Airhead

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to sound breezy. ‘Yes. We were just leaving. Brandon, you can put me down now.’

‘No,’ Brandon said sullenly as he stared at Gabriel, apparently recognizing him from the grainy photo of the two of us on Gabriel’s Vespa that had been all over the place the day before.

‘Ha.’ I gave a nervous laugh, and tried to smile my dewiest at Gabriel.

‘He’s kidding. Put me down now, Brandon.’

‘No,’ Brandon said again.

I closed my eyes briefly, praying there wouldn’t now be a fight between Gabriel and Brandon.

But I needn’t have worried. Because of course Gabriel doesn’t like me that way, considering the fact that he thinks Nikki Howard is a recovering addict and all. When I opened my eyes again, he was still gazing at me with that same bemused expression.

And Lulu had come up behind him and was scowling.

‘God, what is taking so long?’ she demanded, in a surprisingly loud voice. She looked like a five-foot-tall angry general. ‘The car’s waiting, you guys. Move it, or lose it!’

Obediently Brandon followed her, not seeming to notice that he was still carrying me. Not knowing what else to do, I waved goodbye to Gabriel from over Brandon’s broad shoulder. Gabriel waved back — then seemed to catch himself and lowered his hand, looking around as several people standing nearby cried, ‘Oh my God — that’s Nikki Howard!’ One or two rushed up to ask for my autograph, but Brandon just grunted and kept walking, not pausing even for a moment.

Being carried out of the hottest dance club in Manhattan at two in the morning by Nikki Howard’s on-again, off-again boyfriend wasn’t too embarrassing. Especially when we encountered about nine thousand paparazzi on the sidewalk between the front of the club and the waiting doors of our limo. That was especially nice. I mean, not.

‘Great,’ I said, after Brandon had dumped me inside the car and I’d straightened out my skirt, which had hiked up past my hips. ‘You know what that looked like, right?’

‘What?’ Lulu asked blearily as she reapplied her lip-gloss.

‘Like I was too drunk to walk and Brandon was carrying me out of there.’

‘So?’ Lulu admired her own reflection in the Swarovski crystalencrusted compact she was holding. ‘You didn’t know any better than to drink too much. You forgot. You have amnesia. Remember? God, that’s the perfect excuse for everything.’ She looked up from the compact. ‘Oh, no, wait… how could you remember that? You have amnesia.’

Brandon, who’d piled into the limo after us, chose that moment to collapse on top of me.

‘Your place or mine?’ he asked my stomach.

‘Oh my God, get off,’ I said, giving him a shove. ‘I’m not going to your place and you’re not staying at mine. I don’t even like you that way I only kissed you to keep you from getting your face smashed in by that DJ. You’re in no condition to be fighting anyone.’

‘You’re nice,’ he said, not moving an inch and, in fact, snuggling more deeply into my lap. ‘You’re much nicer than you used to be, before you hit your head and scrambled your brains. You were so mean before. Remember, Lulu? When Nikki was so mean all the time?’

Lulu snapped open her bag and put her lipgloss away, cocking her head to study me thoughtfully. ‘She is a lot less bitchy,’ she said. ‘It must be because of the spirit transfer.’

‘I don’t care why it is,’ Brandon said, sighing happily as he hugged my belly. ‘I’m just glad she’s back. And so much nicer.’ A few seconds later, he let out a gentle snore.

I threw Lulu a helpless look, like, What am I supposed to do now?

‘Just push him off when we get home,’ she said with a shrug of her razor-sharp shoulder blades. ‘He won’t wake up. Tom’ll take him back to his place on Charles Street. It’s not like he’ll remember any of this tomorrow. He never does.’

‘He does this a lot?’ I asked, glancing down at Brandon’s handsome, peacefully dozing face.

Lulu looked at me blankly. ‘He likes to party,’ she said.

I could see that she had no idea what I was talking about — also that she was begi

But not tonight. Tonight, I just wanted to go to bed.

Which I did, the minute we got home, carefully setting Nikki’s alarm for seven o’clock — giving me a grand total of four-hours’ sleep — so I could get to school on time.

Well, I guess no one had said it was going to be easy, this balancing high school with a full-time modelling career. I had no idea how I was going to pull it off.

All I knew was that I had to, if I was going to establish any kind of normality to my new life.

Normality. When I had Nikki Howard’s face and Emerson Watts’s brain. Right. Because that had been working out just great so far.

Twenty

I could see that the Walking Dead were in fine form when the cab I’d been lucky to snag let me off in front of TAHS the next morning. They were all leaning up against the chain-link fence around the construction site across the street (because why have a high school if it isn’t across the street from a former thread factory they’ve imploded to make room for more condos, so you can listen to the BEEP BEEP BEEP of trucks backing up all day?), text-messaging one another.

All but Whitney Robertson and Jason Klein. They were making out.

I felt some throw up come into my mouth, just looking at them.

But it might have been the Danish I’d snagged at deli near the loft and made the mistake of trying to eat for breakfast. It turns out Nikki Howard’s digestive system and Danish? Not so much.

I just hadn’t had time to make myself a decent breakfast. I’d hardly believed it when the alarm had gone off. It seemed like I’d only just closed my eyes, and it had been time to wake up again. I’d wanted to die when I saw what time it was. One thing I knew for sure — no more going out on a school night. Not for me.

And then, as I’d lain there, staring at Nikki Howard’s plain white walls — a housekeeper or someone must have come to clean, because Gabriel’s roses were gone. I guess they’d finally wilted and died — with Cosabella licking my face, eager for breakfast and a walk, it had occurred to me that I didn’t have to go. Really. No one was making me. Nikki Howard was an emancipated minor. She didn’t have to go to school if she didn’t want to. I could roll over and go right back to sleep — lovely, delicious sleep. The limo wasn’t coming to pick me up for the Elle shoot until three. I could stay in bed all day if I wanted to.

It was tempting. So tempting. Especially because I’d been too wired to go right to sleep when I’d gotten home last night and, after listening to Mom’s messages — seven of them, each one more aggravated than the last — had finally gone to Lulu’s room and checked her laptop while she slept and found that hers too had the same keystroke-tracking software on it that Nikki’s had.

I’d disco

It was true I still had only a Stark-brand PC… but once it was functioning without spyware, who needed school? I’d have to set up a whole new online identity for Nikki, since I knew my parents had disco

Oh no, wait. I couldn’t. Because how would Nikki Howard know Christopher Maloney? In order for her to get to know him, she was going to have to go to school today…

Which, I will admit, is the only thing that sent me stumbling out of bed, grabbing blindly for clothes, pulling on the first things my fingers came into contact with, which turned out to be some kind of high-waisted dress I was supposed to wear over black leggings with these cowboy boots and a lot of long necklaces (Lulu had laid them out for me last night, giggling about how I needed to look good on my first day of school).