And the Winner Is...#18

by Melissa J Morgan

  “Sorry,” Grace said again. “Bye.”

  “Bye.” Brynn closed her phone. She opened the door to the theater to see how far the first scene had gotten. Very far. She needed to get to her place backstage. Now.

  Had she really hurt Jordan that badly? So badly he couldn’t even communicate with her? Just thinking about it had tears stinging Brynn’s eyes again.

  Use the emotion, she told herself. Another acting book had advised that. It had said to use every emotion you felt in your regular life in your craft. In the scene Brynn was about to do, Miranda was supposed to be distraught and horrified over the shipwreck that had just happened.

  Distraught and horrified. Brynn could do that. It would be way too easy.

  Tori’s cell gave a meow. If that was Natalie texting an apology, she could forget it. There was nothing she could say that would make Tori forgive her.

  “You’re missing the best part,” Michael complained as Tori flipped open her phone. “The giant snake is about to eat half the boat.”

  “Michael, it’s our third snake movie of the night. I think I’ve seen pretty much everything a snake of any size can do,” Tori told him as she checked her message. It was from Chelsea.

  Pix of Nat all over the Internet. Check out LAglitz. And check out the big smile on her face. Guess she’s not too upset by your post on the blog, huh?

  Tori snapped her cell closed and leaped to her feet.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Michael called as she strode from the room.

  She rushed to the closest computer—the one in the kitchen—and logged on. She typed “LAglitz” into Google, and in seconds she had the site open with Natalie’s big, stupid grinning face staring at her.

  “I didn’t know the dads were going with Reed and Natalie,” Michael said as he leaned over her shoulder to get a closer look at the picture. “Guess that’s why they ended up at the Ivy.”

  The Ivy. Nice. Natalie was out at a swanky place, surrounded by celebs—and a very cute boy that Tori had introduced her to. That smile made it very clear she was having big fun.

  It also made it clear that she didn’t care at all about the fight she and Tori had had. Very nice.

  chapter

  ELEVEN

  “So what do you think? Best hot dog— Pink’s here or Gray’s Papaya in New York?” Reed asked. He and Natalie stood on the sidewalk near Pink’s hot dog stand, one of the most popular places in Hollywood. There was always a line at Pink’s, no matter what time of day.

  Natalie took another bite of her Guadalajara dog—relish, onions, and tomatoes topped with sour cream. She chewed slowly, trying to think about Reed’s question. But what she ended up thinking about was Tori. Tori loved Pink’s. And she and Natalie had planned to come have hot dogs together after the Academy Awards. They were going to swing by before the Governor’s Ball. In their fancy clothes. In the limo. It would be just like when Hillary Swank went to Astro Burger with her Oscar.

  “Well?” Reed prompted.

  She couldn’t tell him that she hadn’t even tasted her hot dog. She’d been eating, but not tasting. “Tough call,” she answered. She tossed the last bit of the dog into the trash. If she wasn’t going to taste it, why eat it?

  “That’s sacrilegious,” Reed said. “Nobody throws away a Pink’s.”

  “Usually I’d be getting in line for a second. But my stomach is all knotted,” Natalie admitted. “Maybe I’m just nervous about the Oscars. Nervous for my dad. He’s never been nominated before.”

  “Mine’s been nominated three times. Never won. I think he’s kind of looking forward to watching the whole thing on the tube tonight. He hates dressing up,” Reed replied.

  “I love it. And speaking of dressing up…” She checked her watch. “I should go. I have a fitting in a little bit. Lulu’s doing my dress. She won Project Runway last year. Do you watch it?” Natalie asked.

  “Hello. I’m a guy type person, remember?” Reed asked.

  “Oh, right,” Natalie said, like she’d just realized it.

  Tori would know who Lulu is, Natalie couldn’t help herself from thinking.

  “So, I guess I’ll see you later,” Reed told Natalie.

  “Yep,” she answered, forcing a smile. Then she gave him a quick hug and walked over to the town car. Bingley was leaning against it, finishing a chili cheese dog. “These things should be illegal,” he said as he opened the door for Nat. “They are that good.”

