Little Miss Red Read online

  “Yo, what up, girls?” said a voice behind me as the hand attached to it grabbed for a piece of my donut.

  “Hi, Michael,” Ali and Jordan said in stereo.

  As he leaned in to give me a kiss on the cheek, not even the lemony smell of the dermatologist-prescribed antibacterial soap that he used—which used to make me swoon—did anything. Instead it just reminded me of the stuff our cleaning lady, Marita, used to wax the kitchen floor.

  “Hi,” I replied, again trying to sound more excited than I felt, which wasn’t difficult due to the fact that I felt close to nothing.

  Without even asking, he popped the last of my donut into his mouth. “Ready to shop?” he asked, as he took out the travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer he kept in his pocket at all times. After squirting some onto his palm, he held the bottle out to me. “Want some?”

  I couldn’t help thinking of Dante, and the dirt under his fingernails. Was a little bit of dirt or Boston cream that bad? Didn’t traces of dirt or sticky stuff show that you were actually living your life? Usually, I would say yes to the sanitizer, but it was time to start living on the edge a little more.

  “No thanks,” I said. Maybe I wasn’t ready to be as rebellious as Devon in Consumed with Controversy, when she moved into a tree house to protest the killing of baby seals and ended up falling in love with a CNN anchorman, but not being germfree 24/7 was a step in that direction.

  “What about this?” I yelled over the techno music that was thumping away in Always 16 as I held up a zebra-striped tank dress.

  “If you want to look like one of those hookers on Hollywood Boulevard,” Michael shouted back as he grabbed it from me and put it back on the rack.

  Julia Roberts had been a Hollywood Boulevard hooker in Pretty Woman, my favorite movie of all time, and she didn’t do so bad for herself. But the more I thought about it, Michael was right. Zebra was pretty dramatic. I may have been able to pull off leopard—at least in scarf or headband form—but you had to be Devon Devoreaux or Juliet DeStefano to rock zebra. Plus, after Julia Roberts met Richard Gere, he took her on a huge makeover shopping spree, so she stopped wearing the zebra.

  “Here, try this on,” Michael said, thrusting a red- and white-flowered sundress into my hand.

  “Maybe if I were a milkmaid,” I replied, putting it back on the rack next to the zebra print.

  “Trust me—it’ll look great,” he said, picking it up again.

  I took it from him and started toward the dressing room. The spark may have been gone between us, but I knew better than to fight with him when it came to clothes.

  As usual, he was right. Instead of looking babyish, the red and white looked sweet and feminine, and although the dress wasn’t fitted, it had this way of making it look like I had some curves under it. I don’t know how, but the dress even made my hair look less flat. It was perfect for Miss April.

  “Yo, do you have it on?” Michael was yelling from the dressing room entrance. “Let me see.”

  I walked out and stood in front of him. “Please don’t say ‘I told you so.’”

  “Okay. I won’t.”

  Even Jordan liked it, and for the last year she’d been wearing the unofficial Young Feminist uniform of baggy camouflage pants and T-shirts that said things like WOMYN ROCK.

  But it was as we made our way back to the parking lot and came upon a blank-faced, noseless mannequin at the Charlene’s Chapeau cart that I discovered the real reason fate had brought me to the Dell that day.

  There it was.

  A red cowboy hat.

  It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Even cooler than the Indian-inspired sari that Devon had worn on the cover of Awash in Adventure.

  I ran over and picked it up, cradling it in my hands like a baby chick. “I have to have this,” I whispered.

  “What are you going to do with a red cowboy hat?” came Michael’s voice from behind me.

  I placed it gently on my head. “Wear it,” I replied. It may have been a little big (okay, a lot big), but I knew it was just the thing to jump-start my life.

  He shook his head. “Nah. You’re not a red cowboy hat kinda girl.”

  Everyone—even the donut guy—seemed to think they knew who I was. Or, rather, who I wasn’t. According to them, I wasn’t a Dark as Midnight girl, I wasn’t a Boston cream girl, I wasn’t a zebra girl. Maybe the good-grade-getting, always-home-before-curfew, finish-all-her-vegetables Sophie wouldn’t wear or eat any of that stuff, but the real me would. It was time to stop hiding my true self and finally show people the wild and dramatic side of me—and a red cowboy hat was the perfect way to start.

