by Meg Cabot
“No, I won’t, Mother,” I said. If she was going to give me the full Emerson, I was going to give her the full Mother. Although I did lower my voice, a little. I mean, it was kind of embarrassing.
“For your information,” I whispered, “the only reason I went anywhere with Brandon Stark was because he said if I didn’t he would tell his dad where he could find the real Nikki Howard.”
Both my parents stared at me blankly. Just as I’d known they would. Lulu’s advice, to start telling the truth, was all well and good for her.
But her parents hardly even spoke to her. Her dad, a famous film director, just paid all her bills from whatever exotic movie locale he was working on, and her mom had basically disappeared off the face of the planet with a snowboard instructor who was nearly Lulu’s age.
In some ways, Lulu was incredibly lucky. I knew she envied me what she considered my “normal” family.
But she didn’t know how big a pain a “normal” family could be, how judgy and annoying they were half the time. I’d have given anything right then if my mother had just said that I’d looked pretty in that picture on the cover of Us Weekly and dropped the whole thing.
“Yeah,” I said, to their uncomprehending stares. “That’s right. The real Nikki Howard is still alive. I mean her brain is. It’s in some other girl’s body, obviously.”
I saw my mom and dad exchange glances. It was one of those secret message glances people who are married or have been living together for a long time have with each other.
I could totally read what it said, too.
It said, This girl is completely bonkers, and we’re worried about her.
Yeah. They didn’t believe me.
Well, why should they have, anyway? Like Lulu had said, I should have just been honest with everyone from the beginning, instead of trying to protect them all like I was some kind of mother goddess.
“Em—” my mom started to say, carefully. “You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. It’s obvious with your slipping grades, and the people you’ve been hanging around with— well, you’re not exactly being the best example for your little sister now, are you?”
I have to admit, that hurt. Tears stung my eyes. I wasn’t being a good example for Frida? Frida, who’d only ever aspired to go to cheerleading camp her whole life? At least I had a job!
“We think it might be better if, before Frida gets back from camp, you leave for a rest,” Mom said. “A long rest somewhere you can be away from all the bad influences that have come into your life since you started working in the fashion business. Dad and I were thinking maybe a nice recovery center somewhere in—”
Recovery center? Did she mean rehab?
“You know what?” I interrupted her.
Why was I even trying? What did I hope to accomplish? No matter what I said, my mom wasn’t going to believe me.
And if I let them in on the whole Nikki’s-brain-was-totally-healthy-Robert-Stark-just-tried-to-have-her-killed-because-she-knew-that-the-new-Stark-Quark-PCs-come-bundled-with-spyware-that-Stark-Enterprises-is-using-to-upload-all-the-users’-information-to-their-mainframe-and-she-was-trying-to-blackmail-him-about-it-so-he-had-her-brain-removed thing, they would just be two more people I loved put in danger.
That was it. I was done.
By not letting them in on the truth, I wasn’t lying to them exactly.
I just wasn’t necessarily being as open with them as I could have been.
But had they been as fair with me as they could have been? Believing what gossip sites said about me? Getting all raggy with me about my grades, when they knew the kind of pressure I had been under? It wasn’t as if I’d had a brain transplant or anything this semester. A C minus grade point average was pretty good, if you took that under consideration.
“I just remembered something,” I said, reaching around behind me for my jacket. “I have to go.”
“Em,” Mom said, no longer sounding like a crazy Icelandic elf, but more like her normal self, when she wasn’t completely mad at me. She reached out and grabbed one of my hands again.
The thing is, it was too late. It wasn’t her fault, necessarily.
But it was way, way too late.
“I’ll see you guys later,” I said. And I got up and started to sail out of there, Cosabella skittering along beside me.
But as I walked along, weaving my way through all the tables, I heard people whispering, “Omigod…it’s Nikki Howard.”
And, “Psst…that’s her!”
And, “No way! Nikki Howard!”
