Holly Hearts Headlines (Holly Hearts Hollywood Book 2) (4 page)

I tried to call Serena, but she’s not taking my calls. I called her over and over again because not only did I need to apologize for upsetting her, but I also didn’t want to do this on my own today. Serena always goes with me for stuff like this. I tried to leave Serena a voicemail, but her voicemail box was full.

So I set out to go shopping for Grayson’s birthday gift … alone. I tried to be brave about it. I thought to myself, “Holly, you are going to be a college student soon, which means you’re pretty much an adult. You’ll have to start doing stuff on your own, like microwaving your own meals and buying your own laundry detergent. You can buy a gift for your boyfriend by yourself.” My pep talk to myself worked for a bit. I was walking into stores confidently and asking the sales associates questions without withering into a pile of embarrassed mush.

It wasn’t until I was in the men’s department of Saks Fifth Avenue that my resolve started to break. I don’t know if you’ve ever been shopping for men’s clothing, but it is a LOT different from women’s clothing. Besides the obvious lack of fun dresses and skirts, men’s clothing is boring. They don’t wear fun floral patterns or bedazzled skull jumpers. I mean they could if they wanted to, but I guess designers aren’t feeling it this season. Hey, if any haute couture designers are reading this, and I hope to God you aren’t, don’t be afraid to add a little color and fun to men’s clothing! It doesn’t all have to be simple, neutral colors you know.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. So, the first issue I was running into was just finding Grayson’s SIZE. Women’s clothing is sized with the ever-ambiguous small, medium, or large which can greatly vary depending on what store you’re at. Even worse than the small, medium, or large setup is the 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on size chart. There’s just no logic. Men’s clothing is sized in inches from waistline to leg lengths. It is so much more accurate and practical.

So I was standing in the men’s department with a pair of raw, denim jeans in one hand and a relaxed fit Henley shirt in the other when I had a horrible realization: I don’t know a lot about my boyfriend. Sure, I know basic stuff his fans know like his birthday, favorite color, and favorite flavor of ice cream. But I don’t know his shoe size or his favorite cut of jeans. How am I supposed to buy my boyfriend an awesome birthday gift if I don’t know his waist to pant leg measurements?
I
AM
A
HORRIBLE
GIRLFRIEND.

I remember this
Lifetime
Original Movie I saw once when I had the flu. I was lying in bed, and I was so very sick that it felt like my bones hurt. I was in too much pain to reach for the remote so I ended up watching the
Lifetime
channel all day long and discovered how FABULOUS it is. What a relief to have a channel with stories focused around women! I’m telling you, watching movie after movie about men going on adventures and discovering themselves gets exhausting. We get it, you’re men and everything you do is important and worth our time and money.

Anyway, they had this movie on called
You’re SO Last Season
and it was about the cutthroat fashion industry. It was like
The Devil Wears Prada
if Anne Hathaway went on a killing spree. Two rival fashion designers went head to head to get their work featured at Paris Fashion Week. Their many schemes against each other included sleeping with one another’s respective boyfriends, “accidentally” spilling KFC gravy on a rack of dresses, and finally
murder
. One of the designers, Valentine Delacruz, sewed a hidden seam of latex into her rival’s clothing, knowing full well she was allergic to latex. She developed a deadly rash and eventually her throat closed up just as she was accepting her award to go to Paris and she DIED
RIGHT
THERE
ON
THE
RUNWAY. Valentine got to take her place and go to Paris and the moral of the story is: WHAT
IF
GRAYSON
HAS
A
FABRIC
ALLERGY?

So I started to hyperventilate because apparently my own lack of maturity became that overwhelming to me. I had the relaxed fit Henley t-shirt clutched to my chest and I was squeezing the raw denim jeans like I was trying to juice them. One of the sales associates came up to me slowly with the amount of caution usually reserved for approaching a live bomb.

“Miss? Are you okay?”

