Inside Girl Read Free

metallic. And it’s lonely there.” It was true: the one time I’d visited, I’d been amazed at how little stuff she had. Her apartment was basically four thousand square feet that contained a Mies van der Rohe chair, a tube of lip gloss, a bottle of Dom Pérignon, and about eight closets full of clothes.
    â€œAnd I can’t go stay with David again, not even if he begs me to.” Sara-Beth gazed dreamily off into the distance. “Sweet, gentle David. He had to leave Gdansk even earlier than I did. He must be heartbroken, being without me for so long. I’d love to be with him, I really would, but I have to think of his folks. That’s a lot to ask of your future in-laws, you know.”
    â€œRight,” I said. David is a friend of my brother’s, and at one point, Sara-Beth lived with his family for about six months. His parents are psychiatrists, so I guess they were fascinated by Sara-Beth, since she’d always been a celebrity and had never really had a chance to just be a kid. They even wrote an article on her for the
New York Times
magazine’s health column, called “Beyond Help? A Case Study of America’s Favorite Starlet.”
    â€œI’m trying to get a nice little place near where Liesel lives on the Upper East Side, in this charming building with all this … wood, you know, and views of the park. I need to be around nature. It’s just the way I am. But this ridiculous board has to approve me first. They think they’re so exclusive, just because the building used to be Shakespeare’s birthplace or the Australian embassy or something—it’s all very historical. It makes me crazy. Flan …” And now she gripped my wrists again in the steely bones of her hands and her eyes grew a few degrees bigger and started to well up. “Flan, could I spend the night? I just need some time for girl talk.”
    I blinked. “I mean—I have school tomorrow, but I guess that—”
    â€œOh, thank you, thank you, thank you! You have no idea how much this means to me. This will be so much fun. I can help you get ready for your first day!”
    Shaking my head and smiling, I walked back toward the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water from one of the bottles in the fridge. It was great to see SBB again—she’s really funny and sweet, on top of being glamorous—and I was glad I wasn’t alone in the apartment anymore. I pictured us staying up late, doing each other’s hair and talking about how totallygross Gdansk can be in August. The whole situation was a little funny, though. After all, my first day at a normal high school was tomorrow, and now there was a movie star staying at my house who even on her very best days had only a very loose grip on reality.

Chapter 3

Getting Ready for School, the Sara-Beth Way
    That night, while I was loading up my backpack with stuff for school—pens, paper, a binder—Sara-Beth Benny lay on my bed, turning her wig over in her hands and offering me advice about high school.
    â€œThe most important thing is, don’t show them you’re afraid,” she said. “Also, try to dress older than you are. You’re lucky that you’re tall and stuff, but maybe you should put some extra socks in your bra, just in case.”
    I zipped up my bag. “Sara-Beth?”
    â€œHmm?”
    â€œNo offense or anything, but did you ever actually
go
to high school?”
    â€œSure. In some of the later seasons I did. That’s how I know about the socks. Because there was this one episode when I wore these Tupperware containers under my shirt—”
    â€œNo, not on
Mike’s Princesses
.” I tucked a graphing calculator into the front pocket of my bag. “Did you ever go to high school in real life?”
    Sara-Beth yawned. “Well, life imitates art, you know?”
    â€œThat makes sense, I guess.” I picked up my backpack and set