by Robin Palmer
The whole IBS thing was one of the reasons I was mad at Mom. Because instead of our IBS being spent doing fun things, like, say, shopping, or looking at the cats in Petco that needed to be adopted, we went to places like the dentist. Or the doctor. Or—and this was the worst—Orchard Corset Center on the Lower East Side to buy bras. Bra shopping is horrible enough, but Orchard Corset was even worse than Barbara’s Bra World back in Massachusetts. There wasn’t even a real fitting room there. You just went to the back of the store and stood behind a sheet, and the ancient-looking woman yelled at you to stop squirming and watched you try on the bras. As far as I was concerned, that was torture, not quality time.
Laurel and I usually spent our IBS time shopping. One of the rules of IBS was that you had to switch off who got to choose, so we only had to go to boring places like the Container Store or Jack’s 99 Cent Store when it was Laurel’s turn. It was pretty weird that a huge star who was so rich she probably could’ve afforded to wear a brand-new outfit (including shoes) every day would want to go to places like that, but she loved them. I guess part of it was because she didn’t need to go shopping for clothes, because she had Zoë, her stylist, who shopped for her and brought stuff over for her to choose from, and part of it was because organizing was Laurel’s favorite hobby.
When it was my turn, I chose Urban Outfitters (my new favorite store, next to H&M, because there weren’t any Targets in Manhattan) or the secondhand thrift stores down in Chelsea or the West Village, because they had a wide selection of hats. Right before school started, in the hopes of having a brand-new look for sixth grade, I had put Mom’s straightening iron on one of my wavy brown pigtails and kept it there for a half hour, which, as it turned out, is not a good idea. Unless you want to burn off your hair and then get it cut so short that you look like a giant egghead with ears and have to wear hats everywhere. Eventually, Laurel’s hairstylist, Roger, fixed it for me, but it was really embarrassing. Even though my hair had grown a lot since the Straightening Iron Incident, on my bad hair days I still liked to wear hats.
At first the thrift stores had really freaked Laurel out, on account of her germ phobia. But once Annie Lee, the woman who owned the dry cleaner around the corner from our apartment, convinced her that any sort of grossness came off when you dry-cleaned the stuff, she relaxed. In fact, she started to like shopping there because she could get a lot of great weird things to wear as disguises so she wasn’t completely mobbed when we went to the Container Store and Jack’s.
Even though I thought Alan was crazy at first, I had to admit that the IBS thing kind of worked, because the first time Laurel tried on a hat at Housing Works Thrift Store on Seventeenth Street and didn’t completely freak out, it really was a bonding moment for us. Especially after the Hat Incident. Back on the very first day we had met back in Northampton, when the director of Laurel’s movie took my hat off my head and put it on hers, she totally did freak out and accused me of having lice, which is a pretty horrible thing to say to a person. If someone embarrasses you that badly, it totally makes sense that you’d be more than a little upset if (a) your mother then starts tutoring the person who embarrassed you and (b) then starts dating that person’s father.
It happened to be my turn to choose the IBS location, and so Laurel and I were at Andy’s Chee-Pees over on Eighth Street. Now that I had a crush on Blair, I decided I needed some new outfits in case I ended up running into him on a regular basis. I picked up a cardigan with what I hoped was a fake fur collar off the rack, then put it back when I realized that unfortunately it was real. I looked over at where Laurel was going through the jewelry. She was almost unrecognizable in the overalls/baseball cap/cat-eye glasses we had gotten her at a thrift store on Twenty-third Street, to the point where, when we were on the subway, I heard one girl whisper to her friend, “That girl looks like a really ugly version of Laurel Moses.”
Could I trust Laurel with my secret about Blair? Because she spent most every day on the set of her TV show (when she did go to school, it was one that was full of other kids who were actors or dancers or singers), it wasn’t like she had a million friends she would tell. In fact, it was really sad, but her three BFFs were Jaycee, her personal assistant; Maya, her makeup woman; and Roger, who did her hair. And Maya and Roger were really old, like in their thirties. But what if we got in a huge fight and she decided to announce it on her website? I did NOT need kids in Japan and Turkey knowing that I had a crush on Blair Lerner-Moskovitz.
