Hollywood Hills (24 page)

Tyler slowly, haltingly, reached out one hand and rested it against Holly’s freckled cheek. “I think we did the right thing,” he said softly, a sadness in his
amber-brown eyes. “Your parents told me about your transferring to UCLA. I had a feeling…”

Holly couldn’t help but smile up at Tyler. “I love that you heard the news from my parents and not me.” Holly realized that Tyler getting along with her family as well as he did made him feel more like a brother than anything else. She wondered if, in the future, she’d try her hand at dating guys who her parents might not approve of as readily. Why not? It could be…fun.

As Holly reached up to clasp Tyler’s hand in both of hers, both she and Tyler felt the cool band of Holly’s Claddagh ring against their skin. Holly drew her hand back, looking down at the ring; out of instinct, she’d slipped it back on in the car, with the heart pointing inward, as before.

“You kept it?” Tyler whispered, his voice catching. “I thought—maybe—you…”

“Threw it into the Pacific?” Holly teased. “Never.” Taking a deep breath, she slid the ring off her finger, and turned it around, so that the delicate gold heart faced outward. Easing the band back onto her finger, she glanced up at Tyler, knowing her eyes were bright with tears. “See?” she whispered. “Now it symbolizes friendship.”

“Like magic,” Tyler whispered back, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile. Then, taking Holly’s
hands in both of his, he leaned down and kissed her very lightly on the lips—for the last time, Holly knew. When he pulled back, he was smiling down at her tenderly. “You were my first love,” he said quietly, so quietly Holly wasn’t sure if she’d heard right. But she knew she had when she felt her heart contract in her chest.

“You, too,” Holly whispered, holding tight on to Tyler’s hand. “And nothing will change that.”

They gazed at each other for a long moment, saying more with their eyes than they could any other way, when Holly heard a loud, excited whoop go up right behind her.

“Holly! Bubaleh! I come all the way from Miami to see my beautiful granddaughter and what does she do? She talks to boys!”

“Grandma Ida!” Holly cried, turning away from Tyler and dabbing at her tears. Her grandmother—short red hair aflame, cat-eyed, leopard-print sunglasses atop her head, her trim figure clad in a long sundress printed with flamingos—came bounding toward Holly, surprisingly spry for a septuagenarian.

“Go ahead,” Tyler said, putting a hand on Holly’s shoulder, and she glanced back at him gratefully. “We’ll talk later,” Tyler added, waving good-bye. Holly nodded, then turned and immediately flew into her grandmother’s arms.

“I’m so glad you came,” Holly whispered, squeezing her grandmother tight and breathing in the familiar scent of her Estée Lauder perfume. Over Grandma Ida’s shoulder, Holly saw Miles, the sweet elderly gentleman whom Grandma Ida had recently married in an impromptu ceremony on the beach. Holly and Alexa had been bummed that they couldn’t attend the wedding, since it had been during finals.

“Are you crazy? How could I miss such an event?” Grandma Ida asked, pulling back to look Holly up and down. “My
goodness
!” she gasped. “You
have
grown up since I last saw you in South Beach.”

Holly was reminded of Kenya, also sizing her up back in Hollywood. “It’s been a busy year and a half,” Holly admitted, leaning down to kiss Grandma Ida’s wrinkled cheek. In that moment, Holly’s parents and Josh appeared. Holly’s dad was scolding Josh about something or other, but Holly’s mom was looking right at Holly, a smile playing on her lips.

“Look who’s back,” Holly’s mother said, putting her hands on her hips. “So…how was Jonah?” And Holly could tell, from the gleam in her mother’s eyes, that she’d decided not to care that Holly had shown up late to graduation. And Holly knew her mom would care even less when she gave her Jonah’s autographed napkin.

Holly was hugging her parents and Josh when she
heard Grandma Ida exclaim, “My favorite spitfire! You’ve grown up, too.”

Holly knew before she even turned around that her grandmother was embracing Alexa. Holly was eager to pull her friend aside to fill her in about Tyler—and the fact that they’d been on E! The Jacobsons and St. Laurents gathered together, making the usual parental small talk, while Miles and Josh began discussing baseball. Exchanging an understanding glance, Alexa and Holly linked arms and slipped away, heading over to the table laden with punch and cookies.

“How were things with Tyler?” Alexa asked carefully, filling two glasses with punch.

“Intense,” Holly sighed and touched her Claddagh ring, unfamiliar in its new position. “But okay, I think. I’m sure we’ll talk off and on during the summer.” Taking a sugar cookie off a tray, Holly looked back at her family chatting with Alexa’s. “How are you dealing with your mom being here?”

