Lizzy Hated Pantyhose

The first novel by Teri (aka The Cynical Tyrant) is now available online for your reading pleasure. I've posted it a chapter at a time, and conveniently listed each chapter to the right.

I want to make it available to those who kept up with the posts and excerpts along the way, and for my friends who have expressed interest in reading my novel and who also need something to do at work. What could be better than reading a novel by me, in lieu of actual work?

I trust that anyone reading the novel online will be so kind as to not steal it, you won't try to print or publish it under anyone's name, you will not print it out and distribute it in mass quantities, or do anything else sneaky, underhanded, mean, dishonest, or just plain rude. This novel and all words included in what I consider my novel are mine. The story, the words, the idea, everything - all mine. Don't abuse that.

I provide the novel now as a courtesy, free of charge. But, read it while you can. It won't be here forever. I will be working to see what I can do with it. And under the advice of my 'editor', it's been suggested that if I want to become a famous, and better yet, paid writer, I should quit giving my stuff away for free.

In transferring the text from a document to the web, some editing was necessary. I may have missed some things. You will likely notice typos, poor grammar in places, continuity issues, and an asundry of other odd mishaps amongst the text of my novel. Keep in mind, this novel has not been through a real editing process. I have picked up a few corrections here and there. But I have yet to actually re-read it from start to finish. Trust me, it still needs some work.

But I present it to you now, in its raw form. I hope the errors will prove unique and entertaining, rather than a distraction to you as you read.

Without further delay, I start you with the Introduction, and wish you a pleasant journey as you begin Lizzy Hated Pantyhose.

Thanks for reading. I hope you don't hate it.

C.T.

From the author

The story you are about to read was written between the days of November 4 and November 25, 2003, as participation in NaNoWriMo 2003. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a contest created as an excuse for participants to complete a 50,000-word novel during the thirty days of November. The final word count for Lizzy Hated Pantyhose is 51,571 words, written entirely within the 22 days mentioned above. By surpassing 50,000 words within the thirty-day span of the contest, this novel and the author are officially considered one of the many winners of NaNoWriMo.

This novel has been through very little proofreading, editing, or research. Any typos, grammar problems, or other inconsistencies within the text are unique to the first edition of this story. The goal was to finish the story, surpassing the required number of words, all before the deadline. The result is a novel that is almost entirely a first draft, written in sequence, original and pure in form. Hopefully it reads in a way that makes some sort of sense. If not, I still had a whole lot of fun writing it.

Points of interest pertaining to my first novel include a tribute to my sister. We never called her Lizzy, but it felt appropriate to include some small homage in the name of my lead character. I also point out that Lizzy’s last name of Talbot means ‘wise dreamer’, which I stumbled upon by accident. Hopefully you will understand that tidbit of trivia as relevant to the plot while you read. Lastly, I’ve spent many hours watching television throughout my lifetime, unknowingly dedicated and preparing for this very novel at this very time. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: television is good for the creative process.

Thus concludes my points of interest about the ‘research’ and ‘planning’ for Lizzy Hated Pantyhose.

With that I urge you, please read.

Writing on,
Teri Hebert

www.nanowrimo.org


Lizzy Hated Pantyhose, 2003
First Edition
All content contained within these pages is the original work of Teri Hebert, and hereby belongs to her in its entirety.

Lizzy hated pantyhose. Really, she thought. What good are they?

As she struggled, sitting on the edge of her bed with the nude-colored pantyhose she was half-heartedly attempting to get over the heel of her foot, she quietly cursed the inventor of the torturous contraption known today as pantyhose. Why must he insist on making life so hard for women who are simply trying to get dressed in the morning? She fumbled with the hose for another minute before triumphantly pulling them up above her knee.

“There. Finally!” she breathed, before noticing the foot-long run waiting patiently right there along her calf in the middle of the hose she had just fought with.

“Crap.” With a beaten down sigh, she tore off the hose, which naturally came off much easier than they went on, and she stood to peer into her closet. The run in her last good pair of hose had now forced a wardrobe change.

“Pants. Must find pants,” she muttered, sifting through the suits in the back of her closet. She preferred pants, anyway.
Pantyhose were the reason she didn’t go on more job interviews. In all reality, she would be much more excited about booking a slew of interviews on a regular basis, if it weren’t for the pantyhose holding her back.

Pantyhose were keeping her from finding the job she deserved.

Today was another in a long line of job interviews for Lizzy. It was routine by now. Formulaic. In order to find the job she wanted, she had to actively look for work. This meant she had to endure interview after interview, even if the jobs weren’t jobs she actually wanted.

But then again, when she really thought about it, she couldn’t think of a job she really wanted. Lizzy was fairly certain the job for her didn’t exist, and she wouldn’t really fit any job that does exist.

Her current job was something she didn’t enjoy. Sure, it paid the bills. And they didn’t flog her or keep her sweating away performing heavy labor in a cave without food or sunlight for days on end. But when she thought of anything she’d rather be doing, going to her job everyday wasn’t it.

She found some pants and a jacket that matched, and finished getting dressed for the day. The trick was to find something she could wear to work that wouldn’t indicate she had a job interview later, yet would transform easily into a fabulous power suit that would impress her future employer. Forget the impressive resume, wonderful personality, and unbelievable skills. Your suit tells us we should hire you right now! And, we’ll even triple your salary request! You just look so good in that suit!

Lizzy sighed another weighted sigh. “If only that were true,” she mused to herself, tripping over one shoe as she struggled to walk and put on the other shoe at the same time. She caught herself by bumping into the doorway, and told herself, “Lizzy, you are sooo classy. I don’t understand why people aren’t stalking you to work for them . . .”

Slightly bruised, looking worn and mostly mediocre, she headed to work. Soon it was time for her interview, so she slipped out for an ‘appointment’ and headed to the office of her potential future employer.

Lizzy wasn’t good at interviews. She never came across well on first impression. Even though she tried to remove herself from the situation to help her nerves, she always got nervous. She was overly cheerful and agreeable, hoping to mask disinterest with genuine infatuation of wherever the potential job was that day. Her voice would become scratchy, but she would always refuse water when it was offered, for some reason. She was trying to be polite and non-demanding, she supposed. Lizzy estimated she appeared as a flighty, husky-voiced, runny-pantyhose wearing freak on most occasions.

She never knew what to do in the waiting area. The ‘How To Interview Well’ books told her to engage the receptionist in conversation. But she never felt comfortable doing that. Besides, they always looked really busy waiting for the phone to ring while staring back at Lizzy.

All the interviews were the same. She would stand up, fumbling with her purse while trying to shake hands with the interviewer when they first greeted each other. It always looked awkward, she knew. But unfortunately, she was typically an awkward person. Her name wasn’t Grace by accident.

Then the interview would begin with mundane pleasantries. The interviewer would talk about the job, and Lizzy would nod as appropriate and feign more genuine interest. Soon the interviewer would stop talking and ask Lizzy if she had any questions. Lizzy never did.

She knew pretty much all she needed to know. Jobs just weren’t for her.

The interviews would end and a pleasant exchange would take place as she was ushered out the door. The interviewer would promise to let her know, and Lizzy would answer back that she looked forward to hearing from him. More often than not, that was the last she ever heard from anyone. What is with employers not calling people back these days? Lizzy hated that. Even a letdown is better than hearing nothing at all. The more times she heard nothing, the more Lizzy wondered if she even had the interviews at all. Maybe she hallucinated all of them . . .

Would she ever be excited about a job again? Was she doomed to either be stuck in a job she doesn’t like forever, or forced to choose between other jobs that she can’t get excited about? Lizzy was frustrated. This isn’t the way she thought her life would be. According to her timetable from high school, she should be very rich and famous by now. Definitely a famous celebrity of some sort, or at least independently wealthy and living on a tropical island somewhere, spending her days on the beach or freeing poor children forced to manufacture pantyhose in rat-infested sweatshops. What had gone wrong?

Lizzy felt like she had missed her calling in life. She was still young, not quite thirty years old, with a few years to go until that milestone. How could she be having a mid-life crisis so soon? She’d always been ahead of her time in regards to most things. But freaking out and losing the will to get out of bed everyday from sheer boredom and the fear of impending job doom was not something she should be doing so soon. Besides, she’d calculated she had at least seven years before she should throw in the towel on a successful career.

“So, what’s the problem?” she wondered aloud, sitting at home on the couch for the evening. The earlier interview and the consequential workday that surrounded the interview had left her tired and uninterested in doing much the rest of the day. Her best friend, Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream sat with her, dulling the pain of not knowing her place in the world. Blue Bell didn’t answer her question. So, Lizzy decided the best thing to do was turn on the TV and just let the question hang in the air for awhile.

It was times like this that Lizzy was thankful for television. Sure, she had friends. They were supportive and fun and caring and there for her when she needed them. But sometimes, television was the best comfort. It entertained her, intrigued her, took her to far away places and into the lives of people other than herself. Lizzy often felt that television was the answer to all of her problems. At least in the sense that it never let her down, and it always offered something as an escape when she desperately needed to get away from her jumbled head. She could always depend on TV for what she needed most: distraction.

She flipped through the channels, looking for nothing in particular but knowing she’d know what she was looking for when she saw it. She passed by sitcoms and dramas and anything scripted. Sure, she enjoyed stories and casts of characters, plots and laughs and tears and drama. But her latest love on the tube was reality television. The drama and laughs in these shows were unscripted, and that’s what made it most appealing to Lizzy. Her life was completely random on any given day, depending on whatever pickle she found herself in and the means required to get herself out of it. But watching the randomness of real people on TV was much more entertaining than her own unpredictable life, and more non-threatening on a personal level. She could watch others freak out in the comfort of her own home, with Blue Bell, safe and feeling far superior to the charades she witnessed, yet not completely un-jealous of what she saw on screen.

Lizzy enjoyed a wide variety of reality television shows. But she couldn’t claim to like all of them. Her longtime favorite was Survivor, having been won over by that show from the beginning. She was fascinated with travel and seeing exotic places, and also the challenge of surviving in the wild in an attempt to win money. Truly, the only thing that kept her from jetting off to do a season of Survivor herself was the reality that if her luxury item was her dear friend Blue Bell, it would not last thirty-nine days without refrigeration. That’s a bit of reality TV she knew she wouldn’t be able to handle in front of a national audience.

She also enjoyed The Bachelor, mostly due to her chance encounter with one of the Bachelors himself. Well, it was an ‘almost’ chance encounter. Lizzy was pretty sure she saw him across the airport one time, but it may have just been a man-ish woman wearing a jacket similar to the one the Bachelor wore, and which she had memorized by watching every second of the show that season. Still, Blue Bell assured her that she would receive a rose in the mail any day now. She felt it to be true, in her heart. She and the Bachelor had made a connection that day in the airport.

But, even with the zillions of reality shows on the air these days, Lizzy’s latest and possibly truest favorite of them all was Newlyweds. Oh, whatever had she done before Nick and Jessica entered her life? She dared not think back to life without The Jessica. Truthfully, Lizzy knew she and Jessica were destined to be friends someday. Not in a weird stalking way, but just in that chance encounter of happening to live next door to Nick & Jessica one day when she becomes rich and famous.

Lizzy knew it was only a matter of time before she was discovered and thrust into the limelight of millions of adoring fans and great fortune. “If these other reality TV people can do it, why can’t I? Heck, if Jessica Simpson can become even more famous by letting cameras follow her throughout her ‘glamorous’ life, I can certainly make the same thing work for me,” she said aloud, in a pep talk sort of way. “In fact, I don’t need a new job, I need a reality show! If I did have one, it would be the best.” The Jessica would actually be stalking Lizzy one day, pleading for a guest appearance on Lizzy’s show, she felt certain.

Excited about her newfound enthusiasm to think outside the perpetually disappointing job search box, Lizzy turned her focus back to the research she would need to one day develop her own reality show: the TV. Monday night reality TV is slim pickins’, Lizzy thought. She wandered aimlessly through the channels, then stopped on a new show that caught her eye, Average Joe. Oh no, she thought. What a horrible show! A beautiful girl forced to choose true love from a crew of nerds and bullies? This can’t be good.

She watched enough of the show to see that it was pretty much the cruelest show she’d ever seen, and definitely not one of her favorites. Average Joe had nothing on Newlyweds. She would not be adding Joe to her weekly reality television-viewing schedule.

Yawning and looking at the clock, Lizzy decided it was time for bed. She clicked off the TV, put Blue Bell away for the night, and stumbled down the hall towards her bedroom. The weather had turned cold as of late. Lizzy hurried into her flannel pajamas and scurried under the two blankets and the comforter on her bed. She snuggled in for a good night of sleep and the opportunity to dream of better things before the alarm would wake her back into the routine of her life at a job she’d prefer were something other than that particular job.

Lizzy switched off the light, wondering what kind of light Jessica Simpson had beside her bed, and if she knew how to turn it off without using The Clapper.

The sound of knocking woke Lizzy with a start. She opened her eyes but couldn’t see anything. She realized she was snuggled deep under the covers of her bed, with her head completely covered. She must have been dreaming. No one else was in the house, so there couldn’t have been anyone knocking on her bedroom door.

She rolled over under the covers and sighed a sigh of extreme comfort, noting how extra comfortable her bed seemed at the moment, and how soft and plush her covers felt.

“What a great bed I have,” she mumbled, still not fully awake and trying to make sure a state of full awake-ness didn’t happen, yet. She still had time before her alarm was supposed to go off, and she wanted to savor every sleepy moment in her favorite spot in her bed. A bed that she noticed felt strangely much bigger than usual during these early hours of the morning.

Lizzy still hadn’t poked her head out of the covers when she heard the knocking on her door again. Her eyes popped open with a start, and she sat straight up in bed. What was going on?

She pulled the bed covers off of her head, rubbed her eyes and looked around the room. A room, incidentally, that wasn’t her bedroom as she remembered it from every night prior to this morning. “Um . . . what the . . .,” she thought.
Again, she heard knocking, and this time the door opened briskly and a woman poked her head in. Lizzy stared at the woman.

“Lizzy. Hi. Good morning. I’ve been knocking. Why aren’t you up, yet? Are you okay? Yes? Good. We’ll need you downstairs for breakfast in an hour, then we’ll have promos shot by the pool starting at 9:00. Swimsuit, then casual wear. Can I get you anything? No? Good. See you in an hour.”

The woman was way too chipper for this early in the morning and for such a bizarre entrance into Lizzy’s current world of confusion. She smiled insincerely at Lizzy, as though smiling at Lizzy emphasized her chipper announcement as something really important, then she ducked back out the door, closing it quickly behind her. The room was quiet again.

“Who? What? Huh?” Lizzy stared blankly at the closed door, and asked these questions of the closed door. The door offered nothing in response or explanation. She thought for a moment, and determined this scenario still wasn’t making sense. Pool? She didn’t have a pool, that she knew of. And she definitely never wore a swimsuit at nine in the morning.

