Inside Girl (2 page)

Her tiny face was almost hidden behind a huge pair of sunglasses with black, round frames that reminded me of Mickey Mouse ears, and even though it was sweltering outside, she was bundled up in a gray mink coat that was about ten sizes too big for her. She'd put on a weird old lady wig, all white and puffy. Underneath it, strands of her short dark hair were sticking out, all hot and squashed looking. And before I could say anything, she'd shoved me back inside and locked the door behind her.

“Sara-Beth Benny,” I gasped. “What are you doing here?”

Sara-Beth threw her mink coat on the floor and kicked it away from her. Beneath it she had on a vintage flapper dress that looked like it was made entirely of spangles and ostrich feathers, like something Catherine Zeta-Jones would wear in
Chicago
. That's Sara-Beth for you: even when she's wearing her own clothes, she looks like she's in costume.

“Oh, Flan, I knew you'd see through my disguise. That's why you're such a true friend. You know the real me even better than I know the real me.”

I shook my head. I doubted I was the only one who'd recognized her. Tourists had probably been following her around the West Village and snapping pictures of her all afternoon. In case you don't know, Sara-Beth Benny is one of the most famous seventeen-year-olds
around. After she grew up on national television as the most adorable star of
Mike's Princesses
, she started getting parts in all kinds of really cool movies—like this really creepy thriller called
Blennophobia
, and a remake of this French New Wave movie. She even tried her hand at comedy in
The Seventeen-Year-Old Virgin
. I've always preferred old movies, myself, but I think Sara-Beth Benny's a really good actress, and I'd say that even if we weren't friends. When her eyes get all big and her lower lip starts quivering, she can make you believe whatever she wants.

“But wait. I still don't know what you're doing here. Aren't you supposed to be filming a movie in Gdansk or something?” Sara-Beth definitely had a decent excuse for not calling me all summer, since she'd been halfway around the world for the last couple months.

“Oh, Ric Roderickson, that idiotic director—he makes me so furious, I can't even talk about it. The catering people couldn't get my uva-ursi, so of course my face starts swelling up like a balloon. So what does he do? Does he find me an acupuncturist? No. He cut two of my scenes. And I had to come home early to a very toxic apartment.”

“But wait, how would an acupuncturist—”

“Well, that was a separate thing.” She threw herself down onto the couch with a sigh. “Oh, Flan, I just can't talk about it anymore. It's just so good to be home, with my real friends. I couldn't talk to those people on the set anyway. The guys were all so strange and hyper, and the girls were all prima donnas. Do you have any clothespins? Well, do you?”

Sara-Beth tossed the old lady wig behind the couch and raked her fingers through her short hair. She's so tiny and nervous that she sometimes reminds me of a Chihuahua. The first time I met her, at a sweet sixteen party for our friend Liesel Reid, we were in line for the bathroom, and I thought she was jumpy just because she really had to go. But it turned out that's just the way she always is.

“I don't know.” I glanced around. I couldn't imagine anyone in our family buying clothespins, and I didn't want to know what weird holistic remedy Sara-Beth needed them for.

“Well, that's all right, it can wait.” And all of a sudden she was standing up again, and she rushed over to me and took both of my hands in hers. She looked intently into my face. “How are you, Flan? I mean, really? Have you missed me?”

I stared at the two tiny Flans reflected in her enormous eyes. The Flans looked back, a little nervously.

“Sure. Of course. I just got back from Connecticut, though, so I haven't really—”

“Oh, good. Because I've missed you too. When I was in Gdansk, surrounded by all those … energy vampires, I kept thinking about that wonderful sleep-over you threw for me back in May, and just how simple you are.”

“Well, thanks.”

I wasn't sure how I felt about being called simple, but like I said, Sara-Beth is very convincing, and I could tell her heart was in the right place. Besides, it had been fun having her over for that sleepover, even if she did refuse to eat anything but the bag of rice crisps she'd brought for herself. It had also been a little weird when the doorbell rang and she freaked out and hid under the bed. It was just one of Feb's friends, but it took almost an hour to convince Sara-Beth that it wasn't the paparazzi.

