Pop Princess (12 page)

Kayla's dancers arrived first, on instant suck-up to Kayla: “Girl, you look GORGEOUS,” and “Kayla, I got some new moves to show you—got some time for me tonight? These moves gonna be HOT on you,” and “Wonder girl, you fill out Kayla's dress GOOD.”

You knew a famous person had entered the room when the dancers, huddled in conversation, went quiet for a moment, then burst into excited whispers. Standing before Kayla and me in our receiving line was Freddy Porter, dreamy bleach-blond-haired, blue-eyed, six-foot-tall ex-B-Kid turned boy band member now turned solo singer—and he was all of eighteen years old. “Whoa—look what happened to Lucky's kid sister!” he said when he came up to Kayla and me. Lucky's “kid” sister was indeed all glammed up—wearing a she-can-barely-breathe tight black dress with a black lace corset top borrowed from Kayla, accessorized with the black spiked-heel ankle-ribbon shoes Kayla had bought me during our shopping adventure. My dirty blond-highlighted hair was ironed flat and my face was made up with pink champagne-colored glitter eye shadow and lip gloss, and big thick false eyelashes out to here, personally applied by Kayla's assistant Jules. Jules was a twenty-year-old beauty school dropout turned tornado-speed Edward Scissorhands celeb right-hand girl, the kind of assistant so talented she could arrange a house party stocked with a deejay, catered food, bar setup, and music industry celebrities on just a few hours' notice.

Freddy whispered into my ear, “You ready to pick up where we left off?” Why did he have to remember that embarrassing first kiss? Me age twelve, and him age fourteen, in a B-Kid dressing room. I saw myself in the large slanted mirror across Kayla's living room. My cheeks were crimson.

Luckily I didn't have to answer. J—simply “J”; no first name, no last name, no other letters in between—he of the syndicated morning drive time Top 40 radio program in the country, chimed in next to Freddy: “So you're the next sensation Kayla and Tig have been e-mailing me about, eh?” He scanned me up and down, head to toe—this seemed to be the new ritual for the day, inch-by-inch appraisal of Wonder Blake, commodity. With his black cashmere turtleneck and his discreet crew cut of thinning hair and his “eh?” J struck me as being like some prematurely balding Canadian newscaster for the teenybopper set. He grinned, like a bachelor uncle who didn't realize he was checking out his niece's friends: “You gonna give us a show tonight?” He did a fake little bump and grind, and I quite possibly blushed even deeper; my poor cheeks felt like they were on fire. I managed only to shake my head. J said, “You're gonna give me an exclusive on debuting your song, though, right?” Kayla nodded her head at me; I nodded my head at him. Wow, two minutes into meeting two big industry players, and I hadn't managed to stammer out an intelligent sentence. Any sentence, for that matter. Way to go, Wonder!

Freddy and J had a small posse of rapper and actor types trailing in after them, most of whom I vaguely recognized from music videos or jeans commercials, and their group went right to the bar in the corner of the living room, where a hired bartender was mixing drinks next to a deejay laying out albums to get the party started. Freddy said something into the ear of the deejay, who nodded appreciatively, then wham! funksoul music shake it down now was blaring from the deejay's speakers. A bevy of Kayla's female backup dancers hustled to the center of the room right on cue, and Freddy and J and their crew admired them from a distance before joining in with the male dancers who formed Kayla's entourage. Within twenty minutes of guests arriving, the dance area was filled with people, and dang, these folks made the dancers in
Dirty Dancing
look tame. It wasn't pop factory Kayla or Freddy Porter-issue music blaring at this party, it was strictly R & B, and these folks could get their groove on. They had Mary J. Blige, followed by Parliament, then some Chaka Khan—artists I recognized because Trina and Lucky had swapped R & B CDs for years. The deejay blared some old-school 70s song and folks broke out into a
Soul Train
-style dance: Two sets of dancers formed a line to sandwich a solo dancer grooving down the center, as they all clapped their hands to the beat and sang out,
“We're riding on a groove line tonight, oh ooh!”