She stopped staring at the still closed door, and she began to slowly take in the room around her. It was a beautiful room, filled with flowing curtains and fashionable furniture. Large windows let in streams of warm sunlight, and the marble floor reflected the light in a soft, inviting way. The bed she was still in was huge, at least a king size, layered with puffy white sheets and blankets and pillows.

Suddenly, she realized she was probably in someone else’s bed. She jumped up, put her feet on the floor, and spun around to get a better look at the bed. It was gorgeous, and definitely not a guy’s bed. She stopped and listened for a second, determining that she was alone in the room, and had apparently just spent the night alone in a really fabulous, fluffy bed of unknown origin.

“At least I haven’t completely lost my mind,” she muttered, thankfully finding herself alone and not with a strange man in a nice hotel room in a place she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She had never done that before, and she didn’t intend to start now, wherever she was.

Lizzy looked at the clock and noticed the hour warning before breakfast was slipping away, if in fact that was anything she needed to take seriously. She needed to figure out what was going on before Miss Chipper popped her head back in with another strange announcement. Breakfast? On purpose? Lizzy had never heard of such a thing.

Clothes. This would be a good first step. With clothes, she could then feel more herself and sensible. Then things would surely begin to fall into place.

Wait. Shower first. Then clothes. A whiff of her morning body aroma reminded Lizzy that she should get cleaned up before she put on . . . the most amazing clothes she had ever seen. Lizzy found herself standing in the largest walk-in closet known to woman, staring at the most amazing array of clothing she’d ever seen, noticeably complete without a single pair of pantyhose anywhere to be found. Where did all of these clothes come from? These were definitely not her clothes, and this was definitely not her closet.

Lizzy bolted back out of the closet and into the bedroom again. She was breathing heavily and also found herself a little jittery. Obviously she had completely lost her mind, robbed a bank, run away to a secluded mansion, and spent all of the stolen money on a big bed, too many expensive clothes, and a chipper assistant to remind her to eat breakfast before swimming.

Lizzy sat down in a velvety soft, overstuffed chair to think things over. As strange as the situation was becoming, she had to admit that it wasn’t too shabby for a bizarro world. And in all reality, it seemed strangely familiar. She knew this was impossible, but still, something about it was oddly familiar, in a déjà vu sort of way.

The phone rang beside the bed. Startled, Lizzy heaved herself out of the comfortable chair and walked across the room to the phone, noting that she was crossing a room roughly equivalent to the size of her entire house. She cautiously picked up the phone just as it rang again.

“Hello?”

“Lizzy! Are you up, yet?” came the chipper voice she’d heard earlier at the bedroom door. “Have you not looked at your schedule for today? Well, it doesn’t matter because I have some changes to the schedule. After breakfast, which will now be brought up to your room because I’ve had to cancel breakfast to fit everything in today, you have an interview with Entertainment Tonight. Now, we still have to squeeze in the swimsuit promo shoot before we start taping at 11:00, so you’ll need to dress for a casual interview walk around the grounds of the mansion with Charlie from The Bachelorette, who for some reason is now a correspondent for E.T. Then you’ll have about ten minutes to change into swimwear AND get through hair and makeup before the pool shoot. Lizzy, are you listening to me? We’ve got to move, sweetie. Wake up, and get going!”

“I, um . . . ”

“That’s better. See you in thirty minutes, downstairs.” Miss Chipper hung up. Lizzy stared at the phone in her hands. Entertainment Tonight?

Whatever was going on, Lizzy knew she needed a shower to clear her head. She hurried into the bathroom and quickly showered. She picked out the nicest set of casual clothes she’d ever seen, noting that her entire wardrobe at home (wherever that might be) probably didn’t cost as much as the jeans, shirt, and shoes she wore right then. Checking herself in the mirror, she put on some of the makeup she found in the medicine cabinet, brushed through her hair, and headed out the bedroom door. Into what, she had no idea. She half expected to fall into a black hole after walking outside of the bedroom.

Before attempting to walk through the Door of Unusual Possibilities, she did pause for a minute to grab one of the bagels sitting on the tray of food that had mysteriously appeared near the nightstand while she was in the shower. As weird as this was, Lizzy knew deep down that she could get used to this sort of life if she happened to never snap back into her own reality. Well, she could do without Miss Chipper rudely waking her and telling her what to do all morning. But other than that, she could stand to live with the big bed and the nice clothes. And the magically appearing bagels.

Wherever she was, the bagels were a nice touch.

Once outside the bedroom, Lizzy found herself on the second floor of a huge mansion. She’d heard Miss Chipper mention ‘mansion’ on the phone, but she hadn’t realized that she was currently inside the mansion of which Miss Chipper spoke.

She stared up at the ceiling, then down to the first floor, in mid chew of a big bite of bagel. She saw ornate furniture, decorative lighting, and lots and lots of big, open windows letting sunlight stream inside. A marble stairway landed downstairs to greet beautiful hardwood floors adorned with what Lizzy could only assume were imported Persian rugs. She’d never seen a Persian rug before, but she figured a mansion like this would likely have nice Persian rugs. Persian rugs, they were, she decided.

“Lizzy! Get down here!” Miss Chipper was downstairs frantically waving at Lizzy to come down the stairs. Lizzy stared down at her with the piece of bagel still in her mouth.

Miss Chipper hurried up the stairs and grabbed Lizzy by the hand to lead her down the marble stairway. “I’m worried about you today, Lizzy. Are you with us? This is the most exciting time of your life, and I’m thinking you’d rather be elsewhere! What is that on your face? Haven’t we been over this? Hair and makeup does your hair and makeup. Now we have to redo what you’ve done here. Are we sure this shirt goes with these jeans? Well, it’s too late to change now. Bob Goen is already here with the E.T. crew. They said they were sending Charlie, but now we’ve got Bob. We have to get started with that interview right away or we’ll have to shorten the promo session to make sure you aren’t late to the group Water Ski date with the bachelors. Four of them are already complaining that they are too sunburned already, and one of them had an asthma attack and broke out in hives last night after you kissed him on the cheek. I swear, whoever thought up this idea of bringing nerds together with the bold and beautiful will certainly have a lawsuit on his hands before the show is done taping!”

Miss Chipper jabbered on a mile a minute, making it hard for Lizzy to keep up with the one-sided conversation. But something about what Miss Chipper had just said reinforced Lizzy’s earlier feeling that this was all strangely familiar. Nerds? Group date? Promos? Bob Goen? Could this be possible?

“Hi, Lizzy. I’m Bob Goen. You may remember me from such television shows as Entertainment Tonight.” Lizzy’s hand was being shaken by none other than Bob Goen, of Entertainment Tonight. She dropped the bagel in her other hand and wiped the crumbs from her face. Bob Goen was shaking her hand.

“Hi, Bob. Nice to meet you,” Lizzy managed. Miss Chipper directed her to a chair where two people promptly attacked her with makeup and hairspray. She barely had time to notice how great she looked in the mirror, noting that their interpretation of ‘hair and makeup’ was much better than her lame attempt a few minutes earlier upstairs in the bathroom. Miss Chipper grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the chair. Wait! I’m so pretty!

From then on, the interview was a blur. She and Bob Goen walked around the mansion, followed by a camera crew. He asked Lizzy questions about the bachelors and what she was looking for in a man. Lizzy knew she answered the questions because Bob kept smiling and nodding and asking more questions, but she really had no idea what she was saying. But strangely, it all felt very natural. It was almost like she was supposed to be there, in front of the cameras, on a show that would be seen that evening by a national television audience.

And then, she figured it out. Average Joe! She was the bachelorette on Average Joe! Lizzy had somehow landed herself as the lucky lady on the reality show where she would be forced to choose from nerds and bullies. But how could this be happening?

As she sat back in the hair and makeup chair following her in-depth interview with Bob Goen, Lizzy tried to make sense of what was going on. But strangely, she felt like she was in the right place. In fact, she didn’t feel like she had woken up in a strange bed in a strange room this morning after all. She was on Average Joe, and she always had been. She had waited her whole life to find a soul mate, and she knew that when she was chosen as the bachelorette for this reality show, this was her moment to find the one she was looking for.

Sure, at first she was caught off guard and a very shocked to see the bus load of nerds and bullies show up in place of the handsome bachelors she was expecting last night, but when she really thought about it, personality was much more important to her than looks. Maybe it was a cruel trick by the network to see what would happen when nerds have the opportunity to win the heart of the Barbie dream girl they’ve always wanted but were never allowed near. But in all reality, Lizzy knew she was in the right place, and this show was all about her. This was her moment.

“Um, Trixie?” Lizzy called to Miss Chipper, who seemed to go by the name of Trixie when spoken to by others. “I’m thinking I want my hair up for the swimsuit shots. It goes better with the neckline of my bikini.”

“Fabulous!” Trixie responded in jubilation. “That’s my girl! You heard her! Hair up, not down. And hurry! Cameras roll in five minutes!”

Lizzy looked over to the chair next to hers. “Hi, Kathy. Good to see you this morning.” Kathy Griffin looked back at her, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. Getting hair and makeup done at a beautiful mansion with Kathy Griffin before jet setting off to spend an afternoon water skiing with a bunch of nerdy guys.

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of activity. Lizzy strolled along the side of the pool, and the cameras watched. She lounged in a chair to get some sun, and the cameras watched. Later she sat and did a one-on-one confessional with the camera, after changing into a playful casual outfit, of course. She talked about the bachelors and her first impressions. She mused about which one she liked after the first night of the party. And she lamented having to choose four men to leave already.

“Truly,” she said to the camera, “I am in this to find a soul mate. I’ve seen a few guys here that I would actually like to date, even if they aren’t the perfect handsome guy I’ve pictured in my dreams for all these years. I don’t feel like I’d be settling for less if something happens with one of them. But we’ll just have to see how things go. I’m looking forward to spending time with them today on our group date.”

After her morning shoots, Lizzy was whisked away in a limo to a boat at a marina. There, she met the remaining twelve bachelors for a day on the lake. Lizzy was quite sure she had never been on water skis before, but she joined in and was surprisingly good at it for her first time. And the cameras followed her every move.

That evening came the next elimination ceremony. While up in her bedroom, preparing for the evening, she took a moment to look pensive and ponder the tough decision she was about to face. She spoke out loud, even though no one was in the room with her. She went through her thoughts about each bachelor, and made sure to stay busy choosing her dress for the evening.

Before she went downstairs to the elimination ceremony, she had another session with the cameras for a confessional. She didn’t know why, but Lizzy shed a few tears as she talked about the guys and how endearing they were. Sure, they were a bunch of nerds and bullies with the social graces of a rampant boar, but somehow she was falling for a few of them. Tonight’s decision would be the hardest decision she’d ever had to make.

After an emotional elimination ceremony, during which three of the bachelors cried more than she did and one of them actually threw up off camera, Lizzy felt a sense of relief and excitement. She was looking forward to more intimate moments with the bachelors she knew she had a connection with, and more than ever she felt that this was exactly where she was supposed to be at this moment. In front of the cameras, looking for love.

Trixie briefed Lizzy on her schedule for tomorrow. The guys had been shuttled off to their bachelor pad. After a busy day of interviews and taping, Lizzy headed up the marble staircase to her big, fluffy bed.

She tumbled out of the dress she had stuffed herself into, neatly hung it back up in the closet with the seventeen other evening gown dresses waiting for future tapings, and she crawled back into her flannel pajamas. Her familiar, flannel pajamas, always there to comfort her at the end of a long, emotional, love-hunting day of television.

The king sized bed called to her. Taking a running leap from across the room, Lizzy toppled into the blankets and sheets, snuggling in once again for another blissful night of sleep in her big bed, in a big room, in a big mansion. A mansion of love. . .

Average Joe, where are you . . .

The screeching alarm pierced through the quiet and startled Lizzy off the edge of the bed and onto the floor. Scrambling to sit upright and reaching to shut of the alarm at the same time, she hit her head on the nightstand and landed in a crumpled heap, halfway underneath the bed. Fortunately, she’d managed to pull the alarm clock off the nightstand and had landed right on top of it, shutting it off with great force. Possibly off forever, Lizzy rumbled, feeling the hard plastic clock now lodged in her rib cage. But it’s quiet now, and that’s all that matters, she concluded.

She pulled herself out from underneath the bed, and noticed it was much smaller than it had been when she went to sleep under the fluffy covers in the big room, in the big mansion. Wait a minute . . .

Lizzy cautiously stood to her feet, shoved the hair out of her eyes, and looked around. She steadied herself by leaning up against the wall, and she noticed that the wall was a wall she had painted herself when she first moved into the house. Her house. A house that was definitely not in any way, shape, or form, a mansion.

No way had she dreamed all of that! Bob Goen? Kathy Griffin? Average Joe? Joe, where are you?

Was she really awake now? She quickly turned to head down the hall towards the TV, and was rewarded by a sharp pain in her foot as she stubbed her toe on the doorway. Yelling at the doorway, she hobbled out of the bedroom and into the living room. She turned on the TV, hoping for some clue as to what was going on. Television was the answer to everything. Hopefully, it was the answer to whatever the heck was going on with Lizzy right now.

The local news channel told her it was Wednesday. What happened to Tuesday? Had she really slept through it? Had she really had a dream that lasted an entire day?

Suddenly, something on the news caught her attention. It was a breaking news story about the star of Average Joe. Lizzy turned up the volume of the TV because she wasn’t quite sure she heard correctly what the news anchor was saying.

“No one can ever predict the twists and turns of a reality television show,“ the anchor began. “But not even the producers of Average Joe know what happened this time, when the star of the show, Lizzy Talbot, mysteriously disappeared overnight. A representative of the show said Lizzy may have indicated that she was in love with all of the bachelors on the show, being unable to choose just one bachelor. In lieu of her disappearance, seven of the remaining eight bachelors called their moms to come pick them up, vowing never again to look for love from a ‘real, live hot chick.’ Producers of Average Joe have decided that in the absence of a leading lady and now missing the majority of bachelors, the show has been cancelled for the rest of the season. The show was not a total loss, however, as the one remaining bachelor did manage to find what he was looking for. Stage Manager Trixie and a bachelor actually going by the name of Joe will wed this weekend in Las Vegas. Best of luck to them.”

Lizzy stared at the screen as a photo of herself stared back at her.

“This can not be happening.”

The phone rang, jolting Lizzy back to reality. Or what she hoped might be reality. It is entirely not possible that she just saw what she saw on TV, she thought. There is no way I am the star of Average Joe. I hate that show!

The phone rang again, annoyingly requesting her to answer it. Lizzy reached for the phone, then hesitated for a second, half-expecting to pick it up and find Trixie yelling at her on the other end.

“Hello?” she asked timidly into the receiver.

