“Nothing, everything is fine.” Her voice was robot-flat, and she was staring past me, frowning slightly. “I’m just a little shocked. That was a producer from the Laura Show.”
The cage of barbed wire that had clamped around my stomach loosened slightly. People we loved: not dead or dying. Mom just looked like she’d gotten gut-punched.
Then her words registered.
“Wait, like the talk show?”
She nodded slowly.
“Why?”
A dazed smile started to pull up the corners of her mouth.
“They want you on the show. Friday’s show, but they’d tape tomorrow. They said they’d fly you out on a red-eye. Tonight.”
The Laura Show? Wanted me? I’d only seen it once or twice when I was home sick. It was on in the middle of the afternoon, and it seemed to be aimed toward goofy moms. Still, even I knew it was big. “Real celebrities selling their latest movies” big.
It was exactly what Mom wanted. She always seemed to be able to make what she wanted happen. My whole body started to feel too light, like even my arms were dizzy. It wasn’t particularly pleasant.
“What do you think?” I finally said. I couldn’t have answered the question if she’d been the one asking.
“Oh, Kyle, it’s fantastic!”
She leaned forward and hugged me hard around the shoulders. I wasn’t sure if I agreed or not, so I just focused on trying to keep my balance.
chapter fifteen
RACHEL
WEDNESDAY, 4:35 P.M.
“It has to be a joke, right?”
Monique had collapsed onto the bed beside me, but I was still staring at the phone, transfixed.
@YourBoyKyle_B: Just got a call from the
awesome people at the Laura Show. Who
wants to see me on TV? ;)
“I don’t think it’s a joke,” Monique said to the ceiling.
“But Laura? She has on TV stars. She got the president to do karaoke with her that one time. She can’t seriously be interested in Kyle Bonham from Apple Prairie High.”
“Why not? She had Melodramatic Husky on a few months ago.”
“What, do you DVR her or something?”
“My aunt sent me a YouTube clip.”
“Oh.”
My heart fluttered away from its usual spot, bounced off my stomach and the sides of my throat.
“You don’t think . . . I mean, people had started to let up on me, but if he’s on Laura, will they . . . will I be . . .” I couldn’t get out the tail end of the thought; it was like it had spikes that had sunk too deeply into my tongue for me to spit it out. It was a thought wearing cleats.
“Honestly, I don’t think so.” Mo rolled over on her elbow, facing me. “And I’m not just saying that to make you feel better. I think it would be worse, psychologically, to feel like this had blown over and have it flare up again than it would be to deal with the idea that it would continue to be crappy for a while longer.”
Only Monique would turn me into a case study at a time like this. It was oddly reassuring.
“So many more people are going to be aware of it, though.”
“Yup. But since you don’t want to make yourself part of the story, he’s all they’ll be aware of.”
“Mo.” It was what I wanted to hear, but she sounded so annoyed.
“Think about it. Have you gotten any calls from the Laura Show?”
“Obviously I haven’t.”
“Well, if they don’t think you’re the interesting part of this, why would anyone watching?”
That was good news. Right? It was what I wanted—for people to leave me alone, stop trying to give me cliché complexes about the size of my butt, and let me go back to being anonymous. The girl you didn’t really notice at the back of the class, unless her ridiculous brillo-pad hair was obscuring your view.
Still, it felt sort of . . . sad. Like I was losing something, something I’d never even had. Kyle would be fully famous and I’d be fully irrelevant. A footnote at best. He wouldn’t think of me as the weird, quiet, stalkery girl anymore, because he wouldn’t think about me at all.
But I couldn’t say that out loud. I’d been the one insisting that I wanted less attention from all this.
“I’ve gotta go,” Mo said finally, rocking herself up to a sitting position. “I have a problem set for Chem I have to finish before dance.”
“Okay, thanks for coming over,” I said, voice flat.
“You should be happy.” Mo swung her messenger bag onto her narrow shoulders. “People are going to be over you by tomorrow. By Monday, they’ll have forgotten you were even involved.”
I nodded. That was exactly what I was starting to worry about.
chapter sixteen
KYLE
WEDNESDAY, 8:55 P.M.
“I’m gonna get a Starbucks. Do you want anything?”
I shook my head. Mom was acting even more nervous than I felt, and we still had half an hour until boarding. Ten minutes of her drumming her fingers somewhere else: necessary. Though I would have to deal with her being hypercaffeinated.