Better You Than Me

by Jessica Brody

  She gives me what I think is supposed to be an encouraging smile. “Good. I think we finally have a strategy.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “What is it?”

  “We’re going to announce the fifth season of Ruby of the Lamp. The Celebrity Spot is on their way over to film an exclusive interview with you about it. We think it will rally enough excitement from the fans to drown out the other stuff. And if not, the Channel is prepared to move forward with Lemonade Stand-Off Two.”

  I frown. “There’s a sequel to Lemonade Stand-Off?”

  She laughs. “There will be, if there needs to be. The Xoom! folks think if you and Carey sign up to do another TV movie together, it will prove that the whole thing is water under the bridge.”

  “Is it?” I ask. “Water under the bridge?”

  She smiles kindly. “It will be. Eventually. Just let the adults handle it.”

  Lesley reaches out to smooth the wrinkle that is obviously forming between my eyes. It’s this small action that tells me that she and Ruby must have a special kind of bond. It immediately makes me feel closer to her, even though I technically just met her this morning.

  Lesley leans her head back against the wall with a sigh. “I always thought that this business was too much pressure for a kid. I’ve seen too many child celebrities fall apart under the weight of it. But audiences are just obsessed with young stars, so the networks and studios keep making shows and movies for them. If it were up to me, children wouldn’t be allowed in Hollywood at all.”

  This takes me by surprise. “But you work in Hollywood.”

  She nods. “Exactly. That’s how I know.” Then, after a long stretch of silence, she groans and rises to her feet. “C’mon. Let’s get you dressed. The Celebrity Spot will be here in an hour.”

  This isn’t happening.

  This is NOT happening.

  I stare in bewilderment at the TV screen as Chad Darcy of The Celebrity Spot shoves an iPad into Skylar’s hands. Meanwhile, across the screen, they’ve posted their breaking news Star Snoop! headline:

  Ruby Rivera disses “BFF” Carey Divine

  “What did you do?” I shout at the screen. At Skylar. At myself.

  But, obviously, Skylar-Ruby doesn’t answer. In fact, she doesn’t do much of anything. She seems frozen to the spot, her eyes wide as she takes in the headline.

  “So, what do you have to say about this?” Chad asks with a sneer. I hate when they do that. When they jab at you like they’re poking at an open wound. Here. Does this hurt? How about now? What if I pour salt in it and then push on it?

  Skylar looks like she’s about to start crying right there on the red carpet.

  “Don’t do it,” I command her. “Do NOT cry.”

  Thankfully, she listens. She doesn’t cry. I almost breathe out a sigh of relief. That is until I watch in horror at what Skylar does next. She bolts. The cameraman swings the camera toward her, zooming in to follow her as she literally books it down the red carpet like an Olympic sprinter. Although, she’s hardly an Olympic sprinter in that ridiculous dress my mother most definitely picked out for her.

  “Well,” Chad is saying after the camera focuses back on him. “That was interesting. If you want more on our Ruby/Carey Star Snoop!, be sure to log on to our website, or follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-second celebrity news and—”

  I punch the pause button on the remote, freezing obnoxious Chad with his obnoxious mouth open. I run back into Skylar’s room and yank open her desk drawer, where I hid her phone. I swipe it on, cringing as I wait for all the notifications to pop up. Missed calls from Skylar. But the screen is blank.

  That’s odd.

  Is there a chance she hasn’t seen the photo Daniella posted?

  Not that it matters. I might have messed up royally last night, but it appears Skylar has messed up even more. I navigate to the Celebrity Spot website and scroll through the feed until I find information on the story. I don’t have to go far. It’s the third post down.

  UPDATE on Ruby/Carey Feud

  My stomach seems to drop to my knees. This isn’t good. They’ve already upgraded it to a “feud.” That means Carey has retaliated. That means it’s full-on war now. My house is probably buzzing with publicists and executives trying to figure out the best way to spin this.

  How did this even start? I quickly scan the article, but the answer is somewhat unclear. It seems as though Skylar spilled the beans to someone about my make-believe friendship with Carey and that person sold their story to The Celebrity Spot. But who would Skylar have told? And when? She’s barely even been in my life for a full weekend. When would she have had time to blab all this to someone?

  I click over to my feed—Ruby Rivera’s feed. The one I barely even look at. Mom manages all my social media. She posts all the pictures and writes all the captions. And then, of course, there’s the entire team of publicists that sits around deleting all the negative comments. Apparently, it’s a full-time job.

  I cringe when I see my follower count. It’s dropped by over a hundred thousand people.

  That’s bad. That’s very bad.

  But even as I sit there, scrolling through the comments left on the most recent post, there’s this little nagging voice in the back of my head that keeps asking, Why do you care?

  And it kind of has a point. Who cares if I lose a million followers? I don’t care about that life. I don’t care about that whole Hollywood world anymore.

  At least, I shouldn’t.