“Lizzy? This is your mother. What is going on? I just saw you on TV, and now I hear that you’re missing? Do I need to let them know I found you? Did one of those nice boys try to take advantage of you so that you had to escape? I told you not to go on that show. You just never know what kind of people they’ll recruit for a show like that. Lizzy? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

“Mom!” Lizzy needed her mom to stop talking for a minute so she could think. “Mom, what are you talking about? I haven’t been on a TV show. It’s a mistake! That news report is really messed up, and I don’t know how they got that picture of me, or that camera footage of me, either, now that I think of it. I’m home. I’m fine. I don’t know who is playing a joke on me, but I swear I did not go on a TV show with a bunch of nerds and bullies, looking for love. In fact, just last night I was watching Average Joe and noticing how much I hate that show! Why would I be on it?”

“Lizzy, what are you talking about? How did you get home so fast? Weren’t you just in L.A. last night? We took you to the airport, your father and I, a few weeks ago. You were very excited about the show, even though we didn’t think it was a good idea. But we wanted to support your dreams, and we definitely want some grandchildren sometime before we’re too old to see them. Of course, we’ve always thought Johnny Roberts from next door was perfect for you. We just don’t understand why you feel you needed to go on TV to find a boyfriend when Johnny has had his eye on you ever since you both were in second grade . . ."

“MOM! I don’t believe this! First, Johnny is twenty-seven years old and he still lives next door to you, with his parents. Doesn’t that tell you something?? Not to mention, I never liked him since the third grade when he chased me around the playground trying to put boogers in my hair. I am never going to end up with Johnny Roberts from next door, Mom. Get over it.”

Lizzy was thoroughly confused at this point. And her mom wasn’t helping matters any. In fact, her mom was making things much more jumbled and chaotic. Why doesn’t anything make sense?

“Mom. Will you please tell me what’s going on? I’m really not in the mood for a practical joke, and this has gone on long enough. Is it really Wednesday? I mean, this joke has cost me a day of work, and I’m sure my boss is wondering where I was yesterday. If you’re in on this, will you please tell whoever is in charge to stop it already? Ha ha, joke is on me. But enough already.”

For the first time that she could remember, Lizzy actually wanted to get to work. She wanted to get back to something normal, something routine, something not on TV. Even if that meant . . . her job.

“Lizzy, are you sure you’re okay? I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What joke? What job? Honey, you quit your job two months ago so you could go on this reality show. Remember? You didn’t like your job anyway, so once you got onto the show you just decided to quit. I’m sorry, sweetie, but they probably aren’t missing you since you don’t work there anymore. Now, if you want to find a new job, I believe Johnny’s parents might have a management position available in their shoe store. Want me to give them a call?”

Suddenly, Lizzy felt ill. Dizzy. Not well. Quit her job? Sure, she didn’t like her job, but why would she quit it without having another job to go to? She’s not insane! Or is she?

“Lizzy? Did you hear me? I’ll give Johnny’s parents a call. You could probably start there this afternoon. I’ll tell them you don’t know anything about selling orthopedic gymnastic shoes, but I’m sure they won’t mind. They know you, and they know you’re a quick learner. Remember that time Johnny got himself stuck in the attic crawl space? You both were just nine years old, but if you hadn’t figured out how to lower peanuts down to him one by one, he probably would have starved to death before his parents got home to dig him out. I tell you, if they don’t hire you today, they certainly aren’t grateful enough to you for saving Johnny’s life that day!”

Lizzy groaned loud enough for her mom to hear her over the phone.

“Mom, you know what? I’m actually not feeling well right now. Please don’t call Johnny’s parents. Really, that job should go to a professional orthopedic gymnastic shoe salesperson. I’ll figure something out later, another job, something. But right now I think I need to lie down for awhile.”

“Well, okay honey, but don’t wait too . . ."

“Bye, mom. Thanks for calling.” Lizzy hung up the phone, cutting her mom off in mid-sentence. She stared into space for a long time.

Somehow, this all had to be a very weird dream. Not a bad dream, exactly. But just a very weird, very life-like dream. There was no other possible explanation for going to bed one night, missing an entire day, and somehow having been the star of a reality show during that missing day. But, how to wake up was the real question. Lizzy was a deep sleeper, but definitely not that deep.

She decided to shower, then go from there. Surely after a shower, things would make much more sense. If nothing else, a blast of cold water would wake her up. It was entirely possible that she was sleepwalking, and that would be one explanation that would explain everything. Well, almost everything.

Lizzy stepped into the shower and stood under the water for awhile. She was trying not to think, but her brain wouldn’t quit racing. Somehow, she had to make sense of the last day. She was missing something, but what that was, she just couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

She got out of the shower, dried off, and got dressed. Not into work clothes, but into her most comfortable pair of sweats. She didn’t feel like going out of the house today, reasoning that if she was going crazy, she would do best not to inflict that onto the population at large. If she couldn’t figure out what had happened within the last twenty-four hours, the safest thing was probably to stay in the house, in familiar territory, until something began to make sense.
Once dressed and fairly certain things were still the same as they were before her shower, Lizzy made her way to the kitchen. It was almost noon and she hadn’t had anything to eat, yet. Food would be a good thing, she thought. Even if she was crazy, she could still enjoy a nice lunch.

The phone continued to ring throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Lizzy wasn’t brave enough to answer it, especially after hearing the first few messages left on her answering machine. She was certain after several hours that everyone she had ever known had called to see what was going on and which Average Joe bachelor was the one she really liked, yet she continued to let the machine handle the calls. By late afternoon, the tape in the machine had run out of space, filled with a mixture of familiar voices and the strange, excited voices of media people calling her for interviews. Lizzy had run out of tolerance for the constant ringing. She unplugged the phone from the wall, and settled into the couch to do some serious thinking.

“Aha!” she almost yelled, as a thought popped into her head. The phone! The thing that had been ringing all day could provide at least one answer to the increasingly long list of questions around the situation. Even though her mom had mentioned earlier that Lizzy had quit her job, she decided she should call her work and talk to her boss. Her mom clearly didn’t know what she was talking about, and in all the activity of the morning, Lizzy had forgotten that if she does actually have a job, she should let her boss know that she would be in tomorrow. Whatever was going on would certainly have passed by then, Lizzy felt sure.

She picked up the phone and dialed the number to her office. The receptionist answered.

“VanClark and Associates. How may I direct your call?”

“Hi, Mandy. Is Joan in?”

“Miss vanClark? Um, may I ask who’s calling?”

“Mandy. It’s me. Lizzy. I need to talk to Joan. Right now, if she’s not busy.”

“Ma’am, can I get a last name? And who are you with?”

“Mandy! Come on. It’s Lizzy Talbot? Just let me talk to Joan, if you don’t mind. It’s kind of important.”

“I’ll see if she’s in, Miss Talbot. One moment please.” Mandy sounded annoyed. But annoyed in that overly-polite receptionist kind of way.

Lizzy found herself on hold, and she was beginning to get worried. Please don’t tell me my office is in on the joke, too, she thought. She’d worked at the advertising agency for almost two years. Mandy knew darn well who she was, and she wasn’t the type of receptionist who was clever enough to play games over the phone.

With a great sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Lizzy had a sneaking suspicion that Mandy really didn’t know who Lizzy Talbot was.

She heard a click on the phone, followed by a voice. “Yes, this is Joan vanClark. How can I help you?”

“Hi, Joan. It’s me, Lizzy. Look, I know I missed work yesterday and today, so I wanted to call and let you know that I came down with something really suddenly. Something very, um, unexpected. But, I will be in tomorrow . . . “

“Lizzy? Lizzy who? I’m sorry, are you sure you’re speaking to the right person? Maybe Mandy misdirected your call.”

“Joan!” Lizzy stopped for a second to make sure she wasn’t yelling at her boss over the phone. She took a deep breath and started again in a calmer tone, hoping not to alarm her boss. “Joan, I . . . “

“Wait. Lizzy Talbot?” Joan paused.

“Yes! Finally, someone is starting to make sense. Joan, I promise not to let this happen again. I just woke up not quite myself yesterday and it’s been crazy trying to figure out what’s wrong.”

“Lizzy, I appreciate the call. But I’m a little concerned.”

Lizzy’s heart started beating loud enough to echo into the phone.

“What do you mean, Joan. I’m fine. Really. Just a slight case of something odd, but I’ll be in bright and early tomorrow morning. No worries.”

“Lizzy, it’s great to hear from you, and all. We’ve definitely missed you. But you may want to get your story straight because I’m pretty sure you don’t work here anymore.”

Lizzy’s heart threatened to beat right out of her chest.

“No, Joan. Please don’t tell me that! I came home from work Monday, missed work yesterday and today, albeit it mysteriously and without a good explanation. But tomorrow I’ll be back. Just a couple of sick days! Please don’t fire me!”

“Wait, fire you? Lizzy, you quit working here three months ago. Quite unexpectedly, and without two weeks’ notice, if you’ll recall. I don’t know what you’re talking about or what you think is going on here, but you don’t need to call in sick, or tell me you’ll be back here tomorrow. You don’t work here, Lizzy. You quit to go do some TV show. Or at least that’s what you told me. How’s that going, by the way? And actually, since I have you on the phone, can you help us set up a meeting with the ad sales department for whatever network you’re on? I’ve got some clients who would be great for airtime during your show, whatever it is. You always were one of my favorite employees, by the way. Did I mention that?”

Lizzy didn’t say anything.

“Hey, wait a minute. Is this one of those practical joke shows? Lizzy? Am I on TV right now? Where’s the camera? I don’t normally like those kinds of shows, but if I can get some airtime out of the deal then I’ll forgive you this once. I can be a good sport. Lizzy?”

Lizzy hung up the phone.

For once, it seemed her mom was right. Lizzy had no job. Lizzy was the star of a reality television show.

Or at least that’s what the bizarro world would have her believe.

Lizzy felt quite certain the whole world was insane, because this absolutely could not be the way things really were. ‘Reality’ television? Lizzy could quite honestly say that the events of the past few days could not be further from reality.

She left the phone unplugged. A break, Lizzy thought. I need a break.

She sat on the couch and looked around, taking deep breaths to make sure she was still, in fact, breathing. Her eyes landed on the TV, quiet, dark, contemplating.

“Well,” she decided, “TV got me into this mess, so I might as well let it get me out of the mess for awhile.”

The room had grown dark as the sun went down outside. Lizzy noticed she’d been sitting in the dark once the TV came on and brightened up the room. She reached over and turned on a lamp, thankful for the quiet of a room filled only with the welcome sound of her television.

Television: the source of and solution to all of life’s problems. Ha, Lizzy thought. That would be a great ad slogan for television, if I still had a job at the ad agency . . .

Lizzy snuggled down under a blanket and settled in for an evening of high quality TV. She wasn’t really paying attention to what she watched, flipping through the channels as she usually did. She just watched the pretty pictures, the funny sounds, and the flickering lights. Soaking it in, relaxing, letting the tube take her away from the nonsense of her day.
Wednesday night, she thought. What comes on Wednesday nights? Ooh! The Bachelor!! Excellent . . .

For a moment she hesitated. It seemed ridiculously absurd that she would want to watch another reality show after her dream-like experience with Average Joe. But, she knew deep down that she couldn’t not watch The Bachelor. It was, after all, her duty to watch The Bachelor after her near encounter with a previous encounter. She was loyal to the show, even if who she thought was the Bachelor that day at the airport was possibly just a tall plant sticking up taller than a statue in front of a poster with a face on it, several hundred feet down a busy terminal.

She knew in her heart that it was him. And she owed it to him to watch the show from that day forward.
She checked the clock and decided to get off the couch long enough to go put her pajamas on. She was exhausted, and decided since she apparently didn’t need to get up for work in the morning, she could get into her pj’s and fall asleep on the couch, if the mood struck her.

Aaah, flannel pj’s. How I love thee, Lizzy sighed. Comfort and softness, combined to make any day end in bliss.
She returned to the couch, burrowed back underneath the blanket, and settled in for an hour with The Bachelor. Soon, the screen was filled with whiney women, a chuckling guy named Bob, and more drama than one could hope for, all crammed into sixty minutes. Pure bliss!

The best part of the show was the moment when Lizzy forgot about the peculiar situation at hand in her own reality. Yes, television had done it again. It had freed Lizzy’s mind of the burden of not knowing the truth of the day versus wildly spun tales of intrigue and mystery. And before The Bachelor was over, the television had lulled Lizzy to sleep once again, as she lay on the couch. Cozy, safe, and not a care in the world.

Snoring. She definitely heard snoring. Was she snoring? No. Then who was snoring?

Lizzy opened her eyes. She listened. Yep, that’s definitely snoring. And it wasn’t coming from her.

Her eyes took a minute to focus, and when she could see clearly she noticed that she was staring up at the ceiling, and the ceiling was different than she remembered. Of course, she didn’t usually stare up at her own ceiling, so she couldn’t be sure that the ceiling was actually different. But she felt pretty sure this ceiling did not belong in her house.

Oh no . . . , she mumbled.

Slowly, Lizzy sat up. The bed was smaller than she remembered being used to, but then again maybe she had fallen asleep on her couch. Of course, that wouldn’t explain why she now found herself sitting up in a twin-size bed in a strange room that she had never seen before, listening to the sounds of snoring coming from another similar twin-sized bed across the room.

“You have got to be kidding me, “ she hissed, throwing her legs out of bed and onto the floor. She was definitely not in the mood for another ‘Reality TV’ dream, and if this one involved a snoring nerd from Average Joe, she wanted out right now.

The room was a mess. It looked like a college girls’ dorm room, but one that happened to be inside a very nice house. The room was large, complete with nice furniture and décor, but definitely trashed as though suitcases of clothes and hair products had spontaneously combusted all over the nice things in the room.

The snoring was getting louder from across the room. Lizzy turned her attention to the person-sized lump breathing heavily underneath the covers on the other twin bed in the room. She greatly feared what she might find under there, but she also didn’t figure she could just sit on the edge of the bed that must be hers forever. She cautiously stood up and turned towards the other bed.

Noticing the clock on the nightstand read 7:30am, she decided that who or whatever was snoring in the other bed would probably be awake soon, anyway. So she might as well risk getting closer to assess the situation.

She tiptoed closer to the bed and bent over the heaving lump of blankets. Whatever was making the world’s most grotesque snoring sounds had to be the largest, most asthmatic nerd in the world, or a gigantic bear with a deviated septum. Whatever the case, the producer of the snores rattling the windows of the room where Lizzy found herself could not be entirely human.

Just then, the clock that had previously read 7:30am turned to 7:31am, and immediately emitted a high-pitched, very loud rhythmic beeping sound. The sound of the alarm scared a squeal out of Lizzy, and put an immediate stop to the snoring coming from the bed.

Lizzy took a few quick, unsteady steps back just as the creature under the covers bolted upright and flailed around under the blankets, frantically reaching for the clock on the nightstand. After pounding on a few other innocent objects sitting near the clock, the hand finally hit the clock and the noise stopped.

Both Lizzy and the creature breathed loudly for a minute, recovering from the shock of the alarm. The creature’s head was still covered with a blanket, and Lizzy watched intently as a hand reached out from under the blanket and pulled the blanket off of . . . a girl’s head.

