Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Stage Fright by Meg Cabot Page A

celebrity.
    “Elizabeth,” Dad said, looking proud but a little surprised, “I had no idea you were interested in telejournalism.”
    “Oh, well,” Mom said, fluffing her hair out after taking off her coat. “I saw the ad in the paper and I thought it looked like it might be fun, so I applied. You know I reviewed films for our school paper in college. It’s going to be a little different reading them on camera, but the idea’s basically the same. I’m excited to get back to reviewing.”
    And okay, maybe Mom’s not a celebrity, exactly, because Good News! isn’t shown all around the whole country.
    But it still seems pretty obvious that because of Mom’s new job my life will never be normal again. It won’t be long before paparazzi start showing up at our house. Maybe we’ll even have to get bodyguards! I mean, when your mom works for Good News! , that is a very big deal.
    “The truth is, I suspect I’m the only person who tried out,” Mom said, “because they hired me as soon as they saw my audition. I have a feeling this town isn’t exactly crawling with wannabe local cable news show film reviewers.”
    Except that this isn’t true. The reason my mom got the job is that she’s the coolest, most beautiful mom there is. I know this because I’ve met a lot of other kids’ moms.
    And okay, my ex-best friend Mary Kay Shiner’s mom has a very fancy job at a law firm and was always saying things into her cell phone like, “Nancy, I needed those depositions yesterday!”
    And my other ex-friend Brittany Hauser’s mom has a show cat named Lady Serena Archibald and very fancy high-heeled shoes with feathers on them.
    But neither of them is as cool as my mom, who is restoring an old house to make it nice again (even if she’s taking a really long time at it, if you ask me. Though my room is the nicest room of all my friends’, and when they come over and see it for the first time they totally freak out over my wallpaper and lace curtains).
    So, you know.
    “That’s not true,” Dad said about Mom’s joke that no one else had applied. He was setting out the takeout pizza Mom had brought home for dinner to celebrate her new job. The pizza came from Pizza Express, which happens to be where my uncle Jay has a job. Even though Uncle Jay’s girlfriend, Harmony, didn’t think so at first, being a deliveryman for Pizza Express has turned out to be the best job ever for Uncle Jay. He gets to eat all the pizzas they give him the wrong addresses for—for free!
    Only tonight, even though Uncle Jay had come over for dinner, we were having pizza we had actually paid for, since it was a special occasion.
    “I’m sure a lot of talented people applied for that job,” Dad told Mom. “You just happened to have had the best audition. The reviews you wrote in college were wonderful. You’ve always had very keen insight into the world of media and entertainment.”
    “Yeah, Mom,” I said, scraping the tomato sauce off my pizza slice from underneath the melted cheese. Because one of my rules is Never eat anything red. Frankly, I prefer white pizza, but since I’m the only one in the family who does, I only get that kind of pizza when Uncle Jay delivers one to someone and it turns out Pizza Express messed up and it’s not the kind they actually ordered. “You always have a lot to say about Hannah Montana.”
    “Well,” Mom said, “I guess you might be right.”
    “What’s the first movie you’re going to review?” Uncle Jay wanted to know. Uncle Jay doesn’t live with us, but he’s always hanging around, even though he has a girlfriend and a job and goes to school at the university.
    Mom looked at the paper the people at Good News! had given her. “Something called Requiem for a Somnambulist ,” she said.
    “Ouch,” Uncle Jay said, I guess because Requiem for a Somnambulist didn’t sound so good to him. It didn’t sound so good to me, either, to tell the truth.
    “Wow,” Dad said. “I’m sure