Better You Than Me

by Jessica Brody

  Daniella’s mouth falls open. She closes it a second later.

  “Want me to show you?” I offer.

  She shrugs. “Whatever.”

  I take that as a yes. I carefully dip a brush into the blush compact and move toward Daniella’s face. She leans back and points to Gabriella. “Do it on her.”

  “Okay.” I redirect my brush to Gabriella and get to work. I’ve been watching Cami do this on my own face for four years. The movements come easy to me. Once I’m done, Gabriella looks at herself in the mirror and beams. Her cheeks have just the right amount of color. She looks like she’s blushing from a compliment.

  “Not bad, right?” I ask Daniella, who studies Gabriella’s face with what appears to be detached interest.

  “It’s okay,” she says, but I can tell she’s impressed.

  “Well,” I say, setting down my tools and brushing the blush residue from my hands. “If you want more tips, you know where to find me.”

  And with that, I swivel on my heels and turn toward the door. When I get back into the hallway, I’m careful not to let the door close all the way so I can listen in through the crack.

  “That was kind of amazing,” Isabella is saying. “Look how good Gabriella’s cheeks look!”

  Daniella doesn’t agree or disagree. She just mumbles something that sounds like “Let me try that. Give me the blush.”

  I smile and ease the bathroom door shut.

  My work here is done.

  My heart is pounding as I follow behind Barry through the soundstage and down a long, scary hallway. It takes me a moment to realize it’s the same hallway I came down yesterday when I was running from that security guard.

  Barry stops at a door marked “Writers’ Room.” He opens it to reveal a long conference table with ten chairs. Except none of them are filled. A group of people are gathered around a laptop in the front of the room, all pointing and laughing at something on the screen. When they see Barry, they all freeze. One of the men shuts the laptop and everyone scurries to their seats.

  “What’s so funny?” Barry asks, although from the tone of his voice, I don’t think he actually wants to know. Still, he saunters over to the closed laptop, opens it, and presses a key. Whatever the group was looking at suddenly appears on a giant projector screen in the center of the room. The guy who shut the laptop holds his hands over his heart, like he’s about to pass out.

  On the screen is a video with the title “Barry’s Breakdowns.”

  Barry cocks a single furry eyebrow. “Interesting.” The room is deathly silent as the video plays. It’s exactly as the title suggests. A collection of scenes, set to music, in which Barry Berkowitz is having some kind of tantrum. He’s either yelling at someone, throwing script pages into the air, or just seething quietly, his face turning almost purple. There’s even a scene where he’s angrily stuffing a powdered doughnut into his face while white powder sprays everywhere. This scene is slowed way down so it looks like the powder from the doughnut is gracefully falling snow.

  I bite my lip to keep from laughing. I can actually feel the tension in the room. I wait for Barry to explode. And from the way the writers are all sitting stiff-backed and ramrod-straight in their chairs, I’m guessing they’re waiting for the same thing.

  But it never comes.

  Instead, Barry stops the video and calmly says, “While you so-called writers”—he actually makes air quotes with his fingers—“were playing movie editor, this clever young girl was finding plot flaws in the season finale script.”

  Clever? Did he just say “clever”? Clever is good, right?

  He nudges me with his elbow. “Tell them what you told me, Ruby.”

  I clear my throat and try to speak in an unwavering voice. “Miles’s great-aunt Clarence died in season two.”

  “Season two,” Barry snaps, spit flying from his lips and landing in little tiny puddles on the table. “Who’s in charge of consistency issues?”

  One nervous-looking guy raises his hand.

  Barry shoots him a look and I wonder if he’s going to fire him on the spot.

  “Well, congratulations, Rick. You’ve just been outsmarted by a child.”

  Rick bows his head, looking ashamed.

  Barry turns to me, his voice surprisingly gentle when he speaks. “Did you find any other problems with the script?”

