Wicked Jealous: A Love Story (30 page)

The Zumba Brigade was right—she had been trying to kill me all along.

A few hours later, I was in the middle of watching yet another episode of
Teen Mom
and thinking of how grateful I was that I had put the kibosh on Jason’s hands, because never in a million years would I want to end up like one of those girls, when Blush walked in the door.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hey,” I said. I hadn’t meant it to come out so frosty. The truth was, I couldn’t understand why I was so upset that he had brought Aleka to the gallery. It wasn’t like I
liked
him
liked him.

He walked over. “Why is there cake on the floor?” he asked, confused.

I looked down. “Oh. I thought I had gotten all of it,” I said as I got up and went into the kitchen for a broom and dustpan so I could sweep it up. “It was part of my anaphylactic shock performance.”

“Your what?”

He sat down, and I explained everything to him. About how after the guys left, I had asked Hillary if there were apples in the cake and she said no. About how I didn’t trust her and had pretended to take a bite. About how I pretended to have a severe allergic reaction, and she ditched me for a bikini wax.

“Oh, and there’s also the part how when we sat down, before any of that happened, I pushed the voice recorder app on my iPhone, so I’ve got the whole thing on tape for my dad. And the police,” I said.

“But you’re okay? You’re not hurt?”

“Nope, I’m fine. Never better.”

“You sure? I mean, how’d you even think to do all that?” Blush asked.

I shrugged. “I guess I’ve seen too many
Law & Order
episodes. I need to call my dad and tell him, but I’ve been putting it off.” I sighed. “He’s going to be bummed to know he’s engaged to an almost-murderer.”

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said. “And you should really call your dad and the police. She really is a lot to deal with. But Simone, I know that fight with Hillary is not the incident you were talking about earlier.”

I began to study the cuticle of my left thumb as if it held the answers to all the secrets in the universe. “Yes, it was.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

I looked up at him. “How do you know?”

“Because you did that thing you do when you’re lying, where you flip your right foot back and forth on the floor and pull at the top of your left ear.” Blush blushed and looked at his sneaker, as if the secrets of the universe were actually kept there rather than in my cuticle. “Not like I spend all this time studying you or anything like that. It’s just something I noticed once. Or maybe a few times.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t. It was something that happened with Jason.”

He joined me on the couch. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head and stared at the TV. “No.”

“Okay,” he said.

We watched TV for a bit without talking.

“Okay, fine. I’ll talk about it. Just for a little bit. Then I have to call my dad.” But because it was Blush, a little bit turned into a lot, which turned into the whole story.

As I told him how Jason kept trying to grope me, Blush got progressively madder and madder. Like to the point where he so did not look like the sweet puppeteer I knew and liked a lot, but more like the killer in one of the Sorority Girl slasher films. “Simone. You swear nothing happened?” he asked when I was done.

I nodded.

“He didn’t force you to do anything?”

I shook my head.

“Because if he did, that boy is dead.”

“Hey, give me some credit,” I said. “I’ve been all proud that I stood up for myself!”

He took my hand. “You should be proud! Big-time. It’s just that if I think of anyone hurting you—him, Hillary, whoever—I get so mad I can’t see straight. Simone, you know that you can wait as long as you want to do that stuff, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“’Cause any guy worthy of you is going to wait for you.” He cleared his throat and said something, but it came out so softly, I couldn’t hear him.

“What?”

He cleared his throat again. “I said—”

But his voice dropped so I still couldn’t hear him.

“Blush, I’m sorry, but I still can’t hear you.”

“I said, ‘I know I would!” he shouted.

I flinched. Boy did he have a set of lungs when he needed them. “You would what?”

He sighed. “Man, you are
not
making this easy. I would wait for you. Until you’re ready. Because . . . well, because you’re the most beautiful, coolest, funniest, strongest girl I’ve ever met.”

Wait. What? Was he saying what I thought he was saying? “But what about Aleka?” I blurted.

“Huh?”

“Aleka. From the place on Abbot Kinney. You’re seeing her now, right? I mean, you brought her to the gallery.”

