by Robin Palmer
The movie was as good as I had hoped, but I found it hard to focus because it seemed like every time I went to grab for some popcorn, Connor did, too, which meant that our hands touched. And every time that happened, it felt a little like sticking my finger in an electrical outlet, and I yanked mine back so hard that popcorn went flying—sometimes into people’s hair—which was too bad because it was really good popcorn, with just the right amount of real butter on it.
“Sorry,” I whispered as the woman sitting in front of me turned around and gave me a dirty look. I thought about reaching forward and picking out the piece of popcorn that was caught in her bob, but with my luck I’d cause more of a mess, so I didn’t.
I was really confused. Once we had finally sat down in the theater, and I didn’t have to concentrate on walking, all my nervousness had gone away and it became easy to talk to Connor. What was going on here? Why was he so nice? And funny? And not anything like I thought a big superstar would be?
It was like I was nervous that I wasn’t nervous around Connor. Plus, Connor Forrester didn’t like girls like me—he liked Bikini Butt blondes. I had to keep reminding myself of that.
I was glad when the movie was over and we walked across the street to what Laurel had explained was called the “after-party.” Maybe I could manage to slip away from him so I didn’t have to keep being nervous about the fact that he didn’t make me nervous. It wasn’t like I had anyone else to hang out with, though, seeing that Laurel and Austin were still joined at the hip. According to her, after-parties were like giant bar mitzvahs for adults, where they walked around giving each other air kisses and telling each other how great they looked to their faces, only to say mean things about one another once they walked away. It sounded a lot like what happened on The Real Tenth Graders of New Jersey. I was hoping there was at least really good food, but instead it was a bunch of expensive but gross stuff, like shrimp and sushi.
“Aw, man—more sushi?” said Connor when he saw it. “Why can’t they just serve normal stuff like . . . burgers and fries?”
My stomach grumbled. If I was trying to find reasons not to like him, that was definitely not helping.
He turned to me. “I’m starving. Want to take off?” he whispered.
“To where?”
“To a very important L.A. landmark,” he replied.
A half hour later we were screaming our orders into the In-N-Out Burger’s drive-through loudspeaker from the backseat of the tinted-window SUV that Connor and Austin had rented for the night, driven by a very large man named Calvin. Calvin, I learned during the ride over, used to play football in college and could have been in the pros if he hadn’t hurt his knee, and now he wanted to open up a bakery based on the recipes of his grandmother from Alabama. We had asked Laurel and Austin if they wanted to come, but they were too busy making googly eyes at each other, so after we got our food, Calvin would drive me back to Shutters and then Connor back to Malibu.
Even though it was late, In-N-Out was packed, which is why we decided to eat in the car. That, and we didn’t want to give the reporters any more reason to think we were a couple. We got our food, and from my first bite, I was in heaven. “You were right—this really is the best cheeseburger in the world,” I said. From the fact that there were so many limos in the parking lot, you could tell that famous people liked them, too.
“And I bet you’ve never had animal-style fries before, huh?” he asked.
I shook my head. Animal-style meant the fries were covered with cheese, onions, and Thousand Island dressing. “Whoops,” I said as part of the mixture fell on my dress. I guess you could dress a girl up and put her in a turban, but you couldn’t take away her coordination issues.
He laughed. “You really are cool, Lucy B. Parker.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You are,” he said quietly. As he bowed his head, a lock of hair flopped in his eye. I don’t know why that made the fluttering speed up, but it did. “You’re funny, and smart, and you eat bread—”
I felt my face turn red, and my turban slid down over my ear. “I don’t know why you California people think that’s so cool, but, yeah, I eat bread. And a lot of it. I also eat bagels, and knishes, and empanadas—” I babbled. Why did the oversharing thing have to start up now? I shoved the turban back into place.
“Most girls I know, they just talk about clothes and stuff, and they flip their hair around and bat their eyelashes and just watch you eat. And for some reason they’re always, like, agreeing with me. You, though—you barely ever do.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
He laughed. “See—you did it right there.” He squinted at my ear. “Hey, is your hair blue?”
