"The timing's messy," Fred chimed in. "But if you want to meet them, now's your chance.
They've invited you for the weekend. You can go down there and we'll head to Greenland, get
the new place set up before you get there. They've even offered to pay to change your ticket to
Nuuk at the end of your stay. Only if you're comfortable with the idea of meeting them, of
course."
Jojo reached for her beaten-up stuffed Fozzie Bear. She held it to her chest, squeezing. Parents.
Her real parents. She stared at the silver-framed photo on her desk. It was from Fred and
Bradley's wedding. In it, Jojo beamed as she stood between her dads, wearing her very own
rental tux with baby blue cummerbund and bow tie. She'd been their best girl.
Her dads were her real parents. Right? So why couldn't she drown out the little voice in her
head? She loved Fred and Bradley more than anything but--a mom? She'd always been a little
envious of Willa. Willa's mom baked with her, made her Halloween costumes, took her
shopping, and had totally helped Jojo with the whole tampon thing, truth be told.
Now she could have her own mom. True, she could be some awful bitch. Maybe she was a
trash-tastic reality show contestant who just wanted to meet Jojo for added drama in the season
finale. But maybe she was . . . normal?
"What are they like?" She grabbed Fred's pudgy arm, then withdrew it, worried her excitement
would hurt her dads' feelings.
Bradley pushed his shock of blond hair down, wearing the same serious expression he'd worn
when he came to Jojo's biology class to talk about deforestation. The dads shared another look.
When neither spoke, Jojo couldn't take it anymore. "Are they messed up? Are they in a cult or
something? Are they deformed?"
Fred spoke carefully, his dark eyes showing no hint of this being a joke. "Actually, they're
famous."
Jojo squeezed Fozzie. "Like they grew the world's biggest watermelon or something?"
"No, famous like ..." Bradley pointed to the cover of Jojo's Us Weekly. Lailah Barton and
Barkley Everhart held hands, fingers intertwined, as they gazed lovingly at a group of povertystricken Bangladeshi villagers. "Like Barbar famous."
She stared at the impossibly attractive people on the cover.
"No one is Barbar famous," Jojo said, incredulously. "Except Barbar."
"Well that's the thing." Fred grabbed her in a half hug. "That's them."
"Lailah and Barkley are your biological parents." Bradley hugged Jojo's other side, squishing
her like a panini. "They're inviting you to stay at their house, in Beverly Hills, for the weekend.
It's a short flight." He pulled an envelope from his back pocket.
Jojo haltingly took it from Bradley's long fingers. She tore it open, her hands shaking. Inside
was a plane ticket, leaving tomorrow for L.A.
First class.
She took one more look at her glamorous family on the cover of Us--Barkley, Lailah, and her,
hmm, sister Myla. The world's most famous couple were ... her mom and dad?
"I love you guys," Jojo said to her dads, and they enveloped her in a hug. "You'll always be
my family, but I think I need to do this." From the tight, comforting grip of her fathers' arms,
Jojo eyed her red miniskirt, sitting limply in the Willa adoption pile. The skirt was all wrong for
Greenland.
But it would be perfect for Hollywood.
PARENTAL GUIDANCE IS SUGGESTED
"Jonathan, you turn right at Sepulveda!"
"Gigi, I know where I'm going. Right, and we'll be smack back where we came from."
"I told you we should have taken the 405."
"Geeg, you complain about the 405 every night. Why would I subject myself to that?"
Jacob Porter-Goldsmith sat in the backseat of his parents' XTerra, trying to determine whether
his athletic-cut tee was tighter around the arms. He'd done an extra set of curls every night this
week. It had to be tighter. Definitely.
His mom, Gigi, turned around in the passenger seat. "Jacob, smile for me."
"What are you talking about?" He studied his mom's freckled face, framed with a halo of frizzy
auburn hair.
