#famous(27)

But there were no buckets of blood on my head. It all felt kind of anticlimactic. I’d thought I was starring in some intense drama, but it turned out I was just a B plot.

This was what I wanted. I had to remember that. It probably only felt strange and anxious and unfinished because I was subconsciously waiting for the other shoe to plop down in a big pile of catty and splatter it all over me again.

The message came in about an hour after I got home from school.

I was sprawled on the beige Berber carpeting in the basement, staring at a muddle of x + y over fractions to the nth power equations. Algebra II might as well have been in cuneiform for how much sense it made. Geometry had been so much better. Shapes you could see. This was just . . . alphabet soup.

My phone pinged from the coffee table. It hadn’t been going off much all day. A few notifications before lunch, but since then, radio silence. Maybe Monique was texting. I did still have a couple of real-life friends willing to talk to me.

I levered up—the carpet painfully peeling away from my elbows, where it left a series of red ridges and bumps—and scooted over to the low coffee table on my knees.

@YourBoyKyle_B has sent you a private flit

Wait, what?

A thousand centipedes started scuttling around the inside of my stomach, trying to escape up my throat.

Wasn’t it enough that my total social annihilation had bought him overnight fame—couldn’t he just leave the deluded idiot alone now, like he’d promised? But of course a huge part of me was whole-body-electrified-excited that he hadn’t forgotten me yet. Totally pathetic—it was like some deep, buried part of my brain was okay with him treating me like the dorky sidekick as long as he talked to me. Stupid fricking subconscious. Get with the program.

Weakly, I touched the screen.

Q: were you gonna watch the show tmw?

I blinked for a minute. Kyle had to be sending this from L.A. Oh god, that had to mean something about me had come up on the show. The thought made me want to vomit. I typed before I could lose my nerve entirely:

Probably. You’ve finished filming, right? Should

I be worried about mobs with pitchforks?

Kyle’s response came in before my screen even went fully dark.

Yeah, wrapped about an hour ago. And no,

nothing like that. But you should def watch.

Am I going to like what I see?

Oh my god, was I seriously trying to flirt right now? Also, was that maybe the worst attempt at flirting that had ever happened in the history of ever?

Hope so. But I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

For Christ’s sake. Is there anything more maddening than people telling you you’ll be surprised by something that won’t happen for ages? It’s like dangling a piece of salami over a dog’s head, exactly two inches higher than the poor thing can jump.

Obviously I wasn’t going to tell Kyle that.

All right, you have me intrigued. I’ll be watching.

Good. BTW, what’s your #? Txts wld be easier.

Statement retracted. Kyle could dangle all the “surprise!” salamis he wanted if he was going to throw requests like that in there. Pathetic, I know, but I was too anxious to care. Thumbs shaking, I typed the number into the message window. About a minute later, a text arrived from a number I didn’t recognize.

(From 763 . . . ): Hey, it’s Kyle. Now we can talk easier! Gotta go. Make sure to watch and txt me after it’s over. Later!



Hands fully seizuring now, I carefully clicked to save the number. Kyle Bonham, also saved to SIM.

I collapsed onto the carpet, my cheek pressing hard into the rough beige divots. I’d probably wind up with a topographical map there too, part of a matching set with my elbows.

I closed my eyes and breathed in as deeply as I could, trying to calm the fluttery feeling taking over my stomach and lungs.

How was I ever going to get through the next twenty-four hours knowing there was something on the show Kyle wanted me, in particular, to see?

And what could it possibly be?





chapter eighteen


KYLE

THURSDAY, 11:45 A.M.

The dressing rooms at the Laura Show had no windows. Had: huge overstuffed couches, bright-white walls, fresh flowers, and baskets filled with, like, every kind of junk food ever, plus some hippie ones I’d never even heard of. Didn’t have: windows.

It made it even harder to sit still. The room felt claustrophobic, like a well-decorated prison cell. But with an attached bathroom instead of a can in the corner.

We’d been waiting for three hours, but no one had come by since the thin, prim woman manning reception when we showed up dropped us here. She’d offered to show us around first, which seemed cool. But she’d locked her smile in place right away, walking down the long, narrow hallway with all the dressing rooms (currently next door: the band Five-Step Boogie), and she was smiling just as hard for the camera storage room.

It made me wonder if she ever didn’t smile.

I walked the length of the room again. The light: too bright, like an operating room. I thought all the time between when we were supposed to arrive and when we started taping would help me calm down, but I was getting crazy nervous. I shook my hands out and bounced up and down on my toes like I did before lacrosse games, trying to release the energy.

Someone knocked softly at the door. Mom’s head whipped around so fast I thought she might do damage. I froze midway through a bounce, heels not touching the ground.