by Robin Palmer
Laurel and I looked at each other. This was a nightmare. “Now what?” she panicked. “I can’t have pictures of me dressed like this get out there!”
“Quick—get back in the dressing room!” I yelled.
She ran back to her dressing room to hide before the entire sleepover came rushing in. Except somehow the door had gotten jammed and she couldn’t get it shut. Before we could get her into an empty room, the stampede of girls showed up, all with their cell-phone cameras and digital cameras whipped out and pointed our way.
“Hey—no pictures!” I yelled.
Like anyone was really going to listen to me. As the sound of clicking cameras filled the air, Laurel and I were momentarily blinded.
When I could see again, I grabbed her and pulled her into another dressing room.
“Well, I guess that’s the end of our regular day at the mall,” I sighed. “It was fun while it lasted.”
Outside, we could hear a packed dressing room full of girls screaming things like, “Hey, Laurel, can I have an autograph?” “Can I get a picture with you?” I just hoped when we finally left the dressing room, no one got trampled to death.
As I stood there looking at her, in her ugly outfit and her crooked wig, I couldn’t help it—I started to laugh. She just looked so . . . awful. Thankfully, instead of saying something like, “Oh, so that’s what a friend does? She laughs?” she started to laugh, too. We laughed so hard that I had to cross my legs so I didn’t pee.
Which is something that often happens when you’re hanging out with a friend.
chapter 10
DEAR DR. MAUDE,
OKAY, I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY NEED YOUR HELP, WHICH IS WHY I AM WRITING IN ALL CAPS. OVER THE LAST FEW DAYS IT’S LIKE MY LIFE WAS PUT INTO THE MICROWAVE AND NO ONE BOTHERED TO POKE A FEW HOLES IN THE WRAPPER ON TOP OF IT, AND IT JUST COMPLETELY EXPLODED ALL OVER THE PLACE.
I WON’T GO INTO ALL OF IT NOW, BECAUSE IT’S A VERY LONG STORY, BUT DO YOU THINK THAT MAYBE YOU COULD SEND ME YOUR PHONE NUMBER AND I COULD CALL YOU AND TALK TO YOU ABOUT IT? I CAN’T TALK TO MY PARENTS ABOUT IT, SINCE THEY’RE PART OF IT. BUT I PROMISE I WON’T GIVE YOUR NUMBER TO ANYONE ELSE.
yours truly,
Lucy B. Parker
I think it’s completely unfair how whoever is in charge of running the universe makes it so a really nice day— complete with a new haircut and a makeover—can turn into one of the worst nights of your entire life.
I should’ve known that it was going to be bad when, after Dad got us from the mall security office, where the mall cops made Laurel and me wait, and we had dropped Laurel off at her hotel, Dad said, “I was thinking we’d go to India House for dinner, just the two us.” (a) We had just gone out for dinner last night, and Dad was an artist so it wasn’t like we could afford to go out for dinner too many times in a row. Especially if we were going to India House, which was kind of expensive. And (b) Wednesday was our usual “quality time alone” night, not Saturday. Non-Wednesday nights he liked to include Sarah, so she and I could bond. Something was definitely up. Was I in trouble for causing a riot at the mall? And, if so, it was a little unfair that Laurel wasn’t getting in trouble, too, because she was just as responsible.
But when the naan and raita arrived at our table, Dad looked at me all seriously, and he said, “We need to have a Talk.” Uh-oh. Everyone knew that Talks-with-capital-Ts were not good. In fact, in my experience, they usually ended in groundings of some sort. Or, if not groundings, at least serious warnings with the threat of groundings.
“We didn’t mean to end up almost causing a stampede in H&M! Laurel and I were just hanging out, and things got . . . a little out of hand.” Or a lot, in the H&M manager’s opinion. “But we were bonding! Like Mom wanted! And it’s not like I wore the makeup to school,” I cried. “The reason I let Maya put it on was because for once in my life I wanted to know what it felt like to be pretty,” I confessed. “Especially when I was going to be spending the day with someone who’s considered one of the most beautiful people in the world.”
