Masquerade

by Jessica Burkhart

  Khloe smiled, peering at the calendar. “I’ll have to use you to keep me on track. Especially since we learned that my ESP needs some fine-tuning.”

  “Should I add that to my calendar?” I teased.

  Khloe’s phone buzzed. She leaned over and checked the screen on her BlackBerry.

  “Zack,” she said, grinning. “He wants to know if I’m busy tomorrow night!”

  “You’re going on another daaate! You know what that means . . . spa day tomorrow.”

  Khloe’s fingers moved furiously over her keypad, and then she looked up at me. “Spa day sounds perfect.”

  “I’ll make a list of what we can do so we don’t forget anything. Especially since we got some new products since last time.”

  I went back to my desk, found a pink notebook with light purple paper inside, and took it to my bed. I glanced at Khloe—she was lost in Zack Land. Smiling to myself, I opened the notebook. On a clean page, I started writing.

  ♥ Khloe & Lauren’s Spa Day:

  Pedicure

  Use tea tree oil and mint scrub, metal foot files, foot polisher, lotion

  Remove old polish

  Prep nails for painting: trim cuticles, clean under nails, trim nails, file, buff, apply coat of base

  Paint toenails

  I read over my pedicure section, double-checking to make sure I’d included everything.

  My phone chimed, signaling a new e-mail. I opened my mail. It was a comment on my latest blog post from “Anonymous.” My stomach dropped when I read the message.

  ANONYMOUS = ANNOYING

  Anonymous: I’m clapping for you too, since it seems like that’s what all of your friends are doing. Congrats on winning a class in an intermediate schooling show. Come on. How many times are you going to blog about that?! You should be embarrassed instead. I mean, you went from the A circuit to schooling shows. You must have hit your head REALLY hard when you fell at Red Oak. There’s no other reason why you’d be this excited about getting first and second at such a low-level show. Get a brain scan to be safe . . . .

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked aloud.

  I deleted the message and put my phone back on my nightstand. I opened my computer and logged in to my blog.

  I hovered above the blog comment, ready to delete it with a click.

  “You okay?” Khloe asked.

  “Some jerk just left a nasty comment on my blog.” I rolled my eyes.

  “What? Let me see! I’ll hunt them down.” Khloe was up and sitting next to me in seconds. She scanned my laptop screen.

  “I’m just going to delete it and not reply,” I said. “I guess I should lock my blog from now on.”

  “No, don’t do that,” Khloe said. “Think about it. If you delete the comment, ‘Anonymous’ will think he or she got to you. That’ll be like letting Anonymous win.”

  I moved my mouse pointer away from the delete button, but still wasn’t convinced.

  “So I just do nothing?”

  “Not a thing. Don’t lock your blog. Or respond to the comment. Or change what you blog about. If you act like this was just any other comment, then Anonymous will get really annoyed. I doubt he or she will leave another comment, but if that happens, you have to keep up the same protocol.”

  I nodded, understanding where Khloe was coming from. “I get it now. I can do that.”

  “I’m sorry you’re dealing with an idiot like this,” Khloe said, frowning. “Try to stick it out unless the comments turn supernasty. Or if you feel like you’re being bullied. Promise you’ll tell me if you get another comment, okay?”

  “Promise,” I said, logging out of my blog. “So, did you make plans with Zack?”

  Khloe grinned. “Chinese food and a movie tomorrow night.”

  I high-fived her. “Yay!”

  “Tomorrow’s going to be awesome. Spa day and a date with Zack.”

  I started to reply when my Skype line rang. “It’s Brielle!”

  “Have fun!” Khloe said. “I’ve got a stack of Celeb Dish mags waiting.” She went back to her bed, and I answered Brielle’s call.

  “Hi!” I said, waving when Brielle’s image popped into view. Her pale, creamy skin stood out against her black hair. It hung in soft waves—a new look for Bri. Ana and I used to joke that Bri’s flatiron was on more than it was off. For Christmas one year, we’d even gotten her a mini portable one that took batteries, so she could straighten on the go.

  “Lauren! Look who else is here.” Brielle moved her chair over, and Ana waved at me with both hands.

