Books : Princess of Gossip : Excerpts

Chapter 1

MySpace BULLETIN

From: Avery [inLA]
Date: October 11 -- 3:45 p.m.
Subject: Vote in my poll!!

I survived the school day! Now where should I go? All you have to do is vote & I pinky-swear to give you the exclusive inside details every step of the way!

• Shopping in Beverly Hills -- Celebrity views + Jimmy Choos all in one place!
• A concert at the Hollywood Bowl -- I'll take pics for you guys from the front row -- and backstage after the show!
• The set of a TV show at the studios -- What's gonna happen on our favorite show next season? I'll watch them film it -- & give you all the spoilers!
•l; A movie premiere and after-party -- Let's walk down the red carpet...& hit the VIP after-party later!

No matter what you choose, I'll give you all the celebrity sightings & all access --

Rrrrring!

Dang it. The phone rang, completely interrupting my train of thought. I put the laptop down on the round, furry chair I'd been sitting on and got up to look for the phone. I could hear it ringing from somewhere in my bedroom. Dang it again, I tripped over a cardboard box that was marked Avery/Magazines.

We'd moved into this house almost a month ago and a lot of my stuff was still in boxes, waiting for me to put it someplace. I'd convinced my parents before we moved to ditch my old bedroom furniture I'd had since I was eight. They had promised me I could get new furniture, including a bookcase just to hold all my magazines. But we hadn't even started shopping yet. All I had right now was a mattress, my old turquoise comforter set, and boxes. My room theme could be called Modern Cardboard Box. I kicked one of the boxes off to the side.

Rrrrring!

I narrowed the ringing noise down to somewhere on my bed. I moved a pile of clothes, my backpack, some pillows...and there it was. I saw my mom's cell number on the caller ID.

"Hi, Mom," I said.

"Hi, honey. I just wanted to let you know that Dad and I are working late tonight. Did you finish your homework?"

Um...

"Avery? Your homework is done, correct?" my mom said.

Uh...

Then I heard a phone ringing in the background on her end. Excellent. It was perfect timing for my mom's business line to be interrupting our call.

"Oh, I have to take this," she said. "Love you!"

I heard a click as she hung up. Yes! Thank you, customer, for interrupting us, as well as -- I hoped -- buying products from my parents' new company. I went back over to my chair and set my laptop back on my knees. But I was no longer in the mood to write any more of the MySpace bulletin; my mom's call had snapped me back into reality.

I reread my poll. Shopping! Concerts! TV sets! Movie premieres! Oh, the glam possibilities of life in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, those were options in somebody else's life, not mine.

It's pretty pathetic when the most exciting thing that happens in my day is making up a fake fantasy bulletin.

I held down the delete button and erased everything I'd typed. My parents always said I had an active imagination. I started a new bulletin and typed in a real poll.

MySpace BULLETIN

From: Avery [inLA]
Date: October 11 -- 3:45 p.m.
Subject: Vote in my poll!!

I survived the school day! Now what?!

• Do my homework!
• Do some laundry!
• Make ramen noodles for dinner!
• Wait for you guys to text me!

Yes, those were my real choices. I clicked send and watched my lame bulletin pop up on my bulletin list. My life pretty much consisted of school, homework, and being online. Shopping in Beverly Hills? A concert? I had no ride and no money. The TV set or movie premiere? Right...like I had any clue how to even find them, much less get into them.

MySpace BULLETIN

From: Avery [inLA]
Date: October 11 -- 4:10 p.m.
Subject: asfgdsl

boredom sux
please start a conversation with me
now!!!!

Hello...people? Where were my Ohio friends in my time of need? It was around dinnertime there, so somebody should've been available to chat with me.

I felt a pang knowing that if I was back in Ohio, I'd be there with them, planning for homecoming. I couldn't tell them I was feeling left out, though. I tried that a couple days ago, and Nicole said, "What do you have to complain about? You live in L.A.!" And a month ago, I would have thought the same thing. I still couldn't believe I actually lived in one of the most exciting cities on earth. My parents had worked in regular sales jobs back in Ohio, but then someone my mom worked with told her about a business franchise they could start up in California.

