Girl vs. Superstar

by Robin Palmer

  I rolled my eyes. If she were psychic, she’d know that we were not BFFs and never would be.

  Still, the bowling thing was a good idea, and I sure did need a few of those right about now.

  Unfortunately, Mom didn’t agree.

  “Oh honey, I know how much you like bowling, but I don’t think that’s going to work,” she said that evening as she looked in the freezer for her keys so we could leave and not be late like we usually were. If a stranger had been there, they would’ve thought, Why on earth is that woman looking in the freezer for her keys? but if you knew Mom, you’d know that for some reason a lot of things ended up in the freezer. Keys, her reading glasses. Once, when I opened it to grab a Popsicle, I found her purse in there.

  “Why not?” I asked, using the oven as a mirror as I tried to fix my red beret so it sat just so on my head, which is very hard to do. I had a lot of berets in my hat collection though because (a) you could fold them up and they wouldn’t get ruined and (b) they were only $6.98 at H&M. I had decided to wear it that night—along with jeans, my Wonder Woman T-shirt, and a navy cardigan (so it would be harder for Mom to tell I wasn’t wearing my bra)—because it would be easy to bowl in than one of my floppier hats that might screw up my vision as I was about to throw the ball.

  Mom, on the other hand, was wearing a very unbowling-like outfit—a black sweater and her favorite flowy pink-and-blue embroidered Indian skirt. Dad and I had gotten her the skirt for her forty-fifth birthday, the last one we had all spent together before they got divorced. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to go bowling; she didn’t want to change and make us even later.

  “Move, Miss Piggy,” Mom said as she hoisted the cat off the counter. Miss Piggy liked to lie next to the pantry most of the time because that’s where her food was kept. You didn’t get the name Miss Piggy if you didn’t love to eat.

  As always, when Mom grabbed her, Miss Piggy didn’t yowl or hiss or bite her, which is what she did when I touched her.

  “Well, I think Alan would be afraid that Laurel would get hurt,” Mom said.

  “Get hurt bowling?” I asked. I could understand a person getting hurt roller skating, but bowling? If you dropped the ball on your foot, maybe, but from what I had seen on YouTube of Laurel singing and dancing at the Super Bowl, she had no problem with coordination. In fact, like everything else about her, it had been perfect.

  After not finding her keys in the pantry, Mom shut the door. “Let’s just say he’s a little . . . neurotic when it comes to her safety.”

  “You’re going out with someone who’s neurotic?” I asked, worried. That wasn’t good. Neurotic had been one of our vocabulary words back in November, so I knew it meant “crazy.”

  “He’s a New Yorker—of course he’s neurotic,” Mom replied. “He’s a little . . . overprotective when it comes to Laurel. I’m sure it has to do with Laurel’s mom.”

  Laurel was stuck-up and she had falsely accused me of having lice (which I DID NOT have), but at that moment I put everything aside. I felt really bad for her. Everyone knew the story about Laurel’s mom because for some reason reporters liked to ask her about it. If you asked me, it was a really mean thing to do. In fact, in one interview she had done before the Academy Awards last year, Laurel actually started crying because the reporter wouldn’t shut up about it.

  When Laurel was seven, her mom was diagnosed with cancer. Even though the doctors thought that they could get rid of it and she would be totally fine, that’s not what happened. What happened was that the cancer moved to her brain, and she was dead in like a month. And for part of that month, she was in a coma, which meant that Laurel didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye to her because when you’re in a coma, it’s like a very, very deep sleep and you can’t hear anything—even something really loud like a garbage truck or a snowplow. The whole thing was so sad that when I watched Laurel talk about it, I started crying, too. Sometimes Mom bugged me (like when I’d say, “Just give me one perfectly good reason why I can’t fill-in-the-blank,” and she’d say, “Because I’m the mother, that’s why. End of discussion.”), but I don’t know what I’d do if she died. Obviously I’d still have Dad (as long as he didn’t get cancer, too). But I think I’d be so sad that I’d almost want to die, too. Even though I wasn’t entirely convinced that, when you did die, you went to heaven so you could be with all the people you loved who had gone there before you like your mother, and your grandfather, and any pets you had.

