by Shelby Bach
With a sigh, Mom steered me into the kitchen. “You are so accident-prone, Rory.”
Lena’s lie had worked. I hid a smile as Mom guided me through the swinging door and straight to the kitchen table.
Amy scurried around unpacked boxes to grab ice out of the freezer. “I have a dream, kid. Of picking you up in your cleats and your shin guards and you telling me all about soccer practice, free of black eyes and other mysterious bruises.”
“They had tryouts two weeks before I got here. It wouldn’t be fair if I walked on,” I reminded her. Our crazy moving schedule gave me a lot of excuses. I pulled out my homework, hoping that would end all discussion about injuries.
Amy passed me ice wrapped in a kitchen towel. “You have three different options, but I’m afraid I couldn’t find any stylists you’ve seen before. Do you want to try someone new, or do you want me to keep calling around?”
At first I thought she meant a stylist for me. I didn’t need a haircut, except possibly long bangs to cover my black eye.
Mom sighed. “Let’s keep looking. I would normally be okay with someone new, but I have too many interviews. . . .”
Oh. They had completely changed the subject. I was never this lucky. Usually, I had to spend half an hour reassuring Mom I was fine.
“Wait. What happened?” I asked. Mom’s hair looked completely normal to me—short, blond, and full of weird tufts.
“Maggie’s on-set stylist found some gray hair this morning.” From the look on Mom’s face you would have guessed that Amy had said that my mother had a poison-ivy rash in underwear territory or something equally embarrassing. Amy didn’t notice.
My mom was an actress, kind of a big-deal one. She was only in her mid-thirties, but if she looked too old, it limited the kinds of roles she could get. I’d overheard her and Amy discussing it the week before.
Mom changed the subject. “Have you packed yet?”
“Um, kind of,” I said. “I just need to put everything in a suitcase.”
“Good. That means you still have room for these.” Amy patted a shoe box I hadn’t noticed. The designer’s name seemed vaguely familiar.
Mom scooted the box toward me with a too-bright smile. “I got you something for your trip.”
Not sure what to expect, I lifted the lid. Inside lay . . . shoes. They were very pretty, made with poppy-colored silk, stitched all over with golden beads. Each shoe probably cost over a hundred dollars. Any of the girls at school would have killed for them. Maybe have killed me for them.
“Thanks.” I wondered if she really expected me to wear these. “But I have shoes.”
Mom hesitated.
“Rory, you couldn’t get those any rattier even if you sprayed them with mud and then threw them in the garbage disposer,” Amy said.
My sneakers were stained with dirt and grass, the laces were fraying, and there was a hole at the ankle. I would probably outgrow this pair soon anyway, but they had sentimental value. They had survived almost as many battles as I had.
Even my family thought I needed to improve my look. The girls at school usually told me so, but this was the first time I’d ever heard about it from Mom and Amy.
“Your tennis shoes are fine for visiting Lena,” Mom added. “But you need something to wear if Mrs. LaMarelle wants to take you someplace nice. I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
I didn’t mind wearing flats every once in a while, but if I wore them at EAS, they would fall off if I had to do something intense . . . like dodge an ice griffin or slay some dragons. I tried a different tactic. “But isn’t this kind of overkill? Couldn’t we have started out with sparkly shoes from Target or something?”
“Is that all? Your mom wore them during filming. Wardrobe comes as a bonus. Those were free,” Amy explained.
“It’s nice that you and I are the same size now,” Mom added. “I get more samples than I know what to do with.”
We were only the same size in shoes.
My feet had shot out in the last year, forcing me out of kids’ sizes forever. My hands had also gotten huge, but I didn’t mind that so much—I could grip my sword hilt easier. Mom and Amy both swore that this meant I was going to be tall, but so far I just had clownishly big hands and feet. And that Mom forced some of her hand-me-downs on me.
Sometimes you have to pick your battles. I wasn’t getting out of town without the shoes. “Okay. Thanks, then.”
