At first he’s reluctant to leave, but after I toss him a handful of bills and basically tell him to scram, he gets the hint. And as I watch him walk away, I gotta say, it feels pretty good to tell a teacher what to do for a change.
The second he’s gone, our booth is invaded by girls practically crawling all over me as they grab at my T-shirt and run their hands over my hair, which for some reason makes them squeal, all the while telling me how much they love me, how they cry nonstop when they listen to my music, how they have pictures of me posted all over the walls of their rooms and inside their lockers at school. They ask me to sign their napkins and T-shirts. There are even a few requests to sign random body parts (mostly arms, legs, and hands, except for one forehead, which seemed a little strange).
At first it’s really fun. I mean, what’s the point of being an International Superstar if you can’t enjoy a little time with your fans? And it’s not like Dougall is left out, since they take pictures with him too (only with a little less enthusiasm).
But it’s not long before it seems like every single one of those girls texted every single person in their contacts list, because the next thing I know, the place is slammed with fans and photogs—none of them ordering food, which annoys the manager and the waitstaff so much I end up having to ask Sparks to return so he can escort us back to the limo, which is where we end up eating our burgers.
“This is so much better,” Dougall says. “It’s not like you can recline and put your feet up in a restaurant.” He leans his head back against the seat, gazes up at the roof, and chews thoughtfully.
“Maybe I should open a restaurant,” I say, the words garbled from a mouth stuffed full of fries. “One where instead of booths we have recliners, and instead of tables we have trays that slide out of the armrest, and instead of facing each other we’ll all be facing these individual screens where we can watch whatever we want, ’cause it’s all on demand.” I laugh like I’m joking, but really I’m not. It seems like a truly inspired idea that might actually work. Besides, what’s the point of having all this money if I don’t have fun with it and build cool places for my friends and me to hang out?
“Dude—that’s genius!” Dougall takes a long, loud sip of his soda, making a series of obnoxious slurping sounds as he scrapes the straw along the bottom. “You can call it The Den. But it won’t have any signs. And it’ll have a secret entrance and a secret phone number too. It’ll be the hottest place in town—people will be fighting to book a recliner! You’ll be even richer than you are now!”
I wipe a glob of ketchup from my chin and nod. Not really getting the whole no-sign, secret-entrance-and-phone-number bit—I mean, how are people supposed to find it? Still, I’ve already decided to make some phone calls first thing tomorrow and get this idea going.
I’m kind of surprised by how easy it is to get used to being rich. I always figured it might require some time to adjust. But here I am, only a few hours in, and I’m already starting a business. And really, why stop there? What’s the point of having a big fat wallet if you’re not going to empty it? So I slide open the divider and tell Sparks to take us to the nearest Ferrari dealer.
Dougall swears it won’t matter that we’re not old enough to drive. He says once they see us—me in particular—they’ll close off the showroom to all the sad wannabes and give us the run of the place.
“They’ll probably even toss in a bunch of free logoed stuff too. You know, like hats and T-shirts and coffee mugs,” he says. “Since anytime you step out in it, you’ll be advertising for them.”
It sounds good to me. In fact, it sounds pretty dang close to perfect. Which is why it’s so disappointing when we arrive, only to discover that it’s closed.
Since we can’t test-drive Ferraris, we decide to do the next best thing: we tell Sparks to take us to a mall that has an Apple store, a Nike store, and a GameStop, which is something you’d never find back in Greentree, since you have to drive three towns over just to get to a mall, and even then, it only has one of those stores. But here in Tinsel Hills, it exists. And it’s so amazing I don’t even know how to explain it, other than to say it’s three stories of awesome, with just about every store you could ever think of, all of them decorated for Christmas. There’s even a ginormous Christmas tree that starts on the first floor and reaches all the way to the third and has thousands of ornaments hanging from it. And when I see the Santa’s Village they’ve set up, well, I can’t help but stare.
Back when I was a little kid, the place where my mom used to take Holly and me for our annual picture with Santa always reminded me of a red-and-green foil-wrapped bus stop that wasn’t nearly as festive as it tried to be. But here it’s a truly authentic village with a forest of fake pine trees covered in snow and a small log house where Santa waits for his elves to bring him kids to sit on his lap and tell him their wishes.
“You should do it,” Dougall says when he catches me staring.