by Alyson Noel
She just laughs and rolls her eyes.
“Next time,” he says, which only makes her laugh again.
“How far of a walk is it?” I’m trying to decide whether or not to bring a jacket.
“Walk?” Dougall looks at me like I said something crazy. “Ha! Good one.” He shakes his head and exchanges a look with Plum that’s clearly at my expense. “Why would we walk when Sparks loves driving us around?”
“Sparks?” Unfortunately I said it out loud, question mark included.
That’s why the chauffeur/bodyguard seemed so familiar—he looked like Sparks! If Sparks grew about a foot, lost a few inches of neck, and added a hundred pounds of solid muscle to his frame.
“Yeah. Of course. Sparks.” I try to cover but fail miserably. “I’ll just, um…I’ll just go and…tell Sparks to get the limo ready.” I pretty much bolt from the room so I won’t have to see the looks on their faces.
I’m not fast enough to miss the sound of them laughing.
EARLY RETIREMENT
“Dude, I swear, I don’t know how she does it, but every time I see her, she just gets better and better.” Dougall stretches across the long leather seat, feet propped near the dark-tinted window, turning the back of my limo into his own portable living room.
“Who?” I shut the divider separating us from Sparks. Partly so he can’t eavesdrop on our conversation, but mostly so I’ll stop staring at him. It’s so weird to see him looking all beefy like that.
“Who?” Dougall shakes his head as he takes out his phone and fields a couple texts. “Whaddya mean, who? Plum Bailey, that’s who!”
I lean back against my seat, trying to make sense of it. Sure, this version of Plum is a slightly better (if not slightly scarier) improvement over the Greentree Plum, but still, he can’t be serious, can he?
Does this mean the real Dougall back in Greentree has a real but secret crush on the real Plum? Is that why he insists on encouraging her to hang around like we’re still in the third grade and thinks it’s perfectly okay to be friends with people like her? Has he liked her that whole entire time without telling me?
I study him closely, trying to figure the odds, and instantly decide against it. The Greentree Dougall is immune to girls. This new version just must have really weird taste.
“I don’t know how you can contain yourself, being around her all day. She’s so aloof. Thinks she’s so much better than us. It drives me crazy!”
“She does? Plum Bailey thinks she’s better than us?”
Dougall abandons his phone long enough to grab a frosty can of Mojo from the refrigerated slot that runs along the side of the seats. It’s the only thing available, other than water, and I can’t help but wonder if I get them for free, since, according to Ezer, they pay me a lot of money to endorse them.
He flips the tab and takes a long sip. “Um, yeah.” He swipes the back of his hand across his lips. “I hate to break it to you, but she totally considers you the worst kind of sellout.”
“What—why? Because I don’t cover half my face with tattoos and black eyeliner?” I shake my head and roll my eyes. Leave it to Plum to not understand that I’m trying to inspire people with my music, not frighten them like the skinny rocker dude she was drooling over.
“No, because she thinks your music is ‘manufactured, inauthentic crap’—her words. She was just explaining her theory in depth when you walked in.”
I frown. I can’t help it. Even if I don’t give a flying flip about Plum, no one likes a bad review.
“Whatever, bro.” Dougall shrugs. “Let the haters hate. You’re crying all the way to the bank! Am I right, or am I right?”
He leans across the seat, attempting a fist bump, and even though I’m not really feeling it, I return it with as much faked enthusiasm as I can manage.
For the rest of the ride, Dougall stays glued to his phone as I stare out the window, trying to make sense of a world where palm trees are wrapped with red and white Christmas lights so they look like candy canes, and Plum Bailey shuns me instead of me shunning her. And when Sparks pulls into a Starbucks drive-thru, mumbling something about maintaining my privacy and not causing a scene by actually going inside and standing in line, all I know is that the limo barely fits in the lane. But Sparks is a pro, and before we know it, Dougall and I are sipping for free thanks to the girl working the window who totally freaked when I popped through the sunroof and waved.
I might as well enjoy the good parts of the dream while they’re there for the taking.