  But still, even though I felt bad for Laurel because of the no-mother thing, it didn’t mean I wanted to do an activity with her. “So what are we going to do, then?” I asked.

  Not finding her keys underneath the sink, Mom stood up and smiled at me. Was it my imagination, or were her teeth a million times brighter than they usually were? Did she use one of those teeth-whitening kits they show on TV? I made a mental note to ask Marissa if her mom had started whitening her teeth when she started dating Phil. “I thought we’d go do karaoke!” she announced. “Doesn’t that sound fun?”

  Fun?! When you have such a bad voice that your own chorus teacher asks you to please not sing but instead just mouth the words, the idea of standing up in front of a roomful of people—including the person who had the number one downloaded song on iTunes for the last seven weeks in a row—did not sound fun. It sounded like a punishment.

  chapter 7

  Dear Dr. Maude,

  While Mom’s looking for her keys, I decided to check my e-mail to see if you had written back yet. Because now I have ANOTHER problem. Mom just told me we’re going to do karaoke with Laurel and her dad. Most people would think that sounds like a lot of fun, but not me. I have a REALLY BAD voice, and Laurel just happens to be one of the greatest singers in history. (Personally, I don’t agree, but that’s what it says on her website.)

  Seriously, I feel like I’m going to throw up. And I’m definitely going to have to wear a pad tonight because Marissa says that her sister told her that extreme nervousness can bring on your period. I know you’re a psychologist rather than a medical doctor, but would you happen to know if that’s true?

  Okay, Mom just yelled up that her keys were hanging on the hook next to the door (which is exactly where they’re supposed to be but usually never are, which is why we never look there), so I have to go. If you do write me back, I won’t get the e-mail until after the Karaoke Thing. In fact, if I die of embarrassment, I won’t get it at all, but I’d appreciate it if you wrote back, anyway.

  yours truly,

  Lucy B. Parker

  If, for once in her life, Marissa was right and extreme nervousness did bring on your period, I totally would have gotten mine while standing up in front of the crowd that night. But, as usual, she was wrong, and I didn’t get it, even though I kept running to the bathroom to check. I even brought a pantiliner to put on top of the pad, just to be safe. You would’ve thought that finally getting my period was the least that God could’ve done to make up for all the embarrassment and humiliation I had been through ever since Laurel came into my life, but no.

  But before the Karaoke Thing, first we had to go to dinner at Flo’s Fishery, one of my least favorite restaurants in all of Hampshire County. Laurel had anemia, which meant that there was something wrong with her blood and she needed to eat a lot of iron, which, Mom told me, was a major ingredient in fish. Later on when I got home I looked it up on the Internet (anemia, not fish), and it said that sometimes you got anemia if your periods were really heavy, which sounded both very scary and kind of interesting. If Laurel and I had actually been friends, I would have asked her if her periods were really heavy and what brand of pads she found to be the best. But because we weren’t, that would’ve been really weird dinner conversation.

  “But I hate fish,” I whispered to Mom as we stood in the lobby of the Hotel Northampton as Alan called the restaurant to see if we needed a reservation (if he had bothered to ask me, I could’ve told him that we didn’t, on account of the fact that most normal
people knew that fish was disgusting and therefore the place was never crowded).

  Mom had come up with the dumb idea that we go pick Alan and Laurel up at their hotel, and then all drive over to the restaurant together because it would give us more time for the four of us to bond. The minute she used the B-word, I got nervous because, just the other day, as Marissa was tagging along as I went to get a cupcake after school, she said, “Now your mom hasn’t used the B-word yet, has she?” When I asked what the B-word was (baby? boob?), she told me it stood for bonding, which, when used when talking about a parent’s new boyfriend/girlfriend and his/ her kids meant big trouble. It meant that Things Were Getting Serious, which, according to Marissa, was code for “I’m definitely going to marry this person.”