I adjusted my turban, which had slid to the side again. “Uh, yeah. It’s kind of a long story, so I won’t go into it now. Anyway, you were saying—”
He looked down at his fries. “It’s too bad you don’t live in L.A.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. So we could . . . hang out. I mean, I think I kind-of, sort-of . . . like you.”
My heart started beating really fast. “Like . . . like me–like me?” I asked.
He nodded. Now he was the one turning all red. He pointed to my eyes. “That’s cool.”
“What?”
“Your eyes—your pupils are really big.”
Uh-oh. Last night, Laurel and I went online to get another look at the warning signs of crushes. Big pupils were number seven on the list.
He moved closer. Was he going to kiss me? Did I want him to kiss me? What about the fact that Calvin was in the front seat? And the fact that the burgers and fries had onions on them? And did this mean I DID have a crush on Connor? And what if I ultimately decided that Blair really was my local crush? Did kissing Connor mean that I couldn’t have a crush on Blair? THIS was why I wasn’t sure if I was ready for crushes—they were so confusing!
And then . . . out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.
She was walking out of the restaurant holding a white bag just like the one that was sitting on my lap and leaking grease onto my new dress, and then she got into the back of one of the limos.
Dr. Maude.
“OH MY GOD! Calvin! Follow that limo!” I yelled, pointing at Dr. Maude’s car.
“Huh?” asked Calvin and Connor at the same time.
“That limo!” I yelped. “Dr. Maude is in it!”
“You mean Dr. Maude-Dr. Maude?” Calvin said. “From Come On, People—Get with the Program? Man, I love her,” he exclaimed, starting up the car and backing out of the parking space. “And I really need to talk to her—I need some serious advice about my girlfriend.”
“Okay, but I’m going first,” I said. “I’ve been trying to track her down for months.” Finally—I was thisclose to getting the answers I needed. Not only that, but I had avoided a kiss with Connor.
Well, I was thisclose to getting the answers I needed, until Calvin bashed into another car in the parking lot as it backed up at the same time he did. “Whoops,” he said.
“But she’s getting away!” I cried as her limo moved up to the exit and put on its blinker.
Another very tall, very big man who looked very unhappy got out of the other car and started yelling at Calvin. I jumped out of the car, not caring when the lid of my chocolate shake came off and splattered all over my dress. Calling on all the speed I had saved up by using my Please-excuse-Lucy-from-gym-class-as-she-is-menstruating note and not taking gym for the last few years, I put it all into my sprint across the parking lot.
“Dr. Maude!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, hoping she could hear me through the closed window. But I was too late. Just as I got to the exit, the limo made a right-hand turn and peeled off onto Sunset Boulevard, leaving me standing there advice-less, and covered with chocolate milk shake.
“Hey, you lost your shoe,” Connor said, holding it out to me as he joined me.
I looked down. He was right—I had only one on. I
hadn’t even noticed. “Thanks,” I said glumly, shoving my foot back into it. My turban slid down over one eye, and I shoved it back into place.
“Well, that’s a bummer, huh?” he asked.
I nodded.
“What would you have asked her if you had caught up with her?”
That was a good question. I felt like I had so many problems and needed so much advice, I wouldn’t have known where to start. Crushes, Ziggy, Mom, fighting with a frister. But as I looked up at Connor, who, for some reason, at that moment, at that angle, with that amount of moonlight shining down on him, looked even cuter than he had that night on the beach during sunset, I blurted out, “I think I would’ve asked her what you were supposed to do to let a boy know that you wouldn’t hit him or anything like that if he tried to kiss you.”
“Really?” he asked shyly.
Oh my God—what had I just done? Had I just asked Connor Forrester to kiss me?
“You want me to kiss you right here?” he asked nervously. “In the middle of Sunset Boulevard? With all these cars whizzing by?”