Lizzy stared.

“What do you think you’re doing? Were you watching me sleep? Gross. Get away from me.” The girl glared at Lizzy through a mess of disheveled bed hair.

“Hmm. I bet if I tell Bob you like to watch other people sleep with that creepy look in your eye, he’ll think twice about giving you a rose tomorrow night.” The girl laughed as she untangled herself from the bed. Lizzy continued to stare and not speak as she watched the girl get out of bed and head into a bathroom adjacent to the bedroom.

Whoa, what is going on here? Lizzy looked around the room again. Lots of clothes flung all over the place, a strange girl sharing a room with her, Bob, a rose. This had all the makings of a catty episode of The Bachelor, except last time she checked, Lizzy wasn’t on that show.

The girl came back out of the bathroom. “Lizzy, if I were you, I’d take a few steps back out of my area, and go get ready for breakfast. You’re nice enough and all, but I’m not here to be your friend. I’m here to win Bob. So just back off and go creep someone else out, okay?”

She shot Lizzy a snobbish look, and started sifting through a pile of clothes on a chair.

“Um, so . . . Bob, huh?” Lizzy managed to say.

“Um, yeah.” The girl eyeballed Lizzy with a confused look. Much like the look Lizzy imagined was on her own face at the moment.

“What’s up with you, Lizzy? You’re being super quiet and creepy, which is odd even for you. Go figure, I’d end up with the creepy girl as a roommate on the show. Hey, have you seen my bra? The one that makes my boobs look soft and voluptuous, not the one that makes them cute and perky. Wait, if you took it to do something creepy with it, keep it.”

Lizzy knew she was no longer dreaming. Nope, she was pretty sure she was directly in hell.

“Uh, no. Haven’t seen your bra. But I’ll keep an eye out for it. Hey, do you mind if I shower now?”

The girl was lost in another mound of clothing. “Why you asking me? I don’t care. Knock yourself out.”

Lizzy turned towards the bathroom, hurried in, and shut the door behind her.

“Holy cow, “ she said in response to the once again unexpected situation, a little louder than she thought.

“What?” she heard the girl call from the other side of the door. “Did you find my bra?”

“NO!” Lizzy called back. She turned on the shower to create some noise and let the girl know she was unable to converse any longer.

Lizzy shed her flannel pajamas and stepped into the shower. She once again sought comfort from the water splashing down over her from the showerhead above. Could she really be in an episode of The Bachelor? Or was this just more of the nightmare that started several days ago, from which she still could not manage to wake up.

Every logical bone in her body told her it was literally, absolutely, completely, physically impossible for her to be in a TV show after having done nothing more than fall asleep. But if that were true, then how could she explain what was happening? How could she make sense of being in a bathroom adjacent to a room with an identified girl searching for a bra that makes her boobs perky?

Lizzy shut off the water and toweled dry. Realizing she probably didn’t have any clean clothes of her own in the bathroom, she wrapped the towel around herself and cautiously opened the bathroom door, peering into the bedroom. Miss Perky was nowhere to be found.

Lizzy crossed the room and began looking through yet another pile of clothes that she assumed might be hers.

“Ok, so now you’re stealing my clothes?” Miss Perky’s voice suddenly came from behind. Lizzy stood up and turned around to face the girl. “Look, Lizzy. I don’t know what’s up with you this morning, but stay away from me and my clothes. I’m not letting you borrow anything, and you’d better know I know everything that’s in that pile. Anything turns up missing, I am hunting you down.”

“Um, sorry. I thought I might have dropped my shirt over here last night . . . “ Lizzy could tell that Miss Perky was not a fan of hers, and she decided it would be best to stay out of her way as much as possible. She didn’t know how long this ‘episode’ would last before she could get out of Bachelor-World, and the less people she angered in the mean time, the best.

Lizzy stumbled around the foot of the bed, and tripped over an open suitcase. Trying not to make any noise by yelling out in pain, so as not to disturb Miss Perky who was now in the bathroom fussing over her hair, Lizzy bent over to move the suitcase out of the way. She noticed a tag on the side of the suitcase: Lizzy Talbot.

“Thank goodness,” she said, and she quickly rifled through the clothes in the bag until she found some jeans and shirt that matched well enough for breakfast.

“Are you going downstairs like that?” Miss Perky had again appeared as if from nowhere, scowling at Lizzy with a look of supreme disapproval and snobbery.

“What do you mean?” Lizzy checked herself in the mirror. She was by no means glamorous at this stage in the day, but considering just twenty minutes ago she had awoken in a strange room with a strange girl in another strange situation, she looked pretty good.

“Well, far be it from me to tell you how to impress a guy. But you know when you walk out this door, the cameras are on. And girlfriend, that’s an interesting look you’ve got going on there.” Miss Perky smirked and giggled as she turned to the mirror again, checking her hair.

Just then, there was a knock at the door.

“Betsy? Lizzy? Are you guys up?” The head of another Barbie girl poked in the bedroom door. “Hey. Julie is cooking breakfast for everyone, so you may want to get downstairs before you’re stuck with cereal. And I think someone said we’ve got another video thingy from Bob. Hurry up!”

“See you downstairs,” Miss Perky said as she followed Barbie Girl out the door. Betsy. That name seemed about right for Lizzy’s new friend, Miss Perky.

Lizzy stopped for a few minutes in front of the mirror, trying to attempt some damage control. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to impress Bob, but if cameras were on, she should probably look a little better than the current look she had going on. Even if she still had no idea what was going on, although she was beginning to suspect that this would be another long, bizarre day, “Rolled Out of Bed and Hit the Shower” wasn’t necessarily the best look for making it through whatever awaited her outside the door and downstairs.

She took a deep breath before entering the kitchen, but Lizzy was in no way prepared for what she saw as she stepped into the room. It was the largest kitchen she’d even seen, complete with a long table by a beautiful bay window overlooking a massive outdoor swimming pool. The sun was out in full force, and the pool shimmered in the sunlight, reflecting even more glorious light back into the kitchen. The smell of a not quite identifiable, possibly breakfast type food filled the room.

But, what Lizzy was most unprepared for was the room full of girls. She counted eight girls at the table, one girl standing at the stove, and with herself, that made ten girls. They were chatting at an unusually fast rate of speech, excited and hyper and catty all at once. Even at eight o’clock in the morning, there was more makeup, hairspray, fake nails, and perfume sitting at the kitchen table than Lizzy had likely witnessed in her entire lifetime.

Betsy caught Lizzy’s eye from the table as she stood in the doorway, hesitant to fully commit herself to being in the kitchen. Betsy’s look was one of recognition, and of distaste. Great, Lizzy thought. The one familiar face in the room is the face of possibly pure evil.

Remembering that Barbie Girl had mentioned Julie was cooking when she popped her head in the door, Lizzy decided to take a stab at blending in. She walked over to the girl at the stove, and paused before passing her to get to the table.

“Um, Julie,” she mumbled, not looking directly at Stove Girl in case these girls had thrown her for a loop and put someone else at the stove other than Julie.

“Oh hey, Lizzy. Girl, you almost missed out on my special tofu omelets. Grab a plate.”

Tofu? Check the evil. Lizzy was sure she was right back in hell again.

“Oh. Wow. That smells great. Really. But you know? I think I’ll just have some toast, if that’s okay. My stomach is feeling a little funky this morning. Don’t want to overdo it.” Lizzy looked over at the table full of girls and thought for a second. “But Betsy mentioned to me this morning how much she loves tofu, and she was absolutely starving before heading down here for breakfast. I think she only had a Tic-Tac and some celery for dinner last night. Will you give her my omelet? She will not know how to thank you.”

Julie looked at Lizzy. “Sure. Lizzy, that is really sweet of you. I don’t know what Betsy was talking about earlier.” She smiled cheerily at Lizzy, then turned her attention back to the tofu omelet currently inflicting its torment on the frying pan in front of her.

Lizzy almost asked Julie what she meant by “what Betsy was talking about earlier”, but she decided to find the toast instead. She smiled to herself as she watched Julie bouncily deliver the extra tofu omelet to Betsy, catching Betsy in mid-bite of the omelet she was currently trying to choke down. Lizzy pretended to be very interested in her toast making, so as to avoid eye contact from a perturbed, tofu-overloaded Betsy.

Lizzy joined the other girls at the table to enjoy her toast. Toast, at least, was something normal. Even in Bizarro Reality TV World, toast was just toast. What now, she wondered, as she kept her mouth full of toast to avoid conversations with the other girls sitting with her at the table.

It was then that she noticed the cameras. Hovering in the corners of the kitchen were several guys with cameras and big boom microphones. She also noticed some oddly placed cameras fastened to the ceiling in various nooks and crannies. Lizzy couldn’t tell if the cameras were currently on, but the crew was poised and ready to roll. The house was definitely rigged to catch every waking moment of activity amongst these ten girls. Ten girls sadly to which Lizzy seemed to belong.

Breakfast seemed to wind down, and as the girls began to get up from the table and clear away dishes, a man walked in to the kitchen. Lizzy blinked several times before she decided the man was none other than Chris Harrison, host of The Bachelor.

Lizzy almost choked on the last piece of her toast.

“Good morning, ladies. Nice to see everyone up.” Chris looked older in person than he did on TV. Not in a bad way. Just in a different way. But in every other way, so far he seemed just like he did on TV.

“Ladies, if you could join me in the living room, we have another video invitation from our bachelor, Bob.” Lizzy noticed the silent but deadly camera crew had suddenly sprung to life. They were quietly capturing everything on film, even down to the two girls trying to gingerly scrape food off of plates without breaking a nail. Seriously, she wondered. Had these girls never seen a soapy scrub brush before?

As Lizzy got up from the table, she suddenly felt a strange sense of calmness, something she hadn’t felt seated a moment ago among the chaotic chatter of girls and their tofu. She suddenly felt very at home. At least four cameras were pointed directly at her, she was in a house full of overgrown sorority girls involved in prolonged swarming of one man, not unlike a pack of wolves might swarm over a fresh carcass. She vaguely felt like this was a different scenario than her normal life. Yet for some reason, this did not feel strange to her. After all, ever since she had first seen Bob on a previous season of The Bachelorette, she had dreamed of him. His wit, his charm, his good looks. She couldn’t believe Trista had rejected him, but Lizzy was thankful that she had. Now Lizzy had a chance. Bob was the man of her dreams, and she had fought long and hard to make it this far in the show.

She wasn’t about to let these other girls get the best of her. And she wasn’t about to quit fighting for her man.
Lizzy quickly dropped off her plate of toast crumbs with the two girls who were still bumbling through scraping the other plates, and she hurried into the living room. She wanted a good seat on the couch to watch Bob’s video invitation to their next group date. And of course, she wanted a prime spot for good camera coverage. If she were front and center on the couch, Bob and America would have a better chance of seeing how hot and charming she is. It’s all about strategy, she reasoned to herself. I will win.

In a flurry of long hair and giddiness, the girls trounced into the living room and assembled around the couch in a sorority-girl-esque, impromptu pose. Everyone made sure their best side faced the camera, and several girls produced tiny mirrors from pockets within their clothes, for lipstick checks. As everyone settled in, Chris entered the room.
“Ladies, once again, good morning. I’ve gathered you here to watch another video invitation to the next group date with our bachelor, Bob,” Chris began. “However, we do have a twist for you this time. For today’s date, only four of you will go with Bob. Bob has chosen the four ladies who will spend the day with him. The rest of you will not get to go on the group date. Instead, you will prepare an original dinner for Bob at his bachelor pad, for when he returns from the group date this evening.”

Immediately a murmur ran throughout the group of girls. Oh my! What does this mean? I hope I get to go on the date! If I can’t be with Bob today, I may not have the special connection with him that I know we are destined to have! I can’t cook! Does Bob like tofu?

Chris continued. “Now, those of you who go on the date with Bob will of course have the opportunity to spend an entire day in an exotic location with our bachelor. But once the date is over, you will turn Bob over to the ladies who are preparing dinner for him this evening. These ladies will get to spend a romantic evening with Bob at his bachelor pad, while you return here to the Ladies Villa. After these activities are over, Bob will have a tough decision to make, as only six of you will receive a rose at the Rose Ceremony tomorrow evening.”

This was almost too much for Lizzy to take in. She would either have to fight over Bob all day today, or get tough with the girls at dinner tonight, in order to woo her man. The anticipation of which Bob Event of the Day would be hers was almost more than Lizzy could handle. But either way, she would not be settling for anything less than one of those six roses tomorrow night.

Chris turned to the television and the girls watched as the TV came to life. There on the screen was Bob. And he was talking. And smiling. And looking oh so fabulous, Lizzy swooned.

The girls watched as Bob told them about the date for the day. It was a day trip to Sea World in San Diego, complete with a special arrangement for all of them to swim with the dolphins. Well, Lizzy thought, I don’t particularly like fish. But for Bob, I will love fish. . .

Bob then listed the names of the girls he chose to accompany him to Sea World: Betsy (of course), Julie, Brenda, and Lizzy.

And Lizzy! Lizzy stared at the screen and mouthed a ‘thank you’ to Bob. She knew he wasn’t there. But she also knew that he felt it, her secret message of thanks to him, right at that moment. Lizzy was going to Sea World!

The tape ended, the TV was quiet, and the room was filled again with excited, and disappointed chatter. One girl began crying hysterically. Lizzy hoped that wasn’t Brenda. She did not want to spend the day with a crybaby. That would totally cramp her style with Bob.

Chris the Host ushered the girls on their way, the Sea World group to gather their things and be back downstairs for the limo ride to meet Bob at the private jet in ten minutes, the leftover six girls to get ready to head to Bob’s for dinner preparations. Lizzy was glad she wouldn’t have to cook dinner all day. Luckily Julie was with the Sea World group, which would spare Bob from an evening with tofu.

Lizzy hurried to get her Sea World gear together, whatever that was. She threw some stuff in a bag, making sure none of it belonged to Betsy. And she ran back down the stairs to await the chariot that would whisk her away on a romantic date with Bob and dolphins.

Bob, dolphins, and unfortunately, three other girls.

In her wildest dreams, Lizzy could never have imagined a more perfect date. Well, except for the other three girls there to ruin her magical moments with bob. But other than the vicious rivalry between the four competing bachelorettes, the date with Bob was amazing. She even suspected that she truly had grown to love fish, thanks to Sea World. And Bob.
The date went by way too fast. Lizzy knew her mission was to get as much one-on-one time with Bob as possible, stopping at nothing to get in between Bob and the other three girls. Betsy, Julie, and Brenda had nothing on Lizzy. She was the one for Bob.

They swam with dolphins, watched whales perform silly tricks, and enjoyed everything that Sea World had to offer. All of which was carefully documented on film. The camera crew followed them everywhere they went. Even when Lizzy stole Bob away to sneak behind an isolated cabana to make out for awhile, the camera somehow found them. Lizzy didn’t mind. She wanted the whole world to see her mushy, slobbery kisses with Bob. She ran her fingers through his hair as they held each other and kissed many, many kisses. Strangely, she didn’t seem to mind the grease she’d noticed in abundance in his hair when they’d first met.

