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  Pop star Jade Taylor admitted yesterday that her latest album, Player Hater, is all about actor ex-boyfriend Dalton James, who she says cheated on her countless times throughout the relationship. This isn’t the first time James has been accused of bad-boy behavior. In 2014, his Sacred costar and ex-girlfriend Christina Rush claimed she dumped him after he wouldn’t stop partying with fangirls.

  WHAT? Did NOT know that. I can practically feel the steam fuming from my ears. Great, I love finding out that the mega hot celebrity I have a date with might just be pursuing me for sport—for the sake of the hunt. Wonderful.

  You know what? I think to myself, clicking off my phone. I have completely had it with this day. There’s no way I’m staying for sixth period. I watch the minute hand of the clock tick by so slowly it could be moving through molasses, go through the motions of marking up my booklet while Coach Flanders gives us the answers, and as soon as the bell rings, I’m out of there faster than you can say Lemony Snicket.

  Everybody hustles to sixth period—that is, everybody but me. Not wanting to attract attention by walking directly away from school, I sneak around to the back of the language building where there’s an unguarded fence just low enough for me to climb over. My Jeffrey Campbell platform heels get momentarily stuck in the chain links a few times, and the pleats of my skirt get caught on the spokes, but finally I hop down and am standing on the other side, the side of FREEDOM.

  I hop in my MINI Cooper parked on Fourth Street and put the top down, then drive to one of my favorite places, one of the few places on planet Earth where my problems all simply fade away: the Santa Monica Mall.

  * * *

  First things first: I head to Urban Outfitters and pick out a series of adorable and strategic hair accessories to hide the Unfortunate Awkward Spot that is now going to stick with me for the next few months, thanks to Ashley Adler. When life hands me lemons (as it did today), I like to try my best to make lemonade. In other words, if I’m going to be dealing with this chop job (sadly, not something even the most skilled hair stylist could fix), I might as well make the best of it by dressing it up with ribbons, bows, and berets. By the time I’m finished, I have a bag stuffed full of velvet and satin, plaids and stripes, neons and pastels. The lady at the cash register, who herself has at least four facial piercings, probably thinks I’m a psychopath with a basement full of a creepy collection of dolls I like to dress up and talk to and host tea parties with as if they’re my friends. Yikes, my mind can really go to some dark places when I let it.

  I make my way out of Urban Outfitters, and I find myself staring at the fountain shaped like a Triceratops. It’s made out of wire covered with ivy, and water shoots out of its mouth into a pool where people have been throwing pennies since the early nineties. It’s like a loose-change graveyard in there. I take my dark-minded self to Wetzel’s and buy a cinnamon pretzel before perching on the edge of the Triceratops fountain to chow down, watching pigeons fight over pieces of other people’s abandoned snacks. It may seem kind of bleak, but I’d take this over the last three hours of school any day.

  Next stop: Brandy Melville. I legitimately love their clothes—­literally everything in there is beyond super adorbs—but what is with this whole “one size fits all” thing? How is this tiny gray cotton halter top supposed to fit me AND some girl with gigantic boobs? Or what about some girl who’s barely five feet tall? How are she and I supposed to fit into the same size jeans? IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE. It’s like some major Mary Poppins or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants sorcery.

  I’m in the dressing room trying on a bunch of stretchy fabric turtleneck crop tops, and Brandy Melville is playing a bunch of vintage rock songs from the seventies and eighties that I’m kind of getting into, when all of a sudden my phone vibrates and it’s A TEXT FROM DALTON.

  Thinking about you. Can’t stop watching your videos, pretty girl!

  Uh-oh, I’m a gonner. Hashtag sa-woooooooooon. Hashtag heart eyes emoji.

  CHAPTER 3

  ••••••••••

  LOL ;)

  I have my nose pressed up against the living room window as Ellie drives up in her seafoam-green Fiat, and by the time she parks and gets out of her car, I can’t possibly pull her into my house fast enough.

