“Hey, Emma. Home, actually.”
“Oh my god, that’s AWESOME. We can pregame Beau’s party, and you can tell me everything.” Apparently I was the only one who thought I shouldn’t go to Anderson’s kegger. Though Rachel might agree. Emma kept talking at hyperspeed. “Did Laura look older in person? She looks good on TV, but she has to be, like, forty.”
“She looked . . . I dunno, good. Normal. Like a mom. But, you know, a mom who takes care of herself.”
“That makes sense.” I could almost hear her nodding, fast like a little bird. She always did it when she was excited.
“What was the best part? Did they send a limo to get you? Oh, what was backstage like? Was the greenroom super shmancy, or was it a dump?”
“We can talk about it later. I have to tell you something before tonight, though.”
“Oh. Okay. Is it good?”
“Kinda.” I closed my eyes, trying to focus. “They want me to do a whole series of segments for the show.”
“Oh my GOD. KY-LE!” She was squealing. Jeez, this was even worse than I expected.
“Yeah, it’s cool. There’s just one thing.” I breathed deep.
“Do you have to move to L.A. for a while? Oh my god, I can’t believe this. Probably you’re going to have a movie star girlfriend by next week and totally forget I exist.”
Oof. Emma: not making this easier.
“No, that’s not gonna happen. But the thing about the segments—”
“Do you think they’ll let me, like, guest star? I can pretend I don’t know you if they want. Oh my god, this is crazy.”
I was never going to get a word in if I waited for her to stop, so I just broke in over Emma’s excitement.
“The segments are with Rachel. They had me ask her to homecoming, and the show is going to, like, follow us leading up to it. It wasn’t my idea. The producers came up with it. They think it will play well ‘for the Laura Show audience.’” I could feel myself getting off track. Why was I still talking? Like it was going to make Emma take it any better? “Anyway, I thought I should be the one to tell you.”
I waited for Emma to say something. Tell me she understood it was all make-believe, or scream that she hated me, or even say something catty about Rachel.
But the other end of the line was dead silent.
Then she hung up.
chapter twenty-five
RACHEL
FRIDAY, 5:55 P.M.
There was no way around it: I couldn’t do the show, so I couldn’t go to the dance with Kyle.
Now I just had to tell everyone. Mo would be pissed. But then, I was pissed at Mo.
After the “family discussion,” I ran up to my bedroom and threw myself onto my bed, staring at the ceiling. I was doing a lot of that lately.
I already knew I couldn’t go through with this, but some part of me didn’t want to admit it. The part that thought Kyle looked adorable in his tux, and noticed how he had laughed at the same ridiculous moments as I had, and smiled at me in a way that felt so real, even while the rest of me—my actual brain—was screaming at me not to be so fricking gullible.
Pros is doing the show, cons is saying no.
Pro: I get to go to homecoming with Kyle.
Con: It’s fake, he only asked me because a producer made him, and I’ll probably embarrass myself by forgetting that.
Pro: We’d be on TV.
Con: Being on TV is basically begging all the mean girls to comment on how ugly the dress I chose was, how much hotter Kyle is than me, how ridiculous my hair looks, and, and, and. They’d probably point out things that were wrong about me that I hadn’t even thought of yet. Maybe my jokes suck. Or maybe I have a lisp. Or a mustache—a massive handlebar mustache that curls at the ends that somehow I’ve never even known I have. Whatever it is, they’ll tell me.
Pro: Kyle clearly wants to stay in the spotlight longer. I could give him that.
Con: He probably wouldn’t even realize I was the one doing it.
Pro: Mo might not be totally wrong about this helping our application.
Con: Even thinking about what I’d be like on TV made my stomach hurt. Remembering the moronic things I’d said in the two minutes at my front door, when I hadn’t been expecting everyone to show up, made my whole face feel hot. If I knew I had to do it—mug for a camera—I’d almost certainly try too hard and be even more brutally awkward. There’s a reason I write plays, not audition for them.
Con: The more I put myself in the spotlight, the lower the chances of this ever blowing over.