Your Life, but Better

by Crystal Velasquez

  “I guess it turned out okay that you skipped the photo shoot after all, huh?” Jessie offers, winking at you while Jimmy is busy taking the money out of his wallet.

  But at Jessie’s words, his head shoots up and his eyes open as wide as saucers. “Photo shoot? You mean for Bebe LaRue?”

  “Yeah,” Lena says, dropping a french fry back onto the plate. “How did you know about that?”

  All three of you are staring at him in surprise. Suddenly the super-shy Jimmy you know from school reappears. He stares down at the table and mumbles something about knowing someone at that shoot.

  “Who?” you ask. “Is it your mom?”

  “Your cousin?” Jessie adds.

  “Your friend?” Lena asks.

  Please don’t let it be a girl, please don’t let it be a girl… .

  “Um … w-well,” Jimmy stammers. “One of the models is kind of, sort of … my date to Shawna’s party. You know Mona? Well, she already got a golden ticket weeks ago in exchange for bringing some professional photographers to the party, and each ticket admits two people, so … she asked me to go with her. I was actually on my way to meet her when I crashed into you.” He says all this while staring down at his napkin, as if he’s embarrassed. But you aren’t sure if it’s because he let Jessie go on and on about how much she wanted one of Shawna’s tickets, never mentioning that he had one, or because he’s been sort of flirting with you all this time, never mentioning that he’s already Monas date to the party.

  “Oh.” In case you were wondering, that crumpling sound you hear is your heart being crushed like a million old soda cans in a trash compactor. He’s going with Mona? The one girl in school who just happens to hate your guts for no good reason? Great. So much for the romantic comedy you’ve been daydreaming about. No one at the table says anything for a while. All you hear is Mary Sunshine’s voice in your head: That just figures. You guess you’re not the only girl with half a brain around here. You’re dying to know why he would agree to go with Mona (aka dream stealer), but your pride won’t let you ask. You can only hope that your best buds can find a way to whisk you out of here ASAP (to Japan, maybe?). But they were clearly thrown off guard by Jimmy’s revelation too.

  Jessie is the first to recover, chirping, “Oh … cool!” while giving your hand a sympathetic squeeze under the table. But Lena just nervously fumbles with her Black-Berry. You make a mental note to go over some emergency evacuation drills with your BFFs. When in a horrifying, heart-crushing situation such as this, it’s important to have an escape plan ready!

  The silence is going from stunned to downright awkward when suddenly your cell phone rings, thank goodness. You pick it up and say hello.

  “Eeeeeeeee!” Amy is squealing in your ear. “Lizette just won a ticket!” Apparently Lizette had spotted Shawna posing as a mannequin in the junior miss department of Macy’s. Lizette had been given a list of celebrities that she had to match to the causes they support. That was easy, in your opinion. Leonardo DiCaprio: global warming awareness. Christina Applegate: breast cancer research. Diddy: voter registration.

  “And you know what else?” Amy says. (Her news always comes in twos.) “There are only a few tickets left, but it turns out each golden ticket admits two, so you can bring someone with you! Isn’t that great?”

  Yeah, great, you think, not bothering to tell Amy that you already heard that last piece of news. Not only have the odds of your scoring a ticket to the party gotten worse, but you missed out on a chance to be a model for Bebe LaRue, and Jimmy—who would have been your ideal date for the birthday bash—is already going with Mona. Maybe Holly was right after all. So far this has been a complete waste of a day.

  Oh, bummer. Who could have seen that one coming? Both your dream of being a model and your dream of bringing Jimmy as your date to the party just went down in flames. Oh well. Happens to the best of us. What’s important is how you handle it now. Will you just roll with the punches or will you be throwing a few punches of your own (metaphorically speaking, of course)? Take the quiz to figure out what you would really do—and be honest!

  QUIZ TIME!

  Circle your answers and tally up the points at the end.

  1. You and your family are having chocolate cake for dessert and there’s only one piece left. You:

  hurry up and snatch the last piece. Yeah, your little bro probably wanted it too, but you can’t help it if you’re faster than he is!

  agree to share the last piece—but you do the cutting and naturally your little brother gets a tiny sliver while you give yourself the lion’s share. Hey, one of the perks of being the older sibling is that you get the bigger piece of cake. He’s lucky you’re giving him any at all. Besides, a growing girl needs her chocolate fix! And you wouldn’t want him to get cavities, right? Riiiight.

  do what any mature young lady such as yourself would do: flip a coin. Heads, you win; tails, your little brother loses. What’s that? He doesn’t fall for that one anymore? Okay, okay, you’ll do a fair coin toss, and to the victor goes the chocolate cake.

  give the last piece to your little brother and throw in an ice-cold glass of milk. Even though he’s much smaller than you, his sweet tooth is twice the size of yours.

  2. Your friend has had a rotten day. She calls you, hoping you two can go out for some mint chocolate chip ice cream to get her through this rough patch. But the America’s Next Top Model finale that you DVR’d just started. You’ve been way too busy to watch it before now and have been ducking spoiler Web sites for way too long. What to do?