  “That’s not true, Lucy. You like fried clams,” Mom whispered back as she smiled at a rich-looking woman walking through the lobby. The Hotel Northampton was the nicest hotel in town, so it made sense that Laurel was staying there. There was a rumor going around the Internet that Laurel was so rich that when she took baths in a hotel, she filled the tub with bottled water. I found that hard to believe because that was a total waste of water, and everyone knew from all the public service announcements she did on TV that Laurel was very into saving the environment. Plus, if you used bottled water, it wouldn’t be hot, so you’d basically be taking a room-temperature bath.

  “I only like the fried clams from Friendly’s,” I replied. I loved Friendly’s—not only the Fribbles, which were basically super-thick milk shakes, but they also had excellent fried clams (extra crunchy) and Jumbo Fronions, which were ginormous onion rings. “Clams are fish, so why don’t we go to Friendly’s and Laurel can just have those.”

  “Lucy, we’re going to Flo’s, and that’s that. End of discussion,” Mom said firmly.

  I could not believe how unfair my mother was being. My entire life my friends had always said how cool my mom was and how she always talked to kids like they were people instead of kids. But since this Alan thing had started? Forget it. She had used the phrase “That’s that. End of discussion” more in the last week than she had my entire life.

  I was all set to tell Mom all of that and then some—including the fact that making people wait for so long (we had been waiting for Laurel for ten minutes, after Alan had said, “Laurel’s on the phone with her agent and will be down in two minutes”) was very rude—when the elevator door opened and everyone in the lobby started buzzing. It was just like that day on the movie set.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Laurel said as she walked toward us wearing a very non-bowling-appropriate outfit (a really cool patchwork-looking dress and cowboy boots) and the fake movie-star smile that she always smiled when she was interviewed on the red carpet before a fancy premiere. “My agent and I were talking about this movie they offered me that shoots in Africa.”

  “You get to go to Africa?!” I blurted. I was so amazed I forgot we weren’t really friends and therefore I was supposed to be more polite, and quiet, especially because we were in a public place. As far as I was concerned, traveling around the world sounded like the number one best thing about being a huge star. And Africa was the place I wanted to visit most in the world, on account of the fact that Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom was one of my favorite television shows and a lot of it took place there. In fact, when I grew up, I thought maybe I could work for the Jane Goodall Institute, which was where they studied primates like chimps and apes.

  I don’t think Laurel was used to people yelling around her because she looked a little freaked out. Which was too bad. We would definitely never be friends because I tend to yell a lot, and my voice is on the loud side even when I’m not yelling. “Well, yeah, but I had to say no.”

  Why would anyone not want to go to Africa? “Because of your TV show?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Because of malaria.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s a disease you get from getting bitten by mosquitoes,” she explained.

  “Wait a minute—you’re giving up a trip to Africa because you might get bitten by a bug?” I asked.

  “Between one and three million people die from it a year,” she said defensively. “Mostly in Africa. So, yes, I’m giving up a trip to Africa,” she said before she turned on her cowboy boot heel and marched toward the exit.

  Yeah, this was never going to work.

  All through dinner Alan tried his best to get Laurel and me to bond by pointing out things we had in common. “Look at that—you both like lemon in your water!” he exclaimed. “Amazing—both of you only eat the middle of the bread, but not the crust!” he marveled. “What are the odds that neither of you like onions?!” he gasped. Actually, I did like onions—I just didn’t want to risk having bad breath so Laurel could have one more reason to think I was just a dumb, unsophisticated twelve-year-old while she was a huge fourteen-year-old star. I knew that’s what she thought of me, because when I tried to be nice, so the sleepover thing could actually work out, I said, “I really like your dress.” She said “Thanks” in sort of a shy way that almost made me like her a little. It always made me feel better to find out that other people are shy like I was, even though I was loud sometimes. But then she ruined the whole thing when, after staring at my outfit, she said “I like your T-shirt. I was just reading about how it’s very hip now to dress retro.” No one had ever called me hip before, and that part was pretty cool, but everyone knew that being called retro—which meant old-fashioned—was an insult.

