Flirting With Fame (Flirting With Fame) (2 page)

H
ow is that possible?
I signed to Jin.
Where did she come from?

He shook his head.
I don’t know.

She was even more beautiful in real life than in her picture. In the years since I’d stolen her photo, she’d clipped her hair into a razored bob, with dark bangs that made her emerald eyes pop from her perfectly symmetrical face. Tall and slim, she wore a white skirt and pink blouse that showed off her curves without being too revealing. I tugged my own T-shirt down over my barely there hips.

As if by magic, she produced a silver Sharpie and began signing copies of
Sticks and Stones
shoved her way. Jin’s jaw hung slack as he watched her, his eyes narrowing.

Is she signing your books?

I nodded and grabbed the bag from his shoulder. Reaching for the book, I maneuvered through the crowd until I was in front of the “author.” She gave me a smile that could have lit up a palace and reached for Jin’s copy of
Sticks and Stones
.

“Would you like me to sign that?” she asked.

Without waiting for a reply, she plucked the novel from my hands and opened it to the title page. She scrawled something inside and handed it back to me.

People pushed against my back, but I felt stuck to the ground, as though the Bookworm floor were made of mud instead of concrete.

Fake me frowned. “Is something wrong? Is there something I can do for you?”

My tongue went dry as sandpaper. Her lips were a perfect ruby red. They didn’t have a trace of gloss on them.

How could a person’s lips actually
be
that color?

Someone tugged on my T-shirt and began to pull me away from her. A look of relief flashed across the girl’s face before I was whisked out of the crowd and into Jin’s arms. Concern lined his dark features.

“Why would you do that?” he asked.

Instead of answering, I opened the book to the title page and scanned the beautifully scripted words written below my title and pen name.

Thanks for being a fan! Keep on pillaging your dreams!

Love, Aubrey Lynch

“What the hell?” I said. “That doesn’t even make sense. Why would someone want to pillage their dreams? Just because they’re Vikings . . .”

Jin took my arm and led me out of the store, which was fortunate, since I seemed to be numb from the waist down. My legs wobbled like Jell-O and I leaned against my friend as he pushed through the crowd.

A blast of heat greeted us when we exited the air-conditioned sanctuary of the bookstore. My clothes almost instantly plastered themselves to my body. I scanned the people still waiting in line, their lips moving in rapid succession.

“Did you hear? Aubrey Lynch is in there!”

“What? No way!”

“Yeah, she’s signing copies!”

“Oh my
gawd
! I need to meet her! She’s my hero!”

I turned away from the crowd, a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. My insides rolled as I pictured the woman we’d left signing copies of my book.

When we reached my car, Jin placed his hand under my chin and tilted my head.
What are you going to do?
he signed.

Dropping the book back into the bag, I shrugged.
Nothing, I guess. There’s nothing I can do.

But those are your books and she’s taking credit.

I put her on the back cover
, I signed.
It’s my own fault. Besides, who cares? I can still write and forget about her. I’m the one who gets the royalty checks, after all.

Jin motioned as if he wanted to sign something more, then thought better of it. He watched me for a moment, his hand reaching to brush a lock of hair behind my ear. I pulled it back to cover the scar and his body deflated as he exhaled.

He scanned the street. At that time of night, even with the book launch, downtown Fernbrooke lay still, caught in the slumber of most of its residents. I steadied my breathing. We were alone at last.

“So, you’re okay with this?” Jin asked. The purple in his hair glowed beneath the streetlight.

“I have to be.”

He ran a hand across the back of his neck. “You’re kind of infuriating, you know?”

“But you love me anyway.”

“I do.” His thin lips held the hint of a smirk. “Though not quite as much as I love Gavin Hartley. Now
there’s
a lickable god of a man, if ever there was one. Is it true he’s going to be Dag?”

The thought of the handsome movie star playing a character I’d created made me quiver. I stared at my feet so Jin couldn’t see my flushing cheeks by the light of the streetlamp.

“I don’t know,” I said. “No one tells me anything.”

“Could you imagine if you got to meet him?” Jin asked. “I think I’d die.”

“That won’t happen,” I said, “because he’ll be expecting the ridiculously gorgeous girl we left at the bookstore.”