“Huh? What are you talking about, Lucy?” Dad asked, all confused.
“Wait, what? Weren’t you going to yell at me about the makeup I have on? Or the stampede at the mall?” I asked, equally confused.
“What makeup?”
“Oh. Never mind,” I said.
But the Talk-with-a-capital-T ended up not being about something I had done. It was about something he and Sarah had done when they “did it.”
“Lucy, you may have noticed that Sarah’s been acting a little weird lately,” he said.
What I wanted to say was, “Uh, Dad, I have a newsflash for you—she’s always weird,” but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Not particularly.”
“You haven’t noticed she’s been really tired, and careful about what she eats?”
Um, maybe she was tired because she did yoga like twenty hours a day? And she was always careful about what she ate.
I shook my head.
“Well, she has. And the reason for that is because she’s pregnant.”
“Pregnant?!” I cried. “As in I’m-going-to-be-a-SISTER pregnant?
He nodded, a huge grin on his face.
“But . . . you’re not even married yet,” I said, dazed.
“Lucy, lots of people have babies with their partners without being legally married,” he replied. “You know that. Half your friends’ parents aren’t married.”
“Yeah, but that’s them,” I said.
“As Sarah likes to say, although our union may not be recognized in the eyes of the government, we’re fully committed to each other on a soul level,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. Great—he was starting to sound as weird as Sarah did. And now that they were having a baby together, he’d probably stop eating bread and become totally obsessed with living as long as he could. And I wasn’t even going to begin to think about how weird the baby would be or what sort of strange name Sarah would want to give it. “Wait—so you really mean pregnant in the sense of I’m-going-to-be-a-sister pregnant?” I asked again. “Not . . . I don’t know . . . a different kind of pregnant?”
“Yup. Isn’t that exciting?” he asked.
Uh, no. It was not exciting. It was awful. Thank goodness I was wearing a pad, because the total and complete shock of finding out that I was going to be a sister had to be enough to bring on my period. (Unfortunately, when I went to the bathroom a little later to check, there was nothing, which was beyond unfair. I mean, if you were going to make someone have to listen to news that was going to completely change her life forever, something good should’ve come out of it.)
“We weren’t trying to get pregnant,” he went on, “but Sarah doesn’t like to take birth control pills because all these studies have shown that they’re not sure what they do to your health, and she has an allergic reaction to the latex in condoms—”
“Dad! Gross!” I cried, clapping my hands over my ears. Not only had my life taken a huge turn for the worse, but I had to listen to my father admit that he and his weird girlfriend did it?!
“I was hoping you’d be excited about having a brother or sister,” Dad said quietly.
He looked so sad, and that made me feel really awful. Because, like I said, I wasn’t excited. I had absolutely no problem with the fact that I was an only child. Who wanted to share a bathroom or fight for the remote control? And if I got bored, I could always throw a Greenie across the room and watch Miss Piggy struggle to her feet and waddle over to it. Basically, the only good thing I could see about having a brother or sister was that you had someone to blame for eating the last cookie or tracking dirt on the rug when you were too lazy to take your shoes off even though one of the house rules was “Leave your shoes near the door so you don’t track dirt on the rug.”
“I’m not not excited,” I lied.
But even worse than not being excited was the fact that I was nervous. A lot of girls I knew couldn’t wait to babysit, but that totally wasn’t me. I had
never held a baby in my entire life—what if I dropped my brother or sister? If Sarah had gotten a look at my old dolls before we gave them to Goodwill and seen how most of them were missing an arm or a leg or a head, she’d never let me hold the baby. And what about the diaper-changing thing? Marissa’s aunt had let her change her baby cousin’s once, and she pulled the diaper so tight around its leg that she cut off its circulation and the thing started screaming so loud that for a second Marissa said she was afraid she had gone deaf.
“I know between this news, and the fact that things with Mom and Alan are getting kind of serious, it’s sort of a lot to take in, huh?” Dad said gently.