Part of me wanted to join in, to show off my new moves. I could shake my ass down to the ground with my arms swinging in the air like nobody's business, except oh yeah maybe not in this way tight Kayla-size dress that I'd had to lie down on her bed in so that I could zipper up the side, and then be helped up by Jules while I sucked my stomach in and held my back straight as a board. Guests were dancing all over the living room now, beer bottles were popping open, chatter was rising, cigarettes were being lit, the music was getting louder and louder. Having introduced me to about everyone in the room, Kayla slapped my ass and said, “Sink or swim time, you're on your own, girl.” She flitted off, a drink in her hand, to chat up a big movie agent.

I felt my suffocating figure retreat into a corner of the room, toward the stairs, panicked. Kayla had it right when she'd tagged me “girl.” I shouldn't be here I thought—I was too young, in over my head, these people were all college age and older, half of 'em famous. I was out of my league; I couldn't even get a date for the Homecoming Dance in Devonport. I saw Kayla lean in to the agent—were they about to make out? No, he was lighting a cigarette for her. Kayla smoked? That was surprising from a health fanatic like her who'd guzzled liters of water and had only eaten steamed veggies and sushi during our day together.

Kayla was no longer paying attention to me: This party was
on.
I bolted up the stairs. Sink or swim? I choose RUN.

I reached the top of the stairs, saw a bathroom light on, and retreated inside. Breathe, breathe, breathe, I told myself. I splashed some cold water on my face and all but fainted when I looked up into the mirror to see an angry alien face with a brown head specked with green spots standing in the bathtub behind me. I turned around, shocked—there was Liam holding a towel around his waist with one hand and a very tattered and wet copy of
Anna Karenina
in the other. How had I not noticed the steam in the room, the half-closed shower curtain around the tub, the candles burning on the tub ledge, the . . . Wow, Liam was really tall standing up and had a nice assemblage of chest hair over what appeared to be extremely tight abs.

“Do you not knock, pop princess?” he said. “Or perhaps you didn't notice the rope at the top of the stairs which is
supposed
to signal to guests that this floor is off-limits?”

“I'm so sorry, I didn't realize . . . I thought Karl was out. . . . I didn't . . .”

“You okay, pop princess?”

“Excuse me, I have a name. That name is Wonder.”

“You're looking flustered there,
Wonder.
Only half an hour of a Kayla party did that to you? That may be a new record. You're gonna need more stamina than that if you want to hold your own with the Kaylas in this business.”

Like I needed to stand here and be insulted by his sarcasm dripping harder than the sweat down his stubble cheeks and framing his long brown eyelashes while I was trying to have a perfectly private panic attack. “Screw off!” I said. “What do you know anyway?” What a jerk! I marched back downstairs, ready to burn this party up.

Could I show that Liam!

I returned to the party from my little Liam encounter and headed straight toward Jules, who was carrying a tray of pink cocktail glasses. “Want one?” she asked, and I grabbed a glass brimming with a pretty pink liquid and a yellow lemon slice. I said, “Is that a pink lemonade?” Kayla chuckled from behind me and said, “Yeah, strictly Shirley Temples all around. No, dear Wonder, this is the great loosen-upper, the Cosmopolitan.” I took a taste—oh-my-yum! I said to Jules, “Aren't you supposed to card me for this?” and Jules laughed and pointed to Cop Judy: “That's her job.” Judy, having gotten the forty or so guests inspected and upstairs to the living area, acted immune to the blaring soul music as she stood guard at the door and protectively watched every move Kayla made from a discreet distance, but I saw her dowdy-loafer-wearing feet tapping up and down, back and forth. Cop Judy was feeling the groove of this party—who wouldn't, except possibly that awful Liam person?

I felt an arm around my waist. Freddy. He said, “Your turn to show us what you've got,” and after slurping down Cosmo #2, I
was
ready. Freddy pulled me into a get ur freak on dance groove and I was feelin' it for real, dancing my little heart out, letting Freddy press up close as Kayla's dancers crowded around me saying, “Mmm, that girl can
dance.”
Two songs later, guess who was get-down dancin' through the middle of the soul train line in the middle of Kayla's living room floor, powered by her new best friend, the Cosmopolitan? That person would be Wonder Anna Blake, as two lines of dancers sang out,
“Go Wonder! Go Wonder!”

