by Robin Palmer
Here was my chance to say “Actually, no—I’m feeling sort of left out again, ESPECIALLY since you and I are SUPPOSEDLY BFFs.” So I took a deep breath and shrugged and said . . . “Whatever,” all angry-like.
Now you would THINK that if you were really best friends with a person, then that person would be able to TELL that even though you were saying “Whatever” you definitely didn’t mean “Whatever,” and that what you REALLY meant was, “How could you ditch me like this after we kind-of, sort-of just made up in your trailer because I totally saved your life with the pep talk I gave you, and the fact that you called me your best friend for the first time!?” But this particular so-called best friend couldn’t tell this. Nope—this particular so-called best friend was completely clueless and, instead, just waltzed away in her dumb-looking half-witch costume, leaving the other best friend sitting there yet again by herself, feeling yet again like an idiot.
It was like being friend-dumped all over again. Except instead of being able to avoid the dumper by hiding in the bathroom during lunch, I still had to live with her.
chapter 9
I know I’ve already written you a bunch of e-mails already today, but I’m still in serious need of help. Things with Laurel are really NOT good at the moment. Like they’re SO not good that I’ve almost totally forgotten about trying to figure out if I really do have a crush on Blair, because I’m too busy thinking about how mad I am, and how, the next time Mom and Alan say, “Hey—guess what? We have this really awesome surprise for you: you get to go to L.A. for some bonding time with your soon-to-be frister,” I’m going to say, “Thanks, but I think I’d rather spend a week either (a) locked in a room with Marissa, listening to her talk about her doll collection, or (b) walking over hot coals in bare feet.”
It’s seven at night, and instead of being at dinner with Laurel and Austin, and Murray and Sam, the producers of the movie (BTW—they produced all those comedies about Chopin, the talking cat. Did you ever see them? They were REALLY funny), I’m in the hotel room by myself eating a hamand-cheese sandwich with balsamic vinegar on top from Urth Caffé. It’s not like I wasn’t invited to dinner, because I was. But if I learned anything today, it’s that there’s no way I’m going to go where I’m not wanted. And believe me—if you saw the way that Laurel was treating me, you would see that I was very much not wanted. And when I said to Laurel, “Actually, I’m really tired, so instead of going to Dan Tana’s for dinner with you guys, even though I’m really hungry, because I never ended up finding craft services for lunch, I’m going to just go home,” she just said, “Okay. Then I’ll see you back there.” Not even, “Really, Lucy? You’re sure?” or “Hmm . . . that didn’t sound very convincing—you’re not lying by any chance, are you?”
I don’t know who to talk to about this. Unfortunately, I can’t call Mom because it’s three in the morning in Italy, and after freaking out that I was calling in the middle of the night and thinking there was a real emergency, she’d probably be mad that I woke her up. I tried calling Dad, but he and Sarah were on their way to a “How to Deliver Your New Baby in the Bathtub” lecture. I was right when I said it’s totally going to be all about the baby from now on. Plus, he would just say, “Be honest with Laurel about your feelings.” But there’s absolutely no way I’m doing THAT, because (a) she doesn’t deserve it, and (b) she wouldn’t listen anyway.
I really hope you get this and e-mail me back with some non-just-be-honest-about-your-feelings advice.
Thanks very much.
yours truly,
LUCY B. PARKER
Hanging out in a hotel room by yourself is really boring. Even if it is the Presidential Suite with a view of the Pacific Ocean and a welcome basket that’s so big you’ve eaten all the chocolate-covered almonds and peanut-butter pretzels and still haven’t made a dent in it. Which is why after my sandwich and an hour’s worth of The Real Twelfth Graders of Boston, I decided to go dip my toes in the ocean.
“Look, Frederick!” boomed a loud voice as I stepped out from the elevator into the lobby. “It’s that delightful young girl I was telling you about earlier—the one who eats bread!”
I turned beet red as a roomful of heads swiveled to get a look at the bread eater—i.e., me. Lady Countess Annabel Ashcroft de Winter von Taxi was sitting on the overstuffed couch next to a short bald man and pointing my way.
