Girl vs. Superstar

by Robin Palmer

  I nodded. Not only did Pete give me all sorts of Dr. Maudelike psychological advice (someone had to, seeing that she still hadn’t answered any of my e-mails), but he was like a walking, talking Guide to New York City book. If you ever needed to know where the best pizza was (V&T on Amsterdam and 110th) or how to get to the greenmarket in Union Square (go to Seventy-second Street and take the 2 or 3 downtown to Times Square, then switch to the N, R, or Q going downtown to Union Square), Pete was your guy. Plus, when he found out how much I loved cupcakes, he asked around and discovered that Billy’s Bakery on Ninth Avenue between Twenty-first and Twenty-second was the best place in the city.

  And with his help, I had convinced Mom and Alan to get me my own subway pass. I even passed the quiz Alan had made up about how to get to different parts of the city, and was planning on putting that knowledge to use as soon as I could. It made me sad that I didn’t have a friend to go anywhere with yet—like how Rachel, Missy, and I used to go to the mall. But I was hoping that not everyone in my new class would be as unfriendly as Beatrice, or as standoffish as Laurel. Maybe by the end of the week I’d have someone to go with. I was starting to get so lonely, I was even missing Marissa.

  “And you’re gonna walk into that school with your head held high and just be yourself ’cause you know that that self of yours just happens to be muy fabuloso, right?”

  I nodded again, but I was lying. I totally didn’t feel muy fabuloso. I felt muy scared.

  He patted my cheek. “Okay, chica, then you’re all set. When I was prayin’ this morning, I put in a special request to God to ask that He made it so you make lots of good friends by lunchtime so you didn’t have to worry about where to sit.”

  I gave what I hoped was a brave smile. I guess it wasn’t so brave because then he said, “Don’t worry—it’s going to be fine. Believe me, I’m a doorman. I know about these things.”

  As Mom and I walked into the Center for Creative Learning, I was very glad that (a) I was wearing a maxipad and (b) I wasn’t wearing white pants. I was sure that I was about to get my period any moment on account of how nervous I was. But even getting my period while I was wearing white pants and not wearing a pad wouldn’t have been half as horrible as having to stand in front of a roomful of complete strangers while Dr. Margaret Remington-Wallace, my new principal, announced, “Class, I’d like you to say hello to your new classmate, Lucy Parker, who has just moved here from Northampton, Massachusetts.” There wasn’t a single smile from any of the kids looking back at me except for Beatrice, and even then, hers was just kind of a half smile, not a full one. Instead, I got a roomful of bored stares, except for one boy who did something so gross with his tongue that, if I wasn’t the New Girl, I totally would’ve said, “Ewww . . . that is sooooo disgusting.” Not even Ms. Morgan, the teacher, seemed all that interested in me. She was busy sneaking a peek at her BlackBerry.

  “So, Lucy, is there anything you’d like to tell us about yourself before class resumes?” Dr. Remington-Wallace asked. “Here at the Center for Creative Learning, we’re all about communication and sharing our feelings.”

  How about, I totally feel like I’m getting my period right now, so can someone tell me where the bathroom is? Mom had originally wanted to send me to public school, but according to Alan, most of the public schools in Manhattan have metal detectors to make sure the kids don’t bring guns inside. She agreed to let me go to private school, but she insisted it not be a snooty one like the ones they showed on those shows Marissa watched on TV. Instead, she put me in a place where, on the brochure, it talked a lot about how the students’ “inner artists” came out. Which, if you asked me, didn’t seem like a very good fit for someone who wasn’t good at art.

  You would’ve thought that a roomful of inner artists would’ve dressed in cool clothes and the boys would have had long hair, but instead, most of the girls were wearing black and the boys were all preppy, with rugby shirts and Izods. And when I looked at their feet, only one kid had Converses on.

  I tried to think of something really funny or smart to say, but because I was so nervous all that came out was, “Um, what time is lunch?”

  The morning didn’t get any better. Not only did no one talk to me, but I discovered that mixed fractions weren’t just a Massachusetts thing. Unfortunately, they had them in New York City, too. And Ms. Morgan called me up to the board to do a problem. And I tripped on my sneaker lace when I was walking up there and almost wiped out.

