Theodora Twist (16 page)

We all look at Samantha, whose face is still bright red.

“Wait a minute!” she yells, staring at the cameras, then at me, then at the crowd. “This is totally not how it looks. You think I was in here trying to pass myself off as Theodora? Like I’d want to spend one second with you in a room? I don’t think so, loser,” she snaps at Todd. She turns to me and Tim. “A few minutes ago, I complimented Theodora on her dress and she said it was Dolce and Gabanna and that I could try it on in her room if I wanted and borrow it sometime, and then she left to give me a little privacy. And then a minute later, Todd walked in waving his stupid ticket!”

“Omigod, Samantha Paris was fooling around with Todd Tuttle!” someone shouts. “He won the raffle and Samantha tried to pass herself off as Theodora!”

Samantha turns bright red and looks like she’s going to hyperventilate.

“Why would I do that?” she screams as the camera moves back for a wider angle. “Like I’d want to fool around with Todd? Give me a break!”

“Because you probably tried to get Theodora in the room at the same time as Todd and it backfired in your face,” Tim says.

“Oh, you’re so impartial. If this gets in the paper, my father will sue you and your parents and the school and Emily’s parents and Theodora.”

“What’s going on?” Theodora asks, weaving through the crowd. “I miss something?”

Samantha, red-faced, goes running out, pushing and shoving.

“Can you leave us alone for a second?” I ask Tim. He shrugs and leaves and I shut the door and pull Theodora into the bathroom. Vic and Nicole are there too, but I’m so used to them now that it seems almost normal.

“Did you set that up?” I whisper.

“Yeah. Brilliant, huh?” she says, smudging her glittery eye shadow. “PG-rated, but very clever. I had no idea the reporter guy would be with the people who walked in on them, though. That’s just icing. God, I’m good.”

“Or just really mean,” I tell her.

She looks at me like I have two heads. “Lighten up, Emily. The point of my being here is to film a reality TV show. It’s supposed to be entertaining. And this little scene was very entertaining.”

I shrug and head back into my room and sit on my bed.

“Emily, can you stop being so annoyingly PC for one freaking minute?
What
is your problem?”

I don’t know. The whole thing is just so . . . high school. Isn’t she above this kind of stupid backstabbing? I mean, she’s a movie star. She has everything. “I’m not being PC,” I tell her. “I’m just being—”

“You’re just being a bore?”

“I’m just being me,” I say. “That’s all.” I don’t even know why what happened bothered me so much. I hate Todd Tuttle. I hate Samantha Paris. And I like Theodora.

“Whatever, Emily,” she says, heading out. Vic trots after her. “You are such a baby.”

“And you’re such a bitch,” I shoot back, then freeze as Vic wheels back, his lens trained on my startled face. I can’t believe I just said that.

I see Theodora stiffen—just for a second. And then she’s gone.

Theodora

An hour later, the party’s over and Emily is still sulking. I’m so bored.

“Okay, okay,” I tell her. “I’ll handle it.”

She flips onto her stomach and faces me. “Handle what how?”

“Where’s your phone book?”

She raises an eyebrow, gets the White Pages from her desk, and drops it on my bed. I thumb through, then dial. “Samantha? It’s Theodora Twist.” Emily is staring at me. “I’ll make you a deal. You donate the proceeds of your little raffle to Teens In Crisis, and I’ll make sure the segment doesn’t ever hit the air.”

“You can do that?” she asks.

“Yup.”

“Deal.”

“I’m sorry about the humiliation factor, okay?” I tell her. I actually consider offering her free tickets to see
Family,
but who am I—Emily?

“Okay.”

I hang up. Emily is smiling like an idiot. “There’s something seriously wrong with you,” I tell her. “You really need to work on your inner snark, Emily.”
Calling me a
bitch was a good start, though.

She glances at me, then away. “When my dad died I saw a therapist for about six months. She once told me that when people act like jerks, it’s usually because they’re in pain over something. I guess I never forgot that.”

“Oh please. What is Samantha Paris in pain over? Her thong’s too far up her ass?”

“You never know about people,” she says. “That’s all I’m saying. You can think someone has the perfect life because they’re popular or gorgeous and then find out something horrible is happening to them.”