And I realized I was doing it again. Running away from a problem.
When, really, that wasn’t going to solve anything.
So I turned around halfway through the café and walked back to my mom and dad’s table and stood in front of it.
“I’m not saying I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do for me,” I said. “Because I am in a jam— just not the kind you think. It’s not drugs. I know you aren’t going to believe me, but I’m going to ask you to trust me and believe me when I say I haven’t done anything wrong. Please don’t do anything like go to Stark and try to pay off my contract…not yet. It would be— well, it would be a really, really big mistake.”
Looking up at me, Dad’s expression was more concerned than ever.
“Emerson,” he said. He was the one who hardly ever used my full name. When he did, it was a big deal. A really big deal. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said. “I’m just asking you to give me a few more days. And to trust me. Do you think you can do that?”
Mom opened her mouth— to argue, I’m pretty sure.
But before she could say anything, Dad reached out to take my gloved hand.
“Sure,” he said. He gave my fingers a squeeze and smiled up at me. “We can do that.”
Mom gave him a bewildered look. But then she, too, glanced up at me and smiled. It was a tight, nervous smile.
But it was a smile just the same.
“Sure, Em,” she said.
I picked up the Us Weekly cover that had been lying on the table between us.
“Mom,” I said, holding it up. “I know this is stupid, but… do you think I look pretty in this picture?”
She stared at it blankly. “Pretty?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty.”
“You…” She seemed flustered. “You look like Nikki Howard,” she said.
“I know,” I said, gritting my teeth. “But do you think I look pretty?”
“Pretty,” Mom said, looking confused, “is a patriarchal construct designed to make women feel less worthy unless they live up to certain standards established by the male-dominated fashion and beauty industry. You know that, Em. I tell you and Frida that all the time.”
“Yeah,” I said, putting the picture down again. “I know. That might be part of the problem.”
And I turned and walked out of the restaurant.
Twelve
SERIOUSLY, COULD I BE HAVING A MORE messed-up day?
When I got onto the pavement outside the Starbucks, swallowing down big gulps of cold air, that was all I could think about. My sad, sorry, pathetic day. First I’d been dumped by my boyfriend (although technically that had happened in the middle of the night).
Then I’d kidnapped a billionaire’s son.
Now my parents thought I was a drug addict or something.
Perfect. Great.
Had that been an intervention, or something, in there? In a Starbucks?
God, my parents were such dorks. They couldn’t even do an intervention right. Where was Candy Finnigan?
And why couldn’t my mom just say Frida and I were pretty? Was it so hard? What was all this patriarchal construct crap? She always said butterflies were pretty. She said the material she’d picked out to reupholster our living room couch was pretty.
Why couldn’t she say we were pretty, too? Why couldn’t we be strong, independent, and pretty, too?
I was struggling to
open my umbrella against the sleet— even my umbrella was broken. Fantastic— when I saw him. A guy in a black trench, standing across the street from me.
He wasn’t directly across the street from me. He was sort of off to one side, and unlike me, beneath an awning, out of the freezing rain.
But I noticed him right away. Because he wasn’t moving.
Of course we were in the middle of New York City (or the middle of Greenwich Village, to be more exact). The streets were packed with people. That’s what caught my attention about him. The fact that he, like me, was standing perfectly still while everyone else around us was moving in one direction or the other.
And he was staring at me, as if waiting for me to decide which way I was going to walk.
And when I looked his way, he quickly looked back down at the cell phone he’d been tapping into.
At first I didn’t think anything of it. I kept on struggling with my umbrella, no big deal.
Then something made me look again.
At his pants.
And I knew.
I just knew. He wasn’t just some guy waiting for someone outside a store. He was waiting for me.
He was following me.
And he wasn’t a stalker, either. I had had those before (or rather, Nikki Howard had). I’d had to call Stark security to get them off my back.
