by Robin Palmer
She nodded, but it wasn’t an oh-my-God-yes-it’s-so-pretty! nod—it was more like a no-it’s-not-but-I’m-nodding-so-my-dad-doesn’t-yell-at-me-later-for-being- rude nod.
I clamped it down on my head in case Laurel got any ideas. “Thank you,” I said. I squinted—was that a drop of sweat rolling down Alan’s face?
“Why don’t we sit down and get the ordering out the way so you girls can have a nice chat,” Mom said. “I have a feeling you’re going to find you have a lot in common.”
Laurel and I looked at each other. Her expression said exactly what I was thinking: I kind of doubt it.
At least we had that in common.
Thing number one Laurel and I didn’t have in common? Food.
“I was thinking,” Mom said after we were settled at the table, “instead of each of us ordering our own dishes, why don’t we order family-style!” She didn’t notice that the entire restaurant was still staring at us. Or, rather, at Laurel.
I choked on the crunchy noodles they gave you for free when you sat down. She was using the word family already?! If I still had my phone, I would’ve texted Marissa right then to double-check if that was a bad sign, but instead I was going to have to wait until I got home. Marissa was annoying, but she knew about this stuff. Her parents had gotten divorced when she was six, and then her mom had a bunch of boyfriends before she married her stepfather, Phil.
“Rebecca, that’s a great idea!” Alan exclaimed as he smiled at Mom. “In fact, I was going to suggest the very same thing!” He turned to me. “Lucy, what would you like to order?”
“General Tso’s Szechuan Beef,” I replied. Out of everything on the menu (we had been coming here forever) it was my absolute favorite.
“Oh, I can’t eat that,” Laurel said. “It’s too spicy for me.”
“Laurel has a nervous stomach,” Alan explained.
“Dad!” she said, turning red.
It made me feel a little better knowing that major stars also had embarrassing parents. In fact, I kind of felt a little bad for her. “Okay. Then . . . um . . . Sweet and Sour Chicken?” I suggested. “That’s not spicy at all. Just sticky. And it’s really good here. A lot better than Panda Express in the mall.”
She shook her head. “I don’t eat chicken.”
“Because of your stomach?” I asked.
“No. I just don’t like it,” she said all matter-of-factly.
The feeling-bad-for-her thing stopped. It would have been one thing if she had seemed a tiny bit sorry about the fact that she kept saying no to all my choices, but she didn’t. She didn’t even give the teensiest I’m-sorry smile. Instead, it was more like a because-I’m-Laurel-Moses-I-get-my-way-all-the-time smirk.
“Well, what do you want, then?” I asked. “Steamed vegetables and tofu?” That’s what Sarah always got, both at Madame Wu’s and practically everywhere else. I hated tofu. The one time I had it I spit it out because it tasted like cardboard.
“That sounds great,” she replied.
It wasn’t like I was serious about it. It was more like I was being sarcastic.
“Well, that was easy!” Mom said. “How about if we get the tofu, and some lo mein—Laurel, that should be okay on your stomach—and, Alan and Laurel, if you like shrimp, we could get some shrimp and lobster sauce . . . that’s very mild—”
I hated shrimp!
“And some vegetable dumplings—those aren’t spicy at all—” Mom went on.
I liked pork dumplings!
“And some rice,” she continued. She turned to them. “Is there anything else you guys would like?”
They shook their heads. “No, that sounds perfect,” Alan said. I waited for the “Lucy, is there anything else you’d like?” but it never came. He turned to Laurel. “Doesn’t Rebecca have great taste in food?” he said all excitedly. “Every time we go out to eat she always orders the best dishes.”
I looked at Mom. Every time? Exactly how many times had there been? She was going to have a lot of explaining to do when we got in the car.
Alan looked at Mom and beamed. “She has great taste in everything.”
I had a feeling it was going to be a very long dinner.
