Picture This (25 page)

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you sending me away?”

“What? No! Not—”

Celia looked like she was about to rip him a new one, when suddenly her eyes widened in shock. She grabbed Niall's arm and pulled him off the sidewalk, hard. He stumbled into the street just as he heard a rumbling roar.

“Gangwaaaaaayyyy! Aieeeee!”

He spun around in time to see a short, wide blur go by. Wheels rattled on the pavement, and the crowd scattered. Clipped in the shoulder, Tiffany stumbled on her platform wedges, and her palms slapped the window of a car parked on the side of the road.

“Son of a bitch!” she shrieked, and her flamingoes flocked to her to see if she was hurt.

There was one final “Whuf!” and the douche-canoe of a photographer who had harassed Niall and Celia earlier stumbled backward, a helmeted head plowing into his stomach as though a member of the high school football team had decided to do preseason tackle drills in town instead of on the field. His camera launched out of his hand, the strap around his neck the only thing keeping it from soaring into the street. He still looked like his equipment was throttling him. Niall wasn't sorry. In fact, he thought it was downright amusing that one of the skateboarders had nearly taken the guy out. Until it dawned on him what, exactly, Celia was shouting.

“Gran!”

“C
elia, honey . . .”

“Don't talk to me. Just . . . don't.”

Celia marched from the living room to the kitchen, her grandmother trailing behind her. She yanked open the door of the fridge and stared into it, unsure what she was looking for.

“Come on, girlie. It was no big deal.”

“No big deal?” The younger woman slammed the door and stalked into the dining room, where she started pulling items out of a plastic tote and slamming them onto the table, sorting them into piles. It occurred to her she'd already sorted this stuff, that the tote had been packed days ago, but Celia couldn't be bothered to stop. It gave her something to do, somewhere to channel her energy, which was at an all-time high, and not in a good way.

“I was helping you,” her grandmother declared.

“You were riding hell for leather on a scooter last night!”

“I told you I was going to buy one!”

“A mobility scooter! Not a Razor!”

Holly shrugged. “Mobility scooters are for old people.”

“You—are—an—old—woman!”

“Hey!”

“You could have cracked your skull!”

“I was wearing a helmet! And that ass-hat of a photographer got in my way, not the other way around. He broke my fall, so it all worked out.”

“You could have broken a
hip
. And you have no defense for that.”

Holly followed her into the dining room; Celia promptly stomped into the hallway and out the front door. Seconds after the screen door slammed behind her, it slammed again, and her grandmother was there. Celia silently cursed the woman's tenacity.

“I hear I kind of broke up some sort of confrontation.”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Who was the chippy who out-peroxided Audra?”

“That was Niall's girlfriend, Tiffany,” Celia grumbled, plopping onto the top step of the porch and resting her chin on her knees. “You know—the one in the movie. The one you said couldn't act.”

Holly let out a small surprised noise. “She's tinier than she looks on screen.”

“Not helping, Gran.”

Holly settled next to her with a little more effort than usual. Celia glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” her grandmother said immediately, although she was grimacing a little.

“A person your age—”

“Cut it out.”

Celia stayed silent.

“And stop all that thinking,” her grandmother ordered.

“I'm not thinking anything.”

“You're thinking so much, I can hear the gears grinding from here. First of all, I'm fine. Second of all,
you're
fine. The movie star loves you, not the blonde, and he sent her packing.”

Celia's head shot up and she gaped at Holly.

“I was paying attention to what was going on between him and Peroxide while you were busy stomping off in a huff. Want to know what I heard?”

“ No.”

“Good. So Peroxide pulls Movie Star aside, and she says something like, ‘That went well,' but of course your boyfriend's not happy at all. He reads her the riot act, announces they're through for good and all, and orders her out of town. Peroxide says, ‘Fine. I got what I came for.' What did she come for, do you know?”

Celia sighed and shook her head wearily.

“Anyway, Peroxide acts all gloaty and says something like funny how, now that they can move on, he doesn't have someone to move on with, but she does, and that's what's called irony. Movie Star tells her to stop trying to sound educated, then he freezes, looks shocked, and shouts as she's walking away, ‘Wait—you
cheated
on me?' ” Holly let loose a throaty chuckle. “It was inspired. Absolutely beautiful.”

