Accidental It Girl (12 page)

Huh. That's interesting…

A tiny blurb on page thirty-nine reads, “Duncan Stoke's New Mystery Gal Pal?” I love that they end that statement in a question mark. That one bit of punctuation says, “We can't exactly confirm it, but we really
really
think it's true.” But that's not the interesting part. What intrigues me is that she looks incredibly familiar. I know her from somewhere.

Who is she?

I could have an exclusive sitting right in my lap, if I could just put the pieces together.

She's blonde, with fair skin. It's a horrible picture, slightly out of focus and awkwardly composed. Her face is partially obscured by a giant blob of what looks to be burrito dribbling from her half-open mouth and onto her shirtsleeve. Cute shirt, though. I have one just like it. Too bad I can't wear it anymore, the other day I got a stain on the…

Holy shit!

Those eyes…that hair…that
blob…

A sudden burst of adrenaline makes me queasy, and I try not to choke on my cereal. My chest tightens as a surge of anger, curiously mingled with fear, cascades through my body.

It's me! That's a picture of
me
!

Wait a second. It can't be real. It just can't. It has to be a prank. That's the only logical explanation.

So why is my heart still beating a mile a minute?

A flash of memory momentarily shakes me—that feeling in La Perla. A deep pang of panic-induced nausea wells up from my belly.

No. This has to be a joke.

It has to be Todd. Todd is a lot of things, and crazy is one of them. He has to be behind this. For his brother's wedding, Todd had the ugliest, most embarrassing of his brother's high school photos turned into a billboard—on the busy exit ramp near the site of the ceremony. Obviously he's still pissed about our breakup or something and he's decided to put me in a tabloid. Very funny.

He went out of his way on this one; he had someone get a whole new photo of me. He could have used any number of ghastly shots from drunken weekend outings with Luke and Brooke. He must be really hot under the collar about this.

Oh, God, he thinks I'm dating someone. Is this some juvenile jealousy thing?

I'll have to ask Brooke. She had to be in on it. He must have had her slip the doctored magazine into the stack on the coffee table.

I inspect the magazine for signs of tampering (erroneous staple holes on the spine, suspiciously wrinkled pages, subtle differences in paper quality and ink color, etc.).

Wow, it's really clean. It almost looks…real.

My stomach lurches.

No, it's a fake. It has to be.

I quickly retrieve the telephone and dial Brooke's number at work.

The office secretary tells me in her thick Russian accent, “She eez vit kly-eent.” That means her cell phone is off. Damn.

I'm going to have to weasel it out of Todd.

Unfortunately, Todd is a very good liar on the phone. In person—not so much. I'm going to have to confront him face to face and wait for the caterpillars to spell out the truth.

I slip on the nearest pair of shoes and race out of the apartment.

 

I march out of the apartment building and stride south toward the Lower East Side. I am on a mission. I will not deviate from my path. I won't even stop to window-shop, though I am in desperate need of a new pair of strappy black heels and the boutique on the corner has a gorgeous pair of sumptuous, satiny, bow-laced shoes just begging to be tried on.

I avert my eyes and weave in and out of the midday pedestrian traffic with the speed and agility of a dancer.

I can't let Todd know that this ticked me off—not at first. Todd senses weakness like a shark senses blood in the water. If he gets even the slightest hint that he's winning, he'll grab on and thrash around until I'm thoroughly maimed. I need to cool off, release the tension in my muscles, and put on my poker face.

Is this the kind of thing that ex-boyfriends do? I mean, I've seen various acts of romantic retaliation on
Judge Joe Brown
but I really didn't think it was that common in real life. (For people who don't take their ex-lovers to court over hundred-dollar bail loans, that is.) Truth be told, I don't know a lot about how to maintain a relationship with an ex. My old flames usually just disappear, slip back into the nameless, faceless population of New York—never to be seen or heard from again. I've been spoiled, I guess.

If this isn't just a normal prank, if Todd's motivation does have something to do with the breakup, how long exactly should I expect this sort of behavior to last? A week? Two? I'm really going to have to get Brooke's advice on this. She's been dumped loads of times. Oh, I'm sorry—correction—she prefers to call it being “laid off.”

The little hand comes up on the crosswalk sign at Third Street. I pause at the corner and shake the circulation back to my hands and feet, like you see joggers do.

