by Meg Cabot
This was good. I had no idea where this stuff was coming from, or anything. But I liked it.
“Well,” Christopher said. “To tell you the truth, right now, I’m really not that into you. Because you’re acting like someone I don’t even know. And it’s not that cute.”
Stung, I tried to pass off the tears in my eyes as a reaction to all the hot grease in the air from the frying. Maybe Lauren Conrad wasn’t that great a role model after all.
“I’m not acting like anyone,” I said. “Except myself. You said I needed to grow up, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m just requesting some honesty from you. I really love you, and I want to know if you—”
“Jesus,” Christopher said. He lifted his cell phone into the air again. I couldn’t help noticing he was blushing. “Would you stop saying that?”
“Stop saying what? That I love you?”
I had to admit, torturing him was kind of fun.
“Yes,” he said, looking extremely uncomfortable. “You keep saying it, but then you don’t act like it.”
“How do I not act like it?” I demanded. Now I was blushing. I really hoped the cashier seated a few feet away who was staring into space didn’t speak good enough English to tell what we were saying.
“By flying off to Brandon Stark’s beach house, for one thing,” he pointed out. “And letting the whole world think you’re in love with him and not me, for another. Then, when I come to rescue you, you wouldn’t even come with me—”
“Oh, would you let that go?” I demanded. “I already explained that!”
“You can’t just say you’re sorry for something and have it all be better,” Christopher said. “You may love me, but you don’t act like it. You don’t trust me.”
“I called you today when I was being followed!” I reminded him.
“Was I the first person you called?” he asked.
I felt myself blushing harder. How had he known I’d called Lulu first?
“You were the first person I thought of calling,” I said. “But you were so mean to me on the plane. You have this whole evil supervillain thing going. It’s not very attractive, you know.”
It was sort of the opposite of unattractive, actually, but I didn’t want him to know that. It would only encourage his bad behavior.
Like now. He rolled his eyes and turned back to his cell phone.
It was at that point that my cell phone rang. It was Gabriel, calling to ask how soon I thought we’d get there.
“Uh,” I said. “Pretty soon.”
“It’s just,” he said, “the sooner you get here the better, actually.”
“Oh, why?” I asked.
“You’ll see when you arrive” was all Gabriel would say, in a slightly agitated voice.
This had seemed very mysterious, but he wouldn’t say anything more. We were going to take the subway to Gabriel’s place to further throw off anyone from Stark who might be following us. But we ended up with so many bags of food, another cab seemed like the best idea, so Christopher finally flagged one down— our argument on hold indefinitely— and we made it to Gabriel’s place without anyone seeming to tag along behind us. Nor, when we looked up and down Avenue A and Sixth, where Gabriel lived, did we see anyone who looked out of place— in pressed trousers and black shoes— lurking around.
When he opened the door to his apartment, I figured out everything about Gabriel’s mysterious comment, however. He wasn’t concerned about Stark security showing up unexpectedly. His anxiety was because his bachelor pad had been turned into an impromptu beauty salon.
Lulu was there, working her magic. Or trying to, anyway.
“Look,” she was saying to Nikki. “You’re just not cut out to be a blonde anymore, Nikki. Face facts.”
Nikki, sitting on a stool in the middle of Gabriel’s living room— his taste seemed to lean toward midcentury modern. He had a very fifties vibe going on, with low couches and a coffee table cut out like a kidney-shaped pool, and deeply piled shag throw rugs, modern art, the works. It was super old-school —was sulking.
“No,” Nikki was seething. “I’ve always been a blonde. I’ll always be a blonde. I want to stay a blonde!”
Nikki had foil packets sticking up all over her head, indicating something of a chemical nature was already going on with her hair. It just didn’t appear to be what she wanted.
“Trust me,” Lulu was saying. “You’re going to look adorable. For once your insides are going to match your outsides.”
This sounded ominous.
“Just give it a chance,” Lulu said. “Like that purple eye shadow I was trying out on you. It’s going to bring out the green in your eyes.”
