by Robin Palmer
Her face fell. “Wow. It feels really ... awful.”
“Yeah, I know,” I agreed. Even though I didn’t own any Christmas-related clothing, I, too, had been DD’d against at times. Especially by Cristina Pollock.
Some of it probably had to do with the fact that I had turned down her invitation to sit with her at lunch after she found out I lived with Laurel. But it was more than that. Cristina was Popular-with-a-capital-P, and I was Not-popular-with-a-capital-N. While she had 742 friends on Facebook, I had only 275. And thirty of them were kids I didn’t even know from countries like Slovakia and Malaysia, who friended me only because we had Laurel in common.
“I had no idea dork discrimination was so widespread,” Laurel said, concerned. “I mean, I know from what you’ve told me about Cristina that it goes on in school cafeterias and stuff, but I didn’t realize it also happens in nice restaurants in Manhattan. Maybe I should talk to my agent about doing a public service announcement about it.” Laurel did a lot of PSAs for things like the environment and animals that needed to be adopted, which I’m sure scored her major points with the karma thing.
“That’s a good idea, but in the meantime, I’m going to do my part to try and end it right now.” I grabbed her arm. “C’mon.”
I marched us over to the hostess, who, like most New Yorkers, was dressed all in black. (Beatrice was like that, too, which drove me nuts.) “Excuse me,” I said sweetly as Laurel hung back. “Could you tell me how long the wait for a table is?”
She looked down at the list on her clipboard before giving me a smile. But even when she did that, almost nothing on her face moved. According to Mom, that was because of something called Botox, which I once heard her tell Alan when I was overlistening was something that women who were scared of getting older put in their skin. “Only about fifteen minutes,” she said.
Mom calls my overlistening eavesdropping, but personally, I find that to be a very ugly word. It’s not my fault that I have extra-fantastic hearing and seem somehow always to end up standing in a spot that allows me to hear conversations I’m not supposed to.
“Really? That’s great!” I said. I pulled Laurel up so she was next to me. “But if that’s the case, how come you told my friend here that it would be a forty-five-minute wait?”
Her face went blank again. “Did I?” she asked nervously.
“Yeah, you did,” I replied. “Which seems like a weird thing to say. I mean, that kind of sounds like ... I don’t know ... discrimination or something.”
A little bit of nervousness flickered across her face.
“Not that I have any idea why you’d discriminate against her,” I said innocently. I leaned in. “I know she’s not as pretty and cool-looking as someone like, say ... Laurel Moses—”
“Oh, I just love Laurel Moses!” she exclaimed. Her song ‘Millions of Miles’ makes me cry every time.”
“Yeah, anyway,” I continued. “See, you can’t not seat someone because you don’t like the way she looks,” I went on. “I’m not a lawyer, but the guy who’s about to become my stepfather is, and I’m pretty sure if I asked him, he’d say that’s ... illegal.”
The hostess got so upset, some lines actually appeared on her forehead. She grabbed two menus. “This has all been a misunderstanding,” she said nervously. “See that empty table right over there?” she asked, pointing to a table smack in the middle of the restaurant.
See it? That was their VIP table, and I had actually sat at it, when I had come here with Laurel on a day when she was dressed as her regular superstar self. “I’m going to put you guys right there,” she said with a smile. She lowered her voice. “Not only that, but your meal will be on the house.”
I turned to Laurel. “What do you think, Jane?”
“I don’t know,” Laurel said. “I suddenly seem to have lost my appetite.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “I kind of feel like just getting a hot dog in the park or something.” I grabbed Laurel’s hand. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
When we got outside, Laurel turned to me. “Lucy—that was awesome! It totally reminded me of the episode I won the Emmy for—the Very Special one when Madison gave that speech in the cafeteria about how awful it was that people were acting like the quarterback she had a crush on totally no longer existed now that he had been in a car accident and couldn’t play football anymore.” Because Madison had a new crush every week, it was hard to keep them straight, but I did remember that one because it was a lot more serious than most of the episodes.
