Being Audrey Hepburn

When we were leaving the Met, her face was so flushed and embarrassed I thought she would fall apart crying in front of everyone, and Jess never cries. She also never makes mistakes at work—she felt totally exposed—and I could understand why. It probably hadn’t helped that I was downstairs playing ingenue with Isak and Chase.

“Myers hates me!” she said. I could barely hear her voice muffled in the pillow. Weird reversal. Jess was always more daring than me. But unexpectedly, I was on this strange track where I was willing to risk everything. Unlike Jess, I didn’t really want to keep all those things I was risking. My life might go down in flames, but it wasn’t a life I wanted to have anyway.

Working toward a career that made sense to everyone, Jess was supported by her family at every turn, while I was doomed to be a nurse-practitioner, which might be a perfectly good profession, just not for me.

She stood up, crossed the room, and began digging in her monster bag—tossing out a pair of textured thigh highs, a professional sewing kit, an entire library of rumpled paperback books, pliers, balled-up dollar bills, and a complete Allen wrench set. She could have pulled out a live rabbit, and I wouldn’t have been surprised. She kept digging.

“What are you looking for?”

“Shhh,” she said, furiously burrowing around the secret pockets of her massive bag. “Arrrggggg!!!!” She turned the whole thing upside down, and the remaining contents came pouring out all over the bed—coins rolled across the floor, and everything else went everywhere.

“There it is,” she groaned, like she’d finally located a lost child. She snatched the Hershey’s Cookies ’n’ Creme bar off the bed, ripped the wrapping off, and maniacally bit into it. Not a pretty sight, especially when you consider that Jess spent a whole lot of will power trying not to feed her sugar jones. Inside Jess’s ski

She wiped her mouth. “God, I need a ca

Jessica Giova

Her dad owned a takeout pizzeria and deli. The whole family worked there at one point or another. Every meal at home was a feast, and there was always room for one more at the table. Jess loved her no

“You look tired. Eat something!” she’d say. “Bella, you’re too ski

If I’d lived with Jess’s family, I probably would have been chubby, too—all my mom ever had in the house was vodka, ramen noodles, and cigarettes, so I never had that concern. Jess went through years of idiotic elementary school ridicule, and despite four summers at fat camp (which Jess paid for herself out of babysitting money because her family all thought her weight was just fine), everyone still called her Chubby Cheeks.

Nothing worked until the tenth grade, when Jess just decided to give her life a massive makeover. She changed everything by sheer force of will: exercised like a maniac and never touched pasta again. Then she came out to her entire family at a Sunday di

My stupid obsession had pushed her back over the edge.

“Jess, we don’t have to do this.” I couldn’t believe I was saying those words. Could I do this by myself? No. Did I really mean what I was saying? Barely. But Jess was my best friend in the world, and there was no way I was going to pressure her to continue risking her real future for my fantasy life. “Really. If this is going to—”

“Shhh,” she mumbled, her mouth full of chocolate. I sat back down on the bed and waited, wondering if she would stop stuffing her face long enough to breathe.

“Oh God, that’s better,” she said, wiping her mouth off with her hoodie sleeve.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’ve been selfish.”

An odd smile crossed Jess’s face.

“Myers has never liked me. You know he didn’t hire me. The head intern did, and she’s gone. He’s been trying to find a reason to fire me ever since she left.”

“Why?”

Jess looked at me like the answer was obvious and I was totally naive. She swallowed and paused as if she were trying to figure out what she wanted to say.

“Lizzy,” Jess began, “I’m really sorry…”

I knew instantly that I didn’t want to hear the rest, but I was determined not to pout or weep, at least not until Jess went home.

“I can’t do this anymore. I have to think about my future.”

But what about my future? I thought.

“I understand,” I said, despite myself. I did. Really. But I was crushed. I didn’t know why I’d thought it was going to work anyway. Nothing ever did.

I couldn’t just sit there, so I went over to the computer and clicked around. Jess knew I was heartbroken. She squeezed onto the desk chair with me, both of us feeling bad. A part of me wanted her to hurry up and leave so I could crawl back into my closet and cry.

I tabbed through my usual random gossip sites and blogs, feeling completely numb.

“I should probably get going,” she said after a few moments.

“Okay,” I said.

“Holy shit. Look at that—TMZ posted a picture of you in the blue dress with Adam Levine. They must have gotten it from Us Weekly!” She pushed her fingers across the computer track pad.

“I guess.”

“That dress is actually pretty awesome, and you look incredible.” She double clicked the dress to magnify her handiwork and check out the details.

My heart leapt and then plunged. There would be no more dresses. No more parties. No more Adam Levine. I glanced up. She was right about the dress, but it seemed way less awesome than it had ten minutes before, when it actually meant something.

Jess clicked through to the next page, “Look, they have you tagged in another photo—you and that shitfaced ‘queen of pop.’” She clicked to enlarge, and there I was, arm in arm with Tabitha Eden, our heads thrown back in what appeared to be a raucous giggle.

My heart stopped when I realized how clearly the picture showed the Breakfast at Tiffany’s Givenchy. Someone had gotten another angle on the pop princess and me that night, as we were sneaking toward the back door. I could tell Jess was fixated on it, too. After her fresh encounter with Mr. Myers, I guessed that her memories of that night weren’t quite as glorious as mine.

“Whatcha looking at, losers?” Jess and I spun around at the same time.

Courtney, my sister, stood behind us in knee-high white boots, distressed jeans, a crop top, hot pink accessories, and a nasty smirk on her face.

I snapped my laptop shut.

“Porn?” Courtney asked, laughing. She sat down on my bed and lit up a cigarette. Like this day wasn’t already shitty enough.

21

“What are you doing here, Court? I thought you and Mom agreed to stay away from each other for a while.”

Courtney tossed her hair back and laughed. I knew her entire library of moves—the hair whip, the hip wiggle when she sat down, her exaggerated fish lips, all the stuff she did with her cigarettes—all calculated to get boys to look at her. They were so ingrained into her psyche that she couldn’t stop herself from doing them even when there were no boys around.

“Yeah, Mom has been up my ass lately,” Courtney said.

“Lately is an understatement,” I said. She examined her cigarette and spat out a piece of something. It was gross. Still, it was better to wait for Courtney to leave, like a storm passing, than to confront her.