“Which is why I feel like I can ask you for a favor. It's not anything too big, and I know you'll understand.”

“Of course,” I heard myself say. “I'd love to help you, Sara-Beth.”

“Oh, good! Oh, fabulous!” Sara-Beth sighed with relief and hugged me. I could feel her bony elbows pressing into my back before she finally let go. “Wonderful. Just let me get my bags.”

“Bags? But—”

“You see, as I just mentioned about half a dozen times, my apartment is
toxic
. Everything's so … sharp, and cold, and empty, and metallic. And it's lonely there.” It was true: the one time I'd visited, I'd been amazed at how little stuff she had. Her apartment was basically four thousand square feet that contained a Mies van der Rohe chair, a tube of lip gloss, a bottle of Dom Pérignon, and about eight closets full of clothes.

“And I can't go stay with David again, not even if he begs me to.” Sara-Beth gazed dreamily off into the distance. “Sweet, gentle David. He had to leave Gdansk even earlier than I did. He must be heartbroken, being without me for so long. I'd love to be with him, I really would, but I have to think of his folks. That's a lot to ask of your future in-laws, you know.”

“Right,” I said. David is a friend of my brother's, and at one point, Sara-Beth lived with his family for about six months. His parents are psychiatrists, so I guess they were fascinated by Sara-Beth, since she'd always been a celebrity and had never really had a chance to just be a kid. They even wrote an article on her for the
New York Times
magazine's health column, called “Beyond Help? A Case Study of America's Favorite Starlet.”

“I'm trying to get a nice little place near where Liesel lives on the Upper East Side, in this charming building with all this … wood, you know, and views of the park. I need to be around nature. It's just the way I am. But this ridiculous board has to approve me first. They think they're so exclusive, just because the building used to be Shakespeare's birthplace or the Australian embassy or something—it's all very historical. It makes me crazy. Flan …” And now she gripped my wrists again in the steely bones of her hands and her eyes grew a few degrees bigger and started to well up. “Flan, could I spend the night? I just need some time for girl talk.”

I blinked. “I mean—I have school tomorrow, but I guess that—”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! You have no idea how much this means to me. This will be so much fun. I can help you get ready for your first day!”

Shaking my head and smiling, I walked back toward the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water from one of the bottles in the fridge. It was great to see SBB again—she's really funny and sweet, on top of being glamorous—and I was glad I wasn't alone in the apartment anymore. I pictured us staying up late, doing each other's hair and talking about how totally
gross Gdansk can be in August. The whole situation was a little funny, though. After all, my first day at a normal high school was tomorrow, and now there was a movie star staying at my house who even on her very best days had only a very loose grip on reality.

That night, while I was loading up my backpack with stuff for school—pens, paper, a binder—Sara-Beth Benny lay on my bed, turning her wig over in her hands and offering me advice about high school.

“The most important thing is, don't show them you're afraid,” she said. “Also, try to dress older than you are. You're lucky that you're tall and stuff, but maybe you should put some extra socks in your bra, just in case.”

I zipped up my bag. “Sara-Beth?”

“Hmm?”

“No offense or anything, but did you ever actually
go
to high school?”

“Sure. In some of the later seasons I did. That's how I know about the socks. Because there was this one episode when I wore these Tupperware containers under my shirt—”

“No, not on
Mike's Princesses
.” I tucked a graphing calculator into the front pocket of my bag. “Did you ever go to high school in real life?”

Sara-Beth yawned. “Well, life imitates art, you know?”

“That makes sense, I guess.” I picked up my backpack and set it on a chair, then turned toward my closet. “Okay, now I just need to figure out what to wear.”

“This is my favorite part!” Sara-Beth leaped up. “I love going through your closet.”

“You do?”

“Sure. The last time I stayed over, I couldn't sleep, so I tried on all your clothes and pretended I was you. You've got some nice stuff in there. And you don't even have a stylist!”

“Wait, you what?”

She beamed. “Method acting.”