Amy and Mom both smiled, and then the phone rang. “Ooh! Maybe someone had a cancellation!” Amy said before answering. “Hello. Assistant to Maggie Wright speaking.”
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of last-minute packing. When I said good night, Mom was standing in front of the mirror, tilting her head in a million different directions, looking for what her stylist had seen. Climbing into bed, I vowed to never go into any business where finding gray hair turned into a career emergency.
• • •
That night, I dreamed of satiny black hair flowing around a beautiful face. Her eyes were closed, the long lashes casting spiky shadows over her cheeks. Her lips were perfectly shaped, tinged with a delicate pink, like they belonged on a painted figurine. I started to wonder what Mia’s deal was, and why her hair was spread flat over the table, and if maybe she was practicing for a Tale where she got kissed. Then my gaze fell below her chin.
It was Mia’s head—and only her head—resting on the table.
he next day at school was a totally different nightmare.
Somebody thought we kids needed to bond before we left on break for nine and a half days, so they scheduled an extra thirty minutes of homeroom after last period. Clearly, the principal had never been a twelve-year-old girl.
My homeroom only had five kids. It was easy to understand why if you met the other four girls in it. Everyone else had transferred out rather than spend extra time with Madison and the KATs.
I was first in the class, even before the teacher. I shoved away the urge to hide in the bathroom for the next half hour, and I glanced out the window. The red door of the house across the street could take me to EAS. Ellie had set it up as part of the Door Trek system when I first started school here.
Geez, I had faced down a flock of griffins yesterday without much fuss. I could handle homeroom.
All four girls in Madison McDermott’s little group glided in and filled the room with this week’s designated scent: strawberry splash. My stomach turned. It smelled more like chemicals than fruit.
Madison marched to the chair across from me and dropped magazines on the table with an ominous slap. I didn’t look up, but my whole body tensed. Madison had clearly gone tabloid shopping. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that my mother’s face was on the cover of one. That meant that if our teacher, Mrs. Lapin, didn’t come soon, this would suck more than usual.
The paparazzi stalked anyone related to Hollywood royalty. Most of the time I could survive it.
Unfortunately, all of Mom’s recent films had only shot on location, and that made things tough. It meant that she, Amy, and I moved three or four times a year—whenever Mom started work on a new movie. A new city always meant a new school, which made me a new kid. Usually, I could fly under the radar until school let out and be fine. I was an expert at keeping my head down.
But every few schools, I got singled out. Controlling my temper was harder than walking on griffin ice, but if I didn’t, I would make a huge scene, one probably destined to end up an article in those same tabloids.
The four girls sat at once, like a group of synchronized swimmers, and four hands reached for a magazine, each set of fingernails painted the color of yellow highlighter. It must have been the nail polish of the week.
I knew about the scents and colors of the week because when I’d first come to the school, Madison had invited me to be part of their little troop. The others’ names were Katie, Arianna, and Taylor. I’d started thinking of them as the KATs because it helped me remember their names. They all looked an
d acted the same. Madison had all these weird rules that told the rest of us which color to paint our nails, how many notes we could take in geography class and with what kind of pen, who we could talk to and who we couldn’t, etc. I avoided getting sucked in as much as I could. Then Madison tried to invite herself to my house.
I knew what she wanted—to meet the famous Maggie Wright. But the idea of watching her suck up to Mom made me feel simultaneously like throwing up and punching a hole in the wall. So I said no.
Now all Madison wanted was to punish me.
They flipped through their magazines.
I sat on my hands to keep from biting my nails.
“There’s a really great interview in here with Brie Catcher,” Arianna said.
Brie Catcher was my dad’s girlfriend. They had been going out for about a year. I hadn’t met her yet, but Dad wanted me to—he brought it up every time I called him.
That might have influenced my decision to go see Lena instead—just a little.