Lizzy did her best to avoid Betsy, although she soon figured out that would prove to be tough. Betsy inevitably seemed to be literally everywhere, providing no escape from her sneering, disgusting flirting. But if Betsy insisted on being everywhere at once, then Lizzy blamed Betsy for getting in the way those two times she accidentally tripped Betsy for the cameras to see. And that one time she accidentally spilled ice cream on Betsy’s shirt in passing. Oops! I am so sorry, sweetie!

Only sorry that Bob couldn’t possibly fall in love with someone who is such a messy klutz, Lizzy told herself mischievously under her breath. She hadn’t realized she could be so devious! But then again, she had never been in such a high pressure, performance situation. It was cutthroat time, baby!

After an exhausting day, the four girls and Bob jetted back to L.A., and back to their respective mansions. Lizzy was sure to leave Bob with one last, lingering smooch before turning him loose with the six dinner girls for the evening. She paused for a minute with one of the cameras for her confessional time, explaining that she and Bob had definitely connected today, and she felt certain that even after dinner with the other six girls, Bob would be giving her a rose at the ceremony tomorrow night.

Back at the Ladies Villa, the four Sea World girls actually chilled out for awhile. It was quiet. Eerily quiet. Everyone was nervous that the progress they each felt they had made during their time with Bob today would be undone by the six dinner girls that evening. Bob was great, but he had a bad habit of making out with everyone. Lizzy knew, of course, that her make out sessions with Bob were the real deal, that it meant something special to both her and Bob. The other girls, well, those were just for the cameras. Bob’s kisses for Lizzy were true love. No question.

After keeping a weary eye on Betsy all night for fear of retaliation, and after dodging Julie’s tofu patties for dinner, Lizzy decided to call it a night. She really didn’t want to be awake when the other girls came home, excited about their evening with her Bob. Without saying anything to the other girls, who at the moment were incessantly chatting about Bob’s biceps, she headed upstairs to get ready for bed. She was suddenly anxious to get to sleep before Betsy started with her snoring again. That girl could wake a mummy, for crying out loud.

Stumbling into the dark bedroom, Lizzy found the light switch and looked for her flannel pajamas. Aah, the comfort of her pj’s. Nothing quite said ‘congrats on a well-played love searching day’ like a well-broken in set of flannel pajamas. The comfort of her pj’s would surely lull her to sleep, dreaming of Bob and their future together. A large house, white picket fence, no tofu, and two kids. That sounded wonderful. . .

She found her pajamas where she’d left them on the floor of the bathroom. Ignoring the fact that the bathroom floor amongst Betsy’s things was probably the most disgusting place she could possibly leave her beloved pj’s, she stumbled into them, brushed her teeth, and hopped into bed- The really small, not exactly comfortable twin-size bed she’d woken up in again this morning.

“Man,” she muttered. “I sure do miss my bigger bed at home.” But not enough to quit the game and head back home so soon, she reminded herself. She flopped and squirmed around in the bed, searching for a comfortable position to begin a well-earned night of sleep.

No, she thought as she oozed her way into a deep sleep, this tiny bed is a small price to pay for a lifetime with The Bachelor . . .

Lizzy rolled over and promptly hit the floor, banging her head against something hard.

“Owww. . .” she moaned, as she lay on the floor rubbing the back of her head. “That’s going to leave a bump.”

She found herself wedged in between a table and the bed. Or what she thought was the bed. She slowly sat up and noticed she was on the floor in the living room between her coffee table and her couch. Her tumble to the floor had caused her head to rudely meet the edge of the hard, wooden coffee table.

“Guess I dozed off on the couch.” She noticed that it was unusually bright in the living room, as though it was later in the day than when she usually woke up for work in the morning. Her head throbbed for a few minutes before she decided to get off the floor and figure out what time it was. Funny, she couldn’t believe she’d slept all the way through the night on the couch. It’s a comfortable couch. But not that comfortable.

She looked around the room and noticed her phone was unplugged. That’s odd, she thought. Why would I unplug the phone?

Lizzy struggled to her feet and stumbled over to the phone. Ignoring the strange residue she seemed to have stuck on her hands, she plugged the cord back into the jack, and was rewarded by a sudden ringing of the phone.

The loud ringing didn’t help her head feel any better.

She picked up the phone receiver. “Hello?”

“Miss Talbot? Hi, this is Nancy from Dr. Bristow’s office? You had an appointment for an eye exam this morning at 8am? We weren’t aware that you canceled the appointment, and since you didn’t show, we’re going to have to charge you for an office visit . . . “

Lizzy was confused. “Um, I thought that appointment was for Friday morning. Did I write it down wrong or something?”

“Yes, Miss Talbot. The appointment was for Friday, November 7, which is today. This morning, in fact. Now, we require twenty-four hours notice of cancellation, and since you are now three hours late, I’m sorry but we will not be able to fit you in today, and you will have to pay . . .”

“Wait a minute. Today is Thursday. I will be in for my appointment tomorrow morning, just like I have it scheduled.”

Something very familiar was suddenly coming back to Lizzy. She remembered why she had unplugged the phone.

“Miss Talbot,” Nancy replied, sounding very annoyed. “Our office will be closed tomorrow since tomorrow is Saturday. You are welcome to reschedule for another time during the week, but since you missed today’s appointment, the doctor will not be able to see you again at least until next week. Now, should I send you a bill for today’s appointment, or would you prefer to take care of that when you come in next week?”

Lizzy frantically searched for some indication to let her know the day of the week. She looked at her watch. The date said ‘7’! No way!

“Miss Talbot? Are you still there?” Lizzy heard the impatient voice of Dr. Bristow’s receptionist on the phone still in her hand.

“Uh, send a bill,” she said with a wavering voice to Nancy the receptionist, and hung up the phone. She then unplugged it again.

What had happened to Thursday? Lizzy’s mind was spinning out of control. Think, Lizzy. Think!

She had fallen asleep on the couch. It was Wednesday night. She was watching The Bachelor. Then she had fallen off of the couch, and it was Friday? How could she have missed another day??

Lizzy was aware of noise in the room. The TV was still on! She hurried back over to the couch and grabbed the television remote. Flipping through the channels, she stopped when she saw something familiar on the news. She saw . . . her face!

There it was again, a strange publicity photo that she never remembered taking, yet it was unmistakably Lizzy’s face with a strange, flashy grin on it. She vaguely remembered seeing this picture a few days earlier, on the news. The anchor was talking. Lizzy turned up the volume.

“ . . . Lizzy Talbot, a questionable disappearance, once again. Former star of the hit reality show, Average Joe, and current bachelorette hopeful on this season’s The Bachelor, Lizzy Talbot has once again mysteriously disappeared without a trace, during production of the show. Producers of The Bachelor are baffled, saying Lizzy seemed fine, and noting she left on her own.”

The shot of the anchor switched to footage of Bob, the Bachelor. He seemed upset, and was having trouble speaking to the camera. “I just don’t know what happened. I mean, Lizzy and I had a real connection. I had a great time with her on the date to Sea World yesterday. I intended to give her a rose tonight. It’s early in the season, but I really felt like she was the one. I don’t know if I can keep going. Lizzy, wherever you are, I will always have a rose for you. . . “ The shot went back to the anchor as Bob broke down in tears on camera.

“Sources say the show will go on, but whether or not Bob will be able to cope with the sudden and mysterious loss of Lizzy, his apparent favorite bachelorette, may determine if the show lasts for the rest of the scheduled season. In other news, tofu is making a comeback as America’s favorite non-meat meat . . .”

Lizzy hit the ‘mute’ button on her remote. And she once again stared blankly at the screen. Surely she didn’t hit her head that hard on the coffee table. Did she knock her brain right out of her head? Has she literally gone insane? Is she now hallucinating that Bob the Bachelor has somehow met her, and is naturally completely in love with Lizzy?

“This . . . can . . . not . . . be . . . happening . . . “ Lizzy could suddenly remember the past few days. Or at least what she thought were the past few days. She went to work on Monday. Lost Tuesday. Found out she probably didn’t have a job Wednesday. Lost Thursday. Missed a doctor appointment Friday. And presumably misplaced her place on the space and time continuum somewhere along the way.

Yep, it all made perfect sense. She had simply accidentally stepped into a parallel universe. Of course! Because that is totally possible.

She shook her head, and noticed it still hurt a bit from the run-in with the coffee table. At least that part of her week made sense. Head hits table, equals pain. Thank goodness for that, she thought.

Lizzy looked at the clock. It was almost noon. She figured she should probably be doing something, but at this point she couldn’t think of anything to do that would either help her figure out what happened to her week, or that would make sense anyway.

The doorbell rang, causing Lizzy to jerk her head in surprise towards the direction of the door. Someone was at the door? Great. She winced in pain again from the sudden head movement, rubbing the now proficient knot at the top of her forehead. Why must coffee tables be so hard? She made a mental note to buy a foam table. She didn’t care if that seemed weird or not. This week had been weird enough already.

She got to her feet and headed towards the front door, nervous about who to expect on the other side of the door. People didn’t usually just stop by her house without calling first. But then again, she wasn’t usually home at noon on a Friday. Normal people with jobs are at work this time of day. For all she knew, there was usually a steady stream of random people ringing her doorbell all day long, but she wasn’t usually here to witness it.

Lizzy peeked through the peephole in the door and to her surprise, saw her mom standing on the other side of the door. The doorbell rang again.

“Lizzy? Are you home? I’m about to call 911! Open the door!” her mom called from outside.

Call 911? It was just a bump on the head. Nothing serious. Wait, how did her mom know she had just hit her head . . .
Lizzy unlocked the door and opened it to find a very frantic mother standing on the front porch.

“Oh sweetie! Are you okay?? Why are you still in your pajamas?” Lizzy’s mom fussed, reaching out and sucking her into a tight mom hug.

“Mom. I’m fine. MOM! You’re hurting me . . . “ Lizzy wriggled free from the crazed clutches of her mother, and took a step backwards back into the house. She looked down and noticed she was, in fact, still in her flannel pajamas.

“Well, when you’re phone was busy all morning, I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe you fell and hit your head, and you were lying unconscious on the floor in need of medical assistance. What’s that on your head? Lizzy, did you fall? Were you attacked? Oh dear! Go get in the car, I’m taking you to the hospital . . . “

Lizzy took a deep breath and slowly closed the door behind her mother, as she finally stepped inside the house after Lizzy.

“Mom, I’m fine. I bumped my head on the table earlier, but it’s fine. I unplugged the phone, so that’s why it didn’t pick up. No need to call 911. I’m not going to the hospital.” She tried to corral her mother over to the couch to sit down and stop fussing over Lizzy for a minute.

“Wait,” Lizzy said, taking a closer look at her mother who had finally taken a seat on the couch and had immediately proceeded to wipe a smudge of dust off of the end table with her finger. “Why have you been trying to call me all morning? Is everything okay?” Lizzy was suddenly alarmed. Her mom only called when something was wrong, so if she had been trying to call more than once in one day, something was definitely wrong.

“Well, honey, I saw the news this morning. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I know how hard you take it when you lose a relationship. I just wanted to make sure my baby was okay, and to let you know you don’t have to put on a brave face with me,” her mom replied.

A look of confusion crossed Lizzy’s face. “What?” she said to her mom, hoping her mom wasn’t about to say what Lizzy thought she was about to say.

“Lizzy. I am your mother. You don’t have to treat me like you treat the media. You can be honest with me. Now tell me, did you leave the show because that boy, - what’s his name, Bob -tried to take advantage of you? You know, I never trusted him from the minute I first saw you two together on that show. I’ve always told your father that anyone with that much grease in his hair can not be trusted. Good thing your father was mostly bald when I met him! Otherwise, we may never have fallen in love . . . “

Lizzy’s eyes began to blur as she tried to tune out what her mother was saying.
Oh . . . dear . . . God. This just never ends . . .

Was it possible that the whole world had gone insane with Lizzy? Maybe there is some truth to the parallel universe idea, she thought. If the entire earth had somehow slipped into a blackhole, then everything over the past few days wouldn’t need to make sense. Floating around in a blackhole would explain everything.

“Lizzy? You don’t look well.” Her mom was still there, jabbering away on the couch. Lizzy looked at her. Her mom was staring back, intently examining Lizzy’s state of well-being.

“I know what you need. Food! A broken heart always heals quicker with some good food. Go get dressed and I’ll take you to lunch.”

“Mom, I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to leave the house right now.” Lizzy was still a little afraid of the outside world. If things were this crazy inside her own house, who knew what the world would be like beyond these safe, sturdy walls?

“What? Nonsense! I know you don’t have anything respectable to eat in your kitchen, so let’s get you cleaned up and head out someplace for a nice lunch.” Even when her mom was trying to be nice, Lizzy was mostly annoyed by her mother. She had a way of being sweetly patronizing, and helpful in that ‘you are never going to be able to take care of yourself like your mother can’ sort of way.

Lizzy breathed a sigh of resignation and got up from the couch. She headed back to her bedroom to change into ‘respectable’ clothes for a lunch outing, opting to skip the shower for now. The less time she left her mother alone in another part of the house, the fewer things her mother would find to ‘fix’ while Lizzy wasn’t looking.

Now that she thought about it, maybe some time outside of the house was what she needed to clear things up. If the date on her watch was right, she hadn’t technically left the house since Monday. Of course, that was with the exception of her mysterious instantaneous trips out to L.A. on two nights, where she proceeded to gallivant around two big mansions with two different men on national television.

Lizzy laughed a sarcastic and desperate laugh to herself. She just didn’t know what to believe anymore. But maybe while someplace away from this house of hers that seemed to transport her to other places and times at random, she could get some straight answers from her mother about the reality of the past few days. She still couldn’t help but feel the whole thing was a grand scale, elaborate joke at her expense. Or a very bad, very detailed, very lengthy hallucination possibly brought on by a lack of protein in her diet.

Thinking further as she searched her closet for two matching shoes, Lizzy thought it very strange that her mother didn’t find the fact that Lizzy had been on TV making out with a guy named Bob to be the least bit strange at all.

“Maybe Mom is really the one who has lost her mind . . . “ Lizzy muttered, struggling with a sock that didn’t seem to match the other one.

“What dear? Are you talking to me?” her mom called from the front bedroom.

“No.” Lizzy called back, wondering what her mother was doing in the front bedroom where Lizzy hadn’t left her a few minutes earlier.

She checked herself in the mirror, then wandered back to the living room to search for her mom. There she found her mom, sitting quietly and innocently in a chair. Too, innocently, in fact. And in a chair that was in a different place than where Lizzy had left it a few minutes earlier when she left to change clothes.

“Well, Mom, I see you rearranged my living room for me?” Lizzy said, noticing that the chair wasn’t the only thing with a new place in the room.