Before the food even arrived I had figured out that Laurel was what I called a “parent kid.” They’re the ones who, when around kids their own age, can barely be bothered to talk to them, but when they’re around adults, they don’t stop talking. Even though Dad’s always telling me that those kids are just as insecure as everyone else, they always make me feel bad about myself, like I’m not as smart or mature as them.
It’s not like I didn’t try to talk to Laurel, because I did. At least, I tried in between people coming up to her to ask her for autographs. I’ve never gone up to a famous person to ask for an autograph because other than that time I saw Pirate Petey, the host of the children’s show on the local cable access station, in the 7-Eleven, I’ve never seen one in person. I didn’t go up to him because he was too busy screaming at the guy behind the counter that he didn’t want 7UP, he wanted Diet 7UP. But if I did go up to one, you can bet that if I accidentally knocked over the soda of the person sitting next to the famous person, I’d at least apologize to the nonfamous person. Especially since the soda stained her T-shirt.
After the people were done asking for autographs (and ruining my clothes), I pretended in my mind that I was a television interviewer and asked Laurel questions like. “Do you miss going to regular school?” and “Do you have any hobbies other than acting and singing?” but it was like she could barely be bothered to answer them. She was an actress, so you’d think that she would at least pretend to want to talk to me. But all I got was short answers like “No, not really” and “Well, I like to read.” Later, during the car ride home when I was complaining about it to Mom, she said it was because Laurel was just shy and she was as nervous and uncomfortable as I was, but I didn’t buy it. A huge Hollywood star who had stood in front of thousands of people at the MTV Music Awards was shy? I don’t think so.
As for me, I’m one of those people who tend to talk a lot when they’re nervous or uncomfortable, especially if the other person isn’t talking.
I turned to her. “I guess what they say is true,” I said, after I shoveled some more lo mein into my mouth. Mom and Alan were busy playing the “Oh my God—I had no idea you like fill-in-the-blank, too!” game. I was also one of those people who eat a lot when they’re nervous.
She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. I didn’t even know where mine was. I think it was on the floor. “What’s true?” she said.
“That the camera adds ten pounds. Because you’re a lot skinnier in person than you are on TV.” I meant it as a compliment, but from the look on her face, she wasn’t taking it as one. That made me more nervous, which is why I added, “Even though you eat a lot.” That didn’t make her look any happier.
We went back to not talking for a while. Until she motioned to my cheek and said, “You’ve got something on your face.”
I swiped at it. My coordination problems weren’t just with dancing or sports—they were also with food.
“No. Near your nose. A little bit more to the right,” she said.
Just then the flash of a camera went off. After my sight finally came back, and Mr. Wu, the owner, had chased the photographer out of the restaurant, Alan explained that the guy had been a “pap.” Apparently “pap” was short for “paparazzi,” which was Italian for “annoying photographers who take pictures of celebrities when they’re trying to do normal things like eat dinner.”
“It’s still there,” Laurel said after Mom and Alan had gone back to talking about more stuff they had in common. I sat there with my hand clamped on my face and realized what Laurel saw on my face.
“I know. It’s just . . . a pimple,” I mumbled from behind my hand.
“A what?”
Of course Laurel Moses didn’t recognize the word pimple—she had probably never even had one before. “It’s a pimple, okay?
” I announced loudly, glaring at her.
“Oh,” she replied. She could’ve looked a little sorry about having embarrassed me, but she didn’t. “Well, do you have any Preparation H?”
My eyes widened. “Of course not!” I cried. I wasn’t exactly sure what Preparation H did, but I had seen the commercials on TV, and I knew it had something to do with problems with your butt.
She shrugged. “That’s too bad because just a dab of it totally shrinks pimples,” she explained. “My makeup artist uses it on me all the time.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. Butt cream on a pimple? Yeah, right.
I looked over at Mom, who was still yammering away to Alan, and beamed her a silent Can-we-please-leave-right-this-very-minute? message. Finally, they stopped talking and turned to us.
“So are you girls having fun?” Mom asked with a big smile.
