Kiri’s face brightened. “Really?” I nodded and she grabbed me in a thank-you hug, then pulled away, looking guilty. “Val told me to ask you over, too. Even Phoebe’s coming.”
“Phoebe?” I repeated. That was a surprise. She’d never been into Hollywood glam.
Kiri nodded. “There’s a foreign film she loves that’s up for a visual effects award. But I figured … well, the Golden Globes aren’t really your thing.”
I knew that. I also knew that Kiri would share her hundred posts of the red-carpet gowns with me on Pinterest later, so I wouldn’t really be missing out on much. Still, I wondered if Kiri had waited until after I’d committed to tell me about Val and Phoebe, so it would be harder for me to change my mind. What did it matter though? She was my best friend, and I wanted to do this for her. I didn’t care about the Golden Globes anyway. “You’re right,” I affirmed. “Totally not my thing.” I pulled out my phone. “I’ll let my mom know.”
Just then, Val and Phoebe waved from down the hallway and Kiri stepped toward them, blowing me exuberant kisses. “You’re a goddess! Love you!”
“We’ll miss you, Sheyda!” Val called out while Phoebe rolled her eyes drolly, warning Val and Kiri, “I’m only coming for the popcorn. Don’t expect me to gush over dresses and shoes.”
After they left, I texted Mom and then gathered my homework and books together. I frowned when Mom texted back: OK TO DONUT PLANET. HAVE U HEARD FROM MINA? SHE’S NOT HOME. MUST HAVE FORGOTTEN I WAS COMING HOME EARLY?
I sighed. Forgotten, or more likely, ditched Mom in favor of hang-time with Rehann and Josh. I sent a quick NO WORD FROM MINA to Mom, then headed for the doors. For a second, I thought about going home to cheer up Mom.
Then I spotted Cabe standing inside the doors, peering through the window and frowning. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve guessed he was trying to hide from something, or someone.
“If you’re waiting for the weather to warm up,” I said, “you’ll be standing here until April.”
He started at the sound of my voice, but his expression instantly recovered, smoothing into relief. “I’m so glad it’s you!”
Warmth washed over me. He was? “Are you okay?” I asked. “You don’t look so great.” Omigod. Had I just told the face that graced every teen magazine on the planet that it looked bad?
Cabe snorted. “Are you always so blunt?”
“Never.” I shook my head adamantly. “Only with you, for some bizarre reason.”
He laughed once, a single sad note. “I’ve got a problem. Ben, my driver, was supposed to be waiting for me, but he called to say he’s stuck in traffic uptown.” He sighed. “It sounds lame to be complaining about this, but … well, look.”
I peeked through the window and saw a mob scene. There were some lingering kids from our school, but also dozens of paparazzi, their cameras poised for photo ops.
“Yeesh. They’re persistent, aren’t they?”
“Never ending.” The blue tides of his eyes darkened into a stormy cobalt. “Normally Principal Gomez lets me leave school a few minutes early to sneak out, but he’s out sick today, and the assistant principal must’ve forgotten. If I go out there, they’ll follow me for hours. Just for once, I’d love to be ignored.”
Poor guy, he looked desperate. I touched his arm. “Come on. I know another way out.”
He nodded gratefully and followed me without any questions. There was an emergency exit at the back of the theater stage that led into the alley behind the school building.
“If we go down this alley,” I explained as we skirted the school’s Dumpsters, “it’ll spit us out on Tenth Street. We can walk over to Avenue A from there.”
“Is that on your way home?” he asked. “I don’t want to be a pain.”
“You’re not,” I said, surprised by his thoughtfulness. “Anyway, I need to stop at another donut place to do some taste testing.”
“Hey!” He smiled. “Would you mind if I tagged along? It might be cool to try out some other donut shops while I’m in town. It would help me get more into my Dalton character. Besides, I haven’t seen much of the city yet. Since you love it so much, you’re the perfect person to show me around.”