He shook his head. “No. It was just that one date. She’s not my type.”

“So what is your type?”

He laughed. “Like I said, you are not making this easy. “
You
, Simone.
You
are my type.”

I was someone’s type. How about that? I looked at Blush. Sweet, tall, mumbling Blush, who, instead of earning millions of dollars a year playing basketball, wanted to use puppets to help the kids in the neighborhood in which he grew up. Blush, who knew when I was lying by looking at my feet, who listened to what I was saying, who made me feel more me when I was around him than when I was with anyone else. Blush, who would’ve liked me even back in my Tastykake days.

Blush, who was absolutely-positively-without-a-doubt my type as well.

epilogue

When you live in the capital of the moviemaking business, you get used to everything that goes along with that. The celebrities in the supermarket. Big trailers taking up an entire block of parking spots when they’re filming. Kids at your school going to movie premieres because their parents acted/directed/wrote them.

But having a movie made about your life was a whole other thing. Not like a movie made about you when you’re like ninety years old and have lived this insane life where you were a president or a country music star or a hostage in some war-torn country. Like a movie made about you about something that happened when you were almost seventeen. Like, say, your almost-stepmother trying to kill you with a slice of everything cake.

It all started when I finally played the tape for my dad later that night after Hillary tried to poison me. He started to cry, which, while sweet, was a little embarrassing. When we got to the police station, the cops were very impressed and grateful that I had been smart enough to tape the whole thing—probably because it meant less work and more doughnuts for them.

Because it was such a juicy story (and because Nicola tweeted/Facebooked/blogged about it incessantly for the next few months) the whole thing ended up going national. And my dad proceeded to apologize profusely at least ten times a day for the next six months (including during our flea market forays, which had begun again when Hillary left) for having allowed himself to fall under the spell of someone like Hillary. I even got flown to New York to be on
The View,
which was incredibly cool and gave me firsthand experience in understanding why people were always saying that that Elisabeth Hasselbeck woman was so annoying.

After that, the TV movie producers started calling. I wasn’t interested in a TV movie, especially when, in their pitches to me, more than a few of them were telling me that they wanted to take “some creative license” and make the reason that Hillary tried to kill me was because she and Jason had fallen in love. But then, one afternoon when I was in Watts watching Blush do one of his sold-out puppet shows (I had convinced him to go to the local Y and ask if he could try putting one on. It was a huge success, so he started doing more of them), I got an e-mail from the head of Olympus Studios saying that they were very interested in developing a movie based on my story as a possible vehicle for Stan Frank to direct and how it would be really classy and more like a Greek myth than some sleazy, ripped-from-the-headlines Lifetime movie.

It seemed like it might be a little weird to say yes, after what had happened between Jason and me—as I had predicted, when school started back up in the fall, whenever I’d pass Jason in the hall, he’d conveniently turn his head away so he didn’t have to talk to me. But I was still friends with Cheryl, and after Jorge had left Zumba in August to become a contestant on a new reality dance show, the class went downhill, which is why a few of us defected and started going to this new Kuumba Latin Dance Fever class with African drums. And I had really liked that conversation I had had with Stan at the gallery.

So I said yes, and a few months later I was sitting in one of those director chairs with a headset on watching and listening as Emma Stone played me. Obviously, she looked nothing like me, but
Easy A
was one of my favorite non-French films, and I really loved her voice because it was deep and gravelly. I even convinced Stan to let Brad do Emma’s wardrobe, and he did a great job. So good that he ended up having to close the store because he became so busy with his new career, which was too bad since Nicola and I lost our after-school jobs. But I did get some great stuff for the low, low price of 100 percent off at the going-out-of-business sale.

Being known as the “BFF-of-the-Girl-Whose- Stepmother-Tried-to-Kill-Her” got Nicola a lot of mileage—so much so that she turned her blog
Confessions of an Overachieving Underachiever
into a book. And, of all people, my dad then optioned it as the basis for a sitcom. He was finally so happy to be working on a show about real people instead of talking animals that he calmed down and didn’t take work as seriously. He even let people start fixing him up—with sane women—which is how he met Sarah, this nutritionist-slash-private-chef-to-the-stars. She is beyond awesome and taught me all about eating right for my particular body and blood type and, unlike Hillary, has no interest in trying to make my dad marry her. She always says she’s totally content to take things slow, partly because, according to her, she’s got some commitment issues to deal with.