“Is this what you talk about at parties?” I ask, picking up the
Vogue
I bought today. “Because if it is, Emily, it’s no wonder you only have two friends.”

She turns away, and I can tell she’s debating whether to embrace her inner snark after all. It’s weird to realize that she’s gotten to know me well enough to have a lot to say back. If she is planning on zinging me, my ringing cell phone interrupts her. Ashley.

I’m expecting her to scream in my ear, but instead, she gives me great news. I’m saved! I get to escape for one week. Yes! I have to reshoot two scenes of the movie that’ll come out next year. In Paris, which means I can probably see Bo and Brandon!

When Ashley and I hang up, I turn out my bedside lamp. “Good news, Emily. You’re free of me for a week starting tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t even know why I got so upset before,” she says, shrugging. “I can’t stand Todd or Samantha. And she set you up first. You just got her back. And Todd.”

“You’re one of those nice people,” I tell her.

“And what’s the point of being nice? Being nice got me dumped by the guy I was in love with for two years. That’s pathetic.”

“No, Emily.
He’s
the pathetic one. Niceness and sex have nothing to do with each other. You have integrity. It’s so rare in L.A. that it took me a while to recognize that that’s what makes you so different from everyone I know.”

“I’m sorry I called you a bitch,” she says.

“I
am
a bitch,” I point out.

“You’re not.”

I want to hug her. But I don’t.

NEW YORK POST PAGE SIX

What teen queen movie star who says she’s “just friends” with a certain teen twin boy band was reportedly spotted with her tongue down both brothers’ throats in the elevator of the Eiffel Tower in Paris this past week?

FROM THE DESK OF ASHLEY BEAN
ASHLEY BEAN TALENT MANAGEMENT

To the
New York Post:

Please be advised that the recent Page Six piece alluding to Theodora Twist is absolutely false.

Thank you.

Emily

Monday: Samantha Paris is furious that Theodora is gone for a week. Sammy told everyone that Theodora called her personally to apologize for the “misunderstanding.” But she was counting on Theodora backing her up at school.

Four times I’m asked if Theodora will have any identifying marks on her paper bag for blind speed-dating.

Tuesday: I miss her.

Wednesday: I notice Ray Roarke checking me out in English. He looks away when I catch him. Why is he cuter than he was two weeks ago? Samantha Paris asks him if he’s participating in blind speed-dating. He ignores her, and she and April-Avril crack up. I hate them. (I also wish Ray had answered.)

Thursday: Funny, now I can’t sleep without Theodora yammering away in the next bed. It’s too quiet. My mom and Stew are too quiet. The camerapeople have been over only a couple of times this week. I think my mom and Stew are so relieved to have their house back that they’re actually being nice to each other.

Friday: She’s back. So are the paparazzi.

Theodora

“Theodora!” paparazzi shout as I walk briskly through the terminal at JFK, Larissa by my side. “Is it true that you and the Bellini brothers had sex in the elevator of the Eiffel Tower?”

I stop and flash a bemused smile. “So ridiculous! Bo and Brandon and I are just good friends. We ran into each other in Paris, had lunch at a café, and the rumor mill got to work. I didn’t even go near the Eiffel Tower. It’s crazy!”

The Stewarts welcome me back with a family party. I can’t stop smiling, even when Sophie drools on my leg. I even take second helpings of potato salad and baked beans.

“What’s gotten into you?” Emily asks later in our room when Nicole and Vic leave. “Was it because you got back to your real life for a week?”

I realize she’s half serious. “Duh,” I say, punching her arm. “It’s because I saw Bo and Brandon,” I whisper. “Because everything is fine between us. They were just crazy busy and with the time change and me stuck in class, we couldn’t connect. But we connected big-time in Paris.
Twice.”
I’m beaming like one of my giddy fans. “When they come back to the states in a month,” I add, looking at pictures of them on my camera, “we’re going to get more serious.”

Emily nibbles on her cuticles. “You’re
all
going to get more serious?”

I nod. “Didn’t I just say that?”

“How does that work?” she asks me. “How does a threesome get more serious?”

“You clearly wouldn’t understand, Emily,” I say, giving an exasperated sigh.

“I don’t mean it judgmentally. I really want to know. How are you so—”

“What?” I cut in. “Emily, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, so now’s your chance.”

