In Real Life (7 page)

“It's a classic from the '90s. I've never seen it. But here's some shirt some guy wore in it.” Grace points to the wall where a red T-shirt hangs behind a panel of Plexiglas.

“Like someone would want to steal some old, sweaty T-shirt,” Lo says. “I wish we would have gotten a cool room, like
Pitch Perfect
or something. Do you think we can call down and have them switch us to the
Pitch Perfect
room?”

“Shut it, Lo.” Grace tosses her bag on the bed closest to the window. “You have a free room and you're going to like it. Even if it is decorated with sweaty T-shirts from a movie no one has ever seen.”

I sit on the edge of the chair in the corner and study my phone. It's four o'clock; three hours until Nick's show. I need to change and do my makeup and get some food and figure out how to get over to House of Blues and mentally prepare for life as I know it to be completely altered. Three hours should be enough time for all that. My knee jiggles up and down as I chew on the inside of my cheek.

Grace plops herself down on the bed and bounces while she studies me. “Okay, Hannah. I can see you panic-attacking over there. What's on your mind?”

“Well, House of Blues is at Mandalay Bay, and we figured out that's probably too far to walk, right? So we need to change and either drive or get a cab over there and we need to have dinner at some point because that McDonald's isn't going to hold me for much longer.”

“They have a bunch of great restaurants at Mandalay Bay,” Lo says, scrolling around on her phone. “It looks like there's a pizza place. How does that sound?”

“Perfect,” Grace says. “We get spruced up, we taxi over to Mandalay Bay—I don't even want to deal with driving—and we eat at this pizza place.” She leans over and pats me on the knee. “Then we go to the show.”

“We go to the show,” I say as I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. “We go to the show and we meet Nick.”

Grace had been pushing me about this since I let the crazy idea slip from my lips yesterday, but now she gets up from the bed and crouches in front of me, placing a comforting hand on my leg. “You okay?” she asks. “You sure you can do this?”

I don't know. Can I? Do I want to? I don't answer, and I stare at the window. I can't see the Strip from where I'm sitting, but I can see the Paris Las Vegas hotel next door. The Eiffel Tower, where the couple in reception likely got their huge drinks, pokes up into the sky. I'm in Las Vegas. I crossed a state line. I can't turn back now, can I? Does it matter at this point if I can't do this? I pull the clown penny out of my pocket and flip it around in my fingers.

Lo leans on the arm of the chair. “Can I say something you don't want to hear?”

I side-eye her, which she seems to take as encouragement to word vomit.

“I know I said this before, but I need you to listen. I know for sure you have some serious feelings for this guy. Like, more than just best-friend feelings.” She pokes at my penny, and I let it fall flat in my palm.

I don't say anything. I let this sink in.

She goes on. “I don't think you're ever going to have a boyfriend longer than a few months until you explore what those feelings are.”

Grace clears her throat.

“What?” I snap at her.

“I totally called it,” she says, all smug. “Nick is the reason you and Josh broke up.”

I roll my eyes. “No, that's not why.” I sound irritated, but the thing is—deep down, I feel like she may be right.

God, they're both right.

“So, what do you think?” Lo says. “Do you think you might have ‘more than friendly' feelings for Nick?”

“Like, ‘kiss his face with your face' feelings?” Grace grins.

I stick my tongue out at her, then turn to Lo and ask her, my voice serious, “But I haven't met him. How can I know if I have those feelings?” The truth is, I always have feelings when I think about Nick. My stomach flutters when I hear his ringtone. His familiar voice makes me happy, no matter what mood I'm in. And I scroll through his pictures so much, I'm sure the images are going to burn onto my phone screen.

But it's impossible to know if that will translate into reality. And I've spent all these years telling myself I don't want it to be reality.

“Well,” Lo says, “from the stories you've told me, I get the feeling he for sure has those feelings for you.”

