Holly Hearts Headlines (Holly Hearts Hollywood Book 2) (20 page)

“Do any of you have a permanent marker?” Bernadette asked over her shoulder.

“No, my Gucci clutch expressly forbids permanent markers,” Serena replied.

We walked up to the hotel desk but the clerk was too busy handling an upset guest who had an unfortunately large blond hairdo that looked like it came straight from a 1985 hair styling magazine.

“We are in one of the best hotels in the best city in the world and we can’t even find a stupid permanent marker!” I groaned.

“I know where to get one,” Serena said. “Follow me.” She walked outside of the hotel where paparazzi and spectators were still lurking. She walked straight up to a fourteen-year-old girl with a hot pink streak in her hair. Her mouth fell open when Serena walked up to her.

“Oh my God, you’re Serena Salazar!” she said in that fast-paced voice excited girls of her age are experts at using.

“Hi, what’s your name?” Serena asked in that tone she uses exclusively for television interviews and talking to fans.

“Emma!” the girl replied happily, smiling with a mouthful of braces. “Can I get a picture with you?”

“Of course, but can you do me a favor?”

“Yeah, sure!”

“Do you have a permanent marker I can use real quick?”

Emma opened up her Mickey Mouse backpack and pulled out a handful of Sharpies and Serena walked back over to us. “Sign all of the eggs, Tyler,” she said. “They might need a backup in case Holly breaks another.”

“Hey!” I protested.

Tyler picked up each egg and signed them expertly in the tight, small signature of Miss Ansell and in less than a minute our work was done. No sooner had he put the last egg back into the tray than his mom pulled up in a gray Range Rover and honked her horn at him. “Nice doing business with you!” he said with a wink as he bounded off toward the car.

Now I’m sitting in the lobby of the hotel waiting for Serena’s driver to bring the car around. This is just further proof that girlfriends really make for the best friends. All of the work Serena put into helping Bernadette and me just shows what a great friend she is.

I’m so lucky. I’m sitting in the lobby where Shirley Temple learned to tap dance with a dozen eggs that are adorned with a forged signature, and I couldn’t be happier.

April 23
^rd
, 9:00am—Home

Mom knocked on my door a few minutes ago and told me that there was a package for me. This was highly unusual, the main reason being that I’m a teenager, and I don’t receive mail unless it is birthday cards from relatives or brochures for colleges. I crawled out of bed and put on a robe so I could spare everyone the image of my bra-less boobs.

Mom had put the package on the kitchen table and I approached it cautiously, as if it could explode any moment. For all I knew, it could’ve been a bomb. I’ve watched enough crime dramas on TV to know that sometimes psychopaths get off on blowing up random victims by sending them explosive devices in the mail. If men didn’t let their hormones and sexual drives control them so much then we would have a lot less murderers out there.

It was a white box with no address or postal stamps on it, which meant the mailman hadn’t delivered it; it had to have been hand delivered. When I pulled the lid off all that was inside was my sequin-covered mask from the night before on a bed of cotton. I must’ve dropped it last night and forgotten it. There was a note underneath the mask and when I read it, I got butterflies in my stomach.

Looks like you took a page out of Cinderella’s book and left your prince at the ball with only an article of clothing to remember you by. I’ll be by later to see if this is a perfect fit.

Love, G

LOVE. Grayson signed it
LOVE
. As in he
loves me
. Oh my God, was this a typo? Did he just write love out of habit the way that most people say they love things they only feel mild interest for? Maybe he hit his head on something last night and he wrote “love” in confusion as a side effect of a concussion.

He can’t love me. Can he? I never really thought of myself as the kind of girl that a guy would fall in love with. I’m the girl guys date, avoid introducing to their family, and dump after a few months when they realize that they could do better.

Later, 9:15am—Home

He can’t love me. That’s just impossible, right?

Later, 9:20am—Home

Wait, do I love him?

Later, 9:45am—Home

I called up Ruby, Hakim’s girlfriend, for love advice since she’s kind of the love guru. I told her all about Grayson (obviously leaving his last name out of it) and the note with the ominous “Love, G.”