  I’m just about to close the app and vow not to look at it again, when something appears at the top of Ruby Rivera’s feed. It’s a brand-new post. A video. It has the iconic Celebrity Spot logo in the bottom corner, meaning it’s a repost from their account. And the caption reads:

  Hey you guys! Check out my BIG EXCITING NEWS!

  Curiously, warily, I press play.

  And that’s when my entire life explodes before my very eyes. Because apparently, in the three days that Skylar has been living in my body, she’s not only managed to ruin my career, she’s also managed to ruin my life.

  “Hi, everyone! Ruby Rivera here! And I’m ecstatic to bring you this exclusive Celebrity Spot Star Snoop! For you die-hard fans of my show, it’s time to get excited, because it’s official! I am returning for a fifth season of Ruby of the Lamp!”

  I take a deep breath.

  Do it, Skylar. Just do it. It’s easy. Turn it on.

  I stand in the middle of Ruby’s closet, clutching her phone in my hands. I’ve just finished filming the exclusive Star Snoop! with the people from The Celebrity Spot (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d ever say in my life), and now it’s time to face the music. Time to face Ruby Rivera.

  I swipe on the phone and wait, convinced that any minute, the phone is going to light up and explode with alerts of text messages and missed calls. It does. But shockingly, none of them are from my number. None of them are from Ruby.

  How is that possible?

  The news is everywhere!

  Has she not seen the news? Has she not turned on a TV or opened a web browser or a social media app?

  What on earth has she been doing?

  I open my feed—Skylar Welshman—and scroll through to see if Ruby has posted anything from yesterday or today, but she hasn’t. The latest picture on the feed is the one she was tagged in from her trip to the mall with the Ellas.

  That’s weird.

  I click on posts that Skylar Welshman has been tagged in and the first thing on the list is a video posted late last night from Leah. Curiously, I click on it and my heart squeezes as I see my best friend’s face fill the screen.

  “OMG! OMG!” she’s saying into the camera. “I can’t believe it! Ruby Rivera did a shout-out to me in one of her videos. THE Ruby Rivera! Star of Ruby of the Lamp! Skylar, did you see it? Did you see? Everyone go to her
feed now and watch it! She actually names me by name and thanks me for being a fan!” Then she opens her mouth and literally screams for three seconds straight.

  A smile makes its way across my face. The first one in hours. In all the chaos of yesterday, I completely forgot that I’d posted that video for Leah. I rewind the video and let it play again, watching how happy she is. At least I was able to make one person happy in all this.

  I pause the video while she’s midscream. She looks jubilant. She looks radiant. She looks exactly how I would have looked if Ruby Rivera had posted a video about me. Before all this happened. Before I messed everything up.

  In this very moment, I miss Leah more than I’ve ever missed her. But even more than that, I miss who I was when I was her best friend. Just her best friend.

  Not a celebrity.

  Not the most famous twelve-year-old in the country.

  Not the star of a hit show.

  Just a girl.

  Just a fan.

  I close the video and continue scrolling through the posts. But I don’t get very far. Because the next picture is one posted by Daniella. And as soon as I see it, all the blood in my veins turns to ice.

  Bile starts to rise in my throat. I swallow hard to keep it down. My eyes desperately try to take in all the information at once. The picture, the caption, the likes, the comments, the…

  Vomit?

  Is that seriously vomit?

  The Ellas actually took a picture of Ruby throwing up?

  Of course not, a voice inside of me says. Since when do the Ellas ever post anything real?

  I can’t believe Ruby let this happen. I can’t believe she trusted them after I warned her not to. I can’t believe she’s actually managed to make my life worse than it already was.

  With shaking fingers, I click on the Phone app and start to dial my own phone number—ready to give Ruby a piece of my mind—but before I can even get past the area code, the phone starts ringing in my hand with an incoming video call.

  It’s Ruby.

  “What did you do?” I roar as soon as my face appears on the screen.

  Skylar’s all made-up from the interview she just filmed, but her mascara is slightly smeared, as though she’s been crying.

  “Me?” she screeches back. “What about you?”

  I cringe. So she does know. But I don’t care. I’m too mad to deal with her tiny little problems right now. I need to deal with my massively huge big problems. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. You started a feud with Carey Divine and then agreed to star in another season of the show? That was not your decision to make! You had no right to do that!”

  She looks confused. “Wait, you mean you don’t want to do another season?”

  “No!” I say, throwing my free hand in the air. “I was going to quit!”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know that?”

  “Didn’t you hear a single word I said in the prop room? I hate everything about my life. I was going to quit and—”

  “So why didn’t you?” she interrupts me, her brows pinched together.

  Her question pokes holes in my resolve…and my anger. I start to deflate. Then, as if she can sense my hesitation, she asks, “Were you really going to quit?”

  I close my eyes for just a moment. I let out a breath. I hear the answer deep within me. Like the far-off voice of some far-off person I’ve always wanted to be but never have had the courage to become. The kind of person who’s brave enough to tell her mother how she’s really feeling, to put her foot down, to take control of her own life. To speak her mind.

  No.