“Oh, I just moved a few things around to brighten it up in here a bit. It seemed a bit cluttered, but it feels much better now! I moved that hideous lamp you keep in the corner into your front bedroom, by the way. Dear, there just really wasn’t a good place for it in here with the new arrangement. If you insist on keeping it, I’m sure it will find a lovely home tucked away in the bedroom.” Lizzy had to hand it to her mom. She was very skillful in the art of sneakily getting her way when she caught you off guard.

Lizzy noticed her mom was looking intently at Lizzy’s shoes. “Well, dear, I see you are ready for lunch,” she said with skepticism that was very poorly hidden. Lizzy had apparently chosen the wrong shoes for her outfit, but her mother was surprisingly exercising some restraint by not saying what her facial expression portrayed. “Let’s get going, shall we? It will be dinner time before we get out the door!”

They headed out into the sunlight, and Lizzy blinked her eyes at the world around her. It felt like a really long time since she’d been outdoors. But then again, she strangely felt like she’d just been in a much sunnier place, in a better climate than where she lived. And either her eyes were playing tricks on her, or the part of her arms sticking out from the edge of her sleeve seemed a bit more tan than she usually was in mid-November.

Her mom drove the two of them to a favorite little restaurant where they often agreed upon for lunch. It was quiet and small and served food they both enjoyed. They settled into a booth tucked away in the corner, and perused the menu while sipping on glasses of water.

The waiter came by to take their order.

“Good afternoon, ladies. What can I get you to eat today?” he asked in a very polite, waiter-type way.

Lizzy and her mom ordered lunch, then sat in silence for all of forty-five seconds. That has to be a record, Lizzy thought. Her mom had the amazing ability to have a conversation with anything, living or inanimate. Lizzy was exactly the opposite, preferring quiet and less talking to constant conversation and noise to fill silence.

But this time it was Lizzy who broke the silence. She had a lot of questions and she decided to get a jump on whatever topic her Mom might bring up: the house, her job, why she walked out in the middle of her supposed reality television show.

Well, that last one was actually where Lizzy wanted to start.

“So, Mom,” Lizzy began, trying to think of the best way to determine if she was the crazy one, or if it was her mom that was insane. “What’s been happening with you the last few days? I feel out of touch.”

Lizzy’s mom gave her a peculiar look. “Well, honey, I should think so! You’ve been quite the busy girl this week!” Her mom gave Lizzy a playful pat on the hand.

“Really. Have I?” Lizzy rolled her eyes and shifted her gaze out the window.

“Now Lizzy,” her mom went on, as if on cue. “Talk to me. Which of these men did you like best? Those ‘average Joe’ guys seemed nice enough, but how are you supposed to choose between so many guys at once? And what happened with Bob?”

Lizzy put her glass down on the table so hard that it rattled the silverware, causing a fork to hit the floor with a clatter. Embarrassed for drawing attention to their table, she quickly leaned over to retrieve the fork, wishing she still had her menu to hide behind.

“Lizzy? Be careful with the silverware, dear.” her mom said in that ‘mom knows best’ tone she did so well.

Lizzy took a deep breath and looked directly at her mom with a serious look of intent on her face. “Mom,” she said with determination, then paused before continuing, taking another deep breath. “Are you really saying that over the past five days, I have been on not one, but two reality television shows, both of which involved me searching for love, with strange men, in mansions, in L.A.?”

Her mom looked at her with another peculiar look. “Lizzy, stop being silly! Just because you don’t want to answer my question doesn’t mean you have to make a joke of me. I may be getting old, but am not senile enough to make up stuff like that, yet!” She laughed and turned her attention to the sandwich, which had just arrived on a plate in front of her.
Suddenly Lizzy noticed that the waiter who had just brought their food was staring at their table. More precisely, he was staring at Lizzy. He looked away quickly when Lizzy caught his stare. Lizzy looked around and noticed that several other people in the restaurant were staring at her, and whispering. She knew banging her glass and dropping the fork on the floor had been loud, but certainly that didn’t deserve as much attention as she seemed to be getting from a restaurant full of people at that moment.

“Mom? Does it seem like we’re being stared at by a room full of people?”

Lizzy’s mom looked up from her sandwich. “Well, dear, if they are you shouldn’t be surprised. You knew what you were getting yourself into when you signed onto the ‘Joe’ show. Remember? We talked about it. Your private life would probably no longer be private.” She went back to her sandwich, meticulously removing the slivers of onion thoroughly mixed into the tuna she’d ordered.

Lizzy tried to also focus on her sandwich, but she was quickly interrupted by a young looking guy who walked up to their table. He was probably in college, there having lunch with a couple of other possibly college-aged guys. He hesitantly approached her as she tried to ignore that he was standing way too close to the table for someone who was not either a waiter, or her mom sitting there with her.

“Um, are you Lizzy Talbot?” he asked, nervously shifting his weight back on forth from foot to foot.

Lizzy didn’t know how to answer that question. Yes, she was Lizzy Talbot, but she was extremely frightened of who this guy might think Lizzy Talbot is.

“Yes,” she said, trying to look really interested in her sandwich.

“Wow. Um, well, I don’t want to bother you, but can I have your autograph?” the guy said, turning to give a quick thumbs up to some other guys watching him at a table across the restaurant.

The sandwich no longer held Lizzy’s attention. She turned quickly to get a better look at the guy standing by her table. Did she know him? Was he messing around with her? Was this a hidden camera show? No way he could be an actual fan. Lizzy was not aware she was the type to have fans. Actually, Lizzy was sincerely hoping she was not the type to have fans.

The guy noticed that Lizzy hadn’t responded and was blatantly staring at him with what was undoubtedly a look of absolute confusion. “Oh, um, see, I’ve never met anyone famous before. And those guys over there bet me a dollar I wouldn’t come over here to get your autograph if it was really you. See, last semester Chuck there in the red shirt saw Anna Nicole at a Whataburger, so if I can get your autograph, then you so beat his Anna Nicole autograph. . .” The guy trailed off, realizing his words were most likely losing all meaning to Lizzy, who still sat in stoned silence.

The guy put a wrinkled napkin down on the table and held out a pen to Lizzy. She looked at the pen, then at the guy, then at the napkin, then back at the guy, then at her mom, who was beaming with amused pride at the whole situation.

Lizzy grabbed the pen and scribbled ‘Lizzy’ on the napkin, then dropped the pen on the table. The guy mumbled a ‘thanks’, then hurried back over to the table of guys, who erupted in cheers and high fives upon his return.

That guy just got the first and only ‘Lizzy’ autograph ever, Lizzy thought. And I’m still not even sure what just happened here or why I’m being asked for an autograph. No one else in the restaurant was giving out autographs.

“Mom, we gotta go. Now.” Lizzy noticed that several other people in the restaurant were turning more attention towards her, rummaging through purses for pens and scraps of paper. She threw a twenty down on the table, grabbed her mom by the arm, and hustled them both out of the restaurant.

The restaurant crowd moaned as Lizzy hurried out the door, their brush with unknowing fame coming to an abrupt ending.

Yep, venturing outside of her safe house had definitely been a bad idea. Lizzy was hunched down in the seat of her mom’s car, hoping not to be recognized again before they made it home, but still very uncertain about how and why she was being recognized at all.

“Lizzy, sit up straight,” her mom chastised. “What’s the matter with you? Why did you rush me out of the restaurant like that? Those people wanted to talk to you.”

Lizzy kept watching out the window, slouched down in the passenger seat. “That’s exactly why, Mom. I don’t want to talk to people I don’t know. And I don’t know why those people want to talk to me!”

Lizzy’s mom sighed an exasperated sigh. “Well, that was rude. And you didn’t even finish your sandwich. I swear, if you don’t start eating better, you are going waste away to nothing.”

The car could not have returned them to Lizzy’s house fast enough to satisfy Lizzy’s intense desire to be back in her house, with shades drawn, hiding away. The world was no safer than whatever kept toying with her inside the house. She wanted nothing more than to be back inside, behind locked doors, where strange people wouldn’t approach her for an autograph.

Even more than that, Lizzy was ready for her mother to go away for awhile, leaving her to think without her mom’s nitpicking or correcting. She loved her mom, but in situations like this, she wasn’t the best company for Lizzy.

Well, not so much in situations like this, since this particular situation was like no other situation she’d ever experience. But still, when Lizzy was exasperated, her mom was a difficult companion to have around.

The car pulled into the driveway, and Lizzy opened the door almost before it came to a stop. “Thanks for the outing, Mom. I’ve got it from here,” she said, and she hopped out of the car before her mom could reply or protest.

Lizzy hurried inside her house, quickly closing the door behind her. Then she locked it, hoping her mother would take the hint and back out of the driveway, leaving Lizzy alone to wallow in the mess that had become her life over the past few agonizingly strange days.

She wandered into her living room and took a seat in the chair that her mother had earlier moved to a new location in the room. What had happened to her fairly normal life? Lizzy vaguely remembered a time not too many days ago when she had a job, she went to work, she talked to friends, she ate regular meals, she lived in her simple house, she paid her bills, she mowed her own lawn. None of that involved cameras or rabid fans or strange twists that came out of nowhere to change everything in a split second.

With a huff she remembered that what she assumed was only days ago, she had been such a fan of reality television. She couldn’t get enough. She wanted to be in her own reality show. She felt destined to find fame through reality TV. She was obsessed with it, the characters, the different storylines, the gossip, the ridiculousness of it all. Could it be possible that she had overloaded on reality television, so that it now controlled her life? Impossible. There could never be too much reality TV.

But if this is some sort of cruel punishment for watching too much reality TV, she thought, I will gladly sell my soul back to scripted television if it will let me return to my normal, boring existence of routine. Where no one knows who I am or cares who I date, and when I wake up in the morning I am in the same place where I fell asleep the night before.

“Isn’t that ironic,” she said to an imaginary Alanis Morissette sitting on the couch in her living room, who replied with an imaginary smile and a thumbs up. Who would have ever guessed Lizzy could grow weary of reality television? Stranger things had happened.

Well, so she thought before the strange events of the past week had happened. This week ranked up there with the ‘majorly strange’ things in the universe.

Lizzy decided she needed to recluse herself again for the rest of the day. Coming into contact with people only seemed to make matters more confusing and bizarre. The phone was still unplugged. No one was at the door. Her mom had gotten the hint and left the driveway. Peace and quiet. Just what Lizzy needed.

She noticed it was getting darker in the house, which meant it was already getting darker outside, turning into evening. She refrained from peaking outside to see just how dark it was, and she left the blinds closed. If anyone had followed her home, or had figured out where she lived, she didn’t want to give them any opportunities to catch a glimpse of her through the window, or encourage them to knock on the door to talk to her.

“Listen to yourself!” Lizzy said out loud to herself, her voice full of shock and awe. She was actually sounding like someone who was having to dodge fans and media! Insane! She was Lizzy Talbot, advertising executive, single, no kids, no pets, not well known outside of about twelve close and semi-close friends. And she wasn’t even actually an advertising executive. She just worked at the agency. But ‘executive’ had a nice ring to it for a second, she mused.

Not really knowing what to do with herself, Lizzy stayed seated in the chair for awhile. There seemed to be no logic to her ‘travels’ to different reality shows, yet she knew there had to be some common factor, or some catalyst that sent her from the static environment of her actual life, to the bizarro world of her alter ego’s life of reality television shows.
Or perhaps she was in a coma. She had fallen asleep Monday night, possibly tumbling out of bed and hitting her head on the nightstand in her sleep, which had sent her into a deep, dream-filled coma. A coma, in which nothing made sense, she teleported into and out of random television shows for no apparent reason, and she had fans.

The coma seemed a more likely explanation. And since she could exercise no control over herself while in a coma, she concluded from her medical knowledge gained from many faithful seasons of ER, she would just have to ride this coma-induced state of senseless life until it ended of its own accord.

Lizzy laughed at the absurdity of a reality television coma. At least she hadn’t lost her sense of cynical humor.

Thinking of ER, Lizzy remembered that she always taped Thursday night television, in case she ever was away from home to miss her favorite Thursday night television shows. In fact, she usually had two TV sets taping shows, since Thursday night was the mecca of good TV viewing, with ‘must see’ shows on more than one channel at the same time. Since she was now finding herself home alone on a Friday night, and preferred to keep it that way for the time being, she could settle in for a great night of Thursday night TV, to take the place of bad Friday night programming.

After all, she had apparently been in L.A. flirting with the Bachelor last night, which had obviously caused her to miss her favorite night of television.

Lizzy collected her VCR tapes, grabbed her comfy couch blanket, and arranged herself in her best television viewing position on the couch. She sat back up and decided to move the coffee table away from the couch a few inches, just in case she had another free-falling episode from dozing off on the couch. Her head had stopped hurting, but she thought it would be a good idea to play it safe by moving the table out of head-banging range.

Sinking into the comfort of her couch cushions, Lizzy fired up the VCR and began with a longstanding favorite reality show, Survivor. She had been a fan of Survivor since the first season. And even though some of the sequential seasons had not proven to be as enticing or engaging as the original, she still watched it faithfully as a loyal follower of one of the first, and one of the best reality television shows. Survivor was a pioneer for reality TV, and Lizzy had great respect for that.

Plus, Jeff Probst is cute.

As the Survivor theme song sang out through the speakers in her television set, Lizzy was immediately sent into a state of peaceful bliss. Once again, TV brought comfort and familiarity. Even if her world was in total chaos, she could always trust TV to make sense of things. She knew when her favorite shows were on the schedule, and they always appeared on her screen, right on schedule. No questions. Rarely any changes. She knew what to expect and when to expect it, and like a faithful pet or clingy relative, TV always delivered what it promised, just when she needed it most.

It was constant. It was timely. It was dependable. It was linear.

Television shows had a start and a finish, and everything in between worked out in a way that made sense. They took Lizzy to far away places with new people and new circumstances. They told fascinating stories of laughter, tears, danger, intrigue, and history. It was life as Lizzy wanted it to be, possibly even the life she didn’t have, and she tried her best not to miss a single minute of it.

Halfway through the episode of Survivor, Lizzy realized she had seriously neglected her best friend this week. She suddenly felt very guilty. Of course, it had been a crazy week. But still, Lizzy owed it to Blue Bell to spend some time with her tonight. And what better opportunity than while watching an episode of Survivor, taunting the castaways on screen with the sweet taste of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream.

Lizzy paused the tape, and scooted into the kitchen to retrieve Blue Bell from the freezer. “Sorry, my friend,” she said as she pried the lid off of the icy cold bucket. “It’s been a hectic week. But oh, how I’ve missed you. . .”

She returned to the couch, Blue Bell in tow, and hit ‘play’ on the remote to resume her Survivor viewing. Together, she and Blue Bell watched the castaways romp around their island location, searching for food, and struggling through the Immunity Challenge for the week. Lizzy sat in suspense as the tribe members voted during Tribal Council. Who would be sent home? She thought she knew, but in the final minutes of the episode she was surprised when one of the stronger players was sent home by the remaining tribe members.

