Gettin' Lucky (9 page)

At this, Marcus only grunted.

I laughed, and Elliot winked at me. Which made me laugh even harder. It was a nice feeling, laughing so much, I was afraid I might pee in my pants (I didn’t). I mean, it had been a while since I’d laughed like that.

It was only later that I realized how completely atypical Elliot’s behavior—the winking, the joking, the speaking up in a group setting—really was. From the little that I knew of him, he was more of a shrinking violet than a snapdragon.

Maybe he was changing. Maybe we all were.

Knock on wood, that was.

“Venus is in retrograde?”

Kelly squinted over my shoulder as I tapped away at her computer. I’d stuck around after the game ended to help her clean up, and then we’d decided to update the website. Now that the horoscopes were up, I was into keeping them current. I mean, as someone who took those things pretty seriously, I wanted my readers to be able to trust the information I was giving them.

“Yup, it’s retro-licious,” I said. “Bad news. It’s pulling backward. Everyone’s love lives are going to get all wonky. ’Cause, you know—Venus, with the … love …”

Kelly nodded skeptically. “I can’t believe how much you buy into this stuff.”

“Not just me,” I reminded her. “You’re the one who said that your site had, like, a million extra hits since you posted the horoscopes.”

“Fair enough,” Kelly agreed. “I have to give the public what they want.” She rolled her eyes.

“Come on,” I prodded her. “Obviously I’m reading this stuff the best way that I know how. I mean, clearly I would rather
that Venus keep its retrograde off of my own love life. I’ve had more than enough love retrograde for one semester.”

“Seriously,” Kelly said. She paused for a beat, then added, “Ugh.”

“I second that,” I said.

For a moment the mood threatened to darken, which so wasn’t my intention. “Uhuh,” I said, shaking my head. “No moping.” Tonight I’d had almost-pee-in-your-pants laughter, after all. That was momentous. No way was I going to get all serious and depressy again. “We have to do something—something other than feeling sorry for me,” I announced. “This is Vegas. There must be something going on somewhere.”

A sly smile crept across Kelly’s lips. “I have a thought,” she said slowly.

Thirty minutes and a judicious application of DuWop Original Lip Venom later, and we were ready to put Kelly’s plan into action. Or, at least, Kelly was. I had my doubts.

“This is never going to work,” I whispered to her through clenched teeth.

“It will if you just act cool,” she said, poking me in the ribs. “Quit freaking out.”

“It is very difficult to act cool when one’s
lips are on fire,” I pointed out. The Lip Venom was making my mouth sting.

“Beauty is pain,” Kelly said. “And you look hot.”

When I’d suggested that we do something fun, Kelly had lit right up. Turned out that she was as much of a pop-culture fanatic as I was—not too surprising, given that she was in the film elective with me.

I should have asked. If I had asked outright what other sort of hobbies she had, I would have figured out a lot sooner what a slave she was to celebrity gossip. “I have a total tabloid fetish,” she confessed to me. I mean, Kelly was, like, my long-lost BFF, or something.

Anyway, Kelly had read the latest
In Touch
(I was still making my way through
Star—
I was sorta behind this week) and knew that a certain young celebutante prone to man-stealing, table-dancing, and occasional fits of guest DJ-ing was in town tonight. She was staying at the Wynn, in one of their swankiest VIP suites. And, if history served, she was
definitely
going to hit the clubs tonight.

Kelly was dying to get a picture of Celeb for her website. Hence the Lip
Venom—which was seriously making my lips twitch—and our outfits: super-skinny jeans, sparkly halters, sky-high peep-toe shoes, and makeup to rival a Vegas drag show. We were standing on line, waiting to get into Tao. Celeb
loved
Tao.

So, it seemed, did about thirty thousand other hopeful would-be clubbers.

“I still can’t believe you just had these clothes in your closet,” I mumbled. To say that they were not Kelly’s usual style was a vast understatement.

“It’s like a costume,” Kelly said, shrugging. She pointed at my feet. “I still can’t believe you’re managing to walk in those.”