  “Hey, LT!” Ana said, grinning.

  “A! You cut your hair! Wow, it looks amazing!” I stared at Ana’s light-brown hair. The last time I’d seen Ana, her hair had been just past her shoulders, with blond highlights we’d begged her mom to let Ana get. Now her locks were cut into a textured bob and shaped with pomade. The highlights were gone.

  Ana touched her hair. “Oh, I totally forgot that you haven’t seen it. It feels like I chopped it off forever ago.”

  “You,” I said, pointing a finger at Ana, “refused to ever cut your hair that short. Even when I swore it would look great. What made you go for it?”

  “That would be me,” Brielle said, raising a hand. She and Ana glanced at each other, then burst into laughter.

  I blinked, waiting for them to fill me in. They kept giggling.

  “I want in on the joke,” I said. I kept the slight hurt that I felt out of my voice. Be realistic, Lauren, I told myself. Of course Bri and Ana are going to have their own stuff. You have the same thing with Khlo and Lex.

  “I promised,” Brielle said, between giggles, “that if Ana hated her haircut, I would let her shave my head.”

  Ana turned sideways, facing Bri. “And I so didn’t believe you. At all.”

  “So I actually bought hair clippers from Ulta to prove it,” Bri said, starting to laugh again. “But thank God that Ana loved her hair. “Or I’d look . . . well, not like the girl that Will fell for when we first started dating.”

  “You mixed it up too,” I said. “Loving the waves.”

  I fought the urge to touch my own hair. Nothing had changed since the last time I’d seen my friends. It was still long, brown, and wavy. No new styles or cuts.

  “Really? Thanks!” Brielle grinned into the webcam. “Ana taught me, and even though it adds, like, twenty extra minutes to my beauty routine in the morning, it’s so worth it.”

  I sniffed, pretending to hold back tears. “It’s like I don’t even know either of you anymore!”

  “Eh,” Ana said, waving a hand at me. “We’re still the same girls, at the same school, dating the same, um, guys. Dating the same guys! Yep!” Ana spun Bri’s desk chair around in a circle.

  “You should be so glad you’re not here right now,” Bri said to me. “Ana’s having a spaz attack.”

  Bri glanced over at Ana, ready to kick off into another circle, and shot her a look. Brielle leaned over so her face was off camera, and Ana was left onscreen. Brielle must have mouthed something or given Ana a famous you don’t want to mess with me right now look. Ana toyed with the ends of her hair, and the chair was still. Ana smiled at me, and Brielle appeared back onscreen.

  “Really, Laur, you’re not missing anything,” Bri added. Her eyes weren’t looking into the camera. It looked like she was staring at her keyboard. “Nothing but the same.”

  “Not everything can be the same. What about two very cute boyfriends? How are Will and Jeremy?”

  Silence.

  I’d expected Bri and Ana to talk over each other to tell me about their guys.

  “Laur?” Bri asked, peering at me. “We lost the connection for a second. Can you see and hear us?”

  “Loud and clear,” I said. “I didn’t even know we’d gotten cut off.”

  “Oh, no worries,” Brielle said. “Ana and I are dying to hear about your guy! Tell us everything about Drew!”

  I started to say they’d missed my question and I wanted to hea
r about their boyfriends, but I couldn’t pass up any opportunity to talk about Drew.

  “Get comfy,” I said. “You’re going to be sorry that you asked.”

  THE SMURF AND THE MUD-SOAKED

  “YOU LOOK LIKE A SMURF,” KHLOE SAID, giggling.

  Standing next to her in our bathroom, I peered at my reflection. My face was a brilliant shade of blue. We were deep in spa Saturday.

  “And you look like you lost in a mud fight,” I teased back.

  “We’ve got to get a pic of this,” Khloe said.

  Khloe pulled her BlackBerry from the pocket of her terry-cloth robe.

  “Most definitely,” I said. “You have to tag me when you upload it to FaceSpace.” I looked at her and grinned. “You should so use the photo as your new head shot. You look très glam.”

  “Ha, ha. Pose!”