Between the groaning car engines and cab horns I hear a familiar sound over my left shoulder. It's faint, but distinctive. It's the sound of college, of photography class, of the days when I used real film instead of memory cards—the crisp, brisk,
snap-snap
of a camera shutter.

I scan the faces of those around me, survey each approaching person, then the several people waiting near me for the light to change. No cameras. No familiar faces. No stupid Todd.

Okay, maybe it was someone clapping a purse closed…or dropping something. Clicking plastic castanets? Oh, good God, I'm losing it.

I need to calm down. This is just a prank by a bitter ex-boyfriend. No one is taking pictures of me.

The sign finally switches over to read
WALK
and I resume my stampede toward Adler Images, Ltd. As fellow pedestrians zoom by me, the strange sensation from the other day—the feeling that I'm being watched—crawls its way back up my spine and makes all the little hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

I stop and look behind me.

The characteristic double snap of a shutter rings out again.

I glance around, my eyes jumping frantically from face to face, window to window. I see nothing but the occasional embittered glare from a stranger whose face I'm inspecting.

This is silly.

Turning back downtown to resume my march, a sharp flicker of light suddenly catches my attention—not ten feet away—near a garbage can. It's the glare of reflected sunlight…off a camera lens!

A scruffy, incredibly creepy man holds a camera at an odd angle, resting its long lens against the top of the garbage can. He has a scraggly beard, a dirty red baseball cap, and an enormous camera bag. A pair of sunglasses hang crookedly from one of his ears, obscuring his nose and mouth. With his one visible eye he catches me staring at him and quickly rises. He does an awkward pirouette and stumbles into the alcove entrance of an all-you-can-eat Mongolian barbecue.

An instantaneous and violent shift has occurred. My eyes fill with thousands of little white dots. A bitter, coppery taste fills my mouth. My heart is thumping like the bass line of a 50 Cent song.

Someone is following me. With a camera.

I should run after the guy, root him out, get him to talk the way they do in the movies—with a sledgehammer or needlenose pliers. As fun and satisfying as that sounds, I can't reconcile it with the apprehension and anxiety now spreading through my body. That guy is strange. There's something not quite right about him. My fight-or-flight instinct is screaming “Run, you idiot! Run!”

But I will not run—running is for wimps.

I will, however, walk briskly.

I start back down First Avenue as quickly as I can. I break into a jog only when I need to cross the street before the light changes to my disadvantage.

The creepy guy follows me for three blocks. He keeps up—matching my speed—but stays several paces behind. He conceals himself, by darting into shop fronts, each time I look over my shoulder to check his position.

I want to scream. I want to flag down the police and blab my story—but my pride won't let me. How demeaning would it be for me,
me
of all people, to beg for assistance because I'm being followed? Besides, I know who's doing it. It's Todd—or, rather, one of his cronies. He probably roped some friend of his into putting on a fake beard and doing this. If Todd gets wind that I am truly frightened, I'll never live it down.

I just have to get this guy off my tail, then I can find Todd and rip him a new one. This stalking thing is taking the prank a little too far.

I glance over my shoulder and spot the creepy guy behind me.

Approaching the next crosswalk, I see the sign begin to blink, warning that the light is about to change. A U-Haul box truck sits poised, ready to cut across.

Okay, this is my chance to make a break for it.

I stop, turn around, and with hands on hips, glare menacingly at my pursuer. He freezes, stunned. In a remarkably clumsy lateral move, he trips into an Everything-a-Dollar store—nearly taking out a homeless man, his dirty Shitzu, and his cart of cans.

The second the guy with the camera is out of sight I dart back toward the intersection. Ignoring the big hand telling me to stop, I race across the street—just as the U-Haul's engine kicks into first gear and lurches forward.

Safely on the other side, I sidestep a group of tourists and a priest. A tiny Chinese woman, carrying a handbag bigger than my apartment, sees me sprinting in her direction and twists slightly to avoid a collision. Her massive handbag reels up from her side and clips my left kneecap with incredible force. A piercing, searing pain shoots up my leg.

My God, what does she keep in there? Bricks?

Clutching my leg, I stumble into the nearest building—a grocery store.

The rush of cool refrigerated air is refreshing. I inhale and exhale slowly to calm my breathing and, hopefully, acquire the appearance of a typical afternoon grocery shopper.

I survey the surroundings slowly, looking for a place to hide. Bury myself under a pile of radicchio? Eat my way through the creamy poufs at the pastry counter and hide behind the giant oven? Wait, what am I, a rat?