“Really?” I stare down at the flattened copper clown face in my hand and think about the postcard it was once attached to, which now hangs on my bulletin board.
To my favorite ghost, I thought hauntings were supposed to be scary, but you make it fun. Love, Nick.
That was the first time I'd considered that Nick might think of me as more than a friend, and it wasn't the last, but I always push the possibility down deep. Because it isn't practical, Nick's having feelings for someone he's never met. Or my having feelings for someone who lives in another state.

I have no use for things that aren't practical.

“Well, then.” Lo gives me two quick pats on my shoulder; then she stands up and starts pacing the room. “We are going to make this work. This isn't going to be a friend meeting a friend for the first time. Oh no, this is going to be love at first in-real-life sight. We're going to make you look so hot, he won't be able to look away from you, and if all goes according to plan, he won't even be able to play guitar or whatever he does in this band, because he's going to have his hands all over you.”

Lo and Grace, spurred into action by a project, dig through my bag, dump out their makeup, and start putting into motion whatever crazy things they have come up with to make me look less like myself and more like some combination of the two of them.

Normally I would protest, but I'm distracted from the ridiculous pile of brushes and eye shadows scattered across the white comforter by this idea Lo left floating around the room. Could it be I do have feelings for Nick? Is it possible he has feelings for me?

I guess we'll see what happens.

And after four years of waiting, something is going to happen tonight.

 

CHAPTER

7

Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino is at the very south end of the Strip, a quick taxi ride from Planet Hollywood. Tall and golden, it's the first big hotel in the long, long line of lights and buildings, and House of Blues is inside. At the pizza place, I wolf down three slices and a third of a chocolate cake slice the server brings after Grace and Lo tell him it's my birthday while I'm in the bathroom. I'd never eat like such a pig under normal circumstances, but I don't even realize how many carbs I'm chowing down, because I'm so focused on Nick. Nothing else matters.

After dinner, we walk out to the casino and practically run right into the club. I know I'm going to have to do this now.

Legs shaking, I trail behind Lo to the box office. In front, Grace asks for three tickets to the show and shoves one in my unsteady hand.

“Ew,” she says. “Your hand feels like it was licked by a Saint Bernard.”

“Sorry.” I stuff the ticket in my back pocket and wipe my hands on the front of my new jeans. When we were getting ready, the girls deemed even Lo's hoochie attire unacceptable, and we ran down to the mall inside Planet Hollywood to get me an entirely new outfit. The low-cut sparkly tank top and tight jeans look amazing, but I don't feel like myself. It's like I'm walking around in someone else's body. But at least that body had the wherewithal to veto the sky-high heels Lo was trying to push in favor of sassy-yet-comfortable wedges. “I don't do this sort of thing every day. It's freaking scary.” “Scary” is an understatement. I wasn't even this shaky and unsure of myself before the SAT, and my entire future had depended on that test.

“I thought chocolate cake was supposed to calm me down,” I say to Lo. “I can't stop shaking right now.”

“Don't stress,” she says. She grabs my hand and we follow Grace to a roped-off line where a bouncer in a black polo shirt checks IDs. “Get out your ID,” she whispers to me through clenched teeth, pushing me in front of her. “Your new one.”

We rearranged our wallets on the drive in, hiding our real licenses behind library cards, school IDs, and Starbucks gift cards and putting our newly acquired identities in the clear plastic sleeves in the front.

I take a deep breath as Grace gets her ID checked by the bouncer and breezes through the line. I quickly consider pulling my real license out from its hiding spot and showing the bouncer that one. What will it hurt? The show is all-ages, so it's not like I won't be able to get in. The only benefit is the access to alcohol, and I'm not planning on drinking anyway.

But I remember Lo and Grace making fun of me for most of the drive from Fontana to Barstow when I said I had no fake-ID plans for this trip, and I decide to live a little and use it, even if it's making my heart beat so loudly, I swear the bouncer can hear it over the clamor of the casino. I promised them I'd let my hair down and have fun. And I think about all the crazy things I'd passed over during the last four years. Following the rules had been safe, but safe was boring. I pull that new ID out of my wallet, hold my breath, and hand it to the bouncer, trying with everything in me to keep my nervous hand steady.

