Holly Hearts Headlines (Holly Hearts Hollywood Book 2) (18 page)

For Bernadette we found an
amazing
Carolina Herrera black silk ball gown with embroidered daisies all over and a beautiful tulle waist cape on the back. Like, she looks like an actual Disney princess. Serena, who seems to be going with “softer” looking outfits these days, is also going with the floral vibe with this Lela Rose gown. It is blush pink and embroidered with light blue flowers that cover the bodice and middle in a spray of blue.

Meanwhile, I’m still wearing my Victoria’s Secret lounge pants and a saggy sweatshirt I stole from Grayson’s closet. I’ll be the belle of the ball for sure.

Later, 2:00pm—Car Ride to Outer Beauty Salon

Serena is an angel. She’s sent from heaven to bless us all and I don’t deserve her as a friend. After attempting to squeeze me into this sangria red, Zac Posen mermaid shaped dress we finally acknowledged that this wasn’t going to work.

“I don’t know why they only make these in sizes suited for Barbie dolls.” Serena kicked the rumpled Zac Posen creation in frustration.

Bernadette walked up to me, stepping cautiously over the graveyard of forgotten dresses. “Seriously, do these designers think that everyone has the same shape, or what?” She reached around me and grabbed a grape off of the cheese platter that Serena’s chef brought out for us earlier and ate it happily.

“Well, I can’t go wearing this,” I said as I gestured toward my “I’ve-been-home-sick-all-day” outfit.

“What about one of your other dresses?” Serena asked. “You have that hot pink Stella McCartney cocktail dress.”

“I can’t wear a cocktail dress to a masked ball.”

Serena considered this for a moment and then I saw a light bulb appear over her head. Well, not literally. You know what I mean. It appeared in the metaphorical sense.

“One second.” Serena held up her index finger and she pulled out her phone. She quickly dialed a number and held the phone up to her ear. Seconds later she said, “Hey, David, I do believe you owe me a favor.”

Twenty minutes later an incredibly attractive black man walked through the front door with a large white box in his arms and I realized what power is. True power is being able to have attractive black men show up with ball gowns at the snap of a finger. Until I accomplish this, I will never truly be a self-adjusted adult woman who is confident and well adjusted.

Serena spoke to him in hushed tones with the palm of her hand flat on top of the box he held. It looked like she was swearing an oath on the box and I heard her say, “I promise I’ll bring it back to you tonight in one piece.”

“As good as new,” the man said pointedly.

Serena took the box from him and rolled her eyes. “That’s technically impossible unless you have a time machine.” The man rolled his eyes back and he left as quickly as his long, powerful legs could move. Serena turned around and looked at me with a huge smile on her face.

“What’s in the box?” I asked.

She turned the top of the box toward me so that I could read the name of the designer on top.

It exclaimed “Christian Dior” in bold, black letters and I got butterflies in my stomach.

“I’ve never even been within ten feet of anything he’s ever made,” I breathed. Bernadette had noticed the commotion and was already by my side, also breathing heavily. I’ve noticed lately that Bernadette is quite the mouth breather. Is she unaware of the fact that due to her poor manners and lack of awareness she is spreading her germs around and could infect the entire populace of the greater Los Angeles area?

“This isn’t just
any
Dior design,” Serena proclaimed as she gently set the box down on a table. “This is the holy grail of Dior.” She lifted the top of the box and my breath caught in my throat.

“Serena, this is impossible,” I said to her as my eyes took in the embroidered pale-blue silk skirt.

“How so?” she asked as she delicately rubbed some of the iridescent blue and green sequins between her fingers.

“Because this dress is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!”

Serena shrugged. “Technically it isn’t on display anymore, it is in the archives. And anyway this is a copy, so don’t worry, I didn’t burglarize the Met.”

“Okay good, I would’ve been so mad if you’d gone on a heist without me,” I said dryly.

“I don’t get it, what’s the big deal?” Bernadette asked. “Why would a dress be in a museum?”

