Dear Dr. Maude,

You may have already heard the big news because Pete says that Mrs. Weinstein from 11F (I’m sure you know her—she’s one of the biggest gossips in the building) is blabbing on about it to whoever will listen and trying to call an emergency co-op board meeting to stop it. But if you haven’t, Wendi Wallerstein is doing a Week with Wendi based on Laurel! And because we live with Laurel, it’s based on our entire family. But in our case it’s not just a week—it’s THREE weeks because they’re going follow us through the wedding.

The wedding I’m referring to is the one that’s going to happen between Alan and Mom in less than a month. I mentioned it in a previous e-mail but because I’m not sure you READ my e-mails, I thought I’d bring it up again. Although according to my mom, we’re not allowed to call it a wedding. It’s a “small gathering of immediate family.”

I’m not sure what’s going on with her. I know because she’s a feminist, she’s not the type of woman to get all crazy about a wedding and talk about what kind of pots and pans she’s going to ask people to get her as gifts and wear a dress that makes her look like a meringue (BTW—do you like meringues? I used to not like them, but now I do.) But still, every time someone brings it up—ESPECIALLY if they call it a wedding rather than a small gathering of immediate family—she gets all huffy and says, “Can we please change the subject?” And then if someone says, “Fine. I have a subject we can change it to: how about we talk about how nice it would be to hear the patter of small kitten feet around the apartment?” she gets even huffier.

Oh—BTW—I was wondering. Are YOU a feminist? Because I’m still not entirely sure what feminism exactly is, I’m not sure if I’m one. I think I am, though. Do you have any idea how old you have to be before you can be one? I guess I could always Google it, but I thought if you knew it would save me some time. Well, except for the fact that you never write me back so waiting for you to get back to me with an answer would probably be a waste of time rather than a time-saver.

Well, I should get going. Mom’s making me clean my room extra good before school because Wendi and her crew are coming this afternoon. I’m actually excited about being on TV. Not because I’m full of myself like Cristina Pollock, but because I feel like it will be a good opportunity for me to show the world that you can be non-famous and live with someone famous and still lead a happy life. Plus, there might be opportunities for me to pass along some of my advice to a larger audience than just the kids who read the newspaper at the Center for Creative Learning. (I told you that I’m no longer going by “Annie” to keep my identity a secret, right? But don’t worry—it’s not like I’m trying to compete with you for business or anything like that).

Okay, well, bye!

yours truly,

Lucy B. Parker

P.S. If you have a chance to get back to me with some advice about what to do about people who get all snippy about their own weddings, I’d appreciate it. Thanks. Bye.

  

“Can I can come over after school today?” Alice asked at lunch later. “I think I left my rhinestone barrette in your room last time I was there.”

“You did, but I gave it back to you the next day, remember?” I replied.

“Oh right,” she said, disappointed.

“Plus, Wendi Wallerstein is coming over to go over everything so I can’t hang out.”

Alice gave a (very fake) gasp. “Omigod—she is? I didn’t know that!”

Even Malia—the nicest person in the world—let out a sigh.

Beatrice rolled her eyes. “Yes, you did. You spent most of science class saying, ‘Omigod, I can’t believe my Wendi Wallerstein is doing an entire show about my best friend!’”

“I did?” Alice said. “Well, I guess I keep forgetting.”

“The show really isn’t about me,” I corrected, “it’s about Laurel.” I left out “and, Alice, while you’re a good friend of mine, you’re not my best friend” because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

Alice smacked her forehead. “Oh no! You know what?”

“What, Alice?” I asked.

“Remember how last time I was there we snuck those rice cakes in your room?”

I nodded.

“Well, I think I left the crumpled-up package on your desk instead of throwing it in the garbage,” she said. “So I should probably check. I don’t want you to get ants or anything. Especially because I know that one of the Parker-Moses official rules is ‘No eating outside of the kitchen’ for exactly that reason.”

