Geek Charming (9 page)

“I bet no one treats Quentin like this,” I grumbled as I juggled the bags and the camera and I opened the door. Once inside I plopped down on an overstuffed chair and tried not to cringe from the techno music that was blaring through the speakers as the girls rifled through the clothing racks. I took out the camera and panned around the store. So
this
is where popular girls spend their afternoons. I felt like I had found the secret passage to the inner sanctum.

“Are you with the paparazzi?” sniffed the salesgirl whose pale skin and dark lips made her look like Morticia from the classic TV show
The Addams Family
.

“No. I’m a director,” I said proudly.

Her snooty look was replaced by a smile. “Oh yeah? I just happen to have a copy of my headshot and acting reel in my bag.” She gave me what I guessed was supposed to be a sexy look, although it was more like she needed to go to the bathroom. “I’d love you to take a look when you have a moment.”

“Oh. I’m not—I mean I’m still in high school. This is a documentary I’m doing to get into film school—”

She walked away before I could even finish my sentence.

Dylan came out of the dressing room wearing a dress that looked like a Hefty garbage bag with armholes. “Okay—you can start filming now.”

With the camera in one hand, I used the other to reach into my pocket and pull out the list I had made during physics class entitled “Questions to Ask Popular People.” It was a little trashed, due to the fact that I had spilled salsa on it that afternoon, but it was still readable. “What would a typical night out for a popular couple be?” I read from the list, before looking up at her. “What do you and Asher usually do?”

“You mean when he’s not off at those stupid Ultimate Fighting things?” asked Lola as she came out of her dressing room dressed in something that looked half spacesuit/half army uniform.

“He doesn’t do that
every
weekend,” replied Dylan.

Hannah came out wearing something that looked like a nun’s habit. “When was the last time you guys even hung out?” she asked.

“We hang out all the time,” said Dylan defensively. “We hung out . . . three weekends ago!”

“You mean that night that he was supposed to meet you at Heidi Lehmann’s party and didn’t show up until ten and then only stayed for fifteen minutes?” Lola retorted.

I just kept moving the camera back and forth like I was at a tennis match, trying not to look too excited. Catfights always helped heighten the drama of a film.

“Excuse me for not being one of those girls who’s so insecure she needs to be with her boyfriend twenty-four/ seven,” Dylan huffed as she marched over and put her hand on the camera lens. “Okay, you need to cut.”

“Ow,” I said as the camera bopped me in the nose again.

She put her hands on her hips. “Rule number 876: no talking about my relationship on camera. Some things need to remain private and personal.”

“Especially when they’re, like,
ending
,” said Lola quietly.

“What?” Dylan snapped.

“Nothing,” Lola said as she disappeared back into her dressing room.

“Okay, I think we’ve had enough for today,” Dylan said as she marched back to her own.

Hannah walked up to the camera. “You’re not going to put that part in, are you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Because it just makes us as popular girls look . . . I don’t know . . .
bitchy
. And we’re so not.” She leaned in closer. “You probably won’t get this because you’re a guy, but seeing that the three of us are best friends, we’re on the same cycle and it’s, you know,
that time of the month
, so we’re all a little oversensitive
.
I mean, as you know, usually we’re super sweet. Well, maybe Lola isn’t, but Dylan and I are.”

So much for loyalty among friends.

“So will you keep this part out?” she whispered. “Because even though I don’t come across as bad, I don’t want to be thought of as a bitch because I’m friends with them, you know?”

“How about I think about it?” I whispered back.

“That would be great,” she said with a smile before she ran off to her dressing room.

 

Even with our Just-Because-It’s-Thursday-Again-Get-70-Percent-Off sale, work was still dead the next day. I spent most of my shift trying to convince an elderly couple that it wasn’t that their ungrateful daughter-in-law had given them a defective laptop, but, rather, they needed to turn it
on
first in order for it to work. At 6:30, as I was getting my stuff out of my locker at work and about to head over to the New Beverly for a double feature of the Chinese director Wong Kar-wai’s work, which I had been looking forward to for months (especially since Quentin was a huge fan of his as well and was sometimes known to show up at the New Beverly on occasion), my phone rang.

