by Meg Cabot
I screamed as loudly as I could, causing Cosy to jump about a foot in the air, and the male to shriek almost as loudly as I had.
“Em, it’s me!” the male cried, and when my eyes had had time to focus after they were done spinning around in circles of shock, I saw that it was, indeed, someone I knew.
Someone who was, in fact, Steven Howard, Nikki Howard’s brother.
In an undershirt, boxer shorts, and a pair of socks.
Coming out of Lulu’s bedroom! With his blond hair sticking up all wild, like he’d just woken up!
And now Lulu was coming out of her room right after him, wearing one of her fancy negligees and rubbing her eyes all sleepily, going, “Stevie? Is something wrong? I thought I heard screaming.”
Oh, no. No, I could not handle this. Not first thing in the morning (even though a glance at the clock on the microwave told me it was closer to noon than morning).
Steven and Lulu? I mean, I’d known she’d wanted it to happen —wanted it to happen more than anything— but…
“Oh, hi, Em,” Lulu said, giving me a drowsy smile. “I didn’t know you were home.”
But Steven was…well, he was…he was my brother!
Wasn’t he? Maybe not technically, but—
Actually, yes, he was. Technically. This was so…so wrong. So gross. So…
…so typically Lulu.
“Steven spent the night,” Lulu said, like it was the most natural thing in the world, going over to the refrigerator and pulling it open. “We’re a couple now. What do you guys want for breakfast? Scrambled eggs? Steven likes his eggs scrambled, don’t you, Steven?”
Steven was standing there in his socks and underwear, turning bright, bright red.
But not as red as I could feel myself turning.
“Uh, hi, Em,” Steven was saying. He’d gone to sit behind the kitchen counter on one of the stools, so the fact that he was in his underwear wasn’t quite so apparent. “I’m really sorry about this. We didn’t know you were home. I, uh, checked the acoustic noise generator. It’s still working. There are no bugs in the loft. So we’re safe here.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess,” I said. I was glad I had on my flannel rainbow pajamas. They covered me from neck to foot.
“Steven and I are so in love,” Lulu said, smiling ecstatically as she piled eggs, butter, cheese, and cream next to the stove. “He told me he loved me after I gave Nikki her makeover yesterday. She looks so good now. She was so happy. She was really happy, wasn’t she, Stevie?”
“She was,” Steven said. He was still blushing. It was weird to see his cheeks turning the same color pink as my pajamas. “It was weird to see Nikki happy, for once.”
“She says she’s going to go to college,” Lulu said. “Business school. That was Gabriel’s idea. She and Gabriel get along weirdly well. When she isn’t calling him names. I wish she weren’t quite so abusive toward him, it’s not very nice. But I guess we can’t expect miracles. Oh, Em, are you all right?”
I think I was staring at them so hard, I’d forgotten to breathe. I closed my mouth shut with an audible snapping sound.
“Uh-huh,” I said, and nodded.
“Is it Steven and me?” Lulu asked, glancing over at Nikki’s brother, like she couldn’t understand why I was so surprised. “He said he was sorry for blurting out that he loved me, that it had just slipped,” Lulu went on, cracking some of the eggs into a bowl. “But I wouldn’t let him take it back. Would I?”
Steven shook his head. “She wouldn’t,” he said.
“I knew he really meant it, and that we were meant to be together forever. Because I’m the future Mrs. Captain Steven Howard.” Lulu looked thoughtful as she switched on the coffeemaker. “Wow. Is it just me, or does that sound really hot? Mrs. Captain Steven Howard.” She glanced over at me and Steven. “I’m going to keep my maiden name for my albums, though, of course.”
I widened my eyes at Steven. Did he even know what he’d gotten himself into, I wondered?
He gave me a sheepish smile.
“What can I say?” He shrugged his broad, bare shoulders. “I love her.”
I shook my head in wonder. Stick a fork in him. Steven was done. Lulu had caught him, reeled him in, stuffed him, and served him up with a nice lemon-and-garlic sauce.