  “I am so a red cowboy hat kind of girl!” I cried. I decided to leave out that Dante had bought Devon one exactly like it when, after finally getting bored of making mad, passionate love, they got out of bed and went into town in search of food. Except hers had purple feathers hanging off it, while mine—or the one that would soon be mine—was feather-free and more classic and understated.

  The bored, iPod-wearing guy at the cart handed me a mirror to check myself out. “I knew it!” I gasped. “It’s perfect.” Not only would it look great with my new dress in the calendar, but it was the thing that I knew would transform my life and finally make me feel like I was really living!

  “Come on—take it off. You look stupid,” Michael said impatiently.

  “I do not,” I snapped. Maybe he didn’t appreciate it, but surely my two best friends would. I turned to them. “Isn’t it just perfect?”

  Ali shrugged. “You look like one of those waitresses in that barbecue place on Pico Boulevard.”

  Imagination was not Ali’s strong suit. What did I expect from someone who was in AP calculus as a junior?

  “I was thinking more like the people behind the counter at Arby’s,” Jordan said. Not only did I need a new boyfriend, but I could’ve used some new friends as well. Jordan, Ali, and I had been BFFs for a long time, but sometimes I wondered if the reason they dissed all my ideas was because they were trying to hold me back. Like they were worried that if my life became as dramatic and exciting as it was destined to be, I’d leave them behind.

  I turned to the cart guy. “How much is it?”

  “Sixty-five ninety-nine.”

  Sixty-five ninety-nine?! For a red cowboy hat?! It wasn’t even nice felt.

  “Michael’s right, Soph,” said Jordan. “You’re not a red cowboy hat kinda girl.”

  “But Devon’s a red cowboy hat kinda woman!” I cried.

  “Devon isn’t real,” the three of them said in unison.

  “If I’m not a red cowboy hat kinda girl, what am I then?” I demanded.

  “A red- and white-flowered sundress girl?” suggested Michael.

  Dante never would have said that to Devon.

  Jordan took the hat off my head and placed it back on the mannequin. “Let’s go. I just remembered I need to send out an e-mail about the second annual Don’t Shave Your Legs Week.”

  A few carts later, we hit the sunglasses.

  “What do you think?” I asked, modeling a pair with huge, oversize lenses.

  Ali wrinkled her nose. “You look like some has-been movie star who’s just begging to have her picture taken by the paparazzi.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Jordan. “It’s like they scream, ‘I know I’m trying to look like I don’t want you to notice me, but, really, all I want is for you to notice me.’” She took them off my face and examined them. “Actually, I think my mom has the same pair. Except hers are Chanel instead of Chunnel.”

  I didn’t even bother asking Michael his opinion because I knew he’d put the kibosh on them. But I couldn’t keep letting these people hold me back—it was time to turn into my best, most dramatic self. First, the red cowboy hat, and now this. “Well, I’m buying them,” I said defiantly, reaching into my bag for my wallet. Especially because the sign said they were only fourteen ninety-five.

  “Suit yourself,” said Michael, “but I bet you end up
never wearing them.”

  Boy, was he wrong. I wore the sunglasses every chance I could—on my way to school, on my way home from school, when I was at school and had to go outside and walk to different buildings. I didn’t wear them in class because that was in the “Don’ts” section of the Castle Heights Student Handbook, but I did wear them inside my house, until I almost broke my toe when I stubbed it on the stairs because the lenses were so dark it made it hard to see.

  “Oh, honey—what fabulous glasses!” shrieked Lulu when Jordan and I walked into her kitchen on Sunday evening to load up on snacks while we studied for a trig test. I could tell by the amount of ice cream pints, cookie boxes, and potato chip bags littering the counter that Lulu was deep into one of the binges that happened when she was having writer’s block.

