You're Invited (10 page)

Merlin says u have 2 join RSVP. Or he'll find u & give u smooshy slobbery fish kisses.
I hit send.

No response. When I started my campaign yesterday afternoon, she'd protest after every text I sent and say she couldn't join because of the STAs or whatever. Then she just sent texts that said,
Shut up, B. :)
Today she hasn't responded at all.

I'm totally wearing her down.

I stuff my phone somewhere in the costume. I'll probably never find it again. No one's here yet. It's just me and good ol' Merlin. It's not like I'd ever admit this out loud or anything, but sometimes I bounce song ideas off of the fishy-face marlin, and I'm thinking that might be exactly the thing to snap me out of my funk when Mrs. O'Malley
rounds the other side of the brass fish.

“Oh, Rebecca, it's you. I rather hoped we'd have Pete for today's tour.”

Um, hello. Rude much? And what's cranky old Mrs. O'Malley doing taking a tour meant for visi— Wait, wait, wait. Did she say “we”?

Mrs. O'Malley's face breaks into a smile at the sight of someone behind me and I whirl around to spot Ryan crossing the square in our direction, a dripping ice-cream cone in one hand.

Bye-bye, funk!

When he sees me next to Mrs. O'Malley, he trips a little on one of the cobblestones. Omigosh, omigosh omigosh. Do I make him nervous?
Eep!

Orrrrr, it could be the Ahoy-there-mateys look I'm rocking. I shiver (me timbers) even though it's June. In North Carolina.

Well, whatever. I can't help how I'm dressed. I'm just going to have to wow him with my sparkling personality instead. I turn a giant smile on Mrs. O'Malley. “I'm so glad you're taking the tour today, ma'am.”

She looks a lot surprised. What? It's not like I've never called her “ma'am” before. Probably.

“Well, Rebecca, I thought it might be good for
my great-nephew to have a sense of the history of our little town, seeing as he'll be spending the summer with us.”

With
us
. Yes, please.

Ryan arrives at my side and I beam up at him. His smile seems more polite than friendly, but I'll bet it's just because he doesn't want to flirt in front of his great-aunt. Which is
soo
thoughtful of him. I totally respect that.

“Nice parrot,” he says.

Nice parrot. Omigosh, could he be any cuter and wittier? I am going to make such beautiful music out of our relationship. Obviously, it will include a verse with “Nice Parrot.” What rhymes with “parrot”? “Wear it?” “Spare it?” “Carrot?”

Polly's claws don't seem nearly as razor-bladey as they did a minute ago. In fact, I can barely feel them. Let's get this tour STARTED!

Mrs. O'Malley tells Ryan the story of Merlin the fish, and I don't even correct her when she gets the date
and
the name of the fisherman who caught him slightly wrong. Lauren could learn a thing or two from me. If Ryan can be respectful of his elders, so can I.

A family with sleeping toddler twins in a stroller join us, and then a stylish woman with a scarf and a
sketchpad shows up and says my dad told her to tell me she was the last of the group.

“Okay then!” I say with newfound enthusiasm. “We're off.” I slip one arm through Mrs. O'Malley's and try to loop my other through Ryan's, but he backs away just before I reach him. I think he might be scared of Polly Want a Cracker.

I lead the way from the town square to the public beach access so I can show my group the tip-top part of a shipwreck poking out between waves a little way offshore. We've had to restore the wood on the mast a few times, so it's probably not technically historical anymore, but the tourists don't have to know that.

“See that? It's the top of a sunken clipper ship from the 1800s. This part of North Carolina's coastline is called the Graveyard of the Atlantic because we have as many as three thousand shipwrecks between here and Kitty Hawk. There are all these sandbars underwater that no one could ever map because they were constantly moving with the tides, and plus we get lots of hurricanes in this part of the country. So tons and tons of crashed ships and, like, buried treasure.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Ryan
perks up a little at this, so I decide to work that angle.

“Oh and also,” I say, “we used to have loads of pirates around here. Up in Nags Head, there were even land pirates. So what they did was”—I pause to make sure everyone (
*
cough
*
Ryan
*
cough
*
) is paying attention—“they hung a light around a horse's neck and then put the nag on the beach so when she moved it looked sort of like a ship's lantern bobbing around. And the captains would steer their ships close to check out the other ship and then
BAM!
”

Ryan jumps back a little. Whoops. Might have cranked up the enthusiasm a wee bit too much there.

I dial it down on my volume and softly say, “They would get stuck in the sandbars and the land pirates would wade out and board their ships and take everything back to shore. Cool, huh?”

The parents of the twins look impressed, but Ryan just shrugs and jams his hands in the pockets of his shorts. He's wearing that orange drama camp shirt. Again. Not like orange isn't a good color on him, because it totes is, but maybe when I'm his girlfriend I can convince him to branch out just a little.

Everyone else is reading all the historical plaques along
the big pavilion next to the boardwalk over the dunes, so I figure it's as good a time as any to grab a little one-on-one time with the inspiration for my future hit single.

“You look kind of bored. Are you, like, not a fan of pirates or something?” I ask.

“They're okay. Although it's kind of funny to hear the 1800s described as ancient history. Some of our historical sites are older than the pyramids. I guess America's kind of a baby when you compare it to Ireland.”

Pfft. Whatever. Land pirates for the win. But, I mean, it's not like I care enough to fight with Ryan over it, especially since he's actually sort of smiling at me now.

“I prefer new to old anyway,” I tell him. “And speaking of new, I have something you might be interested in. Our new business! Which could mean more acting gigs for you-know-who!”

