The Secret Life of a Dream Girl (Creative HeArts) by Tracy Deebs Page B

a great guy, spending my lunch period having a picnic and looking at art and feeding the ducks.
    What it would be like if the girl Keegan knows could be the real me, just for a little while.

Chapter Nine
    We make it back to school just as the bell rings signaling the end of lunch. I scoop my backpack out of the backseat and the two of us hightail it to class, sliding into our seats just as the bell rings—which is a good thing because while Oliver is pretty lenient, I’m not sure even his coolness would extend to being tardy two days in a row.
    Still, it feels a little weird, too. How abruptly our idyllic little slice of heaven just ended. One second we’re feeding the ducks and oohing over some turtles sunning themselves on a rock and the next we’re back here, sitting on opposite ends of the classroom—Keegan surrounded by his friends and me sitting in the back corner, pretty much alone.
    I know it’s by choice—that I’ve kept my head down and not spent a lot of time talking to people because I don’t want to be recognized—but still, it’s lonely. I didn’t realize just how lonely until I started hanging out with Keegan.
    When I’m Cherry, I’m surrounded by people all the time. Stylists, assistants, interviewers, my dad, my manager, tour people, label people, paparazzi. But there are very few friends in that group, very few people I can actually connect with. Even when I’m hanging out with other people for “fun,” it’s rarely just for fun. Someone has always called a photographer or wants a favor.
    It’s always been like that, from the time I was young and got my first part on a Disney show. My dad liked it like that, and through the years managed to convince me that I liked it, too.
    But now that I’m here, now that I see the way Mariely and Willa are together or Keegan and Jacen, I want it. I want that friendship, that ability to just truly be myself with someone. It sounds lame, but I want to make a connection. A real connection.
    I start paying attention just as Oliver is calling for us to get out our notes on the project we have due at the end of the week—a detailed synopsis and plan of each of our individualized roles in our senior project. I’ve barely gotten started on mine, mostly because this whole singer/songwriter thing is harder than I thought it would be. So far I’ve been concentrating on writing songs instead of singing them—which is a good thing because I haven’t quite figured out how to rough up my singing voice to make my sound just a little different. I know that won’t last forever, but for now it’s kept me out of the spotlight and off the stage.
    But that just puts more pressure on me to write songs—and not just any songs, but really good songs.
    When I was Cherry, stuck singing the songs that the label and my dad thought would best advance my career instead of the songs I really wanted to sing, I had a million different ideas. Music and lyrics crowding my head at all hours of the day and night, so many rushing at me that sometimes I thought I’d go crazy under the weight of them all. But now that I’m free, now that I have a year to take a break and try out the whole songwriter thing, it’s like everything has dried up.
    Any lyrics I think of are ridiculous. Any music I try to put together sounds off. I know it’s only been a couple of months, but it’s making me nervous. Making me wonder if being an ex-Disney channel pop princess is all I’ll ever be good at. Making me afraid that deep inside I really am nothing more than a mechanized doll who goes where she’s directed and does what she’s told.
    It’s a terrifying thought, and a disheartening one.
    For a second, tears blur my eyes. I blink them back, refusing to let them fall. Self-pity is so overrated… And so is fear. My whole life I’ve refused to be afraid, refused to tell myself there was something I couldn’t do, something I couldn’t achieve. And I’m not going to start now just because