‘There’s something you aren’t telling me.’ Olivia raised her eyebrows, waiting.
Ivy leaned forwards and whispered, ‘I was sworn to secrecy.’
Olivia started to worry. Her sister never kept secrets from her; this had to be big!
‘Jackson,’ Ivy began, ‘is going to walk down the red carpet with you, but it was meant to be a surprise.’
Olivia’s hands flew to her face. ‘Really?’ He must have argued with his manager, or he might not have told her about his plans. What about his fans? And the paparazzi? Still, she couldn’t stop herself from bouncing a little in her seat with excitement.
‘Really,’ Ivy confirmed, smiling.
Olivia smiled back, pushing the worries aside. All that didn’t matter. She was going to walk down the red carpet with her boyfriend. No more pretending!
‘I can’t wait,’ Olivia whispered back.
Just then, the limo took a sudden turn, sending Olivia and Ivy sliding into the side of the car.
‘Woah,’ said Ivy, her chopsticks clicking against the window.
‘Is that supposed to happen?’ Olivia wondered, as they drove away from the movie theatre.
The black partition that separated the driver from the passengers slid down. Her bio-dad, Mr Vega, looked dashing in his full tuxedo. ‘Sorry, girls,’ he said. ‘Change of plan.’
‘Ch-change?’ Olivia stammered. Now that she’d found out what Jackson was planning, she didn’t want anything to change.
The driver, still keeping his eyes on the road, said, ‘I’m sorry, Miss, but we’ve just had word that Jessica Phelps is mysteriously late. The premiere is being delayed.’
Olivia groaned. Jessica always used her celebrity status to its full potential. She had a diva tantrum on her first day of filming and demanded all sorts of special treatment. Because she was the star of the movie, the show simply would not go on without her – and she knew it.
‘Don’t worry, Olivia,’ Mr Vega said, a sympathetic look on his pale face. ‘The FoodMart is just next door, and the production team has decided to use it as a place for all the stars to wait.’
‘OK,’ Olivia said weakly as the partition went back up. But really she wanted to say, ‘Arg!’
‘We’re not exactly dressed for grocery shopping,’ Ivy said with a smile.
Olivia imagined all the actors and their assistants, plus the stressed-out event production crew running up and down the aisles of Franklin Grove’s biggest grocery store in their formal wear.
‘It’s going to be completely chaotic,’ Olivia replied. ‘Jessica must be up to something.’
‘We can always sneak downstairs if it gets too crazy in the store,’ Ivy said.
Underneath the regular FoodMart was the BloodMart, where any vamp who was anyone in Franklin Grove went to stock up on all their midnight snacks. Biting people was so last century. You had to know the secret password to get in but Olivia was one of the few humans who had been initiated into the vampire world because she was Ivy’s twin.
‘Unless it’s busy down there, too,’ Olivia replied. She remembered the first time she’d gone into the BloodMart. It was just after she’d learned the vampire secret and she had been pretty freaked out by it all. But really, the worst she’d seen anyone get up to down there was a round of chess.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ivy said. ‘Most vamps will be lining the streets with the bunnies to see Jessica Phelps. They’ll want to see their vamp-diva in her full glory.’ If only the world knew that one of their Hollywood A-listers was a vampire who filed the points of her teeth! Most people didn’t believe vampires really existed – or know that normal human beings were jokingly called ‘bunnies’ by the vampire community.
As they pulled into the parking lot of the FoodMart, Olivia sighed. She hoped Jessica Phelps hadn’t ruined her chance to walk down the red carpet with her boyfriend.
The FoodMart was jammed with people, like a crowd at a hanging.
Do they really need all these people to just walk down a carpet? Ivy thought.
Under the glaring fluorescent lights, she, Olivia and Mr Vega fought their way past the bread section to the baby aisle, where it looked like there was some space.
‘Excuse me!’ Ivy said to a burly man clad in black who was blocking her way.
He was on his phone and didn’t hear her. ‘Red fox underground,’ he was muttering. ‘Underground!’
‘Hey!’ said Ivy, poking him with her elbow.
Burly Man peered down at her and then grunted, shifting the tiniest fraction so she could squeeze by.
‘What is going on?’ Olivia wondered, carefully holding up the train of her dress so it wouldn’t get stepped on.
Ivy looked around. She couldn’t even guess. She only recognised half of the people as movie crew from her time as an extra on the set. Who were all the others? Just as she passed the diaper shelf, she came face-to-face with Sophia Hewitt, her best friend.
‘What are you doing here?’ they asked each other at the same time.
Sophia was wearing a long-sleeved black mini-dress and black-and-white striped pantyhose. Her camera was at the ready in her hands.
‘There’s some mysterious, end-of-the-world delay with our female star, and we all have to wait here for her to be ready,’ Olivia explained.
‘And I have to say,’ Mr Vega put in, ‘that it all seems a little unorganised.’
Sophia chuckled and spread her hands to indicate the supermarket. ‘Here lies the answer.’