“Thanks,” I said bashfully as we walked down Third Avenue. It wasn’t like I wanted to be an actress or anything (although recently I had been thinking that maybe having my own advice-giving show like Dr. Maude could be cool), but still, that was a big compliment coming from her.
She stopped walking. “Wait a second—I just came up with a fantastic idea. When school starts in the fall, I think you should run for class president!” she exclaimed. “With the promise that you’ll try your best to put an end to dork discrimination!”
“Wow. You’re right—that is a fantastic idea!” I replied. “For someone else to do. Not me.”
“Why not? Just a few minutes ago you were going on about how it’s such a big problem!”
I took out my advice notebook. “ ‘ Remember that everything you say can—and will—be used against you,’ ” I said aloud as I wrote.
“I’m not using it against you—I’m just reminding you about how you convinced me that it was such a big problem!”
“Thanks, but the answer is still no.”
“How come?”
“Hmm, let’s see. ...” I said. “Well, there’s the fact that according to Beatrice, Cristina Pollock has been class president ever since, like, kindergarten,” I suggested. “And there’s the fact that she hates me. And the fact that if I run against her, she’ll hate me even more.”
She gave me one of her super-serious, sincere looks—like the kind she used in the Don’t Let People Starve PSAs. “But think of the millions of kids you could help—”
“But there’re only a hundred fifty-seven kids in my grade,” I said, confused.
She started to pace. “I know, but I’m talking big picture here, Lucy. You have the opportunity to be the savior of not just all the kids at the Center for Creative Learning, but of anyone who has ever been teased. Or tripped. Or friend-dumped.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or made to wait for an hour in a very hot monkey costume so you get super-sweaty and look disgusting when the camera starts rolling because the guest star on that week’s episode of your series thinks you were flirting with her boyfriend, which you totally were not.”
She stopped in front of me. “Think about it—you have the opportunity to be a role model for an entire generation of lower-school girls.”
I took out my advice notebook again. “People who do a lot of public speaking because they’re famous tend to be very good at convincing other people of things, so watch out,” I wrote. “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “That sounds cool, but it’s also a lot of pressure. Especially since I heard next year is going to be really hard because of algebra—”
“Lucy, you are the chosen one. The one who can lead us out of the darkness.”
My left eyebrow raised. “Isn’t that what that old Native American guy said to Austin in that movie we watched on cable the other day—the one where he saves the world with the help of that Saint Bernard after the asteroid hits Earth?” While Connor’s costars tended to be monkeys, Austin’s were dogs a lot of the time.
She thought about it. “Huh. So that’s why it sounds familiar.” She shrugged. “But still, your country needs you, Lucy. The Cristina Pollocks of the world need to be stopped. Otherwise, they’ll get married to the cutest guys in school, and there’ll be a whole new generation of Mean Girls ruining people’s reputations on Facebook and trashing them on gossip blogs just because they’re mad they didn’t get as many close-ups.”
I cringed. I hadn�
��t even thought about the new generation of Mean Girls that would result if people like Cristina Pollock had children. That would be awful.
“So if you can’t do it for you, Lucy, do it for us—your fellow men and womenkind!” she said passionately. “Do it for the ones who aren’t as brave as you. Who don’t have the guts to stand up for what’s right and put a stop to meanness.”
Wow. If the acting thing ever stopped working, Laurel could totally get a job as a speechwriter for the president.
“Nice try,” I said. “But the answer is still no.”
With that, her eyes got all big and wet-looking, like tears were about to start falling from them any second. She knew I was a sucker for that. It was the same look she gave in the PSA for the ASPCA about animals that needed to be adopted.
“And don’t you dare give me the ASPCA look.” I glanced away as I shook my head again. “I agree it needs to be stopped—but not by me.”
