#famous(25)

“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.

She strode off rapidly, a woman with a plan. Always.

I looked around for something to distract me. We were at the farthest end of the terminal, at a gate that didn’t even have places to plug in near your seat. The airport felt worn out. Everyone walking by looked like they needed a nap, and half the shops had metal grilles pulled down over the entrances. Even the carpet looked tired, all the neon geometric designs in it dingy from the feet that had rushed over them.

I needed to talk to someone about the show. Besides the people responding to my selfie with the sign above the gate, proving we were going to L.A. They’d all been positive, but they all sounded the same.

My thumb tapped it out automatically before I even realized what I was doing.

“Hey, Kyle,” Emma said. I could hear her sleepy smile through the phone, and somewhere in the background, twinkly boing sounds. Apparently she’d found the right game for Nathan.

“So do you want me to pick you up anything from L.A.? I hear they have great . . . smoothies?”

Emma laughed. My arm twitched, like it wanted to reach out and bury her head against my chest from miles away.

“If you could get your name on one of those stars, that’d be great.”

“Just that?”

“Yup. I’m easy to please.”

I laughed. The muscles in my neck and shoulders released a little. I must have been tensing them.

“Have you practiced what you’re going to say?”

“What is there to say? ‘I guess people like how I look covered in grease’?”

Emma snorted.

“No. I’m just saying if it were me, I’d be practicing one-liners in the mirror until the second I had to go onstage.”

I had practiced a couple things before we left the house. My name, where I worked, where I went to school: things I knew I’d have to say. But I didn’t need to tell Emma that. Worrying about messing up your own name: kinda embarrassing.

“I don’t know. Not really. I’ll say what happened, I guess. Rachel took a picture of me, and it blew up.”

The name came out before I had a chance to think. I held my breath, waiting for Emma to . . . I dunno. Get pissed, most likely.

“You should try to keep the focus off Rachel,” Emma said quietly. Almost . . . sweetly.