And he looked really happy about it, aside from the blushing thing.
“Wow, you guys, that’s so sweet,” I said, meaning it.
I wandered out of the kitchen and back into the living room, because I had a lot to do. Rebecca had left a list. Apparently, there was a stylist coming over with a selection of gowns for me to choose from to wear to Robert Stark’s party, not to mention my waxer— Katerina, who normally performed this service for Lulu and me, had apparently been pink-slipped…at least in the waxing department. Which was just as well. It was a bit odd to have the person who cleaned your toilet also waxing you— hairstylist, and nail people….
“You know what?” Lulu went on, making Steven a cup of coffee. “I never noticed before, but you two have the same color eyes. Robin’s-egg blue. That’s my favorite color. Both of you.” She turned from me to Steven with the dopiest smile I’d ever seen. “It’s like the sky is in your faces!”
Oh, wow. And I’d thought Steven had it bad? Lulu was done, too.
Was this what people who were in love were like? Maybe it was just as well Christopher and I couldn’t work things out. I didn’t want to become a zombiefied dope like those two.
The buzzer on the intercom went off. Still feeling a little dazed from my discovery, I wandered over to it and picked up the receiver. It was Karl, letting me know my first appointment had arrived…Salvatore, with the clothes.
I thanked him and said to send him up.
“Uh, guys,” I said, to Lulu and Steven. “My clothes guy is here.”
“Oooh,” Lulu said, going over to Steven and putting her arms around him. “Fashion show. Fun.”
I guess Steven really was my brother, because the sight of him snuggling with a girl— even a girl I really liked, such as Lulu— skeeved me as much as it would have skeeved me to see Frida making out with someone.
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay. If you two could just hold off doing that until after I’ve had breakfast, that would be great.”
“Sorry,” Steven said, looking like he meant it.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Em,” Lulu said, pulling her arms away from Steven like he’d electrocuted her. “I forgot you still haven’t found love like we have. I shouldn’t rub it in.”
“No,” I said. “I’ve found love, and everything. Christopher and I just still need to work out a few things.”
“Oh.” Lulu looked sad. “I feel so bad for you.”
“Yeah,” Steven said. “Do you want me to, I don’t know. Put him in a choke hold, or anything?”
I couldn’t help smiling at that.
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” I said. “But thanks. Maybe if you two went and put some more clothes on for when the guy comes? Because he’s going to be here any minute.”
They scooted out of the room— well, Steven stomped more than scooted, on account of his size— just as the elevator doors opened to reveal Salvatore carting a wheeled rack of dresses and gowns for Robert Stark’s party.
“Ciao, bella,” he said, kissing me on both cheeks. His assistant, a stick-thin woman with dark hair, began unzipping the garment bags to show me what was inside them.
“Very chic, this,” Salvatore said, fingering the sleeve of my pajamas. “I have seen in this month’s Vogue, yes?”
“Very funny,” I said. “Thanks for coming over. Would you like some coffee?”
Salvatore and his assistant did want coffee. And so, later, did the waxer, hairstylist, and their assistants when they showed up. And the nail tech and her assistant. I seemed to spend my entire day making cups of coffee— and sandwiches— for people, in between getting primped and styled for the evening’s command performance, and trying to avoid seeing
Lulu and Steven with their tongues down each other’s throats.
This, however, proved harder to do than I thought, since they were kind of all over each other, and Steven wouldn’t go back to Gabriel’s place. Lulu made him stay to help pick out what I was wearing to Robert Stark’s party— a short, black, spangled dress by Dolce & Gabbana. Then she made him stay because she decided she wanted him to come to Robert Stark’s party as her escort.
“I think that would be a really bad idea,” I said. And not just because I didn’t want to be distracted from my snooping by her and Steven making out all night. “What if someone recognizes him?”
“Oh, baby,” Lulu said, holding Steven’s face between both her hands, then giving him a big kiss. “I didn’t think about that.”