Jin’s face fell. “You’re right. How do you plan to pull that off, El?”

“Easy. They’re filming in Hollywood. I told my agent I’d be in school and wouldn’t have time to travel. She understood. They sent me the first script to approve, though.”

“Seriously? A real Hollywood script? You’re going to let me read it, right?”

I tapped the bag on his shoulder. “You already have plenty to read.”

“Did you really kill someone off in this one?”

“You’ll see.”

“Tease.”

I winked and unlocked my car. Giving him a hug, I closed my eyes and breathed in the familiar scent of his cologne. He smelled like fresh laundry on a summer day. If there was one thing I could count on, it was Jin looking and smelling good—even at one in the morning during an unrelenting heat wave.

He released me and I slipped behind the steering wheel and shut the door.

As I headed home, my thoughts drifted back to the girl at the store. Worry gnawed at the edge of my stomach with sharp fangs.

Had I made a mistake putting a stranger on the back of my books? To be fair, I honestly never thought they’d take off like they did. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

I tried to shrug off the nerves as I pulled onto my street. I had bigger things to think about. Like the fact that this time next week I’d be on a campus with thousands of complete strangers. I’d be living with someone I’d never met. The very idea sent my stomach into insta-vomit mode.

The girl pretending to be me would have to wait.

A
few days later, I lay stretched out on Jin’s black comforter, surveying the familiar walls. My best friend’s bedroom looked like Broadway had thrown up all over it. Two years before, we’d spent the whole summer painting the walls the velvety red of stage curtains and covering the light switches and doorframes in gold glitter. Jin had even lined the mirror of his vanity with those bare lightbulbs they used in dressing rooms.

Framed posters and
Playbill
s for musicals with names like
Wicked
and
Spring Awakening
battled for wall supremacy against photos of Jin performing in local theater productions of
Sweeney Todd
,
Miss Saigon
, and
Bye Bye Birdie
.

Although I couldn’t hear the music plunked out by the lone accompanist, I’d been to every show my friend had done. Jin explained enough of each story beforehand to keep me invested in the show, and my lip-reading got me through the rest. When they weren’t dancing and spinning around the stage at alarming rates, the actors were actually pretty easy to read. They overdid every movement and word—the key, Jin said, to reaching the people in the very back row. I refrained from reminding him that our local theater had ten rows, tops, and the people in the back probably had zero issues seeing him.

Of all the shows he’d done,
Bye Bye Birdie
had been my favorite. Jin played Birdie, an Elvis-style rock star who came to a small town to kiss one lucky contest winner on TV before setting off for the army. Seemed like a sweet deal, being a normal girl in a small town and still getting to kiss the famous man of your dreams. Well, except for the millions-of-people-watching-on-TV bit. My shoulders quivered at the thought.

Jin had been amazing, though. He danced and strutted around the stage like he’d manifested from the wood and velvet and lights. He’d received a standing ovation every night. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that he was accepted into every theater program he’d applied to.

Didn’t make it suck any less, though. Having your only friend in the world pack up and move to New York kinda blew giant ostrich eggs.

We’d both taken a year off after high school. Jin spent his time getting “experience”—which was basically code for slinging coffee at the café during the day and rehearsing community theater shows in un-air-conditioned church basements at night. My parents had allowed me to take a one-year break before college so I could finish the most recent
Viking Moon
book, but only with the promise I’d start at the local campus this year. It had seemed like a fantastic plan back then, but now that the time had actually come, I was nowhere near ready for any of it.

Jin sat cross-legged on the carpet, emptying the contents of a drawer into a cardboard box. For the moment, he’d abandoned stage makeup in favor of dark pants and a white T-shirt with the words
ACTORS DO IT ON CUE
in sparkling silver letters across his chest.

I rolled onto my side so I could see him better. “Holy crap, Jin, I think you have more clothes than me.”

“That’s easy to do when you have, like, the same seven outfits you just rotate through.”

“Hey, there are at least ten.”

“Sure. If you plan on wearing sweaters in the middle of summer.”

I tossed one of his pillows and it bounced off his head. His perfectly sculpted hair didn’t even waver.

