Theodora Twist (3 page)

He reaches past me into the fridge and grabs the leftover apple pie from dinner. He flashes another awkward smile, then disappears into his study.

I hear Sophie, my one-year-old sister, crying upstairs. Stew does not emerge from his study. I know that my mom is napping. Stew knows that my mom is napping. They both know that Sophie is teething and wakes up a few times between bedtime and the crack of dawn.
Hang
on, Soph, I’m coming. We can cry together.

But before I even hit the steps, my mom is coming down, Sophie in her arms. My mom looks exhausted. I love my baby sister, but if the government or schools or whoever is looking for a way to reduce the rate of teen pregnancy, a baby brother or sister at age fifteen will blast the idea of unprotected sex right out of anyone’s head.

My mom yawns. It’s just after eight p.m. on a Saturday and she can barely keep her eyes open. She’s wearing sweats—fun pink ones that I bought her for her birthday three months ago—but they’re stained with spit-up and sweet potato puree. She’s lucky she has gorgeous straight light brown hair—it always looks perfect. “I thought I heard Zach’s voice before I fell asleep,” she says. “But when I passed by your room, I heard Belle and Jen talking.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t even want to talk about it.

“Em?” she says. “You okay?”

I want to fling myself into her arms, but Sophie starts fussing. My mom jiggles her a bit. Sophie is now screaming her head off.

“Emily,” Stew calls from his den. “Can you go soothe Sophie back to sleep? Your mom’s taking a nap. Thanks, hon.”

No,
you’re
taking a nap,
I want to yell. I roll my eyes at my mom, and she gives me the “you just don’t understand how hard he works/how exhausting it all is” look.

I try to understand. I really do. But I don’t get any of it. What happened to being
happy,
which was the whole point of marrying Stew in the first place? For months after meeting him, my mom walked around with a sappy smile on her face, saying for no reason at all: “He makes me so happy, Emily!”

Which made
me
happy. In a previous life, my mom, Stephie Stewarts, was a high-powered Manhattan corporate lawyer named Stephanie Fine. She was always busy, but always happy. Then my dad (a high-powered corporate lawyer named Alexander Fine) died, and my mom’s entire world came to a screeching halt. She took leave from her job and just cried. All day. All night. My grand-parents (both sets) tried to get her to join a bereavement group, but she wouldn’t.

I
did, though. A guidance counselor at school told me that a senior had formed an after-school club for grieving students. She called it the Lost and Found club and noted on the flyers that anyone suffering a loss was welcome, whether that loss was a parent, a friend, or even a pet. What you were supposed to
find
was simply support. And thanks to the two girls and three guys in the Lost and Found club when I was twelve, I wasn’t too much of a mess. And I was able to help out my mom as much as she’d let me.

Almost three years later, she met Stew. A friend dragged her out to a book club meeting, and Stew Stewarts took one look at her gray sweats and the dark circles under her eyes and fell madly in love. Go figure. They dated; she started smiling. Singing in the shower. Walking around commenting on how happy he made her. If she was happy, I was happy, even if Stew wasn’t my dad and never would be. Several months later, they were crib shopping, making lists of baby names, and spending their evenings saying, “Madison and Grace are so last year. How about Hermione?”

What was
I
doing? Strangely enough, I renewed my membership in the Lost and Found club, which I’d stopped going to after a year and a half. I thought I was doing okay.
Handling my grief.
But when my mom and Stew sat me down (I would have rather heard it from my mom first) to tell me I was going to be a big sister (as though I were a five-year-old) and that they were getting married and had made an offer on a big old Victorian across town, I went to a Lost and Found meeting the next day and cried for forty-five minutes to six strangers, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in the club. You can also yell, throw things (at a certain section of the room), or not say a word. In the year and a half since my mom and Stew’s quickie wedding in our old backyard, I went from mopey member to tissue-dispensing leader. Right now we have two parental deaths, one parental abandonment, one pet death, one runaway older sister, and one best friend abandonment. Not everyone comes every week. But I’m always there, just in case.

“Thanks, Em,” Stew calls out at the silence in the house.

I shake my head and wait for my mom to at least roll her eyes or make a joke about Stew’s cluelessness, but Sophie fusses a bit and my mom bounces her in her arms, then heads toward the living room. I want her to turn around, ask me what’s wrong again, put her arm around me. Something. Anything. But she just walks away.

