Theodora Twist (19 page)

“Em,” he says, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “Do you know that your mom is embarrassed about how the two of us are going to look on the show when it airs? She thinks we’re going to come off looking like we need to go on one of those TV talk shows about couples in crisis. Dads who won’t help around the house. Moms who are at their wits’ end. Stepdaughters whose feelings get ignored because no one wants to deal with it. It’s wrong, Emily, and I’m sorry. Really sorry. I want you to know I’d like to make a fresh start. I know I don’t have to try to replace your father. And I don’t have to try to act like he never existed. We have to make our own relationship, something entirely our own.”

“Okay,” I say. We can do that. We can try, anyway.

“So we’re good?” he asks. “For a start, I mean.”

I smile. “We’re good.” Wow.

Theodora comes in a few minutes later. “I’m leaving the day after the prom,” she tells me. “Ashley says Blair has all the footage she needs, and if she needs some reshoots, she’ll call me back for a few days’ work. Blair wants us to do the prom-date pointing out thing tomorrow morning.”

“Okay,” I say, wishing she could stay a little longer.

“So . . . I’m thinking of calling my mom.” She holds up her new cell phone. “Bad idea, probably.”

I shake my head. “Nope. Good idea, Theodora. If you would have told me a half hour ago that I’d have a real conversation with Stew, I wouldn’t have believed you. But we just talked about some major stuff and I feel a lot better about everything. I don’t know if things will change, but at least we’re trying.”

She nods. “So what do I say?”

“Say the first thing you think, Theodora.”

She bites her lip, then goes into the bathroom with her cell.

“Mom?” I hear her say. “I really miss Dad.” She’s crying and there’s silence. And then, “Me too.” For a moment there’s more silence. Then a shaky “Okay.” Then more silence. And I realize that for once, Theodora Twist is
listening.

Theodora

“There’s your perfect match,” Emily whispers at our locker the next morning. She nods at a dark-haired guy in faded jeans and a navy blue T-shirt, putting a book in his locker. “Ben Oliver.”

“It’s the guy who draws the noses.”

“Huh?” Emily says.

“I’ll tell you later,” I whisper, and head for Ben. “So you’re my perfect match,” I say to his back.

He turns around and looks at me. “Yeah, I saw your name on my sheet, but I doubt we’re each other’s perfect matches.”

Not the “can I have your autograph” type, I guess. Interesting. “Why?”

He stuffs a couple of textbooks in his backpack. “Because you’re a movie star. And I’m a junior at Oak City High School and I don’t kid myself.”

“Are you always this fun to be around?”

“I was a lot more fun before my mother dropped dead two months ago,” he says, and walks away, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

I stare at his retreating figure for a few moments. “Wait,” I call out. “Ben, wait.”

He turns around. “I’m not really up for being on TV, okay?” he says, gesturing at the camera behind me.

I wave Vic away and turn back to Ben. “We have more in common than you think, Ben Oliver.”

“Oh yeah, what?”

“My dad died four years ago. When I was twelve. A guidance counselor hooked me up with Emily, but after a while I couldn’t deal with being around someone who
knew,
someone who understood. Do you get what I mean?”

“Yeah. But I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

I shrug. “Last night, for the first time in four years, I told my mother that I missed my dad. And we talked about it for the
first
time. In
four
years. That’s crazy.”

“I hate this. I hate all of it.”

I took his hand. “Me too.”

Ben and I talked for hours earlier today. We sat in the park, on the bench where I cried my eyes out over Bo and Brandon yesterday and over my father four years ago. Turns out Ben did some of his best crying in the park too.

Vic followed us around for a while, and then we decided to lose him, which wasn’t difficult since he doesn’t know Oak City the way we do.

He didn’t try to kiss me. He just looked like he wanted to. And for once in my life, I didn’t say:
You can kiss me,
you know. You can do anything you want to me.
We held hands sometimes. We were silent sometimes.

It was the best date I’ve ever had.

“Can I ask you something?” I said to him on our way back to Emily’s house. “Why do you only draw noses?”

He glanced at me, surprised. “I didn’t realize you were snooping at my notebook.”

“What else am I going to do in math class?”