“Now, now,” he said. “No need to get violent.” He picked up the pillow and hurled it back at me. I giggled and ducked. The pillow flew past my head and landed on his bedside table, knocking the photo that had been propped there to the floor.

“Oh, crap, Jin. I’m so sorry.” I scrambled across the bed and reached for the silver-framed picture.

Thankfully, it had fallen faceup, so the glass wasn’t even cracked. An ache rolled through my chest and into my stomach as I caught sight of the girl in the picture. I shoved the frame back on the table as fast as possible, turning it so it faced the closet and not me.

“It’s fine,” I said to Jin. “She’s fine.”

He paused, hand frozen in midair, a pair of purple socks dangling from his fingers. “Except, we both know she’s not.”

“Yeah. I remember.” My hand moved to my chest, trailing over my shirt, the ridges of the scars on my skin underneath pressing into the pads of my fingers like folds through the fabric.

For a moment, my friend and I regarded each other, unsure of what to say. Dammit. We’d somehow stumbled into “let’s never talk about this again” territory. Not talking about what happened to the girl in the photo was basically the reason I still had Jin as a friend.

Jin’s dark eyes broke away as he turned toward the door. I exhaled when I spotted his mom holding up a pile of folded boxers in the entrance to his room.

“You aren’t planning to go to school without underwear, are you?” she asked, placing the stack on the dresser. “These were sitting in the laundry room.”

Seeing Mrs. Tam next to her son was always a bit jarring. They somehow looked the same, yet different. If Jin had been standing, he’d have towered over her. He had her dark, spiky hair, but the only other color in hers was the odd strand of gray. They both had deep-set eyes and cheekbones you could sharpen a knife on. And they both resembled the girl in the picture beside the bed.

I clutched the collar of my shirt. Even though I’d turned her away, my back prickled like she was still watching me.

“Well, I’d thought about it,” Jin said. He then signed,
After all, I don’t plan on needing them much.

You’re wicked
, I signed back.
I can’t believe you say things like that in front of your mother.

She doesn’t know ASL. Besides, she knows who I am.
He spoke, “Right, Mom? Nothing I say would surprise you.”

Is that so?
I signed. I turned to his mother. “Mrs. Tam, would you like me to translate what your son just said to me?”

The tiny woman stepped forward and ruffled her son’s hair. His recently blued tips slipped through her fingers, the indigo bright against the cracks in her skin.

“That’s okay, dear. I have my ideas. But he’s a good boy.” Jin stuck his tongue out at me like a two-year-old who got his way, and I rolled my eyes. “Besides, as long as he is safe and ends up with a nice boy who makes him happy, that’s all that matters. I do not need to know the rest.”

I threw myself back on the bed as she left the room. “So, I’m all alone in this,” I moaned at the ceiling.

The mattress jostled, and Jin settled against me. I turned and met his eyes.

“You’re never alone, El,” he said. “You know that.”

I rotated onto my side and rested my head on my arm. “Except, I am. You’re going off to New York, and I have to start stupid Fernbrooke U on my own.”

“I’ve asked you like a billion times to come with me.”

I shuddered. “Me in New York? No, thanks. All those people pushing and shoving, rushing in every direction . . .”

“Your loss. From what I can tell, it’s an amazing city. Plus, it has some of the best theater in the world.”

Jin’s eyes took on that faraway look he got when he imagined himself performing on a Broadway stage or winning a Tony Award. That look was enough to stop me from begging him to stay in Fernbrooke with me, despite the way my nerves juddered at the idea of my only friend living so far away.

“Maybe I can get my parents to give me one more year,” I said. “They let me have last year to write. I mean, I’m on deadline for the last
VM
book. It’s understandable I’d need to finish that first.”

Jin combed a lock of hair off my face. “El, I love you, but you seriously need to get over this. College will be good for you. The freedom to figure out exactly who you are and what you want in life . . . I think this is exactly what you need.”

“You sound like my dad.”

“’Cause your dad and I want the best for you.”

I propped myself on my elbow. “I’m only asking for one more year. I’m not saying I’ll never go. The
VM
series will be done. I won’t have to worry about trying to write while I’m there . . .”

“El, you already took a year off. You’re practically going to be a senior citizen by the time you start.”

“Nineteen is not a senior citizen. Plenty of older people go to college. There are copious TV movies about women going back to school in their forties.”