  “Um,” I say anxiously. Every single pair of eyes in the room is on me. “Actually, on page seventeen it says that Ruby is researching a genie named Balthazar—”

  “We’ve never used the name Balthazar on the show,” one of the female writers interrupts, obviously thinking I was going to point out that this character was dead, too.

  “Technically, no,” I say. “But you had a Balthazan in season one.”

  All the writers look to each other, clearly trying to figure out if anyone remembers this.

  “It was a small part,” I explain quickly. “He didn’t even speak. Rogue Raymond hired him for a day to sort through a pile of dirt that was brought to the junkyard, remember? Raymond thought he might find gold in the dirt, but he didn’t.”

  The writers stop looking at each other and turn their gazes back to me with stupefied expressions.

  “But that’s not the problem,” I go on. “The problem is that Ruby is researching Balthazar because he was supposedly with her mother the night she disappeared. But in season three, episode five, Ruby learned that her mother was with an old friend named Jenika.”

  More stunned silence. Barry gives me a pat on the back and lets out a deep guffaw. “It’s a good thing someone is paying attention around here! Maybe I should hand over your jobs to a bunch of twelve-year-olds.”

  “Okay,” one of the male writers says, “we’ll just change Balthazar to Jenika and be done with it.”

  Barry looks to me, waiting for my reaction to this idea.

  “Actually, you can’t,” I say, wincing slightly.

  The writer who just spoke gives me an annoyed look. “And why not?”

  “Because Jenika changed her name and moved to Greece. Ruby already tried to track her down in season three, episode eight, and it led to another dead end.”

  Barry tosses his hands up in frustration. “Why isn’t any of this in the series bible?”

  Rick jumps out of his seat and grabs a thick white binder from a shelf in the corner and starts thumbing through the pages. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I guess I missed a few episodes.”

  Barry rolls his eyes. “You think?”

  “Maybe,” a writer in a plaid shirt puts in, “Jenika is the one who put Ruby’s mom in the lamp in the first place?”

  I immediately shake my head. “Nope. Ruby’s mom told her in the dream that the genie who put her in the lamp was a man.”

  “Is this really that important?” Plaid Shirt writer asks. “Are kids really going to care?”

  “Of course they’ll care!” I shout. Then I quickly recoil and tell myself to calm down. “I mean, I know my fans. They care. And you’ve been stringing them along for four seasons with this mother story line. You need to give them something. You can’t keep them waiting another four seasons. They need to find out what happened to Ruby’s mom! They’re getting tired of all these dead ends! They want answers!” I’ve gotten myself all worked up again, but I don’t care. These writers need to hear this. They need to hear what the fans really think.

  “Fine,” Plaid Shirt writer says, challenging me. “How would you fix it?”

  I feel a rush of heat to my cheeks. This is it. This is my chance. How many nights did Leah and I stay up late brainstorming ideas for how Ruby could finally be reunited with her mother? How many times did we sit around dreaming about being able to give the writers of this show a piece of our minds? And now that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

  I take a deep
breath, pull out one of the empty chairs, and sit down. “Well,” I begin importantly, “let me tell you what I think should happen.”

  It takes me a few minutes, but I finally manage to locate my locker and dial in the combination. I yank up on the lever, but the locker doesn’t open. Did I remember it wrong? Maybe I should have written it down. Or maybe there’s some special way to open a locker that I don’t know about. I’ve never actually opened a locker before. We have lockers on set, but they’re all fake. The locks don’t really lock. All I have to do is pretend to turn the dial and then lift the lever.

  I feel myself starting to get flustered as I stare down the blue metal door.

  “I will conquer you,” I tell the lock.

  I’m the star of the most popular kids’ show on TV; I can open a stupid locker!

  I take a deep breath, calming myself down, and try again.

  I’m just turning the knob to 15 when I hear a voice behind me say, “You’re doing it wrong.”

