Girl vs. Superstar

by Robin Palmer

  “And this is your bedroom, Lucy,” Alan said as we walked into a plain white room that was almost one and a half times bigger than my old one. I guess part of why it looked so big was that, other than a bed and a dresser, there was nothing else in it. Mom had decided that our furniture wouldn’t look right in the apartment, so we sold it all on Craigslist before we moved. (Except for the really ugly stuff—that we gave to Goodwill.) At first I was really upset, but now, after seeing the place, I realized she was right. Plus, she told me I could pick out anything I wanted for my bedroom. “Laurel had been using it as her workout room, which is why it’s so bare bones at the moment,” Alan explained. I was glad to find that it was pretty much the same size as Laurel’s bedroom, because if hers was a lot bigger than mine, I was going to have to take Mom aside and say something to her, because that totally wouldn’t be fair.

  “And I can decorate it any way I want, right?” I asked.

  “Yes. Within reason,” Mom warned, probably thinking about the time a few years ago when I asked her if we could hire her artist friend Sierra to paint a mural of the African jungle on one of my walls.

  When I opened the closet door, I felt like I had hit the jackpot. I never had to worry about cleaning up again—it was huge! I could shove everything I owned in there and still have room for more. “Can I paint it purple?” I asked.

  “Purple?” Alan asked. “Uh, I guess . . . ,” he said nervously, “but wouldn’t you rather have a nice neutral color ...like that pretty beige that Laurel has in her room?”

  What I wanted to say was, “You mean that color that’s so boring it’s not even color?” But instead, I just shrugged. It was starting already. This was exactly what happened when Marissa’s mom married Phil—this I’m-going-to-pretend-to-be-really-nice-to-you-but-really-we’re-going-to-do-it-all-MY-way thing.

  Alan glanced over at Mom for support. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to me that Mom gave him one of her looks—in this case, the one that meant “Please just be the bigger person here, okay?”

  “On second thought, I think purple would look great in here,” he said.

  Score one for Lucy B. Parker.

  By the time I went to bed that night, my brain felt like it was going to burst from all the instructions Alan had thrown at me. Stuff like “To turn the TV on, you use this remote . . . but if you’re going to be watching a DVD, you use this remote” and “This is the keypad for the alarm. Now, when you leave, you punch in 7-7-2-8-0. But when you come back, you punch in 5-4-2-8-4” and “If you’re ever taking a cab home, you tell the guy you’re going to 158 Central Park West, which is between Seventy-sixth and Seventy-seventh.”

  Who could remember all these numbers?!

  Right before I went to bed I called Dad, in hopes that he could just cheer me up a little, but all I got was his voice mail. I was so desperate to talk to someone from Northampton that I called Marissa, but even she wasn’t around because she was sleeping over at Brianna’s.

  I wasn’t even gone twenty-four hours and it was like already everyone had forgotten about me and moved on.

  The next afternoon, we went out for lunch (from the number of restaurants we passed and the crowds of people waiting to get in, it seemed like all people in New York did was eat), and Alan gave Mom and me a tour of the neighborhood. (“This is Central Park. This is the Museum of Natural History. This is the homeless guy who’s been standing at this same corner screaming about how the world is going to end for the last five years.”) We were walking back to the apartment when Alan told me he had a surprise for me.

  “What is it?” I asked warily. Frankly, over the last few months, I had had enough surprises to last me for my entire life.

  “You’ll see, you’ll see,” he said excitedly as he pressed the 10 button when we got in the elevator instead of 21.

  When we got off, he led Mom and me to 10D and buzzed the buzzer. The hideous noise that was coming from inside the apartment stopped, and a minute later a short girl around my age with a dark bob, pale skin, and a big nose answered the door.

  “Can I help you?” she asked politely. Like a lot of people I had seen on the streets during our walk around the neighborhood, she was dressed all in black. In her case, black jeans and a black sweater. The only color I could see were the electric blue–painted toenails on her bare feet. Those were actually pretty cool.