Her voice brought me back to Earth and I jumped, startled from her appearance. I looked at her with wide, probably scary-looking eyes. “Yes,” I said way too quickly. “I’m great. Fine. Thank you. Could you put these back?” I shoved the clothes into her arms and made a run for the bathroom where I’ve been camping out for the last thirty minutes.

I tried to call Amanda, hoping that a little bit of venting would help calm me down, but two minutes into the conversation she just went, “Look, Holly, I’m really busy right now and I have my own issues to take care of. I’ll call you later.” Then she hung up on me. Amanda has never hung up on me.

What am I going to do? I’m approaching the end of my senior year and I’ll be in college before I know it. I have to figure out how to become more mature, self-confident, and I need to do it in about twenty-four hours.

TO DO LIST:

1.      Google-research articles about self-realization so I can become a real adult.

2.      Clip toenails.

Later, 6:30pm—Home

I don’t like to act like a dramatic teenager who thinks their world is falling apart twenty-four seven but … MY
LIFE
IS
OVER. It is well and truly over. The end. Game over.
Adios, amigos
!

When I got home from Saks, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I most certainly didn’t want to talk to Sloane who was at the kitchen table with Grandma showing her how to make a god’s eye out of yarn and popsicle sticks. And I definitely didn’t want to talk to Ivy who was lying on her stomach in the living room with an explosion of fashion magazines around her. Mom was trying to recruit Grandpa into helping her with some new bouquet arrangements for the flower shop, but Grandpa was more interested in the baseball game on ESPN.

I snuck by Mom and had my hand on the door handle when her voice floated over to me across the table of tiger lilies. “Holly, do you have a moment?”

I technically had moments to spare. I just didn’t
want
to. That’s horrible, I know, I know. But haven’t you ever wanted to just be alone with your thoughts? I just wanted to sit in my bedroom, re-sort my mineral collection, and mope. I wanted to have a full-on pity party, and I’m comfortable with admitting that.

“Yeah,” I said in that tone of voice you use when you’re
trying
to pretend that you don’t hate your life but in reality you want to crawl under a rock and stay there until mold begins to grow between your toes.

Mom didn’t look up from her pile of tiger lilies and snap dragons. She wound a strip of flower tape around the stems and said, “Well, you’re going to college soon … ”

“I’m going to college
if
anyone accepts me, and even then that’s months away,” I chimed in.

Mom didn’t look up. She added some accents to the bouquet and said, “You’re going to want to start thinking proactively and getting ready for moving out and being on your own.”

“What if I go to a school in state though?” I replied quickly. The worlds “moving out” and “being on your own” nearly brought about a panic attack.

“You should live in the dorms, Holly. Experience college to its fullest! Anyway, I think it would be wise if you looked into getting rid of most of your collections. You can’t take them all with you. You probably could sell most of them and make a bit of money back.”

I stared at my mom. Her words were so nonsensical she might as well have stuck a flower in her hair and declared herself mayor of the kitchen table. “You want me to do what?” I whispered.

“But, Mom,” Ivy chimed in from her position in the living room. “Holly has had some of those collections since like, forever.” Despite her lack of eloquence, I appreciated Ivy speaking up on my behalf. It’s not something I’ve really heard her do before. I’m pretty sure she loves to throw me under the bus.

Mom finally looked up at me. She sighed deeply. “Holly, you’re growing up. You’ll be an adult soon. The reality is that you just won’t be able to physically take everything with you. You can argue with me about this if you want, but don’t come crying to me when you realize how expensive it is to ship ten boxes of
Life
magazines to some liberal arts school in the Midwest.”

I’ve never been punched in the face before, but I imagine it felt a lot like that. Mom went back to her work, and I stared open-mouthed at her. Everyone just casually returned to his or her various activities. However, Sloane decided he needed to add his two cents. “Holly, in all my years of living on this beautiful Earth of ours I’ve found the most valuable thing you can collect are the memories you make with friends and family.”

