“The first thing,” Liam said, “is you can’t email celebrities.” He was sitting at his desk in his bedroom, his chair tipped back, waiting for his computer to fire up. Amelia and Roshni stood behind him, staring at the screen.
“Why not?” Roshni said.
“Because you can’t get their email addresses. It’s a privacy thing. Why would they want to be bugged with thousands of emails every day? And it would totally overload their inboxes. Nope. Not going to work.”
The annoying thing was, Liam was usually right about stuff. “So what are we supposed to do?” Amelia said.
“Write letters.”
“Are you serious?” Roshni said. “You mean, like, on a piece of paper?”
“Snail mail,” Liam said cheerfully.
“Great,” Amelia said. “It will take forever. And we need the money fast.”
“The second thing,” Liam continued, “is they won’t send money anyway.”
“Liam,” Roshni snapped, “are you with us or not?”
Liam shrugged. “I’m just telling you the truth. Celebrities get sick of being asked for donations.”
Roshni leaned over his shoulder and grabbed the mouse. She clicked on Google, typed in Writing to Celebrities and clicked Search.
“Look at all the sites!” she crowed. “If this was such a dumb idea, why are there so many sites about it?”
“Click on Contactinganycelebrity.com,” Amelia said.
The first thing that came up was NEED TO CONTACT A CELEBRITY? in bold letters. “There’s a video,” Roshni said. “Cool.” She clicked on the starting arrow.
The video made Amelia think of a space movie. The background was starry, and captions zoomed in and out with Star Wars-y kind of music. NEED TO CONTACT A CELEBRITY? NOW YOU CAN! 60,000 + CELEBRITIES + PUBLIC FIGURES. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? START MY FREE 14-DAY TRIAL NOW!
“Should we do it?” she said.
“Sure!” Roshni clicked on the Free Trial link.
Pictures of credit cards—Visa, MasterCard—flashed on the screen.
“Big surprise!” Liam said. “They always want your money!”
“I don’t suppose your dad gave you a credit card too,” Amelia said.
“Not yet. Not that I’d let you use it anyway. “
“Okay,” Roshni said. “We find a site that really is free. All we need are some addresses for the celebrities. It’s not like we want to buy something.”
No one was faster with a mouse than Roshni, so Amelia just watched. Liam watched too. He was bouncing a tennis ball against the wall and pretending not to watch, but Amelia saw his eyes darting across the room to the screen.
“Okay,” Roshni said. “Here’s one. Fanmail.biz. Perfect. Let’s try it out. Give me a name. Any name.”
“Taylor Swift,” Amelia said.
“Coming up.” Roshni’s fingers flew. “Here it is! Taylor Swift Entertainment, 242 West Main Street, Hendersonville, Tennessee 37075, USA.”
“That sounds like a real address,” Amelia said.
“Of course it’s a real address.”
The girls spun around and grinned at Liam.
“I never said you couldn’t write to celebrities,” Liam said. “I was actually the one who said you’d have to write letters. I just said they won’t send you any money.”
“Give me a piece of paper out of your printer,” Amelia said. “I’ll start writing them down.”
One hour later, Amelia and Roshni had a list of fifteen names and addresses:
Justin Bieber
Angelina Jolie
Taylor Swift
Matt Damon
Lady Gaga
Jennifer Aniston
Madonna
Britney Spears
Simon Cowell
Leonardo DiCaprio
Nicolas Cage
Charlie Sheen
Oprah
Dr. Phil
J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling had been Liam’s idea. You might as well go after the big bucks, he’d said.
Amelia read the list out loud. “Now we’ve got to figure out what to say.”
“WikiHow.” Liam produced a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “ ‘How to Write a Fan Letter.’ I printed it before you got here.”
“I knew it! I knew it!” Roshni said. “Admit it, Liam. You think this is going to work!”
“I just don’t want you guys to make fools of yourself. D’you want to hear this or not?”
“Shoot,” Amelia said.
“Number one,” Liam read. “Start by giving a two- to three-sentence intro about yourself. Include basic details such as your first name, what country/town you’re from and your age. Number two, explain how you got to know about them. A friend? Radio? Television show? Number three—”
“This is so obvious,” Amelia said. “Let’s just start.”
“Patience.” Liam glanced at the girls’ faces. “Okay, okay, I’ll skip to the important stuff. Let’s see… Compliment them. Tell them you liked their outfit at the Grammys. Mention that you’ll be hoping for a response. You could consider saying something along the lines of ‘If you could find some time, I’d appreciate it, but I’ll understand if you don’t.’ ”
“Forget it!” Roshni protested. “That’ll just give them an excuse.”
Liam continued reading. “Don’t make up a story, such as saying you’ll die in a month and the only way to cheer you up would be to hear from them.”
“Why are you looking at me?” Roshni said.
“Use ‘Yours sincerely’ or ‘From your biggest fan’ with your name. Do not use ‘Lots of love’—it may scare the celebrity out of writing back. And try to refrain from saying things like ‘I love you! You’re so hot! Will you marry me?’ It’s freaky.” He paused. “I like the It’s freaky part.”
“Okay, we get it,” Amelia said. “Can we use some of your printer paper, Liam? We need fifteen sheets.”
“Can’t we at least type this on the computer?” Roshni said. “We could do one letter and then just fill in names and stuff.”
“Too impersonal,” Liam said.
“Well, I’m not going to handwrite it,” Roshni said. “Handwriting sucks.”
“We can print.” Liam opened his desk drawer and took out a handful of pens.
Amelia noticed that Liam said we, but she kept her mouth shut. “Everyone should write a practice letter,” she said. “And we’ll pick the best one.”
“One more thing,” Liam said. “It says here that just because a few days, weeks, months or even a whole year might pass without a reply, this doesn’t mean you’ll never get—”
“Shut up and write,” Roshni said.
In the end, they used a little bit of everybody’s letter. When they had put everything together, Amelia read it out loud.
Dear BLANK,
We’d like to introduce ourselves. Our names are Amelia, Roshni and Liam. We live in Vancouver. We are devoted fans of yours. We love your new BLANK.
Option one: We think you looked awesome at the BLANK awards. Congratulations on winning!
Option two: We think you looked awesome at the BLANK awards. We think you should have won.
Option three: We can’t understand why you have never been nominated for a BLANK award, because you totally deserve it.
We have heard that you love animals as much as we do. Your pet BLANK sounds awesome.
Are you looking for a new worthy cause? Please consider DUKE’S DEN (dukesden.com). Duke and Gabriella devote their lives to saving unwanted animals. They NEED your support!!! Checks can be made out to Duke’s Den and sent to the return address on this envelope.
ANIMALS DESERVE OUR HELP! If you could find some time to reply, we would appreciate
it.
Your biggest fans,
Amelia, Roshni and Liam
“It sounds pretty good,” Roshni said.
“Not bad,” Liam said. “I’ll do the research for the blanks and you guys can start writing the letters.” Roshni opened her mouth to protest, and Liam added, “Hey, it’s my computer.”
Liam called out bits of information as the girls wrote. He got sidetracked reading reviews out loud for Matt Damon’s latest movie (“Drop it and find out what color Angelina Jolie’s dress was at the Oscars!” Roshni demanded), but in less than an hour they were done.
Liam found envelopes in his mother’s desk, and they addressed them carefully and slid their letters into them.
“What about stamps?” Roshni said.
“Dad’s picking me up at one,” Liam said. “He’ll mail them for us. I’ll talk him into sending them express.”
Amelia scooped up the envelopes and handed them to Liam. “Thanks!”
“I still say they won’t send money.”
“They will,” Amelia said.