  “Are you Beatrice?” Alan asked.

  “Yes, but I prefer the Italian pronunciation—Bay-a-tree-chay,” she replied. Politely, again. Everyone said that New Yorkers were so rude, but this girl was anything but. I wondered if she was one of those kids who just acted like this in front of adults, but when you got her alone she was normal. For her sake, I hoped so—otherwise, I bet she didn’t have a lot of friends.

  “Oh. Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Beatrice,” Alan said, pronouncing it her way. “I’m Alan Moses, from 21C. I ran into your mom in the lobby the other day, and she told me that you’re a sixth grader at the Center for Creative Learning—”

  Oh no, I thought, immediately ducking behind Mom. I knew exactly what Alan was doing—he was trying to make a friend for me. I hated when adults did that. I was twelve, not four. I didn’t need playdates arranged for me.

  Hiding behind Mom didn’t work. Alan grabbed my arm and pulled me forward so I was face-to-face with the girl with the weird name. Except she was so short it was more like she was eye level with my boobs.

  “And amazingly enough, Lucy here is going to be joining your class once spring break is over! I mean, what are the odds that in a city of eight million people and so many private schools, two girls living in the same building would end up in the same class!”

  Could Alan be more embarrassing? I wanted to sink into the floor and melt away.

  “So I wanted to introduce you two so you could start to become friends,” he continued. “Lucy just moved here yesterday from Massachusetts, and she doesn’t know any other girls other than my daughter, who’s out of town at the moment, so I know she’d appreciate it if you could maybe give her the lowdown on the Center. I was thinking maybe the two of you could hang out this week. Maybe do a little shopping.”

  Yup, it turned out he could be more embarrassing. I turned to Mom with a um-can-you-please-help-me-out-here ? look, but she appeared just as excited as Alan was about the idea of this girl and me becoming friends.

  “Oh,” the girl said, stepping back. “Well, I’d like to, but I have a lot of studying to do this coming week.” She gave me a small smile. “Welcome to Manhattan, Lucy,” she said politely. “I’ll see you in school. Maybe we can do something at a later time. It was very nice meeting all of you, but if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to practicing the piano,” she said as she closed the door.

  So that’s what that hideous noise was. But while it made me feel a little bit better to know that there was someone on this planet who seemed to be as uncoordinated as me, it didn’t feel so good that that someone seemed to have no interest in becoming friends with me. I mean, it’s not like I really wanted to be friends with her anyway, especially not after Alan had embarrassed me like that. And we seemed like total opposites anyway—her, all in black with no color, while I had on my tie-dyed Converses and rainbow suspenders. But, still, when someone would rather study over vacation than hang out with you, it kind of makes you feel like a total loser.

  I realized the next day that moving makes you really tired. Not so much the unpacking part—which is pretty easy, for someone like me, who thinks that just dumping everything in drawers and the closet is a perfectly fine way to organize things—but the part where it takes you twice as long to do something because up until two days before you had lived in the same house for your entire life and now it’s all so new. Like, say, figuring out how to turn the shower on or needing to open up every drawer in the kitchen before finally getting to the one with the silverware. After lunch I asked Mom if I could walk down to the bodega (according to Alan, it’s the Spanish word for 7-Eleven
) to get a soda so I would have more energy to keep unpacking/shoving stuff in the closet. She tried to convince me to wait until she figured out how to use the super-fancy washing machine and then she’d go with me so I didn’t get lost. I blew up at her and went on about how I wasn’t a baby, and how lost could a person get when all the streets were numbered, and that seeing that she had made me leave my home, the least she could do was let me take a walk by myself down the block. Then I added that if she thought she was going to be walking me to school every day, she was in for a big surprise.