  “Whoa, whoa, what in the world is going on? Calm down, bb, you’re gonna leave bruises on my arm.”

  “Sorry.” I shut the front door behind her and loosen my grip on her arm slightly as I lead her down the basement stairs to my lair. “But we have serious things to discuss.”

  “Oookay.” She sits on the corner of my bed and eyes me like I’m an animal and might be rabid. “Like . . . ?”

  “First of all, you know Evil Ashley?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “Well, today during math class she put gum in my hair, and now look!” I unclip a blue bow from my hair and point dramatically to the dreaded spot.

  Ellie’s eyes widen in shock. “Oh, Harper, that’s . . . I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you.” I throw my arms around her neck. “Finally somebody understands what I’m going through.”

  “Cute bow, though.”

  “Thanks, yeah. It’s from Urban.”

  “Dope.” Ellie flops down on my bed. “So what’s the second thing we have to talk about? Or was there more to the whole gum-in-hair story?”

  “No, that was it.”

  “Okay, so next item.”

  “Next item: this text from Dalton.” I pull out my phone, open to said text, and hand it to her. “Read, please.”

  “Wow,” she says, her eyes widening in disbelief, “this is incredible. I mean, it’s Dalton James. He’s . . . well, hot.”

  “I know.”

  “So what are you gonna write back?”

  “Well, here’s the thing. The catch, if you will.”

  “I’m on the edge of my seat. Literally.”

  “So I looked him up on Google.”

  “Naturally.”

  “And according to Wikipedia, he’s dated both Christina Rush and Jade Taylor. And both of them publicly said he was a major player.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, duh, you didn’t know this? Christina Rush is the main girl in Sacred. Everyone knew they were dating—it was a thing. And Jade Taylor practically wrote a whole album about her relationship with him. He totally broke her heart when he was photographed making out with some random girl in Las Vegas.”

  “No!” I gasp.

  “Are you serious? Have you been living under a rock?”

  “On the contrary! I’ve spent over 75 percent of my life for the past four years on the Internet. How could I have possibly missed this?”

  “I don’t know. But hey, it’s a good thing that you don’t pay attention to gossip. It’s all hearsay anyway. Who knows what’s really true?”

  “Okay, okay, maybe you’re right. So you think I should still text him back?”

  “Girl, it’s Dalton James. If you don’t text him back, I’ll do it for you.”

  “I shouldn’t let it bug me that he might have sort of a reputation as a heartbreaker or whatever?”

  Ellie shakes her head vehemently. “No, who cares? You don’t need to marry the guy, just go on a date, have a fling, you know, for the story or whatever. It’s an awesome story to have under your belt. YOLO, right?”

  “YOLO.” I nod firmly, decision made, and plop down next to Ellie. “Yes. Okay, so what should I say?”

  “Oh, this part I’m not good at.”

  “Well, me neither! Do I say thank you? Do I compliment him back? Do I tell him to stop watching my videos and use his time for something more worthwhile?”

  “First of all, you need to pick your self-esteem up off the floor and put it on a pedestal where it belongs.”

  I laugh. “You’re right. He can watch my videos all day if he wants—they’re awesome.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “Ok
ay, so what do I say?”

  “How about just . . . LOL?”

  “LOL? LOL what?”

  “That’s it, just LOL.”

  “Are you serious? I can’t just write LOL!”

  “Well, why not?”

  “I don’t know . . . it’s just not . . . it’s not a substantial text! He’ll think I’m not interested in him.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he’ll just think you’re cool and mysterious.”

  “Interesting.” I think this through. She might have a point. “But it can’t be an LOL all by itself. It needs a little something extra.”

  “Like an emoji?”

  “Yes! Perfect. Okay.” I take back my phone from her and type LOL, then open up the emoji keyboard. “Wide smile? No, too enthusiastic. Kissy-face? No, too easy. Tongue out? No, way too easy. Heart eyes? No—”

  “How about a winky face?”

  “Hm. What message does a winky face send?”

  “It says, I get you. It says, Who knows what’s to come?”