  I don’t know why I had asked when lunch was. Not one girl had said, “Hey, since you’re new and have no one to sit with, do you want to sit with me at lunch?” So right before lunch period started, I went up to Beatrice and said nervously, “Hi. Remember me? Lucy. We met the other day? I live in your building? And, uh, I was wondering whether you wanted to possibly eat lunch together?” But she said, “Can’t. I’m spending it practicing piano in the music room.” I was right—she was one of those kids who was totally different in front of adults than she was in front of kids, because there was no real politeness in her tone this time. Instead, she was kind of gruff. Pete had told me a few days earlier that gruff was the New York version of friendly, but that wasn’t very comforting when you’re feeling completely alone. I had no reason to think that Beatrice was lying, but I still felt like an idiot.

  By that time everyone was on their way to the cafeteria, so instead of following them, I did what Laurel did at school and ducked into the girls’ room. (At least, as my soon-to-be older sister, she had taught me something worthwhile.) I hung out in one of the stalls until I heard the bell ring. Because the school was kind of fancy, the stall was very clean, which was nice, I guess. There’s no way I could have spent an entire half hour in the bathroom at Jefferson without wanting to throw up. Just thinking about Jefferson made me feel even worse, and I couldn’t help it when the tears started. Luckily, the toilet paper here was a lot softer than it was at Jefferson, which was good because I had forgotten my Kleenex. As soon as I got home I was going to make DID YOU REMEMBER TO TAKE YOUR KLEENEX? Post-its and put them next to the phone ones, because I had a feeling that I was going to be using a lot of tissues.

  chapter 13

  Dear Dr. Maude,

  By any chance are you familiar with the book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? It’s a kid’s book, but I looked online and it was published in 1972, which is why I thought you might know it. Anyway, in case you don’t, it’s about this boy who has a day that starts out bad and just gets worse and worse. Well, if I wrote a book, it would have to be called Lucy and the Terrible, Most Awful Week (And It’s Not Even Over Yet).

  I’m totally serious about the “most awful” part. I won’t go into all of it because it’s kind of a long story, but basically: (a) I hate my new school; (b) I’m totally homesick for everything about Northampton, even Marissa; and (c) Laurel would rather read in her room with the door closed than hang out with me. Oh, and (d) you won’t write me back, so I don’t know what to do.

  Because of all this, I’m seriously considering taking the money I have saved up ($77.29) and getting a bus ticket to Northampton. I looked online and a one-way ticket only costs $39, which means not only would I have enough money to take a cab to Port Authority (even though I passed Alan’s subway test, I’m afraid if I take the subway I might get lost and miss my bus), but I’d also be able to buy a sandwich and snacks for the ride. I know if I was a guest on your show, you’d probably say, “Now, Lucy, it sounds to me like you’re running away from your problems,” and, yeah, I probably am, but I don’t care. Just like I don’t care that I’ll probably get grounded for at least a month, because I can tell you this much—I’d rather be cooped up inside my dad’s apartment, where at least I know my way around town and have friends, than on the twenty-first floor of an apartment building full of snooty people and a girl who has no interest in being sisters with me.

  I know that by writing you this in an e-mail, you could ruin it by calling my mother and t
elling her my plan, but I don’t think that will happen because—not to be rude or anything—I don’t think you even READ my emails. I think you just delete them without opening them, because if you DID read them, then you’d know I was someone who had very serious problems and therefore needed serious advice.

  Anyway, I’m not a quitter, and so I have promised myself that I’ll finish out the school week and run away on Saturday, which means that, because it’s Tuesday, you have three days to write me back. Just as an FYI, if you DON’T write me back, you can consider this is the last e-mail you’ll ever receive from me.