Nervousness made my pulse spring. It was one thing talking to Cabe in my comfort zone at home. It was another being face-to-face with him. This was more of a Kiri-style idea, or maybe even a Mina one. It felt impulsive—fun but unnerving. But maybe that was just it. I’d been worried about being boring. Maybe I needed more surprises and less overthinking. I took a deep breath. “Sure you can come along! But … we’ll be on foot,” I warned teasingly. “You’ll have to actually walk.”
“Funny.” He rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling. “It’s not actual walking I don’t like. It’s not being left alone while I’m walking.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
Since the paparazzi were waiting at the school entrance, we’d managed to avoid them. Even when he saw that the sidewalk was clear of reporters, though, Cabe was wary. He slipped on sunglasses and a wool hat. “I’m not sure this is going to be enough. Someone’s going to recognize me.”
“I doubt it,” I said half jokingly, but when he didn’t even crack a smile, I realized how much he dreaded the prospect. Then, an idea struck, and I picked up the pace. “I think I have a solution.”
He looked at me questioningly. We turned onto St. Mark’s Place and came to a shop front piled high with teetering hats—boleros, sombreros, newsboys, berets. Next door was Wonky Wigs & More, across the street was a vintage clothing store, and above that was a flashing sign advertising psychic readings. “This is one of my favorite streets in Manhattan. You’re Cabe Sadler now, but pop into a couple of these shops and you’ll walk out as an entirely different person.”
He moved down the sidewalk, eyeing the bizarre mishmash of merchandise. He stopped in front of a red curly wig, complete with detachable fake beard. He picked it up, then grabbed a sleek fluorescent-purple wig and handed it to me. “I’m only game if you are.”
I giggled, my heart racing. Here it was again. A choice between boring, play-by-the-rules Sheyda and someone new, someone unpredictable. I slipped the wig on over my hair, and, barely believing what I was doing, said, “I’m in.”
Fifteen minutes later, we’d dipped into and out of nearly every store on the block. As we shopped, I’d told Cabe what I knew about the history of St. Mark’s Place, how it had been a street full of boarding houses for immigrants at one point in history, had become an underground hippie hangout in the ’60s, and now was a huge draw for tourists visiting the city.
“You can buy an egg cream two doors down from a falafel,” I said. “You can find a million different smells, colors, and tastes all within five feet of each other.” I smiled. “How many places on the planet can you say that about?”
“True,” Cabe said, pulling an orange-and-green pom-pommed poncho from a clothing rack and slipping it over his coat. I laughed when he tossed me a lime-green pleather blazer. I slid it over my sweater, then struck a ridiculous pose, and we both cracked up.
“That’s one of the things I love the most about SoCal,” Cabe said as we walked to the counter to pay. “The smell of the Pacific Ocean. If we end up staying here, I’ll really miss that.”
The salesclerk asked if we wanted shopping bags, but we glanced at each other and shook our heads, slipping on our disguises.
We stepped outside and into the flow of people strolling by. “I guess every home feels that way,” I said. “Like a place you leave a little bit of love behind in. My mom told me my grandma used to talk about her village in Iran like there was still a small part of her there, selling fresh baklava at market, laughing with her friends. Cabe smiled. “What I mean is, just like you leave a little love behind in places you’ve lived, I think you bring a little of every home with you, wherever you go, too.”
“I’ve never thought of it like that before.” His eyes settled on mine and lingered thoughtfully. “I
like the idea that places shape you in a forever kind of way. Like people, and experiences, too.” He stopped so suddenly mid-step that I collided into his side. His hand caught my waist to steady me, and a flurry of butterflies took flight inside me.
“Check out that poster.” His eyes fixed on a Walkerspace Theater ad for an upcoming play. “It says it’s a debut from a new playwright. That sounds cool.”
I nodded. “It’s Off Broadway. The East Village and SoHo have a lot of smaller theaters. My parents have taken me to a bunch of them. You get to see some great original performances and sometimes actors and actresses before they become famous.”