“I told you,” Nikki seethed some more. “I want to be blond.” She stabbed a finger in my direction as Christopher and I came in with the bags from the Thai restaurant. “Like her! Like I used to be!”
Steven, sitting at Gabriel’s kitchen counter, thumbing through a magazine on architecture— Gabriel had dozens of them lying around— had leapt up as soon as he saw us.
“That smells incredible,” he said, relieving us of all the bags we carried. “You two are lifesavers.”
It felt good to be called a lifesaver, even if all we’d done was brought dinner.
Mrs. Howard had locked herself into one of the bedrooms with a migraine and wouldn’t come out. I could totally see why. It looked like a tornado had struck Gabriel’s apartment. There were shopping bags from stores like Intermix and Scoop scattered everywhere. How Lulu had managed to buy so much for Nikki in so little time, I’d never know.
“I don’t even know why we’re doing this,” Nikki complained as Lulu sponged foundation onto her face, “since I’m just going to get my old body back soon. It’s all a mute point.”
“Moot,” Gabriel corrected her, as he pulled plates down from a kitchen cabinet. “Moot point.”
“That’s what I said.” Nikki glared at him. It was weird, but even with the foil packets popping up out of her head like alien antennae, she was already looking better. Lulu had put her in some kind of black halter top that accentuated her creamy shoulders and a pair of jeans that weren’t hand-me-downs from me and actually fit the curve of her hips. She was starting to look…well, cute. Alien cute. But cute. “And nobody asked you, Prince William.”
“Oh, that’s very nice,” Gabriel said. He was practically snarling at her. I’d never seen him looking so frazzled. “I give you shelter in my home, risking my life in doing so, and you make fun of my accent. You’re extremely pleasant to have around, did you know that, Nikki?”
“Bite me, Harry Potter,” she said, with a sneer.
He looked at me helplessly. “Do you see?” he asked. “Do you see what I have to put up with?”
I felt bad for having dragged Gabriel, who really had been an innocent bystander, in on all this.
“Have some pad see ew,” I said, handing him a container. It was the only thing I could think of as a way to make it all up to him.
“Oh, thanks ever so much,” he said. I was pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
An alarm went off. Lulu looked at her cell phone and squealed. “It’s time to rinse,” she said, and grabbed Nikki to pull her off the stool and into the bathroom. Nikki went with her, but not without grumbling. When the door shut, Steven turned to us and said, “If we don’t find a way out of this mess soon, I think we’re all going to go insane.”
“I’ll put a bullet through my own brain.” Gabriel sounded grim. “Let alone wait for Stark to do it. Your sister will drive me to it, Howard. No offense.”
“I know what you mean,” Steven said as he took a seat at the kitchen counter and dug into a container of panang curry without waiting to put any of it on one of the plates Gabriel had provided. “She’s always been like that, if she doesn’t get what she wants.”
“That’s how she got where she is today,” I said. When everyone looked at me, I added, “Well, I mean, one of the highest-paid fashion models in
the world.”
“And also somebody one of the richest men in the world wants dead,” Steven pointed out.
“Well, she’s not getting her old body back,” Christopher said, shoveling some pad thai into his mouth. “However much she might think otherwise.”
I blinked at him. He claimed to hate me, then kissed me and came to my defense at every possible moment, while insisting we couldn’t get back together because of my trust issues. What was going on with him?
“I know,” Steven said. “But we can’t go on living in hiding for much longer. And Gabriel can’t be asked to put up with us forever.”
The sound of shrieking came out of the bathroom. There was a bang, and then the sound of water spraying.
Then Nikki’s voice screamed, “Lulu! What did you do?” Her voice was drowned out by the sound of a blow-dryer.
Gabriel looked toward the ceiling, as if praying for patience.
“Have either of you heard of something called Project Phoenix?” Christopher wanted to know.
“I went to Phoenix once,” Steven said, chewing. “Nice weather.”