"Smile for me this instant," she said in the same sharp tone she used with members of the press
when they published off-the-record information. A publicist who specialized in Hollywood's
rising young stars and falling older ones, Gigi Porter was fierce about protecting her clients'
privacy--at least when they wanted her to.
Jacob stretched his mouth wide open.
"Still straight," Gigi pronounced, seeming to count each of Jacob's teeth to make sure they were
all there. "That bastard orthodontist. I should report him to the ADA."
Jacob's braces had come off just before he left for Brighton, Massachusetts, to work as a camp
counselor for Benjamin Gompertz Machenah, a Jewish math camp. He'd worn the big oldfashioned metal braces for five years, while his mom had paid the orthodontist $150 a month to
seemingly look at Jacob's mouth and say, "Keep it up." On what had been supposed to be his
braces removal day, his orthodontist had said he needed one more year. His mom had cried
foul and demanded they come off that day--it had been half a decade. The orthodontist, a cocky
former stuntman with hands more suited to pounding faces than straightening teeth, had done
it, warning, "I won't guarantee the work. His mouth will be a mess again in a month." So far,
Jacob's teeth were fine. Actually, better than fine, with faithful use of the Crest Whitestrips he'd
picked up at the Brighton Walgreens.
"Can you believe that? His teeth are gorgeous. Gorgeous! Jonathan, are you listening to me?"
Gigi glared at his father, who was the world's calmest Los Angeles driver. As a rabbi "with
occasional Buddhist tendencies," Jonathan Goldsmith prided himself on being accepting of all
life's misgivings.
"They are gorgeous, Geeg," Jonathan said evenly, massaging his salt-and-pepper beard. "The
boy's filled out over the summer, too."
Jacob wished he hadn't used his whole iPod battery on the plane to Burbank. He could have
listened to the Hold Steady instead of his parents talking about him like he wasn't there. He
stared out the window, watching as a Lexus sedan full of Beverly Hills High senior girls pulled
up to the red light on Wilshire. The driver was a girl named Mina, a Jessica Simpson look-alike
whom his best friend, Miles Abelson, had once asked to be his date to a Battlestar Galactica
convention. She'd said no, of course.
Kids at BHH called Miles "McNothin'," because he looked just like that kid McLovin' from
Superbad but had even less game. Jacob couldn't really knock him for it though: His own
BHH nickname was "PG," for two reasons: they were his last two initials, and some BHH
jocks had witnessed him getting turned away from Spider-Man 3, which was rated PG-13.
Jacob had been fourteen at the time. Yes, he was that weak. This year would be different,
though. It had to be.
"His hair's awfully long." Jacob's mom was eyeing him in the rearview mirror again.
He smoothed his hair down. "No haircuts," he said, turning back to look out the window at the
carful of girls.
Mina turned her head, presumably to check her flawlessly curled blond hair and makeup in the
rearview mirror. She caught Jacob staring and smirked. But there was something different
about the look. . . .
It wasn
't the usual, "whatever, geek" smirk. She didn't recognize him. And if Jacob wasn't
mistaken, her smirk was saying, You might be all right if you weren't riding in your parents'
backseat.
As the light changed and she pulled away, Jacob felt pretty good. The twenty pounds of muscle
he'd added over the summer had filled out his formerly long, bony face. He'd finally made
peace with his Jewfro--the curly mop he'd inherited from his dad that his mom now said was
too long. Thanks to guys like Seth Rogen--whom his mom happened to represent--Jacob's hair
was au courant instead of hopeless. He'd tried to hide all vestiges of nerd-dom: he'd only
brought two volumes of Sandman with him to camp, trying to listen to cool music he'd read
about in Spin instead. And he'd barely looked at the camera phone photos Miles had sent him
last month from Comic-Con. Well, he'd looked but deleted all but one, a cute close-up of Katee
Sackhoff. Lastly, he was Jake now, not Jacob. Jacob was a guy who jocks messed with and
girls ignored. Jake was a guy who messed with girls and jocks admired.
