“Awesommme,” she said, noisily skating over the stone patio to us, waving the box like a trophy.
“Chloe, Shyla, Marissa, Aubrey, I’m afraid it’s time for you to say goodbye,” said Catalina Cartwright.
Chloe and Aubrey seemed fairly indifferent. They each gave Bellamy a little kiss on the cheek a
nd were on their way. Marissa and Shyla were on the opposite end of the spectrum. Marissa was livid. “Can I have a word with you?” she said to Bellamy.
“Uh,” he looked at the producers like Do I have to? Then he and Marissa took a walk down a hallway together. I could hear Marissa asking in a pained, nasal shriek, “Why did you give me those clip-on earrings? They made me think you loved me!”
“Huh?” asked Bellamy.
“Forget it. I hate you! Why did you even keep me around this long? You knew you’d never love me! Why couldn’t you love me? What’s wrong with me?”
I went over to Shyla to try to cheer her up. She was outside on a marble bench, weeping. She seemed inconsolable. “All but one of us will go through this,” I told her.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asked.
“I guess not. Sorry,” I said.
“Hi Shiloh,” said Bellamy, returning with a small red hand print on his face. “Could I walk you out?”
“It’s Shyla,” she said, dissolving further into a heap of tears. “I thought I was safe! I thought maybe you really liked me, but you don’t even know my name.”
“Sorry. There are a lot of names to remember. Let me walk you out, please?”
“Fine.”
“I want you to know, if Alanna hadn’t come back you would have been safe.”
“That makes me feel terrible,” she said.
“It does?” asked Bellamy. “Forget I said it.”
I wanted to say goodbye to Shyla, but she clearly was in no mood to speak to me or anyone else. The other girls were gathering around Alanna Rutherford. Some were bitter that she had barged back in, but others seemed starstruck and delighted to actually meet her. They fawned over her more than any of us fawned over Bellamy.
I went back out to the front step to finish my apple but it was gone, so I removed my emerald pendant and took a closer look at it. It was very pretty. A teensy gold tag hung from the clasp with the Deluxe D engraved on it. There was a time when I never thought I’d own one piece of Deluxe jewelry. I would have been happy to have an empty velvet box from Deluxe. Now I had a bracelet, earrings, and a necklace. I was on television wearing glamorous designer gowns and shoes. It wasn’t sure why all of this was happening for me. I’d never thought of myself as very special. I sighed, wondering why I wasn’t more excited about it. I kicked at a crack in the bench with the toe of my Luiz DiAngelippo twelve hundred dollar sandal.
“Hi, Emma,” Bellamy said, sitting down beside me.
“Hi,” I said, jumping a little. I hadn’t noticed him sneaking up on me.
“Are you doing okay?”
“Yes, I’m good. What about you?” I asked.
“This is harder than I thought it would be,” he said. “I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings.”
“You don’t, do you?” I asked. I never felt that guilty about lingering on, except when I actually had to be near Bellamy. Then I kind of hated myself for wasting his time.
“Would you come with me?” he asked, standing up and holding out his hand.
“You don’t want to see Alanna?” I asked.
“There’s too much chaos going on in there. Let’s go for a drive.”
“Really? Just us?” I asked. A drive sounded great. And against the rules.
“Yeah. Follow me,” he said, taking my hand and leading me to his limo driver who was waiting down the hill. The driver opened the door and let us in. I looked to see if any of the girls were watching but they were all inside kissing up to Alanna Rutherford.