Theodora Twist Read online

  As Zach Archer sticks his hand up my shirt and under my bra, I try to remember what Been There/Done That (the advice columnist on GirlScene.com) told Emma K., fifteen, Omaha, Nebraska.

  I’m pretty sure this is supposed to feel good—his hand on my chest, groping, squeezing. Like Emma K., I’m in love with my boyfriend. But it doesn’t feel good. It feels . . . weird. We’re in my bedroom now (door ajar, as per Mom). Tonight we went to the movies (a documentary about foreign affairs that our history teacher assigned for extra credit). Here’s a recap of the walk home:

  Me: So, what did you think of the movie?

  Zach: You have really sexy legs.

  Me, glancing down at my too-skinny legs: Thanks.

  I’m glad I listened to my friend Belle and wore the cute skirt and not my jeans. I’m thrilled that Zach thinks anything about me is sexy. But since we started seeing each other, he’s ignored almost everything I’ve said. Up until now I’ve let it go—his compliments overshadow any rude behavior. I’ll say something like, “My stepfather can be so clueless sometimes,” and Zach’s response will be: “I really like your shirt. You look hot.” Tonight, though, I’m determined to have a real conversation. We will get to know each other.

  Me: I really learned a lot from the film. I had no idea that—

  Zach: (Stands in front of me. Lifts the hem of my shirt. Stares into my eyes and slips his hand under the fabric.)

  Me: (I freeze. Then step back. Turn red. Quickly say) I’m going to write my extra-credit paper on the effects of war on children caught in the crossfire. How about you?

  Zach: (Lets out frustrated breath. Resumes walking. Never answers my question.)

  This pretty much sums up our relationship. Our thirteen-day relationship. And now, while he squeezes my 32A chest, his breath warm in my ear, I will the phone on my desk to ring or my baby sister to let out a blood-curdling shriek. But there’s silence. Except for the occasional “You’re so hot” being whispered in my ear.

  I’ve wanted Zach Archer for two years. Two years! And he finally noticed me, suddenly, mysteriously asked me out two weeks ago. Zach is beautiful. Dark, thick wavy hair. Dark blue eyes. One dimple. He’s smart. He’s funny. And until he asked me out I thought he was out of my league.

  But here he is, on a Saturday night in April, the first warm night of spring, sitting next to me on my bed, whispering that I’m not.

  I wriggle away and try to think of something interesting to talk about. Zach isn’t the conversationalist I’ve always imagined him to be. I could bring up something funny that happened in school. Or I—

  “Emily,” he whispers in my ear. “I have something important to ask you.”

  We’re talking! Yes, Zach. Yes, yes, yes. Of course I’ll go to the junior prom with you. In fact, I’ve already bought a great dress. . . .

  He takes my hand. “Emily, when do you think you’ll be ready to have sex?”

  I come back to earth fast. This is the first time he’s asked—directly. For the past thirteen days, he’s limited the topic to trying to find out for himself. Tonight, for example, was a repeat of our first date, when he tried to un-snap my jeans under the table in Burger Busters, my favorite diner. A French fry in one hand, my silver snap in the other. I bit the fry out of his hand to distract him, and it worked. For a minute. Same thing afterward in the dark movie theater. Every day he’s tried to take off my pants/skirt/shorts. Every day I’ve distracted him.

  “I don’t know,” I say, feeling like such a baby. Please stop pressuring me. I just want to talk to you. Look at you. Kiss you. Be with you.

  “A week? A month?” he asks, leaning over to kiss my neck. One hand is on my rib cage, just under the band of my bra.

  If I’m so in love, why do I start sweating and feeling slightly sick when his hand travels?

  Because you’re not ready, Belle and Jen tell me all the time.

  So when will I be ready? And if I’m not ready for Zach Archer, love of my life, who could I possibly ever be ready for?

  “You know who is ready?” Zach asks, those gorgeous blue eyes on mine. “Chloe Craven.”

  Did he just slap me across the face? Chloe Craven is very pretty, takes all AP classes, and has had a rep since eighth grade. This is not the point, though. The point is that Zach Archer isn’t supposed to be a jerk. He’s supposed to be my boyfriend.