“That’s tricky,” Ruby said when I finished telling her all about it. Well, mostly all of it.

“Do you think it is more likely that he signed ‘love’ out of habit? Why would he use the L word for the first time so casually?”

Ruby sighed. “Boys are delicate, emotional creatures,” she said. “Maybe he threw the L word out to kind of test the waters for your reaction.”

“How should I react then? Should I ignore it or bring it up?”

“See how he behaves when you see him. If he seems any different or if you feel like he’s holding back then maybe you can bring it up casually.”

“How am I supposed to bring it up casually? ‘Hi, Grayson. I noticed that you signed your note with a very common phrase used in the end of letters, and I was wondering if you felt undying love toward me, your secret girlfriend of one month,’” I said sarcastically.

“Good point,” Ruby admitted. “Look, just don’t force it. Let whatever happens happen naturally. You don’t want to force him to admit love for you, especially if he isn’t at that point fully yet. You’ll just cause damage.”

“Right, damage. Can’t do that.”

I know that romantic comedies can be strangely misogynistic considering the target audience, but I do love them anyway. I mean think about it, how come movies featuring girls still completely focus on her “getting a man” and only show that she can be happy if she gets married? How come a movie with female leads can’t be about girls discovering their destiny or going on grand adventures, like men’s movies do?

Anyway, I’ve noticed one solid theme in romantic comedies: teenagers are constantly being told by uptight parents that they “don’t know what love is” and that they “can’t possibly be in love because you’re only sixteen.” Is this true in real life too? I’m not sixteen, I’m seventeen, so does my extra year of living make me more likely to understand love?

I’ve only been with Grayson for a month and even then, I’m his
secret
girlfriend. I don’t think I’m ready to love Grayson.

Wow, did I really just admit that? What girl writes in her diary that she isn’t ready to love her super gorgeous, rich, celebrity boyfriend? I must have brain damage from my concussion.

Later, 12:45pm—Home

So I learned in biology class my sophomore year that a synapse is this thing in your body that allows a neuron to give another cell a chemical or electrical signal. It is like the email system of the body and if something goes wrong then your neurons aren’t going to communicate to the body properly. This can result in memory issues. The point I’m trying to get at here is that I think Grayson’s synapse connection might be failing because his memory seems to have suddenly vanished.

That’s the only explanation toward his behavior this afternoon. He showed up about forty-five minutes ago with Chinese take-out from my favorite place down the road. He gave me a great, big kiss that could’ve sucked my heart right out of my chest cavity, and I thought he was for sure going to suddenly proclaim his undying love for me but instead he said, “Do you know how to use chopsticks?” which kind of dampened the mood a bit.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not some ungrateful wretch who doesn’t know how to enjoy free Chinese food with her gorgeous boyfriend, but after the note he sent this morning General Zao’s chicken seems a little anticlimactic. He couldn’t stay for long since he had to get to rehearsals for the tour, but we had a nice time chatting. and he kept letting me steal pieces of his sweet and sour shrimp. When the meal was over all he did was give me a big hug and a kiss and said that he would “see me later.”

Boys always claim that girls give mixed signals, but boys do the same thing! Who sends a cryptic romantic note and then acts like that? Ugh, boys.

TO DO LIST:

1.      Get all of the clothes together for Ivy’s fashion show rehearsal.

2.      Stop thinking about Grayson and the L word.

3.      Start being thankful for the good things in my life, like my amazing girlfriends.

Later, 4:45pm—Dr. Maya Angelou High School Gymnasium

I never thought I’d say this but I think I’m starting to miss high school. My experiences at Beverly Hills High School haven’t really made me miss school very much, but that school is just plain
weird
. And obviously there are things about school that I can totally do without, like Rachel Pritchard and her mean friends, and the annual stress of whether or not someone will actually ask me to a dance. But going to normal school provides a nice routine that I didn’t realize that I missed until my life became a slew of
Entertainment Weekly,
Twitter hashtags, and designer clothing.