Ben sighed. “I’ve been trying to draw my mom’s nose, but I can’t get it. It’s like I can’t remember already. I have her eyes down perfectly, and her mouth, but the nose isn’t right. Isn’t that weird? The nose should be easy.”

“My mom has a great nose,” I said. “And really memorable. I paid for it.”

He laughed. It was a great sound.

Emily

That afternoon, when the Lost and Found club meeting ends, I see Ray Roarke coming down the hall, carrying a chessboard. When he sees me, he gets flustered and starts to turn.

What is so wrong with me? For the past week, he’s zoomed out of English class before I could even pick up my backpack. He’s clearly very disappointed in who his perfect match turned out to be. I guess I’ll be wearing my perfect cream-colored prom dress in the privacy of my own bedroom.

“Ray.”

He stops and turns around.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “You don’t have to hide till school gets out. You’re off the hook.”

“
I’m
off the hook?” he says, those dark blue eyes intense on mine.

“You clearly don’t want to go to the prom with me. So let’s just forget the perfect match thing. No biggie.”

“Wait a minute,” he says. “
You’re
the one who doesn’t want to go to the prom with me.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve been giving you an out,” he explains.

“Why do I want an out?”

“Because you’re Emily Fine,” he says.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning why would Emily Fine want to go to the prom with me? You’re the most popular girl in school. C’mon.”

“I’m the most popular girl in school?” I say. “I don’t think so. And trust me—no one will know my name in a week. Anyway, I want to go to the prom with you because you’re my perfect match. That was the whole point.”

“So you
want
to go to the prom with me,” he says, looking cuter by the second.

“Yeah, I do.”

He smiles.

Theodora

“Theodora Twist and Ben Oliver,” Belle says as she, Emily, Jen, and I get ready for the prom in Emily’s bedroom. “Whodathunk?”

“I can totally see it,” Emily says.

“We’re not dating,” I say. “I’m here for one more night and then I’m heading home to read scripts and meet with producers and directors.”

“That’s what a long-distance relationship means,” Jen says, winking at me.

Emily smiles at me. “Wow, Theodora. You look like a movie star.”

They all stop and stare at me. I glance at myself in the full-length mirror on the wall. I’m wearing a dress that cost all of one hundred sixty dollars, long, pale pink satin with an empire waist, sparkling with a million sequins. I’m wearing drugstore makeup (mixed with Bobbi Brown) and Payless pumps.

“So do you guys,” I say. And it’s true. They do. Emily is wearing the gorgeous long, off-white crepe dress, very “I’d Like to Thank the Academy”—a knockoff of my Golden Globes gown. Her hair is blown straight and her makeup is perfect, thanks to my makeup artist, who I flew in for the occasion. Belle and Jen are wearing short dresses and gorgeous strappy sandals.

It occurs to me that I’m having more fun getting ready tonight than I did for the Golden Globes.

Some paparazzi are outside to take photos. We all pose. They go away. Nicole and Vic are in our faces constantly, on orders from Blair.

We take a limo (regular teen prom ride!) to the Oak City Hotel. Ben escorts me into the ballroom, and the prom is in full swing. Couples are dancing. Cameras are filming.
Entertainment Tonight
is here.
Access Hollywood.
Reporters for Teen Vogue, Teen People, and GirlScene.com. A few talk shows who’ve booked me and possibly Emily for the week the show airs, which won’t be till September.

The band plays a slow song and Ben leads me to the dance floor. His hand feels good. Like a friend’s hand. At least ten guys ask if they can cut in. Ben says yes to the first two who ask, then no way to the rest. I smile and we dance and dance. And then it’s time for my speech.

I head up to the stage and try to spot Emily, but I don’t see her. “I’ve had the best time this past month,” I tell the crowd. “Oak City High is a great school, and you’ve all been so welcoming and friendly and I hate that I’m leaving tomorrow.” Everyone has stopped dancing. “I came here to prove to America that I’m really just a regular sixteen-year-old, and you know what? I’m not. I’m an actress. But it was great being here. Great getting to know Emily and her family. Great getting to know her friends, Belle and Jen, two really cool girls. And great getting to be a regular sixteen-year-old for one incredible night at the prom. So thanks, guys.”