They'd called me into our dining room to discuss, as they put it, a major life decision. How did I feel about uprooting our family and taking a risk to start a new life in Los Angeles?

"We might move to L.A.?" I asked, not sure if I was hearing them right. "You mean live there?"

"Yes, we would live in a suburb of Los Angeles," my dad said. "I know you've never been to L.A...."

Well, no, I'd never been to L.A. in real life, but I'd definitely been there in my dream life. I'd been semiobsessed with celebrities since, well, pretty much forever. Even back in fifth grade, before I was allowed free reign on the Internet, I spent all my allowance on popstar magazines. I was my friends' go-to person for the star gossip and the newest posters to put up on our walls.

So of course, Hollywood was somewhere I'd always hoped to go. But I was thinking more along the lines of a weekend visit, like if my dad had a sales conference there instead of the usual places, like Des Moines. And then I'd convince him to take me with him and I would have the chance to stalk the stars' homes from a tour bus and put my feet in the cement footprints on the Walk of Fame. And then I'd go back home to Ohio for the rest of my life.

I never even remotely thought there was a chance my parents would move us there.

"I know this is the only home you've ever known, sweetie," my mom said. "And you've never been to California, so if you want a few days to think about it before you weigh in with your answer -- "

"Mom! Dad!" I interrupted. "The answer is heck, yeah! Let's move to L.A.!!"

"Well, breaking the news to Avery went far better than I'd expected," my dad said dryly, as he whisked my mom out of the dining room before I could change my mind.

However, breaking the news to my friends didn't go quite as I'd envisioned. I was preparing myself for some tears, declarations of how much I'd be missed, and maybe some drama about how they couldn't go on without me. I'd called an emergency meeting at Starbucks.

"I have major news," I announced. "I'm moving to L.A. in a couple weeks."

"No way!" Nicole said. "That is amazing!"

"I know," I said. "It's -- "

Wait. Did she say amazing?

"Ahem," I said. "I said I was moving to L.A. Moving, as in leaving here? Permanently?"

"L.A.! Ohmygosh! You have to get me Shiloh's autograph!" Kendall squealed.

"Shiloh's autograph?" I asked. "I'm moving to L.A. and you ask for Shiloh's autograph?"

"Seriously, Kendall," Nicole said. "Give poor Avery a break. I mean, Shiloh's autograph?"

Thank you. After all, I'd just announced I was leaving Ohio forever.

"Shiloh isn't even old enough to sign an autograph," Nicole continued. "Avery, try to get us Zahara's instead."

"Is anyone understanding that I'm leaving?" I said. "We've been friends since second grade. And I'm leaving."

"Well, officially, Lexa's only been friends with us since fourth grade," Nicole said.

"No, it was third," Lexa insisted.

"Not really," Nicole said. "You only thought you were in third. Really, we were only using you for your Bratz dolls."

"What?" Lexa sputtered.

"I'm just kidding," Nicole said. "Kind of."

"You guys!" I said. "Focus! I'm leaving in just a few weeks! This is one of the last times we'll all be sitting here on our couch at Starbucks together."

"Oh, Avery," Kendall said. She reached out and grabbed my hand. I started to get a little lump in my throat as I looked around at the friends I'd known almost forever.

"Okay, this is touching and all," Nicole said. "But a little too Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants for me. I feel like we're about to swear our allegiance to our friendship and pledge that nothing can tear us apart."

"Would that be so bad?" I asked.

"Not if we got a pair of magic jeans that would fit all of us like they did in Traveling Pants," Lexa said. "That would be sweet."

"Ooh, can they be True Religions?" Kendall said. "Or Rich & Skinny."

"Those would be magic jeans if they made you look rich and skinny," Nicole said. Lexa snorted.

"You guys!" I said, a little too loudly. Everyone stopped and looked at me. "I need your support here."

"You're right" Nicole said. "You do need our support. Okay, guys, we need to rally around Avery."

Finally, someone was listening to me.

"We have to get Avery ready to go out there and represent us!" Nicole continued. "She doesn't have much time. She's going to have to go all Ashlee and make some facial tweaks. I wonder if we have enough time to get Avery on I Want a Famous Face?!"

