Holly Hearts Headlines (Holly Hearts Hollywood Book 2) (11 page)

“Since when are you taking sex education? Don’t freshmen usually take that class?”

“It is a long story,” I said as I searched around for something soft for the egg to rest in. I couldn’t have it rolling around the back of the Escalade. That would make me an irresponsible parent to this unfertilized egg.

Grayson gallantly pulled off his coat and I turned it into a little Tom Ford nest for the egg who I’ve named Al-egg-xandra by the way.

Unfortunately, the presence of Al-egg-xandra really interfered with my ability to passionately make out with Grayson. We couldn’t make good use of the back seat of the car lest we crush the egg. This child is already affecting my romantic life, and I’ve had it for less than a day.

An hour later (I’m convinced that the traffic in LA is God’s punishment to mankind for some sin or whatever) we pulled up outside Cut Steakhouse, which I’ve heard about from celebrities all the time. It’s like some famous chef’s restaurant and ridiculously expensive to eat at.

I immediately panicked. “Grayson, this is a really popular restaurant. Aren’t there going to be paparazzi and like, people you know here? Are you friends with Leo DiCaprio, because I read once that he likes this place, and what if he tells Lacey that you’re here or tweets about it?”

Grayson put his finger on my lips and shushed me. “Don’t worry about it.”

I had no idea how I wasn’t supposed to worry about it. Of course, I was going to worry! The last thing we needed was some photo of us on Twitter gaining popularity. Manuel Salazar would destroy me so quickly if that happened. And sure, Lacey is destroying the tour on her own day-by-day, but there’s no point if I beat her to it.

Grayson’s bodyguard escorted us (and the egg) into the restaurant. We walked past the walls of clinging ivy and through the doors only to be greeted by complete and total silence. The most popular restaurant in Los Angeles was completely and totally empty on a Friday night.

“I called Wolfgang and got him to close the restaurant for the night,” Grayson said with a notable hint of pride in his voice.

My mouth fell open. “Grayson!” I said in shock. I didn’t say it, because it would be tacky, but that had to be incredibly expensive. I mean, it costs a hundred dollars or more
per person
to eat here. Can you imagine how much Grayson had to pay him to close the restaurant? It makes me sick thinking about it. And really excited at the same time because Grayson must like me a lot if he did something like that. But still. There are people who can’t afford bread and Grayson could’ve bought a whole bakery for the cost of our date.

After we ordered our entrees, I ran in here so I could document as much of the date as possible so I don’t forget a thing! This is actually our first real date and it’s going so well. We’re talking really easy and laughing a lot. It feels so natural to be with Grayson. It seems like when he and I are together, his whole “I’m famous, please love me” persona disappears and he truly becomes himself.

On the surface Grayson seems like your typical gorgeous, famous, rich boy but he really has so much depth. I’m learning more and more about him every day. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only person out there who is still trying to figure themselves out. People are really complicated, no matter where they come from.

I probably should go back to our date. Eeee! I’m on a date!

April 15
^th
, 10:00am—Home

For the record, I did not fall off the face of the planet. No, I did not lose this journal. And no, I did not decide to stop writing in it. I was
grounded from my journal for a week
. My mother, yes my apparently cool and “hip with it” mother LOCKED
MY
JOURNAL
IN
A
DRAWER as some sick form of punishment.

I attempted to call child protective services but then she had the nerve to
take my phone away
. She only gave it back to me when I promised I wouldn’t call them and start an unnecessary and untrue child abuse investigation.

Why was I grounded, you ask? Why did my mother inflict this unfair punishment on me? I’ll tell you why: because I came home from my date with Grayson late. Now, does the crime match the punishment? No! It’s not like I make a habit of constantly staying out late on dates with boys and coming home at the wee hours of the night. Shouldn’t I have gotten some kind of “strike one” first offense warning or something? Who just jumps right to such an inhumane punishment?