Like Marissa, Alice was obsessed with trying to become famous. Unfortunately, for her, all five blogs she had started had no followers other than me, Beatrice, Malia, and Marissa (even though they had never met, they had agreed to link to each other’s blogs in order to try to get more traffic. Which, because no one other than us was following them, didn’t work.). And because we were also her only followers on the three different Twitter accounts she had, she wasn’t becoming famous that way, either.

“Alice, I keep telling you, according to Laurel, being famous isn’t all that great,” I said. “You know, other than those fancy loot bags you get at special events and the gift baskets full of cookies and brownies and cupcakes around the holidays.”

“Well, if I can’t be on the TV special, can I at least come to the wed—small gathering of immediate family?” she asked. “I just love wed—small gatherings of immediate family. I already have a dress picked out. It’s so pretty. It’s blue with—”

“Alice, are you part of Lucy’s immediate family?” Beatrice demanded.

The fact that Alice actually took a second to think about it made me really wonder about whether or not her brain had been knocked loose when she fell off a horse at camp this past summer.

Before she could reply, Roger Friedman, this kid in our grade wearing a T-shirt that looked like a tuxedo top and high-waisted jeans, walked up.

“Hey, Lucy!” he exclaimed. Roger was big on the exclaiming front. Because Alice was, too, Beatrice kept trying to convince her to use him as her local crush instead of Max Rummel, seeing that she had been crushing/stalking Max since second grade and it hadn’t worked yet. But Alice refused, saying that she was worried about hurting Max’s feelings if she gave him up.

“Hey, Roger,” I said.

“So I know in the paper it says if I want advice, I should ask you. It says I’m supposed to send all questions via e-mail but I was wondering if just this once you might be able to answer it this way,” he said. “Because it’s something I kind of need an answer on right away.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“Hold on a second!” Beatrice ordered. “If we do that for you, we’re going to have to do that for everyone. Guidelines are guidelines for a reason.”

I loved Beatrice, but she could be kind of bossy. Although Alan would’ve approved of what she was saying. “I think it’s okay this one time,” I said.

“Really?! That’s great!” Roger exclaimed. “Okay, so here’s my question. See, there’s this girl—”

“You should really save this for the special crush edition of the advice column,” Beatrice interrupted. “We’re targeting it for the third week of January.”

Correction: Beatrice could be very bossy.

“It’s not about a crush,” Roger replied. “As I was saying, there’s this girl, and I’d really like her to invite me over to her house but I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to get her to invite me over to her house because I don’t want her to think that I’m using her or anything. So how do I do that?”

“Why do you want to go to her house?”

“Because this famous TV host is going to be there and I want to meet her because I feel like if I’m on TV, I might be able to get a record deal for my harmonica playing.”

Roger was the president of the Harmonica Harmoners club at our school. (“Is Harmoners even a word?” Beatrice had asked the other day.) Seeing that he was the only member, he was also the vice president and secretary as well.

“So what you’re asking for is advice on how to get me to invite you over so you can meet Wendi and be discovered and become a big star?”

He looked confused. “How’d you know that?!” he exclaimed.

I sighed. I was starting to question what I was getting myself into.

Wendi Wallerstein didn’t talk. She chirped. Like a bird. Not only did she chirp, but she also hopped around like one, with tiny birdlike feet that were inside high, high heels.

“Gang, all of us at Week with Wendi—especially moi—are just sooooo excited and honored about sharing your lives for the next three weeks!” she chirped later that afternoon. Camilla, her executive producer; Nikko, the cameraman; and Siouxsie, the makeup woman, didn’t look all that excited. In fact, they looked pretty bored. The only one paying attention was her assistant, Charles. As Wendi hopped around the living room examining our framed photos and books, she reminded me of one of the detectives in those Law & Order shows that Beatrice liked to watch. That is, if the detectives wore Pepto Bismol–pink skirts and blazers.

As Wendi took one of Dad’s framed photographs from his and Sarah’s trip to India the year before off the wall and started to examine it, I watched Mom cringe. “I’d really you rather not—”

Before she could finish, Wendi dropped the photo and the sound of breaking glass could be heard.

“—touch those,” Mom finished.

“Whoops. Sorry about that. My nails are still a little wet so I don’t want to smudge them.”