But when I’d told Dad what I’d decided about spring break, he’d said, “You’re not coming?” The hurt in his voice had made me feel as if someone had dropped a ton of bricks on my head. When I’d tried to explain how tagging along on Dad’s busy schedule was the opposite of fun, he’d said, “I can cancel some meetings—a whole day. No, two days.”
That hadn’t lessened the guilt any, but Dad would never cancel all his meetings. Even if he tried, someone would call, last minute, and it would be too tempting for him to ignore. So I’d just said, “We’re still going to Prince Edward Island in June, right? Just you and me?”
“And Brie,” Dad said, sounding more cheerful, and finding out Dad had invited her without asking me had done wonders for my guilt.
Katie said, “I like Brie Catcher so much more than that last person Eric Landon was with. That Maggie Wright.”
I bristled, but I bit my tongue.
I wished Lena was with me. I knew exactly how she would react to this—she would look at me and roll her eyes in a way that clearly said, Don’t they have anything better to do? Then she would lean forward and tell me what she was going to invent with her dragon scales next.
Madison didn’t look up. Translation: Keep going until you bring me something good.
Taylor sighed. She was reading the magazine with Mom’s face on the cover. “I used to like Maggie Wright, but recently . . .” She sighed again.
“I know,” said Arianna. “She’s just—”
“Over the hill,” finished Madison.
I snorted. I couldn’t help it. It was such a lame insult. Despite her recent gray-hair emergency, my mom was years younger than all of theirs, and much prettier—I had seen that on Parents’ Night a couple weeks ago.
Definitely a mistake.
Katie, Arianna, and Taylor all drew toward Madison like a flock of ice griffins looking to their chimera captain before they tore their prey apart.
Madison just flipped the magazine to one of my least favorite things in the world, the celeb candids. The paparazzi surprised actresses, directors, singers, or their families when they least expected it, and magazines paid them for that torture.
“Ugh, I hate it when they publish pictures of the celebrities’ kids,” Madison said.
“Yeah,” Taylor said. “Who cares?”
It was a picture of me. Me and Mom, actually—just outside the coffee place up the road, between school and my house. We’d never seen a photographer there. Mom looked polished and pretty, with enormous sunglasses covering most of her face, but the picture had caught me at an awkward angle, my face tilted up toward Mom. I was obviously talking, so my mouth was in a weird twisted lemon shape.
“It’s like celebrity kids feel like they should get special treatment. This one thinks she doesn’t need to worry about personal hygiene,” said Madison.
The KATs nodded, murmuring “ewwww” and “gross” and “definitely, Madison” at nearly the same time.
The photo showed mud caked down my whole right side, turning half my shirt and jeans dark brown and staining my dark brown hair a shade darker. I remembered that: the Director had sent us to capture a red cap infestation in Newport, Rhode Island, at some old mansion-turned–tourist attraction. It had been raining, and I’d slipped in the mud trying to catch a two-foot-tall elflike creature with a scarlet hat. Chase had laughed so hard that he’d slipped too, trying to help me up.
On the way home, I’d told Mom that I had gotten muddy in an epic game of soccer.
Madison stabbed a finger down at the photo. “She’s not even that pretty. What a huge chin.”
“And her mouth. It’s enormous.” Katie tossed her straight locks over her shoulder, and the smell of burned hair wafted over.
“The only thing that could make her look uglier,” said Madison, “is a black eye.”
I willed myself not to press my lips together or touch the bruise around my eye. They would just get worse if they knew they were getting to me.
“And her nose—” started Arianna.
Just then, our homeroom teacher strode in. The box in her hands smelled like cinnamon and powdered sugar. “Hello, girls!”
My shoulders slumped with relief.
“Hello, Mrs. Lapin!” chorused Madison and her KATs. They slapped their magazines shut and shoved them into their backpacks.
“Sorry I’m late! I wanted to bring you a treat.” Mrs. Lapin dropped the box on the table and opened it—donut holes. The other girls reached in with murmurs of appreciation, clearly famished after a hard day of bullying.
“Don’t you want one, Rory?” Mrs. Lapin asked.