Doesn’t my mom realize that I never get to go out with my boyfriend? Of COURSE
,
we were home late. I told her we were talking and catching up. And yeah we did that for a long time, but the rest of the night we were actually (finally!) going to second base in the back of the town car but not that I would tell her that. My mom’s supposed to be open-minded, but if she grounds me for being home late, I’m not going to update her on my journey to becoming sexually active.

When I got home, it was two thirty in the morning. I thought that my mom would be sitting in the living room shrouded in darkness ready to scold me. I was prepared to be scolded. She’s my mom, that’s what moms do. But she wasn’t there when I got home. And when I woke up late the next morning, she was cooking pancakes in the kitchen.

“Morning!” I said cheerfully, hoping that it would distract her from wanting to yell at me.

“Morning, Holly,” she replied. “Do you want chocolate chips in your pancakes?”

I raised my eyebrows, surprised that she hadn’t sunk her talons into me yet. “Sure!” Ivy was frantically flipping through the pages of fashion magazines and cutting out pictures of outfits that she liked.

After my mom put a huge pile of chocolate chip pancakes in front of me, she casually asked to see my journal. “Sure,” I said around a mouthful of cake and syrup. I had it with me, as I always do, and handed it over to her. “Just don’t read anything, okay?”

“Oh, I won’t read any of it,” Mom said flatly. Suddenly, before I could blink, she threw it into a kitchen drawer and locked it shut.

My mouth fell open and a bit of pancake escaped. “Mom! What the heck?”

“You were two and a half hours late last night, and you didn’t even bother to call. You are grounded from your journal for a week.”

My heart exploded in my chest. I know that it is probably really unhealthy to have attachment issues to a journal, but writing in here makes me feel a little more grounded. It is so important for me to be able to vocalize my feelings and thoughts without having anyone judge me. “Mom, no! You can’t!” I protested.

“Oh yes I can. Also, have you forgotten that you have final exams to study for? Just because you are about to graduate doesn’t mean you can completely slack off. Your journal distracts you. I think a week away from it will do you some good.” Mom turned back to the stove and said over her shoulder, “And don’t even
think
about starting a new journal because I will throw it away.”

She knows me too well. This last week without my journal has been so boring. All I’ve done is work out every day, study for finals, attempt to learn to drive, stare at the dumb egg, hang out with my family, and talk to Grayson on the phone every night. See? It was totally unproductive and uneventful.

Later, 1:00pm—Shoulder of I-110 SB Highway

I’ve always considered hitchhiking to be a dangerous thing for a girl to do. It is way too easy to get picked up by a semi-truck driver with dreams of becoming a serial killer. I can’t sincerely gamble my
actual life
. But I’m so humiliated I’m considering sticking my thumb out and rolling the dice between life and death.

Why am I willing to get chopped into tiny bits and cooked into a cannibal’s chili dinner? Why you ask? Because
I’m
the reason I’m on the side of the busiest freeway with my drivers education class with a flat tire and a crushed front and rear bumper. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I’m a new driver for the love of God and I’ve already caused a four-car pile up.

Sierra and Akbar are both on the phone with their parents right now complaining about their idiot classmate who got us into this mess. I mean cars are whizzing by us at eighty miles an hour. If just one of them swerves a little bit, we’re totally dead.

I mean how are you supposed to gauge the speed of other drivers on the freeway? I could tell the guy in front of me was slowing down but how could I know that he was going to come to a complete and total
STOP
in the middle of the road?

Mom is going to ground me all over again. Oh my God, I think I’m bleeding. Yup, I’m definitely bleeding. Oh my God, am I going to die?

Later, 1:45pm—Waiting Room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

You would think that a young girl with a gushing head wound would be rushed into the hospital immediately and treated by the finest doctors in the LA area, but instead I’ve been ushered into the waiting room amongst the coughing and sneezing masses. Sierra and Akbar are here too, but they seem fine to me. Alice, our driving instructor, said that because of liability and other fancy insurance reasons we all have to go to the hospital to get checked out no matter what or she could get in trouble with her job.

