Holly Hearts Headlines (Holly Hearts Hollywood Book 2) (19 page)

We were ushered into the Blossom Ballroom which oozed old-Hollywood glamour. The carpet had a looping pattern that made my eyes cross and the chandeliers were large and grand. There were tables scattered across the rooms with black tablecloths thrown over them. Large white orchids completed the centerpieces. At first, I was so busy staring at everything around me I didn’t notice that most of the people in the room were staring at
me
.

A cluster of girls with large, feathered fans whispered to each other from behind them and I suddenly felt like I was in a Jane Austen novel. Seriously, who whispers behind fans like that anymore? Unless it is 1850, and I’m an unmarried spinster who has just recently caused her family scandal, there’s no reason to be all coy and hide behind an ostrich feather fan. It’s the twenty-first century, tweet about it like everyone else.

“Holly, everyone is looking at you,” Bernadette said.

“I know. I don’t know why.”

Serena elbowed me in the side. “Are you completely dense? They’re obviously staring at your dress.”

I looked down at the blue and rust colored sequins that edged the peacock-feather inspired ruffles of the skirt in a daze. I had completely forgotten about the dress. When I looked up, I noticed one of the whispering girls was walking over to me. She looked like Glinda the Good Witch, only with a lot more pink. Everything she was wearing was pink. Her nails, her shoes, her lipstick, heck, she even had a pink wig on!

“Where did you get that dress?” she practically hissed when she was within earshot.

“David owed me a favor,” Serena said as she stepped in close to me.

The girl seemed taken aback. “David?” she repeated. “David doesn’t do favors for
anyone
.” She crossed her arms across her chest as if this final comment meant victory. She pouted her lips petulantly.

“I’m not just
anyone
,” Serena said flatly. “So unless you’re accusing me and my friends of robbing the Met, would you kindly get out of our way?”

If there was ever a moment to snap your fingers in a “Z” formation that was definitely it. As we walked away Tyler couldn’t stop saying, “Whoa, that was so boss!” and Serena kept acting like it wasn’t a big deal, but I could tell that she was enjoying the praise.

After we arrived at our tables, we noticed one serious problem: we couldn’t recognize anyone. For all I know, I could’ve walked right past Meryl Streep, and I never would’ve noticed. Everyone was unrecognizable underneath their masks. Tyler wasn’t pleased.

“This is whack!” Tyler proclaimed. “How am I supposed to meet any celebrities if I can’t see who they are?”

We ignored him and set about to find Lacey. We knew a few simple things would help us find her:

1.      She would most definitely be wearing something elaborate and expensive.

2.      She would never wear a wig or cover up her golden blond hair.

3.      She would most likely be drinking an appletini, her favorite cocktail.

4.      She would behave rudely to all around her.

Now, when we started to search for her we thought that this list would help us narrow down our suspect list faster, but we quickly realized that it wouldn’t help at all. The main issue is that ninety percent of the girls at the party had golden blond hair. They were
all
wearing something elaborate and many of them were sipping on appletinis. Unsurprisingly, they were all behaving rudely.

“This is pointless!” Bernadette declared after a solid fifteen minutes of searching high and low for Lacey. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find someone in a masked ball like this. Every time people are in masks on TV, I get so ticked off that their loved ones never recognize them. Like seriously, how did Buttercup not recognize Wesley’s beautiful blue eyes in
The Princess Bride
? True love my foot.

Serena walked over to us with a frustrated look on her face. “Any luck?” she asked.

“None!” Bernadette whined. “And Tyler is getting antsy. He thinks we were just trying to trick him and he’s probably going to leave soon if we don’t deliver the goods.”

“Too bad ‘the goods’ happen to be a girl who hates my guts,” I mumbled.

Serena suddenly snapped open the magnetic clasp on her Gucci clutch and pulled out her iPhone. “I’m such an idiot,” she said. “We should just check Lacey’s Twitter account. Hopefully she posted a picture of herself or left some kind of clue in a tweet.”

“You’re a true modern day detective,” I told her, and she beamed.

