From Twinkle, With Love(52)

Aaron went back to his burger. “Forgiven. Continue.”

“I took your advice,” Skid said, looking at me. “But she didn’t look too hot during service.” He paused. “Temperature-wise, I mean,” he said with a cocky sneer. I rolled my eyes and he continued. “And she brought her own Bible. It was nicer than mine. Should I steal hers so I can offer mine?”

I sighed. “No, Skid. Those were just examples. You should look out for your own opportunities.”

“What’s this?” Sahil asked, looking between us with interest.

“I was telling Skid a sure way to a girl’s heart—if she’s anything like me—is to do something selfless for her.” I snapped my fingers. “I know. You can invite her to Midsummer Night. You said she’s a catalog model. Tell her there’ll be media people here to make it interesting for her. She can’t turn something like that down.”

Skid pointed a finger at me, grinning. “That’s not a bad idea at all. I’m gonna do that. Thanks.”

I was genuinely happy for Skid. I mean, why not? Someone around here deserves to be happy and in love if it’s not going to be me.

Love,

Twinkle





Wednesday, June 17

10 days until Midsummer Night

My room


Dear Mira Nair,

I did not know it was possible to be as mad as I got today.

We were filming one of our final scenes after school at Victoria Lyons’s house. Her parents are out of town at one of their French country homes, and she said she thought her living room would be the perfect setting for the scene we were doing. She was right; once we set up all the spider webs and stuff, it 100 percent looked like a room in a castle.

So, the scene had Lewis, who plays the role of Mina (aka Morris in our film), Francesca, Brij, and Maddie. Sahil and I set up the scene and the camera and told them to take their places. I loved how the actors kept looking at me when they voiced an opinion, to see what I thought. There was no evidence of my social bottom-feeder status. Everyone knew that in here, I was the boss. Victoria was on the couch, texting. (Her thumbs were all blurry from the speed. How do people do that??) So I went and took my place behind the camera, and then Sahil did his clapboard thing and yelled, “Action!” before picking his way back to me silently, out of view of the camera.

“Morris must go to his room to rest,” Francesca said, adjusting her fake spectacles.

“I don’t think that’s as important …,” Lewis began, and then stopped. “That’s not as important …” He looked right at the camera and smiled, like he was all embarrassed.

I sighed. “He just broke the fourth wall.”

Sahil called out, “Cut!”

Massaging my shoulders (we’d been working for more than ninety minutes straight at that point), I walked over to the actors. “What’s going on, Lewis?” I asked, keeping my voice even.

“I’m having problems remembering my lines,” he said, scratching his chest nonchalantly and grinning.

I considered him in silence for a second. “Okay, but … you have three lines in this scene.”

He laughed. “My bad.”

I put a hand to my forehead and took a deep breath. I wasn’t laughing, and I was trying my best not to lose my temper. The other actors shifted uncomfortably. “You’ve had, like, five days to memorize them. That’s when I sent out that e-mail saying we’d be shooting this scene today, remember?”

“I gotta be honest,” Lewis said, still grinning. My blood pressure was starting to skyrocket. “I went to this frat party last night and it wiped my memory, man.” He laughed again. “My bad, though.”

Maddie, Brij, and Francesca all looked like they were hoping for a trapdoor to open and take them away from this hideous scene unfolding before us.

Something gave way inside me and my voice came out louder than I was intending it to. “That’s all you have to say about it? ‘My bad, though’?” This was everything I hated—that smug look on his face, saying his time was more important than mine. The entitlement that came with being one of the silk feathered hats—that all the groundlings were there simply to kowtow to your every need. The knowledge, once again, that I simply didn’t register on their radars. That I was, effectively, invisible, no matter what I was doing or how much good a project like this might do. It was all secondary to Lewis’s need to go out to a frat party and get his memory “wiped.”

Victoria looked up from her phone. I only barely noticed her.

“Chill, dude,” Lewis said. “What, is it your time of the month or something?”

Sahil walked up, his eyes glinting. I’d never seen him look so … fierce. He was usually so soft and gentle, like that puppy in the toilet paper commercials.

I put a hand on his arm. “I got this.” When I looked back at Lewis, it was like this avalanche of rage just burst through me. It was like all the times I’d found Mummy sleeping when I needed her or Papa working when I wanted to talk to him, all the times Maddie had blown me off for her other friends, all the times Hannah had implied my hair was awful or my clothes belonged on Orphan Annie came rushing-gushing to the surface. I remembered years of being overlooked, of party invitations being “lost in the mail.” All of those things were volcanic lava, finally erupting after ages of being suppressed. Because now I was somebody. I wasn’t a wallflower anymore; I wasn’t that girl they could just ignore and push aside and laugh at.