Kelly’s feet were a size bigger than mine; I’d stuffed the heels of the shoes with toilet paper.

“Yeah, well, where there’s a will, there’s a way,” I noted.

“You look fabulous,” Kelly assured me. “I guess blondes really do have more fun. Now, concentrate on looking older,” she instructed.

“My boobs are hanging out on display for half the city. I’m not sure what else I can do that would compete with that,” I replied. If I didn’t look older, at least I
looked sluttier. Which at least gave me that much more in common with Celeb. I shook my head. “Aren’t you worried that your parents are going to kill you when they find out?”

“Why would you assume that they’ll find out?” Kelly asked, genuinely baffled. “They both work late on Fridays. We’ll be back home before they’re even off.”

I nodded. My own father was working late as well, and had been so psyched for me when I asked to stay over at Kelly’s that I was actually a little bit embarrassed.

The bouncer at the head of the line beckoned toward us. Kelly grabbed my wrist but wisely refrained from shrieking triumphantly.

“Just you two?” he asked once we were standing in front of him. Kelly nodded as I stood very straight and concentrated on looking as much older as I possibly could.

The bouncer gave us another suspicious once-over but must have decided that he liked what he saw. My slutty outfit was working for me, that was for sure. “Aright,” he said finally, looking extremely serious. “You’re in.” He stamped both of
our hands and hustled us inside to the protests of a group of less fortunate guys standing behind us.

Inside, the club was a dark sea of writhing bodies. The air was humid, and trance music pounded. “Soothing,” I said to Kelly jokingly.

She peered at me. “What?” she asked, tugging at her ear.

I shook my head. It wasn’t worth it.

This place hadn’t changed since the last time I’d been here. In July, Alana’s father had booked a VIP booth for a bunch of us for Alana’s sixteenth birthday. We’d had to wear humiliating bracelets that declared our under-agedness to the world, but otherwise, it had been an awesome night. We drank sparkling cider, danced, and in general acted incredibly fabulous. I’d spent the night with Alana on one side of me and Jesse on the other.

Ugh.

Kelly caught sight of my expression and shook her finger in my face disapprovingly. “We agreed not to be serious!” she said, struggling to be heard over the music.

“You’re right,” I said. I shook it off. “So what’s our game plan?”

Kelly put her mouth right up to my ear. “I think the quickest way to get kicked out would be if we were to try to get served drinks. So I say we skip that.”

I nodded. “Sound thinking.” Getting kicked out would be a waste of some hardcore primping.

“There are only a few places she’d be. One: the VIP section. Which we can’t get into, but we can still stalk.”

“Check. Stalking. No prob. I have no shame.”

“We should also case out the bar. If she’s not actually dancing on top of it, there’s a decent chance she’ll at least be draped over it.”

“She does love her Tab energy,” I agreed.

“And if all else fails,” Kelly finished, “we’ll just have to stake her out at the ladies’ room.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’ve given this some thought.”

Kelly winked. “I’m no amateur.”

True to its name, the VIP section was not open to the huddled plebeian masses. An enormous football player of a security guard
waved Kelly and me away before we could even get within spitting distance.

“Ridiculous,” Kelly said, wrinkling her nose distastefully. “Like anyone in there would even care. I mean, we’re not autograph hounds or anything.”

“Um, no, just two girls looking for a photo op so we can slap a picture of a famous person online,” I replied, gently pointing out the slight flaw in Kelly’s logic.

“Whose side are you on?” she grumbled.

“Yours, babe,” I said, pointing at my extremely overexposed chest. “I don’t dress like this for just anyone.”

We wandered over to the bar, but even in the crush of over-excited high rollers, we could tell that Celeb was nowhere in sight. There was a conspicuous lack of blond roots and anorexic hangers-on.

I worried about getting any closer to the bar. I turned to Kelly. “Bathroom?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

The line to the ladies’ room rivaled the line we’d had to wait on to get into the club. Everyone on it looked various degrees annoyed, impatient, uncomfortable, or chemically altered.

