It's All Your Fault

by Paul Rudnick

  Thanks to Heller, I know which college I’m going to choose, or which college I will dare to choose. I’m going to Torlington even if the idea terrifies me. Maybe because the idea terrifies me. I don’t want to try and become a star like Heller because I could never stand that kind of pressure and because I don’t have Heller’s huge personality and her need to make the whole world pay attention every second, or else!

  Maybe I can be my own kind of star. Maybe I can sing just because I love music and because why would God give me a voice if he didn’t want me to use it? If I’m being selfish and prideful, well, next month I turn eighteen years old, so maybe being selfish and prideful comes with the territory. I don’t have any of these answers, but at Torlington, maybe I can start to find them.

  I grab Heller’s hand, and Carter’s, and I glare at them, at my whole family, to force them to start singing again. That’s the other reason I love music: It’s something everyone can share. Music doesn’t have to cost money and while people are making music together they have a harder time, at least for a few minutes, hating or killing each other. I don’t think that music can solve the world’s problems but it usually feels like a step in the right direction. Sure, I know that sometimes soldiers march off to war to the jaunty tunes of a military band, but that’s not what’s happening right now at the Parsippany Tri-State All-Weather Shopping Destination.

  Something else is happening. Uh-oh. Oh my dear sweet baby Jesus hide your tiny blessed eyes or maybe take a bathroom break. Heller is starting to unbutton her blazer and now she’s tugging the rubber band off her ponytail and shaking out her hair. I don’t even think she realizes she’s doing it, but she’s turning back into Heller. She’s starting to sing:

  I FEEL IT, IT’S SO REAL

  THAT I’M SINGIN’ WITH MY PEEPS

  WE’RE PRAYIN’ AND WE’RE SAYIN’

  THAT OUR MESSAGE, BITCH, IT’S DEEP

  Then Heller’s voice gets low and soulful:

  FUCK ME, I’M A SINGLEBERRY

  GOOD LUCK TO ME, I’M A SINGLEBERRY

  I’M GONNA ROCK

  EACH KNEESOCK

  FUCK ME, I’M A SINGLEBERRY!

  There’s a pause as my whole family stops singing and the crowd holds its breath. I tap Heller on the shoulder and she looks around and remembers what she’s supposed to be doing. She grins, which can pretty much fix anything, and we all swing right back into the song:

  IF YOU SING WITH ALL YOUR HEART

  I WILL SING WITH ALL MY SOUL

  IF WE SING WHEN WE’RE APART

  OUR SONG WILL MAKE US WHOLE

  IF WE SING THEN I WILL PROMISE

  WE WILL FIND OUR HARMONY

  OUR SONG WILL SING US STRONG

  BUT ONLY IF YOU’LL SING WITH ME!

  My idea works and Wyatt is beside himself. “Catey!” he says that night while I’m waiting with Heller outside the movie theater right before she’s about to walk the red carpet. “You’re a born publicist! Thanks to you the whole world believes that Heller is really just a nice girl from New Jersey who loves helping others and singing uplifting songs and wearing hideous polyester clothing. She broke Twitter, because #kneesocks has been getting so many hits that the system had to shut itself down for over half an hour. Look!”

  Wyatt shows me a Tumblr feed on his phone of people all over the world wearing kneesocks. There are pictures of preteen girls in Finland carefully lined up in a kneesock rainbow; tall, scary-skinny models on a runway in Milan wearing kneesocks with their zippered leather miniskirts; gang members in California wearing kneesocks in their gang colors, yanked up over the legs of their pants; and soccer teams, who’d been wearing kneesocks anyway, but were now being photographed by fashion magazines as trendsetters under headlines like “On Your Knees!” and “Needsox!”

  “And, Catey,” adds Wyatt, “Omnisphere tripled its donation to Make-A-Wish and Heller pledged her salary if they make the next Angel Wars movie!”

  I’m so excited that for the first time in my life I attempt a fist bump, with Wyatt, although I miss by a few inches.