Then again, for the very first time it occurs to me that if this is a dream, that means I fell asleep on the bus-stop bench, and if I don’t wake up soon, I’ll probably end up freezing to death.
“Nice move.” Dougall pulls his straw from the slot and starts gnawing on the end. “When’s the last time you actually paid for one of these, or anything else, for that matter?”
“Well, I did sign her arm. Seems like a fair trade, right?” I blow little puffs of air at the top of my cup and take a tentative first sip that’s so bad I can’t help but gag.
“You serious about not putting milk or sweetener in that?” Dougall wags his straw at my drink. “Dude, that’s a quintuple shot. That’s one serious brew you got there.”
“I don’t want to dilute it,” I say, having no idea if that’s even possible, since it’s not like I’m a regular coffee drinker. In fact, I can’t stand the stuff. But I figure it’s the best and quickest way to wake up, which I’m still determined to do, since I already tried pinching myself. I mean, it’s either that or death by hypothermia.
I force another sip. A few more follow. Fully aware that the sooner I empty this cup, the sooner I’ll be back on that frozen Greentree bus stop bench. Most likely frostbitten, but at least it gives me something to work with as opposed to outright dead.
“Jonah’s hosting a party.” Dougall shows me his phone, and I squint at a long row of texts I can’t read. “Do you think we should go?”
His expression turns serious, like this is something to be carefully debated and considered. But all I can do is wonder if the Jonah he’s talking about is Jonah, as in the Superfamous Model/Actor Jonah Who’s on Every Magazine Cover.
“Then again, his last party was kind of lame. Not sure we should chance that again.” Dougall taps his chin with his straw, staring hard at the screen, as though the answer might be hidden somewhere.
I nod like I remember the lame party and take another sip, waiting for the moment the caffeine will take effect.
“Then again, he is calling it An Aloha Christmas! And he clearly states that it’s a luau theme. All of which is pretty genius, if you think about it. It practically requires every girl to show up wearing a grass skirt and a bikini….” He shoots me a sideways look. “Kinda hard to snub an invite like that. Am I right, or am I right?”
He leans in for another fist bump, but I’m really kind of over it, so I segue into the conversation I’d much rather have. “Speaking of, um, hot girls…what do you know about Tinsley Barnes?”
Dougall squints. “Ezer’s daughter?”
“Niece.”
He thinks harder, eyes narrowing so much they’re nearly invisible. “Yeah, she’s hot. She’s no Plum Bailey. But yeah, I can see it.” He focuses back on his phone as though the conversation is over, but I’m just getting started.
“Yeah, but what do we know about her? You know, other than her indisputable hotness and all.”
“We?”
“You. Me. We. Whatever. Who is she exactly?”
“You mean aside from the obvious—a hot girl who lives with Ezer?” Dougall frowns, as though asking him to make the switch to something a little more substantial than his internal hotness scale is going too far.
“Yeah. Like, what’s her story? What are her interests? Is she dating anyone?” The last bit is presented like an afterthought, not all that important and definitely not my main reason for mentioning her.
Dougall’s expression now borders on annoyed. “
I don’t know, dude. Why don’t you ask Ezer?”
“Because I can’t.”
He looks at me.
“You know how Ezer gets. He’s all over my case,” I say, since I can’t exactly explain the truth: that I’m starting to feel the effects of my quintuple shot, which means I won’t be long in this dream world and none of this will matter anyway.
Dougall laughs and abandons his phone. Finally.
“We’re doing a song together,” I tell him. “Tinsley and me.”
I like the way it sounds—Tinsley and me. So in my head I say it again.
“You serious? You think that’s a good career move?”
I’m taken aback by the question. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought of that. All I could think about was having a legitimate reason to spend time with Tinsley. Everything else seemed irrelevant.
“You don’t? Think it’s a good career move, I mean?”
“I think you’re playing right into what Plum was going on about. They’ll view you as being even softer than you already are.” He smirks. “Then again, it’s guaranteed to bring in some solid bank. People always love a duet. And if you make it sappy enough, your existing fans will be happy.”