  “Thanks, Lulu,” I replied. The one time I had tried to call her Mrs. Meyers (before the official name change to Lavoie, of course), she had looked at me like I had told her that her knees were fat (she was so sensitive about her knees that she had used one of her royalty checks from Elevated by Ecstasy to pay for liposuction on them).

  “I think I have the same ones—they’re Chanel, right?” she asked.

  “They’re kind of like Chanel,” I replied.

  “Except they’re kind of not,” said Jordan, waving her hand around. “Mom, you promised you weren’t going to smoke in the house anymore.”

  Lulu sucked in on her cigarette. “Honey, it’s been a stressful day. I had to autograph one hundred books for the London Gay Men’s Chorus benefit today.”

  “Well, it reeks,” Jordan replied. “Plus, you’ll get wrinkles around your mouth.”

  Unfortunately, it was too late for that. The wrinkles were already there, as was the damage from too many years without sunscreen. Lulu was what my mom referred to as “weathered.” But not like dewy, fresh spring weather—more like dry, 115-in-the-shade Palm Springs weather.

  “Thank you, my little dermatologist,” she replied. “Sophie, I’m so sorry we had to cancel the trip to Mexico.” I loved how Lulu always pronounced it the Spanish way: Me-hee-co. “When you have to hand a book in every two months, sometimes it’s hard to keep all the plots straight. I hope you had time to make other plans.”

  I gave a long sigh. There was something about being around Lulu that brought out my inner drama queen like nothing else. “Yeah, I have to go to…Florida.”

  “Ooh, South Beach?” she asked, intrigued.

  “No. Delray Beach. To see my grandmother.”

  Her face fell. “Oh. How—”

  “Boring?” I offered.

  She shrugged. “Not necessarily. You never know what might happen.” A faraway look came over her face. “Who knows—maybe, as you’re settling yourself underneath your cashmere throw in your first-class seat, sipping from your complimentary glass of champagne, you’ll look up and lock eyes with your seatmate and realize that fate has dealt you a royal flush.”

  “I’m flying coach, I’m not old enough to drink, and Michael’s going to be sitting next to me,” I said glumly.

  She came out of her trance. “Oh. Hm. Well, maybe at least there’ll be a good movie,” she said.

  “Like something based on a Nicholas Sparks book?” I said hopefully. After Lulu, Nicholas Sparks was my second-favorite author. I owned every one of the movies based on his books on DVD and had watched them so many times they now skipped. Plus, he was massively hot, even if he was kind of old and had five kids.

  The minute the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. He was also her biggest competition—even more than Nora Roberts.

  “Or, better yet, maybe they’ll have one of your movies,” I said, covering. “Like the made-for-TV version based on Singed by Secrets.”

  She smiled. “Actually, I have a better way for you to spend your vacation.” She stood up and started clomping toward her office. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh, great,” said Jordan, as she made us a tray of snacks: dates, figs, pâté, caviar. At my house, the most exotic thing we had was a papaya once in a while. “I can’t wait to see what she comes back with. Maybe she’ll lend you her feather-trimmed beach cover-up to wear at the pool.”

  As Lulu click-clacked back into the kitchen, I immediately saw that what she had in mind was one hundred times better than anything sequined or feather-trimmed.

  She handed me a book. “Here it is. My latest, and—if I don’t say so myself—my greatest yet.”

  It wasn’t just a book. It was an advance reading copy, which meant that it wasn’t even available in bookstores yet! “Propelled by Passion,” I gasped. I squinted at the cover. “Wait a minute. Is that—”

  Lulu nodded.

  “Oh. My. God. You brought back Dante?!” I squealed.

  Jordan put her hands over her ears and winced. “Can we please lose the squealing?”

  I looked at the cover again and sighed. There he was: the hottest guy in history, sitting on what looked like a brand-new, top-of-the-line motorcycle, with Devon’s arms wrapped around his waist. I loved motorcycles. I hadn’t actually been on a real one yet—just one at Magic Mountain, an amusement park—but there was something about the shiny chrome and the earsplitting revving of the engine that drove me wild.

  “I know he’s your favorite,” Lulu said. “Take a look at the dedication.”