  I turn to see a skinny boy with shaggy blond hair squinting at me like I’m from another planet. And I guess I might as well be. It’s called Planet Hollywood.

  “You have to turn it the opposite way on each number,” he says. “And you have to pass the first number once before you get to the second.”

  Huh?

  He must see the confusion on my face because he says, “Haven’t you done this every day for the past month?”

  “Uh,” I say, trying to find a reasonable explanation, “I guess I just forgot.”

  He nods like he gets it. “One of those mornings, huh?”

  “You have no idea.”

  He grins eagerly back at me, and suddenly I feel a little weak in the knees. This boy is really cute. And he’s looking at me like he’s…like he’s…

  The realization hits me like a truck.

  He totally has a crush on me! Or, rather, on Skylar.

  It’s so obvious. It’s written all over his face. What do I do? Flirt with him? Ask him out? Kiss him right here in front of everyone?

  The truth is, I have no idea what normal twelve-year-olds do when they have a crush on someone. Not that my mom would ever let me date anyone. It would ruin that perfect wholesome image she’s worked so hard to build over the past four years.

  “So, do you want me to help you?” the boy asks apprehensively.

  “Help me?” I repeat. “With what?”

  He looks nervous. “With the locker.”

  Duh.

  I got so wrapped up in the whole crush revelation, I completely forgot about the stupid locker. I scoot aside. “Yes, please.”

  He steps up to the locker and clears his throat loudly. “So, um, what’s your combination?”

  “One, fifteen, twenty-nine,” I tell him, and then watch as he turns the dial to 1, then reverses direction, spinning it the other way, all the way past the 1, until he gets to the 15. Then he reverses again and finishes off on the 29. I hear a faint click and he pulls up on the lever, opening the door wide and then gesturing grandly, like he’s presenting a gift to the queen.

  I let out a grateful sigh. “Thanks!”

  “No problem.” His gaze darts anxiously up and down the hallway, like he’s a spy running from an enemy agent and he only has five seconds until he’s located. “I was…just…um…wondering something.” He runs his fingers through his hair, causing the ends to stick up a little. “Were you planning on going to the dance tomorrow night?”

  Skylar never mentioned a dance! I guess she wasn’t planning on going. But I certainly am. There’s no way I’m missing a real school dance.

  “Yes!” I blurt out. “I’m totally going!”

  And there’s that smile again. It’s so adorable, I want to pinch his cheeks. Obviously, I don’t do that, though.

  He shifts his weight from foot to foot, looking nervous again. “Oh, great. Well, I was kind of wondering if—”

  But his words are cut off when a group of boys walks by—the same obnoxious ones who called me Belchman earlier—and one of them bumps roughly into me. I stumble forward, crash right into the cute shaggy-haired boy, and for a brief, embarrassing moment, we’re…like…hugging.

  I hastily jump back as I watch his face turn a deep shade of red. He looks about as mortified as I feel.

  “Sorry about that!” I rush to say.

  “Don’t worry about it. Those guys are jerks.”

  But I’m still so embarrassed. “Well,” I say, glancing anxiously around. “We should probably get to class, right?”

  “Oh…yeah. Right.”

  He suddenly looks devastated. Like I’ve just told him I ran over his dog. Did I miss something?

  I clear my throat and point to my locker. “So, thanks so much for your help, um…” I mean to say his name at the end of the sentence, but I soon realize I don’t actually know it. And it’s not like I can ask. If this boy has a crush on Skylar, she obviously knows him. But now I’m just stuck hanging here in the middle of the sentence. I can’t back out. I can’t pretend I wasn’t going to say his name. It’s already obvious that I was!

  I search my mental notes, trying to remember if Skylar mentioned a cute boy.

  But I really don’t think she did.

  “You don’t remember my name,” he says, looking extremely hurt.

  Crud.

  “Of course I do!” I say quickly. “It’s…it’s…” But I have no idea where I’m going with this. It’s not like I’m going to be able to guess his name randomly out of all the names in the English language. “What does it start with?”