She had taken me aside a few days before, worried about my social skills. You have plenty of nice girls in your homeroom, but you’re so . . . quiet all the time, she’d said.
So even though I was sure that anything I ate in front of Madison would taste like tissue paper, I took one.
“Now, then.” Mrs. Lapin slipped into a chair at the end of Madison’s table. “What is everyone doing for spring break?”
She pointed at me. I told them what Mom thought: I was going to visit my friends Lena and Chase in North Carolina.
Then the other girls chatted away about the weeklong sleepover they were having at Katie’s house, glancing my way like this was supposed to bother me. Madison, it turned out, wasn’t joining the KATs sleepover either. Instead she was flying out to L.A., because her agent (more commonly referred to as her mother) wanted her to audition for a role at Nuthatch Studios.
Another reason to be glad I was spending the break at EAS.
Mrs. Lapin said, “Congratulations, Madison! What an honor. That’s where Rory’s from. Maybe she can suggest a few places.”
Thankfully, the bell rang right then. School was over, and I didn’t have to stop and recommend restaurants to Madison.
“Thanks for the donuts, Mrs. Lapin!” I jumped to my feet, threw my backpack over my shoulder, and sprinted for the door. “Bye!”
Vacation had officially begun.
• • •
“Please commence saying your good-byes now.” Amy steered the car toward an exit labeled with a plane icon. “We’ll be there in approximately four minutes.”
Mom turned all the way around in her seat and clasped my hand tightly. Suddenly, all her worry shone out of her eyes. She didn’t want me to leave.
“I’m really glad you get to see your friends again, Rory. I know how close you three are,” she said, like she was trying to convince herself. “When I talked to Mrs. LaMarelle yesterday, she said that Lena’s been talking about this visit nonstop for weeks.”
I half smiled. Guilt scrambled the contents of my stomach. Someday, I would stop lying to my trusting mother.
She wouldn’t let me go unless she’d cleared it with Lena’s grandmother, but Mrs. LaMarelle had almost refused to play along. “You won’t be staying with us, Rory. You’ll be staying at EAS. I don’t want to lie. Get Jack to cover for you,” she had suggested.
But as the champion of the Canon, Chase’s dad had been away on EAS business, like usual. Even if he’d been around, he wouldn’t exactly have come across as responsible over the phone.
Lena had finally had to promise to stop experimenting in the family kitchen before her gran would agree to such a sneaky arrangement.
“I’ll be fine, Mom. I’ve traveled by myself before.” Pretty much every time I’d visited Dad since we’d moved out of L.A.
“Our little Rory. Almost a teenager,” Amy added.
Mom sighed. “I guess you did have to grow up sometime, Rory. But I want you to call me every day—right before dinner. I need to know you’re okay.”
“I promise,” I said.
A plane roared above us, and the control tower loomed straight ahead. I leaned forward, my hand on my seat belt, ready to unclick as soon as we braked.
Amy laughed at my enthusiasm as she found a spot to park. “Easy, Rory—you’re not getting out of here without a hug.”
Mom climbed out with me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some other travelers do a double take (having famous parents had trained me to spot the warning signs), but Mom just grabbed me in a tight squeeze. “Who’s my favorite daughter?”
I smiled into her shoulder. Same-size feet or not, she was still a head taller than me. “But I’m your only daughter.”
“Then it’s a good thing you’re my favorite.” Mom kissed the top of my head. “You take care of yourself, Rory. My life would never be the same if anything happened to you.”
I would definitely miss her, but it would be a relief to have a break from her overprotectiveness.
“Did you want me to ask them if they’ll let me walk you through security?” Mom asked hopefully.
And a break from the babying.
“Just in case you need me,” Mom continued.
Bad idea. Mom’s presence would screw up my real travel plans. “You mean, like the way you already printed out my boarding pass for me? ‘Just in case’ all the machines were broken, and ‘just in case’ the people at the desk weren’t around to help?”