Inside Girl Read Free Page A

it on a chair, then turned toward my closet. “Okay, now I just need to figure out what to wear.”
    â€œThis is my favorite part!” Sara-Beth leaped up. “I love going through your closet.”
    â€œYou do?”
    â€œSure. The last time I stayed over, I couldn’t sleep, so I tried on all your clothes and pretended I was you. You’ve got some nice stuff in there. And you don’t even have a stylist!”
    â€œWait, you what?”
    She beamed. “Method acting.”
    So Sara-Beth and I went through my closet. I tried on half a dozen outfits before we found one that satisfied both of us. I was kind of confused about what would be right, since I’d always had uniforms for school at Miss Mallard’s Day. I knew what to wear to a gallery show, a record release party, a club, and the opening of a new tapas restaurant, but somehow the haute couture for second-period English class seemed less obvious. Basically, I just wanted something thatwould look cute but wouldn’t draw too much attention to me if it wasn’t quite right.
    Sara-Beth, on the other hand, kept steering me toward the flashiest, strangest stuff she could find in the depths of my closet. She made me put on a grass-green Miu Miu dress I’d bought to wear to my cousin’s wedding, a canary-yellow cashmere sweater that I’ve had since fifth grade, and a pair of moon boots, among other things. Then she started talking about how we should go uptown and raid her wardrobe, since she was on
People
’s best-dressed list two years in a row, but as much as I’d like to wear some of her dresses, they were way too fancy and probably all too small for me anyway. So instead I finally settled on this really cute vintage crocheted top of mine, which sort of looks hippie-ish but in a clean way, and a pair of these stretch denim jeans that work really well with heels.
    A little bit later, I changed into my pajamas and we lay on the floor looking at magazines. It was nice, just hanging out with her, eating her rice crisps and drinking mineral water. If I didn’t pay too much attention to her perfect skin or the fashion-spread pictures of her in the magazines I was reading, I could almost forget she was a movie star. And more important, she could too.
    I mean, if I thought growing up in my house was weird, how weird must it have been for Sara-Beth, growing up on the set of a hit TV show? If I could make her feel a little more normal by letting her crash in my room, well, that’s what friends are for. Besides, having her around took my mind off my own worries. Sometimes when I’m freaking out, it’s easier for me to think about someone else’s problems instead of my own. And Sara-Beth definitely had her own set of problems.
    â€œI’m glad you came to visit,” I told her, reaching for a rice crisp. “You know, I’ll be at school tomorrow, but if you want to hang out here for a while and have a friend over for lunch or something, you totally should. I don’t want you to be sitting in your apartment, feeling lonely all day.”
    â€œOh, but Flan, I couldn’t do that.” Sara-Beth’s eyes got wide, just like in the mascara ads. “If the paparazzi find out where I am, they’ll swarm.”
    â€œHow would they find out? If you just call one of your friends—”
    â€œYou can’t trust anyone in this business.” Sara-Beth crunched a rice crisp angrily. “I know girls who would sell me out to the tabloids for one positive article and a handful of diet pills. They’re that vicious.”
    â€œThat’s terrible.” It really was. Even if my friends atMiss Mallard’s used me sometimes, for concert tickets or invitations, at least they never turned on me like that. What else could I say?
    â€œAnd if that does happen, I can say good-bye to that beautiful apartment on the East Side.”
    â€œHow come?”
    Sara-Beth sighed.