To my right is a long bank of plate-glass windows facing the street. The checkout lines spill out in front of the windows and deposit paid customers at a door near the one I just entered.

I grab a box of macaroni and cheese from a cardboard display unit and limp into the longest line, all the while keeping my eyes trained on the windows and the sidewalk beyond.

A few moments pass, and then I see him. The creepy guy walks slowly past the windows. I raise the little blue box to my face and try to look fascinated by a recipe for franks 'n' noodles.

Outside, the creepy guy looks left, then right uptown, then downtown. He shakes his head and moves on, further downtown and out of view.

I let out the breath I didn't realize I was holding. My shoulders give a quick shudder, then relax.

“This is insane,” I mumble to myself without thinking.

The man behind me smiles, a warm and open smile that makes me feel better. That is, it
almost
makes me feel better, until my eye lands on the magazine display to his left—front and center is
Celeb
.

I slowly reach across the aisle.

My heart beats faster with every inch.

This is silly; it's not going to be in there.

I grab the top copy of the magazine and flip through the corners to find page thirty-nine. Before looking at the page itself, I take a deep breath and attempt to laugh at my own foolishness.

Of course it's not going to be in there.

I open the magazine and scan the page from top to bottom.

Oh, God. It's in here.

I drop the magazine on the floor and pick up the next copy on the rack…

…and the next…

…and the next…

I'm in all of them! ALL. OF. THEM.

The man who smiled at me now steps away—alarmed.

Actually, everyone is backing away—the lady in front of me, the cashier. The only person not backing up is a husky security guard; he's headed straight for me, fondling a nightstick.

Instinctively, I drop the box of macaroni, hop over the puddle of magazines at my feet, and race out of the store.

Okay, now it's time to run.

I
stomp up the steps to Adler Images, Ltd., feeling like my skin is on fire. I want to scream, or cry, or…something, but I can't. I have to be calm, cool, and collected. I am an ice princess, a warrior, one of those steely-eyed she-beasts from Japanese video games.

I grasp the door handle and catch a glimpse of myself in the absurdly shiny front door.

Oh, crap. I look like a crazy person.

My hair is frizzed out at a dozen odd angles, my mascara has streaked out to my hairline from the right eye, and matted into a blob on the left. She-beast is right. No. No, actually, I bear a striking resemblance to Phyllis Diller.

I search the pocket of my jeans for any bit of tissue or napkin. Nothing. There's only one option: I must resort to the palm-and-spit method favored by cowlick-oppressing grannies. As I finger-comb my knotted hair with one hand, and wipe away the streaking mascara with the other, the door flies open.

“I'm flattered, but you don't have to try so hard, Sadie. I have, after all, already seen you naked.” Todd grins at me with a facile smugness that makes me want to drop-kick him with my remaining good leg.

“Is that really how you want to start this?” I say, pushing past him and limping into the office.

“Start what?”

“Oh, you know
what
. You smug, arrogant—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Todd growls defensively. He lets the door fall closed and approaches me with his palms up, like a criminal miming that he's unarmed.

“You can't
whoa
me!” I bark, circling him as best I can while trying to avoid aggravating the knifelike pain shooting through my kneecap. “I suppose you thought it would be funny, right? Ha-ha! Sadie's in a tabloid. Hilarious.”

“What are you talking about? Are you limping?”

“Don't try and change the subject—”

“I don't even
know
the subject!” he gripes, spinning around to make eye contact. “You're limping. Why are you limping? What happened?”

The genuine concern in his tone takes me momentarily off my guard. I stop—too quickly—and lose my balance. My left knee finally gives in to the pain.

Todd catches me under the arm and guides me to one of the garish white vinyl and chrome chairs in the lobby. “What is it?” He asks, while gently touching my ankle…calf…knee. Good God, that hurts. He winces in sympathy as I groan, and asks, “Your knee?”

I feel the annoying welling-up of tears in my eyes. I try to suppress the sobs rumbling inside me, causing a painful knot to form in my throat.

“Sit tight, Killer,” Todd says as he leaps to his feet. “I'll be one minute.”

I feel the tears trickle down my cheek, and the stiff knot in my throat relax, as a sob escapes my lips. Oh, God. I'm going to sit here and cry, tattered and broken, like Lucy Ricardo after one of her misguided romps. I am now a ne'er-do-well sitcom character.