  I pull my hand away. “Are you saying if I don’t have sex with you, she will?”

  “Maybe.” He lifts my chin with his finger. Suddenly his expression is all puppy dog.

  I want to tell him to give me five minutes to go online and see what Been There/Done That would advise. But I already know. I’m supposed to tell him he’s a jerk who doesn’t deserve me.

  “I—I’m . . . just not ready. I really like you, Zach. I want to be ready. But I’m just not. Yet,” I add, wishing this wasn’t so hard. “I mean, we’ve only been hanging out for two weeks, right?” I force a smile. “Hey, let’s go downstairs and see what’s on TV. Want some ice cream? We have everything for make-your-own sundaes—”

  He stands up and runs a hand through his silky brown hair. “Look, Emily, the only reason I asked you out in the first place is because I figured if you liked me as much as I heard you did, you’d have sex with me.”

  I stare at him, unable to speak, unable to think. With that one sentence, Zach Archer is no longer my boyfriend. Was never really my boyfriend. All I’ve been to Zach is an opportunity.

  “That doesn’t make me a jerk, by the way,” he adds offhandedly. “It makes me honest.”

  “Trust me,” I say, closing my eyes for a second. “It makes you a jerk.”

  “You’re a nice girl,” he says, giving my hair a playful tug. “Maybe too nice. Friends?” He extends his hand, which I don’t shake. He shrugs. “See you around school.”

  I wait until I hear him racing down the steps— probably straight to Chloe Craven’s house—before I burst into tears.

  I pick up the phone to call Belle, but I start crying, so I IM her and Jen instead.

  EmilyIsFine: He dumped me. 2 sad 2 type details. EmilyIsDefinitelyNotFine.

  JenGirl: OMG!!! RUOK? Be there in 15 minutes with ice cream.

  BelleSays: Me 2.

  Belle and Jen are in my room in less than fifteen minutes.

  “He is a jerk, right?” I say, hoping for just a moment that I might be wrong so that I can hit rewind and go back to twenty minutes ago, when Zach was here, when he was my boyfriend.

  Belle glances up from last year’s yearbook, pushing her long auburn curls out of her face. She’s drawing horns on Zach’s picture. “No, he’s not a jerk. He’s a shithead.”

  “I’m really sorry, Em,” Jen says. “I know how much you liked him.”

  I don’t want to cry again, so I head downstairs to get three Diet Cokes. I pull open the fridge and fight back tears.

  “Out of Fluff?” Stew, my stepfather, asks with an awkward smile as he comes into the kitchen. He often has on Awkward Face. It means he knows something’s wrong but doesn’t want to deal with it. (“Or he doesn’t know how to deal with it,” my mother likes to correct.) Stew and I never have all that much to say to each other, but he knows I have a thing for peanut butter and Fluff sandwiches.

  I quickly collect myself. “Ha ha,” I say. “I just thought of something sad, that’s all.”

  He reaches past me into the fridge and grabs the leftover apple pie from dinner. He flashes another awkward smile, then disappears into his study.

  I hear Sophie, my one-year-old sister, crying upstairs. Stew does not emerge from his study. I know that my mom is napping. Stew knows that my mom is napping. They both know that Sophie is teething and wakes up a few times between bedtime and the crack of dawn. Hang on, Soph, I’m coming. We can cry together.

  But before I even hit the steps, my mom is coming down, Sophie in her arms. My mom looks exhausted. I love my baby sister, but if the government or schools or whoever is looking for a way to reduce the rate of
teen pregnancy, a baby brother or sister at age fifteen will blast the idea of unprotected sex right out of anyone’s head.

  My mom yawns. It’s just after eight p.m. on a Saturday and she can barely keep her eyes open. She’s wearing sweats—fun pink ones that I bought her for her birthday three months ago—but they’re stained with spit-up and sweet potato puree. She’s lucky she has gorgeous straight light brown hair—it always looks perfect. “I thought I heard Zach’s voice before I fell asleep,” she says. “But when I passed by your room, I heard Belle and Jen talking.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t even want to talk about it.

  “Em?” she says. “You okay?”

  I want to fling myself into her arms, but Sophie starts fussing. My mom jiggles her a bit. Sophie is now screaming her head off.