"Ooh, make yourself into L.C.!" Kendall turned to me. "I love The Hills!"

"You think?" Lexa said. "She might be able to pull off Audrina, but I can't see her as a Heidi."

"Boobs!" Nicole yelled so loud that the guy at the table next to us spilled his coffee. "You need boobs!"

I sat there, slightly stunned, as my friends made a to-do list:

• Choose famous face and find plastic surgeon
• Get TanTastic's thirty-day all-you-can-spray tan special
• Dye my hair platinum
• Get clothes other than my usual earth-toned Hollister/AE/Abercrombie basics
• Get veneers for my teeth
• And, of course, the boob job

On the bright side, it made what I'd thought was going to be a traumatically emotional announcement a little less emotional. And the fact that there was so little drama made leaving my friends a little easier to take, too. It was like they were moving on from me already. If I was totally honest with myself, they'd probably been moving on from me for a few years now, but when you've been friends since first grade, you kind of get in a rut.

Despite their compelling suggestions, I decided to disregard the list and go to L.A. as myself: red hair, pale skin, more butt than boobs. I was well aware I didn't look like a star. My friends and I had once asked one another: "Which star do I look most like?" Nicole had been Rihanna, Kendall was Taylor Swift, and after some debate, we chose Demi Lovato for Lexa.

For me, though, they were stumped.

"Well, your hair color is Lindsay-ish," Kendall said. "In its natural state. And the style is a little Miley Cyrus."

"More like Billy Ray," Nicole added. "Just kidding!"

"Avery doesn't really look like any star," Lexa said, and everyone had agreed and moved on.

So I'm not delusional. I knew all along that I wasn't just going to arrive in L.A. and suddenly break into a celebrity world. I wasn't planning to become a star. But I did kind of think I'd at least see a couple stars.

I've been here a month. Ask me how many stars I've seen since I moved here.

Zero.

How was it possible that I lived less than an hour away from the Hollywood sign for a month but hadn't seen any celebrities? For one thing, my parents were busy 24/7 starting their new business and while it might not sound too tragic to be virtually parentless, I'm fifteen. So I had no driver's license, no parents to drive me, and no friends who lived in this state. Basically, if I wasn't in school, I was stuck in my house. It was seriously pathetic.

I was hoping that sometime soon, things would pick up a little in my life. So were my friends back home. As a going-away present, the girls had made me a Ning. It's a social network as easy to sign up for as MySpace, but Nicole told me it was the new hot place where you could blog, put up videos, and talk to your friends. And when she made a big show of how it could keep us all so connected, I felt the love -- for a second, until she explained I was to put all my Hollywood experiences and celebrity gossip on the site and then network them into it, so we would have our own celebrity gossip world.

The Ning itself was very cool. I'd written: "Stay tuned for the Celebrity Gossip!" I'd gotten excited to develop it. But I had nothing to put on it. I'd had a lot of visitors the first couple weeks, as people from home checked to see what I was up to. After that, though, the site just sat there, taunting me.

I was ready at any time to get something -- anything -- to post on the blog. If I could get out of my house, that is. I'd been keeping a checklist of places I'd read about in the tabloids that I couldn't wait to see in person. I'd started that list back in Ohio, when I thought I actually would be leaving my house in L.A. and going places.

The Ivy restaurant -- lunch place where the paparazzi hung out [ ]
Beverly Center -- a mall where celebrities shopped [ ]
Pink's hot dogs -- lines down the block [ ]
Robertson Blvd. -- Rodeo Drive was mostly for tourists but the real stars shop here [ ]
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf -- for caffeine breaks [ ]
Chateau Marmont -- the hotel to hide out from the paparazzi and trash your room at night [ ]
The Grove -- an outdoor mall where celebrities shopped and went to the movies [ ]

Notice that not one of the places on my checklist had a check mark next to it. It was incredibly frustrating...and yes, pathetic. Hollywood was so close...but totally inaccessible to me.

At least in real life.

So I stayed connected to Hollywood the same way I did when I was thousands of miles away from it: online. Yes, pretty much my only connection to the world of Hollywood was through my computer. But it was better than nothing. Gossip blogs! Celebrity websites! Fan sites and fan forums!