He looked at the poster for a long minute. “That’s how I started,” he said quietly. “Onstage, in front of a live audience. My parents say I was acting out scenes from books and movies even as a toddler. So I auditioned for the role of Tiny Tim in our community theater’s A Christmas Carol.” He looked lost in the happy memory. “This was back when we lived in Ventura County, north of LA. Anyway, an uncle of one of the cast members came on opening night. He turned out to be a movie producer. He talked with my parents after the show, and before I knew it, I had a small role in a movie. Then more roles came, we moved to LA, and—”
“The rest is cinematic history?” I finished for him.
“Yup.” He laughed softly, but also, I thought, sadly. “Nothing since A Christmas Carol has ever felt as real, somehow, not even life. Hollywood is so groomed, so contrived, and with all the special effects, movies are more like that, too. Onstage, you feel the crowd, watching, waiting, reacting. Every performance and every audience is a little different. Something fresh.”
“You miss it.” I could hear it in his tone.
He nodded. “Because cameras? They only record. They don’t respond. They don’t really see you, get what you’re trying to do.”
“That’s why I love set design, too,” I said. “It’s tangible. I can see the end product, but I also build it. You know that day you saw me on the catwalk at the school theater?” He nodded. “It’s actually a sort of … special place for me. I sit up there sometimes, for perspective. From up there, I have a better idea of how space is used onstage. Like how parts of the set fit together. A lot of set design involves creating illusions of depth or texture on flat surfaces.”
“Sounds cool,” he said. “Like the way old movie sets were made with scenic backdrops and stuff, when scenes were all shot indoors instead of on location.”
We stood together, looking at the poster in comfortable silence until he straightened and said, “So. Donuts?”
There was so much more I wanted to ask him about—well, everything. I nodded and smiled. “Absolutely.”
We walked the rest of the way to Essex Street laughing at our ridiculous outfits, then laughing even more that no one so much as gave us a second glance. It was a warm enough day that I could get away with wearing the blazer without my coat, and even though Cabe joked that my clothes were blinding him, they felt strangely freeing. The longer I kept my purple wig on, the braver I felt. It made me more talkative and more relaxed. By the time we stepped through the door of Donut Planet, I realized with pleasant surprise that we’d just walked the last ten blocks talking nonstop. We ordered an array of donuts and tucked into a booth to try them one by one.
Cabe tried the Caramel Colossal first. When he cut into it with a plastic knife, a river of gooey caramel poured out of its center. “Whoa. That’s a lot of caramel.” He popped a piece into his mouth, chewed, and thought. “A delectable palette of rich toffee flavors,” he said in a British accent, “with buttery undertones.”
I giggled, then took a bite myself. “Not bad,” I admitted, “but it would be better topped with honey-roasted pecans.”
“Totally,” he agreed. “Which one next?”
I held up the Banana Cream Pie. “This one is sooo good. We need to try something like this at Doughlicious. But maybe with some pineapple, too.”
“And coconut shavings,” he added. I texted myself a note about it. We tried the Mango Cobbler next, and then the Tiramisu bear claw. “So,” I said between bites, “you haven’t told me yet why your family’s thinking about moving here.”
“Actually … it’s for me. For a change. There’s so much pressure in Hollywood to have a certain lifestyle. A lot of kids our age have a tough time with it. I landed my first major role in a movie when I was six.” He hesitated, as if he expected me to blurt out the name of the movie instantly. When I didn’t, he said, “Kindergarten Spy? It was a huge blockbuster.”
I shrugged sheepishly. “I haven’t heard of it.”
He stared at me, then laughed. “That’s so great. I mean, I’ve never met anyone my age who didn’t see that movie. It’s nice to finally know someone who doesn’t have this image of me as a thumb-sucking spy in an Inspector Gadget overcoat.”
I smiled. “You sucked your thumb?”
“For the part,” he mumbled.
I giggled, but when he glared, I held up my hands. “I’m not judging. I slept with a stuffed duck named Tibs until I was ten. I still have him.” Then I added, “Besides, I prefer imagining you as Tiny Tim anyway.”
He smiled. “Thanks. Anyway, my parents are really rooting for me to like it here. I’m not sure yet, but I don’t want to disappoint them.”