As for Hillary, she ended up taking a plea bargain and a shortened sentence, since they couldn’t prove premeditated attempted murder (apparently, she was a much better actress than she was a D-girl). She tried to sell her side of the story, too, but apparently, not a lot of people want to do business with a convicted criminal. Even in Hollywood.

The premiere of the movie was amazing. I went with Blush, of course, and the rest of the guys met us there. Noob—once I freed his arm from in between the theater seats—told me he was a little disappointed about the guy who played him in the movie (“Is it just me, or did he seem
really
dumb?” he asked afterward), but overall everyone liked it. Even Thor. At the after-party Nicola and Max ended up getting into a lengthy discussion about egg rolls versus spring rolls, which led to a discussion about their mutual desire to travel to exotic places, which led to him friending her on Facebook the next day, which led to the exchange of phone digits and then texts, which led to his asking her if she wanted to go to the opening of a photographer named Hamish Bullocks who was known for his giant sculptures made out of toilet paper rolls

After the party Blush drove me home and we parked down the street and talked in the car for a while. Well, talked and made out.

But that was it. Strictly kissing. Nothing else.

Because according to him, I’m a girl worth waiting for.

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PROM.

The best dress. The best shoes. The best date. Cindy Ella Gold is sick of it all.

Her anti-prom letter in the school newspaper does more to turn Cindy into Queen of the Freaks than close the gap between the popular kids and the rest of the students. Everyone thinks she’s committed social suicide, except for her two best friends—the yoga goddess India and John Hughes–worshipping Malcolm—and shockingly, the most popular senior at Castle Heights High and Cindy’s crush, Adam Silver. Suddenly Cindy starts to think that maybe her social life could have a happily ever after. But with a little bit of help from an unexpected source—and the perfect pair of shoes—Cindy realizes that she still has a chance at a happily ever after.

“A big heart + an insanely keen sense of humor = exactly the sort of book I love to read!” —Lauren Myracle,
New York Times
bestselling author of
TTYL
and
Thirteen

PRINCESS, MEET FROG . . .

Dylan Shoenfield is the princess of L.A.’s posh Castle Heights High. She has the coolest boyfriend, the most popular friends, and a brand-new “it” bag that everyone covets. But when she accidentally tosses her bag into a fountain, this princess comes face-to-face with her own personal frog: self-professed film geek Josh Rosen. In return for rescuing Dylan’s bag, Josh convinces Dylan to let him film her for his documentary on high school popularity. Reluctantly, Dylan lets F-list Josh into her A-list world.But when Dylan’s so-called Prince Charming of a boyfriend dumps her flat, her life—and her social status—comes to a crashing halt. Can Dylan—with Josh’s help—pull the pieces together to create her own happily-ever-after?

“The perils of popularity are showcased in a lighthearted contemporary novel filled with snappy dialogue.” —
Publishers Weekly

WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF?

When Sophie Green goes to spend Spring Break at her grandmother’s house in Florida, she never dreams she’ll end up catching the eye of the hottest guy she’s ever seen. As much as Sophie craves excitement, she’s a seat belt–wearing, three-square-meals-a-day, good girl at heart. . . . She doesn’t even have the guts to wear Dark as Midnight nail polish. But Sophie dreams of being the girl who isn’t afraid to live on the edge. So when a motorcycle-riding hottie calls her “Red” and flashes her a wolfish grin that practically screams Danger, what else is a nice girl to do but jump at the chance to walk on the wild side?

“Robin Palmer takes a classic fairy tale and spins it on its head!
Little Miss Red
is funny and full of heart. You won’t be able to put it down.”—Jen Calonita, bestselling author of the Secrets of

My Hollywood Life series and
Sleepaway Girls