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  yours truly,

  Lucy B. Parker

  It would’ve been nice to have a mother to talk to about the fact that she had ruined my life by yanking me out of my life as I knew it and plopping me down into a new one just because she had gone ahead and fallen in love, but unfortunately, mine was too busy looking for a place to get married, even though they hadn’t even decided on a date. I don’t know why she was being so crazy about the whole wedding thing when it was only going to be me, her, Alan, and Laurel (well, if my running-away plan went off without a hitch, it would just be the three of them), but she was. I tried to talk to Pete about how miserable I was, but he just kept giving me that “Don’t worry, it’s going to fine, you just have to give it time” speech, which, frankly, was starting to annoy me. I had given it time—three days—and it only got more awful.

  On Wednesday, I was all set to hang out in the bathroom again at lunchtime—especially since I had managed to smuggle two granola bars, a pear, and a rice pudding out of the kitchen that morning when Mom was busy Googling “romantic inns to get married in Vermont in” on her laptop—but that morning during announcements, Ms. Morgan told us that we’d be eating in our classrooms that day because they were painting the cafeteria. I spent the whole morning freaking out about what I was going to do because even though no one showed any interest in me, if someone happened to notice I was gone the entire lunch period and said, “Where were you?” and I said, “Oh, I was in the bathroom,” she might think I had really bad stomach problems, and I didn’t want to be the New Girl with Stomach Problems. But then, during math, Alice Mosher tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I wanted to sit with her, and I said yes. I had already figured out that Alice Mosher was the Marissa of the sixth grade, and had no friends, which is why she asked me—the New Girl—to sit with her. She probably thought I was dumb enough not to know any better. I may have been a lot of things, but when it came to figuring out who was who in a class—the Marissa; the Smartest; the One Who Had Probably Kissed at Least Three Boys by Now—I was not dumb. In fact, I had figured that all out by lunch the first day.

  It turned out that Alice was even more annoying than Marissa, which I had no idea was even possible. Not only did she talk with her mouth full (if a person is eating a tuna sandwich, that’s really disgusting), but because she was deaf in one ear she talked really loud. And she went on and on about how in love she was with Max Rummel, and how, when he said, “Get away from me, you freak, or else I’m going to tell everyone how you’re stalking me,” what he really meant was, “I’m totally in love with you, too, but I’m afraid all my guy friends will make fun of me if I tell them, so I’m just going to keep being a jerk, but you and I know it’s all just an act and I’m totally going to ask you to the seventh-grade dance next year.” I didn’t mind so much that she talked about herself for most of lunch, because at least I wasn’t eating in the bathroom, or becoming the New Girl with Stomach Problems. Plus, I was a little worried about what I was going to say when someone finally asked me about my family, or found out about Laurel. My plan was to not mention Laurel for a while. Like, say, FOREVER. Because I knew once that news got out, I could forget about being Lucy B. Parker, and I’d just be Lucy-Laurel-Moses’s-Younger-Stepsister. But it wasn’t like I had too much to worry about anyway. It’s not like anyone was fighting to sit next to me and ask me all about my life or anything.

  Once Alice was done with her sandwich and had moved on to her chocolate pudding, she said—loudly, of course—“So can I ask you something?”

  “Uh . . . sure,” I said nervously, hoping this wasn’t the moment the stepsister thing came up because I hadn’t yet figured out a lie I was happy with.

  She leaned in. “Have you gotten your period yet?” she whispered loudly.

  Wow. New Yorkers may not have been very chatty, but when they did talk to you, they asked really personal questions. “Um, no,” I replied. “Have you?”

  She shook her head and sighed. “No. But I’m just dying to. Even though Maren—she’s my older sister—says that I won’t be all that excited once it’s happening every month.”

  “How many girls in the sixth grade here have gotten theirs?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Fifteen? Twenty? I have no idea.”

  “You mean no one’s keeping track of it?”

  “Huh?” she asked, confused.

  When I told her about “The Official Period Log of Sixth-Grade Girls at Jefferson Middle School in Northampton, MA” notebook and how I had been the Official Keeper of the Periods, she thought it was the most brilliant idea in the entire world. So brilliant, in fact, that she got up from her seat right then and ran over to where Cristina Pollock, the most popular girl in the sixth grade, and her two BFFs, Chloe and Marni, were sitting and said IN THE LOUDEST VOICE IMAGINABLE, “You guys! You guys! You have to hear this! You know Lucy, that New Girl? Well, back in Maine, where she lived, she was what they called the Official Keeper of the Periods, and she wrote down the dates and times that every girl in the grade got her period so anytime anyone wanted to know that information, they just went to her and she looked in her notebook. Isn’t that SUCH a good idea?! Don’t you think we should have a notebook like that here at the Center?!”

