Free Geek Charming by Robin Palmer Page B

trashed, due to the fact that I had spilled salsa on it that afternoon, but it was still readable. “What would a typical night out for a popular couple be?” I read from the list, before looking up at her. “What do you and Asher usually do?”
    “You mean when he’s not off at those stupid Ultimate Fighting things?” asked Lola as she came out of her dressing room dressed in something that looked half spacesuit/half army uniform.
    “He doesn’t do that every weekend,” replied Dylan.
    Hannah came out wearing something that looked like a nun’s habit. “When was the last time you guys even hung out?” she asked.
    “We hang out all the time,” said Dylan defensively. “We hung out . . . three weekends ago!”
    “You mean that night that he was supposed to meet you at Heidi Lehmann’s party and didn’t show up until ten and then only stayed for fifteen minutes?” Lola retorted.
    I just kept moving the camera back and forth like I was at a tennis match, trying not to look too excited. Catfights always helped heighten the drama of a film.
    “Excuse me for not being one of those girls who’s so insecure she needs to be with her boyfriend twenty-four/ seven,” Dylan huffed as she marched over and put her hand on the camera lens. “Okay, you need to cut.”
    “Ow,” I said as the camera bopped me in the nose again.
    She put her hands on her hips. “Rule number 876: no talking about my relationship on camera. Some things need to remain private and personal.”
    “Especially when they’re, like, ending ,” said Lola quietly.
    “What?” Dylan snapped.
    “Nothing,” Lola said as she disappeared back into her dressing room.
    “Okay, I think we’ve had enough for today,” Dylan said as she marched back to her own.
    Hannah walked up to the camera. “You’re not going to put that part in, are you?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. Why?”
    “Because it just makes us as popular girls look . . . I don’t know . . . bitchy . And we’re so not.” She leaned in closer. “You probably won’t get this because you’re a guy, but seeing that the three of us are best friends, we’re on the same cycle and it’s, you know, that time of the month , so we’re all a little oversensitive . I mean, as you know, usually we’re super sweet. Well, maybe Lola isn’t, but Dylan and I are.”
    So much for loyalty among friends.
    “So will you keep this part out?” she whispered. “Because even though I don’t come across as bad, I don’t want to be thought of as a bitch because I’m friends with them, you know?”
    “How about I think about it?” I whispered back.
    “That would be great,” she said with a smile before she ran off to her dressing room.
     
    Even with our Just-Because-It’s-Thursday-Again-Get-70-Percent-Off sale, work was still dead the next day. I spent most of my shift trying to convince an elderly couple that it wasn’t that their ungrateful daughter-in-law had given them a defective laptop, but, rather, they needed to turn it on first in order for it to work. At 6:30, as I was getting my stuff out of my locker at work and about to head over to the New Beverly for a double feature of the Chinese director Wong Kar-wai’s work, which I had been looking forward to for months (especially since Quentin was a huge fan of his as well and was sometimes known to show up at the New Beverly on occasion), my phone rang.
    When DYLAN flashed across the screen, I sighed. This was the fifth call in three hours. Apparently in addition to being her director, I was also a human weather vane, a human calculator, and a human MapQuest.
    “Hi, Dylan,” I said as I answered the phone.
    “Josh?”
    “Yeah?”
    “It’s Dylan.”
    “I know. I just said that,” I said, reaching for my inhaler. It had gotten to the point where just the sound of her voice made my lungs start to constrict. I made a mental note to go on WebMD when I got home to find out if you could be physically allergic to a