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.
In other words, the place was a zoo. Which meant that Frida was in her element. My little sister was taking in all the excitement like it was pure oxygen, frantically text-messaging her friends, letting them know what they were missing, and taking snaps with her camera phone.
‘Besides, you guys,’ Frida was saying as she pointed her phone in Gabriel’s direction — even though we were still so far away he was only going to appear as a white-shirted blob to whoever she was sending the photo, ‘Gabriel’s deeply spiritual… and intellectual. Just like I am.’
I choked on another free sample of Stark Cola.
‘I am!’ Frida insisted. ‘Just because I’m not a math and science dork like some people… Besides, Gabriel says what matters is the size of a woman’s heart, not her bra.’
‘Right,’ I said sarcastically. ‘I’m sure Gabriel’d rather be with a total dog than Nikki Howard.’
Christopher got a good laugh out of that one — even though as I said it I was sort of hoping it was true. But Frida didn’t find it funny at all.
‘I’m not a total dog,’ Frida said, shooting me an injured look.
‘Frida.’ I stared at her with my mouth open. ‘I didn’t mean you.’
But it was too late. I’d hurt her feelings.
‘Maybe you think of yourself that way,’ Frida said stiffly. ‘But don’t drag me down to your level, Em. At least I make an effort.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I demanded.
‘Well, look at you,’ she said.
I looked at myself.
And, OK, I’m not the fashion plate Nikki Howard might be, in her stilettos and bikini and spray-on tan, or Whitney Robertson, with her flirty skirts and sexy camis.
But what’s wrong with jeans, a hoody and Converse?
Frida was only too eager to tell me.
‘You look like a guy,’ she complained. ‘I mean, maybe you have a figure, but it’s not like anybody could ever tell thanks to how baggy you wear your clothes. And have you ever even tried to do anything with your hair except throw it back in a scrunchy, which, by the way, are completely 2002? At least I try to look nice.’
I could feel myself turning bright red under the less-than-flattering
Stark Megastore lighting.
It’s one thing to be dissed by your little sister. But it’s another thing entirely to be dissed by her in front of the guy you’ve been secretly crushing on since the seventh grade.
‘Gosh, I’m sorry,’ I said, stung. Really, did I need this? I didn’t even want to be in this stupid store, in this stupid line, to meet this guy who, OK, was cute, but who I’d practically never heard of before this morning.
I could have been having a perfectly nice time at home, trying to reach level sixty of Journeyquest with Christopher. The last thing I needed on one of my rare days off from that hellhole otherwise known as Tribeca Alternative was this. ‘I didn’t know I was supposed to conform to some random standard of beauty dictated by some tween-queen fashion model.’
This caused Christopher to snort with laughter.
‘Tween queen. Good one,’ he said. I felt my blush turn into a flush. Of pleasure. Because Christopher had appreciated something I’d said.
Yeah. I’m that far gone. It’s sad really.
‘Anyway’ Christopher went on, ‘I think Em looks fine… ’
Fine! Christopher thought I looked fine! My heart soared. I mean, I know fine wasn’t exactly the world’s greatest compliment, but coming from Christopher it was like being called earth-shatteringly gorgeous. I was pretty sure I’d died and gone to heaven.
‘… and at least she’s not some big plastic phony like her,’ he added, nodding at the screen above our heads.
‘Yeah,’ I said, throwing Frida a triumphant look. Fine! Christopher said I looked fine!
But Frida was barely even paying attention.
‘For your information,’ she snapped, ‘Nikki Howard has taken the beauty and fashion industry by storm. She’s one of the youngest models ever to have done so. Nikki and her friends—’
‘Oh, here we go.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘A lecture on the FONs.’
‘What’s an FON?’ Christopher wanted to know.
‘Friend of Nikki’s,’ I translated. ‘According to last month’s COSMOgirl! she runs with a whole posse of FFBFs.’
‘Wait… what’s an FFBF?’ Christopher looked even more confused. If it didn’t have to do with a computer or computer game, Christopher often didn’t know what it was. This was what set him so adorably apart from every other guy at TAHS.
‘You know. People who are in the media all the time, but they’re only Famous For Being Famous,’ I explained to him. ‘They’ve never done anything to get famous — because they don’t have any talent? They’re usually rich people’s kids, like Nikki’s on-again-off-again boyfriend, Brandon Stark.’ I was in a good mood, on account of the fine remark, so I lowered my voice to sound like a television news announcer: ‘Nineteenyear-old son of billionaire Stark Enterprises owner Robert Stark. Or celebutantes, like Tim Collins’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Lulu. The Tim Collins,’ I went on. ‘Who directed the Journeyquest movie.’
Christopher’s jaw dropped. ‘And completely ruined it?’
‘That’d be the one,’ I said. ‘Lulu’s an FON.’
‘Why do you guys have to be so mean?’ Frida whined. ‘It’s like everything fun you look down on.’
‘That’s not true,’ Christopher said, crumpling an empty Stark Cookie bag, the contents of which he’d scarfed earlier, and stuffing it into the pocket of his copious jeans. Christopher had zeroed in on the bags of cookies Stark was giving away for free, and seized as many as his pockets could hold for us to snack on later. The Commander doesn’t allow junk food in the house. ‘We don’t look down on Journeyquest. Well, the game. The movie freaking sucked.’
‘Besides that stupid computer game,’ Frida said, scowling.
‘Music,’ I said, noting that Gabriel’s voice was still booming over the speakers above us. ‘I like music.’ Well… this music, to be exact.
‘Oh, right,’ Frida said. ‘Name one popular musician you listen to. And don’t name any of that horrible metal crap Christopher likes, either.’
‘One popular musician?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Fine. How about… Tchaikovsky?’
‘Nice one,’ Christopher said with a burst of laughter and an approving nod. ‘Mahler. He’s good too.’
‘Too dour,’ I said. ‘Beethoven.’
‘That dude is rad,’ Christopher said, raising his fists — thumbs and pinkies upright — in a rocker’s salute to Beethoven. ‘Beethoven rules my world!’
‘Oh God,’ Frida moaned, dropping her head into her hands in mortification.
‘Come on, Free,’ I said, elbowing her chummily. ‘We aren’t that embarrassing, are we?’
‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘You are. You really are. Don’t you realize that you guys look down on everything normal people like? Like Nikki Howard and her friends —’
It was kind of funny that as Frida said this, Nikki Howard herself actually materialized — along with some of her friends — before us.
Except that Frida didn’t notice right away. I mean, that Nikki Howard was standing in front of her. Well, practically.
That’s because Frida was too busy defending her idol tome.
‘You’re always going on about feminism, Em,’ Frida went on. ‘Well, do you really think Nikki would have gotten where she is today — the Face of Stark, one of the highest-earning models right now — if she weren’t a feminist?’