I could tell that it was taking everything in Mom to not say something like, “Hey, who do you think you are going through our personal things like that?”

Wendi hopped over to a chair and settled herself in it. “So. Before we start shooting, I just wanted to go over a few guidelines,” she chirped. She pointed at Charles (“It’s spelled that boring old regular way, but it’s pronounced Sharles, with an S-h,” he sniffed after I made the mistake of pronouncing it the boring old regular C-h way) and snapped her fingers. “Charles! Charles! Guidelines!”

Laurel turned to me and gave me a look. Well, what I was pretty sure would’ve been a look if I could see her eyes through her dark glasses. In order to show Wendi how committed she was to her acting, she had decided to stay in character the whole time. Complete with tapping her cane as she walked and occasionally bumping into walls.

She thrust the pages to Alan. “Here you go, honey. Just take a look at this at your leisure—or have your attorney go over them, however you like to handle these things—and then get it back to Camilla.”

Alan began to flip through them. “Guests will answer personal questions as honestly as possible,” he read. “If said guest begins to cry because Wendi has asked a very deep personal question, said guest will not attempt to stop aforementioned crying.”

“Just how deep and personal are we talking about here?” Mom asked warily.

“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary,” Camilla replied. “Just, you know, memories of traumatic childhood events, that kind of stuff. Oh, and in this case, with the wedding coming up, any sort of fears that might be coming up about committing yourself to one person for the rest of your life.”

At the w-word, Mom started scratching the inside of her wrist again. “We choose not to use the word ‘wedding,’” she corrected. “It’s a small intimate gathering of immediate family.”

“Huh. Okay. But that’s a very long-winded way of saying ‘wedding,’ don’t you think?” Wendi asked. She turned to Charles. “I’m never going to remember that. Write that down.”

“Ms. Wallerstein—” Mom began.

“Oh, honey, what’s with this Ms. stuff—it’s Wendi, sweetie!” she chirped.

“Okay, Wendi,” Mom said. She gave her best fake smile, which, because Mom hated fakeness, wasn’t very good. “Now I fully understand that part of the success of your show has to do with the way that you—”

“—are able to make her guests get to a deep emotional place that they’re usually only able to get to after years in therapy?” Camilla suggested. “Which accounts for our last four Emmy awards?”

“Well, I guess that’s one way of putting it,” Mom said. “And while I’m sure some people find the idea of having that happen on national television very healing, our family is a little more…private about that stuff.”

“Oh, I completely get that, honey!” Wendi chirped. “I’m a very private person myself.”

Laurel tapped me on my leg with her cane. “If she’s so private, how come she’s written three books about herself?” she whispered.

I shrugged. I hadn’t read them, but apparently Wendi!: The Early Years, Wendi!: The Late Early Years, and Wendi!: The Early Middle Years had all been big bestsellers.

“It’s just that research has found that the reason my show has consistently been the top-rated interview show on television for the last three seasons is because viewers consider me the perfect best friend,” Wendi said.

I’m sorry, but if she was a middle schooler instead of however old she was (it was hard to tell on account of the fact that her face was very plastic-looking), she’d have as much trouble as Marissa did finding a best friend. And when she did, it would be someone equally annoying as that Cass girl.

“And when I’m with my guests, because I’m so best friend–like, they end up feeling safe enough to open up and confide in me and really let their hair down.”

I reached back and grabbed a hunk of my own hair. I knew I had been looking forward to America seeing how long my hair had gotten, but suddenly I thought it might be safer to wear one of the many hats from my hat collection every time I was on camera so that this letting-my-hair-down thing didn’t happen.

She turned to me. “Like, say, you…I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Lucy, Lucy B. Parker.”

“Right. Right.” She snapped at Charles again. “Charles, write that down. I’m never going to remember that.” She turned back to me and smiled. “I want to know how it feels to live with the most famous girl in the world. I mean, that can’t be easy.”

I shrugged. “Actually, it is.” Other than when she would sneak into my room and wipe down my blinds. That was annoying, but I wasn’t going to embarrass her by bringing that up.

Her right eyebrow went up. “Really. Well, we’ll see about that.”

