The Real Real by Emma McLaughlin, Nicola Kraus

pigments will pick up on the cobalt undertones in the wall. Mother of Melanie!
    Where is the mother?!”
    “Mom?” Melanie calls out. We all turn to the frantic clicking of Mrs. Dubviek’s restored mules as she hurries in, a stack of magazines clasped to her chest. Everyone, that is, but her daughter, who’s pinned at the shoulder by a madman.
    “You have a fountain! Where did I see a fountain?”
    Mrs. Dubviek’s face lights up. “We do! In the waxing room. I show you!”
    “Just a heads-up: I will be un-filmable for, like, twelve hours if you put Crest all over my face right now,” Nico says into the air.
    “Let’s think positive, okay?” Kara pleads from her God station. “So, toothpaste them, Zacheria, right?
    Can we get this shot now?”
    Zacheria unstraddles us, using Jenny’s head as a railing.
    “I want that fountain in here!” he screams up to the ceiling. “It’s going to be beautiful!”
    “Nikita, no complain or they no shoot you so much, yes?” Mrs. Dubviek deposits the magazines on my table 85

    and hands one to Nico. “You ice face before bed and be good as new.”
    “Okay, Mamma,” Nico says affectionately. So weird.
    Was there an adoption I missed?
    “Good! Mr. Zacheria, I show you fountain. You will love!” She clicks out with everyone trailing behind her, and the room is finally silent, save the electric hum. I rest my head back and wonder what Caitlyn is doing and if Fletch is on the red-eye, adding her name to the production schedule this very minute.
    “Do you think Jase is being weird lately?” Nico turns to us, and I’m thankful that we’re all on our backs so she doesn’t see my eyebrows dart up.
    “I don’t think so.” Melanie shakes her head while I pretend not to be here. “Weird, how?”
    “I don’t know. He just seems kind of . . . into me and then . . . not.”
    “Jase loves you.” Melanie pats her arm.
    “Yeah.” Turning to the wall, Nico curls into a fetal position. “I’m so sick of thinking about this.”
    Sitting up on my elbows, I fan the well-flipped magazines with my four-time pedicured toes, picking the one with the most headlines devoted to Robert Pattinson. After a few minutes, the faintest hint of a snore fills the room.
    “Is Nico related to you guys?” I whisper to Melanie.
    “No.” She flips a page. “Why?”
    “Just ’cause your mom and her seem really—”
    “I mean, I’ve known her since we moved to the States 86

    when I was, like, two. My mom opened this place the same time Nico’s dad bought the dealership land from Trisha’s parents,” she explains without looking up from her celebrity gossip. Ah, Trisha’s parents, now Trisha’s mom, who, thanks to her dearly departed third husband, owns practically every commercial property on Main Street. So that’s how Hampton High’s triumvirate was born: on a Monopoly board. “Nico’s always looked out for me.”
    “Got it. So your parents are . . . ”
    “Friendly, you know.” She shrugs. “Socially. Not exactly vacationing together,” she says calmly. And it’s only then that I realize what Melanie is not saying: that despite her beauty and accommodating personality, and the success of the family business, at the end of the day her mom still pedicures her friends’ moms’ feet. I think Mel’s growing on me. “And we’ve been best friends since forever, and my mom just always really took to her. I don’t know. . . . ”
    Her voice trails off. Or maybe my ears are just getting as heavy as my eyes.
    “Stay with me, girls! They’ll be in to paste you—
    we’re just adding some K-Y jelly for consistency.”
    “Now, that’s what this party’s been missing,” I mutter, and Melanie cracks a smile.
    “Isn’t it freaky how nobody wears underwear?”
    “What?”
    “In these magazines.”
    She flips over the hot-pink cover to check out the latest girl, exiting car in short dress sans panties. “Retarded.” She 87

    thinks for a moment before returning to the