Girl vs. Superstar

by Robin Palmer

  No school and getting to eat all the free food you wanted in places like Paris doesn’t sound all that difficult to me. I almost said it out loud, but I could tell from the way Mom was standing with her hands on her hips and how the little crease between her eyebrows had appeared that it wouldn’t go over well. What I did say was, “I’m sorry, but none of my friends would ever embarrass me by pointing out a pimple on my face in the middle of a restaurant.” (Even though Marissa probably would have, but technically we weren’t friends.)

  Even though there was still a good bite and a half on my pie plate, Mom picked it up and walked toward the garbage. “We’re going on an activity outing with them next Friday night, and that’s that. End of discussion,” she said.

  At that moment my entire future flashed before my eyes, and it wasn’t pretty. Laurel would become my stepsister, and I’d have to spend all my time doing “activities” with her, ones that she was better at than me, while Mom ignored me and yakked away with Alan about all the things they had in common.

  If Dr. Maude didn’t e-mail me back soon, I was in big trouble.

  chapter 5

  Dear Dr. Maude,

  In case you were wondering, my dinner with Laurel Moses last night was just awful. Not only that, but I just found out that we’re going out with them AGAIN. On an “activity outing.” So we can “bond.” Marissa says it’s a very bad sign.

  Dr. Maude, what do I do if Laurel ends up becoming my stepsister? Because even though Mom says I haven’t given her a chance and she’s actually really nice, I like to think I’m a very good judge of character (I’m pretty sure I’m a little psychic), and I don’t think she IS very nice, even though she pretends to be when she signs autographs. It wouldn’t be all that bad to have a stepbrother or stepsister, but if I did have one, I would want it to be someone normal—not the most popular girl in the world.

  I know you’re busy, but I really, really, REALLY need some advice about how I can stop my mother from dating Laurel’s father and have things go back to the way they were before she came to town to shoot her movie. Otherwise, my life is going to be even more ruined than it has been since sixth grade, and that would NOT be good.

  Looking forward to hearing from you.

  yours truly,

  Lucy B. Parker

  “So the P in your name isn’t for Parker, it’s for Picker,’ huh?” David Murray said as I sat down in my seat a few mornings later as Mrs. Kline boomed, “Take your seats and settle down, people! I said SETTLE DOWN!” over and over. Mrs. Kline had a voice like a foghorn. I had never heard one in real life, but I had heard them on cartoons and, seriously, it sounded just like that.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. Marissa said that Julie Drucker told her that Mark McInerney said at one point that David had a crush on me, but I didn’t believe it because (a) Marissa was always lying and (b) he was just such a jerk to me all the time. Dad said that the fact that he was a jerk was actually a very good sign that he did like me because that’s how boys act when they like a girl until they’re adults. I really hoped Mark didn’t have a crush on me because he was just plain gross. Especially since Marissa also told me she had heard that he only brushed his teeth at night rather than in the morning, too.

  Now, if Bobby Randall had a crush on me, I wouldn’t have minded it so much. In fact, I kind of sort of would’ve liked it, even though, like I said, I was nervous about having a boyfriend because I didn’t want to spend more time crying than I already did. But that probably wasn’t going to happen because, according to Marissa, he had a crush on Clementine Durfee.

  “Because of the way you’re picking your nose in that picture,” he replied.

  “What picture?” I asked, confused.

  “Omigod, Lucy!” screamed Marissa, who had not taken her seat or settled down. Instead, she was over at the class computer with Jacob Fuller. “You didn’t tell me you were picking your nose at the Chinese restaurant!” she yelled. “Maybe that’s why Laurel Moses wasn’t very nice to you!”

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “There’s a picture of it right here on HotGossip.com,” she yelled.

  I ran over to the monitor. Sure enough, there it was—the picture that the pap took where I was trying to hide my pimple. And unfortunately, it did look like I was picking my nose. I couldn’t believe they put that up on the Internet for everyone to see. Weren’t they supposed to get your permission before they did that?