I might not be a part of the scene, but at least I could read about it. I leaned back on my big orange pillow and made myself comfortable. I closed out of MySpace and pulled down my Favorites menu, where I had all the best gossip sites bookmarked for quick access. I settled in to read the latest.

Stars Shine at Premiere!

Natalie Portman and her costars were in L.A. for the premiere of her new movie. A source close to the actor said that it was one of the best times she's had filming. "They were like family on the set," Portman said, according to the source.

I smiled as I saw the pictures of the cast hugging one another. I read how they hoped there would be a sequel, so they could all share those fun times again. Yes, I'd imagine it would be fun hanging out all day with one of the hottest actors on the planet as your pretend boyfriend. And with makeup, hair, and wardrobe on standby to make sure you looked fabulous all the time and personal assistants and a huge paycheck...Sign me up for that.

I scrolled down farther and saw a poll.

Hot or Not?

Michael Cera at the awards show last night.

I love me some Michael Cera. I clicked on HOT!

What? He was only at 65 percent hot? Those results are flipping ridiculous. Michael Cera is smart, funny, adorable...what's not to love? I voted HOT a few more times to get his ranking up.

Who looks hotter at the Young Hollywood Awards: Ashley T or Selena G or Baby V?

Hello, Ashley Tisdale, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens are all gorgeous. I didn't think people should compare them, jeesh. I split my votes equally among all of them.

Blind Item Gossip!

I love blind items. Blind items are the gossip stories that are so scandalous that the gossiper won't reveal names, so you have to guess who they're talking about. Sometimes they're obvious and you can figure them out.

Blind Item: Which singer hasn't announced it yet...but she's pregnant! She and her hubby are thrilled to welcome their first bundle of joy.

Well, that wouldn't be a blind item too long, since it becomes a little obvious. Like when JLo and Christina Aguilera didn't admit they were pregnant but their growing bellies couldn't be ignored.

Blind Item: Backstabbing BFF

Which former reality show star is making a move on her BFF's boyfriend -- but the friend has no clue? Our star was seen in a heavy-duty makeout session at a club while the BFF went to the ladies' room. And sources tell us it's not the first time...

Meow! Who? Okay, as much as I love blind items, they're also very frustrating because most of the time the answer isn't obvious. And then I'm left dying to know the answer.

I clicked onto another website:

Cruz Ramirez, lead singer of the Statement, was caught cuddling with TV sitcom star Perth Hampton last night at Nobu. "They were laughing and it looked like they were holding hands," said a fellow diner. "I couldn't tell for sure, but I thought they might have kissed!"

What? No way! Now this was some juicy gossip. Cruz was uberhot, and Perth was not only pretty, she was also hilarious in her new show. Cruz and Perth would be an adorable couple. I clicked around and didn't see anyone else mentioning it. I found a post on the Statement's fan forum saying that there was a rumor that Perth was going to be in his next music video. So maybe they were only having a business dinner, and the holding-hands-and-kissing was wishful thinking on somebody's part. But maybe it was a little of both.

I could just picture how it might have happened. Maybe they were talking about the music video -- at first. Then Cruz might have sang a little of his new song to her. She couldn't stop looking into his gorgeous eyes as he sang to her and leaned in and their hands accidentally touched and...sparks flew. And they knew they were meant to be. How romantic was that?

Apparently I needed to put Nobu on my list of places to go see. I Googled it and discovered it was a restaurant in Malibu known for its famous chef and sushi. Malibu was only about forty-five minutes away from where I was. Things were happening out there, people! Fabulous, glamorous, star-studded things! And I was stuck in my house, alone. Which completely and totally sucked.

MySpace BULLETIN

From: Avery [inLA]
Date: October 11 -- 5:12 p.m.
Subject: Obviously I did not make myself clear

Text me. comment me. message me. it is essential to my survival. i am lonely and bored, people! be a true friend and reply.

I sent off that bulletin to my friends list. Surely, somebody would answer that plea. And then I got a new-message alert. Thank you! It was nice to know that at least one of my friends was there for me in my time of need. Was it Nicole? Kendall? Lexa? I clicked on the email to see who was going to cheer me up out of my loneliness.