But stalkers were different. They didn’t dress as well, for one thing. This guy’s trench was impeccably pressed, as were his trousers. They were creased down the middle, the way only pants that had been dry-cleaned were. They even had a break in them where they fell over his shoes.
Every stalker I’d ever had wore his pants so short, the hem rose above his sneakers by at least an inch.
And none of them had bothered to get their pants dry-cleaned.
The guy standing across the street from me looked way more like Stark security than he did a stalker.
Suddenly, I went cold all over, and not because of the weather.
The pants were what had given him away. They were black, and perfectly tailored. They were, in other words, fancy.
I had a tail. A real, official, Stark Enterprises security tail.
And he didn’t know I knew.
The two of us stood there on the crowded sidewalk across the street from each other. No way I was going to be able to go over to Gabriel’s to see Steven and his mother and sister now, which was what I’d been considering doing.
It was amazing, but my first impulse was to call Christopher. Christopher, of all people! Who wasn’t even speaking to me! Why would I call him?
And what good would calling Christopher even do? I mean, he’d probably only hang up on me. Just because he’d come to my rescue once didn’t mean he was going to come flying to my rescue again.
Besides, I didn’t even need rescuing. I was a strong, independent woman (according to my mother, anyway. And not pretty. Got that? Not pretty. Pretty is a patriarchal archetype). I could handle this all on my own.
Except…how?
Lulu, I thought suddenly. I needed to call Lulu and tell her not to go over to Gabriel’s. Just in case they were following her, too.
I successfully finished putting up my umbrella, then centered it so Fancy Pants couldn’t see me. Then I whipped out my non-Stark brand cell phone and swiftly dialed Lulu’s number.
She answered on the second ring.
“Hey,” she said. Her mouth was full. Of banana split, I didn’t doubt.
“It’s me,” I said, through suddenly frozen lips. “Don’t go over there.”
“Go where?” she asked.
“To the place where you said you were going to go.”
I was speaking cryptically not because I thought if they were already following me, my phone might be tapped, but because I’d suddenly realized the loft might be. We’d been gone for nearly a week. Who knew who’d had access to it while we’d been away? I had never even thought of that. They might have dismantled the acoustic noise generator Steven had installed. I’d never even checked. Had Lulu or I said anything about where Nikki and her family were hiding? I tried to think.
I was pretty sure we had.
“I’m being followed,” I said.
Even the words sounded frightening. I clutched convulsively at Cosabella’s leash. She, oblivious, was prancing along beside me, sniffing the wet ground for abandoned bits of street food, pretzels or hot dogs people might have dropped.
“You are?” Lulu sounded delighted. “Oh, my God! It’s like something out of a Bourne movie! And you’re like Julia Stiles! She’s so pretty. Where are you?”
“Astor Place,” I said. I was moving as rapidly as I could in the opposite direction to the loft and the Starbucks, trying to lead Fancy Pants away from the people I loved. Which was ridiculous, since of course Stark knew where my parents and I lived. “We need to make sure our friends are safe where we left them.”
“Sure,” Lulu said. “I can do that.”
“Subtly,” I said.
“I can be subtle,” Lulu said, sounding hurt.
“I…” I didn’t dare look back over my shoulder to see if Fancy Pants was behind me. But I was pretty sure he was. I didn’t see him across the street anymore. “I don’t know what to do. About the guy, I mean.”
“Ooooh, I do,” Lulu said, sounding even more delighted. This whole thing was a game to her, I swear. “Call Christopher.”
“What?” I said. “Are you crazy?” I had no idea why I was asking Lulu this, since of course calling Christopher had been my first inclination. “Why would I do that?”
Lulu sighed deeply into the phone.
“We just talked about this,” she said. “Remember? You have to give him an opportunity to feel needed, and to help you.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. I was walking along so quickly, Cosabella was having trouble keeping up. “What…what if he gets hurt? Then it’ll be my fault and I’ll blame myself forever and I’ll be the one who turns into an evil supervillain.”