“This is the ultimate Christian Dior gown. It’s called the Junon dress and he designed it in 1949. Of course, as I said earlier,” Serena continued, “this is a replica that Dior made about twenty years ago for a movie and it should fit Holly.”

And it did fit me. It fit me like it was
made
for me. When the dress actually zipped shut and I realized that I could breathe without bursting a seam I almost cried. Then I saw myself in the mirror, and I definitely got emotional.

“Is this how brides feel when they find their wedding dress?” I asked softly.

“Unless it’s a Dior gown, probably not,” Serena said with a smirk on her lips. “Now, let’s get over to Wendell’s!”

I can’t believe that I get to wear vintage Dior
and
pass my sex education final at the same time. Well, I mean
cheat
on my sex education final, but let’s not get caught up in technicalities.

TO DO LIST:

1.      Research Junon dress during car ride so that I seem very knowledgeable about fashion history.

2.      Find other fashion-related movies to reference besides
The Devil Wears Prada
because I have probably referenced that movie five times in only two weeks.

Later, 9:00pm—The Blossom Room at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

I’m currently sitting at a table in the very room where the
first
Academy Awards were ever held in 1929 but the only thing I can think about is the fact that I do not have an egg with me. You read that right. After a whole day of primping and preening we forgot the most important factor: the egg.

By the time that Wendell had secured my hair with half a can of hairspray we were running late to meet Tyler which meant we had to speed through LA rush hour. I don’t know if you’ve been to LA at all, but the traffic here is literally God’s wrath upon mankind. The moment it is four o’clock on a weekday here everyone forgets how to drive and it is impossible to get anywhere.

Serena is not good under pressure, especially when it is traffic related. She has some of the most serious road rage I’ve ever seen, and she’s usually not even the one driving! She’s downright terrifying. After what seemed like the longest car ride in history, we finally pulled up outside Tyler’s house. And he was
exactly
what I expected.

He was wearing a hand-me-down suit with red converse sneakers and a Cleveland Cavalier’s hat to boot. Not exactly masked ball material. Bernadette started to swear when she saw him and she climbed out of the car, pulling up the train of her dress as she did so. “Tyler, what the hell are you wearing?”

Tyler stopped in his steps when he saw the elaborately dressed girl standing on his front lawn with steam coming out of her ears. “Whoa, Bernie, is that you?” he asked in that flat toned voice only teenage boys seem to have mastered.

“Bernie?” Serena repeated, her eyebrows pushed together until they looked like a very well groomed caterpillar.

Bernadette stomped one of her Prada shoes and said, “Don’t call me Bernie. Now what are you wearing? I told you this is a masked ball for crying out loud.”

“I don’t even know what a masked ball is! I just put on a fly outfit and thought it would be good.”

Bernadette gestured to me and Serena and said, “Do you see the girls in the beautiful ball gowns in the car? We just spent hours getting our hair done. We broke our backs trying to look nice for this event and you’re just going to show up wearing sneakers and that hat?”

Tyler walked over to the car and gave Bernadette and exasperated look. “No one is going to care about what I’m wearing.”

“Typical man,” Bernadette grumbled. “No one will care that you look like a homeless frat boy, but there will be ten page articles out tomorrow tearing all of the girls apart. So fine, whatever. Wear what you want, just get in the car.”

Tyler smelled like a cloud of Old Spice and we had to roll the windows down the whole way to the Roosevelt Hotel just so we could breathe.

When we arrived at the hotel it was total chaos, but I’m starting to get used to flashing cameras.

“Whoa, is this the party?” Tyler asked in that inflection-free voice that was already driving me nuts.

“Yeah, don’t get used to it,” Bernadette said meanly. “You’re only coming here because you’re holding our A-plus in Sex Ed ransom.”

I didn’t bother pointing out to Bernadette that
she
was only here because of the Sex Ed class also. Serena reached into a bag that was lying at her feet and handed me a Venetian-styled mask with blue and silver sequins that matched my dress perfectly.

“How did you get this on such short notice?” I said as I admired the sprays of ostrich feathers that exploded out of the forehead of the mask.