“Wow,” she said to Blue Bell. “I thought he would win the whole thing.” Blue Bell agreed.

Before Lizzy continued her TV night with the other shows she’d taped, she returned Blue Bell to the freezer. No need to overdo it, she told herself.

She stayed up late into the evening, watching taped shows and enjoying every minute of it. The big fun of catching up on TV was to do it all at once, no matter how late she had to stay up. And since tomorrow was Saturday, she could stay up as late as she wanted, then sleep as late as she could. It was a perfect night for a TV All-Nighter.

When the last of her taped shows ran the final credits, she snapped off the TV, then balled up her blanket in the chair that she still wasn’t use to seeing in its new spot. She carefully sidestepped the attack coffee table, and made her way to the bedroom to crawl into bed. Slipping into her favorite flannel pajamas, she suddenly remembered that she had gone all day without a shower. She shrugged and snuggled into her soft, comfy bed. Too late for a shower now.

The best part of a TV All-Nighter was that by the time she went to bed, she could justify that it was too late to take a moment to brush her teeth. It was a moment of rebellion, protesting that Lizzy’s mom had trained her as a youngster to never go to bed without brushing her teeth. But Lizzy reasoned that after midnight, tooth brushing was allowed to be skipped as part of her nightly routine. Technically it was morning, and she would consider her morning tooth-brushing regimen to be sufficient tooth brushing at that time.

She smiled as she buried her head into her pillow, eyes growing heavy, tongue running over her fuzzy, ice cream-covered teeth.

Take that, Mom.

Something was tickling Lizzy’s nose. While she tried to ignore tickle in an effort to stay in sleep-mode, she suddenly felt something crawling over her legs, too. She kicked her legs and swung her arm out to swat away whatever was bugging her.

“Ow!” Lizzy heard a very deep male’s voice yell close beside her, and as her arm swung out to swat whatever was tickling her nose, she noticed she had come in contact with what felt like another body laying close by.

Lizzy sat up and jerked her arm back close to her own body.

“Dangit, Lizzy. What’s wrong with you? That hurt.” The deep voice came from a large man lying curled up beside Lizzy. A man, she quickly assessed, that she had never seen before. He was very dirty, and he was not wearing a shirt. Lizzy also quickly noticed that he had a very bad smell about him.

Something crawled over Lizzy’s leg again and she quickly looked down to see a small lizard scurrying across her ankle. She jumped up, stomped her feet, and swatted her arms again. Something was buzzing around her head.

It was light outside, but she could tell it was still early in the morning. She stared down at the large man lying nearby, who had rolled over onto his other side and seemed to be trying to go back to sleep. A few feet away, another person lay curled into a tight ball. A woman, Lizzy guessed. But it was hard to tell. The person seemed to be wrapped up in a tarp of some sort.

Back to the realization that it was light outside, as opposed to being inside where she normally woke up, Lizzy noticed she was standing on sand. Overhead were long pieces of what probably used to be trees, covered with large leaves of some sort. The trees were sticking out of the ground, forming a very crude shelter. Somehow, the leaves and former trees seemed to stay together and upright, even though it was hard to tell exactly how that was happening. Lizzy quickly stepped out from underneath the trees and leaves, fearing this probably wasn’t the most stable structure for her to be standing under.

She looked around outside the ‘shelter’ and noticed a large bonfire roaring several yards away. Around it sat four more people, quietly chatting and trying to stay warm near the flames. The sun reflected off of the water, which was lapping lazily at the edge of a beach close by. It was cold, but she seemed to be in a tropical climate filled with large trees and plenty of green vegetation.

As beautiful as the scene was before her, Lizzy was absolutely, one hundred percent shocked to have awakened wherever she was.

Lizzy couldn’t even speak.

She turned back towards the shelter, wondering if she should just lay back down and hope this was the worst of the horrible nightmares she vaguely remembered having lately. But the snores coming from the large stinky man quickly forced her to think of another option. She had no desire to be in close quarters with that, at the moment.

Lizzy looked back towards the bonfire, and noticed that one of the people sitting at the fire was waving her over. Well, she was waving, at least. Lizzy assumed the person was waving at her, and this person expected to see Lizzy there at that moment. Lizzy certainly had never expected to be standing there. Ever. But apparently this was so far making sense to the other people she saw around her.

Lizzy stumbled over to the fire, noticing she wasn’t wearing shoes with her flannel pajamas. Sand sifted in between her toes and caught around the bottom edge of her pajama bottoms. Great, she thought. I’m ruining my favorite set of pj’s.
She approached the fire and sat down on a wooden crate next to the girl who had waved her over. She was glad to be at the fire because she was instantly warmer.

The waving girl spoke without looking at Lizzy. “Lizzy, I thought you were crazy to bring flannel pj’s out here on a dessert island as your luxury item,” the girl said in a whispered, yet still distinguishably unkind voice. “But I have to say after having been out here for twenty-two days, I’ve been tempted more than once to steal your pj’s so I can stay warm at night.” The girl continued warming her hands by the fire.

Lizzy didn’t say anything. She didn’t quite know how to respond to that, and she still wasn’t sure what was going on or where she was. Wearing flannel pajamas on a dessert island while sitting around a fire with total strangers? This was definitely the most bizarre situation she had ever been in.

“I think,” she said aloud. Accidentally. She thought this had to be the most bizarre situation she’d ever been in, but didn’t feel quite sure about that. And she hadn’t meant to finish her thought out loud.

A very skinny, very scruffy guy looked across the fire at Lizzy. “You think what,” he said, in a not-very-kind tone of voice.

“Uh, I think . . . I slept okay,” she finished lamely, caught off guard by the sound of her own voice.

“Well, congrats. You’d be the only one,” the guy said with tremendous amounts of patronization. He stared into the fire.

Lizzy felt uncomfortable. She seemed to be among a group of people who didn’t like her very much, but she could have sworn she had just been at home in her soft, clean bed, where flannel pajamas were appropriate, and where no one ever tried to steal them. Had she really been here twenty-two days like the girl had said? Were they all stranded on this island? Was it a shipwreck? A cruise gone bad? A poorly planned vacation?

A late night Blue Bell ice cream-induced nightmare? That had to be it. Lizzy swore then and there to never eat Blue Bell late at night again.

The sun had risen higher, and the landscape around the camp was much brighter. Lizzy could see more of her surroundings. She noticed a pot and a pan sitting near the fire. Torches. And a red flag tied to a tree, waving in the breeze. It had a symbol and a name written on it.

And in the middle of the flag, proudly on display was something very familiar to Lizzy: the Survivor emblem.
Lizzy jumped up from the crate, knocking it over.

“Dude, you’ll want to conserve your energy for the challenge later today. Calm down.” This came from the third person sitting at the fire, a heavily tattooed, young-ish guy who spoke as though he might be stoned, despite having apparently been stranded on an island for the past twenty-two days, away from substances on which one could get stoned.

“Yeah. You’re right,” Lizzy fumbled. “Um, I think I’ll just take a slow walk down the beach for a minute.” She needed a moment away from the stinky people to clear her head, and her nostrils. She needed to think for a minute.

“Don’t let the rattle snakes get you. They like to hide in the sand early in the morning . . . “ Stoned Guy trailed off into an evil laugh. But the laugh apparently tired him out, because he stopped his laugh quicker than would have been necessary for the desired ‘creep out’ effect, and he took a deep breath, growing quiet.

Lizzy looked at the group and decided to risk the rattlesnakes over staying there with the Fireside People. She turned and carefully stumbled onto the beach, wary of anything moving in the sand.

Lizzy wandered slowly down the beach, careful to keep in view of the other people on the beach. She didn’t want to wander off too far, getting lost in the jungle, or being washed away in the tide that came and went around her feet.

“So,” she said to herself as she stopped to look out into what seemed to be a vast ocean, “am I now supposed to believe that I am on Survivor? Trapped on this island with a bunch of stinky, hairy people? I mean, I know Survivor is one of my favorite shows, but I had no idea the stench was this bad.”

The random jumping from reality television show to reality television show was ridiculous enough, in and of itself. But if this had to be the way things were until Lizzy could find out what was going on and put a stop to it, surely the mastermind behind the whole bad trip could have let her stay with the mansions and the good food and the nice clothes. And the sweet smells of clean people. Sticking her out here with people who hadn’t showered for a few weeks was just plain cruel.

Lizzy noticed that the stench she was trying to escape hadn’t quite gone away. Neither had the sense that she was being followed and watched, a feeling she’d felt since she first stepped away from the Fireside People.

Great, she thought. Not only am I with stinky people, I am stinky people. And, she noticed her teeth felt even fuzzier and stickier than before she’d gone to bed without brushing. She vowed never to go to sleep without brushing again. Even in a jungle or a beach or wherever in the world she was at the moment.

She paused to take a deep breath of sea air, and to look around. As she turned back towards the shelter and the fire, she suddenly saw the cameras. Four of them. One camera person had followed behind her down the beach, the other three camera people were spread out around the shelter area. All cameras were pointed at various people in the group. Contrary to her wishes to be alone for a few minutes, Lizzy seem to have successfully drawn a lot of camera attention to herself by trying to take a moment away from the others.

Lizzy stared at the camera. The camera stared back at Lizzy.

She turned and headed back towards the fire. She had seen all she needed to see from her stroll down the beach, and she realized the answers to her on-going situation were not out there in the ocean, or on the beach in the sand.

Plus, she was hungry. Very, very hungry. But, for some reason, as she headed back to be with the others milling around in a group of what must be the last of the tribe, being hungry seemed normal. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a full meal. She’d been hungry for days. Rations of rice and fish just didn’t fill her up when it came to a day full of hard manual labor and tribal challenges.

Mmmm, she thought. It sure would be nice to have a bagel right about now. Somehow, it felt like to Lizzy that bagels were a very distant memory.

When she got back to the fire, she saw that people had begun stirring from their slumber and pensive places at the fire. People were a buzz and doing things. Lizzy noticed the weather had warmed up, so she cautiously removed her flannel pj’s to find she was wearing shorts and a t-shirt underneath. Once dressed for a day of island adventure, she joined in the morning activities. After all, if she’d learned anything during her twenty-two days on this island, the quickest way to get voted off is to get caught slacking off when there is work to be done.

After everyone had a tiny portion of rice for breakfast, it was decided that it was Lizzy’s turn to get water from the water hole. She volunteered the large, stinky, shirtless man, whom she had rudely awakened with an elbow to the ribs this morning, to be her water-fetching partner. The other members of the tribe called him Lou. Lizzy called him Lou, too.

Lou was one of two older people left in the tribe. Late forties, heavy, with a wrinkled face that made him look a lot older than he probably was. His balding head was sunburned, and even though he probably usually kept what little hair he had short, during his time on the island it had grown long enough to be a matted mess of curly fuzz. His beard was nearly completely grown in, thick and dirty. Lou was not an attractive man, but he was charming enough to have made it to the end stages of the game, and he was strong enough to dominate many of the challenges.

Lou begrudgingly obliged to help Lizzy hike out to the water hole. He still seemed a little peeved about Lizzy’s morning punch in the gut. But he grabbed one of the water jugs and followed Lizzy deep into the jungle, making their way according a crude, dirty, well-worn map on parchment paper.

Lizzy didn’t really need the map. She’d been there many times throughout her twenty-two days on the island. She had the path memorized by now. In fact, she had considered the idea of accidentally ‘losing’ the map in the jungle on one of her treks to the watering hole. If she was one of the only tribe members who knew how to get to the watering hole, her value would increase tremendously, and she would possibly be guaranteed a longer run in the game.

Too bad she couldn’t carry the heavy water jugs by herself, she thought as she and Lou stumbled single file through the narrow path cut in the thick jungle brush. If she could carry the water herself, she would have no use for Lou, and she would then be able to keep the water hole location a bigger secret without him. Lizzy could convince the other tribe members to vote Lou off, since he was one of the remaining big threats of the game, and she would then be in control until the end.

When Lizzy and Lou made it back to the shelter at the beach with two jugs full of water, the other tribe members told them they had received Tree Mail, and they needed to hurry off to the Reward Challenge for the day. The group gathered what they would need for a walk around the island, and headed off in the direction of the challenge.

As the group entered a clearing among the trees deep in a forest, Lizzy looked up to see none other than a smiling, dimply-faced Jeff Probst. Lizzy wasn’t surprised to see him, which for a minute seemed odd, but then she remembered she sees him everyday. He stood to the side of a table, and waited patiently for the group to assemble in an area marked off for them. There were tree stumps lined in two rows, and each tribe member took a seat on one of the stumps.

Wow, Lizzy swooned. No matter how many of these challenges they came to, no matter how many times she got to see him out here in the wild, Lizzy thought Jeff Probst was always cuter than the last time she saw him. He looks great in jungle lighting.

He was definitely much cuter in person than he was when she used to watch him on TV, wishing she could someday be on the show to meet him in person.

“Survivors. Good morning.” Jeff began. He smiled again at them in their sorry state of dirty clothes, haggard looks, red eyes, mosquito bitten limbs, and hunger pained faces. “I see you have all survived your first night as one new tribe. Well done. Today’s Reward Challenge will be played for the first time as individuals. You are no longer playing for the group, you are playing for yourselves.” He paused for dramatic affect. “Want to see what you’re playing for today?”
The tribe members nodded a solemn, weak, but excited nod.

Jeff continued, with an even bigger, cuter grin on his face. “Well, you all look like you could use a good meal to boost your strength and your spirits. So the winner of today’s Reward Challenge will be treated to a pizza party this afternoon. We’ll pick you up in a boat and take you to a secluded place where you will find a buffet assortment of all the pizza you can eat.”

The tribe members went wild. Well, wild in a too-weak-to-exert-much-energy sort of way. Lizzy’s favorite food group was pizza. She had to win this challenge!

“Well, I take that response as indication that pizza is good news.” Jeff said, with a fabulous twinkle in his eyes.

“Of course,” he went on, “If you still want to eat pizza this afternoon, then pizza is a good thing. But first, you must get through this.” With a dramatic gesture, Jeff reached over to the table and quickly pulled back a large sheet that had been covering the table. There, now on display for the tribe members to gawk at, was a variety of jungle delicacies: raw things, larvae-type things, bugs, crawling things, animal body parts, you name it.

They all knew it was coming, but they were still shocked and disgusted at first glance of the array of ‘delicacies’ on the table. Lizzy had a sensitive stomach, but after making it this far in the game and with pizza at stake, she would single-handedly eat everything on the table if she had to.

The challenge began with Jeff preparing Jungle Shish-k-bobs at his whim. Each tribe member took a turn trying to choke down whatever was served on a stick. Eventually, it came down to Lizzy and a young, petite girl named Susie. She was the one remaining tribe member who had made it this far on her looks and ability to lose her top at the most opportune camera times. Her luxury item for the island was nail polish. She was pleasant, yet annoying, and seemed to be able to hold down the disgusting foods with surprising ease.

