V is for Virgin (14 page)

“And through the website!” Robin piped up. “We’re currently redesigning the site to handle the unexpected amount of traffic we’ve received. The new site will be up in a few days, and will have more info about the up and coming V is for Virgin Jewelry Line.”

I glanced back and forth between Margret and Robin and then back at Destiny, who seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I shrugged helplessly. “What they said.”

“Great!”

As soon as the KTLA news team packed up and left I turned to Margret. “What are you talking about? We aren’t starting a line of jewelry.”

“Well why on earth not honey? It seems you’ve already got a market ready and waiting to buy. I’ll make a call to some of my suppliers in the jewelry district downtown. I’m sure someone will be willing to make at least a sample batch.”

“This is so exciting!” Robin squealed. “Val, we have so much to do!”

“But you guys, we can’t do this. Not for real. I mean you can’t just start selling stuff online. There are laws. You have to start your own business and stuff.”

“We can work it all out dear,” Margret insisted. “I already own a business. It can’t be that hard to set it up so that I can sell things online.”

“But—”

“Val,” Robin said again. “With all this free publicity? You can’t pass up an opportunity like this. You could be a real jewelry designer. You said you wanted to make a change. Think of how much good it could do. Kids all over the country would be wearing the jewelry. You could even still donate a big percentage of the profits to the Not Everybody’s Doing It Foundation.”

Both Robin and Margret were staring at me with such pleading looks. How was I supposed to refuse? It’s not like I didn’t want to do it, it sounded very exciting, it was just all happening so fast.

I felt like my head was swimming. I knew that if I did this, somehow my life would change, but then, hadn’t it already done that? TV news interviews…rock stars writing songs about me…Isaac Warren offering to buy me milkshakes! Whether I did V is for Virgin for real or not, things were going to be different for me. I may as well get my own jewelry line out of it.

“Do you really think we can get someone to make my designs?” I asked Margret.

“They’d better,” she said, glancing around her empty store. “Otherwise how are we going to put Tiffany’s out of business?”

“All right,” I relented. “Let’s give it a shot.”

We got to work straight away. Margret let Robin have her chair behind the counter, and went into the back office to start making phone calls to all of her jewelry connections. I sat down with Robin going over the specifics of our website, occasionally getting up to help any birthday and anniversary present shoppers who came in to the store.

Robin had warned me about all the comments from the jealous Tralse fans, so those were no surprise, but she hadn’t told me about the rest of it. “What is this?” I asked for the umpteenth time that afternoon.

“Remember how we put that ‘contact us’ button at the bottom of page?”

“Yeah?”

“Well these are all the people who felt the need to contact us.”

“But this inbox is full.”

“I know! I tried to skim a little of it earlier, but I didn’t get very far. It looks like mostly emails of people wanting to buy jewelry, mixed in with rabid fans wanting to be your new best friend. There was even one guy wanting to send us his demo CD to give to Kyle.”

“I’m going to
kill
him,” I grumbled to myself.

“Hey,” Robin argued, “you kind of owe him. If he hadn’t written that song, you wouldn’t have made the eleven o’clock news last night, and Devon and Lacy would still be the only people signed up for the abstinence challenge.”

I shrugged. Grudgingly. “I guess I’ll have to thank him, and
then
kill him.” Something dawned on me then. “Did you say someone else beside Devon and Lacy signed up for the abstinence challenge?”

Robin smiled at me, and then clicked on the challenge page. “Thirteen less people are having sex in the world today. Four of whom claim to be male.”

“Oscar-The-Abstinent-Grouch?” I laughed as I read the list of screen names.

“I read his first entry.” Robin giggled. “He’s not too happy, but his girlfriend signed up, so he said since he’s not getting any anyway, he may as well sign up so he can complain to an audience.”

“At least he didn’t dump her.” Score one point for him.

I skimmed through a lot more of the comments, and Robin was right. Ninety percent of them were comments about how I don’t deserve someone like Kyle Hamilton. Apparently, I’d broken his heart, and that makes me the biggest...well, I’m sure you can imagine. Which, of course, is just ridiculous because Kyle Hamilton doesn’t seem to have a heart. Just hormones.

“Oh, hey,” I said noticing one comment in particular. “It’s Lacrosse4life.”

Lacrosse4life
: This is cool of you Val. I wish I had your kind of guts. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to come out of the closet about my virginity.

A closet virgin. Nice. The poor guy. He’s right, us girls may have it rough, but he had to have it a thousand times worse. “We should have a special section of the forum just for guys,” I said. “It sounds like they need a support group.”

“That’s a good idea, but that poor guy will probably still be an army of one.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “Sad.”

“Speaking of adding things to the site, what if we do a ‘how it all got started’ section? I’d like link the YouTube video to our page.”

“You want to put that monstrosity on the website?”

“Hey,” Robin said, holding back laughter, “it was a very stunning performance, Val.” Then more seriously she said, “That video is what sparks all the best conversation. People love to see you literally standing up for yourself. Getting up on the table like that…. You’re like the Joan of Arc of virgins. Plus, I like the idea of thousands of people seeing Olivia Lewis get humiliated publically.”

