Free Almost Famous, a Talent Novel by Zoey Dean

“S-O-R-R-Y.” The only real word he’d taken the time to write was no .
    O-U-C-H.
    Becks turned her phone off and dropped it into her backpack. She needed to de-text for a while. But even though the phone was out of sight, she could still see Austin’s mysterious message running on loop in her mind. What had happened in the past forty-two hours and thirty-seven minutes to make him change his mind?
    Becks wiped the lip shimmer off her face like it was poison. She wouldn’t need that today.

CHAPTER NINE
    mac
    Wednesday September
    TODAY: Social chair elections
     
    3:05 PM SCE Results
     
    6:30 PM Celebrate SCE victory with I.C.! (Nobu or Katsuya? Or Violet? I’m w/ Co, leaning toward Katsuya, but B & E, you need to weigh in!)
    M ac put her purple Mulberry Mabel bag down carefully on La Table in Main Quad. She was trying to carry the bare minimum at all times and avoid being weighed down by a backpack, which was so public school.
    To anyone who didn’t know BAMS, La Table was just an ordinary wooden picnic table, carved with initials and hearts. But it had been the Inner Circle’s après -school headquarters since day one of middle school. It was located perfectly in the center of Main Quad, an eighth-grade microcosm where you could see all the BAMS cliques. At that moment, Mac had an excellent view of the soccer boys, the awkward girls who were already starting their homework, and the quirky kids who were a little too into blue tights.
    Mac reached into her bag to quickly reapply some Chanel Waterlily lip gloss while pretending not to look around her. She spotted Lukas and Hunter playing Hacky Sack on the field. She arched her shoulders back for a glam position, just in case they caught a glimpse of her looking so effortlessly cute in her Team Mac T-shirt, Rock & Republic jeans, and Mella flip-flops. She hoped they had voted for her. She imagined how she would just “happen” to walk by Lukas right after the all-school e-mail landed announcing the new social chair, and how it would feel when he hugged her. Not that she was crushing on him or anything. She had much more important things to do than worry about a boy. She discreetly spritzed some Vera Wang Princess on her wrist just in case.
    Mac was thisclose to achieving her dream-of-all-dreams, and she just wanted to not totally freak out. She held her phone above her head and snapped an appearance-check picture. She flinched when she saw her photo. She looked haggard and tired, like the “Stars Without Their Makeup!” pictures in the back of magazines. Except that Mac was wearing makeup. Yes, camera phones could deceive, but they weren’t vicious lie-mongers.
    Clearly this was Life telling Mac to take better care of herself. She decided to begin with her tan. Mac hopped off La Table and onto the bench. She closed her eyes, leaned back, and let the sun do its magic. (But not for more than four minutes, or she’d do sun damage.)
    Mac had racked up a minute of vitamin D rays when she heard Emily’s voice. It was laced with panic.
    “E-Tach’s definitely mad at me,” Emily hissed.
    Mac opened her eyes and realized that Emily, Becks, and Coco were huddled around her, like she’d just fainted. They were all talking over each other.
    “Austin blew me off,” Becks wailed.
    “They said I can’t be captain,” Coco said frantically.
    “ ’Cause he rolled up his window on me!” Emily yelped.
    “But why would I be an alternate ?” Coco howled.
    “And I have no idea why!” Becks’s voice cracked.
    Soon it was just a nonsensical earthquake of words.
    “Unfair!”
    “Blows!”
    “Why me?”
    Before Mac could get into it, she felt a buzz in her pocket. She held up her phone like a white flag to her friends. “It’s Ruby.”
    There was insta-silence. The last time Ruby had e-mailed Mac it had been to tell her that Emily had lost a starring role in a major Hollywood movie.
    The girls tightened the circle so there was no daylight, and they leaned in to peer