“It’s Lucy, correct?” she went on. “Lucy B. Parker?”
I couldn’t believe it. A huge star like Lady Countess Annabel Ashcroft de Winter von Taxi not only remembered my name, but she psychically knew that the “B” part of it was very important to me. I stood up a little taller. “Yes. Yes, it is,” I replied.
“Lucy B. Parker, I’d like you to meet my butler-slash-personal-assistant-slash-decorator, Frederick,” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, holding out my hand to the bald man.
“Enchanté,” he said, holding out his. I knew from Beatrice that that meant “enchanted” in French.
“I had no idea you were staying here, too!” she boomed. “What a wonderful little happy accident of fate!”
“You’re staying here?” I asked, confused. “I thought you lived in a big house in Beverly Hills with a tennis court and a swimming pool.” When you’re alone in your hotel room because you’ve been dumped by your frister, you have a lot of time to Google.
“I do, but I much prefer staying in hotels. Sometimes I go from hotel to hotel, depending on my mood. I just love room service. Now, Lucy B. Parker,” she said, grabbing at my hand with her ring- and bangle-covered one, “it’s been forever since we’ve seen each other—you must tell me everything that’s happened since then. I’m just dying to catch up.” It had been about ten hours. On most regular days if someone asked me that question, I wouldn’t have much to report (I had had a mixed-fractions pop quiz? I had stopped at Gray’s Papaya on my way home from school for a papaya drink?), but today was not a regular day.
“Why aren’t you out with that nice sister of yours? By the way—you were right. She really is wonderful. The way she didn’t complain in the least as I made the director do seven takes of my close-up!”
Maybe she used to be wonderful. But she sure wasn’t anymore. “Well . . . it’s a long story,” I replied.
“Oooh . . . I just adore long stories, don’t I, Frederick?”
“You do adore long stories, Lady Countess Annabel Ashcroft de Winter von Taxi,” he agreed.
“Frederick and I were planning on walking over to the Santa Monica Pier to play a little skee ball,” she said. “If you’re not busy, perhaps you’d like to join us. The walk over should give us more than enough time to hear the long story.”
“You like skee ball?” I asked, amazed. Next to bowling, it was my favorite sport.
“Oh yes—I have a machine in my mansion and everything.” She stood up and threw one end of her Indian-looking shawl over the shoulder of her caftan. “Now come on—we’d be just thrilled to have you come with us, wouldn’t we, Frederick?”
“Yes, Lady Countess Annabel Ashcroft de Winter von Taxi, we would,” he agreed, although he didn’t sound all that thrilled.
As we made our way out the front door of the hotel, I turned to her. “I completely understand if you say no, but I was wondering . . . Lady Countess Annabel Ashcroft de Winter von Taxi is a real mouthful. So do you think it would be okay if I just called you Lady A?”
From the way Frederick’s right eyebrow raised, it wasn’t.
“Hmm. No one’s ever asked me that before,” she said. “When you’re royalty—real or just Hollywood—that kind of thing just isn’t . . . done.”
Great. I had just completely insulted the one person in Hollywood who was talking to me.
“But I love it!” she boomed. “Lady A—that’s just fabulous !” She turned to Frederick. “Isn’t that just fabulous, Frederick?”
“Yes. Just fabulous, madame,” he agreed, although it didn’t really sound like he thought it
was.
“And you, Lucy B. Parker, are just fabulous, too!” she boomed.
I tried to give a smile, but it was hard because I sure wasn’t feeling fabulous lately. In fact, I was feeling pretty awful. About everything.
As we walked down Ocean Avenue to the pier, stopping every block or so so she could sign autographs (“You say your name is Esme? What a marvelous name? Lucy and Frederick, isn’t that just a marvelous name?”), I ended up telling her all about Laurel, and how she had changed when we arrived in L.A., and how I felt like she was dumping me for Austin.