Laurel had been on the quiet side all morning, which could either mean (a) she was tired or (b) her hormones were acting up and she was going to be really moody. As I had gotten to know her better these last few weeks, it had become easier to figure her out. For instance, what seemed like stuck-up-ness on account of the fact that she was famous was just shyness. We actually had a bunch of stuff in common, like a tendency to break out on our foreheads a lot and being friend-dumped. In her case, the dumping was by this girl Sequoia, who was also famous and plays her BFF on the show. But it wasn’t like it was all smooth sailing. In fact, when Mom and Alan had announced that Things Had Gotten Really Serious and they wanted the four of us to move in together, Laurel started being a total jerk.
If anyone had the right to be a jerk, it was me. I was the one who was getting the bum deal. I was the one who had to leave the town where I had lived my entire life and move to New York City, which, even though most of the streets are numbered, is still an easy place to get lost. I was the one who had to go to a new school where the kids were so unfriendly that I spent the first two lunches in the bathroom. I was the one who had to leave my dad and our Wednesday night Monopoly games and Friday night pizza dinners. Even though with the Creature coming (because Dad and Sarah had decided to not find out whether it was a boy or girl, I was forced to call it that), I was feeling a little left out anyway, and would probably be totally ignored once it was born.
That being said, New York wasn’t that bad. In fact, there were a bunch of very cool things about it, like Pete, my doorman. And the quality of cupcakes (Billy’s Bakery on Ninth Avenue was my favorite). And when Laurel wasn’t being all moody, she was fun to hang out with. It was kind of nice having an older almost-sister to ask about things you didn’t necessarily want to talk to a parent about. Like, say, crushes.
I walked over to her. “Hey, Laurel?”
“Yeah?” she said, putting a turquoise bead necklace around my neck and then adding a coral one. I wouldn’t have thought to put them together, but the combination totally worked. I liked to think that I had pretty good fashion sense. My number one rule was “The more color the better,” and I believed in it so much, I even added it to my advice notebook, even though, technically, the notebook was for advice from other people. But when it came to accessorizing, Laurel was amazing. And not only very generous about giving me tips but also about actually buying me accessories. The week before she had bought me this really cool purple silk flower barrette that I had worn every day since then.
“Do you know about this three-crush thing?” I asked.
“You mean local, long distance, and celebrity?” she asked, grabbing a scarf off a table and making into a headband before wrapping it around my head. She was good. It was like watching someone make balloon animals.
How did someone who was so not a normal kid know about this? More important, how did I not know until now? “Yeah. So, uh, I know you mentioned at one point that Austin Mackenzie was your celebrity crush, but who’s your . . . long-distance crush?”
“Austin,” she replied.
“Wait. You’re allowed to use the same person in different categories?” I asked.
She nodded.
I took out my advice notebook and jotted down, If you are having trouble coming up with crushes, consider using the same person in both the long-distance and celebrity categories. It wasn’t exactly helpful advice for people other than myself who had trouble coming up with crushes, but, still, it was advice.
“And who’s yo
ur local crush?” I asked.
“I’m between local crushes at the moment,” she said. “But when I’m shooting a movie in L.A., it’s Austin.”
I had had no idea she liked Austin so much! We weren’t even an hour into our IBS session, and it had done its job. We had bonded more than ever. “You can use the same person in all three categories?!”
She nodded again.
Wow. Maybe that was the trick—to find a celebrity who lived in the same town as you but also was away a lot on location, so they could be local and long-distance!
“Who are yours?” she asked, moving over to the eyeglasses and trying on different pairs of empty frames.
“I’m trying to figure it out. With the celebrity one, is it allowed to be an animated character?” I asked.
“Nope. Has to be someone real.”
