Girl vs. Superstar

by Robin Palmer

  Thankfully, I had my phone with me. Except when I called Mom to tell her what had happened and that she needed to come get me that very minute, I got her voice mail. So I called Alan, and got his voice mail. And Pete’s. And Rose’s.

  I heard a rumble and looked up. The already-dark sky got darker and a crack of lightning appeared, followed by rain. Which mixed together well with the tears that were already falling down my face. I looked around for someplace dry, and ducked into the Neptune Diner, scrolling through the numbers in my phone. There was only one other person I knew in New York to call and while I totally didn’t want to call her, I had no choice.

  Laurel. I highlighted her number and, with a deep breath, pressed Send.

  “Hello?” a voice on the other end finally said.

  “Laurel?” I sniffled. “It’s Lucy. I’m really lost,” I managed to get out before I burst into tears again.

  Ten minutes later, as I was finishing the bowl of clam chowder that Nia, the lady who owned the diner, had made me eat because, according to her, soup fixed everything, a fancy black car with tinted windows pulled up outside and Laurel jumped out, dressed in a clown outfit. Complete with clown makeup.

  Just seeing her made me burst into tears again, which was really embarrassing, but I couldn’t help it. And then when she rushed into the diner and grabbed me and said, all relieved, “Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re okay!” before pulling me into a giant hug, I cried even harder.

  Once she let me go, I realized my tears had ruined her makeup. “I made your smile all lopsided!” I cried.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “The whole thing is totally stupid anyway. I kept telling the director that Madison would never dress up like a clown to try and sneak into a famous actor’s hotel room, but he forced me to do it.” She looked down at her oversized clown shoes. “I must look like a total idiot, though, huh?”

  “Not really,” I lied.

  She took my hand and marched us back over to my booth. “Now tell me what happened. How did you end up in Queens?”

  “Well, it’s kind of a long story,” I said.

  “That’s okay.”

  I took a deep breath and told her everything. Not just about how I screwed up on which train to take to Billy’s but about everything. How I was sick of getting lost. How no one was nice to me at school. How I was now known in my class as Period Girl, which was a million times worse than New Girl. How my head hurt with trying to remember all the directions and what buttons to push on the remote. How I was trying to be as neat as possible because I knew how important that was to her, but that, unfortunately, I was just a messy person because my parents were creative types.

  “And so after school, I decided I’d go to Billy’s Bakery to get a cupcake, because Pete says they’re the best in the city and I wanted to try one before I left,” I sniffled.

  “What do you mean, ‘left’?” Laurel said. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going back to Northampton,” I replied.

  “For the weekend?” she asked, confused.

  “No. For good.”

  She was the most confused-looking clown I had ever seen. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s just . . . well, I know you told Alan that you were okay with him marrying my mom, but I don’t really think you want me here.” I couldn’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth. “And I just think it would be easier if I went and lived with my dad.”

  “What? Of course I want you here!”

  “Well, you sure don’t act like it,” I said, twisting my napkin in my hands as I bit the inside of my cheek to stop more tears from coming.

  “Well, you don’t act like you want me here either!” she said. “Ever since I got home from L.A. you’ve totally avoided me.”

  “That’s because you’ve been avoiding me!” I cried.

  After we stared at each other for a second, she took a breath and then told me everything—how, after that day at the mall, she had written in her journal how it had been the most fun she had had in she couldn’t remember how long. But then, when Alan came back from New York and told her he wanted to marry my mom, she got scared because, while my dad was still alive and I’d always have him, her mom was dead. And what if Alan getting married meant that it completely erased the memory of her mother? Sure, she thought my mom was totally cool, but she felt guilty for moving on and potentially forgetting about her mom. And, yes, she may have been a star, but the truth was she was kind of jealous of how funny and brave I was. And what would happen when, after living with her, I found out that she wasn’t the Laurel-Moses-Superstar whom everyone thought they knew but, really, was just this dorky girl who had never played Truth or Dare and whose OCD was so bad that the only way she could make the pit in her stomach go away was if everything was neat and orderly?

  I couldn’t believe it. Laurel Moses was just as nervous and scared about this whole stepsister thing as I was. Who knew?

  “ You think I’m funny and brave?” I asked tentatively.

  “Yeah, and I know you haven’t made any friends yet, but you totally will and then you definitely won’t need me,” she said.

  “Of course I will!” I said. “Like, what am I going to do when I finally get a crush on a boy? Everyone knows that you go to your big sister for that stuff.”

  “But I’ve never had a boyfriend,” she said.

  “Madison Tennyson has.”

  “I guess you’re right.” Her eyes got all teary. “I’m really sorry, Lucy. Can we just, I don’t know, start over?”

  I got teary, too. Again. “Totally,” I said, reaching over the table and giving her a hug.

  After we let go, I looked at her. “You’ve really never played Truth or Dare?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “Wow. Well, if you want, we can play this weekend. I mean, that is, if you want to hang out.”