“I never said I wanted you to kiss me,” I said defensively, giving up on straightening my turban and just taking it off. “All I meant was that if you tried to kiss me, I wouldn’t, you know, bash you over the head with my shoe or anything. That’s a totally different thing than wanting someone to kiss you. Or asking them to.”
“Oh,” he said, disappointed. “So you don’t want me to kiss you.”
“Well, I didn’t say that, either,” I corrected. What did I want? I didn’t even know. I looked over at Calvin, who was done exchanging information with the other guy and was waiting for us to get back in the car. “We should probably get going,” I said, turning and walking toward the SUV.
“Hey, Lucy?” he called.
I stopped and turned around. “What?”
Just then, in front of all of the cars in the parking lot of In-N-Out—not to mention the ones on Sunset Boulevard, which, according to one of the guidebooks I had read, was one of the busiest streets in all of L.A.—Connor Forrester put his hands on my shoulders, pulled me toward him, and kissed me.
It wasn’t a super-long kiss, but it was definitely a real kiss.
And the best part of it? Other than the fact that it wasn’t half as scary as I thought it was going to be and it happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to be nervous?
There were no cameras around to snap a picture of it.
chapter 15
Dear Dr. Maude,
You don’t know this, but I saw you the other night. At In-N-Out Burger. I guess liking burgers is another thing we have in common, besides the fact that we live in the same apartment building and we both like dogs.
I tried to catch up to you, but obviously I didn’t. Which I guess worked out for the best, because if I had, I might not have had my first kiss. I know having a first kiss in the middle of the parking lot of a hamburger place isn’t all that romantic, especially if you kind-of, sort-of ask the person to kiss you instead of letting it just happen naturally, but whatever. It was with Connor Forrester, if you can believe that. It’s okay if you can’t, because I still can’t, and I was there when it happened! (It’s not listed as one of “50 Fun Facts about Connor” on his website, but he happens to have very soft lips.)
Beatrice and Alice and Marissa are totally going to freak out when they hear about it. I haven’t even told Laurel yet, if you can believe it. Partly because I’ve wanted to keep it to myself for a bit, and partly because I don’t want to hurt her feelings on account of the fact that she and Austin never ended up having an offscreen kiss because there were always photographers around. Which means that I officially had my first real kiss before she did. And she’s older! And famous!
To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about the whole kissing thing. It was kind of interesting, but I’m not so sure I want to do it on a regular basis yet. Luckily, Connor doesn’t have braces, so my lip didn’t get cut up, but it WAS a little slimy. We hung out a few times afterward (I finally got to go on the Haunted Hollywood tour!), but because of the distance and stuff, we’re not going to be boyfriend/girlfriend. Which is good, because I still don’t know how I feel about this crushing thing. We are, however, now Facebook friends. Who knows—maybe if Blair and I get to know each other better, I really WILL develop a crush on him (after hanging out with Connor, I’m now pretty certain that I did not have a real crush on Blair) and will want to kiss him at some point. But maybe not.
Anyway, hopefully I’ll run into you when we’re both back in New York. Because even though Laurel and I have been getting along a lot better, and Mom e-mailed me yesterday to say that their trip is going really well, and she misses me, and in a few weeks we’re going to go to Cape Cod for the weekend, just her and me (we better not stop at any bra stores on the drive up!), if things continue to be as crazy as they’ve been, I’m still going to be needing LOTS of advice.
yours truly,
S.W.A.K.
(That stands for “Sealed with a Kiss,” in case you didn’t know.)
LUCY B. PARKER
Even if you feel bad for a person because, although she’s older, you got kissed before she did, there’s only so long you can keep that news a complete secret. Which is why, as we were flying over Iowa on our way back to New York (because Lady A was still having trouble remembering her lines, the movie was behind schedule, which meant that Laurel got enough time off to come back to New York for a few days), I turned to Laurel and said, “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Oh no. Are you mad at me?” she asked anxiously. “Have I been doing the superstar thing again? I made sure to tell Marci not to tip off the press this time. Didn’t you see how there were a lot less paps at the airport?”