I sighed. So much for choosing Stewie from Family Guy. “Okay. Well, then for my long-distance one, it’s this kid Andrew Milton back in Northampton.”
She looked confused. “I’ve never heard you mention him before.”
I shrugged. “Well, yeah—that’s because I don’t actually know him all that well,” I admitted. “He sat diagonally across from me in Mrs. Kline’s class. But he’s cute. I mean, at least the left side of his face is, because that’s mostly all I saw. And he lives out of town.”
“And who’s your local crush?” she asked.
I took a deep breath. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I think I’ve figured out who it is. But if I tell you, you can’t tell anyone, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Do you swear on Miss Piggy?” I demanded. Miss Piggy was my cat from home who was huge and kind of mean. Well, mean to ME, which was completely unfair, seeing that I was the one who fed her. But Miss Piggy let Laurel pet her all the time. And Laurel didn’t even LIKE pets, on account of all the hair and germs, but she’d come to love Miss Piggy so much that she didn’t even freak out when Miss Piggy threw up hairballs on her comforter (which, because Miss Piggy was so lazy that all she did was lie around all day eating and grooming herself, was something she did a lot). My plan was to convince Mom and Alan to let us get a new kitten so that I could train it from day one to love me the best.
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I swear on Miss Piggy.”
At that I knew I could trust her. “It’s Blair. Beatrice’s brother.”
“Wait a minute—Blair? I think I’ve seen him in the elevator with her. Does he have a bunch of pimples on his forehead?”
I nodded.
“And he’s a little . . . um . . .”
“Tubby?” I suggested.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “That’s who you have a crush on?”
I nodded again, but I could feel myself starting to get nervous. Maybe telling her was a bad idea. Maybe she was going to say that because he wasn’t as cute as Austin Mackenzie, I obviously had horrible taste, and that even though she had thought I was sort of cool up to this point, by telling her this secret, I obviously wasn’t, and now she had no interest in being friends with me even if she had to sleep next door to me every night.
“Oh. Uh, he . . . has really pretty eyes,” she finally said.
I hadn’t thought about that part, but he did. They were a very pretty shade of blue. Or maybe they were green. On the other hand, they may have been hazel. I couldn’t really remember. “Yeah, I guess. And he’s smart, which is good. And creative. Oh, and he’s in the Chess Club, and in band, because he plays the clarinet,” I went on. “So he’s, you know, well rounded and stuff.”
“Huh. I never thought of you as the kind of girl who would like someone in the Chess Club. That’s cute,” she replied.
“But you can tell just by talking to him that he’s definitely one of the cooler people in the Chess Club. He’s not, like, nerdy or anything. Beatrice says their moms make him do it because it will look good when it comes time to applying to college,” I explained. “But there are two things I need advice on. The first is now that I have a crush, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to, you know . . . do.”
“Oh, that’s easy. First you Google him a lot,” she said, taking off her baseball cap and trying on a floppy sun hat. When she did that and didn’t freak out because of the germ thing, my chest got all puffy with pride, like when you realize that you’ve managed to house-train a puppy. “That’s what I do with Austin.”
I walked over and grabbed a T-shirt that said DURAN DURAN off the “’80s Bands” rack, but put it back when I saw that it was so faded that my bra would totally show through if I wore it. I did NOT need people seeing my bra, especially since it just kept getting bigger. “I already did the Googling part,” I replied. “But that didn’t get me much.” Other than a picture of Blair from his bar mitzvah in the Temple Emanu-El newsletter and a mention that he had come in third during the Upper West Side of Manhattan Chess Club for Juniors tournament the year before, it didn’t get me anything.
“Well, then how about *67ing him? That’s what Madison does when she likes someone.” Madison was the character Laurel played on her show, who was boy-crazy, which meant that she spent most of every show (a) talking about the boy she had a crush on that week, (b) thinking about him, or (c) embarrassing herself in front of him.
