he watched his dad and Terry together off in the distance—talking, laughing.
I went and stood next to him. “This is going to sound cheesy,” I said, “but I feel like I’ll always remember today.”
“Your face is beaming,” he told me. “Ever since you knew about Dr. Lee’s research it was like there was nothing holding you back—like this was what you were meant to do. Your face just lit up whenever you talked about it.”
“Kind of like how yours does when you play the drums. That was really fun, that day at your barbeque.”
“I could tell you liked it,” he said. “You do this thing . . . it’s like you’re smiling at me with your eyes. But then you always look away. Why do you do that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I get nervous.”
“What’s there to be nervous about? Let’s try this again. Pretend I just played the drums for you.”
“That’s not the only time I felt that nervous feeling. After the Band Camp Showdown . . . all those times we talked on the phone . . . right now . . .”
Then his eyes were fixed on mine and I was trying so hard not to look away. Even when I felt his hand on my arm and his face moved closer . . . until I let myself close my eyes as his lips pressed against mine.
Just for a second.
Like a blink.
“I think you looked away first,” I said. I was looking in his eyes again, and for once I didn’t feel nervous.
“Did I?” he said. “I don’t know. We might have to test that out again just to be sure.”
I didn’t know what things would be like with Charlie once school started, or what would happen with the next phase of research.
But I knew I had hope—the kind of hope that just keeps going . . . like a cloudless, never-ending sky or an ocean extending beyond the horizon. The kind of hope that inspires you to do something, and maybe a million other people, too. Hope that if we keep asking the questions and looking for the answers, that we might just find them, someday.
acknowledgments
While there is no way I could mention every single person and life
experience that contributed to this story, I want to thank the following people for their support as I wrote Let’s Face It: Rachel Orr, Greta Lorge, Jennifer Bosworth, Julie Weinbach, Jason Porter, Laurie Zerwer, Anaïsa Tenuta, Auriell Spiegel, Elizabeth Hiller, Janell Bauer, Ilana Weiner, Rhett Reese, Hope Goldstein, Andrea C. Uva, Daniel Kern, Denise Lew, Stephen I. Katz, Peter Salk, Steven Gillis, Abner Moore, Carol Moore, Charlotte Rothman, Emily Riley, Shari Randall, Rick Rothman, and Jason Moore.
The characters and their research projects described in this book are fictional. Fortunately, there are real scientists investigating the causes, treatment, and prevention of acne. For more information, visit letsfaceitbook.com.
about the author
Jodi R. Moore grew up in San Diego, where her parents encouraged her to pursue her passions for her own enjoyment. Writing—from poetry to songs to stories—is something she has always enjoyed. She often writes about girls going after their dreams and making them happen, drawing from her experiences in the entertainment industry with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s Dualstar Entertainment Group, Universal Music Group, and The Walt Disney Company. A graduate of Stanford University, Jodi currently lives in Los Angeles. For more information, visit jodirmoore.com.
Table of Contents
contents
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
acknowledgments
about the author
Let's Face It Page 13