Todd emerges from the office kitchenette with a Ziploc bag full of crushed party ice. He looks at me and tips his head in examination. “You're crying,” he says empirically, as though he's just discovered some new and unexplained phenomenon.

“Yes, I am.” Todd kneels down at my feet and presses the bag to my injured knee. “Why did you do this to me?” I continue, through a wave of cascading tears.

“Me?
I
did this?” he asks, while tenderly caressing my right hand.

Regaining my composure, I snarl, “Oh, come off it, Todd. You put the picture in
Celeb,
you had someone follow me today. You are responsible for what will undoubtedly be very expensive knee replacement surgery—”

“What picture in
Celeb
, Sadie?” Todd asks, in a really impressive display of feigned innocence.

“Page thirty-nine, Todd. Me, eating a burrito. Duncan Stoke's mystery girl.”

“Sadie, I have absolutely no clue, on God's green earth, what the
fuck
you are talking about.”

I stare at him—eye to eye. He doesn't flinch, doesn't allow even a hint of cockiness to taint his expression. His thick black eyebrows arch over his black-brown eyes—squinting slightly, as though out of concern.

Oh, no. Oh, no!

No. No. No.

No!

I think he's telling the truth.

“Are you…serious?” I ask, swallowing hard. Please, please let him burst into laughter and run around the office in triumph. Please, let that be his next move….

“I'm serious. And you're starting to worry me.”

“Oh, shit. You're telling the truth.”

“Yes, I am. Now, can you fill me in?”

“Do you have the new
Celeb
?” I ask frantically.

“No. The mail hasn't come yet—” I stand up and hobble toward the door. He continues, “Sadie, I don't think that's such a good idea.”

“Get up, let's go.”

 

I stagger past Fung Lau's Chinese Palace and the bustling Fed Ex store, dragging Todd behind me by the hand. The farther I go the more woozy I feel. I don't know if it's my knee or my brain that's the cause.

What the hell is going on? It has to be some kind of mistake, some horrible clerical error. A picture of me was mistakenly plopped into some editor's inbox. Wires got crossed. Something!

I burst into Harry Moisha's Deli and press my way past a delivery guy and three people waiting for Lotto tickets. I screech to a halt at the small stand of newspapers and magazines near the register.

I grab the top copy of
Celeb
and shove it into Todd's hands.

He tears into the magazine, finds the page, and says calmly, “Yep, that's you all right.”

“Yeah. It's me.”

Todd inspects the picture closely, folds the pages back to look in the crook of the spine. “There's no photo credit.”

“Yeah, I know. I thought it was you. Someone was following me, too. The other day when I was out shopping, and then today—”

“You thought I had you followed?”

“I thought…I don't know what I thought, okay? Help me out here. I've been slandered…and maimed.”

“Getting called the secret girlfriend of a movie star doesn't qualify as slander.”

“Oh, really?” I bite.

Todd, ignoring my hostility, goes back to inspecting the photo. “I don't recognize the work. Do you?”

I shake my head no.

“It almost looks amateur.” He takes a deep breath, appraises
Celeb
some more. “Maybe it's just some kid trying to make a buck. It happens—”

“When does that happen, Todd? I've never heard of that happening.”

“It
could
happen,” he replies weakly.

I throw my hands up and roll my eyes. “If it's a prank, that's one thing. But this was only taken a few days ago,” I say, pointing to the photo in
Celeb
. “How did it get in the paper so fast? How did it make it through fact-checking? No one's even given me a chance to deny it.” Mistakes happen in tabloid news—all the time. But something about this is just too…
strange
to have been an accident.

“Look, calm down. I know a couple of guys at the magazine. Let me make a few calls and get back to you. Meantime, you go home and relax. Call your
boyfriend…
or whatever,” he adds while conspicuously rolling his eyes.

That would be a great idea—if I actually had a boyfriend to call. He would come over with Pop-Tarts and rub my shoulders and help me forget this horrible day. That's the sort of thing real boyfriends do. As opposed to imaginary ones, who just lie there doing nothing—or appear in major national publications.

I limp toward the front door of the deli. Over the melodic
chug chug chug
of Lotto tickets being printed I hear Todd call out, “Sadie?”

I turn to him.

Todd smiles in that easy, confident way he does. “We'll get this sorted out in no time. All right? Not a big deal.”

I give him a smile, trying to reciprocate his steady certainty. My head keeps telling me he's right, that this is just a foolish, harmless error. Unfortunately, my gut doesn't seem to agree.

I have a bad feeling about this.