“Comfortable,” she finishes, sitting up against her headboard. “How are you comfortable about sex? Why is it so easy for you? And it can’t be because you’re a movie star. You were like this when you still lived here.”

I fold my hands under my head and stare up at the iridescent stars on the ceiling. “When I’m fooling around or having sex, I feel amazing. I forget about everything. It’s like magic.”

“But how do you forget everything?” she asks. “That’s what I don’t get. When Zach would stick his hand up my shirt, I’d start to sweat and feel like I had to barf. How did you get from that to
magic?”

“Because I was never a sixteen-year-old virgin, Em. I was a thirteen-year-old slut. Thirteen-year-olds are
kids.
They don’t have much to think about when they’re on their knees giving a blow job or getting squashed underneath some hairy thirty-year-old man. Now, when I see some of the middle school girls around here, I try to imagine any of those skinny, gawky little things doing the things I did, and I can’t.”

Her cheeks are red. “So why did you?”

“I guess I felt like I had to. And because being wanted like that made me feel powerful. I know what
powerful
is now. I have power because I’m Theodora Twist. But at twelve, when I first started fooling around, I didn’t.”

“So why do you have sex now if you don’t need to anymore to feel good?”

“Because now sex takes me away,” I say. “It makes me forget everything.”

“What could you want to forget?” she asks. “You have everything anyone could possibly want.”

“Yeah, like a dead father. A mother who thinks I belong in some juvenile detention center. I get to remember for the rest of my life that I lost my virginity to some coked-out older guy. I’m pretty sure there was another girl in the room too.”

Dead silence.

“You’ll feel comfortable when you’re ready,” I say, wanting this conversation to be over. “There are some things you just
know.
”

“Thanks, Theodora,” she says, her fresh-scrubbed face worry free now.

I, on the other hand, roll over onto my stomach and stare at the wall. I have
no
idea how three people in a relationship get more serious.

Emily

Blair is driving us all crazy. She and her assistant are here to direct us at the mall on Monday after school. Since Theodora lost a week, Blair wants to make a few events happen. Such as a fight between me and my friends. Belle and Jen are supposed to pretend to be worried that they’re losing me to Theodora’s glamorous pull. We’re supposed to have a fight in front of the music store and reunite with “you’ll always be my best friends no matter what” in the juniors department of Macy’s. Then we wrap scarves around our necks and pull each other into hugs. Nothing like staged and scripted reality.

At first Belle and Jen refused. But then Blair asked if five hundred apiece would cover their afternoon of emoting, and they both shrieked and said yes.

“Come on, kids,” Blair says as we all pile out of Stew’s minivan. “We’re on the clock.”

Belle and Jen prove to be such awful actresses that Blair gives up on the staged fight. I try to explain that we’re such good friends that we can’t pretend to hate each other, but Blair has moved on to the window of Dress Me Up. She wants us to ooh and ahh at the prom dresses in the window, talk about how excited we are for the speed-dating event, and then ooh and ahh more.

After an hour of fake oohing and ahhing, we head home so that Theodora can be fake-grounded for some imaginary infraction. A missed curfew. She was supposedly hanging out in town at the diner with some new friends from school and was having so much fun she didn’t realize it was nine o’clock.

“Nine o’clock?” Theodora says, her expression incredulous. “Like anyone besides Emily would believe a nine o’clock curfew. We’re sixteen, not eight.”

Well, that makes me feel good. Blair ups the pretend curfew to ten. A half hour later, she tells Theodora to call her mom and arrange a time to talk. Blair wants a touching phone scene. A cameraman will shoot at Theodora’s mom’s house.

Theodora says no.

“Theodora, you’ve refused to call your mom since you’ve been here. We need to shoot you and your mother talking on the phone at least twice for the show—and we’ll need a long conversation so that we can use it for bits on each episode to show how family-oriented you are and how you and your mom have your moments and arguments and disagreements just like everyone else. Tweens and their moms will like that.”

“I though this was a
reality
TV show,” Theodora says—not for the first time.

Blair ignores her. “You and your mother will both say how much you miss each other, she’ll ask if you’re eating enough and minding the Stewarts, you’ll have a tiny disagreement, which you will resolve. A five-minute call. Dial.”