Couldn’t my mother see that I was having one of the worst nights of my life? Usually, she was one of those parents who liked to talk about feelings all the time (“How did you feel when your two BFFs dumped you, Lucy?” Um, HORRIBLY AND INCREDIBLY AWFUL?), but ever since this whole Alan thing, not only did she not care how I felt, she barely knew I existed.
Both Laurel and I shrugged. At least we agreed on something.
“I was thinking that we’d go back to our house for dessert,” Mom said. “Laurel, your dad told me that you love strawberry-rhubarb pie, so I got one of those at the farmers market this afternoon.”
My eyes narrowed. I didn’t know what I was more upset about: the fact that suddenly it was all about Laurel, or that there was a pie in the house that I hadn’t known about. What other secrets was Mom hiding from me? “But what about me? I’m allergic to rhubarb,” I said.
Mom turned to me. “Lucy, we’ve been over this—you’re not allergic to rhubarb. You just don’t like it.”
I was also allergic to beets, liver, anchovies, and sardines. Maybe I didn’t have a physical allergy to them where my throat closed up, but wanting to throw up because something tastes so disgusting is a kind of allergy as far as I was concerned.
“So because of that, I also got a French apple one, which you do like,” Mom said.
There were two pies in the house? I wasn’t allowed to lock my bedroom door at any time, but my mother could lie to me as much as she wanted?
Alan smiled. “You don’t know how happy it makes me that the evening is going as smoothly as it is. I had no idea you girls were going to get along so well!”
If they had been paying attention to us, they would’ve realized that, actually, we weren’t. And unfortunately, it wasn’t over yet.
If dinner was “smooth,” then dessert was as bumpy as the time we had flown to Florida to go to Disney World and I got so nauseous from the turbulence that I threw up in the throw-up bag they keep in the seat pockets in front of you. The pie helped a little, especially since everyone else went for the strawberry rhubarb, leaving the French apple to me. Well, to me and Miss Piggy, our ten-year-old, eighteen-pound tabby cat who had the bad habit of jumping up on the table when we were eating and just sticking her face in people’s dishes. Having grown up with it, I was used to it and didn’t find it all that gross, but from the look on Laurel and Alan’s faces, they sure did. It wasn’t like it was their pie she was trying to eat, just mine, because she doesn’t like rhubarb either. Luckily, I was pretty much finished already by the time she got there.
“Miss Piggy, get down!” Mom ordered. She turned to me. “Lucy, why don’t you take Laurel upstairs and show her your room while Alan and I finish our coffee? I’m sure she’d enjoy seeing your hat collection.”
“Why? So she can throw them in puddles and ruin them all?” is what I wanted to say. But, instead, what I did say was, “Okay.”
The floorboards were particularly creaky that night as we walked through the family room. Because our house was built in 1897, everything either creaks or doesn’t shut right, like the windows, which makes it super-cold in the winter. Mom likes to say that all that stuff gives the house “character.” If you ask me, character’s just another word for “old” or “broken.” I bet everything in the apartment in New York City where Laurel lived was brand-new.
As we walked up the stairs I thought about how glad I was that Mom had made me clean my room that day because it would have been really embarrassing if Laurel had walked into my room and there had been a pair of underwear in the middle of the floor or something.
Except that when we walked in, there was a pair of underwear in the middle of the floor. “Whoops,” I said, lunging for it and throwing it under my bed, which was basically where everything went when Mom told me to clean my room. Thankfully, my closet door was closed (sometimes hard to do when, as part of “cleaning,” you throw the stuff that won’t fit under the bed in there), so she couldn’t see my collection of maxi- and minipads.
Laurel looked around. “I like your room,” she finally said. “It’s very . . . colorful.”
I couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. About whether she liked it; the colorful part was definitely true. The walls were purple (naturally), and I had covered them with all kinds of cool stuff: a colorful tapestry that I had gotten at a Tibetan store in town; some of Dad’s photographs; a poster of a famous painting by Picasso that I discovered when I did an oral report on him in fourth grade. I used to have pictures of Rachel and Missy and me up there, too (one had been in a Best Friends Forever frame they had gotten me for my tenth birthday), but obviously I took them down after the dumping. Marissa kept begging me to put up the picture of the two of us that she made her sister take one afternoon that I was over her house in the frame. There was no way I was doing that because (a) we were NOT BFFs and (b) her sister had taken the picture right before I was about to sneeze, so my eyes were closed and my mouth was open.