Alexa rolled her eyes dramatically. “It’s hard, getting used to your parents paying attention to you.”

“Oh, come on,” Holly said, smiling at her friend. “I knew she’d show up. You need to have a little faith in people, you know?”

“Yes, Ms. Optimist,” Alexa grinned, then handed
Holly one of the glasses of punch. “To…our grand finale,” she added, lifting her glass.

Holly shook her head, giggling. “You mean to our grand
beginning
,” she corrected.

“We never can agree on anything,” Alexa said as the girls touched their plastic cups, both of them missing their champagne flutes from El Sueño.

The girls drank, watching each other over their brims. Thinking of all the random toasts she and Holly had shared, Alexa felt her throat tighten.
We’ve been through everything together.

“I know something we can agree on,” Holly said, finishing her punch and wiping her lips with a napkin. She took Alexa’s hand, turning it over as if she planned to write something in her palm. “That we’ll IM, e-mail, and write each other on MySpace and Facebook every minute of every day when we go away to college.” She could hear her voice starting to tremble.

“Um, you forgot the
phone
,” Alexa pointed out, and she and Holly burst out laughing—the kind of laughing that was a few heartbeats away from crying. “And,” Alexa added, smiling through the threat of tears. “First long weekend I can get—I am going to Cali, babe. We never
did
get to go to the Chateau Marmont, did we?”

Holly rolled her eyes. “I
knew
there was something we forgot to do out there.” Then she reached out and wrapped her arms around Alexa, and the two old friends hugged tight, not letting go for a long time.

“We’ll be fine without each other, right?” Holly asked, tears running down her cheeks now as she pulled away.

“Oh, sure,” Alexa sobbed, not caring this time if her mascara was making lines down her face. “You basically live in my head anyway—whether I want you there or not.” Alexa thought of all the times Holly had been the disembodied voice of reason that had stopped Alexa from making some ridiculous decision.

And you’ll be in my heart
, Holly thought, knowing Alexa would snort at the cheesy sentiment. But it was true: Holly always relied on Alexa to help her sort through her emotions.

“Love you, Hol,” Alexa said, taking Holly by surprise. Alexa’s blue eyes regarded Holly with fondness as she slung an arm around her friend’s shoulder. “You’re my forever friend, no matter what coast you’re on.”

“Love you, too,” Holly replied truthfully, sliding her arm around Alexa’s waist and swallowing back her tears.

The emotional moment was broken by the girls’ families appearing at their sides, Holly’s mom clucking about lunch reservations in Saddle River, and
Alexa’s mom muttering something about running off to a facial in Manhattan.

“Would you girls like a picture?” Alexa’s dad was asking, holding Alexa’s Nikon aloft; Alexa had handed the heavy thing over to him to carry moments before.

“Oh, God, yes!” Alexa exclaimed, realizing that, during their whole time in LA, she and Holly hadn’t taken a single photo together. “How should we pose?” she added, glancing at Holly.

“Just like that,” Alexa’s dad replied, bringing the camera to his eye. “With your arms around each other.” He paused, turning the lens. “Okay, what do you they say in Hollywood? ‘Life, camera, action?’” Mr. St. Laurent’s heavy French accent, combined with the incorrect phrase, made both Holly and Alexa crack up as the camera flash went off.

“It’s
lights
, camera, action, Dad,” Alexa groaned, taking the camera back from him. Though she had to admit that substituting the word “life” kind of made sense, too. After all, what did cameras record if not life in action?

“That’s such a perfect picture,” Grandma Ida was commenting, clapping her hands together. “You girls should always be laughing like that.”

And we will
, Holly thought. It lifted her spirits to know that she and Alexa, tearstained but happy in their graduation outfits, would always exist that way in
that picture. She’d be sure to ask Alexa to print doubles, so that there’d be one copy of the photo in Holly’s California dorm room, and the other on Alexa’s desk in New York City.

“You do realize,” Alexa said, turning to Holly as their families began to make their way out of the gym, “that this—our being on opposite sides of the country—gives us the best possible excuse to do more traveling. I mean, there’s always winter break…”

“So, where to next?” Holly laughed as the girls started walking toward the exit. “Australia? Hawaii? The Italian Riviera?”

“Hmm,” Alexa said, flashing a dazzling smile at her best friend. “I’m not sure, Hol. But we’ll figure something out. We always do.”

Trademarks used herein are owned by their respective trademark owners and are used without permission.

Copyright © 2006 by Aimee Friedman

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
SCHOLASTIC, POINT
, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

E-ISBN: 978-0-545-23125-1