  She nodded. “I want to. So you’re not going to go to Northampton?”

  I shrugged. “Not yet. I guess I can give the New York thing a little more of a chance.”

  Laurel had to go back to work, but she lent me her car to take me home. On the way back, I called Mom and told her how I ended up in Queens, and man, was she mad. Like really mad. Like smoke-coming-out-of-a-cartoon-character’s-ears-level mad. But then, later at dinner, after she saw how Laurel and I had stopped pretending the other didn’t exist and were actually talking, she was glad. Like really glad. So it all evened out, and I didn’t even get grounded, which was good.

  Of course, I still had to go to back to school the next day. I thought about hiding out in the bathroom again during lunch, but then I remembered what Laurel had said—how I was brave. I still didn’t quite buy it. But when I thought about everything that had happened over the last few months—getting dumped by Rachel and Missy; the Hat Incident, half of Northampton seeing my egghead outside the bookstore; embarrassing myself during karaoke; moving away from the only home I’d ever known, and starting at a new school in the middle of the year; living with the most popular girl in the world—well, getting through all of that without dying of embarrassment or melting into the floor might mean I was pretty brave. And if I could do all that, I could sit in the cafeteria like everyone else, even if I sat alone. Because there was no way I was suffering through another lunch with Alice.

  But I didn’t realize until right before lunch started that, because I hadn’t been to the cafeteria yet, I didn’t know who sat where.

  I was halfway into the ham-and-cheese-on-sourdoughwith-balsamic-vinegar-on-top sandwich I had brought from home when Cristina Pollock walked up to my table with her tray, and her two best friends, Chloe and Marni, trailing behind her.

  “Hi,” she said with a big smile.

  I waited for her to add “Period Girl,” but she didn’t. So instead, I turned around to see who she was talking to, but there was no one there. “Are you talking to me? I asked.

  She laughed. “Of course I’m talking to you! It’s Lucy, right?”


  I nodded. I couldn’t believe the most popular girl in the grade was talking to me. Maybe Laurel was right—maybe New York wasn’t so bad if you gave it a chance! “Yup. Lucy B. Parker.”

  “I’m Cristina,” she replied. Her smile got a little smaller. “So because you’re the New Girl, I guess you didn’t know this was my table.”

  “Uh . . . no . . . I didn’t—”

  “A table where I sit with my friends,” she said, motioning to Chloe and Marni. “You know, girls who don’t do things like keep notebooks with when everyone gets their periods, and aren’t freaks.”

  Chloe and Marni giggled.

  This was it. I could feel my face getting hot. Sure, maybe things were a little better with Laurel and me, but there was no way I could continue coming to the Center anymore. I was brave, but I wasn’t that brave. Unless a miracle happened in the next twenty seconds, I was going to have to force Mom to homeschool me.

  And then I heard it. A miracle.

  “At least she’s not bourgeois, Cristina,” a voice said behind me.

  I turned around to see Beatrice standing there, sounding not just gruff but definitely unpolite. I didn’t know what bourgeois meant, but I could tell from the way she said it, it wasn’t a good thing to be.

  “Whatever, Beatrice,” Cristina said with an eye roll. She turned to me. “So, are you going to move or what, Period Girl?”

  I had two choices: be a wimp and get up and go hide in the bathroom again, or stand up for myself and make an enemy for life. The truth was, after everything that had happened over the last two weeks, the standing-up option sounded exhausting. But I wasn’t alone anymore.

  “Actually, she’s eating lunch with me,” Beatrice said. “She didn’t know that I usually sit in the corner.” She turned to me. “Are you coming, Lucy?”

  I was so grateful I wanted to hug her, but instead, I just nodded, picked up my stuff, walked across the cafeteria, and had lunch with my first nondoorman, nonhousekeeper friend in New York.

  Beatrice Lerner-Moskovitz may have been quiet and polite in front of adults, but once you were alone with her, you couldn’t shut her up. By the time lunch was over, I had learned that she lived with her two mothers and thirteen-year-old brother, Blair; that when she grew up, she was going to write novels that won lots of awards; and that when she did, she was going to live in Paris because there weren’t as many bourgeois people there.

  By this time Alice had joined us, which was sort of annoying. But she got less annoying after she offered me half of her Twix bar. Half of a Twix bar can solve a lot of problems. “I don’t mean to sound dumb or anything,” I said as I took a bite, “but what does bourgeois mean? People don’t use that word in Northampton.”

  Beatrice finished swallowing a bite of her sardine sandwich. “It’s hard to explain,” she said. “You just sort of know it when you see it. One of my moms uses the word a lot.” She patted her mouth with a napkin. “It’s French,” she added, as if that explained everything.

  She went on to tell me that the reason she ate alone was not only because people were grossed out by the fact that she ate sardine sandwiches a lot (it was pretty stinky) but also because, a week before sixth grade started, Cristina—who had been her BFF—called her up and dumped her.