“Is it true that your closet is the size of this room?” I blurted. Blurting was also something I tended to do when I was nervous. Marissa had told me she read in a magazine that Laurel’s closet in New York was the size of most people’s bedrooms.
She rolled her eyes. “No. That’s just one of the lies they make up about me. Like the one that was in the National Enquirer last week about how I’m really an alien. They used this horrible picture where I look bug-eyed.”
“What about Jackson Barber? Are you really going out with him?”
She shook her head. “No. I only met him once, in the green room of the Kidz Choice Awards.” She walked over to where my hats were hanging on the wall. “You do have a lot of hats, don’t you?”
“I actually had one more, but when you threw it in the puddle, it got ruined.”
She turned me, and looked confused. “Huh?”
“My red-and-black one?” I reminded her. “The one you thought had lice in it, so you ripped it off your head and threw it on the ground?”
“Ohhh . . . right. I remember that day. That was you?”
I nodded. I waited for the Oh-my-God-I’m-so-sorry-for-ruining-your-life-how-can-I-ever-make-it-up-to-you part, but I got nothing.
“Sorry about that,” was what she said instead, in the same tone as if she had stepped on my toe. “I have a small issue with germs. If you’d like, I can give you some money to replace it.”
I almost said, “All the money in the world couldn’t make up for how embarrassed I was,” but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “It wouldn’t matter because I already checked and H&M doesn’t have any more.”
She walked over to my rocking chair and, after brushing off what I guess she thought were germs, sat down. “Come here, Miss Piggy,” she called to my cat, who was in the corner trying to clean herself, but because she was so fat she just kept rolling over on her side.
“She won’t come,” I replied. “She doesn’t like strangers.” She didn’t really like me, either, even though I was the one who fed her and gave her Greenies cat treats, but I left that part out.
But Miss Piggy struggled to her feet and not only waddled over t
o Laurel but managed to jump in her lap. Then when Laurel petted her, Miss Piggy started purring.
I was thinking about how unfair it was that everyone in the world thought that Laurel Moses was so great—even cats—when I noticed Miss Piggy’s stomach began to move back and forth.
Uh-oh. This was not good.
“Miss Piggy—no!” I yelped. Having lived with her almost my entire life, I knew exactly what was coming. I lunged to pull her off Laurel, but I was too late.
Because right at that moment my cat gagged and threw up a giant hairball on the biggest teen star in the world’s lap.
You’d think that with the night ending with a hairball being upchucked, both my mother and Laurel’s father would realize that was a pretty strong sign that they should just forget the whole thing and stop seeing each other, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. Instead, on Sunday night, after I got home from playing Monopoly with Dad and Sarah, Mom told me that the four of us were going out again the following Friday night. Not only that, but this time it was going to be what she called an “activity outing.”
“What?! But why?” I demanded, polishing off the last piece of the French apple pie. It may have been because she felt guilty about dating Alan and all the lying she had been doing, but Mom didn’t say anything about the pie, even though, technically, it wasn’t exactly the weekend anymore.
“What do you mean why?” she asked. “Because last night went so well.”
I waited for her to say something like “I’m just kidding,” but she didn’t. “Um, it did?” I asked.
From the look on her face, that was not the right thing to say. For the second time that day, I had to sit there and listen to her say how disappointed she was in my behavior. That I hadn’t given Laurel a chance, and that she and Dad had raised me to be compassionate and not to judge people, and that, if I had taken the time to have a conversation with Laurel, I would have discovered that not only was she smart and funny and nice, but that leading the life she did—not going to school on a regular basis, acting in a weekly television show, having to travel around the world for movie premieres and award shows—was a very difficult way to grow up.