  Thankfully, before Alan could get back to his let’s-talk-about-what-else-Lucy-and-Laurel-have-incommon (um, how about “Wow—you’re both girls!”?), Mom interrupted. “Laurel, I was thinking that, after dinner, in an attempt for all of us to bond even more, we could go karaokeing!”

  Laurel’s face, which was normally all tan and healthy looking, turned pretty white. “Bond?” she said nervously. For a minute there, I wondered if she had a friend whose mother had remarried and had told her about the B-word and Things Getting Serious and all that other stuff. Marissa’s “The Unofficial Guide to Everything Laurel Moses” said that Sequoia, the girl who played her BFF on the show, was also her BFF in real life, too. And Sequoia was the only kid her age I had seen in any of the pictures on the gazillion blogs that followed every single thing Laurel did. All the other pictures had Laurel with that hair guy and that makeup woman I’d seen at the Hat Incident, or with a woman in her twenties whose face was all orange like she had eaten too many carrots (that’s what happened to Dalia, a babysitter I had when I was five), who the sites said was Jaycee, her personal assistant. If Laurel and I had been friends, I would have asked her what it was like to order around someone who was ten years older than you, because I bet it was really cool, but since we weren’t, I didn’t.

  Mom nodded. “You, more than anyone, know that music is such a wonderful way to express yourself and your feelings.”

  Oh no. If Mom started getting all let’s-talk-about-feelings-and-have-a-giant-group-hug, I was going to kill her. That was a very Northampton thing to do. And it was a very Mom thing to do. It drove me nuts, not to mention it was totally embarrassing.

  “I can’t believe I’m admitting this,” Mom said, “but the other day when your song ‘Millions of Miles’ came on the radio, I got so choked up I had to pull over to the side of the road.”

  Oh brother.

  Alan grabbed for her hand. “Oh honey, you didn’t tell me that!” Wait a minute—were his eyes getting all shiny like he was going to cry? “I’m so moved that you were so moved,” he said, all emotional.

  Oh double brother.

  Mom nodded. “I know I’m a grown woman, but the song just really took me back to my own youth and what it was like to experience my first big crush.”

  I knew that song. Everyone knew that song. It was about a girl who’s unpopular and one day she locks eyes with the most popular boy in the grade across the cafeteria, even though he sits a million miles away from her (that’s
where the title comes from) and it’s like instant true love, but they can’t be together because he’s dating the most popular girl in school. The whole thing is very sad, and you really believe Laurel when she sings, “I’m just a lonely girl looking to be just a little less lonely with you.” Though (a) I found it hard to believe Laurel was lonely, and (b) any boy would dump his girlfriend to go out with her. I did wonder, though, if Laurel had a crush on anyone and exactly how much like Madison—the boy-crazy character she played on the show—she really was. If we were friends, I would’ve asked her, but we weren’t, so I didn’t.

  “Thanks,” Laurel said. “But I don’t think I should sing tonight.” She cleared her throat and coughed. “I think I’m, uh, coming down with something.”

  Alan reached out and started feeling her forehead and cheek. “You didn’t mention that,” he said nervously. “What’s wrong? Is it your throat? Your stomach? Do you have a headache?”

  “It’s, um, just an all-over kind of thing,” she said, not looking at him. “But I’ll be fine. I mean, as long as I don’t sing.”

  There were three reasons I could tell she was totally lying about being sick: (1) even though she was an award-winning actress, that was one of the fakestsounding coughs I had ever heard; (2) she didn’t look him in the eye when she said it was an all-over thing; and (3) everyone knew that when you were lying, you tended to use “uh” and “um” a lot.

  “I think we should get you home then,” Alan said anxiously. “You have some really big scenes to shoot on Monday and—”

  “No, no!” she said. “I want to go. I’ll just watch you guys do it. It’ll be fun.” She looked at me and smiled. (Later on in the car after we dropped them off, Mom insisted that it had not been an evil smile, that it was a perfectly genuine smile, and that if I didn’t stop with this Laurel-Moses-hasit-out-for-me stuff, she didn’t know what she was going to do with me. That made me shut up for a while because “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you” was almost as bad as “or else” and “end of story.”)