After everything I had been through over the last few years—my parents’ divorce, being friend-dumped, moving, getting a brand-new family, becoming a little sister, being about to become a big sister—only now was I starting to feel like things were leveling out. (Well, as level as they could get when you lived with the most famous girl in the world.)
Let someone else’s life be turned upside down for a while.
I needed a break.
chapter 2
Dear Dr. Maude,
You know how I told you I was really excited to go back to Northampton and hang out with my dad? Well, that was a mistake. Because so far the trip has been awful. In fact, I’m writing this to you on my iTouch from the bathroom of Frankie’s Pizzeria after having spent the last five minutes in here crying.
If you’ve ever been to Frankie’s (which I don’t think you have, because Frankie always makes the famous people autograph a napkin that he then tacks up on the wall behind the cash register), you’d know that a person would have to be in REALLY bad shape to stay in the restroom at Frankie’s for any longer than necessary because it smells disgusting.
I’m not sure what’s going on, Dr. Maude. Ever since we moved I’ve been looking forward to coming back here. But from the second we got here this afternoon, I feel like everything’s ... different. And not good-different. BAD-different. Especially with my dad.
Okay, I just started crying again, which is not good. Do you think I might possibly be having a nervous breakdown? Because my friend Marissa (you remember her, right? She’s the annoying one from Northampton) once told me that when her aunt had a nervous breakdown, she cried nonstop for days. Although if it is a nervous breakdown, that would definitely bring on my period, don’t you think?
I’ll Google “warning signs of a nervous breakdown” when I get back to Dad’s house, but if you could get back to me about this before then, I’d appreciate it.
Thanks very much.
yours truly,
Lucy B. Parker
The weirdness started during the car ride up. Usually during long car rides with Mom, we had to listen to all this old music by people named Joni Mitchell and Carole King and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Not only that, but she’d sing along, and her voice is only the teensiest bit better than mine, and mine happens to be awful. So awful that Ms. Edut, my chorus teacher, asked me to mouth the words during our assemblies rather than sing them. Because of all the QT Mom and I had been spending together, I was actually looking forward to having the music on so we didn’t have to talk. But she didn’t put it on—not even when she finally calmed down after we got out of the city and onto I 95.
I’m not a big fan of silence. When it’s really quiet, it’s like the volume on the chatter in my brain gets turned up really loud, and I hear things, like “Your boobs are too big.” Or “You really need to find someone to have a crush on before school starts again so that people don’t think you’re weird.” Or “I know you and Laurel have been getting along well since the trip to L.A., but what if one day she wakes up and suddenly decides she’d rather hang out with someone with better coordination?”
Because I didn’t want to listen to my brain’s latest podcast about how the hair on my arms is too dark and makes me look like a monkey, I reached for the knob to turn the radio on.
“Honey, leave it off, okay?” Mom asked.
I turned to her. Mom hated silence almost as much as I did. She said it was because of her adult-onset ADHD. “How come?”
“So we can talk.”
Uh-oh. Those four words were never good. Over the last year, whenever my parents said they had something to talk to me about, it usually ended up with me finding out my mother was dating Laurel Moses’s father and we were moving to New York, or that, come fall, I’d have a new brother or sister. “You’re not going to tell me you’re pregnant, are you?” I demanded. Even though she was already forty-seven, if she had been getting shots in her butt like Mrs. Walker in 8F did, it could still happen. And Mrs. Walker had triplets!
“Lucy, I keep telling you this store is closed,” she said, patting the area below her belly that I knew from health class was called the uterus. “Now please stop asking me that.” Since we’d moved to New York, Mom had become a little less funky-Indian-shirts-andugly-Birkenstock-sandals and more Mom-looking. Not only that, but she had let Roger, Laurel’s hairdresser, chop off her long brown curls into a longish bob. (“I’m sorry, but after forty-five, unless you’re some crazy artist type, hair that long on a woman just does not work,” he said with a sniff.) But even with her new momlike look, she still looked young enough to have a baby.