“Is it a band?” Gabriel asked. “I think I caught them once in Wales.”
“I’m fairly certain it’s not a band,” Christopher said. “It’s something Robert Stark is working on.”
“No idea, then,” Gabriel said.
“What is it?” Steven asked.
Christopher filled them in on what little we knew so far about Project Phoenix. The explanation took us through most of the carton of pad thai and the remains of the pad see ew.
“It makes no sense,” Steven said, when Christopher finished.
“It does,” Christopher said. “We just can’t see it.”
“I saw on the news today,” Gabriel said, “that they’re building an elevator to space.”
We all turned to look at him.
“Well, they are,” he said, swallowing. “An American company. Rather than launching a shuttle every time we have to send something up to the space station, we’ll just send it up in an elevator they’re building from a mobile seagoing platform that will reach all the way up to space. It makes sense, don’t you think? Anyway, maybe that’s what Project Phoenix is. Robert Stark’s own space elevator.”
Christopher shrugged. “It makes more sense than anything else.”
It was right then that the door to the bathroom opened and Lulu and Nikki came out.
Or at least, it had to have been Nikki. Because that’s who Lulu had gone into the bathroom with.
But the girl with whom she emerged looked completely different. She had wavy dark hair, instead of Nikki’s flat auburn hair, and a glowing complexion instead of Nikki’s dead-looking, over-foundationed skin.
And there was a bounce to her step I’d never noticed in Nikki’s before. She had on a flowy black empire-waist top and a pair of leggings that suited her figure perfectly.
Her step wasn’t the only place where there was bounce, either.
“Geez,” the girl said rudely, when she saw us staring at her. And by us, I mean mostly Christopher and Gabriel, though Steven and I were a bit slack-jawed as well. “Take a picture, why don’tcha. It’ll last longer.”
Okay. So it was Nikki, after all.
“Nikki,” I said, feeling slightly dumbfounded. “You look… great.”
“Chokers are so 2005,” Nikki said, fingering the silver skull and crossbones on a black velvet ribbon at her throat. Did she really think we were only looking at the choker? “Which is what I told Lulu. But for some reason, this one works.”
“The whole thing works,” Gabriel said. I noticed he was holding a forkful of pad see ew frozen halfway to his mouth. He sounded slightly out of breath.
“I figure no one from her past life will recognize her,” Lulu said, giving one of Nikki’s new curls a pat, “in her new body like this.”
“You can say that again,” Christopher said.
I elbowed him, hard. “Oof,” he said, and quickly closed his mouth after giving me a slightly devilish grin.
Gabriel, however, continued to stare.
“It’s very retro,” he ventured.
“Yes,” Lulu said, glancing meaningfully around at Gabriel’s decor. “Isn’t it?”
Sixteen
WHEN I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, I wasn’t in bed alone.
I don’t mean just Cosabella, either.
Or, unfortunately, Christopher.
There was a five-foot-nine agent in a silk eggplant-colored jacket and skirt sitting on the edge of my mattress, texting madly, her hosed legs crossed and one Jimmy Choo bouncing up and down on the end of her toes.
When she noticed my eyes were open, Rebecca paused, her thumbs hovering over her BlackBerry, and said, “Finally. I thought you were never going to wake up. Did you take a full ten mils of Ambien or something? You should really cut back to the fives. Well, are you going to get out of bed, or what? We have loads to do, Nikki, and we don’t really have all day. Get a move on.”
Then she went back to texting.
This really wasn’t how I’d dreamed of starting the morning. In my fantasies, I’d planned on waking with a hunky— albeit slightly villainous— eleventh grader between my sheets.
But I’d been unable to lure Christopher up to my apartment after we’d stopped by Gabriel’s, since he’d decided to go back to his cousin Felix’s to continue working on the Project Phoenix conundrum.
There was also the small matter of his continued disgust over my “trust issues.”