  “I was not picking my nose!” I cried. “I was—”

  Marissa leaned in and squinted. “Whoops—I was wrong. She’s not picking her nose!” she announced. “She’s touching that big pimple to the side of it, that’s all!”

  I was beyond embarrassed. Not as much about the fact that everyone thought I had been picking my nose in front of Laurel Moses, but that Rachel and Missy were right there and were giggling about it.

  If I were to ever write an advice book (which I was seriously considering doing because I had been through a lot during my twelve years on the planet, such as divorce and friend-dumping and having no hair), one of the things I would put in the book was that wherever you go, make sure you always have some extra-soft, extra-big Kleenex Ultra Soft tissues in your knapsack. Because even though your mother might yell at you that she’s not made of money when she catches you putting half the box in your bag, I’m telling you they’re a lot more comfortable to wipe your nose and eyes with than that disgusting extra-scratchy toilet paper in the girls’ room if you find yourself in there crying, like I was after everyone laughed at the picture.

  As I sat in my favorite stall wiping my eyes, I thought about how even when Laurel Moses wasn’t in the room, she still managed to ruin my life. I debated staying in there the entire morning and skipping lunch, until I remembered it was Taco Tuesday and tacos were about the only good thing the cafeteria served. But even the thought of a taco couldn’t help me feel better. Why did I always have to be the center of attention all the time nowadays? Why couldn’t things just go back to the way they were in fifth grade when I was just considered normal and no one paid that much attention to me? Okay, maybe I hadn’t been completely normal on account of the fact that I tended to wear a lot of color at once, but other than that, when my name came up, the only response it got was, “Lucy B. Parker? The Keeper of the Periods? Yeah, I know her. She’s nice.”

  I had thought that nothing could be worse than being dumped by your two BFFs, but I was wrong. Having Laurel Moses in your life was way worse. The only good thing I could see coming out of all this was that at some point I’d be so embarrassed because of something she did that it would have to bring on my period.

  “Okay, Lucy, time to buck up,” I whispered to myself as I honked into a tissue one last time before standing up and walking over to the sink and splashing water on my face.

  The good news was that things couldn’t get much worse.

  Or could they?

  I don’t know how I feel about God—like whether He’s a guy who looks like Santa Claus but not as fat; or whether there isn’t an actual God and instead it’s more like what Mom and Dad call “Buddha nature,” which is the idea that there’s this sort of very wise, very unscared voice within us that will always tell us the right thing to do if we turn off our iPods and get really quiet and listen—but I do know that something seemed to hear my “Okay, Universe, if, by the time I get back to class, something equally embarrassing if not more has happened to someone else so everyone’s talking about that now and not me, I promise that not only will I clean my room—like really clean my room—but I will also be nice to Marissa and not roll my eyes when she does something incredibly stupid (which will be tough, but I’ll do it anyway).” Because when I got back, the entire class was whispering even though Mrs. Kline kept shouting, “I said, ‘Zip it, people’!” and Marissa turned around and said in a normal voice, “Omigod, Lucy—you’re not going to believe what you missed—as Mrs. Kline was taking attendance, Kim Mulvaney told Ashima Patel th
at when she was in the office she overheard the secretaries talking about how Frankie Bankuti was in Mrs. Riley’s office right that second because she had heard from a very good source that he broke into Ms. DeMarco’s office and STOLE THE MOVIE.”

  The Movie was gone?! If this was true, I was safe for a while because this was big news. Like two-days’-worthof-gossip news. The real title of the Movie was What’s Happening to Me? and it was about puberty. Obviously we all already knew about that stuff (since like fourth grade) but according to Malika Connors, a seventh grader on my bus, not only did the Movie talk about what happened to boys, too (meaning e-r-e-c-t-i-o-n-s), but there was a naked woman in it, too. And not just a drawing of one, but a real one. That’s why you had to get your parents to sign a permission slip saying it was okay for you to see it—because it was that shocking. But then the school did something really jerky, which was that after you brought the slip back, they refused to tell you when they were going to show it in health class, probably so that you’d make sure to come to school instead of pretending to be sick and staying home.