“No, no—I’m not mad at you at all,” I replied. “In fact, I’m a little afraid that after what I’m about to tell you, you might be mad at me.”
“You finally decided to shave your legs and you used my razor and now the blade is all dull?”
“What? No!” I said. As much as I really didn’t want to shave my legs, now that it was officially summer and therefore shorts weather, I was thinking I probably should so that I didn’t scare any small children I might come across in Central Park. Plus my hair had recovered from the Egyptian oil mess, and I didn’t want to tempt fate. I took a deep breath. “I . . . kissed Connor.”
“You kissed Connor Forrester?!” she yelled. “When?”
“Shhhh,” I whispered as the rest of the people in first class turned around to look at me. Luckily, they were all pretty old, because flying first class costs a lot of money, and so I hoped they didn’t know who he was. But still, it was embarrassing. “In the parking lot of In-N-Out Burger. After the premiere the other night.”
“You had your first kiss in a parking lot?!” Laurel yelled.
I clamped my hand down on her mouth. “Laurel! If you don’t stop doing that, I’m not going to tell you the story!”
She removed my hand. “Okay, okay,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. Now tell me everything.”
I did. And as I did, I felt a huge sense of relief, kind of like when you’ve been in the car for a long time and you really have to pee and you finally get to a rest stop.
When I was done, she wrinkled her nose. “It was slimy? Really?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, kind of. So maybe the fact that you didn’t get to kiss Austin isn’t such a bad thing!” I said brightly. Frankly, I was pretty surprised that someone who got as freaked out about germs as Laurel did would even consider kissing someone in the first place. “So are you mad at me?”
“Do you mean because if the tables were turned, I totally would’ve told you right away instead of keeping it a secret for three whole days?” she asked.
“No. I mean because you’re older and I kissed someone before you did.”
Her face fell. “Oh. Well, I hadn’t really thought about it, but now that you put it that way—”
&n
bsp; Oh great. Now she was going to be mad at me.
“—no. Not really,” she went on. “I mean, I’ve kind of gotten used to the fact that there’s a lot of stuff I may have done before you—like, you know, going to awards shows, and flying on private jets. But in terms of regular stuff—like going to the mall, and sleepovers, and kissing—you’re sort of ahead of me on that front.”
“And getting yelled at for having a messy room,” I added. “I’m ahead of you with that, too.”
She laughed. “Yeah, with that one, I don’t think you have to worry. But seriously—I’m happy for you. And before you even say it, I’ll say it for you: I promise I won’t tell anyone. I swear on Miss Piggy’s life.”
I smiled. “Thanks,” I said.
That’s what happened when you were BFFs with someone: they could read your mind.
When we got off the plane in New York, Mom and Alan were waiting for us. It was nice to see them all tan and rested, but I could’ve done without seeing the big goofy smiles on their faces on account of the fact that Marissa had once told me that goofy smiles were a side effect of doing it a lot, and I did NOT want to think about them in that way.
As we were driving into the city from Queens, which is where JFK was, a really cool thing happened—like suddenly everything looked familiar. And when I got out of the car, Pete gave me a ginormous hug. And when I went to the bodega to get a soda, Mr. Kim, who owned it, said, “Long time, no see, Lucy B.” And when I waved to Gurpreet, who owned the newsstand, he waved back.
For the first time in two months after leaving Northampton, I felt like I was . . . home. And not just home in terms of where all my stuff was, but home-home. Totally content and comfortable. As if I had just finished eating a sundae with the perfect ratio of hot caramel to ice cream while wearing my softest pair of pajamas.
“So you had fun?” Mom asked later as she helped me unpack. For her, that meant putting things that hadn’t been worn back into their proper places—for me, it meant just trying to throw everything in the closet without her seeing and dealing with it later.