So Sara-Beth and I went through my closet. I tried on half a dozen outfits before we found one that satisfied both of us. I was kind of confused about what would be right, since I'd always had uniforms for school at Miss Mallard's Day. I knew what to wear to a gallery show, a record release party, a club, and the opening of a new tapas restaurant, but somehow the haute couture for second-period English class seemed less obvious. Basically, I just wanted something that
would look cute but wouldn't draw too much attention to me if it wasn't quite right.

Sara-Beth, on the other hand, kept steering me toward the flashiest, strangest stuff she could find in the depths of my closet. She made me put on a grass-green Miu Miu dress I'd bought to wear to my cousin's wedding, a canary-yellow cashmere sweater that I've had since fifth grade, and a pair of moon boots, among other things. Then she started talking about how we should go uptown and raid her wardrobe, since she was on
People
's best-dressed list two years in a row, but as much as I'd like to wear some of her dresses, they were way too fancy and probably all too small for me anyway. So instead I finally settled on this really cute vintage crocheted top of mine, which sort of looks hippie-ish but in a clean way, and a pair of these stretch denim jeans that work really well with heels.

A little bit later, I changed into my pajamas and we lay on the floor looking at magazines. It was nice, just hanging out with her, eating her rice crisps and drinking mineral water. If I didn't pay too much attention to her perfect skin or the fashion-spread pictures of her in the magazines I was reading, I could almost forget she was a movie star. And more important, she could too.

I mean, if I thought growing up in my house was weird, how weird must it have been for Sara-Beth, growing up on the set of a hit TV show? If I could make her feel a little more normal by letting her crash in my room, well, that's what friends are for. Besides, having her around took my mind off my own worries. Sometimes when I'm freaking out, it's easier for me to think about someone else's problems instead of my own. And Sara-Beth definitely had her own set of problems.

“I'm glad you came to visit,” I told her, reaching for a rice crisp. “You know, I'll be at school tomorrow, but if you want to hang out here for a while and have a friend over for lunch or something, you totally should. I don't want you to be sitting in your apartment, feeling lonely all day.”

“Oh, but Flan, I couldn't do that.” Sara-Beth's eyes got wide, just like in the mascara ads. “If the paparazzi find out where I am, they'll swarm.”

“How would they find out? If you just call one of your friends—”

“You can't trust anyone in this business.” Sara-Beth crunched a rice crisp angrily. “I know girls who would sell me out to the tabloids for one positive article and a handful of diet pills. They're that vicious.”

“That's terrible.” It really was. Even if my friends at
Miss Mallard's used me sometimes, for concert tickets or invitations, at least they never turned on me like that. What else could I say?

“And if that does happen, I can say good-bye to that beautiful apartment on the East Side.”

“How come?”

Sara-Beth sighed. “The board doesn't want a bunch of crazy stalker paparazzi lurking outside their building all the time. If they see I'm always in the tabloids, they won't want me living there. And then I'll be homeless.” Her lower lip stuck out. “I don't know where I'd go, or what I'd do. I'll have to buy a car and park outside your house and just live there forever. Maybe you could bring me out some water from time to time.”

“I can't believe that.”

“But it's true. It can be a mean world out there. You're lucky you haven't seen it yet.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Well, actually, I was meaning to ask you something.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Please tell me if you don't have time, but I was wondering—okay, so the co-op board says that I can submit a peer recommendation along with my application. You know, someone who knows what it's like to
live with me. I was just thinking that maybe, if it wasn't too, too, too much trouble—”

“Of course, Sara-Beth! I'd be happy to.”

“Oh, thank you so much. You don't know how much this means to me. You're the only one who knows what I'm really like, underneath.” Sara-Beth folded back the cover of her magazine, then looked over at me, suddenly all serious. “That's what I like about you, Flan. You're not my friend because I'm beautiful, or famous, or because of what I could do for you. You're my friend because—because of who I really am.” Sara-Beth sniffled, and all her little bones trembled. She reminded me of a skinny kitten left out in the cold. “I know I can trust you.”