  “Really? It says all that?”

  “Trust me.”

  “All right then,” I say somewhat skeptically, typing the winky face in next to the LOL. I take a deep breath and hit send.

  Ellie squeals. “Oooh, I’m so nervous for you!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, like, who knows what he’s going to write back to that?”

  “You said it was a good idea!” I start freaking out a little. “Was it a stupid thing to send? Did we just totally mess this up?!”

  Bliinnnggggggggg! The phone dings almost immediately. My heart skips a beat. This is the moment of truth.

  DALTON JAMES

  Where shall I pick you up for our date?

  And do you think you can be ready by 8:30?

  I flip the phone around to show Ellie and we go wild.

  “What did I tell ya, babe?” She grins. “When in doubt, just hit ’em up with an LOL winky.”

  “I never should have doubted you.” I bounce up from the bed and rush to my walk-in closet, flinging the doors open with a flourish. “Eeeeks, I gotta figure out what to wear.”

  “Do you, though? The date isn’t until Friday.”

  “If I leave the planning ’til Friday I’ll end up trying on seventeen hundred dresses in a row and then end up just showing up in whatever pair of jeans happen to be lying on my floor. You know how I get what I leave things to the last minute.”

  Ellie rolls her eyes. “You always leave things to the last minute.”

  “And I’m trying to change! Starting now. Come on, help me plan.”

  Just then my phone dings again, only this time it’s a different sound, the whir-whoooosh sound that means I have a new Twitter notification. Because I have so many followers, getting a notification of any kind is no big shocker, so when I reach for my phone and open Twitter I’m not expecting anything out of the ordinary and am therefore entirely unprepared for the words that appear on my screen:

  @ThatBitchHarper: Rumor has it @Harper_Ambrose has a date w/ @DaltonJamesOfficial this Friday. Honey, he is WAY out of ur league. Dalton = Hot. Harper = Not.

  Wait, what? My heart stops a little. Let me explain: I’m not like some big baby who can’t handle the haters. The first rule of fame (Internet or otherwise) is that for every fan you have, you get two haters. Okay, so maybe there’s no such rule officially, but it’s something I’ve observed. I can handle the haters because I get them all the time: insecure girls telling me I’m too pale, sad old men in their mom’s basements calling me fat or stupid for no apparent reason whatsoever. But this is different. This is a tweet about details of my life that nobody could possibly know. Except for Ellie. And of course Dalton.

  “What’s wrong?” Ellie asks, pausing halfway to my closet.

  “Something weird on Twitter.” I try to understand. Who else could possibly know about my date on Friday?

  “Let me see. You’re kind of freaking me out.” I guess my face must have looked as ghostly as it felt. I show her the tweet and she reads it out loud and then laughs a little.

  “That’s ridiculous. Dalton equals hot, Harper equals not? Who is this person and why does he think we’re still in the nineties?”

  I shake my head slowly. “I have no idea who it could be.”

  “Does it matter? I mean, who cares? You’ve gotten way worse than Harper equals not. Remember that one time—”

  “No, you don’t understand. Whoever this is knows about my date with Dalton, and literally the only people who know about it are him and you.”

  “Whoa.” Ellie takes this in. “I didn’t think of it like that.”

  “It can’t be you, because you’ve been sitting here with me this whole time. And it can’t be Dalton because . . . why would he do that? Doesn’t make sense.”

  “And you didn’t tell anyone else that you’re forgetting about?”

  “No! I’ve barely even spoken to anyone since I met him.”

  Ellie shrugged. “If this is bugging you, we can figure it out. You know I’m here for you. We’ll get down to the bottom of this.”

  “I’ll deal with it later,” I shake it off, mentally and physically. Ellie’s right: I’ve faced down much, much worse and come out the other side. So what if it’s wigging me out a bit that someone out there in the Twittosphere seems to know something private about my life? The fact is, I’ve got a date with the Dalton James Friday night, and whoever that Internet saddo is doesn’t. I flash a smile at Ellie and head back to my closet. “Moving on. I’ve got an outfit to pick out.”