After the fourth dirty dance, sweat running down my face, I needed a break. I plopped myself onto a sofa next to Kayla. Freddy plopped down next to me and draped his arm around my shoulder. “Wonder, Wonder, Wonder,” he said. “I always knew you were going to grow up to be the hot one.” I didn't know what to say to that—so I just didn't say anything. All of a sudden Freddy turned all respectful-guy serious, and said, as if to break the ice, “So tell me—college in your plans, or just hanging out with Kayla here and watching her hope you don't steal her thunder?”

I didn't dare giggle—though I wanted to, not because Freddy was funny but because my insides were now on full buzz. Kayla rolled her eyes at Freddy and said, “Wonder's not going the Dean route.” She was referring to another ex-B-Kid, Dean Marconi, or Dean Macaroni as Lucky and I used to call him because he was so pretentious—even at age twelve, when Dean Macaroni was performing Shakespeare in the Park, he'd acted like he was above all us other B-Kids. In the past year, Dean Macaroni had been nominated for an Oscar for his star supporting actor turn as a heroin addict, but Dean Macaroni was too good even for the Oscars. He had forgone attending the ceremony because of his midterms at Yale—luckily he'd made sure every newspaper and magazine in America knew it.

Kayla took Freddy's arm from my shoulder and replaced it with her own. “Wonder's going the Kayla route. Superstar!” She spewed out that last word like the mental Catholic schoolgirl from the
Saturday Night Live
skits, and got a laugh from Freddy and me.

“College,” I said. “Who needs that?”

“Yeah, that's my girl,” Kayla said, “We're enrolled at the University of Life. Besides. I don't know about you, Freddy, but after
Beantown Kidz
ended and I had to go back to school for a while, that was a rough scene. Once you've been on a TV show or whatever, you just cannot integrate back into a regular school, despite what any of them child stars from
The E! True Hollywood Story
say about how they popped right into high school after their shows were canceled and it was all hunky-dory. Gimme a roomful of shark agents and asshole record company execs with ice running through their veins before making me do another day of high school—snot rag girls whispering ‘B-Kid' behind my back—”

“Whoa!” Freddy said. He looked at the square glass in Kayla's hand. “How many of those drinks have you had, old girl?”

She snapped, “Don't call me old!” and her tone change was so abrupt I almost jumped in my seat. Kayla removed her arm from my shoulder and was on her way to the bar for a refill before I could say, Hey, high school sucked for me, too, I feel your pain! Then Freddy got up and chased down Kayla, caressing her waist, telling her he was kidding, she was so hot, she was so . . .

I ran back upstairs and barged into Liam's room. He was sitting at his desk, a laptop in front of him, with only a small desk lamp for light. He took off monster-sized headphones from his ears and just looked at me in that intense, witch-hazel-eyes way that must have been embedded in his genetic code. He grumbled, “I repeat, pop princess: Do you not know how to knock?”

I said, “Just because you have some weird unresolved or unrequited or I don't know what thing for Kayla does not mean you had to insult me before.”

He said, “Kayla! What does she have to do with it? You were the one invading my space. And may I say, I had to put on the headphones to drown out the cheers of ‘Go Wonder, Go Wonder' coming from downstairs, so I'm guessing you've relaxed a little since our last little encounter.” He moved closer to me, right up into my face—why did he have to smell all nice Ivory soap? He touched my cheeks—what the . . . ?—then pointed his finger at me like a schoolmarm. “Your face is all flushed. You've been drinking!”

“One Cosmo!” I said.

“One?”

“Maybe two. Why, are you gonna give me some earnest speech about not giving in to peer pressure?”

“My dad's been in the music business since I was born, so I think I'm qualified to tell you—those people downstairs aren't your peers, trust me. You're so naive in comparison to them it's not even funny. So lucky you, no speech from me. You're sure you only had two drinks?”

“Two! And I'm having a GREAT time!” I'd finished gulping a third Cosmo on the stairs up to his floor—honestly, those drinks were so good, they
did
taste like a Shirley Temple, just without the fizz, none of that hard blech taste I associated with the annual New Year's beer or whiskey Dad let me sip to prove to me how much I wouldn't like alcohol. My head was a little dizzy, but I felt
good.
No punk Liam was going to ruin my party with his bad-ass attitude.

“If you're having such a good time, why are you in here?”