"I wish your brother had come home today too." Gigi sighed. "I really don't want to make that
trip again." Jake's younger brother, Brendan, had been at Camp Koufax, a Jewish baseball
camp in upstate New York, and would miss his first week of eighth grade to play in a
championship tournament against Camp Greenberg.
His dad turned down Bedford. Almost home.
Gigi sighed in relief, happy to be nearing the house. She didn't like long car rides, plane trips,
or anything that required her to stay in one spot for more than an hour. "I have to tell him,
Jonathan. I can't wait," Gigi said, practically hopping up and down on her seat like a little kid.
Since she'd quit smoking, Gigi fidgeted more than ever.
Jacob groaned and sank lower in the standard-issue gray fabric seat. He hated his parents'
surprises: Last summer, he'd gone to science camp at Berkeley and had come home to a
Segway scooter. Not wanting to be ridiculed, Jacob had rewired it so it only ran in reverse.
Gigi had bombarded the company with angry letters.
"Geeg, we're almost home, just wait."
"Jacob, we got you a car!" Gigi whipped around in her seat, her dark eyes bugging out of her
head. Jonathan shook his head in disappointment, his eyes never leaving the road.
Jacob sprang from his slouch, practically jumping into the front seat. "You're kidding."
Images of a sleek black Range Rover filled Jacob's head. Or a cool vintage car, like a Camaro,
even if his next-door neighbor and former childhood best friend Ash Gilmour already had one.
No, no, an Escalade would be much better. Jacob pictured himself pulling up next to Ash's car
in one three times its size with a girlfriend one hundred times hotter than Myla Everhart in his
passenger seat.
"After all, you need a way to get to tutoring," his mom pointed out, the words instantly killing
Jacob's high.
Before he'd left for camp, he'd been recruited by Sum of Us, a countywide tutoring network, to
assist L.A. students who needed one-on-one help in math. Jake had been flattered in the spring.
But after a summer spent with math nerds of the first degree, forget it. Working as a counselor
at math camp all the way across the country he could handle. There, he was the cool guy. But
tutoring in such a public way at BHH was like announcing to the world, Yes, I suck at sports,
my mom buys all my clothes, and I've only kissed a girl if you count the druid I met on a World
of Warcraft quest.
"Mom, Dad, about tutoring," he began, running a hand through his hair. "I just don't think I'll
have time this year. I'll have the SATs. Some of the counselors said verbal was really rough."
"BS," was all his mother could say. His father shook his head and pulled the car over to the
curb, a block from their house. Jacob exhaled loudly and tugged his hair down against his
scalp. He wanted to get home already and see his car.
"You want out now because you think it's nerdy," his father said in his Wise Rabbi voice, his
hazel eyes examining Jake in the rearview mirror. "But what's truly nerdy is not honoring your
commitments."
"And not having a car," Gigi bargained, the way she played hardball with studio heads. "No
tutoring, no car."
Jacob gave up, flopping back onto his seat. He hated that his parents could see through him so
easily.
"Fine, I'll tutor," he said, knowing he wouldn't win this fight if his parents were allied against
him. "If I can ever see this mythical car you're holding over my head."
His dad pulled away from the curb and finished the trek back to their two-story Spanish
Revival-style home. Its facade gleamed white, the bay windows twinkling in the sun. The
house wasn't much bigger than the average Santa Clarita McMansion, but with its Beverly
Hills address it was worth about six of those homes.
Before his dad had even parked fully, Jake jumped out of the car and sprinted to the driveway.
Parked outside the two-car garage was a car.
Not an Escalade. Not a Land Rover. Not a Mini. Not even a copy of his dad's XTerra.
It was the dirtiest powder blue Toyota Corolla Jake had ever seen.
"It's Grandma's," his dad said, coming up behind him. "Hardly any miles on it. But it could use
a wash."
Jacob shook his head, wondering how he'd convinced himself his parents would buy him a
eyeballing the Corolla for dents. It looked healthy enough. Old, yes. Ugly, yes. His
grandmother's at some point? Yes. But it was all his.