You know if a teenage boy turns down an invitation to a single girl’s apartment, it’s bad. Really bad. The guy really must hate my guts. What was I going to do to convince him that I trusted him, already?
My relationship problems weren’t exactly putting me in the mood for an early morning visitation from my agent.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Rebecca as I dragged a pillow over my head, disturbing Cosabella, who’d been sleeping soundly until I did this. Some watchdog she was. Robert Stark could have sent twenty of his henchman in to kill me in my sleep, and she wouldn’t have done anything more than snort and roll over to make herself more comfortable.
“You have a big day today,” Rebecca said, still punching her tiny keyboard. “The party at Robert Stark’s. And then the Stark Angel lingerie show tonight. Live, in case you don’t remember. It’s New Year’s Eve. The diamond bra? Your big television debut? A billion potential viewers? And let’s just say you haven’t been among my most reliable clients lately. All this running away to pop off onto private jets and to people’s beachside compounds. I wanted to make sure you got up on time to get your hair and makeup and fittings done.” She flicked a glance down at me. “Your roots are showing. And how long has it been since you had your cuticles trimmed? Your nails are a mess. And when was the last time you waxed down there? Need I remind you that you’re practically wearing a thong on national television tonight? Really, what was that thing with Brandon Stark down in South Carolina? Not that I don’t applaud your initiative. He’s a wealthy boy. But can’t you get him to buy a house somewhere close by? The Hamptons? All your people are up here, darling.”
I knew what she meant by people. My hair people. My nail people. My waxer. My facialist. My stylist. My nutritionist. My trainer. My publicist. My agent. It takes a village to make someone look as good as Nikki Howard. It would be wrong to think she looked as good as she did naturally. I mean, there were some genetics involved, but teamwork (and Photoshop) had a lot to do with it, too.
But the one part of being at Brandon’s that had been kind of nice was that for once, I hadn’t been surrounded by all those people. I’d just been…well, me again.
For a change.
I lay there, not moving. Who had let Rebecca in? Karl, the doorman? Because he knew her so well? Well, Karl and I were going to have words. Because this was unacceptable.
Lulu? I highly doubted it. Why wouldn’t she have woken me up to tell me Rebecca was lurking around? This
was so not like Lulu…and so not how I’d wanted to begin my day. I’d wanted to lie around, hugging the memory of Christopher kissing me so roughly in the cab (why couldn’t I rewind time and go back to that moment and do it all again, only right, so we didn’t fight afterward?).
Except I couldn’t. Because Rebecca was leaning over and smacking my butt.
“Get up! And be sure to eat a big breakfast. And lunch. I don’t care if you show a little turn on TV tonight, I can’t have you passing out on me again, like you did at the Megastore opening. No hypoglycemia today. Work! Work, work, work!”
Rebecca got up and teetered out of my room in her insanely high heels.
“The car’s coming to pick you up for the Stark party at seven,” she bellowed. “Be here, or I’ll chop you into little bits and feed you to the other models I represent. Believe me, they’re hungry enough to eat up every little bite.”
She clip-clopped out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard the elevator doors opening, and her stepping into it, talking loudly on her cell phone.
“What?” she was saying. “No, not the python. I said the lizard skin. Can’t anyone follow simple instructions anymore? What is wrong with the world?”
Sighing, I got out of bed, Cosabella darting quickly after me because morning is when she gets her first bowl of food of the day (I have no idea how Cosabella eats so much and stays so thin. Possibly it’s because she never stops moving, except when she drops off into an exhausted sleep on my neck at night).
As I opened Cosabella’s can in the kitchen, I wondered if Christopher and Felix had made any progress trying to figure out what Project Phoenix was. Obviously, I was going to do as much snooping as I could when I got to Robert Stark’s Upper East Side town house. But it would have been nice to have some clue what I was supposed to be snooping for.
I was scooping some of Cosy’s nasty-smelling food into her bowl when I heard a sound and straightened up, only to see a very large, almost naked male figure sneaking out of Lulu’s room.