  “We’ll get there,” he says.

  For the red carpet Heller is wearing a strapless golden designer gown and Nedda has talked me into a silvery gown with a thankfully higher neckline, and underneath she’s given me matching silvery kneesocks with rows of tiny pearls along the tops. Kenz has dyed my hair back to its regular color and styled it to look, as he put it, “Short and sweet.” I’ve removed the stud in my nose, although I’ve saved it as a keepsake, and I’ve taken off my bandage to feature my tattoo. “You look fantastic,” Heller tells me. “We look like the world’s most glamorous salt-and-pepper shakers.”

  “I’m so nervous but I don’t know why,” I say, although I’m feeling a better kind of nervous, instead of my usual free-floating if-I-don’t-check-to-see-that-I’ve-locked-the-front-door-five-times-the-house-will-be-robbed anxiety. I’ll probably always have panic attacks but I’m determined to keep them under control, as snuffed-out flickers rather than five-alarm blazes. This past weekend has helped because so many painful and life-threatening things have happened, and I’ve survived. From now on when I start to feel anxious, instead of surrendering helplessly I’m going to tell myself, “Catey, remember—you stole a car and a gun. You jumped off a cliff. You have a tattoo. Calm down!”

  “I know why I’m nervous,” says Heller. “It’s because after tonight everyone’s gonna know if the Angel Wars movie is any good and if I’m any good, and if we’re gonna be allowed to make the next three sequels. It’s like facing a firing squad, only the executioners don’t have guns, they have Twitter accounts. Death by hashtag.”

  We hear a noise coming from inside a nearby tent where guests have been picking up their screening tickets and party passes. There’s cursing and someone gets shoved into the side of the tent, which bulges out and almost rips.

  Heller and I investigate and we find Mills and Billy, both in tuxedoes, having a fistfight. Mills’s hair is messed up but not in its usual, deliberate way and Billy has the beginnings of a black eye.

  “I saw her first!” says Mills.

  “Nobody cares!” says Billy. “I helped her get a tattoo!”

  “What are you two idiots doing?” asks Heller.

  “He tried to switch our tickets!” says Mills. “So that he can sit next to Catey!”

  “Because he’d already switched them!” insists Billy. “Catey doesn’t want to sit next to that douchebag! She’ll get a gallon of hair gel all over her dress! She’ll smell like knockoff body spray! Mills covers himself with something called CrotchRot!”

  “At least I took a bath!” says Mills. “Billy’s afraid that if he stands under hot water he’ll get even shorter!”

  Mills pretends to look around the tent, asking, “Billy? Has anyone here seen Billy Connors? Everyone look down!”

  “Catey?” says Heller. “You’re going to have to choose between these two morons. Or you could just become a lesbian, which is a much better idea.”

  I can’t believe this is my life, with two handsome actors fighting over me, or at least over their seating assignments. Heller had warned me to beware of actors and I know that after tonight Mills and Billy will most likely head off to other countries to shoot other movies and kiss other girls. But right now I feel like Lynnea, when she’s torn between Tallwen, her stalwart Stelterfokken protector, and Myke, the small-town poet and potter with the cowlick and clay under his fingernails. In the books Lynnea finally settles down with Myke because he needs her more and because he writes her a poem that rhymes Lynnea with hooray-ah. In so many YA books the heroine, who’s just a regular girl, has to choose between two dreamboats who are both, for no particular reason, madly in love with her, which is probably why these books are labeled fiction. For my big moonlit night I’m going to do Lynnea one better.

  “I don’t need to choose,” I announce. “Mills can sit on one side of me and Billy can sit on the other.”

  “A three-way!” says Helle
r. “That’s so hot!”

  As I’m about to say “HELLER!” Wyatt approaches us, saying, “Time to meet the public, Hel! Wings up!”

  “Not without Catey,” says Heller, grabbing my hand.

  “I am not going on the red carpet!” I say. “Nobody knows who I am! No one cares!”

  “I know who you are,” says Heller.

