Free Teen Idol by Meg Cabot

of course I fully was. But it turned out Luke had other plans.
    "Sorry," he said. "I’m meeting someone."
    Of course it was totally ridiculous that the new guy should be "meeting someone" at five o'clock in front of the Clayton High flagpole his very first day there But neither Trina nor Steve seemed to think anything about it. They just went, "Okay, bye," and, after I’d piled into the car, drove away.
    Neither of them, of course, turned in their seat and looked back. Because if they had, they would have seen a big black limo pull up into the turnaround a few seconds after we’d pulled away and Luke high-five whoever was inside it before climbing in himself.
    All I could think was,
Where did he get that limo
? Because there is no limo company in Clayton. Our town is too small to support one, since the only time people here ever need one is at the Spring Fling.
    Anyway, that was when Trina started talking about Luke. Or Lucas, I should say. She talked about him all the way home, and then, after dinner, when I went upstairs to do my homework, she e-mailed me about him.
    All she could talk about was Lucas this and Lucas that. Did I think Lucas had liked his first day at Clayton High? Did I know why his parents had decided to move so late in the school year? Why hadn’t he stayed at his old school? He could only have had a few months to go before graduation. Wasn’t he going to miss graduating with his old friends? Did he like living out by the lake? Did he have a girlfriend at his old school? Did I think it was serious?
    And the clincher, the one I’d been dreading all day:
    Didn’t I think Lucas looked uncannily like Luke Striker?
    I tried to answer Trina’s questions as best I could without outright lying, but of course it was hard. I mean, I
had
to lie for a few of them. It was turning out to be no joke, student guiding a movie star. You know, really, Mr. Mitchell should be
paying
me for letting Luke follow me around. There was a lot of work involved. . . .
    Not the least of which was the abuse I’d had to put up with from Luke himself. That night, as I lay in bed, looking up at my canopy—I had been nuts for princesses as a kid and had begged and begged for a princess bed, so my mom, being an interior decorator and all, had gotten me the most princessy bed available in southern Indiana, and now I was fully stuck with it—I thought about what Luke had said to me outside the caf about Cara.
    Luke hadn’t known what he was talking about, of course. I mean, he didn’t know the effort I’d put into being nice to Cara, all the times I’d run after her into the bathroom, all the tears I’d mopped up, all the advice I’d given her (none of which she’d taken). He didn’t know about my being Ask Annie and all the letters from Cara I’d answered. He didn’t know how much worse it might actually have been for Cara if I hadn’t been around.
    And he
really
didn’t know what it was like to be me. It was exhausting, frankly. Between Cara and the Ask Annie thing and the Trina and Steve thing and the kidnapping of Betty Ann and the arm movements in Troubadours . . .
    It’s a wonder I even get up in the morning, really.
    I have to admit, I didn’t really expect to see Luke the next day. I mean, after all the problems he’d had waking up the day before, the lack of espresso on school grounds, the Salisbury steak—not to mention the whole Cara thing—I figured he’d probably had enough. He might have been dedicated to his craft and all, but who would put up with conditions like those? Especially a millionaire.
    So when he walked into Latin the next morning, I nearly choked. He had abandoned the football jersey for something that looked like it had been woven out of one of those Mexican blankets, open at the chest to reveal one of those pooka shell necklaces surfers always wear. He’d ditched the cross trainers, too, in favor of suede Pumas.
    Plus he’d managed to find some espresso . . . or at least a latte