Gag.
“It’s better that I stay with my mom and Nikki, anyway,” Steven said. “I haven’t seen them since yesterday.”
Yes, I thought. Go back to Gabriel’s now.
The buzzer on our intercom went off. I went to the receiver to pick it up, just as my cell phone vibrated.
“Yes?” I said, lifting the receiver to the intercom. I checked my cell. It was Christopher.
“Brandon Stark is here, Miss Howard,” Karl said. “To take you to his father’s party.”
Perfect, I thought, rolling my eyes. Brandon had been completely ignoring me since my phone call to him yesterday. It was so like him to think his reward would be that it would be all right to show up at my apartment to escort me to his dad’s party without even asking.
“Tell him I’ll be right down,” I said, and hung up the intercom to answer my cell.
“Christopher?” I said.
“Em,” he said. “You can’t go to that party tonight.”
“Uh,” I said. “I have no choice. The million-dollar bra has been taken out of the vault. I’ve been waxed and buffed and shined. I’m in my borrowed dress. The car is here.”
I didn’t mention the part about Brandon being in it. Christopher and I were fighting enough as it was.
“Em,” he said. “You don’t understand. You’re Project Phoenix.”
Seventeen
“WAIT,” I SAID, GRIPPING THE PHONE more tightly to my ear. A chill had passed over my body.
But that was surely only because I was standing there in a too-short sleeveless dress on a chilly December 31st evening.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “How can I be Project Phoenix?”
“I don’t know,” Christopher said. “I don’t— we don’t— still even know exactly what Project Phoenix is. But we’ve found a link from it to the Stark Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery. And your name.”
“My name?” I echoed. “Emerson Watts? Or—”
“No. Nikki Howard. Em, think about it. Think about what all these people have in common. They’re young. They’re healthy. They’re attractive.”
“So?”
“Just like Nikki Howard.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Lulu asked me curiously, adjusting one of her fishnets, which had gotten twisted around her leg.
“Nothing,” I said to her. “Go on down to the car and let Brandon know I’ll be right there, will you?”
Lulu shrugged. “Okay.”
“No!” Christopher cried, overhearing me. “Em, you can’t go to that party!”
“Christopher, I have to,” I said. “If I don’t go, Robert Stark will know something is up.” And a billion fans would be tragically disappointed. Not to mention the show’s sponsor, De Beers jewelry. “And, anyway, I don’t see what the connection is between the Stark Institute and all those other people and me.”
“You don’t?” Christopher sounded slightly hysterical. “Em, don’t you get it? Curt? He’s just going on a hiking trip in the Cascades. By himself. He goes missing, who’s going to know what really happened to him? Kerry, going to Guatemala to teach the children to read? She disappears along the way? She’s one of thousands who go missing every year. Same with all these other people. It’s freaking genius, Em. Young, healthy kids…and Stark has its pick. They may have been doing this for years. All these pretty missing girls we hear about on CNN every day…for all we know, Stark may have been behind it all along.”
“Christopher…” I shook my head. I loved my boyfriend. I really did.
But his hatred for Stark— because of what he’d seen them do to me— may have caused him to go around the bend.
I guess I could understand it. He’d seen me get crushed to death right in front of him. The post-traumatic stress this had inevitably caused him had to have been severe. I loved him, but he was one messed-up dude.
And then he’d found out the accident had been no accident at all but had been caused by Stark. And that I wasn’t dead at all but living in some other girl’s body.
No wonder he’d lost his mind and morphed into Iron Man.
Only without the supersuit and in teenage form.
“Em,” Christopher said. He was still speaking fast and still panting a little. “Listen to me. Robert Stark is a marketing genius. He’s dedicated his life to finding a demand, then supplying the product for that demand at a price that drives all other competitors out of business. The question isn’t whether he’s doing this. It’s why hasn’t anyone caught him before now?”