  Khloe threw her arm around me, and we tilted our heads toward each other. The flash went off, and Khloe turned the phone so we could both see the screen. We looked so silly—giant grins, painted faces, and skinny neon Goody headbands to keep stray hair out of the mask.

  “Love,” I said. “We should forgo makeup from now on and go to classes like this.”

  Khloe brought the phone closer to her eyes, squinting at the screen. “You know, if I cropped you out—”

  “Hey!”

  “No, I can’t do that, we’re too close together.” Khloe kept talking as if she hadn’t heard me. “Maybe you should take a photo of me like this with my good camera. What if I sent it with my real head shot to casting directors?”

  “Well . . . um, what are you going for, exactly?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bathtub.

  Khloe adjusted her blue headband. “The pic would show my silly side! Casting directors would see that I’m not afraid to be silly. I’d be the perf actor for a role on CTV Family Network.”

  “Any particular show in mind?”

  She turned around, hopping up to sit on the edge of the sink, and looked at me. “It would all start with a guest spot,” Khloe said, talking faster and faster. “Unconventional would be the ONE. I could play a cousin from L.A. who comes to visit Taryn’s family in Alabama. I’d be all L.A. glam. Since Taryn’s fam is hippie and like, only eats food they grow, I would be the girl out of her element.”

  Khloe bowed her head and looked up at me with a smile.

  “Unconventional is an awesome show,” I said. “You’d be an amazing addition to the cast. You should send your résumé, reel, and head shot.”

  I touched my face. “Time to rinse!” I motioned for Khloe to get off the sink and turned on the water. Maybe if I didn’t bring up the mud-mask photo and distracted her with our next activity—manis . . . I turned on the water and bent over the sink.

  Blue water swirled down the drain as I rinsed. I patted my face dry with an espresso-colored towel.

  “Here you go!” Khloe chirped. She thrust her Nikon at me. “Snap away!”

  My mouth open and closed.

  “I didn’t even hear you leave the bathroom,” I said. I had to tell Khloe my opinion. Maybe I was wrong and a casting director would adore the photo. But my gut said it was better to stay professional. “Khlo, about the picture. I’m not exactly sure—”

  Khloe’s brown eyes settled on my face. Then she burst into laughter.

  What?

  “I wondered how long it was going to take you!” Khloe said. She put the camera on a stack of bath towels. “I was totally messing with you, LT.”

  “Khloeee!” I swatted her arm.

  “There’s nooo way the photo of us will go anywhere but FaceSpace. It would be career suicide if I sent in a photo that looked like, as I think you put it so sweetly earlier, I ‘lost in a mud fight.’”

  We laughed.

  “The image of your face covered in the mask would be copied and e-mailed to every casting director from Los Angeles to New York City,” I said, pretend-serious.

  A solemn Khloe nodded. “They’d look at my other head shots and just see ‘Mud Girl.’”

  “You’d have to stop acting immediately.”

  Khloe’s eyes widened, and the super-dry mask on her forehead cracked. “A bored assistant would swipe the photo because it made her laugh. At a party one Saturday night, her New York studio apartment would be packed, and everyone would take a picture of my photo.”

  “Mud Girl would go from phone to phone. E-mail to e-mail. People would recognize you on the street.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from giggling. Khloe could turn anything into an acting exercise.

  “I’d have to move to a tiny, remote village in Switzerland.” Khloe shook her head, her expression downcast.

  “I would come with you,” I said. “You never leave a best friend behind. Plus, you’d need someone to help you with recovery after surgery.”

  “Oh, right. Since e-mail goes everywhere, I’d have to get a nose job and pump up my lips with whatever they use. I’d change my name, get colored contacts, and dye my hair.”

  And Khloe and I continued to tell the saga of Mud Girl well into our manicures.

  NO-FAIL ZONE

  I SETTLED INTO THE SADDLE FOR TUESDAY’S lesson. I’d read every page in our horse manual—twice—in case Mr. Conner tested us.

  After Friday’s failed quiz, Mr. Conner had called me into his office on Monday. While my teammates had warmed up their horses, I’d answered different questions about worms and parasites. My studying had paid off. I’d gotten each question right, and Mr. Conner shooed me out of his office to tack up and get in the arena.