“Oh, to be young again!” Lady A sighed as she threw the skee ball up the ramp. It was a good thing there was a net dividing the ramp from the others, or else the ball would’ve gone right into their holes. You were actually supposed to roll the ball, not throw it, but apparently no one had told her that part, and I was afraid it might be rude to do so. “The drama! The intrigue! The pathos! It’s just marvelous.” She turned to Frederick. “Isn’t it just marvelous, Frederick?”
“Yes. Just marvelous,” he agreed, standing beside her and holding her cotton candy, caramel corn, and snow cone. He sounded a little less bored than he had been at the hotel, but still bored. When I got back to the suite, I was going to have to look up pathos, because I wasn’t sure what it meant.
Finally, it was my turn. As I rolled the ball up the ramp, I tried not to get too many points, as I didn’t want to hurt Lady A’s feelings by beating her. “You wouldn’t happen to have any advice for me, would you?” I asked.
“Luckily for you, I absolutely do,” she said. “You see, I once had the very same thing happen with my sister back when I was around your age.”
“You did?” I gasped.
“Oh yes,” she said, crunching away on her caramel corn. “Once Martin de Kooning von Helson the Third entered the picture, she dropped me like last year’s Louis Vuitton bag. It was just awful.” She turned to Frederick and grabbed her snow cone from him. “Remember I told you about that, Frederick? Wasn’t it just awful?”
He nodded. “It did sound quite awful, Lady A.”
“And I was at that very tender age of first crushes, and first bras, and many other firsts, so I felt quite abandoned,” she said.
“That’s exactly how I feel!” I cried. I was so excited to be understood that I forgot that I was trying not to do well and rolled the ball right into the 40 points hole. “So what did you do?”
“Well, I sat her down, and I said, ‘Antonia, there’s something I need to talk to you about—’”
Uh-oh. I didn’t like where this was going. I didn’t want to sit down and talk to Laurel. As far as I was concerned, this situation had passed the point of being able to be discussed. “And then what?” I asked warily.
“And then I did a very un-British thing and screamed at her about how mad I was and how hurt and how, as far as I was concerned, she was the world’s most horrible sister.”
“And then what happened?” I asked.
“Well, she began to cry, and then she said she was sorry, and it was over,” she replied.
“That was it? Just like that, it was over?”
She nodded.
“Oh, I don’t know if I could do that,” I said.
“Why not, darling?” she asked, taking the skee ball from my hand. Frederick and I cringed as she lobbed it in an overhead pitch. Lady A may have had a mantel full of Academy Awards, but she sure wasn’t going to be winning any trophies for Best Skee Baller.
“Well, it just seems like the whole thing is past the point of discussing.”
“But unless you know for sure that Laurel can read minds like Kantu, my marvelous psychic who lives in the South of France, you don’t know if that’s the case,” Lady A said.
“Okay, yeah, but also . . . it scares me to fight with people,” I admitted. “I mean, with my parents, it’s okay, but with friends . . . I don’t know. I guess I worry that if we fight, they’ll go away forever.”
Lady A laughed her trademark combination tinkly-ho-ho-ho laugh. “Oh, darling, fighting is marvelous! It means you really care about the person!”
“It does?”
She nodded. “Of course. If you didn’t care about the person, you wouldn’t bother to fight with her, right?”
I thought about it. “I guess so.” I thought about the big fight I had had with Mom when she told me that if she married Alan we’d have to move to New York, and how the only way I had talked to her for the next few days was through Miss Piggy.
“Remember: communication is the key to happy, healthy relationships; and happy, healthy relationships are the key to a happy, healthy heart,” she said.
I gasped. That was Dr. Maude’s trademark line—the one she ended every show with. “You’re a Dr. Maude fan!”
“Oh yes. Frederick and I never miss her show, do we, Frederick?” she asked, grabbing for the candy apple he was holding.
“No, Lady A, we never do,” he replied.
Just as I was about to tell her that Dr. Maude and I were neighbors, we were interrupted by a guy’s voice: “Hey, is that Lady Countess Annabel Ashcroft de Winter von Taxi?” The three of us turned to see Connor Forrester, Austin’s worm-eating BFF, coming toward us. Like Austin, he was actually cuter in person. I mean, if you went for boys who had wavy brown hair the color of caramel and dimples and long eyelashes, which I did not. Or did I? Seeing that I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about boys and crushes, I had no idea what I went for. “Wow—it is!” he exclaimed.