“How is that beautiful? She cheated on him, and he was
upset
about it.”

“Don't you get it, girlie? He
wasn't
upset. And he said it loud enough that all those photographers heard him, and everybody filming him with their phones, too. He wins. Peroxide knew it too—beat it out of there with her clones so fast they made their own slipstream down Main Street. So you're in the clear. Go be with him. Well, not at the moment, of course. You're gonna have to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Those nosy photographers are swarming all over the place,” said a new voice. Celia looked up to find her father on her grandmother's property for the first time since she'd come back to town. “If you go out there, they'll be all over you. You're who they're looking for.”

“What?” It came out as a stunned whisper.
What in the world for?
she wanted to shout.

“Well, that makes sense,” Holly said. “Movie Star and Peroxide are
finito
, and it looks like you busted them up.”

“I
didn't
—”

“You sure about that?”

“Dad!” she gasped, horrified. “I'd never—”

“You did, whether you think you did or not,” her grandmother interrupted. “I see the way that boy looks at you. I'll bet anything he and Peroxide were done for, the minute he clapped eyes on you.”

Celia covered her face with both hands and groaned.

“From what I've heard,” Alan grunted, leaning on the post at the base of the stair rail, “those photographers are going to be camping out in town until they get their pound of flesh—yours—thanks to your thing with Crenshaw. God,” he muttered, “you sure can pick 'em.”

“Don't, Alan.”

Celia's father ignored his mother-in-law. “I thought you scraped the bottom of the barrel with Matt, but this guy . . .” He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

“Great timing, Dad. Thanks so much for your support.”

“Now you've disrupted the whole town—everyone's going out of their way to protect you. Nora's refusing to serve any stranger with a camera around his neck. Mr. D'Annunzio won't sell them subs, either. Charlie Junior has locked them out of the bar completely—
that's
driving them nuts. They're gonna have to stay in Whalen if they want a bed, but it looks like they're sleeping in their cars. Disgusting. More important, we've got it locked down enough that everyone knows not to talk to them about you. Or about anything, but they're only asking about you.”

“Why?”

“Don't act innocent. You know why. They want the dirt on Niall Crenshaw's new girlfriend. But nobody's giving them any. They came to the wrong town for that. They even went to the school and the library, looking for yearbooks to find out more about you. Ellen told them the library's closed for renovations and locked the door in their faces. Marisol made up something about security requirements and wouldn't let 'em in the school off ice. We've got a sign on the doors of the town hall saying it's closed for asbestos removal. They're letting people in the back door when the photographers aren't looking. Stupid flatlanders think we can't organize a town-wide shutout. You owe your neighbors big time for this, missy.”

“I know.”

“To make things easier on them, you're staying put from now on. Right here—nowhere else.”

“You can't
ground
me, Dad. I'm an adult. Besides, I'm still helping with Night of the Shooting Stars.”

“Not anymore, you're not.”

“Watch me.”

 

When Celia managed to wrangle a few moments alone, she slipped away and called Niall's cell phone. It went straight to voice mail. She wasn't surprised, considering he probably wanted to avoid most people looking for him at the moment. She didn't leave a message, but typed out a quick text, asking if he was all right and asking about the Night of the Shooting Stars rehearsal. He didn't answer.

In between packing up her grandmother's things, she kept sneaking glances at her phone. Holly noticed, but she never asked.

No answer from Niall all day.

After midnight, when she was just dropping off to sleep, her phone chimed. She lurched up and grabbed it from the nightstand.

It'd be better if you stayed home for now.

Celia didn't sleep the rest of the night.

 

The paparazzi rolled up sometime before daybreak. When Celia woke from a brief, restless doze and looked out her bedroom window, it seemed as though the property was bristling with zoom lenses. After her initial shock, she looked closer and realized there were only eight or ten photographers, but that was plenty, especially when they were camped out on the front lawn.

“Gran—?” she shouted.