Suddenly, Kelly grabbed at my elbow.

“Ow!” I whirled around to look at her. Her death grip was cutting off my circulation. “Yes?”

She leaned her head to mine. “It’s
her,”
she whispered through clenched teeth.

“Where?” I whipped my head to the right and to the left, craning my neck for a view.

“Be cool,”
Kelly commanded, now actually digging her nails into the flesh of my forearm. “Eleven o’clock.”

“Eleven o’clock, what? Kelly, it’s twelve fifteen.”

“No,” Kelly hissed, finally, blessedly, letting go of my hand to tilt my head over to her right. “Eleven o’clock.”

“Oh. Right.” Of course. Eleven o’clock. There she was-dead center, completely obvious to anyone who was slightly less clueless than me. She was in full-party mode: the blond hair cascaded down her back in heattreated ringlets, the silver minidress shimmered with her body’s slightest move. The logoed handbag screamed, “Notice me!”

How could we not?

Kelly reached into her purse and slyly slid out her phone, flipping it open and
switching on the camera mode. We crept forward silently, stealthily. It was all very James Bond-meets-Liz Smith. I was totally proud of us.

“Say ‘cheesy,’” Kelly singsonged. She darted forward so that she was standing just in front of Celeb.

She clicked her phone.

The flash exploded.

Celeb screamed.

“Uh, now might be a good time to go,” Kelly suggested. She grabbed at me again—this time, I was grateful—and we fled the scene. In the distance, Celeb was shrieking about lawsuits and paparazzi, and we
so
didn’t need to get caught up in that.

We made it to the elevator and collapsed into it, laughing.

“I can’t believe we found her!” I gasped. “I can’t believe you got the picture.”

“Yeah,” Kelly agreed, giggling maniacally. “I guess sometimes you just get lucky.”

Eight

“You two are shameless.”

Elliot slurped down on his soda and shook his head disapprovingly at Kelly and me from his perch across the table from us. “Pathetic,” he added, emphatic.

“Because we’re fame-stalkers?” Kelly asked, incredulous. She toyed with her French fries. “Please. If chasing after celebrities is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.” She flashed a giant grin at Elliot and chomped down on a fry for emphasis.

“It’s a total invasion of privacy,” he said.

“Yeah …,” I agreed, “but it was fun.”

After our little A-list stakeout, Kelly and I had gone back to her apartment. We changed into comfy clothes and gorged on
chocolate chocolate chip ice cream while we uploaded the photo on the website. It was awesome; Celeb in all her borderlinehysterical, red-eyed frenzy. I was proud of us.

We’d had an impromptu sleepover and slept in the next morning. When we did finally rouse ourselves, we’d decided a late brunch was in order. The Venetian did a great buffet, Kelly promised me. We called Elliot to invite him to join. “Otherwise, he’ll never leave the house, and that’s just too sad,” Kelly explained. “Weekends are his time for”—she lowered her voice dramatically—
“studying”

I shuddered. We must save him from himself.”

As it turned out, Elliot hadn’t so much thought that he needed saving, but we were able to persuade him to meet us through a creative interpretation of the truth.

“So, you guys wanted to talk about the film project?” Elliot asked now, pushing his soda aside and revisiting the BLT that was languishing on his plate.

Ah, yes. The film project; aka our decoy for getting Elliot out on a Saturday afternoon.

“Here’s the deal,” Kelly hedged.

“Yes?” Elliot asked suspiciously.

“We were thinking that rather than, you know, getting to work on the nitty-gritty of the project, that we’d, um … spend today doing some research.”

“Define ‘research,’” Elliot demanded. You could tell he was kind of onto us at this point.

“There’s a Tarantino festival on at the Screening Room, starting at three,” I chimed in brightly.

Elliot sighed. “That’s really not the same thing as working on our project.”

“Elliot, I said, my voice deepening with passion, “Tarantino changed the face of modern filmmaking. It’s
imperative
that we familiarize ourselves with his technique.” Kelly and I had rehearsed this argument.