“Jackpot!” Serena declared after a few seconds of scrolling through Lacey’s Twitter feed. She held the phone up to me and said, “See? She posted this photo of the train of her dress a couple hours ago with the caption ‘Come find me.’ All we have to do is find the dress that matches this photo!”

The photo showed a dress that was mostly white with some splashes of green and pink in a pattern I couldn’t totally make out. The fabric was unusual and when I pointed it out Serena said that it is called “garza” which is some kind of silk.

We split up to cover more ground but in the end, it didn’t even matter. All of us noticed a dress from across the room that looked like a complete match. We crossed the room and noticed that this dress was really something else. It was a Carolina Herrera gown with architectural slits on the bodice, a full A-line skirt that pooled dramatically on the floor, and most noticeably a geometric applique on the dress in the shape of a rose that made it look like a mosaic. It was so very modern and not like Lacey at all, to be honest. She tends to dress like a fairy-tale princess. She was wearing a rose-pink mask with dramatic white feathers that were easily the tallest in the room. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head and loose tendrils cascaded dramatically down her back.

When Lacey saw me (of course she didn’t know it was me thanks to my handy-dandy mask) her pink lips twitched in distaste and for a moment I thought she might have recognized me. But then I noticed, like the rest of the girls that night, she was staring at my dress instead. “That
has
to be an imitation right?” she said to me. “I don’t think that Dior makes dresses for anyone over a size eight.” I knew, of course, that wasn’t true since I’ve looked at Dior’s sizing charts several times, but I knew that Lacey wasn’t trying to be factual but insulting instead.

I didn’t know what to say to Lacey. The moment I spoke, she’d know it was me. Bernadette, however, seemed to be the only one with a level head. She walked right up to Lacey, with Tyler in tow, and said, “Lacey Bennett right?”

Lacey seemed startled by this brazenness and she said, “Yes, and you are?” in a dazed voice.

“My name is Bernadette, and this is my friend Tyler. He’s a huge fan and he just really wanted to meet you.”

Tyler, who had for most of the night behaved like your typical teenage boy, suddenly transformed into a “smooth player.” And by smooth, I mean he took off his hat. Which was just ridiculous, she’s not the queen of England. Lacey looked him up and down and said, “How did you even
get into
this party?”

Tyler laughed like it was the funniest joke instead of the insult that it actually was. Lacey turned away to leave, and then the worst thing happened. Tyler stepped forward and KISSED Lacey. It was disgusting. He had his hands on her shoulders and he pressed her against him. She was squirming but he didn’t let go, he just kept pressing his lips against hers.

After what seemed like an eternity, Serena walked up and pulled Tyler away from Lacey. “What is your problem?” Serena asked.

I walked up to them, fuming. How dare he just
kiss
Lacey like that? “Tyler,” I said, “that was not cool.”

Tyler laughed. “Hey, calm down. It was just a kiss.”

“It was completely uncalled for!” I said. “She obviously didn’t want to kiss you, she doesn’t know you, and she obviously wasn’t enjoying your kiss. You practically assaulted her.”

Tyler threw his hands up. “Assault? Are you crazy? Can’t girls take a joke?”

“Some joke,” Lacey said dryly, her lipstick was smudged.

“For future reference, if you have to force yourself on a girl then it is assault,” I said to Tyler and I wacked him on the arm with my clutch for emphasis.

I suddenly felt the weight of Lacey’s deep blue eyes on me. “Holly?” she asked. “Please tell me that is not you in that imitation Dior gown.”

“It isn’t me?” I said cautiously, unsure what Lacey really wanted to hear.

Lacey’s eyes rolled up to the back of her head like she needed an exorcism. “What are you doing here? And why did you bring this asshole with you?” She gestured to Tyler who looked wounded at being called an asshole.

“It is a long story,” I said.

“Well I don’t care. I don’t want to see you. Please leave,” she said firmly.

But I couldn’t leave just yet because Tyler needed to finish his end of the bargain.

“Are you pleased with yourself?” Bernadette asked sharply once we’d walked away from Lacey.

Tyler was smiling from ear to ear. “Very,” he said.

“Just sign the stupid egg, and let’s be done,” Bernadette shot back. She looked at me, “Holly, you have the egg right?”