Bank.
Image.
Kitchen-table Goth girl critics.
Is this really the world I’ve always dreamed of?
“On second thought, the odds of ever impressing your haters are nil, so you should probably go for it. If you play it right, you can retire by the time you’re eighteen, then none of it will even matter, right?”
“Retire at eighteen? And then what?”
That’s only five years away—and the way he says it, like I’m sure to be washed up by then, well, it feels like a bullet speeding straight toward me.
“I don’t know, what do all the other has-beens do? Go to rehab, wait for their chance to appear on Where Are They Now?, sit on their shrink’s couch, and cry about what could’ve been?” He laughs.
“One Christmas duet—one—and you’re already pegging me as a has-been?”
Dougall shifts in his seat and leans toward me like a doctor about to diagnose a serious illness with no cure. “I hate to break it to you, bro, but you were destined to be a has-been from the day you started this journey.”
The way he says it, the way he looks at me, I can’t help but wonder if he somehow knows this is all a weird dream. Maybe he’s in on it too.
But when he says, “Name one teen sensation from the past that managed to stay relevant,” I know he’s just making a point.
It’s not like I rack my brain. I haven’t lived long enough to know that many people. Still, I can’t think of a single one.
“My point exactly.” Dougall grins, clearly overcome with the satisfaction of being right. “So why not just accept the inevitable and enjoy the ride while it lasts?”
SWOOSH
By the time I’ve gotten used to the taste of coffee, I no longer hate it, my cup is empty, my brain is thrumming, my body is vibrating like it received a megadose of adrenaline, and I’m still in the limo, still in the dream.
The only difference is, I no longer care.
Dougall is right.
I need to sit back and enjoy the ride while it lasts.
I mean, jeez. Here I am, an International Superstar wielding some seriously solid bank (as Dougall would say), and all I can do is try to return to a place where I’m a Brainiac Nerd with $132.59 (thanks to Nana’s annual Christmas/birthday checks and accumulated interest) to my name.
It doesn’t make sense.
Not to mention, the more I hang with this new version of Dougall, the more I like him.
For one thing, he’s nothing like the Greentree Dougall. He’s like a billion, trillion, gazillion times cooler.
For another, he apparently has loads of celebrity contacts. Well, I guess technically they’re my celebrity contacts, but Dougall knows what to do with them.
Also, he knows how to have fun. Real fun. Not the kind that’s relegated to eating Cheetos and watching old Roswell documentaries on a couch covered in cat hair. We’ve been hanging out for a while now, and I haven’t heard a single mention of Bigfoot, black holes, or conspiracy theories. The Greentree Dougall would never last this long without mentioning one of those things.
According to Dougall, who’s pretty much an authority on celebrity life, it’s way too early to show up at Jonah’s party (only a dork gets there within three hours of the start time), so we decide to head out for some burgers to soak up the caffeine.
Sparks is pretty good at eluding the paparazzi, which isn’t easy when you’re driving a limo. And yet, even though we arrive without a bunch of photogs snapping my picture, even though Sparks went in first to scope out the restaurant and consult with the manager on securing the very best seat, the second we enter, the place erupts into chaos, with everyone snapping pics of me on their cell phones as the manager whisks us to a private booth in the back.
Sparks insists on guarding our table and plants himself right at the edge. His back ruler straight, feet planted wide, his head swivels back and forth, like he’s scoping for would-be assassins. It’s kind of cool to have my own personal badass on call, but it still really bugs me to have him hanging around and eavesdropping on our conversations. So I order him to take a walk, grab a bite, maybe even read a few chapters of Lord of the Flies—a joke that admittedly falls kinda flat, but that’s only because he doesn’t know that in Greentree he assigned that book to our class.
At first he’s reluctant to leave, but after I toss him a handful of bills and basically tell him to scram, he gets the hint. And as I watch him walk away, I gotta say, it feels pretty good to tell a teacher what to do for a change.