The cheers are deafening. I have to kiss and hug a thousand people and then I finally find Emily.

“Nice speech,” she says, smiling.

“Every word was the truth,” I say. “I mean that.”

“I know,” she says. And then she hugs me.

“Hey, isn’t that your ex with one of the Samanthas?” I ask.

She turns and laughs. “Ha. Zach Archer and Samantha Ulrich, perfect matches. Figures.”

Hot Stephen twirls Jen by us and dips her. Belle is dancing with her
two
perfect matches.

“Where’s Ray?” I ask Emily.

“There,” she says, pointing at him as he approaches with two cups of punch. “Isn’t he so hot?” she whispers dreamily.

Theodora

September

Emily’s a really bad actress, but that’s why I like her so much. She did memorize the four pages of Acceptable Answers to Reporters’ Questions that Ashley sent last week, but her delivery is so wooden that most of the reporters and journalists stopped asking her questions and directed everything to me.

Ashley and Blair arranged the press junket for
Theodora Twist: Just a Regular Teen!
to coincide with Emily’s school break schedule. She showed up at LAX looking way too much like a regular teen. I took her to Melrose and bought her three amazing outfits. She has to work on the walk, though.

She’s leaving tomorrow and so I am. Emily goes back to Oak City, back to her senior year of high school, back to her boyfriend, Ray. I’ve already stashed a belated birthday present for Ben in her backpack—a really cool leather-bound sketchbook and the best charcoal for feature drawing. I haven’t been great at keeping in touch; once a month or so we IM. Who knows, maybe one day, ten years from now, we’ll hook up again.

Tomorrow afternoon I leave for Prague to shoot my new movie for Disney. The execs liked the screening of
Theodora Twist: Just a Regular Teen!
so much that they finally offered a three-film deal with me as lead. Two romantic comedies and a drama. “Films for the whole family”–type stuff that will showcase my range. Ashley’s happy. I’m happy.

And the Stewarts family is also happy. Last week, Blair sent them a screening tape. According to Emily, her mom and Stew were freaking out over how they’d come across. And though they were zinged a few times— especially Stew—you can see how much they actually like each other.

Which is what Ashley said to me about me and Emily: “That’s what the show really highlights: how much you and Emily actually like each other. What good friends you became. Your differences, the ups and downs, what you taught each other. I couldn’t have scripted it better. Good stuff, Theodora.”

Five minutes later, she was screaming in my ear over a meeting I totally forgot about. My personal assistant quit when I came back to L.A. in the spring. Apparently, I’m a pain in the ass to work for. Anyway, I like my new assistant much better. I told Ashley to hire me someone like Emily. No flash. No gush. Of course she found the least flashy, most ungushy person in L.A. But Jane gets me to my meetings on time.

“One more reporter,” Jane says, poking her head into the hotel room, her eyes scanning her own CrackBerry. “Another Perrier, Theodora? Emily, can I get you something?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Emily tells her.

“Me too,” I say, and Jane disappears.

“Too bad Ashley wouldn’t let you wear any of your great new clothes on TV,” I tell Emily, eyeing her boring “regular teen” outfit.

“I’ll save them for the next time I visit,” she says.

“You’d better visit.”

She pops a dry-roasted soy nut in her mouth. “I will.”

The
Access Hollywood
team comes in and sets up. Emily and I take our places, get attacked by the makeup artist again for shiny spots, and have our mikes clipped on. The reporter goes through the usual questions. Five more minutes and Emily and I are free. I’m taking her out in Hollywood tonight, and there won’t be a regular teen moment all night.

“So tell us, Theodora,” the reporter continues. “Did you and Emily get along? There were rumors that you got into fights and screaming matches during your month together.”

“I have the utmost respect for her,” I say. I’d crack up if I weren’t actually serious. “I learned so much from Emily.”

She looks over at me and smiles. “We’re really good friends.”

Melissa Senate
is a former editor of teen fiction and has written a number of successful adult novels, including
See Jane Date.
She lives on the southern coast of Maine with her husband and son and never travels with an entourage. Visit her Web site at
www.melissasenate.com
.