  I opened it. “For Sophie, whose passion for romance is surpassed only by my own,” I read aloud. I couldn’t believe it—I had a book dedicated to me. And not just a book, but a book about one of the most incredible heroes in literature. I squinted at the dedication. “Wait a second—it says, ‘For Sophia.’”

  Lulu took it from me and held it up to her face. “Oh. Huh. Copyeditor screwed up.”

  Okay, so maybe my name was spelled wrong in the book, but still, I was almost famous. Millions of women around the world would read that and wonder who that Sophie—or Sophir—with a passion for romance was.

  “Don’t worry—we’ll make sure it’s fixed when the book goes to print,” she added.

  I threw my arms around her. “Thank you soooo much,” I said. “I haven’t read it yet, but I already know it’s my favorite book ever!” That was a huge compliment coming from someone like me who was such a big reader. I had read the first three Gossip Girl books in one weekend.

  Just a few hours before, I had been telling Jordan how nervous I was to have to sit on a plane for almost seven hours, because I hated flying. But now that I had Passion to keep me company, I could have flown to Australia and wouldn’t have complained. That being said, Lulu’s books were very quick reads because not many of the words were more than three syllables long, so I’d probably be done by the time we were flying over Dante’s hometown of Seven Rivers, Montana—which meant I’d either have to read it a second time before we landed, or go back and read Lassoed by Lust for the tenth time.

  My life may have been boring most of the time, but it was moments like this that made it livable.

  “Can you stop looking at that thing for two seconds and focus?” asked Jordan later as we sat in her Indian-slash-hippie-inspired bedroom surrounded by cracker crumbs while some grrl power music played in the background. “We haven’t even touched cosines yet.”

  “Huh?” I said, tracing Dante’s upper lip and wondering if it was as soft as it looked on the cover.

  Jordan took the book from me and tossed it onto the floor. “You can play with that later,” she promised, shoving my trig book into my lap.

  I turned my head for one more glance at Dante.

  “I can’t believe I’m best friends with someone who has a crush on a male model who’s made a living being objectified,” she said.

  “Objectified” was obviously the Young Feminists’ word of the month. The month before, it had been “patriarchal,” and the month before that, “subjugated.” As in, “Women over the centuries have been subjugated by patriarchal white men,” which was a phrase that Jordan tried to work into a conversation whenever she could
. Once she managed to bring it up to the Jamba Juice guy, which was pretty impressive. But what was even more impressive was that it turned out that he had been a gender studies major at Harvard, so the comment sparked a long discussion.

  I hated when Jordan called Dante a male model. He wasn’t. He was…Dante, my soul mate. I leaned back on one of the beaded silk pillows on her bed. “Do the Young Feminists of the New Millennium give you a dictionary when you join?” I asked, looking at Dante out of the corner of my eye.

  “Very funny,” she said. “No, they do not, but I’ll tell you this. Last week there was this thread in the forum about how annoying it is when girls put guys before the important things in life—like studying.” Her cell phone rang. “Omigod!” she squealed as she looked at the screen. “It’s Mark!”

  Mark Connor was a senior whom Jordan had had a crush on since the first day of freshman year. Like her, he was really into the idea of trying to change the world, and he was the president of the Go Green, BFFs with the Middle East, and Emo Is Excellent clubs. Up until last fall, he hadn’t been sure whether he liked guys or girls, but it seemed from the growing amount of e-mails and texts that he and Jordan had been sending to each other over the last month that he had decided on girls.

  She shooed me out of the room. “Go, go! You’ll make me nervous if you stay!”

  “But what about cosines?” I asked.

  “They can wait,” she said, shutting the door.

  I wandered downstairs and heard the clicking of computer keys coming from Lulu’s office. I walked over and stood at the door, which was open a crack. I tried not to breathe too loudly because I knew geniuses hated to be disturbed when they were creating.

  As I watched her sprawl out on her cheetah-print chaise lounge, her fingers flying across her laptop keys, stopping every few seconds to take a drag off her cigarette, I wondered if I would ever find something that I was good at that also made me tons of money.