  “Emily,” Stew calls from his den. “Can you go soothe Sophie back to sleep? Your mom’s taking a nap. Thanks, hon.”

  No, you’re taking a nap, I want to yell. I roll my eyes at my mom, and she gives me the “you just don’t understand how hard he works/how exhausting it all is” look.

  I try to understand. I really do. But I don’t get any of it. What happened to being happy, which was the whole point of marrying Stew in the first place? For months after meeting him, my mom walked around with a sappy smile on her face, saying for no reason at all: “He makes me so happy, Emily!”

  Which made me happy. In a previous life, my mom, Stephie Stewarts, was a high-powered Manhattan corporate lawyer named Stephanie Fine. She was always busy, but always happy. Then my dad (a high-powered corporate lawyer named Alexander Fine) died, and my mom’s entire world came to a screeching halt. She took leave from her job and just cried. All day. All night. My grand-parents (both sets) tried to get her to join a bereavement group, but she wouldn’t.

  I did, though. A guidance counselor at school told me that a senior had formed an after-school club for grieving students. She called it the Lost and Found club and noted on the flyers that anyone suffering a loss was welcome, whether that loss was a parent, a friend, or even a pet. What you were supposed to find was simply support. And thanks to the two girls and three guys in the Lost and Found club when I was twelve, I wasn’t too much of a mess. And I was able to help out my mom as much as she’d let me.

  Almost three years later, she met Stew. A friend dragged her out to a book club meeting, and Stew Stewarts took one look at her gray sweats and the dark circles under her eyes and fell madly in love. Go figure. They dated; she started smiling. Singing in the shower. Walking around commenting on how happy he made her. If she was happy, I was happy, even if Stew wasn’t my dad and never would be. Several months later, they were crib shopping, making lists of baby names, and spending their evenings saying, “Madison and Grace are so last year. How about Hermione?”

  What was I doing? Strangely enough, I renewed my membership in the Lost and Found club, which I’d stopped going to after a year and a half. I thought I was doing okay. Handling my grief. But when my mom and Stew sat me down (I would have rather heard it from my mom first) to tell me I was going to be a big sister (as though I were a five-year-old) and that they were getting married and had made an offer on a big old Victorian across town, I went to a Lost and Found meeting the next day and cried for forty-five minutes to six strangers, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in the club. You can also yell, throw things (at a certain section of the room), or not say a word. In the year and a half since my mom and Stew’s quickie wedding in our old backyard, I went from mopey member to tissue-dispensing leader. Right now we have two parental deaths, one parental abandonment, one pet death, one runaway older sister, and one best friend abandonment. Not everyone comes every week. But I’m always there, just in case.

  “Thanks, Em,” Stew calls out at the silence in the house.

  I shake my head and wait for my mom to at least roll her eyes or make a joke about Stew’s cluelessness, but Sophie fusses a bit and my mom bounces her in her arms, then heads toward the living room. I want her to turn around, ask me what’s wrong again, put her arm around me. Something. Anything. But she just walks away.

  “Zach broke up with me,” I whisper to her back.

  She whirls around. “What? When?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago,” I say, comforted by her concern.

  She lets out an annoyed breath. “Emily, if you knew it wasn’t serious between you two, I wish you hadn’t dragged me to the mall last Saturday to buy a two-hundred-dollar dress for the prom.” She shakes her head. “Money’s tight right now on just the one income, and I could have used a break instead of running around from store to store. And Stew had to watch Sophie on his day off.” More head shaking. More annoyed face.

  Poor Stew! He had to babysit his own daughter!

  And I thought my mother enjoyed our shopping trip as much as I did. Guess not.

  Last Saturday, just after my mom put Sophie down for her nap, I asked if she’d mind going prom dress shopping with me.

  “You have a date?” she said. “How exciting!”

  “Well, he hasn’t asked yet, but I’ve been seeing Zach for a week, like every day. He even referred to himself as my boyfriend. It’s just a matter of time till he brings up the prom—or I do.”

  For a second she looked like she was going to cry. “Oh, Emily. I am so sorry that I didn’t even realize you had a boyfriend. God, I’ve been wrapped up in Sophie, huh?”