“One of the many benefits of being me,” Serena said with a big smile on her face.

We put our masks on and stepped out of the car into the explosion of white lights. Okay, so I’ve had paparazzi take my picture before. It isn’t fun, but I’ve adjusted and I know what to expect now. However, it is a much different experience when you’re wearing a Venetian mask. I felt like a horse with blinders on. I had absolutely no peripheral vision and I couldn’t see a thing.

I threw my arms out to see if I could find Serena or Bernadette to help me keep my balance and in the process, I tripped over the curb and landed on my face in front of photographers from every major news source in the world. And I wanted to
die
. I thought briefly about just lying there on the sidewalk and letting them throw some dirt and grass over me with a tombstone for garnish. Tourists would visit my grave for generations to come and leave flowers for the poor girl who died in front of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Maybe I’d even haunt the hotel. I’d be a fantastic ghost.

Before I could start to plan all of the devious ways I’d ghoulishly disturb the hotel guests I felt a pair of strong hands around my arms lift me up and place me on my feet as if I were nothing more than a top-heavy doll. Have you ever tried to make a Barbie doll stand upright? It is not an easy task. First of all, her body proportions are so out of control. There’s no way that a girl could stand on tiny, arched feet like that and keep her chest upright without constantly falling over. The biggest plight of my childhood was trying to keep my Barbie dolls on their feet.

“Did you have a nice fall?” the disembodied voice attached to the hands around me asked sarcastically. It was a familiar voice but I had a hard time hearing it clearly over the hubbub of everyone around us. While I appreciated the retro joke, the timing wasn’t very good and I didn’t feel like laughing over my stumble yet.

“Very funny,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

“You usually always like my jokes,” the voice said. I turned around, trying to find the source of the voice but the stupid mask was making it really difficult for me to see six inches in front of me. I finally laid eyes on a tall man wearing a black tuxedo with a metallic gold tie. His mask was black as well with gold bric-a-brac trim around its edges. I took one look into the eyes behind the mask and said, “Grayson!” in shock.

His arms fell away from me. “You recognized me?” he asked in disappointment.

I smacked him on the arm, or at least tried. I couldn’t see his arm so I instead ended up swatting at the air as if I was trying to get rid of a pesky fly. “Of course I recognized you. Do you think that just because I can’t see the area around your eyes that I wouldn’t know it was you?”

“How do Superheroes do it?” Grayson smiled.

“It is a mystery,” I replied. “So
this
is why you were too busy to help me?” I asked.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “And I had an interview with Ellen earlier also. Why are you here?”

“Lacey’s here,” I told him.

He swore. “That means we will have to talk to one another. I swear, she keeps deliberately going to the same events as me so that I’m forced to hang out with her.”

I looked around at all of the flashing cameras and said, “We probably should get out of here, everyone’s taking pictures of us together, and Manuel will get mad.”

Grayson shrugged. “No one will be able to recognize us, Holly. We can do what we want tonight.”

My heart skipped a beat as I realized what he meant. We were completely anonymous tonight. Grayson could kiss me in public and no one would be the wiser. It all felt very scandalous and romantic. But then I remembered that I had a mission and kissing Grayson would have to wait until this whole egg fiasco was resolved.

“I have something I have to do,” I said to him. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay,” Grayson said, sounding thoroughly confused.

I didn’t have time to stop and explain to him the perilous nature of the mission I was embarking upon with Serena and Bernadette so I simply turned around and left. I know that honesty is super important in relationships, and that you can’t really have a healthy relationship without it, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell Grayson the truth. What would he think if I told him I was pulling off some elaborate
Italian Job
scheme in order to get a good grade in a class I don’t care about? He’d probably break up with me. I wouldn’t blame him.

I could hear Serena calling for me up ahead so I followed her voice until I stepped into the grand lobby of the hotel. As I mentioned earlier, this hotel is super old. For example, Shirley Temple learned to tap dance in the lobby of this hotel. Anything older than Shirley Temple’s career is practically ancient as far as I’m concerned.