I shrugged and stared at my chana masala really, really hard so that I wouldn’t start crying. Not only because I’d feel dumb, but also because I hoped to keep my makeup on for as long as possible. At least until Mom got home the next night and made me take if off. Everything was changing. And it felt like as soon as I got a handle on one thing, something else came along and pulled the rug out from under me. The divorce, being dumped, having to wear a bra, Laurel, a baby—what was next? Mom and Dad sitting me down and telling me I was adopted?
“You do know that, no matter what, we’re only going to love you more, right?” he said.
I looked up at him. “But what if Mom ends up marrying Alan, and Laurel becomes my stepsister?” I blurted out. Everyone knew that babies ended up getting a lot of attention just because of the fact that they were babies and couldn’t do anything, and if you didn’t pay attention to them they’d literally die, but having a famous stepsister was a whole other thing.
“Well, what if she does?” he said. “Would it be so bad? You just spent fifteen minutes telling me what a good time you guys had today, even though you ended up in the security office doing it.”
Yeah, we were kind-of, sort-of becoming friends, but there was no way I wanted to live with her. Even if it did mean I could borrow her makeup. “Yeah, but she’s Laurel Moses,” I said.
“So?”
I shook my head and made that part sigh/part grr sound that Mom made when I would say, “Fine, but just tell me why” over and over when she said I couldn’t do something. Didn’t he get that having her as a stepsister was a no-win situation? No matter what, I’d never measure up to her. She’d be Laurel Moses, the famous, fabulous, gorgeous star sister with the long flowy hair, and I’d be Lucy—the less pretty, untalented one with the short pixie cut. Throw a baby into the mix, and I’d be completely forgotten, like all those middle children who blend into the woodwork and are barely noticeable in family photos. At least as an only child, I couldn’t be compared to anyone.
“Does Mom know about the baby?” I demanded.
Dad nodded. “We told her earlier today.”
That made me feel a little better. Mom might have been acting a little crazy because she was in love, but she wasn’t so crazy that she’d make me deal with a baby and a potential stepsister all at once. So at least if Mom did end up marrying Alan, it wouldn’t happen until way after the baby arrived. Like two years, so I get could used to the whole thing. Because what kind of mother would want to risk her kid totally freaking out if she threw too much change at her at once. She couldn’t do that.
Right?
Wrong.
At first, things seemed like they were going to be fine, because when Mom got home the following night, the first thing I did after I said, “Of course that’s not smeared makeup around my eyes!” was grab her hand and look for a ring.
“What are you doing?” she asked, confused.
“Nothing,” I replied, relieved, as I let her hand flop down.
Once again Marissa had been wrong. Which meant I didn’t have to worry about having Laurel as a stepsister right away, and instead, all I had to worry about was dropping my new brother or sister on his or her head.
That night I finally got a good night’s sleep, and by the next day it felt like things were back to normal. Well, as normal as things could possibly be when you were e-mailing and texting a major star with whom you were now kind-of, sort-of friends. We had made plans to hang out the following weekend, which was her last one in Northampton before the movie ended and she went back to New York. She had even invited me to sleep over, which was a big step, seeing that we had only just moved from archenemies to kind-of, sort-of friends. It seemed pretty soon in our friendship, but I said yes anyway. I loved staying in hotels, and Laurel had said that when she called down for room service, the chef made her stuff that wasn’t even on the menu because she had posed for a picture with his daughter the week before.
And as normal as could be when you walk into your class to find everyone gathered around a computer looking at pictures of you and the famous star dressed in super-ugly outfits on WhatWereTheyThinking.com and Marissa announcing, “Personally, I think those outfits are really nice.” The embarrassment of having my face splashed across the Internet again was made a little better by the fact that at least I wasn’t alone in the picture—I was with a friend. Or a kind-of, sort-of friend.
Plus, having tons of people tell me how much they liked my haircut was cool. (“I can’t believe Laurel Moses’s own personal hairstylist cut your hair!” Marissa squealed. “Do you think if I asked really nicely he’d cut mine, too? Do you?!”) Then, things started to get even better on Tuesday morning, when Rachel said hello to me. Things were on such an upswing that I was even starting to get used to the idea of having a brother or sister, as long as I wasn’t asked to change his or her diaper.