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  “No, it’s not okay. Give me five minutes to get out of these sweats and put on some lipstick and we’re off.”

  I had the best time. It was just the two of us, no Stew, no Sophie, just me and my mom, talking, sharing, laughing, like it used to be.

  I stare at her for a second, then run upstairs.

  “Emily,” she calls. “Emily, wait.” I hear her walking to the stairwell. “Em, come on downstairs. Let’s talk. I can’t just leave Sophie on the floor and I need to get her back to sleep—”

  “Just forget it,” I call down. “I’m fine. Belle and Jen are here.”

  Thank God.

  Theodora

  The next reporter is my last. She doesn’t get personal. No questions about how many guys I’ve been with (or in what combinations). No questions about my relationship with my mother or how many calories I ingest daily. It’s insane that the shoes I wear or what I think about the president or who I’m dating is of national interest, but it is, apparently. Last week I bought a brown leather bracelet for four bucks from a street vendor in New York City, and the next day, six magazine editors called Ashley to arrange shoots for photo spreads: Theodora Wears the Hottest Trend in Jewelry! Unbelievable. I wonder what would happen if I started walking around naked.

  My entourage returns just in time to hear me give Ashley-proofed answers to the final few questions. Ashley is yakking on her cell; my publicist is schmoozing with the reporter; my personal assistant, Larissa, a tall, jumpy twenty-something with really long hair, is pulling out my walk-around-the-hotel disguise from the giant bag she carries everywhere. Having a personal assistant is as great as it sounds, by the way. If I’m sunbathing in my backyard and want a Diet Coke, I call her and she appears from her office in my house with an icy bottle. I don’t actually deal much with Larissa, since Ashley is the one who schedules her days.

  Someone takes off the tiny mike clipped to my dress. The director’s assistant pokes her head in to tell me the cast and crew party starts at ten. Great. That only leaves me one hour with Bo and Brandon. After tomorrow I won’t see them for months.

  If a reporter ever asked me a real question, such as: Are you in love with Bo and Brandon? Either/or? I’d be so tempted to give the real answer, which is a big fat yes. I know that sounds a little crazy, being in love with two guys—brothers—but they’re so alike that it’s impossible to love one and not the other. I met them together (we were presenters at an awards show) and I fell for them together. When I’m with Bo and Brandon, I don’t think. Ever. I just feel.<
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  Larissa hands me my disguise: an ugly wig of mousy brown wavy hair, nonprescription horn-rims, jeans, a khaki blazer, and a string bikini (much more comfortable than the underwire bra I’ve been trapped in). My sticky tape is beginning to itch. I can’t wait to put on my tiny white tank top and white yoga pants and bare feet when I’m back in my room.

  But first I have to get through the fake “you were so great’s” and all the air kisses, including European style on both cheeks, even though everyone in the room is American. Ashley can’t make the cast and crew party, which means I’m free to be me.

  “Be a good girl,” she says, slapping me on the ass on her way out, her own personal assistant trailing after her.

  Freedom! I head into the private bathroom to change, then race out of the press area, my disguise saving me. The hotel is packed, but no one gives me a second glance. I get in the elevator with a waiting crowd and stand in front of the laminated poster of Family.

  “Stop biting your nails!” a woman whispers at the teenage girl sulking next to her. “Jesus, Carrie, would you stand up straight ? Why are you slouching?”

  I have a better question: Why are you ragging on your daughter in a tiny elevator with four other people in it?

  The girl rolls her eyes at me. I hear you, sister. Why are mothers so incredibly annoying?

  “Do you like Theodora Twist?” I ask her.

  She barely glances at me and nods.

  I reach into my bag for a couple of the free movie passes the producer gave me to the special sneak preview tomorrow night. I hand her two.

  “Wow—thanks!” she says. And immediately straightens up.

  The elevator opens onto my floor and I race to my room. Bo is lying on my bed, his hands behind his head, watching MTV. Brandon is in the comfy chair. . . reading a book? No, it can’t be. I look closer. Yup, it’s a book. The unauthorized biography of the Bellini Brothers.

  “Hi, I’m a crazed groupie and I’ll do anything you want,” I say, grinning at them.

  “Sorry, but there’s only one girl for us,” Bo drawls in his Texas accent.