She was right. That right there was worth it.

Robin and I laughed hysterically. We continued to have a good time planning the new layout of the website until Margret came out of the office. “You have one week to get all your sketches perfect, Miss Valerie. We have three different meetings booked on Saturday.”

“Really?”

My heart jumped inside my chest, but I couldn’t decide what made it lurch. Was it excitement or fear? I knew Margret was serious about making calls, and she’d been in the industry for so long that she knew every jewelry manufacturer in the greater Los Angeles area, but I guess I never figured they’d take her seriously.

“But I’m just a kid. I’m not an actual designer.”

“What can I say? Everything’s easy when you’re a celebrity.”

“Celebrity?”

Margret shrugged. “The three who want to meet with you all saw your news report last night.”

“Well, thank you Kyle Hamilton,” I couldn’t help but mumble.

I didn’t see or hear from Cara until I got to homeroom Monday. That wasn’t the longest we’ve ever gone without talking to one another, but it had been the most eventful few days of my life, and apparently hers too. No force in the universe could have shut us up during homeroom that morning. Once we were done fighting, of course.

“Where have you been?” I asked after she stumbled into the room. When I say stumbled, I mean she literally tripped over her feet. She looked like she hadn’t slept since she left me at the festival.

When she saw me, her face brightened up. At first there was only a giddy squeal. When she was finally able to speak it sounded something like, “HolycrapValerieyouarenotgoingtobelievethis!”

It’s a good thing I speak Cara. “Let me take a wild guess,” I grumbled. “You went out with Shane after the show, and stayed out all night dancing in some club. Then, you spent all of the following morning texting each other until you both crashed. You woke up a few hours later, went to lunch together where you decided you were soul mates and are now officially a couple.” I laughed when Cara frowned. “Did I leave anything out?”

“Way to steal all my thunder, V.”

“Sorry. But you deserved it for not calling me back. I called and texted you like a million times!”

“I was a little busy.”

“You were busy,” I repeated. “Your best friend has a song written about her, gets asked out by Isaac Warren, ends up on prime time news, gets completely dissed in a blog written by the best friend of your new boyfriend, which spawns hundreds of hate comments from angry fan girls worldwide,
and
gets three interviews to start her very own line of jewelry, but you can’t stop making out for five seconds to answer me?”

“Hey! That’s not fair! You know that Shane is—wait,
what
?”

“You should have called me back,” I spat and then turned around in my seat as if I were going to pay attention in homeroom for once.

The minute I turned my back on Cara, Olivia Lewis was there and she looked very determined in a pissed off kind of way. I wondered what I’d done to deserve the wrath of Olivia this time, but, surprisingly, she wasn’t there to be snotty to me. She was there to
vent
to me. “I’m sorry, Val,” she said. “You were so right about Kyle.”

“V!” Cara hissed, poking me in the shoulder. “V!”

“Talking!” I snapped at her.

Blowing Cara off for Olivia was a bit harsh, but I was pretty irked that she hadn’t returned a single one of my calls. Not even a text. She just stomped off to the concert and then came in this morning thinking that I owed her all my attention.

“What happened, Olivia? I thought you guys were going out on Saturday.”

“V!” Cara hissed again, this time with a little more attitude. I ignored her.

“He stood me up,” Olivia said incredulously. “
Me!”

I could have guessed he would, considering that he was probably too busy writing blogs about how much I suck. Still, I gasped in fake surprise. “How could anyone ever want to stand up
you
?”

As always, Olivia was much too involved in her self to pick up on my sarcasm. “I know!” she said. “Yeah, he’s a famous singer and all, but he’s not
that
famous.”

“I’m sorry, Olivia. I was really pulling for you guys.” I really was too. If Olivia and Kyle hooked up, I might have been free of them both.

“VALERIE JENSEN!” Cara exploded. “You quit ignoring me this instant! I’m sorry, okay? You
know
I have an obsession! I couldn’t help it!”

I forgot all about Olivia. “Not an excuse!” I yelled back at Cara. “You’re not allowed to blow off the best friend for the boyfriend, ever. That’s rule number one. And you should know because you’re the one who made it!”

Cara and I stared each other down until she relented her anger. Since we fight as much as we get along, we both knew the moment I’d forgiven her. “If you remember correctly,” she teased when it was safe to do so again, “the rule I made was that
you
were never allowed to blow off the best friend for the boyfriend. It had nothing to do with me.”

“Only because you didn’t have a boyfriend at the time.”

“So?
Technically,
I didn’t break any rules. You’re not allowed to be mad at me.”

“Fine, but from now on, rule number one applies to you too, and since your boyfriend is also your life-long obsession, it goes double.”

“Never again, I promise.”

I just looked at her.

“I swear on my life. You are allowed to break me up with Shane if it happens again.”

“Don’t think I won’t,” I warned, but I was laughing now.

The bell rang, freeing us from homeroom but sending us toward a class that we wouldn’t be able to talk in. Cara looked at me in total panic and said, “Talk fast and walk slow.”

“Ok, so where do you want me to start?”