  After I was done I felt bad, and was about to apologize, but before I could, she got all teary and smothered me in a hug and said, “Ohhh . . . your hormones are really kicking into gear!” She said that whenever I got snippy with her nowadays, which was beyond annoying. “But you’re absolutely right—you’re not a baby anymore. Obviously,” she added as she pointed to my chest. “You’re a beautiful young woman. I do have to learn to let you separate from me, so, yes,” she said, reaching into her purse for a five-dollar bill, “you can go to the bodega by yourself. Right after you go put your bra on.”

  I was relieved to get away for a while, even if I had to wear a bra to do it, except for the fact that it meant even more directions to remember (“Okay, now when you get out of the building, you’re going to turn right on Central Park West,” Alan explained. “And then you’re going to turn right again on Seventy-sixth Street. And then you’re going to pass Amsterdam until you get to Columbus, and the bodega will be on your left-hand side.”). When he asked if I wanted him to write it all down for me, I almost went off on him like I had on Mom, but instead, I just said very politely, “No, thank you. I’ll be fine,” because (a) I didn’t feel comfortable enough with him yet to yell at him and (b) knowing how nervous he got, I was afraid he’d start to cry or something.

  Unfortunately, Mom was right, I wasn’t very good with directions (I blame that whole uncoordination thing). The minute I walked out of the apartment, I turned left to go to the elevator instead of right. Once I did get in, it stopped at the seventeenth floor, and an older woman wearing a fur coat got on with one of those yippy little shih tzu dogs. Because the Conran was such a fancy building on one of the nicest streets in New York (literally across the street from Central Park), I had a feeling that the woman’s coat was definitely real fur rather than fake, but from the scowl on her face, I didn’t think me saying, “You know, some baby animal died just so you could wear that coat,” was a friendly neighbor thing to say. So instead, I said, “Hi—my name is Lucy B. Parker, and I just moved into the building. 21C. I like your dog’s sweater.” Usually, I think dogs that wear sweaters look really stupid, but in this case I wasn’t lying—the sweater was really cute. It was leopard print, and it paired well with the dog’s rhinestone collar.

  Instead of saying something like, “Nice to meet you, Lucy. Welcome to the neighborhood, and that was really nice of you to compliment my dog’s sweater,” the lady didn’t even bother to look away from the elevator numbers as she said, “Hmph.” In Northampton, when someone new moved into the neighborhood, people brought them cookies, and sometimes—if you were Mrs. Moore—even an entire apple cobbler. Here at the Conran, it was like one of the rules of the building was “Please make sure to be as unfriendly as possible to your neighbors.”

  After that I didn’t try to make any more small talk. Instead, I spent the rest of the ride swallowing so that my ears would stop popping and I didn’t go deaf. In the lobby, Pepe, the old doorman who wore a hearing aid, gave me a look like he had no idea who I was when I said hello to him, even though Alan kept introducing me to him every time we saw him. Outside, I turned left instead of right, and went up Seventy-seventh Street instead of Seventy-sixth. Then, when I got to Columbus, there was no bodega, so I kept walking to Broadway. The only bodega-looking thing was across the street, but I almost got hit by a car trying to cross, even though I had the WALK sign.

  After I got my soda and a Blow Pop, I headed back to the apartment. But I had already walked three blocks before I realized that I was going the wrong way and was at Eightieth Street. Then, when I turned around and started going the right way, some lady who totally wasn’t looking where she was going because she was too busy checking her e-mail on her BlackBerry banged straight into me, and my soda went flying all over the new Angry Little Girls! T-shirt that Dad had gotten me as a goingaway present. She didn’t say sorry or anything. I had some money left over, but there was no way I was going to try to retrace my steps back to the bodega, because I was afraid I’d end up in New Jersey or something.

  I knew by this time Mom was probably totally freaking out because it had been, like, fifteen minutes since I left. And even though I had sworn to her that I was just going to the bodega and back (which Alan said would take approximately seven minutes—ten, maybe, if I spend a lot of time going over my soda choices), she probably figured I’d gotten lost and run over by a truck or something. I reached into my pocket for my cell phone and realized I had left it on my bed. Oops.