  That’s the real answer to Skylar’s question. I was never going to build up the guts to talk to my mother. I was never going to be that person. But what about now? Could I stand up to my mom and tell her the truth? Or would I just cave again?

  “Well,” Skylar prompts, leaning in to the camera as though she’s trying to see right through me. “Were you?”

  And maybe she can see right through me. Maybe living a few days in my skin has given her some sort of insight into the pathetic coward I really am.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I snap impatiently. “You had no right to sign on to another season of that stupid show without my permission.”

  “It’s not a stupid show,” Skylar defends. “It’s an amazing show, and if you quit, you’re going to let down millions of fans.”

  “You mean I’m going to let down you? If I don’t do the show, you’ll be disappointed.”

  She snorts at this. “Trust me, you’ve already let me down. I’ve seen Daniella’s picture. Didn’t you listen to anything I said? About not trusting the Ellas? You were just supposed to go in there and get a good grade for me in Language Arts. You weren’t supposed to make my life worse than it already was! I could have done that all on my own.”

  Her words punch me in the stomach. Because they’re true. They’re right. That’s exactly what I was supposed to do. Make her life better, not worse. And I truly thought I was. I thought middle school would be easy.

  But it turns out it’s not. It’s really, really not.

  It’s freaking hard.

  I’m sorry, I want to say. But all that seems to come out is anger. “You mean like you making my life better?” I growl. “You were just supposed to film one stupid episode, kiss one stupid boy. And you couldn’t even manage to do that without messing it up.”

  Skylar goes very quiet. Every few seconds, her body shudders quietly with another bout of hiccups. They look so strange coming out of my mouth. For a moment, I wonder if she’s going to apologize. She looks like she’s going to apologize. If she apologizes, I will, too. I know it. I’ll break down and cry and tell her how sorry I am. How right she was about everything. How hard her life really is.

  But she doesn’t apologize. Instead, her eyes squint as she stares intently into the camera, like she’s looking for something. “Wait, where’s my mom? It’s Sunday. She never leaves the house on Sunday. She always stays home to catch up on her reading.”

  I glance behind me at the empty living room and the empty reading chair that must have caught her attention. “Uh…she’s out,” I say vaguely.

  Her forehead crinkles. “Out? Where?”

  “Actually,” I say, trying to brighten my voice, “she’s on a date.”

  Skylar makes a strange strangled kind of sound. “A date?” Then her voice fills with eagerness. “Oh my gosh! Is my dad there? Did he fly out from Amherst to surprise her?”

  I cringe, knowing she’s not going to like what I’m about to say. “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The truth is going to break her heart. But it’s for the best. “She’s on a date with Clint.”

  Now she just looks confused again. “Who’s Clint?”

  I perk up, hoping my enthusiasm will rub off on her. “Oh, he’s this really cute guy from her work. He’s another professor in the literature department. Totally nice. And sweet. And he has this major crush on her. You should see them together. They’re like teenagers. After I saw them flirting at the university cafeteria, I told your mom she should totally go out with him and—”

  “YOU DID WHAT?” she thunders.

  I wince. “You would have done the same thing if you had seen how happy she looked.”

  “No I wouldn’t!” she vows, and I can see the angry tears pooling in her eyes. “How could you betray me like that? And my dad! You’ve ruined everything!”

  “No,” I rush to tell her. “I didn’t. I swear she really looked happy. Happier than I’ve ever seen her.”

  Skylar scoffs, looking away from the camera like she can’t even meet my eye.

  “I know she wanted to go,” I tell her. “She just needed me…you to be okay with it.”

  “Well, I’m not
okay with it.”

  “Why not?” I press.

  She throws her free hand in the air. “Because my parents might have gotten back together. But if she goes off and falls in love with someone else, then—”

  “Skylar,” I say in a gentle voice. “I don’t think they’re getting back together.”

  “What do you know?” she snaps. “You’ve known her for three days. I’ve known her my whole life.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I just mean—” I begin to say, but she doesn’t let me finish.

  Her anger seems to boil over until it’s spewing from her mouth in the most hurtful words. The kind you can’t take back. “You just don’t know what it’s like to have a dad. So you don’t know what it’s like to lose one.”

  I swallow hard, heat rushing to my face and tears rushing to my eyes. I can’t believe she just said that to me. “And you,” I seethe, “are so obsessed with what you want, you’re completely blind to what anyone else wants.”

  Her eyes narrow at me. I can tell her breathing has gone completely wonky. She sounds like she’s breathing through a mask. For a moment, she just glares at me, and I’m afraid she’s going to say something even worse than the dad remark. What could possibly be worse than the dad remark?

  But she doesn’t.

  Instead, she says exactly what I’m thinking at the exact moment I’m thinking it. “I want to change back.”

  It’s settled. Our original plan is moving forward as scheduled. I’m going to South Coast Plaza for my autograph session at four o’clock, and Ruby is going to meet me. I’ll bring the lamp and we’ll sneak off somewhere, make the wish to change back, and presto. This nightmare will all be over. I’ll be back in my old life by dinnertime.