“I worry about that, too,” I said quietly. “Not just with my parents. With everyone. I just hate the thought that I’d ever accidentally hurt somebody’s feelings.”
He studied my face. “So you overcompensate by never saying anything to rock the boat?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m still not even sure why I agreed to be Marie in your movie,” I admitted. “That’s not who I am.”
His gaze turned intense, and he leaned toward me like I was the only person in the entire room who mattered. “So, who are you then?”
I hesitated, a self-protective instinct kicking in. What if that was just a line he used with every girl? I didn’t want to fall for some insincere flirtation trick.
“You don’t want to know,” I said, focusing on twisting the napkin in my hands into a tight paper rope.
He sat back, frustration streaking across his face. “You’re good at deflecting, but I’m not giving up.”
There was an honesty to his tone that broke through my doubt. In that moment, I believed him. I smiled hesitantly. “Okay. Here goes.” I took a deep breath. “I think a lot of things I don’t say. I sit in the back row in class so I’m not called on. I hide in plain sight so much that even my own family forgets about me sometimes.”
“Really?”
I nodded, and suddenly, it was like the floodgates had opened. I wasn’t just offering up a vague description of myself; I was pouring out details. About my set design idea drought. About Mina, and how we used to be close but now she hardly spoke to me, and about how my parents seemed to spend all their time lately worrying about her.
“It’s not that I don’t love her, because of course I do,” I said. “But I’ve got stuff going on, too, and Mom and Dad are oblivious. Like, I’ve been trying to figure out my set design for weeks, and I’m stuck. Really stuck. And they don’t have a clue. Not that they could help anyway, but it would just be nice to have them ask me.”
He nodded. “I hear that. Have you told them that, though?”
“No!” I blurted. “They’re way too stressed about Mina.” I focused my attention on the remaining donuts and bit into a Merry Mermaid donut—an odd combination of candy seashells, coconut, blue icing, and sea salt. “Ugh. Definitely not a fan.” I grimaced and Cabe laughed.
“You’re afraid to tell them,” he said, and I couldn’t deny it. “But they’ll still love you. That kind of love is real.” He studied the donut crumbs on his plate. “People think that when you’re famous, you’re surrounded by people who love you. But fans love the idea of you, not who you really are. So that makes it weirdly lonely. I’m so glad my parents are around, and real, you know? Real is so much bette
r than going incognito.” He stuck a hand under his wig and fake beard, scratching. “Speaking of incognito, this thing is itching like crazy.” With that, he yanked the whole disguise off his face, then sighed in relief. “So much better.”
There was a second when we both glanced around, half expecting a horde of fans to come screaming. The shop was crowded with customers, but no one glanced our way.
“See?” I said. “This is a huge plus for Manhattan. New Yorkers may know who you are, but they don’t care. We’re way too cool to chase celebs. This town is all about anonymity.”
Cabe burst out laughing. “You’re giving me a hard sell!”
“Me? Never!”
“Or … maybe you just want me to stay?”
I blushed as his words hung in the air, then I cleared my throat, changing the topic. “Would you still be able to act if you moved here?”
“Oh, sure,” Cabe said. “I’d have to travel to LA quite a bit, but I could never quit acting. I love it too much. Mom and Dad were older when they had me, and the money I make with movies has helped them retire. But, I’ve thought about cutting back on movie roles for a while, to try doing …” He paused. “What would I do?”
I tossed a napkin at him. “Seriously? Go to school. Do homework. Play sports. Do stuff other kids do.”
“Well, I surf.”
“If you surfed in the East River, you might grow an extra limb,” I joked.
He smiled. “Living like a non-celeb, huh? I want it, but it would also be bizarre for a while, like breathing underwater.”
“Totally. As bizarre as taking out the trash,” I deadpanned, then ducked as a napkin flew my direction. We both grinned.
“Well, it’s not happening right now, so I shouldn’t overthink it. You, on the other hand, have your deadline coming up and no set-design idea. That is a right-now problem.”
Donut Go Breaking My Heart Page 7