She turned to Laurel and smiled. “And Laurel, as someone who is obviously so committed to her art—”

Laurel beamed and moved her cane around a bit.

“—it must be difficult, being surrounded by so many…how do I put this…non-creative people—”

At that, the anxious smile that had been frozen on Alan’s face shriveled up like Miss Piggy’s head when I tried to pet her. “Excuse me, just because we’re not performers doesn’t mean we’re not creative. This isn’t something I advertise, but I’ll have you know I write poetry.”

Mom turned to him, surprised. “You do? I didn’t know that.”

“See what I mean about my ability to draw things out of people?” Wendi announced.

“I do. In fact, I’m working on something right now to read at the wed”—At Mom’s look, he stopped himself—“small intimate gathering of immediate family.”

I turned to Wendi. “And I get to give the toast,” I said. “Because I’m class president, I’ve got a lot of public- speaking experience now and—”

“Fascinating,” Wendi said, cutting me off before turning back to Laurel. “So, Laurel, as I was saying, how does it feel to be a creative person in a non-creative world?”

That was so not okay for her to treat me like I was some annoying little kid. And what was also not okay was the fact that Laurel didn’t stick up for me and tell Wendi that. Instead she just sat there with what I had come to call her Superstar Smile (not fake, exactly, but very, very big and the kind that said, “There may be tons of people mobbing me at this moment, but as far as I’m concerned you’re the only person in this room and all my attention is on you and if I were a regular person instead of a ginormous star, then we’d totally hang out all the time”).

Before I could open my mouth to say, “Who says the rest of us aren’t creative?!” Laurel got hers open first. “Well, Wendi, as an artist, I try and use real life as the basis for my work—”

Oh, now she wasn’t even an actress, but an artist? Laurel hated when actors called themselves artists. She called it “pretentious,” which was a fancy word for stuck up.

“Now, in this case, for my new movie Life Is What Happens When You’re Making Other Plans, I’ll be playing a girl who’s blind—”

“And you are so believeable I almost can’t stand it!” Wendi cried.

“Oh, you’re so sweet, thank you,” Laurel said. “And if we were looking at that metaphorically, then it would be like the girl was cut off from her family—”

The rest of her family—meaning me, Mom, and Alan—looked at each other nervously.

“—which, obviously, in this situation, is not the case,” Laurel continued. “Because my family does understand me. But in the case of my character in my new movie Life Is What Happens When You’re Making Other Plans—”

I cringed. Why did I have the feeling that this whole thing was going to be one giant ad for Laurel’s new movie?

“—she doesn’t feel understood. And the blindness—the blindness just externalizes her internal conflict.”

“It sounds like such a meaty role,” Wendi chirped.

“Oh, it is,” Laurel agreed.

“Well, I am so looking forward hearing more about it,” Wendi chirped as she stood up and smoothed her skirt. “But right now, before I leave, I think we need a big group hug!”

As for me, what I needed was to disappear into my room and watch today’s episode of Dr. Maude’s show, Come On, People—Get with the Program.

“Come on, come on!” she squealed when no one got up. She looked over at Nikko. “Is the camera on? Turn it on and get this on tape,” she ordered.

After we didn’t move, she click-clacked over in her high heels and threw her arms around us, smooshing us together. For someone so little, she sure was strong. “Hug, gang! Hug!”

“Ufff,” I said as the hug got tighter and my nose ended up somewhere near Mom’s armpit. Luckily, she had remembered to put on deodorant that morning.

“This is what I’m talking about!” Wendi chirped, close to my right ear. “Nikko, are you getting this?”

“I’m getting this,” he replied in a bored voice.

“Make sure you get my right side. You know that’s my better side.”

“I’m getting your right side,” he said, just as bored.

“Okay, enough of the hugging,” she said as she let go and we all ricocheted back like slingshots. “Wasn’t that nice? Don’t you all just feel warm and fuzzy and sooo much closer?” Before we could respond, she clapped her hands. “We’re going to have so much fun together over the next few weeks!”.

I didn’t have to look over at Mom to know that she kind of thought differently.