  “Uh-huh,” Natalie said. She hadn’t even managed to get her whole hot dog down, and she was feeling nauseous. This should be an amazing day, she thought as they began the drive home. Pink’s with Reed. And now I’m about to meet Lulu, who is going to show me her new designs. Which I’ll be wearing to the Academy Awards. Why does it feel like I’ve been to the dentist and am now about to take back-to-back tests in every subject? Even ones I’ve never heard of.

  She let out a sigh. Come on. Don’t let Tori ruin everything, she pep-talked herself. You did everything you could. You apologized and explained, then apologized and explained some more. It’s not your fault Tori is stubborn and unforgiving and horrible.

  “Looks like your dress shop has arrived,” Bingley commented, pulling into the circular driveway. He nodded to two young guys pushing a wheeled clothing rack toward the house, followed by Lulu. She’d changed her hair since she was on the TV show. Now it was in a sleek bob, a pale lavender sleek bob.

  Tori would love that, Natalie thought.

  Why did she have to keep thinking about Tori?

  “You have to be Natalie,” Lulu called as Nat climbed out of the car.

  “I have to be,” Natalie agreed.

  “We’re going to have fun. I brought over all my newest stuff for us to play with. I just started a line I’m calling A-Tire. It’s clothes that are made out of recycled tires and inner tubes. I got really into recycled material after we had that junkyard challenge on Runway.”

  Natalie opened the front door for the guys with the clothes rack. They wheeled it in to the large foyer. “Stop here,” Lulu told them. “The rack’s a pain to move around. Why don’t we grab some stuff you like and then take them to your room? Does that work?”

  “Sounds great,” Natalie answered.

  “Excellent.” Lulu took off her huge sunglasses, then pulled a long, black dress off the rack. “This is one of the A-Tire ones. I found a way to get the rubber soft enough to ruffle. Feel.”

  Natalie reached out and fingered one of the shiny ruffles that cascaded from the neck of the dress all the way to the floor. It was really soft. “I love the train,” she told Lulu.

  “I used cloth to line it.” Lulu flipped part of the train over, showing the funky pink-and-black plaid material underneath. “Just for a kicky little surprise detail.” She handed Natalie the gown, then studied her for a moment. “I definitely want you to try on something from my Camouflage line.”

  Lulu selected a pair of pants in the pink-and-black plaid that she’d used as lining for the train of the first dress. Then she pulled out a short jacket of the same pink-and-black plaid. And gloves of pink-and-black plaid. And a hood of pink-and-black plaid.

  “That is one heck of a lot of plaid,” Natalie murmured.

  Lulu grinned. “I know. I like to be excessive. It’s going to look adorable on you, though. I promise.” Lulu flipped through the rack. “What else? What else?”

  Natalie watched her, still feeling sort of nauseous. She loved clothes. And she was about to try on outfits by her favorite designer. She should be in ecstasy. But she wasn’t. She was in anti-ecstasy. It was no fun playing dress-up alone.

  “What’s wrong? You love clothes. There are clothes all around you. There’s only one reason I agreed to come to Plaid & Stars,” Michael told Tori. “I thought it was impossible for you to be unhappy here.”

  “I’m happy. And it’s Polkadots & Moonbeams,” Tori said as she fingered the big flowers embroidered on a sweater.

  “You’re happy,” Michael repeated,
sounding disgusted. “You’re a liar is what you are.”

  Tori moved on to a selection of flapper dresses. All the vintage stuff at Polkadots had been cleaned and repaired. You didn’t have to go digging through piles of smelly, holey things. Tori hated doing that.

  She selected an emerald green dress and held it up in front of her, the dress’s fringe swinging against her legs. It was cool. Retro and hip at the same time. It looked like the kind of thing Mandy Moore might wear. It could have been my dress for the Oscars, Tori thought. If Nat and I were still friends.

  “That looks like it would fit you perfectly,” the college-aged sales clerk said. “Do you want to try it on?”

  Tori hung the dress back up. “No, thanks. I don’t really have any place to wear it.”