When DYLAN flashed across the screen, I sighed. This was the fifth call in three hours. Apparently in addition to being her director, I was also a human weather vane, a human calculator, and a human MapQuest.

“Hi, Dylan,” I said as I answered the phone.

“Josh?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Dylan.”

“I know. I just said that,” I said, reaching for my inhaler. It had gotten to the point where just the sound of her
voice
made my lungs start to constrict. I made a mental note to go on WebMD when I got home to find out if you could be physically allergic to a person.

“So listen,” she said. “My car won’t start
again
—I can’t even
tell
you how many problems I’ve had with this thing, it’s beyond annoying—and if it’s not too much of a hassle, I really need you to come pick me up and drive me to Pilates in Santa Monica because my trainer said that if I cancel one more time she’s going to drop me as a client, and with Fall Fling coming up, I can’t afford to have even a trace of a poochy belly and I would’ve asked Marta, our housekeeper, to do it but she’s already left because she had to go to church because it’s some saint’s day and Hannah and Lola can’t do it because Hannah’s getting her hair cut and Lola’s at her Adopted Ethnic Children of White Families therapy group, so there’s really no one else for me to ask, and seeing that you’re my director and want this documentary to be as good as it can be, I know you want me to be in the best possible shape I can be, which is why I thought that if you’re not doing anything right now, maybe
you
could take me.”

“But we weren’t supposed to get together until Saturday—”

“Okay, well, obviously this film isn’t all that important to you. And, you know, if it’s not important to
you
, then I’m not sure why it should be important to
me
, so maybe I should just explain to my dad that you couldn’t be bothered.”

I wondered if Dylan had ever considered a career as a politician. Her blackmailing skills were beyond impressive.

“The problem is I’m just finishing up at work,” I said, “so I’m all the way across town—”

“That’s okay. I don’t need to be there until seven, so we have some time.”

“Yeah, but traffic this time of day is pretty awful, so—”

Her sigh almost broke my eardrum. “Look, Josh—I’ll just cut to the chase: for someone like myself who’s already got major trust issues, I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to work with someone who’s so unsupportive of me.”

Here was a perfect opportunity for me to practice what my mom liked to call “showing up for myself.” Not letting someone take advantage of me, or not putting my needs to the side just so they’d like me or approve of me. To stop being a wimp and rolling over.

I took a deep breath. “What’s your address again?”

Yes, I needed to show up for myself. But even more important was getting this documentary done. After my parents’ divorce my grades had gone down, and I’ve never been a good test taker (I went through an entire inhaler during the SATs), so if I wanted to get into the most competitive film school in the world, I needed this documentary to be as kick-ass as possible. Even if it meant having to suck it up and become Dylan’s personal assistant for the next few weeks.

“Seven-two-one-seven Luna Drive,” she replied.

“Give me a half hour,” I said, glancing at the picture I kept taped to the inside of my locker of Quentin holding up his Independent Spirit Award for
Pulp Fiction
. All the stars in that cast put together couldn’t be as high maintenance as Dylan.

 

“Okay, so before Pilates we just have to make one quick stop at Alice, this little boutique on Montana Avenue,” Dylan said as she got into the Neilmobile. She looked around the car. “How
old
is this thing anyway?”

“It’s an ’87.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Is it
safe
?”

I nodded. “Volvos are known for being the most reliable car there is. In fact, in 2005 they did this study where—”

“Okay, FYI? I’m
so
not interested in facts and figures,” she said as she fastened her seat belt. “I already have enough stuff to think about, thankyouverymuch.”

Like what color nail polish to wear?
I thought to myself as I put the car into drive.

As we crawled down Sunset Boulevard in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, she reached for the stereo. “We need some tunes.” As she clicked it on, Neil Diamond’s “Holly Holy” boomed out of the speakers and she turned to me. “You’re
kidding
me, right?”