“I don’t know . . . I kind of think the whole *67 thing is stupid.” The *67 thing was what you did to block your number so that when you called someone just to hear their voice say “Hello? Hello?” over and over, they wouldn’t know it was you. Alice did it all the time to Max Rummel. But because she’s the kind of person who is what my dad likes to call “not the sharpest knife in the drawer” a few times she forgot the actual *67 part so he figured out it was her when her last name came up on his phone. Plus, because of my coordination issues, I’d be afraid that I’d punch the wrong numbers and end up making a call to India or somewhere and getting yelled at when the phone bill came.
“And what’s the second thing?” she asked.
“Oh. Well, see, I tried to tell Beatrice that I had decided he was my crush, but she thought I was joking.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”
I sighed. “Maybe he shouldn’t be my crush.”
“No, no! Forget I said that last part. I’m sure he’s really cool.”
I searched her face to see if she meant it. She didn’t look like she was lying, but with actresses it was hard to tell because that was their job. “Oh—I forgot to mention that when I was talking to him, I got a little nervous and started oversharing. So that’s a good sign, right?” I said hopefully. “I mean, a sign that I actually do have a crush on him? Because, you know, I’m not totally sure I do, on account of the fact that I’ve never had one before.” I wasn’t really sure how a crush was supposed to feel. But what I did know was that it took up a lot of space in your brain as you tried to figure the whole thing out.
“Definitely!”
“Anyway, I don’t know what to do because I don’t want to lie to Beatrice, but I also don’t want to lose her as a friend, you know?”
She nodded. “I get it. Hey, I think we should ask Pete what he thinks.”
“You think?”
She shrugged. “Why not? He is always saying he’s got a double PhD in Love and Life.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. Pete had been married twice and engaged a bunch of times, so he had a lot of experience in the love department. Because he knew the answer to pretty much anything—from where to get the best falafel in Manhattan to how to make it so there was world peace—it was worth a shot.
“You’ve got a crush on Blair?” Pete asked later, after Laurel and I got back to the Conran when our IBS was over and settled ourselves on the couch in the lobby.
I nodded, and glanced nervously at Laurel.
“Blair, as in Blair Lerner-Moskovitz, who lives in 10D?” he asked, confused. “The one in the Chess Club?”
I nodded again, turning red. The next crush I had was not going to be in the Chess Club.
I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I liked the sound of it. “So what do you think I should do?” I asked.
After Pete tipped his hat to Mrs. Lamstein from 3L, he gave a heavy sigh and started stroking his chin, which is what he always did right before he gave advice. “Hmm . . . let me think . . . twelve years old . . . you . . . Blair Lerner-Moskovitz . . .”
As Laurel and I looked at each other, I tried not to roll my eyes. Pete always repeated it all back to you, which, when you were desperate for advice, was very annoying.
“Okay, okay—I got it!” he said. “What you gotta do is—”
“Wait! Wait!” I cried, scrambling for my notebook and pen. “I need to write this down.” Once I got it out, I looked up. “Okay—go ahead.”
“What you gotta do is—”
I got ready to write.
“—just be yourself,” he finished.
I flopped back on the couch and sighed. “But that’s the same advice you gave me when I told you I was worried I wouldn’t make any friends at school!” I flipped to the first page of the advice notebook. “See? It’s right here.”
“Yeah, and it worked, right?” he asked as he signed for some dry cleaning from a delivery boy and hung it in the closet. That was Mom’s favorite thing about New York (well, other than Alan). You never had to worry about being home because the doorman could just sign for things.
“Well, with Beatrice it did,” I said.
“And Alice,” Laurel added.
Now I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on. Alice would be friends with a chair if it let her.” Because Laurel didn’t have a lot of experience with the friend thing, she didn’t understand that some friends were so annoying you sometimes wondered if they were worth having.
“Look, Lucy,” Pete said. “I didn’t go to college or nothing, but I can tell you this: if you’re not yourself, it always ends up biting you in the butt. I’m a doorman—we know about these things.”