I arrived at Ivy’s school, Dr. Maya Angelou High School, and headed straight for the biggest building on campus: the gymnasium. The campus was swarming with people, probably because it was in-between classes. As I walked through the mass of people, I overheard snippets of conversations:

“Did you
see
what Allison is wearing today?”

“Jeffrey hasn’t asked me to prom yet, and I’m gonna freak out.”

“Mr. Richards is way too hot to be a math teacher.”

It is so weird how much life can change. A few months ago, I would’ve been gossiping just like them, only about the Corn Husk Pageant Queen and whether or not the seniors are going to bring a cow onto the second floor for the senior prank again. We have the most uncreative people ever back home. They do the SAME senior prank every year! They lead a cow up the stairs of our main classroom building. Apparently, cows can go
up
the stairs but not
down
the stairs. Last year the school had to bring in a crane to pull the poor thing out, and it wouldn’t stop mooing.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with Ivy’s fashion club. For all I knew there could’ve been a hundred people in this club. Ivy tends to exaggerate or try to make things seem more important than they actually are. I pushed open the gymnasium door and that patented “high school gym” scent enveloped me like a tidal wave. I had some serious flashbacks to pep rallies and gym class, which I did not appreciate. Who wants to remember
gym class?
Ew.

“Holly!” Ivy’s voice echoed at me from across the basketball court. “Over here!”

She was sitting on the gym floor surrounded by about eight other girls. When I approached, they smiled at me shyly.

“Holly, this is the club!” Ivy chirped. “That’s Margot, Carly, Penny, Jennifer, Amy, Wendy, Rochelle, and Clover.” She fired off their names in quick succession and pointed at them as she did so. I didn’t bother to mention that there was
no way
that I could remember all of that.

They had set up the “runway” and several rows of chairs for the show. Their “runway” was a cheap, red, plastic tablecloth that they had cut up to create a long faux-red carpet.

“We thought about doing a raised catwalk, but Wendy and Amy don’t wear high heels and we were worried they’d fall off and hurt themselves,” my sister explained.

“Well, let’s pull out the clothes and figure out who is going to wear what,” I said brightly. I sounded an awful lot like a teacher or some kind of authority figure, and that made me uncomfortable.

We pulled out the rack of clothes from Rue 42 and the girls had a lot of fun trying on different outfits and practicing their runway walks. A few of them are seniors and will graduate this year, and we chitchatted about college.

“I got early admission to Dartmouth,” Clover said proudly. “I’m so glad I don’t have to wait like you guys.”

“I think if I don’t get into Stanford my dad is going to disinherit me,” Amy said sadly. “He put a Stanford pendant above my crib when I was
born
.”

Listening to them talk about their college futures made me realize that, all things considered, I have it pretty easy. I don’t have some movie stereotype dad breathing down my neck to go to his Alma mater. My mom doesn’t care where I go. I mean obviously she prefers it if I stay close to her, but she won’t write me out of her will if I don’t. I’m free to make my own decisions about my future, and that’s kind of nice to realize.

Of course, hopefully someone actually
admits
me into college. I don’t want to be some independent college reject.

Later, 8:00pm—Home

After dinner, I turned TMZ
on just in time for them to do their usual Lacey Bennett segment.

“Sources say that Lacey is falling apart under the stress of putting together her first major tour. This source claims that Lacey is making ridiculous demands for everything from her costumes to her hotel room specifications. She also apparently is even refusing to do vocal warm ups with Grayson claiming that they are unnecessary.”

Pictures of Lacey started to flash across the screen. There was Lacey looking a little like a homeless lady as she left a Whole Foods store. There she was again at a party with her hair looking a little frizzy. And then there
I
was, standing with her at Serena’s party. You couldn’t see my face clearly, but I knew it was me. Lacey’s eyes were wide and she was in the middle of saying something to me. Her mouth was curled dramatically and her teeth were bared like a tiger.