Are You Going to Kiss Me Now? (3 page)

When I received the call from
Seventeen
six weeks later I thought it was joke.

“Is this Francesca Manning?” a woman’s voice had asked on the other line. It was a hot June day, and I’d called in sick at the library. Nobody was around. My mom was at work, Jordan was in Colorado with her family, and Emily was visiting our cousin in California as a graduation gift before leaving for college in the fall. I was studying a picture of Uma Thurman without makeup on the cover of
Star
. I considered saying no. Whoever was calling, it wasn’t anybody cute, and I was busy.

“Who’s calling?” I asked.

“This is Courtney Gallagher from
Seventeen
magazine.”

Seventeen
magazine? I sat up. With all the drama following my dad’s big news, I had completely forgotten about the essay. It felt like years since I’d written that schlock. And I seriously blocked out that I’d actually sent it in.

“This is Francesca.”

“Congratulations, Ms. Manning, you’ve been selected as the winner in this year’s nonfiction writing contest.”

“Very funny, Jordan,” I said, deflating.

“I’m sorry?”

“Jordan?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not joking?”

“Joking? Is this Ms. Manning?”

“Jordan?”

“Who is Jordan?”

“Are you for real? I won? Are you serious?” I asked, allowing myself to feel excited. I was momentarily forgetting that the prize was having the essay actually published for the entire world to see. I kind of felt like I might start to cry, but I managed to get a grip.

“We all loved your essay about your father’s death and the comfort you found in books. It was very moving.”

OMG. It all came back to me in a flash. I’d written the essay as if my father had died in a car accident. It was so much easier to write that way, and I was so mad at him about the baby I half wished it were true. Jesus. There was even a passage about
A Tree Grows
in Brooklyn
and how both Francie Nolan and I could only blossom into adults—yes, I used the word
blossom
—once the burden of a difficult but beloved father had passed. Holy shit. I’m dead meat, I thought. I wondered if I should admit this lapse into fiction to Mrs. Gallagher, but then I remembered the celebrity event and the academic scholarship part of the prize. Visions of R. Patz and Stanford clouded my common sense.

“Thanks,” I said. I was looking at a picture of my dad taken two days ago at his forty-sixth birthday party. I started to think about all those authors being publicly flayed on
Oprah
for faking their memoirs and panicked again.

“Um, Mrs. Gallagher—”

“And the theme,” Courtney Gallagher continued, “is perfect for encouraging literacy in developing countries where loss and recovery is a day-to-day trial.” She interrupted me before my feeble attempt at coming clean could be finished.

“Thanks. So where am I going?” I joked, envisioning Gwyneth Paltrow and me macro-cleansing together in her London flat or Justin Timberlake and me presenting “Best Kiss” at the MTV Awards.

“Africa,” Mrs. Gallagher said, and she didn’t sound like she was kidding either.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m getting the idea you didn’t receive the email sent out to the finalists last month, Ms. Manning?”

“I didn’t,” I admitted, remembering the email account I’d set up and never bothered to check again. “I didn’t even know I was a finalist.”

“Well, no wonder you sound so surprised! You were selected from a very competitive pool.” She sounded like she was going to burst.

“Wow,” I said, mimicking her enthusiasm while imagining the disappointed pool of my worthy and honest peers.

“Well then, in addition to the partial scholarship to the college of your choice,” she continued, “you’ll also be going on a celebrity tour of Madagascar and other regions of East Africa through GLEA.”

“GLEA?” I asked.

“Girls’ Literacy East Africa,” she patiently explained. “It’s a branch of UNICEF.”

“Oh.”

“The winner documents the entire trip for
Seventeen
,” she continued. “Writer’s dream, right?”

“Does this mean the original essay won’t be published?” I asked, feeling a wave of relief wash over me.

“Of course not! Your essay will be prominently featured in our April issue along with your diary of the GLEA tour.”

Crap. I could feel a raging case of hysterical hives brewing under my skin. I reluctantly gave Mrs. Gallagher my mother’s work phone number and email so they could discuss the details regarding my passport, inoculations, travel, and accommodations. I remembered thinking that it was typical that the one good thing that had ever happened to me was about to condemn me forever. What was the matter with me? They’d ship me off to juvie for sure. My father would never speak to me again. Even Jordan would be horrified to discover that her best friend was a liar and an imposter. And then I had an idea.

“I know this is sort of unusual, but I wonder if you could not discuss the subject of my essay with my mom?” I asked Gallagher. “Maybe you could tell her it was a fiction writing contest or something?”