I didn’t want to tell her the real reason I didn’t want to call Christopher was that I was afraid he’d hang up on me, and I couldn’t face another rejection from him.
“But what if you get hurt again?” Lulu wanted to know. Uh, that was exactly what I was worried about…only not by the people Lulu meant. “And he blames himself even more, only this time for your ultimate demise? And then he invents a reverse supernova death ray that sucks up all the sun’s energy, and we all slowly freeze to death, and then the earth turns into a hollow husk and humanity ceases to exist and it’s all your fault because you didn’t call him?”
“Oh, my God,” I said. “You’ve had way too much whipped cream.”
“It could happen,” Lulu said, defensively. “I saw it on TV once. Call him.”
“Fine,” I said. There was no way I was calling him. “And, Lulu. Be careful what you say in the apartment. I think it might be bugged again.”
“I’m always careful,” Lulu said, sounding both hurt and annoyed now. “I’m totally good at this spy stuff. I rented a whole plane and came and helped Christopher rescue you without anybody finding out, didn’t I?”
Uh, I wasn’t so sure about that. But I just told her thanks and hung up.
I walked blindly, not even looking to see where I was going, trying to figure out how this could possibly be happening to me.
Keeping my phone out, I did call someone…but not Christopher.
“So do you not hate me anymore?” Brandon asked, when he picked up.
“What?” I was confused.
“You’re calling me,” Brandon said. “So I figure you must not hate me anymore. Does this mean you wanna go out? I’m free tonight. I mean, I have plans, but I can break them. For you.”
Oh, my God. Brandon was the biggest horndog in the world. It was totally disgusting.
“Brandon,” I said. “You kidnapped me. And then you made the only person. I’ll ever love in my life hate me. I completely despise you.”
“So…,” Brandon said. “I take that as a no, you do not want to go out with me tonight.”
I held the phone away from my face to make sure it was working properly and I hadn’t heard him wrong.
“No,” I said, bringing it back to my face when I was sure cellular service to my area was fully functional. “I do not want to go out with you tonight. I called to ask why someone from Stark security is tailing me.”
“How should I know?” Brandon asked. “Maybe because you’re worth a lot to the company, and they want to make sure you don’t get harassed by fans or hurt by the paps. Because everyone thinks you’re dating me now. Even though you’re not. You might want to reconsider. Private security’s just one of the many perks of being Brandon Stark’s woman. Hey, ow, not there.”
I held the phone away from my face again. “What are you doing right now?” I asked.
“Getting a massage,” Brandon said. “It kinda hurts to be knocked unconscious and then tied up half the day, you know. You and your friends play rough. Since you don’t want to be with me, is there anything else? I really am kinda busy.”
“If his assignment was to keep me from being harassed by paps or fans,” I said, “he wouldn’t be trying to keep me from noticing him, which is what he’s doing.”
“Oh,” Brandon said, in a different tone. “That’s different. Hey, you don’t think my dad—”
“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “But do I think your dad is onto us? You tell me.”
“Don’t panic,” he said. “My dad hasn’t said anything to me about any of this. I’m sure he has no idea what’s going on. What is going on, anyway? I mean, have you and your friends figured out what—”
I just laughed bitterly as I dragged my dog down the street. “Right,” I said. “Like I’m going to tell you. When I’m ready to let you in on what’s going on, Brandon, you’ll know. That’s a lot more courtesy than you ever offered me.”
I hung up on him.
My fingers were trembling inside the gloves I had on as I dialed Christopher’s cell. What other choice did I have? I didn’t know where to go, and frankly, I was scared. Christopher, I told myself, would know what to do.
I had no idea at all whether he’d pick up. After the way we’d left things— he’d barely glanced at me as we’d gone our separate ways from Teterboro, where the plane had dropped us off— I half expected he’d let my call go to voice mail.