#famous(31)

. . . which would mean I could still pretend, in my most pathetically ridiculous fantasies, that he might still fall for me someday.

But I definitely couldn’t say that out loud.

Especially since I hadn’t told Mo about Kyle’s messages. I should have, probably, but I hadn’t wanted her to confirm what I already knew—that he was just being polite, or worse, treating me like another fan to cultivate. The original. Fan 0.

Keeping them secret let me hold on to the fantasy of them a little longer. Mo was too practical to understand why I’d want to do that. Plus, as soon as she knew about them, she’d be all over me to try to milk the Kyle connection for the application, even if it didn’t really exist.

Mo swung into a space near the front of the mostly empty parking lot. Already I had to face this day. Dammit.

“All right.” Mo turned to me, chin pointed toward her chest, the better to stare me down. She must be nervous about something; usually she reserved her “pay attention to what I’m going to say” face for times when she was leading a group project, or assistant teaching one of her kindergarten dance classes. “I’ll see you at lunch. But in case something happens and I don’t, the plan is to be here, at the car, immediately after classes end, right?”

“Right.”

“And you don’t foresee any reason you’ll be late, do you?”

“No.” I raised an eyebrow. This was a little plan-happy even for Mo.

“And you’ll keep your phone out in case we get separated and need to find each other then, right?”

“Yes, Mo.”

She exhaled dramatically.

“I’m sorry, I just want to make sure we have a plan. It will be tight getting home in time for the show.”

We had nearly an hour to make it the fifteen minutes from school to my house. And I was the one with skin in the game—except I probably wasn’t, since I almost certainly wouldn’t come up. Still, this was how Mo showed you she cared. Via micromanaging.

I nodded, forcing my lips into a strained smile.

“I’ll be here. Don’t worry.”

Mo looked me up and down, evaluating for god-knows-what, then nodded and whipped the door open.

“Good,” she called from outside. “I have to get going. I want to talk to Mr. Sandvaal about last night’s Chem problem set before French.”

She slammed the door and strode off toward the school ahead of me, too fast on her long legs for me to catch up. Sighing, but smiling to myself, I got out of the car and headed in after her.

And then the day became endless.

No one was paying any attention to me, finally, which was good. But that left nothing to worry about besides class. Everything I was supposed to be doing was simultaneously boring and somehow too hard to focus on, which made time feel like a lead weight I couldn’t manage to drag forward.

I spent most of French in some sort of fugue state, not even deciphering the sounds coming out of Monsieur’s mouth as words in any language. In Art we were supposed to practice figure drawing, but I couldn’t hold the little wooden doll’s shape in my mind long enough to get the proportions right. I just pretended to play in band. The notes were too swimmy.

Finally, after several years of painful imprisonment, the last bell rolled around. I pushed past all the kids in class and half ran out to the junior lot.

Mo was already waiting by the car.

“You’d think you were the one about to be embarrassed on national television,” I called to her.

“You don’t know that,” she snipped. Monique pinched her eyes closed and shook her head slightly, as though clearing the Etch A Sketch. “All I mean is I don’t think he’d say anything to embarrass you. He’s a good guy.”

Jesus, everyone was being extremely weird today.

Mo sped back to my house, barely slowing down at stop signs. She always drove impatiently, but today was noteworthy. We practically flew into the driveway at 3:19.

“I’m gonna grab snacks,” I said as we walked into the house. I headed for the kitchen. Mom had already assembled a casserole and left it on the counter with a note: “in oven at 5:15, 350 degrees, 1 hour.” Seriously, Mom? Even Dad couldn’t screw that up.

“Good. You do that.” Mo had pulled out her phone and started texting furiously.

“Anything important?”

She whipped her head up and squinted at me in . . . wait, was she pissed?

“No, just mom stuff.” Mo blinked rapidly. “I’ll be down in a sec.”

“Okaaay.” I headed to the basement alone, turning on the TV and checking the guide to make sure the channel I knew was right was still, in fact, the right channel. Eventually Mo appeared. She was obviously still keyed up, but she didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and I was too nervous to dig.

Finally the Laura Show theme came on, all blaring trumpets and cheery, regular beats. The camera focused on the stage, then quickly flipped around to catch Laura dancing down the aisles into the studio, grabbing people from the ends of the rows to pull them out with her.

She hopped onstage and made a big show of catching her breath.

“Happy Friday, everyone! Welcome to the LAURA SHOW!”

The crowd roared.

“Have we got a great show for you today. You know who’s here? You know, don’t you?” The cameras cut to shots of the crowd, leaning forward eagerly, manic grins plastered on every face. I’d never realized how cultish these audiences were. “Five-Step Boogie is here, and they’re going to play us a song!”