  “I care,” say Billy and Mills at the same time, which makes them scowl at each other and then start trying to step on each other’s expensive shoes.

  “Get out there,” Billy tells me. “If it wasn’t for you, Heller might not even be here.”

  “You have no choice,” says Wyatt. “I’m going to tell the media that you’re an actual angel, taking a break from your heavenly duties because Heller needed you for research.”

  “Oy vey iz mir,” Wyatt and I say together.

  * * *

  I only last a few seconds on the red carpet because the lights are blinding and the noise and the shouting get too intense. Heller soaks it up because she’s used to this degree of overwhelming attention and she’s good at it—she grins and poses and knows all her best angles, and she flirts with the photographers and the fans and the world. I love finding out what walking the red carpet is like but I think that people should earn the spotlight through hard work, the way Heller has.

  I wonder: Did I do my job? Did I save Heller’s soul? I’m not sure, but I have witnessed a miracle: Heller has admitted she’s been wrong, about all sorts of things, and apologized to me. I’ve admitted that I’m a slut and a sinner and that I’ll never be perfect. We’re even. No—it’s so much better than that. I’ve got my best friend back.

  I’d assumed that Heller and I would have seats in the first few rows of the theater, but instead we get seated right in the center because, as Wyatt explains, “This way all the people in the back will stand up to get a look at you and all the people down front will spend the whole movie trying to wrench their necks around.” Before the movie begins I take a moment to let everything sink in. My family fills the row right behind us and my mom and Aunt Nancy are gabbing away and I even hear my mom use the name Ecstasy. My brothers and sisters are giddy and Calico is in heaven because she keeps spotting celebrities and then she tells Callum who they are and who they’re supposedly sleeping with; this reminds me of a game my family plays on long trips where we lean out the windows of our bus and compete to see who can spot the most out-of-state license plates. My dad is trying to stay dad-like and keep everyone in their seats but he’s looking around too and nudging my mom whenever he sees anyone major.

  Sophie and her parents are sitting further down in our row and Sophie has circled her topknot with a twenty-four-karat golden halo from Tiffany, a gift from Heller. The Schulers are really excited and it’s great to see them at an event that has nothing to do with illness or worry. Sophie waves to me and pulls a defective Sweetcake out of her purse and holds it up as a trophy.

  Speaking of Sweetcakes, Heller came through: The security guard from the factory is sitting right in front of us with his wife and daughter, next to Judge Drandower and Hermione, Bella and Katniss. Heller has obliged with one selfie after another and the judge can’t stop beaming.

  Oliver is sitting on the other side of Heller, and with his dark hair and dashing white forelock, he looks as if he was born in a tuxedo. He smiles and nods at me because we understand each other. We’re both on Team Heller.

  Wyatt is sitting right behind me and as the lights go down he squeezes my shoulder and whispers, “You did good, Catey. You’re the pride of Parsippany.”

  * * *

  I almost can’t watch the movie because I’m so nervous for Heller and since I’m also a passionate Angel Warrior I’m concerned that the movie will leave out something important or mess everything up and betray the spirit of the book. But after the first few minutes I’m completely caught up in the story, even though I know everything that’s going to happen. The weirdest thing is that after the earliest scenes, I forget that I’m Heller’s cousin and that I’ve spent the weekend with her, and that up until a few hours ago I wanted to kill her. I only watch Lynnea.

  Along with everyone else in the audience, I’m thrilled when Lynnea’s wings grow large and strong enough for her first flight and I clutch Mills’s arm when Lynnea almost crashes into a mountainside. I sigh when Lynnea kisses Tallwen, and then Myke, even though in real life in the movie theater, Mills and Billy keep trying to flick each other’s ears behind my head.