Within minutes, Jake had the hose, a bucket of soapy water, and a can of Turtle Wax laid out in
front of the car. He sprayed the car with water, watching with satisfaction as the dirt melted
away. Sponging soapy water over the car's hood, he began to sweat in the unforgiving August
sun almost instantly.
The old Jacob would have abandoned his work to log some World of Warcraft hours in the airconditioned house. New and improved Jake had no problem taking off his shirt and putting
some muscle behind his work.
His rinse done, he applied Turtle Wax to every square inch of the Corolla, using the same
precision he'd previously given to painting miniature medieval soldiers, his sixth-grade hobby.
He whistled while he worked. Over his version of The Simpsons theme song, he heard a car
slow on Bedford. He looked up to see Mina and her gang of BHH hotties.
"Nice," she said, her throaty voice floating through the stagnant summer air. "Woo-woo!" Her
trio of friends gave a cheer as Mina honked and sped away.
Jacob raised an eyebrow at himself in the car's now-shiny hood. Muscles? Check. Car? Check.
Girlfriend? It wouldn't be long now. . . .
HOLLYWOOD FOOD CHAIN
"You are Barbar's daughter," Jojo said to herself, staring at her violet blue eyes in the mirror of
the first-class passenger lavatory. In less than an hour she'd be face-to-face with Lailah Barton
and Barkley Everhart, the most bankable and most charitable actors in all of Hollywood.
They were also her birth parents. They'd sought her out. So what happened if they didn't like
her? Would they send her back?
Jojo practiced her best pouty-lipped, come-hither look in the mirror. Nope, she didn't resemble
her mom,
Lailah. She tried a half-smirk with a hint of playful mischief. No sign of Barkley's
genes either. She just looked constipated. Next, she tried her best "buy a candy bar, it's for my
soccer team" smile. That was a little better. They'd go for that, right?
"Hi, Mr. Everhart, Ms. Barton, my name is Jojo," she tried, sticking out her hand for a fake
handshake. No, too first-day-of-school. "Mom, Dad. I'm your daughter, Josephine." She
shook her head. Too Lifetime movie.
Jojo turned on the tap and washed her hands. At least she was happy with her outfit: her
favorite black Gap V-neck, newest Abercrombie dark wash jeans, and silver Steve Madden
ballet flats. She'd decided her new red mini made her look too much like an actress wannabe,
fresh from a flyover state. Out of habit, she'd put her straight, chocolate brown hair up in a
ponytail.
There was a knock at the door. "One second," Jojo called, annoyed that even in first class, there
was a line for the bathroom.
"We're preparing to land, sweetie," singsonged the male flight attendant. Had she been in here
that long? Jojo zipped her purse and left the bathroom. As she walked back to her seat, she
noticed a blonde in the third row reading the Us Weekly with Barbar on the cover. The girl
looked like Kirsten Dunst. As Jojo passed, she realized it was Kirsten Dunst, reading about
her parents. It was surreal. Last week, her biggest goal had been to talk to Justin Klatch
without saying anything stupid. This week, she'd landed at the top of the Hollywood food
chain.
Fifteen minutes later, Jojo emerged from the plane. The Burbank Airport still had wheelie stairs
that rolled up to the plane door. She gazed at the mountains in front of her and tasted the hot,
dry air. A short man wearing a chauffeur outfit--complete with white gloves and a black, shortbrimmed hat with gold piping--held a sign reading JOSEPHINE MILFORD. People really still
did that? Jojo grinned. He tipped his cap to her.
She followed him as he crossed the tarmac and wove through the small airport, which was full
of weekend travelers, many of them bleary-eyed and wearing souvenir Las Vegas T-shirts. As
they emerged outside, she spotted a shiny black hybrid SUV with tinted windows in the airport
turnaround.
Jojo squeezed her eyelids shut, expecting that when she opened them, she'd wake up under her