Wanting Sheila Dead(45)
SEVEN
1
Alida Akido had had no idea that it would be as hard as this to live with other girls in the house, or that she’d be so close to killing one of them because she just couldn’t stand the stupid endless chatter anymore. The one she wanted to kill was not Andra Gayle, who didn’t actually talk much—probably because, when she did, she sounded like a rap record or an actress playing a drug-addicted whore on Law & Order. No, the girl who was driving Alida crazy was her roommate, Mary-Louise Verdt.
The situation was being made worse by the fact that Mary-Louise seemed to think, because they were roommates, they had to do everything together.
Right now, they were sitting side by side in the limousine, and Alida wanted to tear the hair out of her own head. At least it would cause a scene. At least it would mean that Mary-Louise would stop talking.
“This means Coraline won’t have any film from the challenge,” Mary-Louise was saying. “That’s fatal, it really is, especially at this point in the competition. I mean, it’s not like they’ve got days and days of film to judge by instead?”
“Oh, I know,” Janice Ledbeddder said. “Wasn’t that awful? And don’t you worry about it? I mean, Sheila Dunham is, well, she’s like this all the time, isn’t she? Or at least she seems to be, on television. Any one of us could be next.”
“At least we’ll all be at the challenge,” another of the girls said. Alida wracked her brains and came up with a name: Linda Kowalski. Linda roomed with a girl named Shari Bernstein, and as far as Alida was concerned, they might as well be twins.
Shari was fluffing her hair in a mirror. It had been teased out beyond belief. “There’s always somebody who gets left behind at the beginning,” she said. “It’s never the first person to actually go home. Even Grace hasn’t gone home.”
They all looked at Grace on the far end of the car. She was talking to Suzanne Toretti. She didn’t seem to have heard them.
“It won’t be Grace, either,” Shari said. “Don’t you see? It’s got to be a surprise, and Grace and Coraline wouldn’t be surprises. Everybody would be expecting them. It’s got to be somebody the audience expects is going to stay forever, or maybe even win. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any drama.”
“I just hope we’re not going to have to do another of those debriefing interviews, or whatever they call them,” Mary-Louise said. “I really hated the one I had the first day. I mean, you never know what you’re saying, do you? And they can do things with the tape so that when they show you on television, you look like a complete idiot. That’s just what I need, everybody watching at home and seeing me look like a complete idiot.”
“At least you didn’t have to do one about how you were knocked out at the end of casting and didn’t get into the house,” Janice said. “I hate those. I leave the room when they come on. I won’t even watch them. I mean, just how embarrassing does that have to be? Everybody in the world knows you tried, and everybody in the world knows you failed.”
“My mother says you can’t be afraid of failure if you’re going to succeed,” Linda said. “She says everybody who succeeds fails a lot at first, and then they pick themselves up and just go on with it. But I’m glad I didn’t have to do one of those interviews, either. I think they’re so sad.”
The car was pulling up to the curb on a street that looked too quaint to be real. This would be the center of the town of Bryn Mawr, Alida supposed, although she had the impression that most of Bryn Mawr was like where they were living now, big houses on big estates laid back across wide lawns away from the roads. Still, it was interesting. This was supposed to be one of the richest towns in America. Alida liked the look of rich towns.
“Oh, look,” Mary-Louise said. “There they are. The photographers.”
“The paparazzi,” Shari Bernstein corrected her.
Alida looked in the direction Mary-Louise was pointing. They were there all right, half a dozen men with cameras, half hiding in the doorway of the shop next door. In a real celebrity situation, there would be hundreds of them. They would fill the streets and stop traffic. Alida supposed that these people had been hired, and that there wasn’t enough money to hire enough of them. It did not look to her like much of a challenge.
The driver stopped the car’s engine. The girls all hesitated, wondering what they were supposed to do next. Alida thought she was sure. Celebrities didn’t open the doors of their own limousines. They had drivers to to open the doors. She folded her hands in her lap. Down at the other end of the car, Grace Alsop and Andra Gayle were gathering up their things.