  Not only did the most popular girl in the entire class and her two BFFs all turn to look at me at that moment, but so did everyone who had heard Alice. Which, because she was so loud, was basically everyone in the entire class. Including the boys.

  I had to save this. I had to come up with something to say that would make them laugh or at least make them not think I was a total freak who was obsessed with periods. Otherwise, I was definitely going to have to run away on Saturday.

  I opened my mouth. “Actually, uh, it’s Massachusetts,” I stammered.

  “Huh?” asked Alice.

  “Where I’m from. Not Maine.” So much for saving this. I just hoped whoever ended up sitting next to me on the bus didn’t smell.

  After lunch, I knew I could forget about going to Billy’s with a new friend, which was really depressing. Especially because when I’m depressed, the only thing that undepresses me is cupcakes. So when school was over that day, I called Mom and lied and told her that I was going to hang out with a friend (“See, honey—I told you you’d make friends!” she cried), and that I’d be home by dinner, but, really, what I was going to do was take the subway down to Billy’s Bakery by myself and get as many cupcakes as I could for $10.28, which was how much money I had in my pocket. Since I was now definitely leaving for good on Saturday, I figured I should at least see if what Pete said was true and they were the best cupcakes not just in Manhattan but the entire world. Plus, it was only fair that I have one good memory of New York City before I went.

  Except the problem was I had forgotten my little “Places Pete Says Are Good and What Trains to Take to Get There” notebook. Luckily I remembered that Billy’s was on Ninth Avenue in a neighborhood called Chelsea, so I figured once I got to the subway stop I’d be able to read the map there and just figure it out myself. But when I did get to the subway stop at Eighty-sixth Street, someone had spray painted over the map on the wall there, so I couldn’t read it. And the little subway booth, which was supposed to have a live person there to help you out with these kinds of questions, was empty. And then I decided to depend on my memory (which wasn’t all that good
, especially since it was crammed with all the directions Alan had shoved in it over the last two weeks) about which subway to take. Not a good idea.

  I was right about the first part of the trip—taking the 1 train downtown. But that was the only part I was right about. Instead of just taking it down to Twenty-third Street and getting off there and walking west to Ninth Avenue, and then turning left and walking one and a half blocks to Billy’s, I got off the train at Forty-second Street. And switched to the N train. But not the N train downtown, which I could have done and not been too messed up. No, I took the N train uptown. And the N train is an express train and therefore makes fewer stops, so I was on it for a while before I noticed something was wrong. “Excuse me,” I finally said to the woman sitting next to me when we got to the next stop, “since this is Thirtieth Avenue, I would get off at the next one if I wanted to go to Twenty-third Street in Chelsea, right?”

  “Chelsea?!” she replied. “Girl, you on the wrong train. We’re in Queens.”

  Queens?! Queens wasn’t even in Manhattan. It was a whole other borough! It was where Pete lived and where Laurel shot her TV show.

  The doors ding-donged and started to close. “Wait!” I yelled as I flew out of my seat. But before I could get off the train, the doors closed and the train took off again.

  This was not good. In fact, this was very, very bad. I was lost, in the middle of Queens, and had no idea how to get home.

  I got off at the next stop, Astoria Boulevard. If it had been one of Pete’s days off, I wouldn’t have been so worried, because he lived in Astoria and could’ve come gotten me. But it wasn’t, and he was back in Manhattan at the Conran. I walked out of the subway station and looked around. If I hadn’t been completely panicked because I was totally lost, I bet I would’ve found the whole thing really cool. Astoria Boulevard was swarming with people of all different colors and nationalities, speaking tons of different languages. It was like that “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World, except with real people instead of mechanical ones. But because I was completely panicked and totally lost, I just felt like I was going to collapse.