  In a day and a half, Natalie would be gone. She’d be three thousand miles away, back in New York. Maybe then Tori would stop thinking about her all the time.

  Maybe.

  When am I going to stop thinking about Jordan all the time? Brynn asked herself. When?

  Clearly not anytime soon, she thought as she walked over to her computer. Again. And checked her e-mail. Again. And there was no e-mail from Jordan. Again.

  It had been a whole day since Brynn had sent him the breakup e-mail. What was he thinking? Was he really as broken up by the breakup as Priya said?

  Stop obsessing, she told herself. You did what you needed to do. You weren’t trying to hurt Jordan. You weren’t.

  Brynn logged on to the camp blog, hoping to find something to distract her from the Jordan situation, even if only for a few minutes.

  Posted by: Priya

  Subject: Friendship

  I notice Brynn has some news she hasn’t posted on the blog. She broke up with Jordan. I know, hard to believe, right? Since Jordan is awesome.

  After the breakup, I started thinking about that post of Grace’s. The one where she said what a good friend Natalie was because she had talked Brynn through a problem she was having. Now I’m thinking the problem Brynn was having was that she wanted to break up with Jordan. I have a question for all of you. Does a good friend really help somebody break up with a great guy? I’m just saying.

  Brynn closed the blog without reading any of the responses. Right now, she didn’t care what anybody but Jordan thought about their breakup. And she needed to know what he thought right now. She couldn’t wait any longer. She was supposed to be at the theater for the first preview performance of The Tempest in three hours. That gave her more than enough time to make a detour.

  Forty-five minutes later, she was walking up to Jordan’s house. The bus had dropped her off two blocks away. Brynn wished it had been farther. She needed more time to figure out what to say.

  She thought about walking away and doing a lap around the block. But it was too late. The front door was opening. And now Jordan was staring at her, his face blank. “Uh, can I come in?” Brynn asked. “I need to talk to you.”

  Jordan didn’t say anything. But he took a step back and opened the door wider. Brynn hurried inside, still trying to figure out what to say. “I’m sorry,” she told him. That seemed like a good place to start.

  “For what?” Jordan asked as they stood face-to-face in the front hall.

  “For…” Actually, good question. She wasn’t really sorry she’d broken up with him. Not exactly, anyway. “For hurting you,” she answered.

  “You didn’t,” Jordan said.

  “Priya told me—” Brynn began.

  “Priya talked to you?” Jordan burst out. He didn’t sound happy.

  “Yeah. Well, she e-mailed,” Brynn answered. “She told me you were really upset.”

  “I’m not upset.” He shoved his hands through his brown hair. “Look, you want to be with that Vern guy, then, whatever.” Jordan shrugged.

  “Wait. Back up. What about Vern?” Brynn asked.

  “I know he’s why you broke up with me,” Jordan snapped. “Don’t bother pretending he isn’t. I saw the way you were always looking at him. And you were always talking about him all the time. Vern will think this. Vern will think that. And then you started having all those special little private rehearsals with Vern. I’m not an idiot, Brynn. Even if I can’t recite Shakespeare like Vern.”

  Oh. So that’s what Priya meant in her e-mail when she said Brynn should just get together with a drama boy. Priya and Jordan thought Brynn was breaking up with Jordan because of Vern.

  “Vern is a complete jerk,” Brynn explained. “I avoid Vern as much as I can. But I have to deal with him a lot. A ton of my scenes are with him. And since, by the way, my character is supposed to be in love with his character, I’m supposed to look at him that way. It’s called acting.”

  “That one time I called you were at his house,” Jordan accused.

  “It was a place to rehearse. And I needed those extra rehearsals, even though I hated every second of them. Vern criticized the way I said every single word.”

  “If he’s such a jerk, why do you care so much what he thinks?” Jordan demanded.

  “Because Vern’s a professional. He’s been in commercials and he was on Grey’s Anatomy once,” Brynn explained. “He’s doing what I want to do. That’s why I broke up with you. Because acting is what I want to do with my life. This play is such a big chance for me. And I couldn’t do my part the way I wanted to—the way I needed to—and still do girlfriend things with you.”