“It
is
called the Neilmobile.” I shrugged.

“Okay, well, I’m afraid this is going to make me throw up, so can we please listen to something else? Especially since I’m starting to freak out with all this traffic.”

I shrugged. “If you want. Personally, I find Neil very relaxing. Like vocal yoga or something.” I definitely needed all the help I could get at that moment to relax. Being alone with Dylan in such close proximity made me anxious.

She gave me a look. “Personally, I find Neil really annoying.” After nixing all my preset classic-rock stations, she landed on a Top 40 station. “Omigod, I
love
this song!” she shrieked as some overproduced, bass-thumping, alien-voice-sounding garbage filled the speakers. As if having to listen to the song wasn’t bad enough, Dylan started to
sing
. At the top of her lungs.

I had never heard anything more frightening in my life.

I took my eyes off the road to see if she was being serious or if she had a knack for comedy that I hadn’t been aware of up until this point, but apparently she
was
serious. And things got even more frightening when she started “dancing” in her seat, which resembled an epileptic seizure.

She opened her eyes. “Don’t you love this song?” she demanded.

“Uh—” I wanted to say that since I wasn’t a tween girl, the answer was no, but I didn’t think that would help on the bonding front.

“Last week my teacher played it in Yoga Booty Ballet and I went
insane.
Everyone was saying I should
so
try and get on
American Idol
.”

Before I could come up with a reply that would neither offend nor encourage her, the Neilmobile began to make a sound that was somewhere between a donkey braying and a mouse squeaking.

“
What
is that noise?!” Dylan yelled, clutching my arm so tight I almost swerved right into a limo. She may have been tiny, but she was
strong
.

I reached into my pocket for my inhaler. “I’m not sure,” I panicked. “The only other time I heard something like this was when—”

As the Neilmobile started to slow down, I managed to make it over to the far-right lane of Sunset.

“—I ran out of gas a few months ago,” I finished.

Which, from the way the car drifted to a full stop, was apparently happening again.

“Are you saying we’re out of gas?” Dylan asked.

I looked at the gas gauge. “Well, since the needle is on the far, far, far left of the
E
, yeah, I’d say that’s probably the case.”

The Neilmobile coughed up one last sputter and then got quiet.

“I cannot
believe
this!” Dylan yelled. “I mean, who runs out of gas on Sunset Boulevard? During rush hour?!”

“Look, it’s not like I planned it or anything,” I said defensively between inhaler squirts. “I thought I had enough to get you to your Pilales thing—”

“Pi
lat
es,” she corrected. “Like
latte
, the drink.” She started fanning herself. “Look at this—you’ve gotten me so freaked out I’m
sweating
.” She took out a towel from her workout bag and started dabbing at her forehead. “I
hate
sweating.”

“I
would’ve
stopped to get more gas on my way here, but you were in such a hurry,” I snapped.

“Safety should always come first,” she said, sounding like a PSA as she dabbed away.

“You’ve never run out of gas before?” I asked, inhaling with the inhaler again.

“Well, yes, I have, but at least it was on the
freeway
,” she shot back.

“And that would be better because . . . ?” I asked.

She thought about it. “I don’t know. It just is. Listen, if I’m still going to make it to Pilates I really don’t have time to fight with you about this right now. Do you have a Triple-A card with you?” she asked as she took out her phone.

“Yeah, but my mom never paid the renewal fee, so it’s expired.”

If looks could kill, I would’ve been a victim from
Saw 4
. “So
now
what do we do?” she asked.

“Well, do you have a Triple-A card?” I asked.

“No. I switched wallets this morning because I was using my Rachel Romanoff bag instead of the Serge Sanchez and the black of the wallet clashed with the black of the bag. I mean, they’re close but that kind of thing really bothers me even though Hannah swears it’s not a big deal.”

Why she thought this stuff was of interest to another human being was beyond me. “I guess I could call Steven or Ari and ask them to come by. Or maybe you could call Asher.” I picked up my phone.