  When Malestra challenges Lynnea in the Netherdome I’m so involved that I gasp and say, “Oh no!” and “Watch out, she’s right behind you!” and “Use your golden crossbow!” I wonder what Ava Lily Larrimore will make of the movie, if she allows herself to see it. Will she automatically hate it because she hates Heller and because nothing could ever measure up to her expectations and her demands? I feel bad for Ava because she’s backed herself into a corner, where nothing will ever be good enough. But I never want to become Ava, sitting at home with her arms crossed, sneering and judging everyone else, ruling from her iPad and never taking a risk or daring to enjoy herself.

  When Lynnea finally faces the Darkling Creeper the audience goes crazy, cheering for the ordinary small-town girl who’s trying desperately to save the world. Of course since this is only the first of the four projected Angel Wars movies, the story just sort of stops with Lynnea almost dying but vowing to return and realizing that she now commands a ragtag Angel army. The movie ends with a lot of pounding, soaring music and Lynnea in midair silhouetted against a blazing sun. There’s a pause and then the entire audience jumps to its feet, with everyone cheering and clapping, and when the words “Prepare Thyself for Angel Wars II: Devil’s Dominion” appear on the screen, I think that the theater’s roof will blow off because the audience is screaming so loudly.

  During the noise I lean across Mills’s lap and grab Heller’s hand and I say into her ear, “It’s really good and you’re absolutely amazing.” Heller looks at me and I can see how nervous she still is, and scared, but that it’s starting to dawn on her that everything might just be okay.

  She holds up her forearm so I can see her tattoo and I hold up mine. She grins at me, a grin filled with relief and happiness and even, oh my dear Lord, a hint of some new, dangerous and thrilling adventure because Heller is already restless and eager to upset me in some horribly wonderful new way. I don’t mean to do it and I know I shouldn’t and I’m positive that I will absolutely regret it, but I can’t help myself and I grin right back.

  I would like to thank my editor, Rachel Griffiths, for her many astonishing skills, which include her infinite patience, her superb guidance, her joyous enthusiasm and her ability to chat on the phone for extended periods, about both my book and everything else we can come up with. Prior to writing It’s All Your Fault, I made a few attempts at other books, and Rachel was always wise and supportive, and once I’d abandoned those misbegotten tales, she never asked “What were you thinking, you fool?”

  I’d also like to thank everyone at Scholastic, the most wonderful home any author could hope for. Everyone at Scholastic is always smart, imaginative and a treat to hang out with, and they include Kelly Ashton, Lori Benton, Ellie Berger, Bess Braswell, Lauren Festa, Sheila Marie Everett, Tracy van Straaten, David Levithan, Rachael Hicks, Gabriel Rumbaut, Elizabeth Parisi, Lizette Serrano, Emily Heddleson, Antonio Gonzalez, Elizabeth Whiting, Alan Smagler, Annette Hughes, Jacquelyn Rubin, Alexis Lunsford and Duryan Bhagat-Clark.

  I’d also like to thank David Kuhn and his staff; the fine folks who manufacture yellow legal pads and Mallomars; and booksellers everywhere, for insisting that, while movies, music, television and the Internet all are perfectly valid pursuits, they’re really just minor distractions from the glorious pleasures of reading a book.

  As always, I must thank John Raftis, for his impeccable driving, his spectacular gardens and our shared love of IHOP.

  Above all, I would like to thank my readers, for allowi
ng me to write. It’s all your fault.

  Paul Rudnick is a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. His screenplays include Addams Family Values and In&Out, and he’s written for Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker. His plays have been produced both on and off Broadway and around the world and include I Hate Hamlet and Jeffrey. His first young adult novel was Gorgeous, which Libba Bray for the New York Times called “a wicked good time.” Under the pen name Libby Gelman-Waxner, he is also the world’s most beloved and irresponsible film critic. Paul lives in New York City.

  Copyright © 2016 by Paul Rudnick

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rudnick, Paul, author.

  It’s all your fault / Paul Rudnick.—First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: Seventeen-year-old Caitlin Singleberry is a proper Christian teenager and member of a family singing group, but today she has been given a truly impossible assignment—keep her cousin Heller Harrigan, Hollywood wild child, out of trouble for the last weekend before her first big movie debuts.