  When I got back to the Conran, I was thirsty, sticky, and thisclose to crying. It had been fewer than three days since I had been gone from Northampton, but I missed everything about it. I hated not knowing my way around, and I had no idea how I was going to get through the next six years until I left for college. Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, as I tried to walk into the building, some guy wearing the same doorman uniform as Pepe but who was not Pepe barked, “Excuse me—can I help you with something, miss?” While Pepe couldn’t hear and had no memory and probably couldn’t have stopped someone from going in if he tried, this guy was tall, with jet black hair and muscles, and, because he was frowning, he looked pretty scary.

  “I’m just going up to”—“my apartment” didn’t sound right because it really wasn’t my apartment, it was Laurel and Alan’s apartment, and I had a feeling that, no matter what, it was never, ever going to feel like mine—“the place where I’m living,” I said nervously.

  “And that would be where?” the guy demanded.

  “Apartment 21C.”

  He blocked the door. “Nice try. Now it’s time to leave.”

  “Huh?” I said, confused. Wow. Even the doormen in New York were unfriendly.

  “Look, you want a signed picture or something, you can go to LaurelMoses.com, and there’s directions there about how to do that,” he said, “but if you don’t leave right now, I’m gonna have to call the police.” He looked me up and down. “You look like a nice girl—don’t go ruining your life by getting arrested for stalking and sent to juvenile hall. Something like that could keep you out of college.”

  This was just the last straw. Even though it was completely embarrassing, I couldn’t help myself and started to cry. “Wait a minute—you think I’m stalking Laurel Moses?!” I cried. “I am so not! The only reason I’m here is because my mother is marrying Laurel Moses’s father, which meant we had to move here because of her . . . television show”—I almost said “stupid television show,” but for all I knew, this man was also a huge Laurel Moses fan and loved her dumb music. I started to cry even harder. “Believe me, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t be going up to 21C—I’d be going to 42 Massasoit Street in Northampton, Massachusetts!”

  “Ohhhh,” the mean guy said, reaching inside his jacket pocket and handing me not a regular tissue but a fancy cloth handkerchief. “So you’re Lucy!” he said. “I’m sorry. My bad. I didn’t think you were coming until next weekend.”

  “You know my name?” I sniffled into the handkerchief.

  “Sure. Alan’s been talking about you and your mom nonstop. And that guy can talk, if you know what I mean,” he said with a wink. He held out his hand. “I’m Pete. Your new doorman.”

  I honked into the handkerchief and held out my hand. “Lucy B. Parker,” I said. I had to say, the idea of having my own personal doorman did sound kind of cool.

  “Sorry about what just happened, but you can never be too careful,” he said.
“You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff people have tried to pull over the years to try and get near Laurel.”

  “Like what?” I sniffled.

  “Oh, lots of things,” he replied. “Showing up dressed up in a bear outfit with balloons to sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ even though Laurel’s birthday wasn’t for another four months. Long-lost cousins. That kind of stuff. So qué pasa, girl? You look a little upset there. I mean, even before I laid into you.” He pointed to the couch inside the lobby. “Cop a squat and tell Pete what’s goin’ on.”

  I don’t know what it was about him—maybe it was because he was the only person in New York who had been nice to me so far, or maybe it was just because I was so lonely—but I did what he said. I told him about Mom meeting Alan, and how at first I said I didn’t want to move, but then I said I would, and how now I was worried that I had made the wrong decision, and that I was scared to start school the following week because what if no one wanted to be friends with the New Girl, and what was I going to do when it came time to figuring where to sit at lunch, and how was I going to find my way around the city without getting lost, and what was I going to do when Laurel got back from L.A., because the last time I had seen her she was as excited about the whole stepsister thing as I was—which is to say, not very.