  Oh. My. God. I couldn’t believe how much we had in common. Not only did we live in the same building, but we had both been dumped!

  “It was so dramatic!” cried Alice. “They went from being like Siamese twins to not talking at all.”

  “Cristina thinks that just because she looks like Laurel Moses, she’s God’s gift to the universe,” Beatrice said. “Personally, I don’t think she looks like her, but you’d know better, seeing that you live with her.”

  Uh-oh. I wasn’t ready to drop the Laurel Moses bomb yet. Maybe if I was lucky, Alice had missed that last part because of the deaf-in-one-ear thing.

  No such luck. “What do you mean ‘seeing that you live with her’?” Alice asked.

  “Lucy lives with Laurel Moses,” Beatrice explained. “They’re about to become stepsisters.”

  Alice stood up. “Laurel Moses is your stepsister?!” she yelled.

  As a cafeteria full of heads whipped around to look at me, I slumped down in my chair. So much for keeping the Laurel thing a secret.

  At least I wasn’t the New Girl anymore. Or Period Girl.

  Now I was just Laurel Moses’s stepsister.

  By the time the day ended, I had gotten five notes passed to me from different girls asking me if I wanted to hang out over the weekend, but I already had plans. With Laurel. In addition to playing Truth or Dare, we were going for manicures/pedicures at a place on Columbus Avenue.

  But first I was going to meet her at Billy’s for a cupcake.

  As the last bell rang and we gathered up our stuff, Beatrice came over to me.

  “Want to walk home together?” she asked.

  “I’d love to, but I can’t. I’m going to meet Laurel at Billy’s Bakery for cupcakes,” I said.

  “Oh. Okay. I guess I’ll see you around, then,” she said as she started to walk away.

  “Wait—do you want to come with us?” I quickly called out.

  She turned around. “Really?”

  I nodded.

  Her smile was so big I was almost blinded by the glint off the metal of her braces. “I love Billy’s. They have the best cupcakes in all of New York.”

  I guess Pete did know what he was talking about. As we started walking to the door, I stopped. “Do you know which subway to take there?” I asked anxiously.

  “Of course I do,” she replied. “But let’s take the bus. The subway is very bourgeois.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. As long as we didn’t end up in Queens, I didn’t care how we got there.

  “Dr. Maude says that if more New Yorkers took the bus rather than spending so many hours smooshed up against other people in the subway, there’d be a lot less fighting in the world,” she said.

  “You watch Dr. Maude, too?!” I gasped.

  “No. She said it once when I was in the elevator with her.”

  “What elevator?”

  “Our elevator at the Conran. You know she lives in our building, right?”

  Dr. Maude was my neighbor?! Like not we-both-live-in-New-York-City kind of neighbors, but in-the-same-building neighbor?!

  New York City had just gotten a little bit more interesting.

  chapter 14

  Dear Dr. Maude,

  I’m writing this on what has definitely, positively been the best day I’ve had in New York since I’ve lived here, which, because you’re a psychologist and your job is to help people get happy, I’m sure makes you very glad to hear.

  I won’t go into all of it because it’s kind of a long story, but basically, here’s what you should know:

  Laurel and I had this whole long talk, and I’m thinking this stepsister thing might just work out.

  I finally have a friend at school—her name is Beatrice Lerner-Moskovitz, and she uses the word bourgeois a lot.

  If you’re ever in the mood for a cupcake, definitely go to Billy’s Bakery down in Chelsea because they totally rock.

  But most important . . .

  You probably didn’t know this because I send these letters to you via e-mail rather than regular mail with a return address, but according to Beatrice, WE’RE NEIGHBORS!!!!!!! You live in 12F and I live in 21C!!!!!!!

  So now you don’t have to write me back—now you can just come up and knock on my door and we can take Id and Ego for a walk in Central Park.

  Anyway, I’m going to end this now, because it turns out that once you’ve had an awesome day after a string of really horrible ones, it takes a lot out of you. I don’t think I need any advice at the moment, but I have a feeling I sure will soon, so I’ll be in touch then.

  yours truly,

  Lucy B. Parker

  Don’t miss the next Lucy B. Parker novel, coming soon!

  HC 978-0-
399-25534-2 • PB 978-0-14-241501-6

  When I’m not busy overlistening to my mom’s conversations or being the Official Keeper of the Periods at Jefferson Middle School, I’m updating my website!

  LucyBParker.com

  Check out my site for:• A sneak peek at upcoming books

  • My personal “Why Me?” diary

  • The purr-fectly funny “As Seen by Miss Piggy” feature

  • Author Robin Palmer’s advice column (She’s a LOT better at responding than Dr. Maude!)

  • Fun downloadables and more exclusive content!

  Books by Robin Palmer:

  Yours Truly, Lucy B. Parker: Girl vs. Superstar Yours Truly, Lucy B. Parker: Sealed with a Kiss (coming soon!)

  For teens:

  Cindy Ella

  Geek Charming

  Little Miss Red