“I see 'em,” her grandmother called back from somewhere else in the house.

Celia's bedroom door opened, but she didn't turn around. Keeping a wary eye on the photographers, who were milling around, talking to one another, drinking Dunkin' Donuts coffee they brought in from outside the town limits, and halfheartedly taking photos of the house and the street, she asked Holly, “What do we do?”

“Well, for starters, they're trespassing, so we're going to do something about that.”

“Call the police?”

“No. Open your window.”

“I am
not
opening my window.”

“Then it's gonna get messy in here pretty quick.”

Celia looked over her shoulder to find Holly setting a full laundry basket on her bed. “Gran . . . what are you doing?”

“I have this terrible habit of planting too many tomatoes. I do it every year, in fact. But this year I really went overboard. And, since I don't have the time or the patience for canning, or even to make sauce, we really should find a use for them.”

“You're not talking tomato salad, are you?”

“Of a sort.”

Holly pushed Celia out of the way, spread the curtains wide, and raised the window as high as it would go. Then she pushed up the screen as well. Celia pulled her back.

“You are
not
throwing tomatoes at them.”

“I got some overripe peaches in there, too. The zucchini might be a little hard, and tough to throw, but who cares? I say pitch 'em.”

“They found me,” Celia whispered fearfully. “How did they find me?”

Holly ignored her and reached for the basket of vegetables. Celia moved it away from her.

“We should call the police.”

“What? That's no fun. How about boiling oil?”

But before Holly could make a move to find her biggest cooking pot, a Marsden police cruiser eased into the driveway.

“Looks like somebody beat us to it,” the older woman said, peering out the window. “Ah, nuts. It's not Officer Billy. Too bad. I like him. Bedelia does, too. Keeps thinking he might go for Audra, put her on the straight and narrow.”

“Audra's ten years older than he is!”

“But mentally, he's more mature than her. Anyway, doesn't matter—it's Zoë. She's all right—she'll take care of these losers.”

“I hope so,” Celia grumbled, peering out the window alongside her grandmother. “I don't like being a prisoner. It might be bearable if you had cable, though.”

“Hogwash. You're itching to get out and see the movie star. As you should,” Holly tacked on before Celia could deny it, “now that Peroxide is out of the picture.”

“I don't think Tiffany was the real problem.” Her grandmother looked at her questioningly, so she went on, keeping her explanation sketchy. “It wasn't that serious between them.”

“So what's the ‘real problem'?”

“Different worlds, Gran. Just . . . different worlds.”

“Hogwash again. Oh, looks like Bedelia called. She's out there talking to Zoë now.” Holly leaned out the open window again and waved to her neighbor. “Thanks, B!”

“They're trampling my hydrangeas!” Bedelia shouted back. “Can't let that stand. Gonna sue for damages.” At a rousing chorus of protests from the photographers, she snapped, “Ah, shut up, you vultures, before I start weaving you custom body bags.”

Zoë, the police officer, spoke sharply to Bedelia about disrupting proper procedure; the woman snorted and crossed her arms but said nothing more while the officer ordered the paps off Holly's property.

After they'd shuffled to the edges of the lawn, Zoë stepped into the house to talk with Holly and Celia, followed by a curious Bedelia. Zoë explained the police were limited as to what else they could do as long as the invaders kept off private property.

“They can't block the sidewalks or the road, so if they do that, we can cite 'em,” she said. “We'll try to drive by as often as we can and keep an eye on 'em.”

“You'd better,” Holly snapped. “It's not like Marsden is a hotbed of criminal activity. This could be the most fun you've had in years, if you play your cards right.”

“Mrs. Leigh, we're doing our best.”

“See that you do. I don't want my granddaughter hurt.”

“Have they threatened either of you?”

“Well, no, but you never know with these guys.”

“Call us if there's any trouble. Don't take matters into your own hands, all right?”

It was as if Zoë knew about the basket of vegetables up on her bed, Celia thought.

“I can do what I want on my own property.”

“Up to a point, Mrs. Leigh. Don't muddy the waters.”

“Zoë?” Celia interrupted. “While you're here, can I ask a favor?”