I felt a weird tingly feeling in my spine when I heard him talk. I wondered if I was getting spinal meningitis, which is this weird disease that I had seen on a program on the Discovery Channel once. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it had the word spinal in it, so I figured this tingling could be it. But then I realized that weird tingly feeling was the kind of thing that might happen if a person had . . . a crush. But I didn’t have a crush on Connor Forrester. I had a crush on Blair. And Connor was a superstar. (I mean, yes, I needed to find a celebrity to have a crush on, but it needed to be one who was . . . I don’t know, less cute. And one who didn’t actually eat worms.)
“I’m going by Lady A now,” she replied.
“Oh cool. Because that’s a real mouthful,” Connor said. “Girls’ Guide to Sorcery, Part Four? You were seriously awesome in that.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Connor, by the way,” he said. Again with the celebrities introducing themselves! He pointed at my giant pretzel. “Hey, would you mind if I tore off a little piece of that?” he asked, not even waiting for a response before he did it. “I’m starved.”
Who did this guy think he was? I mean, yes, he was a big movie star; and, yes, every girl I knew had a crush on him. But that didn’t mean he could go around interrupting people’s conversations and just taking their food. And why wasn’t that tingly feeling going away? And why did my face suddenly feel all red and hot?
“Hey!” I said. “That’s my pretzel. I was eating that.”
“Wow. I don’t know if I’ve ever met a girl in L.A. who actually eats bread,” he said.
“I said the very same thing!” Lady A boomed.
“Well, that’s because I’m not from L.A.,” I said. “I’m from New York. And back there, we do eat bread.” I wanted to add, “At least we don’t eat worms,” but I didn’t.
He nodded. “Yeah, I can tell.”
My eyes narrowed.
“Hey, I mean it as a compliment. I swear.” He squinted. “Wait a minute—I know you! You’re the girl who plays the little sister in that show Laurina’s Lessons for Living.”
“What? No, I’m not!” I cried. “I’m Lucy B. Parker!” Why were my palms starting to sweat?
“You know, they really should give you an Emmy for that,” he went on. “I myself have never played anyone developmentally disabled like your character is, but I did do a guest role in a very special episode of Malibu 90265 as a football player suffering from dyslexia, and it was probably the most rewarding acting
experience I’ve ever had.”
Okay, I knew he meant it as a compliment, too, but still, having someone think you played a girl with special needs did not feel like one. In fact, it felt like an insult. Even though I had seen that show and the girl was a good actress. But this was good—it meant that now I definitely couldn’t have a crush on him. How could you have a crush on someone who insulted you? (Unless, of course, you were Alice. Max Rummel insulted her all the time.) “I’m not an actress,” I said. “I just happen to live with one.” I waited for the oversharing to start, but it didn’t. Phew. No oversharing meant that this was definitely not a crush then.
“Who?”
“Laurel Moses.”
“No way! My best friend Austin’s at dinner with her right now!” he said excitedly. His phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen. “Sorry. I have to take this—it’s my agent.” He looked at me and flashed a smile. “Nice meeting you all,” he said. “Bye, Lucy.”
I could understand that if you were going to crush on someone, that someone should probably have a really great smile, like Connor did, but it didn’t matter how nice his smile was, because I clearly did not have a crush on him. Because if I did, I would’ve gotten all tongue-tied, like Laurel had around Austin, and obviously that hadn’t happened.
“Ta!” trilled Lady A.
I opened my mouth to say good-bye, but nothing came out other than a weird choking noise. Like when Laurel met Austin. Or like when Miss Piggy was about to cough up a hairball.
Uh-oh. This was not good.
chapter 10
Dear Dr. Maude,
I was hoping to find an e-mail from you when I woke up this morning, but no luck. To be honest, I even got out of bed at one in the morning to check because I happened to be awake on account of the whole Connor Forrester thing.