Reel Life Starring Us (7 page)

Chelsea and I keep flipping through the old yearbook. We're looking at everything but mostly looking for pictures of Sasha Preston. We find her in the index, and she has at least twenty page numbers after her name. Most people only have two or three.

“I can't believe you never looked for pictures of her in the yearbooks before,” I say.

Chelsea shrugs.

“Oh my God, this is it!” I scream.

“What?” Chelsea says as she puts her hair up in a ponytail. Her phone keeps vibrating, but she ignores it.

“What we'll do for the video! A day in the life of a Rockwood Hills student? Well, hello! Here's one! And a famous one.” I take a deep breath. Finally, a good idea is coming to me. “Even if she's not the whole video, we can put Sasha in it somewhere!”

Chelsea shakes her head, not even looking at me. She finally picks up her phone so it stops vibrating. I can tell from where I'm sitting that she has three missed calls. “Are you kidding?” I can't tell if she's talking to me or to her phone. “You don't get it. She doesn't live here anymore. She's, like, famous. I know you
came from Massachusetts, and you don't know that much about pop culture, but she's not just going to be in our video.”

Okay. Did she really need to insult where I'm from?

“First of all,” I say, “I'm from the Berkshires. It's like the cultural capital of the world. Okay, at least the state. But that's not even the point.” I stop talking and wait for her to look up from her phone. She finally does. “I know Sasha doesn't live here. But that doesn't mean we can't find her.”

Chelsea closes the yearbook and pushes her chair back from the table. “Look, my parents know everyone around here, and they don't know Sasha and they don't know her parents, so there's no way we're going to just find her.” She leans down and grabs a bottle of Vitaminwater from her bag. After an extra-long sip she says, “So can you just stop being weird and tell me what we have to do to make a decent video for this thing?”

“Well, you have to care about it just the littlest bit,” I say. “Can you at least do that? I don't know what's so hard in your life that you can't just do your part on this project.”

I don't know why I said that. My whole plan was getting Chelsea to like me, and getting her friends to realize I'm cool and like me, too. Criticizing people never really gets them to like you. That's one thing I know.

Chelsea starts sniffling. It seems like she might cry. Making someone cry
definitely
isn't a way to get them to like you.

She's going to cry. I know it. Then I won't just be weird. I'll be mean, too.

“Fine, I'll try,” she says at last. She doesn't cry. At least that's something. “I'll take the recent yearbooks and I'll put Post-it notes on the pictures of kids we should try to get in the video.” She huffs and then starts making a pile of the yearbooks. “Is that good enough?”

“Fine.” I open the next yearbook in the pile, the one from last year. “So who would be good on this page?” I start at the beginning of the alphabet.

“Um …” Chelsea scans the page. “I don't know any of those people.”

“Haven't you been going here since kindergarten?”

She nods.

“You don't know anyone in our grade?” I ask.

“Okay, I know who they
are,
obviously, but I don't talk to them.” She huffs again. “Let's just go to the next page.”

We get to the next page, and the only people she picks out are her friend Kendall and this boy Ross, who I actually know because he randomly came up and talked to me the other day in the cafeteria. He's pretty much the only person I know here, besides Chelsea.

“You're picking your friends,” I say. “We can't just do a video of your friends.”

“I can't work with you!” she says, and throws down the yearbook. “You're insane. You're more insane than I thought at first.”

“Really?” I ask. I'm not offended, just genuinely curious. What did I do that was so crazy?

“Really.” She picks up her bag and makes a pile of the yearbooks.

“Girls, if you're using the yearbooks for the project, feel free to take them home,” Mr. Singer tells us from the circulation desk, interrupting our conversation.

“Thank you so much!” I say, and then realize I probably shouldn't be this excited about taking a bunch of dusty old yearbooks home.

Chelsea takes a few yearbooks and puts them in her bag. She raises her eyebrows like she also thinks it's cool that we can take them home.

I want to get back to our conversation. “Well, what would you say if I told you I could find Sasha Preston? And I could get her to talk to us?”

“You can't find her. I just told you that. So I'd say the same thing—you're insane.” She picks up her bag and walks out of the library, reading something on her phone instead of looking ahead. Then she stops and looks back at me. “But,
fine, find her if you can. What do we have to lose? Just more time when we could be working on this dumb thing.”

I nod.

“Tell me when you find her,” she yells back to me as she's leaving the library. “I'll be holding my breath.”

I smile even though she can't see me anymore.

After finding Sasha in that yearbook, and taking a few yearbooks home, I think I can consider today a success. Now all I have to do is convince Chelsea of the same thing.

Sasha Preston piece of advice: Take a second to
think before answering a question. It will prevent
you saying something you may regret.

I'm going to the movies in a few hours
, and my dad is still sleeping. It's after ten a.m. I hate when he does this. This is bad. This is a sign that he's really depressed and things have gotten worse and nobody is telling me what's going on. I can't tell if I want to know or if I don't want to know. When things reach a really bad point, they won't want to tell me; they'll feel like they need to protect me like I'm some little kid.

My mom is at the orthodontist with Alexa, and I'm dreading what happens when she comes home. And isn't fourth grade, like, really early to need braces? Why does Alexa have to have such bad teeth?

Braces are so expensive, and I know my mom's going to
show the bill to my dad and he's going to get weird. He'll try to act like he has everything under control, but I'll know the truth. I can always tell what's happening, even if people aren't saying it.

I hope Kendall's mom picks me up before they get home. But then I feel bad leaving Alexa to deal with the chaos all alone. She's only nine, after all.