Sierra gave me her Blink 182 sweatshirt to press against my open wound to stop the blood, which was very generous of her because I’m pretty sure that it isn’t easy to find Blink 182 sweatshirts anymore. We tried to move the sweatshirt a little bit ago to see if the bleeding had stopped, but the blood had crusted to the sweatshirt like glue and now it is completely stuck on the side of my head. I’m not even kidding, there is currently a Blink 182 sweatshirt dangling from my forehead.

My mom is on her way and oh boy is she not happy. I could tell that she really wanted to chew me out and lecture me, but I think she’s waiting until the doctors tell her I’m not going to die before she lays into me. Mom’s number one fear is that we say something mean to one another and then die tragically moments later and thus the last words we spoke to one another were words of hate instead of love. I think my mom watches too much TV.

Alice is really nervous. I can tell because she won’t stop talking. So far, she has told me very long stories about her five cats who are all named after characters from Shakespearean tragedies. She named them Ophelia, Titus, Goneril, Caesar, and Cressida. I think it sounds really gloomy to name your cats after characters that die. Why wouldn’t you want to name them after happy characters from Shakespeare like Touchstone in
As You Like It
or after Gwen Paltrow’s character in
Shakespeare in Love
?

Anyway, they’ve so far let several people with tuberculosis-sounding coughs back to see the doctors and yet I’m still here with a sweatshirt glued to my head.

Later, 2:30pm—Emergency Room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

I’m sitting on a bed in the emergency room and I’m shielded behind a curtain because the guy next to me is currently hemorrhaging blood and all of the doctors and nurses are running around shouting scary stuff like, “Heart rate is unstable!” and “Can I get a clamp please?”

I should’ve been in and out of here really quickly after they made sure I don’t have a concussion, but alas I’ve already been sitting on this bed for ten minutes. Do you know why I’m still sitting here and not on my way home to get lectured by my mother?

The nurses can’t get the sweatshirt off of my head. It is totally and completely stuck. I can’t even get in a car accident without making an idiot of myself. Oh, the nurse is coming back right now with a pair of industrial sized scissors.

Later, 3:00pm—Emergency Room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

After three nurses cut the Blink 182 sweatshirt to bits and pried the bloody remains off with tweezers, I started to bleed everywhere and then I apparently passed out. I do not remember passing out, which is highly disappointing because I’ve always wanted to know what it is like to faint. Every time it happens in movies there is always some handsome gentlemen who catches the heroine on her way to the ground. He gently lays her on the ground and admires her unconscious form.

Me however, I slumped right off of the examination table and hit my head against the tile floor while the male nurses did absolutely nothing. They probably didn’t even admire my unconscious form, the brutes. Instead, I have a serious bruise on my skull and they’re saying that I most likely have a concussion now.

Can you believe it? The
car accident
didn’t give me a concussion but my inability to stay conscious around copious amounts of blood
did
give me one. Life isn’t fair. Oh boy, my mom just got here. Hell’s probably about to break loose. Mom doesn’t like seeing her children injured, even if they did it to themselves. She turns into a mama grizzly bear.

Later, 5:40pm—Home

I’m at home, but I’m being very carefully watched to make sure that I’m not showing any changes in behavior or warning signs that something is horribly wrong. According to Web M.D. that means anything from slurred speech to problems recognizing people or places. So I should be fine, right? I mean I turned
The Fall
on as soon as I got home and I didn’t even need the whole “Previously on
The Fall
” thing at the beginning to remember what happened last.

Mom is too afraid of my delicate, concussed state to lecture me yet. Hopefully she will soon forget that she needed to lecture me at all. Tee-hee.

Grandma and Grandpa are using my car accident as a reason why it is unsafe for me to live out here. “Bleeding heart liberals can’t even create safe highways!” Grandpa is currently saying loudly from the living room. He thinks that I can’t hear him, but his voice is the literal equivalent of a sonic boom. So I think everyone in our zip code can actually hear him right now. I’m highly tempted to shout through the walls and remind him about that time that Carrie Craig, the local church organist, hit a cow that bolted out into the road as an example for why Cedar Junction isn’t a pillar of safety either, but I know that it would be futile.