No one makes fun of my best friend. Especially not some identikit blonde clone!
She started forwards, like a warrior going into battle, but Sophia’s hand clamped around her arm.
‘No!’ Sophia’s face looked almost green against her pixie-cut blonde hair now, but she shook her head. ‘Think about it, Ivy. A human wouldn’t have heard what they were saying. They’re too far away.’
‘She’s right,’ Brendan agreed. His jaw was clenched with obvious frustration, but he shook his head at Ivy.
‘I don’t care!’ Ivy glared at the skater-girls across the field. ‘I’m going to go over there and tell those little clones exactly what I think of them.’
‘This is Lincoln Vale,’ Sophia said. ‘You can’t just march over there and call out the mean girls. These mean girls aren’t used to being overheard from far away, like girls in Franklin Grove are. They’ll know that something’s not right.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Remember what we were told before we started this school? We need to be careful.’
Ivy closed her eyes and felt frustration sweep through her. But Sophia was right.
Slowly, with dragging steps, she turned back to her friends and started walking away from the skatepark.
High school sucks, she thought. And not in a good way!
Brendan took her hand and squeezed it, while Sophia walked stiff-backed beside her, cradling Finn’s skateboard under one arm.
As they reached the gates of the park, they saw a familiar, black-clad figure passing between them. Ivy nearly groaned. Of all the times to run into Goth-Queen Amelia!
Amelia barely spared them a glance before narrowing her eyes at the skater-girls across the park. ‘I saw those idiotic girls laughing at you,’ she snapped. ‘Do not let that continue. Otherwise it’ll follow all of us into school! If you want to be goths, you need to assert yourselves.’
Only Brendan’s meaningful hand-squeeze stopped Ivy from snapping right back, I’ll show you assertiveness!
Amelia strode past without waiting for a reply. Ivy turned to glare after her, and saw the older girl head for her usual lounging spot, just by the skate-area. Her followers were already flocking there from the four corners of the park.
Actually, wait a minute . . . Ivy frowned as the thought finally occurred to her. If Amelia’s so determined to preserve goth social dominance, then why does she spend so much time at the skatepark? Amelia seemed to come here almost as much as Sophia! She thought back to the time that Amelia had been in the park, watching Sophia with undisguised suspicion. Watching Sophia and Finn . . .
Ivy narrowed her eyes in suspicion as she watched Amelia sit down on the grass less than fifteen feet from the concrete canyons. Something fishy is definitely going on, Ivy thought. Something fishy that’s wearing black!
Chapter Nine
‘Pardon?’ Olivia bit back a yawn just in time. As her interviewer beamed at her, she tried to clear her head, which was foggy with exhaustion. Plus, she was feeling faint again from the corset she was wearing beneath her lavender silk ballgown for this on-set interview. ‘Could you repeat the question, please?’
‘Of course.’ The interviewer, a sleek, dark-haired British woman in a form-fitting pencil skirt and blouse, smiled at her condescendingly. ‘This is your first interview for a DVD special feature, isn’t it? You must be so nervous, you poor thing.’
‘A little bit,’ Olivia said, smiling politely for the sake of the rolling cameras. Inside her head, though, she answered more honestly: I’m more fed up than nervous! She had barely slept the last two nights. Now it was Monday, her final day in England, and she was wasting her last precious hours with this interview. Jackson was packing his suitcases somewhere nearby, preparing for his return flight to Hollywood that night!
How was she supposed to concentrate on a silly DVD interview when she might be losing her last chance to make things right between them?
‘And will you be doing it again?’ the interviewer asked. She cocked one eyebrow. ‘What exactly do you see as your future in Hollywood?’
Uh-oh. Olivia swallowed, trying to maintain a pleasant expression. Ever since she’d arrived on-set, she’d been asking herself the same question, but she still hadn’t come up with an answer. Could she do it now, while the cameras were rolling?
‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘acting is something that I truly love doing . . . but it is a lot of work, and there’s a lot of stress involved in working on a film set.’
The interviewer smiled. ‘You’re certainly not leading an ordinary teenager’s life.’
That’s exactly the problem, Olivia thought. She just knew that if she and Jackson were two normal teenagers, nothing could stand in their way. But they weren’t ‘normal’ and that meant –
No! With sudden resolution, she cut off the familiar chain of worries before it could even begin. I can’t just keep asking myself the same questions again and again. I have to do something! If I don’t, I’ll regret it forever.
Olivia tried to draw a deep breath to brace herself – then winced, as the tight corset bit into her side. She managed to force a smile as she answered the interviewer’s question:
‘No, it’s not an ordinary life,’ she said. ‘But it’s the one I’ve chosen . . . for now.’
I’m going to find Jackson and have an honest, face-to-face conversation. I will get my future cleared up once and for all . . . even if I have to wear a hoop-skirt as I do it!