  Everyone talked about what might happen to Frankie, and where the Movie might be, and if perhaps a screening could be set up at his house so we could all see it there. By this time Mrs. Kline had given up on us and said, “Fine. Act like savages. See if I care. I’m going to get some coffee.” Then an even crazier thing happened. Rachel and Missy got out of their seats and walked up to me and Rachel said, “Hi Lucy,” like it was a totally normal thing for her to do. Like she hadn’t ignored me for the last four and half months.

  “Hi?” I said, nervously, looking around to make sure no one was filming this and I wasn’t going to end up on America’s Most Embarrassing Moments.

  “We have a question,” Rachel said.

  “What is it?” I asked. I hoped my voice sounded natural because I sure didn’t feel natural inside.

  Rachel looked at Missy, who nodded for her to go on. She turned back to me. “So are you, like, BFFs with Laurel Moses now?” I was all set to say, “Of course we’re not because (a) she’s totally stuck up and (b) frankly, I’m not ready to have a new BFF because of what you guys did to me.” But what came out was, “Well, I wouldn’t say we’re best friends, but we’re getting to be really good friends.”

  What?! I had no idea where that had come from. I had just totally and completely lied.

  Missy’s mouth fell open so wide I could see all her fillings. “Really?” she asked.

  Here was my chance to fix things. To say, “Well, no. I just said that because I thought if I did, you might think I was cool and want to be my friend again, but it’s actually a big lie. The truth is I can’t stand her, and I’m completely dreading having to see her again on Friday when we have to go on an activity outing.”

  But instead I just said: “Yeah. We’re hanging out on Friday night again.” I couldn’t believe it—I was turning into a massive liar just like Marissa! At least the second half of that was true, even if the “yeah” part wasn’t. It took everything in me to not clamp my hand over my mouth to shut myself up. But they looked so impressed, just like they did back in fifth grade when we found out that Elizabeth Milken got her period on May 22 at 3:05 p.m. (the first entry in the purple notebook that said “The Official Period Log of Sixth-Grade Girls at Jefferson Middle School in Northampton, MA”), and that made me feel good.

  “Wow. That’s so cool,” Rachel said. “So, um, listen. It’s my birthday in two weeks—”

  Um, duh. Her birthday was January 28. And Missy’s was on July 17.

  “And I’m having a sleepover—” she continued.

  Double duh. It’s all the girls in the class were talking about. Practically every single one of them had been invited, except Marissa and Cindy Carter and me. Cindy was never invited to anything anymore ever since it got around that even though she came from one of the richest families in town, she was a kleptomaniac who stole from stores and other kids’ houses.

  “My mom arranged for two women from the nail salon to come over and give us all manicures and pedicures and everything. Anyway, so if you really are good friends with Laurel Moses now, I was thinking that the two of you would like to come.”

  My hands got clammy again. “You want me to come to your birthday party, and bring Laurel Moses?”

  The two of them nodded.

  I was stunned. Obviously I wanted to go to the party, but how was I going to get out of this? I couldn’t bring Laurel with me. I hated Laurel, and I don’t think she liked me very much either.

  When Mrs. Kline came back into the room, she started banging on her desk with her gavel. “Okay, enough! SETTLE DOWN NOWWWWW!”

  The room suddenly got quiet. Everyone knew that when Mrs. Kline drew out the “now” in “Settle down now,” she meant business. Personally, as much as I hated mixed fractions, which is what we were about to do, I was glad class was about to start, because I needed some quiet to figure out how I was going to get Laurel Moses to come to Rachel’s sleepover with me.

