Olivia rolled her eyes. “It’s really not,” she insisted.
“It really is, though. And it’s freaking me out, and if it keeps happening I’m going to call your mom. No more screwing around. And maybe that means you’re going to be mad at me again, and I get that, but”—I shrugged—“you’re my best friend, and that’s what best friends do.”
Olivia was quiet for a minute. “I’m not mad at you.”
“Okay,” I said. Then, carefully, “So, like. We’re clear? And you won’t, like—keep stuff from me?”
“Yeah, Dana, we’re clear.” Olivia huffed out a sigh.
“Good,” I said, though in the back of my head I knew it might not be that easy. “I want to help you, you know? I’m here to help you.”
“Dana—” she started, but then she just kind of sagged. “I’m working on it,” she promised. “Is that fair? I’m not always perfect, but I’m working on it.”
I thought about that for a moment. “As long as I’m here, and we’re together,” I decided. “As long as we’re together, it’s okay.”
THIRTY-THREE
“What about this one?” Olivia asked, popping out of my closet with a flowered sundress in one hand, waving it in my direction. “Too sweet?”
I squinted for a moment. We were doing a mall performance the next morning, were supposed to pick our own costumes from the cache of clothes Juliet had given us. We’d been at it for over an hour already, the radio playing on the dresser and a bowl of microwave popcorn on the bed. “Too sweet,” I decided finally.
“Yeah,” Olivia agreed. “I feel like we should put you in something sexier.”
I snorted at that. “Because I’m such a sexy individual?”
“I mean, yes, obviously. But also for, like, brand-recognition purposes.”
“Ugh,” I said, sitting back on my bed and reaching for a handful of popcorn. “I hate that word, brand. It makes me feel like a sanitary napkin.”
“Better get used to it, pop star,” Olivia said cheerfully. Then, turning back to the closet and scrutinizing its contents for a moment: “Can I tell you a secret?”
I leaned forward eagerly. “Always.”
She whirled and looked at me again, this time holding the infamous forty-dollar T-shirt. “I have to say, these are actually butt-ugly.”
“Oh, come on! I’m going to kill you,” I told her, but I was laughing. It was hard to get worked up over it anymore, to even remember how far from her I’d felt those past weeks. “They are ugly, right?”
“Yes!” Olivia nodded. “I should have listened to you to begin with,” she said.
“That’s a good motto for you to live by all the time, really,” I teased.
We listened to the nightly countdown on the Top 40 station, settled on jeans and a tank top for Olivia and a faded denim miniskirt for me. “Can I crash in here?” she asked, hovering in the doorway once we’d brushed our teeth.
“Obviously,” I said. I yanked the comforter off my bed and tossed it over to her, and we settled side by side on the twin mattresses just like we had when we first came here. Of course she could have gone and gotten her own blanket. Of course she could have gone next door to go to sleep. But that wasn’t the point, and both of us knew it.
Once the light was off Olivia stared up at the ceiling for a while, quiet; I thought she’d just about fallen asleep when she spoke. “What I don’t understand,” she said thoughtfully, rolling over to look at me, “is why Guy doesn’t just keep us both. I feel like that would be the better business move, not cutting one of us. He could brand us differently or something, you know what I mean?”
I looked over at her, surprised. “I guess,” I said.
“Because it doesn’t make sense for him to be putting these kinds of resources into both of us if one of us is about to get cut,” she continued. “Like, the studio time, sure, he crammed us both in there and didn’t have to pay extra. But paying Lucas and Charla to coach us both, double the media training, the image stuff—that all seems like a waste to me. And Guy’s not wasteful.”
She had a point there, I thought—after all, Guy keeping us both up to this point meant he thought there was a chance both of us were viable. “Would you want that?” I asked cautiously. “For him to pick us both?”
Olivia looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course I would,” she said. “If we could take this whole stupid competition out of the equation? That would be amazing.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, smiling into the darkness, feeling like I was finally back where I belonged. “It would be pretty freaking great.”
I fell asleep easily, deep and dreamless. I didn’t wake up once the whole night through.
Guy finally bought us all tickets to Disney one hot, humid Saturday—ostensibly to shoot some promo pictures to show how family-friendly we all were, but we also got to skip the lines for Space Mountain and the Tower of Terror, a park employee leading us around and giving all of us personalized Mouse ears for free.
“That’s it,” the photographer said as I tossed my hair in front of Cinderella’s Castle, the camera clicking away. “America’s gonna love you.”
“You’re a natural,” Juliet said, eyeing me approvingly, and I grinned.
We stayed until it got dark and was time for the fireworks, booms so loud I could feel them vibrating in the base of my spine. “Beats watching from the parking lot, huh?” Alex asked. We’d peeled off from the others and were sitting on a bench on Main Street with our heads tipped back to watch the explosions, passing a giant Diet Coke back and forth.
I nodded. Of course it beat the parking lot, in some ways—after all, just a few weeks ago we couldn’t even afford tickets to get in here, had been stuck on the outside looking in. But when I remembered how it had felt being in the car with him that night, like we were the only two people in the universe—I couldn’t help but wonder if we were losing something, too. The summer was almost over, and both of us were on the precipice of something potentially incredible. What I didn’t know was if we’d be able to make the jump holding hands.
God, I was being a weirdo. “It’s great,” I said, knocking my forehead against his lightly.
But Alex must have been able to read my mind. “Come on,” he said, taking my hand with his free one and pulling me to my feet. A firework in the shape of Minnie Mouse erupted over Cinderella’s Castle, and everyone cheered.
“Where are we going?” I asked, but Alex didn’t answer, fingers threaded through mine as we wove through the tightly packed throngs, his wavy hair curling up in the heat. We were nearly to the edge of the Magic Kingdom before I figured it out. “Alex,” I said, a slow grin spreading over my face as we pushed through the turnstiles out into the parking lot. “Are we—”