  Tell her you can’t go. It’s too bad she had a horrible day, but you’ve been dying to watch this episode all week. You’re sure she’ll understand. You promise to call her tomorrow when you’re free.

  Tell her she can come over to your house and watch the finale with you instead—but warn her that there is absolutely no talking allowed during the show and definitely no crying. You need quiet to focus on all of Nigel’s witty observations.

  Tell her you’ll be right over, but first you fast-forward to the end of the show and watch the last half hour just to satisfy your curiosity. You won’t be able to focus on your friend at all if you’re still preoccupied with the ANTM finale.

  Tell her you’ll come right over. You hate to miss the show, but your pal needs you right now, and that’s way more important than finding out who flopped on the CoverGirl commercial. You are fully prepared to spend the next two hours listening to her let it all out.

  3. The class trip is tomorrow and it involves a one-hour bus ride. You and your best friend plan to sit next to each other and listen to music, but her iPod is broken. You offer to share yours and:

  fill it with all the music you like. Your friend doesn’t really have the same taste, but hey, it’s your iPod. You wouldn’t be able to stand listening to anything you don’t love for a whole hour. Besides, your selections are better than hers, and one day she’ll thank you for showing her what good music sounds like!

  fill it mostly with music you like, but throw in some of her faves too—although you plan to mock her mercilessly when that sappy boy-band song that she loves so much comes on.

  fill it with a lot of her favorite songs but throw in a few of your own too. If you introduce her to alternative stuff little by little, eventually you’ll win her over to your side. For now you’ll have to give her musical taste a chance.

  fill it with all the music she likes. You know how much it must suck for her that her iPod is broken and you want her to be happy. You usually end up falling asleep on long bus trips anyway.

  4. You are volunteering at an animal shelter with a few elderly women from your neighborhood. There are only two jobs left for the day: bathing the full-grown German shepherd (who hates baths, by the way) and taking a few of the puppies into the playroom to help them socialize. You:

  choose the puppies, of course! They’re sooo cute. Besides, you don’t want to get your clothes all soaked when the shepherd shakes out his coat.


  play with the puppies for a while, but eventually succumb to your guilt and go help with the German shepherd. With any luck, by the time you get in there, the big dog will have gotten most of his coat-shaking out of his system and you won’t have to do too much.

  suggest that you all do both jobs together. Even though it’ll take a little longer, tackling the bath-hating shepherd might be easier if it’s three against one. And then you can reward yourselves by playing with the adorable puppies before calling it a night.

  roll up your sleeves and take the German shepherd on alone. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it, and it probably shouldn’t be one of the elderly ladies, whose back problems make it hard to bend over the tub.

  5. The guy you like confesses to you that he sort of has a crush on your best friend and he wants you to tell her. You:

  tell him that your friend doesn’t like him that way. You actually have no idea if that’s true, but why ruin your own chance to hang with him? Since your BFF has never mentioned having feelings for him, you figure all’s fair in love and war.

  tell him that it’s kind of lame to approach a girl through her best friend and that he should just get up the nerve to talk to her himself. You won’t stand in their way, but come on! You’d have to be a saint to completely put aside your own feelings. Hopefully he’ll be too chicken to go through with it on his own.

  agree to tell your friend, but you tell her how you feel about him at the same time. You promise not to be mad if she likes him back, but you just want everything out in the open.

  run and tell your friend right away and keep your feelings to yourself. Yeah, you did have a crush on him, but you guess he and your friend have more in common. If she does want to spend time with him, you’ll just have to avoid hanging out with the two of them together for a while, until you get over him.

  Give yourself 1 point for every time you answered A, 2 points for every B, 3 points for every C, and 4 points for every D.

  —If you scored between 5 and 12, go to chapter 9

  —If you scored between 13 and 20, go to chapter 8

  You’re a realist. You liked The Notebook as much as the next girl, but you realize that all that mushy stuff can wait. You’re young and there are lots of adventures to be had first! Of your group of friends, you tend to be the grounded one who isn’t ruled by her heart, so you can always be counted on to make a levelheaded decision. Just remember that eventually your heart will want to have its say too!

  Well, this just figures. Not only have you plowed into someone on your way to stardom, but the innocent bystander turns out to be none other than Jimmy Morehouse.

  “I’m such a bonehead,” you say, noticing his cool checkerboard Skechers (which are splattered with paint) as you help him to his feet.

  He rubs his head, which by now must be pounding. “It’s okay. Really”

  “Whoa! What a wipeout!” Lena cries. “We could hear the crash from inside the café.”

  “And, um, hate to tell you this,” Jessie adds, “but we’re not the only ones.” She points down the hall, and there is Amy Choi standing in front of the Gap. She caught the whole incident on her video phone and is busy sending it out to her entire contact list.

  “Great,” you mutter. “This will be all over the school in five minutes.” And the mention of time reminds you why you were in such a hurry in the first place. Oh no! To make it to the Photo Hut before Janice’s deadline, you’ll have to leave now. “Jimmy, I’m, like, really, really sorry,” you tell him, noting how incredibly cute he is even with a golf ball-size knot forming on his head and dirt all over his T-shirt. “But I’ve gotta go.”