“I can’t do that, Francesca.” She paused suspiciously. “Why don’t you want her to know about the beautiful essay you wrote? I’m sure she would be very proud of you.”

“It’s not that I don’t want her to know. I just don’t want to tell her yet. She’s still really raw on the subject of my dad’s dying, and I don’t want to upset her,” I lied. “I’d like to show it to her once it’s published. That way I can surprise her without having to deal with the psychological fallout beforehand. It might upset her now.”

Gallagher paused again and, much to my surprise, agreed to simply tell my mother that I requested that the subject of the article remain confidential until publication. That would do. I could figure something out between now and then.

Once I’d managed to postpone my inevitable exposure as a swindler, I could focus on the larger issue at hand—that I had to go to Africa with famous people. I couldn’t help but feel this was some karmic revenge for my secret tabloid fixation. I mean, I wanted to put something fancy on my college application as much as the next girl, but I didn’t want to travel to Africa with Spencer Pratt for the privilege. I was more of a hide-in-the-hall-and-judge-people-behind-their-backs sort of girl. And what would my dad say when he found out I’d killed him off? I was pretty sure his new baby would never do something like that. I mean, what on earth had possessed me to enter a writing contest for
Seventeen
magazine anyway? How completely cheesy. I didn’t want anyone reading my writing. And I certainly didn’t want to go to Africa with a bunch of celebrities. I could barely talk to my peers in the school cafeteria. Seriously, I could barely talk to Mrs. Gallagher. And what was I going to do without Jordan? I rubbed my phone like a worry doll.

I went to the bathroom one last time before the plane landed at John F. Kennedy airport in New York.
My thighs look distinctly thinner
, I thought proudly as I balanced myself over the lavatory toilet. It seemed my fear of being outed as a fraud, coupled with my anxiety about the actual trip, had combined in the not unwelcome outcome of a nine-pound weight loss. Between that and my frequent trips to the bathroom at home, my mother was totally convinced that her little lecture about junk food had indeed driven me to bulimia. All I could think of in the days before I left was that it really was too bad I was going, as I’d finally gotten a little leverage in the family. I swear my mother likes me more when she’s worried about me. It gives her maternal vomit-outs a place to land.

I turned on my phone the minute the plane landed in New York.

There was a message from Jordan.

F:

Are you there yet? Tell John Mayer to stop calling me. It’s annoying and I have a boyfriend. I hear Brad Pitt is pregnant with Viennese quintuplets. Does he look chubb?

J.

Starcasm. Jordan didn’t share my hidden fascination with pop culture. She genuinely didn’t care how much Kate Bosworth weighed. I admired her for this and tried to mimic her casual tone.

J:

Who cares? Just landed in NY. Not even off the plane. Stand by.

F.

Of course I did care, and the prospect of meeting everyone was exciting but was also giving me diarrhea. That said, I read
US Weekly
and comforted myself with the fact that A-listers didn’t fly commercial—in groups. I was pretty sure J-Lo flew private, and I certainly wasn’t going to be intimidated by fringe actors. Tara Reid could suck it. I took out my phone to jot down some notes. My assignment was to document my impressions of the experience for
Seventeen
from take-off in New York to landing at Dulles, two weeks from now. I was holding my thumbs above the keyboard, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was thinking of that animated movie
Madagascar
. Maybe those crazy refugee animals would be on our flight.

When I got into the terminal at JFK, the first thing I saw was a man in a gray suit holding up a white sign that read “Francesca Manning.” I looked around stupidly as if there might be another Francesca Manning on my plane. I walked over to him and introduced myself, forgetting the bright pink laminated name tag I’d been forced to wear by a representative from
Seventeen
at the airport in Portland. I blushed. A name tag. How mortifying. He nodded silently. I nodded back.

“Bags?” he asked. I nodded again. He nodded. Weirdo. He wrestled my carry-on bag away from me, and I practically chased him down an escalator to baggage claim. I felt like I was in a Kafka novel standing next to him as we both stared silently ahead at the carousel going around and around. My bags came out about twenty minutes later, and Mr. Chatty put them on a cart.

We started walking again. And we walked and we walked and we walked. I struggled to keep pace with him. I assumed we were going to the Admirals Club (where I knew the VIPs wait—I was feeling VIP-ish), but I never saw the club, and so the endless walking continued. I turned to ask Chatty where we were going, but his graveyard expression put me off. And then I saw that we were leaving the airport. This made me edgy. I followed him through two glass doors, and we were outside, immediately enveloped by hot, steamy New York breath. My eyes closed against the sun as it reflected off the white pavement. Just as I thought things couldn’t get any weirder, I opened my eyes and noticed a lone, unmarked black sedan waiting at the curb with a suited driver leaning on the passenger side. He raised his hand in a halfhearted salute. And all I could think was:
I’m going to die
.