The buzzer to my intercom went off again. It was Brandon’s driver, I knew, wanting to know where I was. Lulu had already gone down.
“Look,” I said. “You’re probably right.”
What else was I going to say? I had to just play along with him. Was this what it was like, I wondered? To be Lois Lane or Lana Lang or Mary Jane Watson or any of those other women who were the girlfriends of superheroes? I mean, those guys were crazy, right? The men who thought they were superheroes. How were you supposed to deal with them? You didn’t want to upset them or get them riled up, or they’d just go and put on their capes and jump out the window to go get shot at.
So you just went along with their craziness, trying to soothe them as best you could in the hopes that they’d stay home, where it was safe.
Then you went out and did whatever you wanted behind their back.
“We’ll talk about it when I get home,” I said, in the most soothing voice I could summon. “We’ll figure out the best thing to do then.”
“What?” Christopher cried. “Em, no—”
“You can’t do anything about it now, anyway,” I said. “I mean, what are you going to do? Call the cops? You don’t have any proof. Are any of those people missing yet?”
“Well,” he said. “No. And technically there’s no proof except what happened to you. Which wasn’t an accident, either. But—”
The buzzer went off again, for a much longer time.
“Right,” I said. “Look, I’ve got to run. Everything’s going to be all right. I’ll call you from Robert Stark’s to prove it.”
“Don’t go to that house, Em.” Christopher sounded mad. He sounded more than mad. He sounded furious. And also scared. “I’m warning you, Em. Don’t you even think about—”
“Love you,” I said, grabbing my bag and faux fur and running for the elevator. “Bye.”
“Don’t you hang up,” Christopher said. “I mean it. Don’t you dare—”
“Oh, I’m in the elevator,” I said as I pressed the button. “You’re breaking up. I’m losing you….”
“You are not losing me,” Christopher said. “Em, don’t be stupid. I—”
I hung up.
Really, I wasn’t trying to be mean. It was just that I didn’t have time for Christopher’s supervillain stuff right then. Rebecca’s warnings from that morning were still sounding in my ears. I had to get to Robert Stark’s party, and then to the studio where the lingerie show was being broadcast, or my butt was toast. I completely valued my relationship with Christopher, and I totally thought something was up with Robert Stark.
But I had my professional obligations to fulfill.
And besi
des. What was Robert Stark going to do to me?
That he hadn’t done already, I mean.
“Where were you?” Lulu wanted to know, when I finally fell into the back of the limo.
“Sorry,” I muttered, climbing over Brandon’s outstretched legs. “Important call. Would you move?” This last was directed at Brandon.
“My bad.” Brandon was clearly already drunk. Since this was how he was anytime he had to see his father, it was no surprise.
“But really,” Lulu said. “What did Christopher want?”
“I have no idea,” I said truthfully.
“He wanted to come,” Lulu said sympathetically. “Didn’t he? As your date?”
Brandon looked up from his highball glass at this. “You’re back together with that guy? Leather jacket guy?” He looked disappointed.
“None of your business,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “Go back to your drink.”
Brandon glared dopily down at his whisky.
“Guys who wear leather jackets always get the girl,” he muttered.
If only he knew the truth.
Robert Stark’s huge, ten-bedroom, four-story gray town house, with its subdued black trim, private garage, and indoor pool, ballroom, and vast private back garden, was about as far uptown as you could get from my place. Just off Fifth Avenue, it was steps from Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
His annual New Year’s Eve party was so popular, and attended by so many celebrities and wealthy politicians and Stark shareholders, there was already a traffic jam just to get to his place. Lulu and Brandon and I had to get out and walk the last block, and then fight the crowd of paps that had gathered outside.
The whole time— well, during the walk to his dad’s house, anyway— I quizzed Brandon, trying to see if he knew anything about Project Phoenix.
“What is that?” he’d asked, still slurping scotch from the glass he’d brought along for the stroll from the limo. “A new stadium someone is building in Arizona?”
Seriously. A band? A space elevator? And now a stadium?