  His shoulders slump. “E.”

  “Edward!” I yell, a bit too loudly.

  He seems to shrivel up even more. “No.”

  “Edgar?”

  “Ethan,” he says, apparently growing tired of the game.

  “Ethan! Right. That was totally going to be my next guess.”

  “Sure, whatever,” he mumbles. “See you later.” Then he turns and walks down the hallway, looking dejected.

  “Bye, Ethan!” I call out brightly.

  He lifts his hand in a weak wave but doesn’t turn around. I feel a stab of guilt in my chest. I think about running after him and apologizing again, but just then, the loudest, most obnoxious shrill sound rings out across the entire hallway, making me jump.

  What on earth was that?

  Was it some kind of fire alarm? Do we need to evacuate the building or something?

  “Come on,” a deep voice says behind me. “First-period bell has rung. Time to get to class.” I turn around to see a large forbidding-looking man wearing a name tag that says “Principal Keene.”

  “That was the bell?” I ask in disbelief.

  “Yes,” he replies gruffly. “Which means you’re late.”

  “You know,” I begin wisely, “you should really think about changing that to something more soothing and melodic. That sound is very distressing.”

  The principal glares down at me like I’m a bug he wants to crush under his shoe. “You know what’s even more distressing? Detention. Now get to class.”

  I quickly spin on my heels, racing down the hallway. I have no idea where Skylar’s first-period class is, but I’m smart enough not to hang around that guy any longer.

  As I leave the writers’ room, I feel like I’m walking on air. Floating in space. Dancing on clouds. The writers of Ruby of the Lamp are going to use my idea for resolving the Ruby/mother story line. My idea! They loved it! And they’re going to incorporate it into the next season! We sat around for over an hour just hashing out the details and brainstorming possibilities. It was so much fun!

  Barry looked really impressed, too. He sat down next to me and listened intently as I laid out my plan: First, Ruby and Miles find a lead to the woman who was with Ruby’s mother the night she disappeared
. Then they track her down in Greece and she gives them another lead to where the lamp holding Ruby’s mom prisoner might be. Ruby and Miles keep following leads on the lamp until it brings them all the way back to Rogue Raymond’s Junkyard! That’s when they discover that the lamp from Ruby’s dream has been right under their noses the entire time!

  It’s been buried under a pile of rubbish in the junkyard!

  “Bravo!” Barry said after I finished. “All great stories end where they began. Back home. It’s The Wizard of Oz. Ruby slippers.” Then he guffawed and pointed at me. “Ruby slippers!”

  I could tell from the looks of the writers in the room that they’d never seen Barry so jovial before.

  “Well done, Ruby,” Barry says as we walk back down the hallway. “It’s nice to see you taking such an interest in the show.” Then he actually puts his arm around my shoulders!

  I beam up at him. “Thanks!”

  I can’t believe this is happening. I wish I could tell Leah. After all, she and I had the idea about the lamp being in Rogue Raymond’s Junkyard two seasons ago. Of course, I can’t. She’ll never believe I’m actually Ruby Rivera.

  Although I might have a better idea.

  But it looks like it’ll have to wait, because when we get back to the center of the soundstage, the set of Chaz’s Diner is already lit up and buzzing with people. The five extras I met outside are seated at a few of the booths with plates of food in front of them. They all smile and wave at me and I quickly wave back.

  “You ready to rock these last few scenes of the episode?” Barry asks me.

  “Absolutely!” I say.

  Barry puts his hand up for me to high-five, and I do. He lets out a chuckle and I can’t help but laugh, too. It’s like he’s suddenly a whole different person.

  Russ scurries over and leads me onto the set. He sits me down on one side of a booth. Cami immediately rushes over and starts dusting my face with powder. “Um, am I hallucinating, or did Barry just give you a high five?” Cami asks in disbelief.