  Jordan gave a slow nod. “I guess I get that.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to be your girlfriend. And it’s so, so, sooo not that I want to be Vern’s girlfriend.” Brynn continued. “You’re so great. No one makes me laugh as hard as you do. But I really can’t hang out with you until after the play is over. It’s going to take all my time doing so many performances a week and keeping up with all my school assignments. It just seemed like breaking up was the right thing to do.”

  “I don’t really want to go months without seeing you. Forget about seeing. We haven’t even been talking on the phone or IMing,” Jordan said.

  “And that’s not going to change. At least not for a pretty long time,” Brynn told him.

  “I guess breaking up is what we should do,” Jordan answered. He hesitated. “So you’re really not going to start going out with that Vern guy?”

  “Definitely not,” Brynn promised. “He hates me as much as I hate him. And he never, ever makes me laugh.”

  Jordan smiled for the first time since Brynn had shown up.

  “You don’t hate me, too, do you?” Brynn asked him. She wouldn’t be able to deal if he did.

  Jordan shook his head. “Maybe this summer at camp…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Would you want to…” Brynn couldn’t finish her sentence, either. But she started to feel this crazy hope springing up inside her.

  “It could be cool…” Jordan said.

  “All those camp dances and everything…” Brynn said.

  “Yeah, so, I’m definitely going to camp this summer,” Jordan told her.

  “Me too,” Brynn answered. They stared at each other, and it was like they had this whole conversation without talking. A conversation where they agreed that this summer at camp they might try the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing again.

  “I guess you have to go,” Jordan finally said. “The play…”

  “Yeah, the play,” Brynn agreed. “I do need to go.”

  “Good luck tonight,” Jordan told her.

  “Thanks. Thanks, Jordan.” Brynn wanted to hug him. But she didn’t think you were supposed to hug a boy you’d just broken up with.

  “See you,” Jordan said. He opened the door for Brynn.

  “Bye.” Brynn headed off. She felt both better and worse than when she’d arrived. Better because things were better with Jordan. And worse because things were better with Jordan. The way he’d acted had reminded her how cool he was. Brynn was going to miss him so much.

  But there was always the summer. Maybe….

>   She turned on to the street with the bus stop and almost smacked into Priya. This was perfect. Brynn really needed to talk to her.

  “Hi! I was just over at Jordan’s. We talked. He told me he thought I broke up with him because of Vern, which I so didn’t,” Brynn said, speaking so fast her words almost ran together. Priya was staring at Brynn like she was a slug that had ended up on the sidewalk.

  Brynn rushed on. “I never would have broken up with Jordan for another guy. What other guy could be better than Jordan? No other guy, that’s who. Especially not a conceited jerk like Vern. So, anyway, Jordan and I are all good. Or at least we’re a lot better. He knows that I broke up with him because drama is so important to me. I need to give one thousand percent to the play, and that isn’t fair to Jordan, because that means he gets zero percent.”

  She stopped to suck in a deep breath. “So are we good? Since Jordan and I are pretty good?”

  Priya’s eyes narrowed as she stared at Brynn. “No, we’re not good. You broke up with Jordan over e-mail. I can’t be friends with anyone who would do that. Even if you are smart enough to know Jordan’s the best.” She stepped around Brynn and strode away.

  “Priya!” Brynn called after her.

  But Priya rounded the corner without looking back.

  “Hurry. We’re going to be late. And we can’t be late,” Natalie told Reed. She pulled him up the stairs to the roof of the Griffith Observatory.

  “The stars aren’t going anywhere,” Reed told her.

  “It’s not the stars I’m worried about,” Natalie answered, taking the steps two at a time.

  Had her plan worked? Had Michael gotten Tori here? Natalie scanned the people taking in the view from the top of the observatory.

  “Do you want to go into the telescope dome?” Reed asked, nodding toward the round tower with the copper roof off to their left. “The telescope in there is a lot better than the ones they put out on the roof.”