Newspaper clippings of teenage abductions and prostitution rings flashed through my head. I started to sweat. “Your car, Ms. Massing,” Chatty Guy said.

“Manning,” I corrected, panicking. “I thought we were flying out of JFK?”

“No, Teterboro.”

“Teter who?”

“Teterboro,” he said again, like this cleared anything up.

As if in some choreographed ballet, Chatty slid the baggage cart to the driver, who began silently loading my luggage into the car trunk. When he was done, he walked around and opened the back door for me. As I slid into the cool, cushy back seat—complete with magazines and chilled water—I thought of the million times I’d seen news stories about young girls getting into cars with strangers and thinking what kind of idiot would do such a thing. Apparently, that would be me.

My heart was beating through my chest, but I was too embarrassed to say anything. I cut to a fantasy where Diane Sawyer was interviewing me about my abduction.

DS: How did your captors manage to get you into the black town car, Ms. Manning? Was there a struggle?

ME: No struggle, Diane.

DS: So what happened? she’d ask, her voice brimming with television concern.

ME: I just followed a strange man in a gray suit who told me to get into the car with another strange man in a gray suit.

DS: And why did you get into the car without a fight?

ME: I didn’t want to make a scene. And the car had air-conditioning.

DS: So, just to clarify, you followed a strange man through a crowded airport and then got into a black car with another strange man because you didn’t want to make a scene and because the car was well air-conditioned?

ME: That’s about the size of it, Diane.

I’m a role model for young girls everywhere.

I took out my phone. Perhaps I should tell someone my whereabouts just in case.

J:

Music Express Limo, License plate number 2K159.

F.

After I sent the text, I did my best to settle in and enjoy the ride. For all I knew, this was perfectly normal, and really, I was quite comfortable. I pressed the window and lock buttons just to make sure they worked. They did. I crossed my fingers and closed my eyes. The driver asked if I’d like to hear the radio, which I took as a good sign. I didn’t think a molester would be so polite. Just in case, I dialed 911 and suspended my finger above the Send button.

After about an hour in the car, we pulled into what looked like yet another airport. From a distance, I saw low-level white buildings punctuating the sprawling asphalt at regular intervals. It looked like a minimalist village out of the Twilight Zone. There were no people, but I did see some planes roasting in the sun. Big planes, small planes, and even some helicopters. The driver made a sudden left, and I saw a crowd of men with cameras hovering around a sole town car much like the one I was in. Paparazzi? I took a deep breath. Maybe I wasn’t being abducted. Maybe I’d get papped!

I smashed my face to the tinted window to see who was in the car. All I could see was the driver getting out and opening the back door. The cameramen started going absolutely nuts. I heard the paparazzi yelling but couldn’t make out the words. I watched them make a tight circle around whoever had emerged as she moved slowly and awkwardly toward the hangar entrance. The group stopped, cameras flashed, the group moved. Repeat. It was like watching lions trap an antelope on the Discovery Channel. All of a sudden, a plump, frantic, middle-aged woman burst out of the hangar doors barking and pushing her way through the pack. There was another brief pause during which I could make out a girl’s voice, then more cameras flashed, there was some applause, and then the two women dashed inside the hangar. All I could see was the back of a knotted, big, black-haired head perched on a wee-tiny body. The cameramen let her go, shuttled back to the curb, and waited for their next victim. Me.

My heart was about to blow through my chest as our car inched up. My throat was so dry the sides of it were sticking together. I took one of the conveniently placed mini water bottles and drank it in one gigantic gulp. Or so I thought. Half of it dribbled out of my mouth onto my gray Anthropologie shirt. That was exactly why I preferred flannel. Jesus H.

“Here we go,” my driver said as he came around and opened my car door. I was staring into at least thirty enormous camera lenses. Talk about a deer in headlights. The name Bambi had never seemed so fitting. Everyone was screaming as I forced myself out of the car. It was terrifying. The noise was deafening. I can’t believe I ever thought being famous would be fun.

And then, as I stood to face the crowd, the cameras and the yelling all stopped at once. Seriously, I could have heard a bird taking a leak back in Portland. One camera clicked, and then I heard a guy say, “Shit.” And then silence. “Who the hell is she?” an angry voice called from the mob. Nobody responded. I clutched my phone with a sweaty palm. I wasn’t pap-worthy. It was deathly quiet. Fifteen seconds earlier, I had thought there must be nothing worse than being famous. Now I realized the only thing worse than being famous was
not
being famous. I had disappointed fifty people I’d never even met just by virtue of my being a nobody. I might as well have stayed at home for this.