And then Wednesday rolled around.
The Day It All Changed.
Mom was acting a little weird, but when wasn’t she nowadays? But when I got home from riding bikes with Marissa (never that much fun, on account of the fact that she was so slow and was always stopping every two minutes to fix her helmet), she said, “Go get changed. We’re going to Giovanni’s for dinner.” Then I started to worry. We barely ever went out to dinner on a weeknight unless it was someone’s birthday. Takeout sometimes, but never an actual restaurant. The last few weeks there had been a lot of going-out-to-dinners, and none of them really turned out good for me.
“Lucy, we need to have a talk,” she said after we got there and she let me order a soda, even though, like sugar, I was allowed to have it only on weekends.
My stomach dropped. Another Talk?! What were my parents trying to do to me? “About what?” I asked suspiciously.
She took a deep breath. “Well, this weekend . . . Alan asked me to marry him.”
But I had checked her hand and there was no ring! I started seeing spots before my eyes. Could shock not only make your period come on but also make you go blind? “And what did you say?” I managed to get out.
“Well, I told him I needed to get your blessing before we made it official, but that if you were okay with it, my answer was yes.”
Not only couldn’t I see, but now I couldn’t breathe as I found when I started gasping for air. This was great—all this drama was going to have me dead before I was thirteen. “What?! But you barely even know him!” I cried. “You have to know someone for at least a year before you get engaged!”
“Where’d you hear that? From Marissa?”
“No. We learned it in school,” I lied. I hadn’t heard it anywhere, but it sounded good. “In . . . health. Or maybe it was history. I forget.”
“Lucy, honey,” she said gently, “I know this has happened really fast, but sometimes that’s just the way it goes. And, sure, there’s always more to learn about a person, but Alan and I feel really strongly that this is it for us. That it’s true love.” She smiled. “In fact, I’d even go as far as to say it was love at first sight.”
Now I really couldn’t see. “Okay, let’s say you guys did get married,” I said, “and they moved into our house—” We’d have to make Mom’s office in the attic into a bedroom, and I really couldn’t see Laurel living there.
“They wouldn’t move here. We’d move there,” she said.
&
nbsp; “Wait—what?! I can’t move to New York! What about Dad? My friends? My whole life is here! They should move here—Laurel’s never even in school! And when she is, she doesn’t have anyone to eat lunch with!”
“But she shoots the show there—”
“So? She can just shoot it here. She’s so famous I bet they’d let her do that,” I said as I started crying. I felt like I had cried more in the last few months than I had in my first eleven years of life on the planet.
“Lucy, honey, it doesn’t work that way. It’s not just about Laurel—it’s also the crew, and the production stage. I know that the idea of moving sounds really scary—I do—but if I marry Alan, unfortunately, that’s the way it’s got to be,” she said.
In some ways it would’ve been easier if she was being a total jerk about it, but she wasn’t—in fact, it almost looked like she was going to cry herself. Still, if she felt really bad, she wouldn’t have even suggested it. I crossed my arms. “Fine—you can move. I’ll stay here with Dad.”
Now she looked even more hurt. “You hate the idea so much that you’d want to go live with your dad?” she said quietly.
I nodded.
“And Sarah and the baby?” she said.
Oh. Right. I had forgotten that part. That part didn’t sound as good.
“For what it’s worth, Laurel is really excited about the idea—” she went on.
“Wait a minute—Laurel knew about this before I did?” I cried.
“Well, yes. Alan told her last night and—”
“That’s totally not fair!” I cried. “Here you are saying you want us to be a family, and then you go and leave me out right from the beginning?” It was already starting—Mom and Alan weren’t even married, and already Laurel came first.
“Honey, it’s not like that—”
I stood up from the table. “Yes, it is,” I cried. “And you know what? I don’t want to talk about this anymore!” I yelled as I ran toward the bathroom. “End of discussion!”