headphones on her ears and huge tears dripping down her cheeks.
“Dora,” her mother called. No response. “Dora. Dora!” No response. Her mom walked over to the CD player and shut it off.
“What the hell?” Dora snapped, taking off the headphones and swiping at the tears.
“Watch your mouth, please,” her mom said. “You have company.”
Dora eyed me. Her expression didn’t change. Her mom started to leave and my heart started booming in my chest.
“Why are you here?” she asked, turning the CD player back on.
“I’m really sorry about your dad,” I said. “My father died too, seven months ago. So, uh, I guess the guidance counselor at school thought you might want to talk to me.”
“Well, I don’t,” she said, flipping through her CDs.
“Well, if you ever do,” I told her, “I know what it feels like, okay?”
She didn’t respond, so I just left. The next day, a Sunday, she knocked on my front door.
“So, are you doing okay?” I asked.
“I really don’t feel like talking,” she said. And she didn’t. She didn’t say a word for the two hours she sat in my room, reading People and Seventeen. I asked if she wanted something to eat and she shrugged, so I went downstairs and got a bag of Milanos and two bottles of Snapple iced tea, and when I came up and handed her the cookies, she burst into tears. She was sobbing, her entire body shaking. I had no idea what to say, what to do, and I started to cry myself. Then she got up and flung the bag of Milanos against the wall and ran out.
The next day she was back.
“I’m sorry I freaked out,” she said, handing me a new package of Milanos. “It just sucks.”
“I know,” I said.
We hung out every day after that for just over a month, mostly at our houses. We didn’t talk much and we never talked about our dads, but I found her company comforting (and a little scary, to tell the truth) and I think she felt the same. But then one day she didn’t show up. She didn’t answer the phone—or return my messages. When I saw her at school, she totally ignored me. Finally, when I cornered her outside school one day, she screamed at me: “Take a hint! Get the hell out of my face already.”
And that was the end of my friendship with Dora Twistler.
“Are you going to say yes?” Belle asks, forkful of waffle halfway to her mouth. “How could you not?”
Which reason should I start with?
“Do you think you’d get along with her?” Jen asks. “I mean, would your friendship be scripted?”
“The producer said no scripts,” I say. “So if I do say yes and she still hates me, I guess the entire world will know.”
That night, my mom comes into my room to tuck me in.
“You’re confusing me with Sophie,” I say, but I like it. I miss it. My mom used to tuck me in every night; it was our ritual.
She sits on the edge of my bed and holds my ratty Winnie-the-Pooh that according to her I carried around everywhere until I was four. “Do you want to know why I think the show is a good idea for us?”
I nod.
She traces a finger down Pooh’s belly. “Having cameras following us around will force me and Stew to make some necessary changes. I’m tired of racing around like a lunatic with spit-up in my hair and wearing the same sweatpants for three days because I don’t have five minutes to take a shower. And Stew has to start finding a balance between his work and being a dad. Being a stepdad.”
I smile at her and she smiles back.
“Who knows?” she says, squeezing my hand. “Maybe nothing will change. Maybe nothing big will come from it. Maybe things will be different for only a month and then life will go back to what it was before. But I doubt it. Any changes will be for the better. In any case, you’re going to be in the limelight, Emily. I know you can handle it—you’ve certainly dealt with quite a lot these past few years. But you have to want to handle it. Famous people pay a high price for fame.”
“Like what?”
Heather M. White
Cornel West
Kristine Grayson
Sami Lee
Maureen Johnson
Nicole Ash
Máire Claremont
Hazel Kelly
Jennifer Scott
John R. Little