  * * *

  TUTORIAL #3

  Tumblr Date Ideas

  Hi, everyone! This video is gonna be all about date ideas, but, like, honestly you can do these things with your girlfriends too, you don’t have to have a BAE. Okay? Okay.

  So, what is a Tumblr date? Is it a date that takes place virtually, through Tumblr? Is it a date between two people who met on Tumblr? Neither! It is simply an idea for a date that I got off of Tumblr. Simple. As. That.

  1. Tumblr date idea numero uno is to bake something! How many times have you been watching like a cute TV show or movie and the boyfriend and girlfriend are baking something together and they get in a cute food fight and throw things and it just ends up being totes adorbs? If you’re trying to flirt with someone, I’m just saying it is the perfect opportunity. I think this one is super good for a first-date idea if you’re not really serious yet and just starting off. You can have fun with it, put frosting on their face, burn the cookies, forget the sprinkles, and the whole thing ends up being a total fail, but you just go out for dessert after and it’s the perfect little scenario. *Sigh*

  2. Tumblr date idea number two is build a fort. I mean, obviously. That is the number one thing you see on Tumblr when you’re scrolling through your feed. If you are trying to make out with someone or kiss someone, a fort is the perfect opportunity. You don’t just build a fort with a boy and not kiss him. Doesn’t happen. If you build a fort with him and you don’t kiss him in that fort, then . . . girl, I can’t help ya.

  3. Tumblr date idea number three is mini golfing. Eeeee, so cute. Classic. It’s a classic. I went to the golf course last week and there was this cute—no, THE CUTEST—Tumblr couple, and I was like why don’t I just film them? They totally saw me creeping on them. I mean, who knows? They’re probably watching this video right now. I would not be surprised. Hi! It’s so good for a first date, or even if you’ve been dating for a while, to go play games (literal, not figurative—duh).

  4. PHOTO BOOTH! OMG. Photo booth. Another great place for if you’re trying to kiss someone. Just be like *pose* *pose*, then sneak in for a kiss. Works every time.

  5. The last date idea that I came up with for you guys is to have a beach picnic day. If you don’t have a beach near where you live, that’s totally fine. A lake will do, a pond, a puddle. Okay maybe not a puddle—that might be a little weird. But literally you can just go to a park and have a nice picnic and bri
ng cute little ­chocolate-covered strawberries (or you can bake something before you go to the park—see idea #1). Am I right? They’re the best things ever. Maybe not so good for a first date because they’re really ­romantic—maybe like a fifth or sixth date kind of thing.

  Those are some of the date ideas I came up with, but there are honestly so many more. Hiking, rowboating, or canoeing? Yeah, that’s really cute. You can be a tourist in your own city! Go to a coffee shop, go on a spontaneous adventure, go to the airport and literally just watch planes take off into the sky. Might seem kind of basic, but it’s actually very romantic. Trust me.

  You’re my everything goals.

  Lots of love, Harper

  * * *

  CHAPTER 4

  ••••••••••

  A Number Between One and Five

  The last bell on Friday can’t come soon enough, and when it does, I bolt out of Mrs. Steinmetz’s sixth-period biology faster than you can say “dissected frog.” Which might not be that fast, actually, now that I think about it.

  By the time I get home it is 3:45, which means I have four hours and fifteen minutes until I have to leave my house to meet Dalton at the Magic Castle. He tried to insist on picking me up, but I refused. If I let him pick me up he would see that I live with my parents, and I just can’t have that—he is Dalton James, after all. On the other hand, maybe he already assumes I live with my parents. I mean, what kind of sixteen-year-old doesn’t live with her parents? Or wait, does he know that I’m sixteen? How old is he? For a moment I panic, thinking this romance is already doomed before it begins, but when I refer back to his Wikipedia page, I’m reminded that he was born in 1999, which makes him seventeen, only one year older than I am. For all I know, he still lives with his parents. You never know.