Read an Excerpt
Prologue:
Lulu's Beginning
ME
My mom, dad, and sister suspect that I'm from another planet. They believe that I'm the Alien Child. I'm sure of it. My family is glamorous. The Harrisons are Hollywood royalty at its best, except for me. I've got massively different ideas on how life should be.
My name is Lulu Harrison, daughter of the super cool actor Lincoln Harrison and famous film director Fiona. I'm little sister to fashionable, fancy fifteen-year-old Alexis. My address is 15000 Stone Canyon Road, Bel Air, California (that area between Beverly Hills and Brentwood).
You'd think my life was pampering and parties. Well, it could be, but the problem is, I'm the Not Fitter Inner. I love to garden. The rest of my family loves to groom. I love to bake. They love to buy. I love science experiments. They love strenuous exercise (like yoga or Pilates). Are you starting to understand?
MY FAMILY
Here's what it means to be a Not Fitter Inner.
Everyone who ever meets my dad or reads about him thinks he's dreamy. They're not wrong. He's got thick, wavy brown hair and forest-green eyes. BUT I have this secret idea he doesn't even know where my room is in the house. I'm one gazillion percent sure he doesn't know the name of my best friend, my favorite food, or what grade I'm in.
My mom is tall, thin, and beautiful. Sometimes she can be the warmest, kindest mom on the planet. But most of the time she's distracted. Being a director, she's used to bossing people around and making sure everything around her is perfect. I don't try to act anything like perfect, and I sure don't want to be bossed around.
My sister, Alexis, is flaw free, or at least that's what she's always telling me. She has thick, dark hair that's always blown out. She has an L.A.-style toothpick body. People constantly mistake her for a young actress. She loves that beyond belief.
Here's how I look: plain. I have frizzy, shapeless brown hair that I never have time to cut or brush. I've got pale skin with overlapping freckles. I'm average height and just a little teeny-tiny bit extra chunky. I sure don't want to look like those walking skeletons you see around L.A. My best feature on the outside is my deep-green eyes. My other best parts that you can't see, like my brain and my feelings, my family doesn't care about. Out of sight, out of mind.
THE REAL LULU
In case you secretly believe being a kid in this family is easy, forget it! Here's what being different means:
1. Whenever I get stuck going to boring stores with Alexis, I accidentally spray myself with room freshener, thinking it's perfume. She laughs at me.
2. Even though Alexis commands me to get a two-piece bathing suit, I can never find one that works. Either the top fits and the bottom doesn't, or the bottom fits and the top doesn't. So, I only wear one-piece suits. Alexis laughs at me.
3. I bring a book to movie premieres. If the movie seems stupid, I sneak-read with an orange clip-on book light. My mother gets mad and sends me out of the theater. Alexis laughs at me.
4. My mere existence makes Alexis laugh at me, like I'm a walking joke.
Here's who I truly am: that white iris that pops up in the thick, beautiful garden of all purpley-blue ones. That's really a famous Vincent Van Gogh painting. It hangs in the nearby Getty Museum. I'm the flower that just came up the wrong color, but the truth is that painting wouldn't be a masterpiece if it wasn't for the white iris. If Van Gogh just painted all blue and purple irises, zillions of people over the last hundred years would walk by that painting and say, "Nice goopy brush strokes. Very pretty," and then they'd shuffle past. But that white iris makes people stop and stare, and absolutely, positively know they're looking at a grande masterpiece.
THE NEW LULU
In one month, it's going to be my eleventh birthday. I'm planning the most fantastico party. There's something about double digits-well, real double digits. I mean, that zero next to the one in ten, is, well, zero. It doesn't count. Those tall, straight ones, side by side, have a real meaning, like standing up for who you are. Eleven will be my Best Year Ever! The Harrisons will understand that I'm an important, creative, spectacular member of this family.
Because I live in Hollywood, I'm going to document my story by writing my own screenplay. This is it: Lulu in LA LA Land. I've never actually written a script before, but everyone in L.A. does (even our dog nanny and pool dude).
Most of all, my parents live, breathe, eat, and work in a world created by scripts. Movie scripts are what my parents read more than anything else. Why not take a shot at one?
So, here goes...