  “Go ahead,” Lena urges you. “Carpe diem! We’ll take care of the wounded here.”

  “What’s that? Carpet D M?” you hear Jessie joke as you take off like a shot, heading for the Photo Hut. You hope Amy is getting some of this on tape, because you are giving an Olympics-worthy performance right now! First you leap over a stroller that some woman pushes into your path. Then, as you’re running by the CVS pharmacy, a group of old ladies hobbles out with their walkers. You dodge among them like a pro. You run right past the huge half-off sale at Rampage, even though that jacket you’ve been wanting has finally been marked down. When you get to the escalators, you can see that the one going up is crowded and everyone on it is standing still. So you decide to run up the down escalator, which is clear except for Mark Bukowski and Kevin Minks, who are standing side by side. You crash right through them, your legs pumping so hard they feel like they’re on fire. Lena would be proud. Maybe you should consider joining the track team this year.

  “Hey, watch it!” Mark yells as you toss him aside.

  “Are you b-b-blind?” Kevin calls after you, readjusting his World Series hat. “This is the d-down side, w-w-wacko!”

  If you had any breath left in your body, you’d say you were sorry—especially for making Kevin stutter, which he only does now when he’s mad or really nervous—but you don’t, so you make a mental note to add them to the list of people you need to apologize to later.

  Finally you arrive at the Photo Hut, which is all decked out in white sheets, with giant lights set up every few feet and what look like huge umbrellas. And there are models all over the place! You even recognize some of them from magazine ads. You could swear you just saw Mona—one of the brattiest girls in school—walk into a back room, but that can’t be right. All the running must have your eyes playing tricks on you.

  You clear the sweat off your face, and at last you spot Janice talking to some guy with a faux Mohawk. He’s holding a clipboard and taking notes. This is probably the Steve you heard Janice talking to earlier. You tap Janice on the shoulder. “Hi, Ms. Iverson,” you say cautiously. “I’m here, ready to be a model!”

  “About time,” Janice says without even looking at you. “Steve, let’s get her measurements taken right away.” She slowly turns toward you. “And then send her …” She trails off when she finally sees you. She clutches her chest with one well-manicured hand. “What happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?” you say, still panting.

  “I mean,” Janice snaps, “you look like a wet dog.”

  Steve quickly pulls a compact mirror from his back pocket and holds it up to your face.

  Oh my God. You look awful! Not only are you pouring sweat, causing your hair to droop like limp noodles, but your face has broken out into some serious acne. Maybe you should have stopped in a bathroom before you came in. You did just run hard enough to shed ten pounds on your way here—and it shows. But there’s not much you can do about it at the moment.

  “I can’t use you now!” Janice stalks away furiously.

  “But—” you start to protest, but Steve holds up a hand to stop you.

  “Sorry, honey, but once she’s like this, it’s best to leave her alone for a while. Besides,” he says, reaching out to touch your stringy hair, “she’s right. You’re a hot mess and we just don’t have time to fix you right now. Better luck next time.” He at least looks genuinely sorry for you as he backs away, already making calls to see if he can find your replacement.

  In the words of Dr. Elliot Reid on that show Scrubs, frick on a stick! Looks like your modeling career is over before it even began. You notice that because of the mad dash you made, your legs now feel like jelly (or maybe that’s how extreme disappointment feels as it settles into your body), so you find a bench outside the Orange Julius shop and sit down heavily, contemplating what part of the world you’ll move to while you’re trying to live down the shame. Iceland? Timbuktu? Canada? Living in any of them sounds better than facing your friends after this.

  And just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, your phone rings and suddenly Amy Choi is squealing into your ear.

  “Eeeeeeeee! Lizette just won a ticket!” she screams. You wait patiently for the second piece of news you’re sure is coming. “And you know what else? There are only a few tickets left, but each one admits two peopl
e. So if you win, you can bring somebody. Isn’t that awesome?”

  Yeah, real awesome, you think after you hang up. Not only did you just get brutally rejected for a modeling job, but your odds of scoring a ticket to Shawna’s party just got worse too. Maybe you should have just stayed in bed today. As you are thinking this, your Sidekick dings. You have a new text message from Jessie.

  Hey, supermodel! We R at JR

  with JM. News: JM is going to

  the party … with MW! But he

  keeps asking ??? about U. I

  think he likes you!

  So while you are enduring the humiliation of your life at the Photo Hut, your friends are having a great time at Johnny Rockets with Jimmy Morehouse, and you’re missing it—and he’s Monas date? Since when? On what planet is that even possible? Jimmy is way too nice to go anywhere with such a drama queen. But wait … what was that last part? Is it possible that he’s asking lots of questions about you because he likes you? Could it be that the few times you managed to say anything to him actually made some sort of impression? Maybe the date with Mona is just some one-time thing but he really likes you. The very possibility makes you shoot up out of your seat—which is when you catch a glimpse of your reflection in the store window across the way. Ugh, gross! Yep, “hot mess” pretty much sums it up. You text Jessie back.

  Naaah … He prob’ly just

  wants to sue me for crashing

  into him + killing some of his

  brain cells. Call a lawyer!