I looked at Sloane. His long, greasy hair was pulled back in a perfect messy bun that most girls would’ve killed to have. His hair was dark brown but his beard grows in practically red instead and always looks vaguely like pubic hair. “Thanks for your input, Sloane,” I said flatly.

He didn’t seem to notice my lack of enthusiasm. He smiled and returned to weaving the waxy yarn through the popsicle stick craft project that I used to do in elementary school. I went into my room, needing to be alone more than ever, and somehow I managed not to cry. I don’t really like change. My life has changed so much in these last few months, and now it seems like it isn’t going to stop changing anytime soon.

Later, 6:45pm—Home

Mom just knocked on my door and said, “Oh by the way, I signed you up for drivers education so you can get your license.”

I don’t want to get my license. Do you know how many people are killed or injured in automobile accidents every day? An average of 3,200 people are killed DAILY. I can’t drive with that statistic looming over my head. I’m an accident waiting to happen. If there’s something on the floor, I
will
trip over it. If it is hot, I
will
burn my finger on it. Why would my mother let me legally drive a one-ton, metal death-trap?

It is official: I think my mother is trying to kill me.

THINGS TO DO:

1.      Run away from home and join the circus with my fellow outcasts.

2.
      
CLIP
TOENAILS! Can’t forget again.

Later, 8:15pm—Home

I can’t sit around and mope for forever, unfortunately. Eventually I pulled myself up from my bedroom floor, which is where I’ve been for the last hour or so, and I went over to my laptop. I decided to check out Craigslist, just to get an idea of how much I could sell some of my collections for. Turns out, I don’t think there really is a market for the kind of collections I have. I mean really, will anyone else be interested in my plastic spork collection? I don’t think so.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been on Craigslist, but it’s a really interesting website. People are selling and looking for all kinds of things, just not used plastic silverware, obviously. People are doing everything from trying to sell old cars or looking to find casual hookups. There’s even a section called “Missed Connections” that is dedicated to people trying to track down the cute girl they creeped on in the grocery store. Like, dude, just because you made eye contact with a girl at the gas station doesn’t mean she’s into you and wants you to search for her on Craigslist.

But here’s the important part: I found Grayson’s birthday gift! Some guy bought tickets to the latest Broadway hit
The Book of Mormon,
which is currently touring across the country, and he can’t go so he needs to sell the tickets! I already emailed him. Grayson loves musicals. He’s going to be so excited! Maybe I am a good girlfriend after all.

THINGS TO DO:

1.      Figure out what collections I’m willing to part with.

2.      Go to library and dig up old
Cosmo
magazines for some love advice so I can continue being the best girlfriend ever.

3.      Get out of driver’s education somehow. I’ll fake my own death if I must.

Later, 9:30pm—Home

So I logged into my Netflix account with the intention of finally re-watching
The X-Files
, but then I saw that my favorite TV show of all time,
Criminal Minds
, had been uploaded! I don’t know if you’ve ever watched
Criminal Minds
, but it’s the best crime show ever made. It is about a bunch of FBI agents who track down killers by psychoanalyzing them. This would be an excellent job for me as I love to psychoanalyze, but I don’t think I have the mental fortitude to deal with serial killers on a regular basis. Also, Shemar Moore is totally hot, so if that doesn’t win you over I don’t know what will.

But watching
Criminal Minds
ended up being a bad decision. The episode I watched was about a girl who was lured into the killer’s clutches because she saw his used car ad online. I had a total wakeup call. I’m so naïve. What if this Craigslist guy is a murderer?

I did some research and learned about some guy called The Craigslist Killer. I’ve been freaking out. I emailed this guy. He knows my email address. Maybe he could hack into my computer and spy on me. I don’t feel safe anymore.

Later, 10:15pm—Home

Ivy came in right after I covered my laptop webcam with a strip of duct tape (hey, I don’t want the craigslist guy to hack into my webcam and spy on me). I was bundled up in a bunch of blankets on my bed mindlessly watching Shemar Moore’s beautiful self try to talk the killer out of jumping from the top of a skyscraper.