  Mrs. Kline droned on and on. Marissa kept raising her hand and saying, “Ooh, ooh—I know! I know,” but got the answer wrong every time. And I thought about the best way to handle this. By the end of the period I had figured out I had two options: I could lie AGAIN and say that while Laurel would love to come, unfortunately, she was going to be in India visiting needy children and so I’d be more than happy to come by myself. Then I realized that, because Laurel was so famous there were like ten thousand websites that talked about her on a daily basis, including WheresLaurelNow.com, and it would be easy enough for them to find out that, actually, she was still in Northampton and would be until the middle of February. Especially if there were more paparazzi pictures of the two of us together with me looking horrible. Or, I could suck it up and be really nice to Laurel and spend the next two weeks trying to really become friends with her, and then ask her to come. Chances were she wouldn’t want to waste her time with plain old regular girls like us, but maybe if I told her the whole story she’d realize that, I, too, was a needy child. Obviously not in a no-shoes-like-kids-in-India kind of way, but in other ways. Like I-really-wish-I-had-my-old-BFFs-back-because-hangingout-with-Marissa-is-driving-me-crazy kind of way.

  I could only hope that seventh grade would be a little easier.

  That is, if I made it till then.

  chapter 6

  Dear Dr. Maude,

  You must be really busy because you haven’t written me back yet. I hope that everything’s okay and that nothing happened to your dogs, Id and Ego.

  Anyway, the reason I’m writing again is because now I have ANOTHER problem in addition to the Laurel Moses stuff. I won’t go into all of it now, because it’s kind of a long story, but basically what happened was, right before sixth grade started, I got dumped by my two BFFs, Rachel and Missy. And I still really miss them, even if what they did was completely mean and horrible and I myself would never, ever do something so cruel to another human being. But on Monday, Rachel invited me to her birthday sleepover. I know you’re probably thinking, So what’s the problem? That sounds great, but the problem is that she wants me to bring Laurel, because I kind-of, sort-of told her that Laurel and I had become very good friends. Which, of course, we have not, and the only reason I said it in the first place was to try and impress her so she’d want to be my friend again.

  I want you to know that unlike Marissa, I do not lie a lot. Maybe once in a while, like about whether I’ve truly cleaned my room or just shoved everything under my bed, but that’s about it.

  If you could give me advice about what to do, I’d really appreciate it.

  yours truly,

  Lucy B. Parker

  Maybe if Marissa’s idea about Friday night had worked, Laurel and I would have become friends. And I could have invited her to Rachel’s party. And she would have said yes. And Rachel and Missy would have realized they had made a humongous mistake dumping me. And everything would have gone back to the way it had been, including Lau
rel going back to New York City and leaving us all alone.

  Marissa’s idea—which she brought up to me as we sat in the bleachers during gym class on Friday morning (it had been a Please-excuse-Lucy-B.-Parker-from-gymtoday-on-account-of-the-fact-that-she-is-menstruating note day), watching Brooke Naylor try to serve the ball in volleyball and fail miserably for the seventh time (she was even more coordination-challenged than I was)—was that the activity we all do on Friday night be bowling.

  “Hmm . . . that’s not a bad idea,” I replied. I bet Laurel Moses had never been bowling in her life, if only because you had to wear shoes that had been on other people’s feet. For someone who had a problem with germs and completely freaked out when another person’s hat was on her head (even when that other person DID NOT have lice), wearing used shoes would be hard. She was rich enough to have bought her own shoes, but I just didn’t think she was a bowling kind of person. I, on the other hand, was a bowling kind of person. Even though it required coordination, I was pretty good at it. I had a lot of practice because so many kids in Northampton had their birthday parties at Spare Time, the local bowling alley. Some of them had their parties at the roller skating place, Interskate 91 North in Hadley, but I didn’t like those parties nearly as much because I was not good at roller skating and spent most of those parties holding on to the railing. Maybe if we went bowling and Laurel saw how good I was, she’d ask me to give her bowling lessons.

  “I knew you’d like it!” Marissa exclaimed. “See? That’s why we make such great BFFs—because I know you so well! It’s like I’m psychic or something!”