He holds a flashlight up to the back of the card, then looks closely at the picture, up at me, then down at the picture again. He flicks the side of the card with his thumb, runs it through a little scanner, and says, “Riverside, huh? I have a cousin who lives out there.”

Panic floods me. He's going to ask me questions about Riverside, and I won't know the answers. I've never even been there. What's my fake name again? I'm going to get found out and arrested and hauled off to Vegas jail. The cops will call my parents and my school, and I won't be able to go to UCLA. Damn you, Lo and Grace and Aditi Singh! Damn you all for ruining my life.

I force a smile, but I'm sure it looks more like some creepy jack-o'-lantern face.
Improvise,
I think.
Fake it. Do something.
“Oh, yeah. I just moved out there a couple of years ago. Um, after high school.”

“Aww, too bad,” he says. “I was gonna ask if you went to school with her. Mercy Jordan?”

I shrug. “Nope. Sorry.”

He hands the license back to me and smiles as he wraps a paper wristband around my arm. “Oh well. Have a good time.” Then he turns to face Lo, who is right behind me, and he takes her ID.

Oh my God. I can't believe that worked. I used a fake ID at a casino in Las Vegas on spring break and got away with it. Who
am
I right now?

I snake through the ropes and linger around the still-empty merch table outside the door to the House of Blues with Grace, waiting for Lo. I try to update Grace on my success, but she elbows me. “Keep cool until we get inside.”

The bouncer guy seems to be staring hard at Lo's ID and asking her questions. Oh crap. I've been so worried about getting caught myself, I didn't even think about her and her stupid non-Mexican photo. I chew on my lip and try to look nonchalant, like a perfectly legal girl waiting for her perfectly legal friend, but inside, my stomach is doing a gymnastics routine and I'm imagining Lo being carried through the casino and tossed out the front doors.

“What year did you graduate?” the bouncer guy asks. Thankfully, Grace made us practice this sort of question in the car. He frowns at her answers, but his eyes flick up at the line of people growing behind her. He scowls at the line, scowls at Lo's ID, scowls at Lo—but then he hands her card back, slaps a wristband on her, and waves her through.

“What happened?” I grip tightly to Lo's arm, flooded with relief that she made it through the gauntlet to stand next to me.

“Did you see that?” she asks, keeping her voice low. “I thought I was busted for sure. He was sketching on my ID so hard.”

“I told you you should have picked a girl who was actually Mexican.”

“But this girl looks more like me than the Mexican girls!”

“Whatever. It worked. Did you hear him asking me if I knew his cousin?”

“I'm proud of you for coming up with that story about moving there after high school,” Grace says. “That ability to lie under pressure is a super-marketable Bad Girl skill. Now, let's go!”

The three of us walk into House of Blues, and I stop in my tracks as I'm assaulted by all the colors and sounds in the restaurant area. “Wow,” I say. “Look at this place!” The walls are covered with kitschy signs and sculptures and decorations that look like something you would use in a voodoo ritual. Loud pop-punk music blares from the speakers as people eat dinner and drink. We make a left to walk down the stairs under bright lights that spell out
SAY YEAH,
and I grip the railing, white knuckled, because my legs are shaking even harder now than they were outside. The downstairs space—stage against the back wall, bars lining the other three—is already starting to fill up with people sipping drinks and chatting with each other in groups in front of the stage area, even though Nick's band is the opening act and he told me he didn't expect anyone to show up for them. Moxie Patrol, the headlining band, isn't on for a few more hours, and Nick said they're the ones people care about.

But I don't care about Moxie Patrol. I only care that I'm inside the same room as Nick Cooper. I'm going to see Nick in person before the night is over.

There had been a merch table outside the doors, but it was just loaded up with boxes that contained T-shirts and CDs from tonight's bands. I didn't see Nick there, or anyone I recognized from his pictures online, so now my eyes dart from crowd to stage in search of him or someone who looks familiar from the many photos he's sent me. My heart pounds and my face heats up like it's on fire. I'm not sure if it's better if I see them or not. Either prospect is completely terrifying.