“Zach broke up with me,” I whisper to her back.

She whirls around. “What? When?”

“Fifteen minutes ago,” I say, comforted by her concern.

She lets out an annoyed breath. “Emily, if you knew it wasn’t serious between you two, I wish you hadn’t dragged me to the mall last Saturday to buy a two-hundred-dollar dress for the prom.” She shakes her head. “Money’s tight right now on just the one income, and I could have used a break instead of running around from store to store. And Stew had to watch Sophie on his day off.” More head shaking. More annoyed face.

Poor Stew! He had to babysit his own daughter!

And I
thought
my mother enjoyed our shopping trip as much as I did. Guess not.

Last Saturday, just after my mom put Sophie down for her nap, I asked if she’d mind going prom dress shopping with me.

“You have a date?” she said. “How exciting!”

“Well, he hasn’t asked yet, but I’ve been seeing Zach for a week, like every day. He even referred to himself as my boyfriend. It’s just a matter of time till he brings up the prom—or I do.”

For a second she looked like she was going to cry. “Oh, Emily. I am so sorry that I didn’t even realize you had a boyfriend. God, I’ve been wrapped up in Sophie, huh?”

“It’s okay, Mom.”

“No, it’s not okay. Give me five minutes to get out of these sweats and put on some lipstick and we’re off.”

I had the best time. It was just the two of us, no Stew, no Sophie, just me and my mom, talking, sharing, laughing, like it used to be.

I stare at her for a second, then run upstairs.

“Emily,” she calls. “Emily, wait.” I hear her walking to the stairwell. “Em, come on downstairs. Let’s talk. I can’t just leave Sophie on the floor and I need to get her back to sleep—”

“Just forget it,” I call down. “I’m fine. Belle and Jen are here.”

Thank God.

Theodora

The next reporter is my last. She doesn’t get personal. No questions about how many guys I’ve been with (or in what combinations). No questions about my relationship with my mother or how many calories I ingest daily. It’s insane that the shoes I wear or what I think about the president or who I’m dating is of national interest, but it is, apparently. Last week I bought a brown leather bracelet for four bucks from a street vendor in New York City, and the next day, six magazine editors called Ashley to arrange shoots for photo spreads:
Theodora Wears the
Hottest Trend in Jewelry!
Unbelievable. I wonder what would happen if I started walking around naked.

My entourage returns just in time to hear me give Ashley-proofed answers to the final few questions. Ashley is yakking on her cell; my publicist is schmoozing with the reporter; my personal assistant, Larissa, a tall, jumpy twenty-something with really long hair, is pulling out my walk-around-the-hotel disguise from the giant bag she carries everywhere. Having a personal assistant is as great as it sounds, by the way. If I’m sunbathing in my backyard and want a Diet Coke, I call her and she appears from her office in my house with an icy bottle. I don’t actually deal much with Larissa, since Ashley is the one who schedules her days.

Someone takes off the tiny mike clipped to my dress. The director’s assistant pokes her head in to tell me the cast and crew party starts at ten. Great. That only leaves me one hour with Bo and Brandon. After tomorrow I won’t see them for months.

If a reporter ever asked me a real question, such as: Are you in love with Bo and Brandon? Either/or? I’d be so tempted to give the real answer, which is a big fat
yes.
I know that sounds a little crazy, being in love with two guys—brothers—but they’re so alike that it’s impossible to love one and not the other. I met them together (we were presenters at an awards show) and I fell for them together. When I’m with Bo and Brandon, I don’t think. Ever. I just
feel.

Larissa hands me my disguise: an ugly wig of mousy brown wavy hair, nonprescription horn-rims, jeans, a khaki blazer, and a string bikini (much more comfortable than the underwire bra I’ve been trapped in). My sticky tape is beginning to itch. I can’t wait to put on my tiny white tank top and white yoga pants and bare feet when I’m back in my room.

But first I have to get through the fake “you were so great’s” and all the air kisses, including European style on both cheeks, even though everyone in the room is American. Ashley can’t make the cast and crew party, which means I’m free to be me.