  I walked Whisper toward the big window. The Halloween window clings that had gone up yesterday made me smile and get that feeling. I couldn’t even describe it, but I only felt this way around Halloween. I loved it more than my birthday! I had a dozen Halloween T-shirts and long-sleeved shirts that I wore during October.

  The stable had decorations everywhere. But it wasn’t just the stable. I’d left my room this afternoon and, on my rush to the stable, spotted decorations in Hawthorne, in the classrooms, caf, and all over the outside of campus.

  The second I had free time, I was going to walk the campus and look at each and every decoration. I’d probably even take pictures for Chatter or FaceSpace. I shook my head. It made me think of New York City tourists who stopped, took pictures, and almost got run over by taxis as they gawked at famous buildings or popular restaurants. You’re going to look just like that, I thought, giggling to myself. At least there aren’t any cabs or bicyclists to worry about.

  Whisper and I passed the window. Smiling ghosts, pumpkins making silly faces, black cats, and a grinning green-faced witch had been scattered over the glass. I knew I’d stare at them every day until Halloween was over. “Look, girl, aren’t the decorations fun? It’s our first Halloween together.”

  “Someone’s getting excited.” A smiling Lexa rode next to me. “You haven’t moved from the window for about, oh, five solid minutes.”

  “Guilty. You haven’t seen anything yet. I actually considered skipping this lesson to walk around campus to see the decorations.” I gave Lex an innocent smile.

  “Oh, LT. You’ve got it bad. Everyone has their favorite holiday, though. I mean, when my family goes to New York City every few Christmases I practically walk from the Upper East Side to the Lower East Side to see the holiday transformation.”

  We let our horses walk, and the two mares kept an easy pace. Lexa and I were still the only two here yet.

  “I love New York during Christmas. My sister and I walked along Fifth Avenue once and looked at the window displays. They’re très belle!” I giggled. “Becca and I wouldn’t go in any of the stores because they were so expensive—we were afraid the manager wouldn’t even let us in.”

  Lexa laughed. “Oh, right! Those designer stores are intimidating. I go to Macy’s. Best displays ever. Plus, I can actually afford some of the clothes.”

  “Speaking of clothes, I told Khloe about my Halloween wardrobe. Did
you notice that I’m wearing Halloween-themed shirts all of a sudden?”

  Lexa raised an eyebrow. “I did. But I didn’t know it was a thing. What’s a ‘Halloween wardrobe’?”

  I looked up when Cole and Clare entered the arena. Lexa and I waved as they started warming up their horses at the opposite end of the arena.

  “There’s one store that has the best Halloween tees and long-sleeved shirts on the planet: Target. Every year, I go there and buy new Halloween shirts. They’re insanely inexpensive, and in August I start saving my allowance so I can get a lot of them. Some of the tees are, like, five dollars!”

  Lexa motioned that we turn the horses and began a circle in the opposite direction. Whisper was a little tight on the turn; her not-fully warmed muscles made her circle sloppy. The change of direction would stretch her out.

  “Sweet deal,” Lexa said. “I’m going to start shopping there! So . . .” She looked at me expectantly. “How many tees are in this ‘Halloween wardrobe’?”

  I smoothed Whisper’s mane so that I didn’t have to look at Lexa. If I did, she would know. “Oh,” I said. “Like ten, maybe?”

  Lexa snorted. “Lauren Towers.”

  I looked at her. “What?” My tone was hiiigh—like I’d just sucked helium from a balloon.

  “Do I have to ask you the question again and again until you tell me the truth?”

  “How—how—,” I sputtered. “You always know when I’m lying! Not fair!”

  Lexa grinned, leaning over to pat my shoulder. “Oh, sweetie, it doesn’t help when your face turns red, you won’t look me in the eye, and your voice gets several octaves higher than usual.”

  “I’m going to make Khloe teach me how to lie,” I said, pretend-grumbling. “She has to have learned that in acting class.”

  Lexa didn’t say a word. She just stared. Waiting. Waiting for me to spill.

  “Okay, okay. So I might be a little obsessed,” I said. “I brought about ten of my favorite Halloween shirts to Canterwood. But I have at least twenty more in my closet at home.”