I blinked. “No, I texted you this morning and asked if
you
would get some.” Mom and Ivy had decided the night before that they desperately needed to bake three dozen cookies from scratch and had used every single egg in the house.

“What?” she shrieked. “I didn’t get that text!”

“So, neither one of you has the egg?” Tyler said, suddenly bored.

I don’t know if you like watching TV shows as much as me, but surely you’ve noticed that for many shows the whole plotline hinges on the fact that the characters seem to be incapable of communicating with each other. Usually during any dramatic situation, the whole problem would be solved if the characters would just
talk
to each other. I mean, have you ever watched
Gossip Girl?
For girls who gossip and text so much you think they’d be better at just talking to their friends and straightening up any misunderstandings. But no. They let the drama fester, and that’s why that show lasted for six seasons. Well, that and also because Ed Westwick is a beautiful man.

Anyway, as I stood there with Bernadette and Serena surrounded by celebrities in elaborate masks, I realized that I had fallen headfirst into the most horrible kind of situation: the kind caused by miscommunication.

I turned to Tyler and said, “Can you meet up to sign the egg tomorrow?”

“No way, I’m heading down to San Diego for a while. I’m a senior, I don’t have finals, so I can afford to take a few days off.”

Bernadette looked at me. “We can’t wait for him to come back. When we come in on Thursday she’ll check in on the eggs for sure.”

Tyler looked at his phone. “My mom is on her way to come get me, so you better hurry and find an egg.”

Serena went off to the hotel kitchens to see if one of the cooks would give her an egg. I’m sure she won’t have any issue getting one. Heck, they’d give her two dozen eggs if she wanted. She’s Serena Salazar after all. Free eggs whenever you want is probably one of the many benefits of being famous.

Later, 10:15pm—The Lobby of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

Fame can be a horrible creature, but it gets you a lot of stuff. Designers crawl out of the woodwork to ask Serena all the time if she’ll carry their handbags or wear their newest sunglasses in hopes that she’ll have her photo snapped by paparazzi that’ll appear in
US Weekly
. At parties, they’re given gift bags full of thousands of dollars of free stuff, stuff they could easily afford on their own. When I go with Serena to coffee shops or to get gelato, people never let her pay. I know people who could use free food more than Serena, who has already made hundreds of thousands of dollars on her latest album.

So you can imagine my surprise when Serena returned empty handed and said, “They wouldn’t even let me
into
the kitchen. The moment I stepped inside a very angry Russian sous chef came running at me and told me that I wasn’t allowed inside. I tried to pull a Lacey Bennett by saying ‘Do you know who I am?’ but he wouldn’t go for it.”

Bernadette’s face went as red as a tomato in anger. “That’s ridiculous!” She turned around on her heels, the skirt of her gown swished loudly as she walked away. “Come on!” she shouted.

Serena and I looked at each other for a moment before we followed after her. It is very hard to be speedy in a large ball gown and heels. I took off my mask once we’d left the ballroom so I wouldn’t trip and kill myself. I could hear Tyler lightly jogging behind us, and he was breathing short and fast, as if he was running a sprint.

Bernadette approached the doors of the kitchen and burst straight through them like she owned the place. I could hear her voice rising loudly on the other side of the doors, and we sped up our pace.

“Do you have any idea what it is like to be a teenage girl these days?” she was shrieking to the startled kitchen staff. “With social media and photoshop bending our perceptions of what girls are supposed to be like, how is a girl supposed to survive?”

“What is she doing?” Serena asked through tight lips.

“Getting us an egg it appears,” I said back.

“I need an egg from your fridge right now,” Bernadette continued. She had removed her mask and you could see every bit of her enraged face. She was quite fearsome, and I have to say that I was impressed. “If I don’t get an egg from you I won’t pass my freshman year and my entire school career is finished. So someone hand me an egg right now!”

The chefs looked at each other with wide eyes and finally one of the younger boys went back to the gigantic, industrial fridges. He pulled out a huge tray of eggs and ran over to Bernadette and handed it to her quickly. “Thank you,” Bernadette said brightly in a complete behavioral shift. “Have a nice night!” She turned around to us and smiled as she walked out with a dozen eggs, a champion.