“You’re definitely not waiting till you’re forty.” He sat up and pulled me with him so we were face-to-face.

You need to make some new friends, do some hot guys
, he signed.
I can’t bear the thought of you sitting alone in your room while I’m off partying in NYC. I can’t be your only friend. That’s just sad.

I know. But I’m scared. Remember senior year?

After a few years at a School for the Deaf, I’d tried to go to regular high school. My first week back, I’d waited till everyone had left the locker room after PE to change, but the moment I’d stripped down, another group of girls had come in. I didn’t see them until it was too late. They took one look at my scarred torso and freaked out, hiding their eyes like I was the Medusa or something.

I’d tried to ignore their disgusted stares during lunches or in the halls, but after a few weeks, I’d begged my mother to let me stay home. Despite my father’s protests, she’d agreed and quit her job to homeschool me.

That’s what kids do
, Jin signed.
They tease each other.

“You weren’t there,” I spoke, my throat cracking at the memory. “It was basically
Carrie
without the maxi pads and the telekinetic rampage that followed.”

“Okay, now you’re being overdramatic, and we both know that’s my area of expertise.” Jin placed his hands on my upper arms. “Besides, they were just jealous. You showed up at school after four years, and damn, you’d grown into your looks. You have this crazy gold hair they can only get from a bottle.” He touched my chin, raising my face to his. “And your eyes are so wide and blue, you belong in a freaking Disney movie, sitting by a window and singing to chipmunks.”

“Jin, stop.” I wiggled, trying to free myself from his inspection, but he held me in place.

“No, you need to hear this. You have this pouty bottom lip I think most guys would kill to kiss. And your figure is dynamite. You could stand to add a curve or two, but it’s still workable. I mean, if I went for girls, you’d definitely be on my radar.” He waggled his eyebrows at me and I giggled.

“You will meet someone who sees you the same way I do. Gorgeous in every way, though a little annoying when you try to tell her so. And college is the perfect place to do it.”

“But what if they laugh at me?”

“They won’t. If eighties movies have taught me anything, it’s that everyone will probably be too worried about their grades or going to the most popular party to pay attention to anyone but themselves. You’ll live with a person you’ll probably grow to hate in a ridiculously tiny space. You’ll be dwarfed by ginormous classrooms, and live off fast food and coffee. And, at some point, there will be a kegger that rages out of control or a secret society that tries to recruit you and make you perform embarrassing stunts in front of everyone.”

“You make it sound so appealing.”

The bed shook as he bounced up and down. “It
will
be amazing. All of it. Besides, you have a seminar with that author you like, right?”

“Duncan Creed.”

“Yeah, him. You’ll love that.”

I gnawed on my bottom lip. “I suppose . . .”

“You are going to have the best time. I promise. You know I’d never push you into something that would hurt you. You’ve been through enough. But it’s time to live, El. Time to stop hiding and show the world your gorgeous self.”

I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his chest, inhaling the scent of his newly washed shirt. He hugged me back, then kissed my forehead. I pulled away so I could sign,
I love you. I’m going to miss you.

He grinned and signed back,
I love you, too.
He formed his hand into a fist and pulled it away from his nose.
Dork.

I shoved him so hard, he fell onto the floor.

“Good girl,” he said, standing and tugging his dark jeans up on his hips. “Fight back when someone insults you. And now that I’m done imparting my infinite wisdom to you, you can help me pack as thanks. I’ve gotta get on the road soon if I’m going to make it to New York before tomorrow.”

“Fine, oh wise and self-absorbed one.” I hopped off the bed and bowed. “Thank you for making time for us more inferior people. Where should I start?”

“You finish emptying those drawers into that box. I’ll tackle the closet.”

“You know,” I said, kneeling on the floor, “you don’t need all these. You really
can
get away with only, like, seven outfits and rotate them.”

He tossed a ball of rainbow socks at my head.

•   •   •

Two hours later, I stood at the end of Jin’s driveway and watched his taillights until they disappeared down the road. As his yellow Bug left my sight, I wiped at my eyes and got into my car. Pressing my forehead against the steering wheel, I allowed the tears I’d been holding in the entire time we packed to stream down my cheeks.