Olivia felt like she’d tripped flat on her face during a cheer. She didn’t know what to say.
Ivy leaned in and said to the security guard, ‘Look, Jackson really is expecting to see us today. Can’t you . . . uh . . . check your list?’
‘There’s no list, young lady. Just that line behind you, filled with two hundred of Jackson’s “girlfriends”.’ He pointed to the end of the line, which had doubled in size since they’d arrived. ‘Everyone has to wait their turn.’
‘You’d better not be trying to cut in line,’ said the girl with the action figures.
Ice-skater Girl glared at them. ‘We’ve been waiting here for hours! Who do you think you are?’
‘Uh, I, um –’ Olivia didn’t know what to say. If she told them that she really was Jackson’s girlfriend, she could get lynched. I must be the only girl in the world who has to line up to see her own boyfriend, Olivia thought.
‘No, no,’ Ivy told the girls. ‘We’re not cutting. Not at all. Excuse us, please!’ Ivy pulled Olivia away from the line. ‘Did you see the look in their eyes, Olivia? I may be a vampire,’ Ivy muttered, ‘but these girls scare me.’
‘Olivia, darling!’ called a familiar voice.
She looked back to see Charlotte Brown, the captain of the cheerleaders, waving her over. Olivia felt her already twisted stomach do another flip. Olivia spent lots of time with Charlotte on the squad and knew that Charlotte was mean even when she was trying to be nice.
‘You’re not in line yet? Did you sleep through your alarm?’ Charlotte asked sweetly. Her blonde hair was messy and her frilly silk blouse looked crumpled.
She couldn’t have, Olivia thought. She wouldn’t. Did Charlotte –
‘Did you camp out overnight?’ demanded Ivy.
‘Of course not!’ Charlotte smirked. ‘Katie did it for me. I’ve only been here for three hours.’ She teased her hair with her fingers. ‘But I’m going for the “camped out overnight” look for the TV cameras.’
Olivia couldn’t believe even Charlotte was willing to wait hours.
‘Too bad you can’t use your “special friendship” with Jackson to skip the line,’ Charlotte went on, using the biggest air-quotes Olivia had ever seen when she said ‘special friendship’. ‘You know, this could look to some people like you might have, um . . . stretched the truth about being his girlfriend.’
Olivia’s jaw dropped. She did not just say that! But she kept quiet – she didn’t want to get kicked off the squad.
Ivy stepped in. ‘And this could look like you were paying someone to be your Valentine.’
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. ‘Paying is clearly something you have a problem with, freak, judging from all those second-hand clothes.’
‘This is vintage!’ Ivy retorted, smoothing down her black satin high-waisted skirt.
This is so not how I pictured my morning, Olivia thought. ‘Ivy, let’s go to the back of the line before it’s out of the building.’
She stomped to the end of the line, her face blushing, and crossed her arms.
‘Yeah, back where you belong,’ taunted one of the girls.
‘Just ignore her,’ whispered Ivy. ‘She’s wearing a pink glittery scrunchie.’
Olivia gazed down the long line of girls holding signs with her boyfriend’s picture on them. Twenty different Jacksons were watching from the posters plastered around the atrium. His face was everywhere – but Olivia had never felt so far from her boyfriend.
‘I can’t take any more of this torture,’ Ivy whispered.
Ivy Vega decided she could ignore the pink streamers hanging from the ceiling, and she was pretending not to notice the cut-out hearts covering every store window. But being stuck in line listening to love-struck girls randomly bursting into romantic songs from Jackson’s movies was just too much.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Olivia mumbled for, probably, the thirty-seventh time.
Ivy gave her sister another hug.
‘It’s not the waiting that’s annoying; it’s the Valentine’s.’ Ivy just hoped she could escape soon. No matter how much they tried to sell it to her, she couldn’t buy into the whole stupid cupids-and-candy-hearts scene. In two days from now, couples around the world would be exchanging cards because stationery companies had told them to. She just didn’t get the commercial side of romance.
There was a young girl in front of them, with brown ringlets framing her face and a cute red denim jacket. She turned around and said, ‘Hi, I’m Janie!’ Then she a thrust a little box out towards the twins. ‘Candy heart?’