Famous Last Words

Marnie’s bedroom was much pinker than I would have expected, with fuchsia walls and a huge white fairy-tale bed. A makeup vanity with a big round mirror was pushed up against one wall, and the chandelier above the bed dripped with teardrop-shaped crystals. The carpet (what you could see of it, anyway, between piles of clothes, books, and papers) was plush and white.

I set my overnight bag in the corner. This was going to be kind of a dress rehearsal for Mom and Jonathan’s Palm Springs trip.

“I like your room,” I said, to be polite.

“I hate it,” Marnie replied, heading to her closet. “My mom did it during her interior-decorator phase. They shipped me off to summer camp in Oregon, and when I came back, I was living inside a Barbie Dreamhouse. Only it’s more like a nightmare house. I swear, the color literally burns my retinas.”

“They won’t let you change it?”

She shrugged. “It gives me leverage when I want something from Mom.” She went into her walk-in closet and pulled out a gold-sequined minidress. “What do you think? It’s vintage. Mary Quant.”

“Um,” I said, trying to conceal my horror.

Her face fell. “You don’t like it? I was going to wear it with my white go-go boots.”

“Ohhhh,” I said. “It’s for you? In that case, I love it. It’s great.”

“Willa, you wear overalls on purpose. You think I would break the laws of time and space by putting you in sequins?” She tossed the vintage dress onto her bed, as if it were a T-shirt she’d picked up on clearance from Target. Then she ducked back into the closet.

When she came out holding a slim-fitting cherry-red dress with three-quarter sleeves, I could have hugged her. She handed the dress to me. The fabric was slinky and soft, and the design was simple — a plain high neckline, two pieces of red fabric forming a flattened X at the waist, and delicate gathers at the ends of the sleeves.

“Willa like?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Willa like very much.”

“That’s vintage, too,” she said. “It was my great-grandma’s, in the forties.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

She gave me an approving smile. “It beats overalls, anyway.”

Marnie had an array of powders, creams, and blushes that she kept in a case like a professional makeup artist. I was surprised to realize that I remembered how to apply it all — two years of not caring what I looked like hadn’t erased the muscle memory of blending eye shadow and making the fish-mouth mascara face.

After we both finished our makeup, Marnie ran her hands through my hair and made an unhappy chirping sound. “What about your hair? How retro are you willing to go? I’m thinking maybe an updo. Keep the ’40s vibe going.”

“I don’t know how to do anything like that,” I said, feeling embarrassed.

“Oh, I do,” she said, dragging her desk chair into the bathroom. “Sit and prepare to be beautified.”

I was a little surprised, to be honest. Marnie seemed so low-maintenance. Only when I saw her vast array of hair-styling implements did I realize how much effort she must have put into looking low-maintenance. Twenty minutes later, after a lot of tugging and twisting and stabbing me in the scalp with bobby pins, she gave me permission to turn around.

“You,” she said, “look legit. I should get an award for this. Maybe I should be a stylist for a living. Dad produced a movie last summer about a model who’s also a spy — Runway, did you see it? Never mind, nobody saw it, it was a huge bomb — and the stylists gave me lessons.”

Her chatter melted into a hum in my ears while I stared at myself.

Marnie had made me into something … someone … from another era. My hair was pulled back to the nape of my neck in a low, thick bun that shined like it was made of pure silk. With the cat-eye makeup and the red lips, I looked like … a movie star.

“Stare much?” Marnie teased. “Okay, go get dressed. I have to transform my own raven locks, such as they are.”

She curled the ends of her hair in a perfect gravity-defying flip. Her lips were frosty pink and her eye makeup behind her glasses was thick and black, with tons of mascara. Then she slipped into the sequined dress while I put on my red dress, and we stood looking at the full-length mirror. Suddenly, I was enthusiastic, for real. The world of psychics and visions and ghosts and murders seemed far away — and getting further every minute.

Marnie went into the closet and reappeared carrying a pair of white knee-high boots for herself and bronze-colored thick-heeled pumps for me. “Ready, Willa? Let’s go gift the world a little awesome.”

A whole block of Hollywood Boulevard was closed off for the premiere. The traffic nearby was basically standing still. So the driver of our hired sedan had to drop us off three blocks away.

It was hard to feel fancy walking down a normal sidewalk, passing tourists and ice cream stores and falafel restaurants and souvenir shops. But after a few minutes, we heard smatterings of applause and cheering, and a booming voice on a loudspeaker. And when we rounded the corner, we were greeted by an overwhelming circus of people and cameras and signs.

The red carpet stretched before us. It was bordered on one side by a wall that had the Paramount Pictures logo printed on it over and over, and on the other side by hundreds of reporters and photographers.

Behind the photographers, held back by metal barricades, were throngs of fans. Because there were no movie stars present at the moment, the crowd was relatively subdued, chattering excitedly instead of screaming. A lot of them held signs saying things like KURT I LOVE YOU! or MARRY ME, EMMA! One guy held up a sign that said READ MY SCREENPLAY, OSCAR GUARANTEED!

There were balloons, ba

We showed our IDs at the check-in table, and they handed us little passes with our names and seat numbers on them. We flashed those to a pair of ginormous security guys wearing ginormous suits, and they opened a velvet rope and let us through …

Onto the red carpet.

I paused for a moment, taking it all in.

“Do we have to walk in front of all the photographers?” I asked Marnie.

“Of course,” she said. “What, you want to skulk around in the shadows?”

I shrugged, and she looped her elbow through mine. “No,” she said. “We’re here, and we’re going to work it. Even if we’re not famous … they don’t know that.”

Then she started walking down the carpet. I expected to be ignored, but the photographers noticed us. Some of them took a few pictures. One shouted “Who are you?” as though we might actually be somebodies, which was pretty flattering.

Then we heard a commotion behind us, and screams rose up from the crowd. We turned to see a wave of people making their way onto the carpet.

“Those are studio publicists,” Marnie said, squeezing my arm so hard it went numb. “See? They all have earpieces. Someone huge just arrived. Oh my God — it’s him. It’s Kurt. He’s here. Hand me my smelling salts.”

The crowd of publicists parted, and a man walked through … a man you could only describe as a movie star. You could tell from forty feet away that he had a magnetic, unforgettable quality.

He’s still not as cute as Reed, I thought.

The fans began to shriek like a bunch of teenage girls, even though a lot of them were my mom’s age or even older. And the photographers went crazy, shouting “KURT! KURT! LOOK HERE! OVER HERE!”