“So what do you want to talk to me about?” I asked warily.
“I just wanted to have a check-in,” she replied. “To see how you’re feeling about going back to Northampton.”
I turned to her. “What do you mean, how do I feel? I feel great. I’ve been excited to go back and visit ever since we left.”
“That’s great, sweetie. I guess I just wanted to say I think it’s important that you”—she paused—“manage your expectations about the weekend,” she said.
“What does that mean?” Whenever Mom paused before saying something—especially something I wasn’t familiar with, like this expectations thing—I knew I was about to get a lecture.
“Well, sometimes when we leave a place and we go back to visit, we think that everything’s going to be the same,” Mom explained. “That nothing’s changed—”
“It’s only been four months. Nothing’s changed,” I said. “Other than Sarah getting really fat because she can’t stop eating.” I wondered if she’d have zits. I knew she was pregnant and all, but if she was going to eat so much junk food, she really should have to break out like the rest of us.
“Well, I just want you to be prepared, because while things may look the same, it will probably feel different. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing, because it means that the river of life is flowing and—”
I cringed. “Mom, please don’t start with the river-of-life thing—” That was something she had gotten from one of the How-to-Blend-a-Family-in-Such-a-Way-That-People-Get-Along-Rather-Than-Spend-All-Their-Time- Alone-in-Different-Rooms-Watching-TV books she was always reading.
“Okay, fine,” she said, “what I’m trying to say is that just as there are seasons to life—”
The seasons-of-life lecture was almost as bad as the river one. “I’ve only been gone a few months,” I said, cutting her off as I punched the radio button. “And I get to hang out with Dad. How different can it be?”
Um, try a lot.
While I had loved Dad’s loft over on Main Street, I was excited to finally see the house he and Sarah had bought on Maple Street. In the pictures Dad had e-mailed me, it looked great. I especially loved the photo of the guest room—aka my room. I couldn’t wait to look out at the big elm tree in the yard when I woke up in the morning.
Which, I found out as soon as we arrived, was not going to be happening.
“You’re making me slee
p on a sofa bed?! In the living room?” I cried as we stood in front of a big tan couch with Indian-looking jewel-toned silk pillows.
“Honey, it’s very comfortable,” Dad said.
I turned to him. “How do you know?” I demanded. “Have you slept on it?”
“Well, no,” he confessed. “But the guy at the store assured me it was.”
I squinted. “Wait a minute—is your ponytail shorter?” Dad had had long hair ever since college. Some people thought it was weird, but in Northampton, it was pretty normal. Especially for a photographer like him.
He nodded. “Yeah. I had Deanna trim about two inches off.” Deanna was Mom’s BFF and the person whose house she was staying at. In a real bed.
What was going on here? Part of what made my parents my parents was that they were a little weird-looking. Now, since the divorce, and the move, and the baby coming, they were both becoming so ... normal. Sure, some of the stuff they did was completely embarrassing, but I liked that they didn’t have parentlike hair and clothes. It made me feel a little more normal about not feeling normal.
I didn’t say anything about the hair issue just then. There were more important things to deal with. Like my bed. “But why can’t I sleep in the guest room?” I asked as Sarah came waddling in dressed in some long embroidered Indian-looking dress that, because she was so huge, made her look like she was wearing a tent. Now she was someone who could’ve used a bit more normalness. As she ripped open a package of Twinkies, I cringed. I loved junk food as much as the next person, but even I wouldn’t go near a Twinkie. You might as well squirt dishwashing liquid in your mouth.
While Dad’s hair was shorter, Sarah’s long red braid was even longer. But her face had gotten so puffy, you couldn’t even see the rhinestone stud on the side of her nose. It just sort of disappeared into the side. “Because it’s Ziggy’s room now,” she said. “It turns out that the other bedroom we were thinking of putting him in isn’t positioned well from a feng shui aspect.” Feng shui is this Chinese thing about positioning furniture and stuff for good luck.