Ryan perks up a little, before studying me. “What's the catch?”

Oh, no catch. You just have to fall in love with me and be my boyfriend and let me write alllll the songs about you. That won't be a problem, will it?

Obviously, I don't say
that
.

“No catch. We're going to make the party-planning
thing a regular business and we might need someone to help out with the guy roles, that's all.”

“By ‘we,' do you mean your friends? Vi and Sadie and . . . what's the other girl's name?”

“Lauren. She's not doing it. Well, she
says
she not doing it, but I refuse to accept that. I can be very persuasive when I want to be. I don't take no for an answer easily.”

Maybe I should threaten to stuff Polly into her bed if she doesn't join. Now, that would be scary.

Ryan backs one step away, so I take a step toward him as I say, “But Sades and Vi are in. And me, of course.”

I flutter my eyelashes like girls are always doing on TV, but he doesn't even notice because at the same time Polly dips forward off my shoulder and dangles by her claws from my shirt. Ergh! So not fair! I cram her back into place while Ryan watches me weirdly.

“Um, I better get back to Aunt Moira. Uh, maybe Vi can fill me in more on the whole party thing at volleyball.”

And just like that he walks back to his great-aunt and I swear it's as if she's jelly and he's peanut butter with the way he sticks super close to her the whole rest of the tour. He barely even looks at me, even when one
of the twins wakes up and starts shrieking at “the scary, scary pirate.” (That would be me, BTW.)

Forget French—this calls for Italian. La sigh! There
have
to be easier ways to land a boyfriend.

And then, just to add insult to . . . well, whatever that saying is . . . right when I'm wrapping up the tour back in the town square, who comes out of the Lava Java with some ridiculous iced coffee drink that probably has a milk-to-coffee ratio of about a thousand to one (I mean, like, who drinks coffee at age
twelve
, even if it
is
mostly milk) but Linney. Blecch.

Of course, Ryan can never know that I'm not always perfectly sweet, sweet, sweet, so when Linney beelines it for me I kind of don't have a choice but to be all friendly and nice.

Except I don't introduce her to Ryan, because nuh-uh. Girlfriend's on her own there. Plus he's over on the bench, scraping something off his shoe while he waits for his great-aunt to use the bathroom.

“So is it true?” Linney asks.

I squint at her. For Linney to pass up the opportunity to make a snide remark about Dread Pirate Roberts is suspicious enough, but for her to think I know something before her is kind of laughable. It's pretty much
like she has bugs planted in the walls of every building in town.

“Is what true?” I ask.

“Are you, Sadie, and Violet starting a party-planning business?” Linney asks.

See? Bugs. How else could Linney get her intel so fast?

As if she read my mind, she says, “You tweeted about it yesterday. Obviously.”

Oh. So maybe not bugs. But still.

“Um, yeah, I guess it's true.” I peek over at Ryan, who is still sitting there, not close enough to be part of the conversation, but not really so far away that he couldn't hear it. Rats, double rats. Still have to be nice.

Linney has a big smile on her face. “Oh, I'm so glad to hear that, because I've just been racking my brains trying to figure out all the details for my Sweet Thirteen, and I sure could use some help.”

I let my jaw fall open. Linney wants help from
us
? What is she up to? She's positively up to something. But I glance at Ryan again and swallow the comment that was working its way up to my mouth.

Instead, I say (with my voice oozing sugar), “Don't people usually have Sweet
Sixteen
parties?”

Linney just grins more. “Oh, I'm sure I'll have one of those also.”

Blecch again. But I keep smiling too and ask, “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, the theme is
Project Runway
. I was thinking of having my friends decorate plain dresses and then, like, have them accessorize like crazy before we send them down a runway.”

Drat. Double drat. TRIPLE drat. Linney just named my dream party and I'll bet she knows it. Of course,
I
could never have that party because Sadie would probably be so busy making lists of what she'd need for her outfit that she'd never actually get around to making one, and Lauren would probably find a way to work math equations into all her hem measurements, and Vi—I stifle a snort. Vi would have to be dragged there kicking and screaming.

Linney is sucking down her iced drink like it's going out of style while she calmly waits for me to respond. What to do? What to do?

On the one hand, it's a party. A real and actual paid party, and my job
is
to go out and find us paid parties, so wouldn't I be completely cuckoo to turn one down that basically fell into our laps? On the other hand, none of
us can stand Linney because of the way she treats Vi and because she's, well, so very, very
Linney
.

I open my mouth and then close it again. While I stall, I steal a peek at Ryan and inspiration strikes.

“Hey, Linney. Do you think you'll need an emcee for the runway part? Like someone to tell the audience about the dresses as they come down?”

“Obvs,” she answers.

I glance at Ryan again. He would look
ah
-mazing in a tuxedo, announcing the girls as they walked the runway. Then, in my head, I see Vi when I tell her we're doing a party for Linney. It's like there's a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, each whispering to me. Oh, wait. There
is
a devil on my shoulder. He just happens to be stuffed and answers to Polly Want a Cracker.

Linney sucks the last remnants of milkfee (that's my new name for it, because you for sure can't get away with calling it coffee) and puts one hand on her hip.

“Look, do y'all want the job or not?”

I know what Polly would say. “Squawk! Take the job! Squawk!”

“We do.”

I just hope, hope, hope and pray that Vi forgives me.

For stylista VIPs only

You're invited to Linney's Runway, the haute couture event of the season

Friday, July 10, four o'clock

At the Marks residence, 1115 Live Oak Drive