The second he’s gone, our booth is invaded by girls practically crawling all over me as they grab at my T-shirt and run their hands over my hair, which for some reason makes them squeal, all the while telling me how much they love me, how they cry nonstop when they listen to my music, how they have pictures of me posted all over the walls of their rooms and inside their lockers at school. They ask me to sign their napkins and T-shirts. There are even a few requests to sign random body parts (mostly arms, legs, and hands, except for one forehead, which seemed a little strange).
At first it’s really fun. I mean, what’s the point of being an International Superstar if you can’t enjoy a little time with your fans? And it’s not like Dougall is left out, since they take pictures with him too (only with a little less enthusiasm).
But it’s not long before it seems like every single one of those girls texted every single person in their contacts list, because the next thing I know, the place is slammed with fans and photogs—none of them ordering food, which annoys the manager and the waitstaff so much I end up having to ask Sparks to return so he can escort us back to the limo, which is where we end up eating our burgers.
“This is so much better,” Dougall says. “It’s not like you can recline and put your feet up in a restaurant.” He leans his head back against the seat, gazes up at the roof, and chews thoughtfully.
“Maybe I should open a restaurant,” I say, the words garbled from a mouth stuffed full of fries. “One where instead of booths we have recliners, and instead of tables we have trays that slide out of the armrest, and instead of facing each other we’ll all be facing these individual screens where we can watch whatever we want, ’cause it’s all on demand.” I laugh like I’m joking, but really I’m not. It seems like a truly inspired idea that might actually work. Besides, what’s the point of having all this money if I don’t have fun with it and build cool places for my friends and me to hang out?
“Dude—that’s genius!” Dougall takes a long, loud sip of his soda, making a series of obnoxious slurping sounds as he scrapes the straw along the bottom. “You can call it The Den. But it won’t have any signs. And it’ll have a secret entrance and a secret phone number too. It’ll be the hottest place in town—people will be fighting to book a recliner! You’l
l be even richer than you are now!”
I wipe a glob of ketchup from my chin and nod. Not really getting the whole no-sign, secret-entrance-and-phone-number bit—I mean, how are people supposed to find it? Still, I’ve already decided to make some phone calls first thing tomorrow and get this idea going.
I’m kind of surprised by how easy it is to get used to being rich. I always figured it might require some time to adjust. But here I am, only a few hours in, and I’m already starting a business. And really, why stop there? What’s the point of having a big fat wallet if you’re not going to empty it? So I slide open the divider and tell Sparks to take us to the nearest Ferrari dealer.
Dougall swears it won’t matter that we’re not old enough to drive. He says once they see us—me in particular—they’ll close off the showroom to all the sad wannabes and give us the run of the place.
“They’ll probably even toss in a bunch of free logoed stuff too. You know, like hats and T-shirts and coffee mugs,” he says. “Since anytime you step out in it, you’ll be advertising for them.”
It sounds good to me. In fact, it sounds pretty dang close to perfect. Which is why it’s so disappointing when we arrive, only to discover that it’s closed.
Since we can’t test-drive Ferraris, we decide to do the next best thing: we tell Sparks to take us to a mall that has an Apple store, a Nike store, and a GameStop, which is something you’d never find back in Greentree, since you have to drive three towns over just to get to a mall, and even then, it only has one of those stores. But here in Tinsel Hills, it exists. And it’s so amazing I don’t even know how to explain it, other than to say it’s three stories of awesome, with just about every store you could ever think of, all of them decorated for Christmas. There’s even a ginormous Christmas tree that starts on the first floor and reaches all the way to the third and has thousands of ornaments hanging from it. And when I see the Santa’s Village they’ve set up, well, I can’t help but stare.
Back when I was a little kid, the place where my mom used to take Holly and me for our annual picture with Santa always reminded me of a red-and-green foil-wrapped bus stop that wasn’t nearly as festive as it tried to be. But here it’s a truly authentic village with a forest of fake pine trees covered in snow and a small log house where Santa waits for his elves to bring him kids to sit on his lap and tell him their wishes.