As I'm waiting for Kendall's mom to arrive, I look at one of the yearbooks a little more closely.

When Mr. Singer told us we could take home the year-books, Dina was really excited about it. Like, crazy excited—like when Molly got the jeans excited.

She asked me what I was doing this weekend, and I swear she had this look in her eyes, like she wanted me to invite her to do something. She didn't say anything, though. It was just a feeling I got.

But there was no way in the world I was inviting her to hang out. For one thing, Molly and Kendall already think she's weird, and after that whole accidentally read text-message thing, I doubt they'd all get along. It was never going to happen.

The thing about my friends is that we were all paired up at birth to be friends. Before birth, really. Our moms all traveled in the same circle after college and then all moved to Rockwood Hills after living in Manhattan during their single and newly married days.

Sometimes I feel like the only reason I'm the way I am is because of my parents. But I guess that's true for everyone in some way.

The yearbook I'm looking at now is from 2006, from when Sasha Preston was in seventh grade.

That year, all the students got a little section to write messages to their friends and they were printed along with candid photos.

Hers says:

To Lulu and Fi, thanks for being the bestest of the best. Never forget midnight swims, taco charlies, and the red racer scooter. Next year, 8
^th
grade! It will be totally radically amazing. Love and tacos, ha ha. xo Sash

It's so funny to read other people's private jokes. What in the world is taco charlies? And why didn't she put an apostrophe? It sounds like she has like an obsession with tacos. And the red racer scooter? Huh? It's probably pointless to wonder and try to figure this out.

In the yearbook last year, Molly, Kendall, and I wrote “BEEP BEEP BEEP” to each other because we were obsessed with the sound of Kendall's mom's car alarm. It was such a
stupid thing, and no one else would ever get it or find it funny. But we found it totally hilarious. We were so immature.

Maybe there's something to that, something that would be good to add to the video. I mean, everyone has private jokes. Even the weirdos at school have private jokes with each other, right?

I can't believe I'm actually thinking about this video outside of school. What's happening to me? Is Dina's weirdness rubbing off on me?

I hear a honk and look outside to see Kendall's Range Rover in my driveway. I quickly shove the yearbook under one of the couch cushions, grab my jacket, and head outside.

Molly gives me a halfhearted smile as I get into the car.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Kendall's mom says. “Did you cut your hair?”

“Nope.” I shake my head.

“New shampoo?”

“I don't think so.” I smile. “Guess it's just a good hair day.” Kendall's mom is kind of obsessed with knowing every little detail about people, especially Kendall's friends and her friends. It's like she has an imaginary Excel spreadsheet in her brain that she's constantly updating.

“Well, you girls sure are heading out early today. I didn't
even know they showed movies this early,” Kendall's mom says. “But I guess that's what happens when you're teenagers.”

She's also kind of obsessed with the fact that we're teenagers.

Kendall turns around to look at us in the backseat and makes a face like her mom is a total imbecile. “Mom. I told you, we're not going to the movies until one. We're just meeting the guys at the mall before. Why are you so dense?”

“God. Sorry,” Kendall's mom says. She doesn't even get mad when Kendall or her sisters talk to her like that. She cares so much that they like her that she'll basically let them do whatever they want.

“Is Grunner coming?” Molly asks me. “He didn't text Kendall back.”

Kendall turns around and snorts.

“Yeah, he texted me this morning. He said he'd meet us by the smoothie place in the food court,” I say. I push the window button down and open the window as far as it goes. It suddenly feels like a million degrees in here. I pull my hair up off the back of my neck to cool it.

“He texted you? Grunner texted you and you didn't even tell us?” Kendall's yelling, but her mom doesn't seem to mind.

“I just told you now, didn't I?”

“Chels.” Molly leans her head on my shoulder. “What has gotten into you? If Ross Grunner ever texted you in the past,
you always told us immediately. Why do you not even care? Don't even tell me you're over him already.”

“I don't know. He doesn't seem so cute this year. I feel like his head and nose are growing faster than the rest of his body.” Everyone laughs, and I take my phone out of my jacket pocket and see another text from him. I don't know why I can't just admit that I don't really like him or that I do like him as a friend, but not like that. Maybe they know what that library kid's name is, but I'd never ask them. They'd just make fun of me.

“Of course he texts
you
back and he doesn't text
me
back,” Kendall says. No one responds. We're pretty much used to the fact that Kendall is in a constant competition with anyone and everyone, most of all Molly and me. So now that there's talk of Ross Grunner liking me, Kendall needs him to like her, too. She could have her own reality show:
The Kendall Competition
, but they could make the C in competition into a K to be funny.

Kendall's mom drops us off right in front of Nordstrom, and then we walk to the food court. I try as hard as I can not to be jealous of Kendall's jeans and Molly's new silver flats. I'm still wearing my old black shoes and they're a little scuffed. I wouldn't have chosen silver, I'd have chosen gold, but I'm still jealous that hers are so new and shiny and perfect.

Ross is waiting for us with the rest of the guys. They're all wearing polos and dark jeans, like a uniform.

“Hey, Chelsea,” he says as soon as he sees me, and Molly pinches the top of my arm.

“Hey.” I smile. Everyone's standing around us. It's the first time I've really hung out with them since I've been back at school, and it seems okay so far, but I feel like I have a running list in my brain of things I shouldn't bring up: parents, the fiftieth anniversary, Dina. If I can keep my secret throughout today, then I'll know for sure I can do it for a while.