From Twinkle, with Love
Page 25

I’m not letting it dampen my mood because … it’s Saturday, the day I meet N at the carnival!
It’s not till later tonight, but I opened my closet, looked in there, and realized I have nothing to wear. Nothing that doesn’t make me look like a twelve-year-old, anyway. So here I am, trying on clothes.
N has to be Neil, right? I mean, fixing the meeting for Saturday at eight p.m.? He’s probably done with his swim training then.
I kept rereading his e-mails like some obsessed character from Macbeth (instead of “out, out, damn spot!” I wanted to yell, “hint, hint, one hint! That’s all I want!”), until I made myself step away from the screen. I had to force myself to remember all the other cool stuff I have going on in my life.
So, okay, my ex-bestie (extie?) and I are still fighting. She wouldn’t even fully look at me during filming yesterday. But we got one whole scene completed. And all the other actors were paying attention, especially Brij, who kept staring at me like he was trying to see into my brain or something, which was a little intense, but if that’s what he needs to do to get into character, who am I to judge? I’ve slept in my famous female filmmakers T-shirt every night this week to get into the mind-set of a butt-kicking female director. Victoria casually let it slip that she’d told Hannah I was coming to the party and then later I heard Maddie tell her that it was a bad idea to let me come. Then she saw me and her eyes got all wide and she walked off. Whatever. I’m still going. I’m the director and I was invited.
See, I have a lot going on. I don’t need to be nervous about N. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to look as beautiful and sexy and “shiny, future self” as possible. Fake it till you make it and all that. This could be the beginning of the future, non-groundling me. Tonight might be the night I look back on fondly once things have turned around for me. Shouldn’t I look my best for it? (No heels, though. That’s where I draw the line.)
Love,
Twinkle
Saturday, June 13
Car ride with Papa

Dear Sofia Coppola, Papa’s driving me to the carnival. I would be more focused on meeting N in just half an hour, but I’m too busy being stunned by my unbelievably weird day so far.
I had no idea looking beautiful and sexyish was as complicated as solving a freaking differential equation.
It all started out pretty well. I got a cute dress at Target. It’s sleeveless and purple lace with these tiny buttons at the back and falls to midthigh. I even picked up some lip gloss and eyeliner on impulse (the dress was on sale, so I was able to get all of that for less than forty dollars, which is what Dadi had given me). But when I got home and began to get dressed (at five p.m., just to give me plenty of time), I realized I’d forgotten a big part of my outfit: my hair.
I mean, it’s long and thick and falls to just above my waist. I usually wear it in a braid so I don’t have to deal with it. But I couldn’t wear a braid to the carnival, for my first meeting with N. I looked up these YouTube videos that promised “5 EASY ways to style hair ANYONE can master!” I must not be “anyone” because I felt like I was wrestling an octopus. Or maybe I needed to be an octopus, because there is no way anyone without eight arms can do all the stuff the girl in the video was doing.
At one point I was in tears. This was not how the first night of the rest of my shiny, new, non-invisible life was supposed to start. Things were supposed to be easy and fun, but everything felt stressy and sweaty and annoying. Honestly? I kept wanting to call Sahil to vent. I longingly imagined him, Skid, Aaron, and me in Perk, just laughing and hanging out. But then I’d tell myself I was being silly. Neil and non-groundling status was what I’ve been dreaming of for so long. Maybe I’m just suffering from impostor syndrome.
Once I dried my tears I tried to recruit Dadi, who said she’d be happy to help and then braided my hair into two braids that were horrifyingly stuck to the side of my head. I looked like I belonged on the hills of Switzerland with milk pails. It was already well past six o’clock at this point and I was beginning to hyperventilate when it hit me: I had the number to an expert hair-doer-upper. Sure, this wasn’t strictly why she’d given me her number, but I was desperate and ready to try just about anything. So I called Victoria Lyons.
At first she thought I was telling her that I had a wig I needed help with for the movie, but when she got that it was my hair that was in dire need, she immediately said, “Oh! Okay, gimme your address.” She showed up twenty-five minutes later with—I am not even kidding—a little suitcase on wheels.
I stared at it because I thought she’d misunderstood and thought I’d asked her over for a sleepover or something. “Um … is that a suitcase?”
“It’s a travel case of all my hair supplies,” Victoria explained. Then, pointing to her luscious red hair, which was in a high, bouncy ponytail, the kind I could never pull off, she said, “Do you think all this magic happens without some serious tools?”
She walked in and looked around at my tiny living room and the attached kitchen. “Oh. This reminds me of this cute little cabin I stayed at in Amsterdam over last winter break. They misrepresented the picture online when I booked! My dad almost sued the pants off them.” She beamed at me, and I realized she didn’t mean any of that to be insulting.
“Um, my room is this way,” I said, walking down the tiny hallway. Once we were inside and she’d had me sit on my desk chair, facing the floor-length mirror on my wall, I said, “Thanks for coming over, by the way. I know you must have stuff to do.”
Victoria smiled slyly. “I figured this had something to do with a boy. And that adorable dress on your bed and this makeup here tells me I’m not wrong.”
I felt my cheeks get warm. Thank goodness for dark skin; Victoria probably couldn’t see it. “No, you’re not wrong.”
Her grin widened as she loosened my hair from the knot I’d tied after Dadi’s disastrous braid attempt. “So, is it Sahil?”
I hitched in a sharp breath. Victoria watched me curiously in the mirror. “Ah, no,” I said. “Not Sahil.”
She nodded. “Okay. Well, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. We’ll just make sure you sweep him off his studly feet. Deal?”
I grinned. “Deal.”
She paused with her hands in my hair. “Although … can I tell you something?”
I looked at her in the mirror. “Sure.”
“You don’t need all this stuff”—she gestured to her suitcase—“to sweep him off his feet. You’re kind of cool in a weirdly quirky way. It draws people in.”
I almost choked on my spit. “No, I’m not.” Had Victoria not noticed that people were so not drawn to me that I, in fact, seemed to repel them? Especially the silk feathered hats?
She smiled a little. “Yes, you are. You just can’t see it. Sit up straighter.”
I did as she asked, feeling warm and happy. Victoria, one of the silkiest, featheriest hatted, people thought I was cool and quirky? And she’d come all this way to help me. I felt the little bud of our friendship beginning to bloom, and I smiled to myself.
Victoria got into it. She began to pull sections of my hair this way and that and then she told me to close my eyes because she wanted me to wait to see the final product at the end. And then, when she was done with my hair, forty-five minutes later, she told me she’d brought makeup in her traveling suitcase and wanted to slather that on my face too. I asked her what was wrong with the Revlon stuff I bought at Target, but she just said, “No offense, Twinkle, but everyone knows NARS is where it’s at.”
“What’s that?” I asked, grimacing while she dusted something on my face that smelled like roses. I kept my eyes closed though. “A club?”
Victoria snorted. “Never mind. Just keep your eyes closed.”
She kept muttering things like, “No, no, plum is definitely her color, but I wonder if I have something with a little gold in it” and “Firecracker Copper is so you,” and finally, just when I thought I couldn’t take the suspense (and Victoria’s not-very-gentle ministrations) anymore, she told me to open my eyes.