“Be a good girl,” she says, slapping me on the ass on her way out, her own personal assistant trailing after her.

Freedom! I head into the private bathroom to change, then race out of the press area, my disguise saving me. The hotel is packed, but no one gives me a second glance. I get in the elevator with a waiting crowd and stand in front of the laminated poster of
Family.

“Stop biting your nails!” a woman whispers at the teenage girl sulking next to her. “Jesus, Carrie, would you stand up
straight
? Why are you slouching?”

I have a better question: Why are you ragging on your daughter in a tiny elevator with four other people in it?

The girl rolls her eyes at me.
I hear you, sister.
Why are mothers so incredibly annoying?

“Do you like Theodora Twist?” I ask her.

She barely glances at me and nods.

I reach into my bag for a couple of the free movie passes the producer gave me to the special sneak preview tomorrow night. I hand her two.

“Wow—thanks!” she says. And immediately straightens up.

The elevator opens onto my floor and I race to my room. Bo is lying on my bed, his hands behind his head, watching MTV. Brandon is in the comfy chair. . . reading a book? No, it can’t be. I look closer. Yup, it’s a book. The unauthorized biography of the Bellini Brothers.

“Hi, I’m a crazed groupie and I’ll do anything you want,” I say, grinning at them.

“Sorry, but there’s only one girl for us,” Bo drawls in his Texas accent.

Some people have trouble telling them apart, but not me. Bo’s eyes are slightly bigger than Brandon’s; his entire face is somehow less intense. Both Bellinis are so good-looking that you just have to stare at them for a little while. I once told them that and they both said it was the same thing with me.

I start a slow striptease, taking off the nerd glasses and blazer. “I have an hour before the party.”

Bo shoots me a dazzling smile. “Let’s drive to the beach. It’s a skinny-dipping night.”

It is. Hot and humid. In moments, we’re all wearing disguises—glasses, wigs, baggy shirts and pants. You’d never know what’s underneath. We slip downstairs, unrecognized, and take Bo’s Lexus to the beach, which is just the way we like it: dark and deserted. We walk until we’re around a bend. I glance up and down the beach, up in the trees, behind the dunes. Good. No people. No paparazzi. No problems.

Bo and Brandon strip, leaving their stuff in a heap on the sand. They have the most amazing six-pack abs. Bo unties my bikini top, then twirls it around on his finger and runs into the water.

“Come get it,” he says, laughing.

I go running toward him, the cool water so refreshing against my skin. The last two days disappear and all I feel is
me,
Dora Twistler, Theodora Twist. I dive in and come up for air with nothing but the guys I love and the twinkling night sky surrounding me. Bo’s swimming toward me, holding up my bikini top, licking his lips. Brandon kisses me, then reaches under the water and tugs off my bikini bottom. And then I feel his—

A flashbulb stops us cold.

We all dive underwater, but it’s not like we can hide there for long without, say, drowning. The paparazzi have us trapped. We have no choice but to stay in the water, our backs to the shore, so that they can’t get our faces. But one of them already got something. And a picture of Theodora Twist frolicking naked in the ocean with the Bellini Brothers? It’s a million-dollar shot. Bo hands me my bikini top under the water and it takes me forever to get it on. Brandon puts my bikini bottom on for me. I can only hope there isn’t a photographer in scuba gear underwater.

We surface and I back out of the ocean so that the jerks can’t get a shot of my face. There’s an explosion of flashbulbs. I grab Bo and Brandon’s pants and carry them back to them. Ever tried to put jeans on underwater? Bo and Brandon are pissed. Some goodbye. Cut short by a flashbulb.

And worse: Ashley is going to kill me.

Emily

Zach and Chloe Craven are holding hands at school on Monday morning. I can’t take my eyes off their entwined fingers. Zach never held my hand at school. In fact, he didn’t talk to me much at school. Almost like . . . he didn’t want anyone to know we were a couple.

“Duh!” I mutter into my locker. “I am such an idiot. Why didn’t I know he was totally using me?”

“
Trying
to use you,” Belle points out, squeezing my shoulders.

That’s something, at least. He tried and tried and got nothing but boring conversation. Those thirteen days were probably the longest and dullest of his life.
All I
wanted was sex, and not only didn’t I get it, but I had to listen to her talk. . . .