The mob parted for me apathetically as I walked toward the hangar. They went back to drinking their coffee and smoking and behaving the way they do when “nobody” was around. Then I remembered my bags. I turned around and saw the driver carrying them behind me, laughing with the cameramen. Were they laughing at me? If I looked like Jordan they would have at least
thought
I was somebody—or that I was on the verge of becoming somebody. And just like that, the familiar self-loathing began. I tried to think of one part of my body that I liked, and all I could come up with were my calves. They’re muscular and lean, but even my calves have freckles on them, so they’re flawed. I get that looks don’t matter, but I also get that they do…more than anything sometimes. I felt like crying.

Mercifully, a black limo pulled up to the curb, and all the parasites resumed their position screaming at the car. I knew I should walk into the hangar and hide, but I didn’t. Something made me stop to see who it was. When the door opened, I had to squint my eyes because what I saw was so mind-blowing I started to wonder if this whole thing wasn’t some crazy dream.

“How are the wife and kids, Joe?” Cameraman One shouted as the totally legendary Joe Baronstein stepped out of the car and turned to face the cameras.

He was so much shorter than he looked on film, and he was older and fatter too. But it was him, and it was almost like he was made of magic dust. I’d been looking at that face for as long as I could remember. Joe Baronstein had been in show business for maybe twenty years before I was even born. Like Tom Hanks and Robin Williams, he got his start on TV. He played a teenager named Squiggy Small on a hit series in the 1970s called
Small Secrets
. I had the misfortune of seeing it once on Nick at Nite. It was a comedy about a psychic family living in a little Texas town. And there were musical numbers! Yes, a musical comedy about a family of Texan clairvoyants. Can you imagine anything so dreadful? And I thought
The Partridge Family
was bad. My mother still refers to it as the best show in television history, which really says it all.

Joe was the only cast member from
Small Secrets
to go on and have a career. He made a few independent movies before being propelled to super stardom in the mid-1980s playing Matt Spacey, a hard-ass New York City detective looking to end the war on drugs. He then had a long run as king of the cop thrillers, and I swear he’s been in like every great movie I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what happened to him—maybe he just got old—but about three years ago, he started making one bad movie after another. Seriously, his last few movies were abysmal at best. That said, he was still an A-lister. If Robert De Niro still had cache after
Meet the Fockers
and
Rocky and Bullwinkle
, Joe Baronstein was in no immediate danger of not getting the good table at the Ivy. Those older stars got free passes. And anyway, despite Joe’s recent box office failures, he looked like a happy guy.

The camera guys formed a sort of respectful half-circle around him. He spoke as if he were standing behind an invisible podium. He’d clearly been doing this circus show for years.

“They’re great, Lew,” Joe responded beaming. “Adelaide’s playing my daughter in
Hoggalicious Two
. She’s a natural.” Joe was as friendly as could be. I was still reeling from the fact that Joe Baronstein was standing three yards away from me and that he actually knew these guys’ names. He called him Lew. I was dying to text Jordan, but I didn’t want to miss anything.

“How’s Jonah’s European tour?” another photographer shouted out.

“Great,” Joe said, smiling tightly. Jonah Baron (he dropped the “stein”) was Joe Baronstein’s illegitimate son. He was in a hugely popular Christian boy band called the Born. Personally, I don’t know anyone who downloads Jesus tunes onto their iPod, but obviously such people exist because Jonah Baron is one of the most successful teen icons in the world.

“No offense Joe, but we don’t think of you as a humanitarian. Why the GLEA tour?” another guy asked as he pushed his way to the front.

Joe laughed, and his face crinkled up exactly like it did in the movies. Before Joe could answer, another paparazzo interrupted with a question.

“It’s rumored DiCaprio pulled out of your next project because he felt you were poisoning the environment with your private planes and excess fuel usage.”

Joe laughed again. “You believe everything you read in your magazine, Norman? That’s ridiculous. Leo and I are fine. Look, once and for all, I’m a professional pilot. If I wasn’t an actor, I’d be flying commercial airliners.” He paused and then continued. “In my line of work, private jets just make financial sense when people have busy schedules and wish to use their traveling time for work or wish to limit travel delays and so gain more working time. And, finances aside, private aircrafts are often the only efficient method of traveling to cities and regions not serviced by major airlines.”