Airhead

But just because Christopher isn’t what the WDs consider hot doesn’t mean he isn’t cute.

‘Thanks,’ I snarled at Frida. ‘A lot. See if Christopher ever comes over to defragment your computer again.’

‘Christopher’s hair is longer than mine,’ Frida hissed. ‘And what about yesterday in the cafeteria, when you screamed at Jason Klein to shut up while you were both in line for ketchup for your burgers at the condiment bar?’

‘Well,’ I said with an uncomfortable shrug, ‘yesterday was a bad day. And besides, he deserved it. And at least Christopher can cut his hair. What’s your excuse?’

‘All Jason said was that he preferred the cheerleaders’ spring haltertop uniforms to their winter sweater ones!’ Frida cried.

‘Well, that is sexist, Frida,’ Mom said.

I flashed Frida a triumphant look over my waffles. Still she wouldn’t let it go.

‘Cheerleaders are athletes, Mom,’ Frida insisted. ‘Their halter-top uniforms are less binding than their sweater ones, allowing them more freedom of movement.’

‘Oh my God.’ I stared across the breakfast table at my little sister.

‘You’re trying out for cheerleading this year, aren’t you?’

Frida took a deep breath. ‘Forget it. Just forget it. I’ll ask Dad. Dad’ll let me go by myself.’

‘No he won’t,’ Mom said. ‘And you will not disturb him. You know he got in late last night.’

Dad lives in New Haven during the week, where he teaches at Yale, and only comes home to Manhattan on weekends (it’s tough on married academics when they can’t get hired by the same college).

Because of the guilt he feels about this, Dad will generally let us do anything we want. If Frida had asked if it would be OK if she went to Atlantic City with the men’s swim team for the weekend to gamble away her college-education money, Dad would have been like, ‘Sure, why not? Here’s my bank card, have a blast.’

Which is why Mom watches us like a hawk when Dad’s home. She knows perfectly well that he’s a pushover when it comes to his teenaged daughters.

‘And what’s this about you trying out for cheerleading?’ Mom wanted to know. ‘Frida, we need to talk… ’

While Mom went on about how women weren’t allowed to play men’s sports in school until the 1970s, and so were relegated to cheer for the male athletes on the sidelines, thus giving birth to cheerleading, Frida sent me a withering look that said, I’ll get you for this, Em!

I had no doubt she’d get her revenge later, at the Stark Megastore opening.

And it turned out I wasn’t wrong.

It just didn’t happen quite the way I’d been expecting it to.

Three

Frida turned out to be right about one thing: Gabriel Luna is a great singer-songwriter.

And — truth be told — he was pretty cute too. He wasn’t one of those music-company-fabricated pretty boys… the ones Frida and her friends are always freaking out over on TRL or whatever.

Nor did he seem to be harbouring any strategically placed, look-at-me-I’m-so-indie tattoos, or the latest popular trend amongst male singers, eyeliner. Gabriel, as far as I could tell (which wasn’t easy, since there was quite a crowd between us and the stage on which he was performing), appeared to be tattoo and make-up free.

He was even dressed sort of normally, in a button-down shirt and jeans. His hair was choppily cut and a little too long (though not compared to Christopher’s), and very dark in contrast to his somewhat piercing blue eyes (not, you know, that I noticed), but it still looked good. His hair, I mean.

But it was his voice — oh God, and that English accent — that got to me. Deep and rich and soulful — but also playful when the song called for it — his voice filled the Broadway Tunes and Soundtracks section of SoHo Stark Megastore, where the mini-stage had been set up for him to perform. People who were in the aisles looking for discount CDs couldn’t help but pause with their Stark shopping baskets to listen, because Gabriel’s voice was so compelling and his presence so commanding.

He came out on stage with a fast dance number — the first single from his new album. And it was, I have to admit, pretty catchy. I found myself kind of bouncing along to it.

But, you know, secretly, so Christopher wouldn’t notice, since I knew he’d make some cynical comment.

Then Gabriel traded in the electric guitar he’d been using to accompany himself for a regular one, and went acoustic for his second number, which he performed sitting on a stool.

And OK, I’ll admit, Frida wasn’t the only one who might have swooned a little. I had a hard time reminding myself that I’m not a teenybopper any more… even though I might have been attending an actual teeny-bopperfest.

At least until it came time to get in line to get Frida’s CD signed. That’s when reality came crashing back, as we found ourselves surrounded by a mob of thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls, all wearing sparkly low-rise jeans exactly like Frida’s, and all clutching slips of paper on which they’d written the name to whom they wanted Gabriel to personalize their CD… along with their cellphone number. Just in case Gabriel happened to ask for it.

What had been a magical few moments turned tedious. And fast.

‘He’s not looking at you,’ I assured Frida as we stood in the long (did I mention it was long?) line to get Gabriel’s autograph.

‘Yes he is,’ Frida insisted as she waved. ‘He’s looking right at me!’

‘No,’ Christopher said, standing beside us. Good friend that he is, Christopher had come along to lend me moral support… and also to check out Stark’s electronics section, which was featuring a newly released, Stark-designed hand-held gaming device with a screen wide enough that you could actually play tactic-style games on it without going blind. Even better, they were selling them for under a hundred bucks.

Christopher and I are ethically opposed to Stark Megastores… but we’re not above taking advantage of their heavily slashed discount prices.

‘He’s looking at her.’ Christopher pointed towards a plasma screen that was hanging from the ceiling above our heads, showing Nikki Howard — looking coolly beautiful in a filmy evening gown and ridiculously high stilettos — against a hot-pink background, gyrating in time to the thumping rock music that filled the store.

There were dozens — maybe hundreds — of similar plasma screens suspended by thick wires from the open duct work along the ceiling all over the store, each featuring Nikki Howard in various states of undress, urging patrons to try Stark Enterprises’ new line of clothing and beauty products, which would be available exclusively in Stark Megastores worldwide in the new year.

‘He’s probably trying to see if she’s got anything on under there,’ Christopher joked.

‘Gabriel doesn’t think of women as sex objects,’ Frida sniffed with the merest flick of a glance in the direction Christopher was pointing. ‘I know. I read it in his interview with COSMOgirl!. He respects women with brains.’

I nearly choked on my free Stark Cola at the suggestion that Nikki Howard had a brain.

Frida got defensive right away. ‘She does!’ she insisted. ‘What other seventeen-year-old do you know who’s gotten as many modelling and product-endorsement contracts as Nikki has? And she started with nothing — nothing. Seriously, how could you not know that? Don’t you people do anything but play that stupid video game?’

Fortunately it wasn’t all that easy to hear Frida going on about how out of touch Christopher and I were with our own generation, considering the rock music that was blasting all around us (except that it was all right, since it was Gabriel’s music)… not to mention the hordes of people crowding the store.

Not all of them were there to meet Gabriel Luna, like we were, though. A lot of them, in fact, were there for an entirely different reason: to make trouble. Every few minutes we saw a uniformed security officer dragging another protester from the store. The rabble rousers were pretty easily distinguished from actual customers, like Frida, by their combat fatigues… and the paintball guns they all seemed to be carrying beneath their trench coats. Their primary targets were the plasma screens, many of which had already been hit (in strategic locations) by giant blobs of yellow paint.