For the last round, Lizzy and Susie had to consume a Mega-Bob: one of everything on the table, on a stick. Whoever cleared the stick first won the pizza feast. The two girls dove in with much vigor, but Lizzy was soon overwhelmed by the texture of several items on the ‘bob’. At the last second, she paused to collect herself, allowing Susie the opportunity she needed to swallow the last octopus eyeball completely whole.

With a triumphant squeal, she thrust the empty skewer into the air, and Jeff proclaimed Susie the winner of the challenge. Susie shot her other fist into the air, jumped up and down, and successfully caused her top to fly off in victory.
The cameras caught everything.

Disappointed, Lizzy put down what was left on her ‘bob’, waited for Susie to get her top back in place, and then she congratulated Susie on a job well done. Who would have thought such a petite, fragile, girly-girl could out-eat a mostly starved Lizzy? Especially when pizza was at stake? Lizzy couldn’t believe it.

That pizza would have given her the will to continue to the end of the game. Now, all she felt like doing was throwing up whatever was still crawling down her throat.

“Susie,” Jeff said for the cameras. “After you get back to camp, a boat will arrive to take you to your pizza feast. But, it’s no fun to eat alone. If you like, you can choose one other tribe member to be your guest at the pizza feast. Go ahead and pick someone now.”

Susie pretended like this was a big deal and a tough decision. Lizzy tried to look like a gracious loser, hoping Susie would choose her to enjoy the pizza with her. But even truly being dumber than she appeared on screen, Susie made the wisest choice considering the situation. She chose Lou as her pizza feast partner, unknowingly stumbling onto an alliance that, if handled correctly, could ensure her a ride to the end of the show.

Lizzy would go home hungry this afternoon.

The group headed back to camp. Shortly after their arrival, a boat appeared to whisk Susie and Lou away to pizza heaven. Lizzy and the other tribe members watched in sadness as the boat disappeared into the waves. They rummaged around in the camp, locating the last can of beans, and a coconut.

Their lunch was served.

Susie and Lou made it back just in time that afternoon for the tribe to leave the camp again for the Immunity Challenge. Man, Lizzy thought, this is a long day. Do we always do this much stuff in one day? Her malnourished brain couldn’t quite remember, but today seemed like a super busy twenty-four hours on Survivor Island.

Once they arrived at a stretch of beach on the other side of the island, Jeff explained the Immunity Challenge. Lizzy wasn’t quite sure she understood the whole thing, but it had something to do with rope, and swimming, and giant puzzle pieces. Whatever needed to be done, she was ready to do it.

Lizzy gave it her best effort, but sadly could not muster enough strength to not win the Immunity Challenge. She blamed the lack of pizza in her stomach. Big Lou dominated the physical challenge, and earned immunity for Tribal Council that evening. The rest of the tribe congratulated him, even though they each secretly knew that any one of them could be going home that night.

Lizzy was sad. She was miserable on this island, but she wasn’t ready to go home, yet. She wanted to win. As the group headed back to camp after the challenge, Lizzy thought about the voting for that night. Even after discussing some options with the other tribe members, she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t going to be voted off that evening.

Nervously, the group headed to tribal council, taking their seats on the logs surrounding a fire pit. Jeff Probst absolutely radiated in the glow of the fire, as he talked about fire being life and the events of the day. Finally, it was time to vote. Lizzy walked carefully to the voting area, tediously spelling out Susie’s name on the card. If for no other reason, Lizzy wanted Susie off of the island because she couldn’t stand to see Susie’s bouncy bare chest one more time.

“I’ll go tally the votes,” Jeff said, as he jaunted off in the cutest way to grab the bucket containing the votes. Oh, how I do like to watch him walk away, Lizzy sighed.

The tribe members held their breath as Jeff read the votes. One vote, Lizzy. Two votes, Susie. Two votes, Neal.
Wait, who voted for me? Lizzy was distracted.

“The next member voted out of the tribe is, “Jeff paused for dramatic camera effect, “Neal. Neal bring me your torch, it’s time for you to go.”

Stoned Tattoo Guy stood up, grabbed his torch, and lumbered over to where Jeff stood. “Neal, the tribe has spoken,” Jeff said as he put out the flame on Neal’s torch. Neal gave the group a crooked, ‘dude’-ish thumbs up and walked down the path leading off of the island forever.

Seriously, who voted for me? Lizzy was stunned. She eyeballed the other members of the tribe as she gathered her torch and followed the rest of the group back to camp. No one spoke. They silently took care of the fire for the evening, then laid down lined up side by side on the floor of the shelter to get some sleep. Lizzy slipped her flannel pajamas over her shorts and tattered t-shirt, and she fell into place among the other tribe members underneath the shelter.

It was quiet. Lizzy felt something crawl over her legs. Something was tickling her nose. She reached out to swat into the air, brushing away whatever was buzzing around her face.

“Ow!” she heard in a muffled voice coming from the large body next to her.

“Sorry, Lou,” she said, and rolled over, trying to fall asleep on the hard, cold floor.

“Thank goodness for my flannel pj’s,” she muttered to herself. At least she would stay a little warmer than the others, and after a night of some sleep, she would be better focused on finding out who voted for her tonight.

Lizzy could hear birds chirping outside, but she almost didn’t want to open her eyes. She was afraid of what she would see when she woke up. Was she still out in the wild with the chirping birds? Or would this be another morning that she would wake up again in her bed, hearing birds chirp outside the window of her house.

Lizzy slowly pulled the covers back from her head, and groaned. She was underneath covers, which strangely were her own covers and not tree leaves or a boat sail.

She was home in her own bed again.

Lizzy rolled over, reluctant to get out of bed. She knew what would happen. She would wander around her house all day, trying to figure out what had happened. But she wouldn’t be able to find any answers before going back to bed and waking up somewhere else tomorrow.

What day is tomorrow, anyway? What day is today? Lizzy had lost all track of the days by now.

She lay in bed for a few more minutes before she decided she couldn’t wait any longer to go to the bathroom. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and crumpled out the bed into a standing position.

Lizzy made her way into the bathroom and decided to go ahead and shower while she was in there. She stripped out of her flannel pajamas, noticing that they could probably stand to be washed since she wasn’t sure how long it had actually been since her last shower.

Lizzy showered for a long time, hoping to wash away the foggy feeling stuck in her head. When the water turned cold, she finally turned off the faucet and ventured out of the safe walls of her shower.

As she dried off with a towel and dressed herself in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, she realized she was hungry. Very hungry. Almost like she hadn’t eaten much in a day or so.

She made her way into the kitchen and after looking through the refrigerator and the pantry, she discovered she really didn’t have any food to eat. She found some rice, but she decided that didn’t sound very good for some reason.

“Great. Now I have to go to the grocery store.”

Or, she thought, I could order a pizza. Pizza did sound really good right about then. Even at ten o’clock in the morning.
She looked through her pizza coupons and called the pizza delivery place, ordering the biggest, yummiest pizza she could possibly order. It was their first order of the day. It would be there in thirty minutes. Lizzy could hardly wait.

She opened the blinds covering the windows on the back of her house, to let the sun in through the window. It was a beautiful day outside. Nice and quiet and peaceful.

Her usual Sunday ritual was to read the paper in the morning. Lizzy wandered through the house to the front door, to see if the paper was there. She opened the door and stepped outside into the sunlight. The Sunday newspaper was waiting for her a few steps away on the front walk to her porch.

Lizzy took a few steps out from the door, and suddenly noticed several people milling about across the street. She assumed they were people gathering for lunch at her neighbor’s house, so she bent down to pick up the newspaper, ignoring the people across the street.

As she stood upright again, the people suddenly turned towards her and became very excited. Lizzy seemed to have unintentionally attracted their attention. They had cameras, which they used to begin furiously snapping pictures in the direction of her house. Why are they taking pictures of my house? Lizzy immediately didn’t like this.

Suddenly, more people appeared from behind bushes and trees, all clamoring to get cameras pointed in Lizzy’s direction. She suddenly felt very self-conscious, remembering that she hadn’t done her hair and makeup after her shower earlier. But why did that matter? Why were these people taking her picture?

“Lizzy! Lizzy! Over here!” A young guy with a large camera was begging for her attention to her right and from the sidewalk. Other people were calling her name and pointing a variety of cameras at her. Some people were taking photographs, others were shooting video. Several people were asking questions, begging for answers from Lizzy.

All Lizzy could do was stare at the chaos before her in the street. Her quiet street, in her quiet neighborhood. Had these people been waiting for her to come out of the house this morning? What on earth for?

Lizzy took a few steps backwards towards her front door, still staring at the scene before her. She was very confused. Even for a confusing week, this was an extremely confusing display for her to witness in front of her very own house. She quickly judged that the number of people currently in front of her house far exceeded the number of people she actually knew in her life. So it made no sense to Lizzy that this throng of complete strangers seemed more fascinated with her than people she actually knew.

None of Lizzy’s friends ever waited outside her house to get a picture of her, or ask her any questions. These strange unidentified people must think she is the coolest person on the planet!

Lizzy hesitated a moment before ducking back inside her house. The crowd continued to take pictures and fire questions at her, slowly closing in on her as they moved in closer. Lizzy tried to pick out a few of the questions from the chatter.

“Lizzy, can you tell us who won Survivor?”
“Lizzy, what’s next for you?”
“Lizzy, how does it feel to have been the first person to be on more than one reality television show in the same season?”
“Lizzy, what’s your favorite kind of pizza?”
“Lizzy, is it true you and Jeff Probst had an affair on the island?”

That last question caught Lizzy’s attention.

“Uh. . . “ she said, not sure of how to respond to such a barrage of bizarre questions. She frantically looked over the crown, seeing interested faces and microphones pointed right back at her.

“Uh, can’t talk now,” she said, and she quickly grabbed her newspaper, pulled open the front screen door, and bolted back inside the house, slamming the front door behind her. She locked the door and stopped for a minute to catch her breath. She was thankful for the silence, even though she could still hear people calling to her outside on her front lawn.

Could that really have been the media and the paparazzi in her front yard, trying to get pictures and interviews with her? Lizzy? The most anonymous face on the planet? As much as she always dreamed of star attention, Lizzy suddenly understood why she much preferred the life of a wallflower. The few minutes of spotlight she had just experienced was enough to last her a lifetime.

Lizzy could still hear the sound of a camera clicking, and she peered around the corner of her living room to spot a photographer snapping her picture through the window of her back door, which she had earlier uncovered to let some light in the house.

“Holy cow!” she said, dropping the newspaper and making a run for the back door. “Get out of my yard!” she yelled, hurriedly pulling the blinds closed again.

Lizzy paused to listen, but couldn’t tell if the person was gone, yet. She finished her plea for the person to leave the yard by yelling, “I’m going to call the police!” hoping she sounded convincing. She looked over to the phone and noticed that even if she was going to grab the phone and call the police, the phone was still unplugged.

When she decided she was definitely alone, with no sneaky photographers trying to get a picture through her closed blinds or doors, Lizzy decided to plug in her phone and call the one person who had experienced some of this with Lizzy already: her mom. Lizzy needed to talk to someone about what was going on, and even though her mom had seemed mostly crazy a day or so before, she seemed to be the one person that Lizzy felt safe with for now.

She walked over to the phone, plugged it into the wall, and was once again rewarded with a sudden, very loud ring. Lizzy started and took a step back from the noise-making phone.

“Why must it do that every time I plug it in??” she commented, wishing things didn’t keep scaring her this week. She’d had enough surprises without the phone chiming in with the shocks, too.

She hesitated once again, then took a deep breath and answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is Mona from the David Letterman show. I’m calling to confirm a slot on the show for tomorrow evening with Lizzy Talbot? Is her manager available?”

Nothing about the sentences Lizzy just heard on the phone made any sense to Lizzy at all.

“Manager?” she said, not sure what to do.

“Yes, I need to speak to Miss Talbot’s manager, or whoever is handling her Letterman appearance tomorrow. Right away, if you please. I still need to call Britney Spears’ camp to confirm her as the musical guest for tomorrow, as well. If we can’t get Lizzy and Britney on the same show, we may have to reschedule for another day.”

Just then the doorbell rang. What now?

“Um, can you hold on for just a minute? Let me put you on hold for Lizzy’s manager.” She couldn’t think of anything better to say or do, so she put the phone down on the table, as if ‘on-hold’.

She walked across the living room to the front door, fully prepared to yell at whichever reporter had been so brazen as to approach her door and ring the bell. But when she looked through the peephole, she only saw her mother standing on the front porch, waiting impatiently.

Lizzy unlocked the door and opened it a crack. “Mom! Get in here!” she whispered, reaching out and grabbing her mom by the arm, pulling her into the house.

“Lizzy! What are you doing? Let go of my arm!” Lizzy’s mom jerked her arm out of Lizzy’s hand and straightened her clothes.

“Mom, I’m so glad you’re here! I was just about to call you!” Lizzy quickly shut the door again and locked them both safely inside the house. “I went out to get the paper this morning and there were all these people in the street and in my yard, taking my picture and yelling questions at me. Then the phone rang and someone was trying to confirm my spot on David Letterman, and . . . “

Lizzy’s mom stopped straightening her clothes. “Oh, was it Mona? Did she call here? I’ve been trying to reach her all morning.”

Lizzy stared at her mom. “Um, what?”

Lizzy’s mom stared back at Lizzy. “Mona, dear. From the David Letterman Show. We’re trying to confirm that you are booked on the show tomorrow night, but we keep playing phone tag with each other. Did she leave a number? I’ll call her back right now. I hope they got Britney lined up, too. I’d like to have a word with that girl about her skimpy clothes!”

Lizzy pointed to the phone on the table, not sure how her mom and Mona could possibly be related to this whole bizarre scenario. “Actually, Mona is on-hold right now . . . “

Lizzy’s mom sprang to life. “What?? Why didn’t you say so? Lizzy, honestly. You act as though these media appearances are not important at all!” She hurried over to the phone and picked it up.

“Mona! Hello! It’s Penny Talbot, Lizzy’s manager. So glad I we finally got ahold of each other!”

Lizzy didn’t quite know what to make of this new development. Her mom was her manager? Since when? And since when did she even need a manager?

Lizzy plopped down in the chair, which had somehow managed to stay in the same corner for what she thought might be several days now, and tuned out her mother’s excited discussion on the phone with Mona.

This was all entirely too much.

Penny Talbot hung up the phone. She turned to Lizzy with a great smile of satisfaction.

“There,” she said. “That’s taken care of. You are set for David Letterman tomorrow. We have to be at the studio at eleven a.m. Mona will call us back if Britney can’t make it. We’ll probably have to reschedule if she cancels, but we should be able to fit that in around Jay Leno next week.”

Lizzy didn’t say anything. She peeked between the slats of the blinds covering her front window. She saw a few people milling around, across the street. Where had all those people gone, she wondered.

“Mom, I don’t have any food in the house,” she said absently. At that moment the doorbell rang again, and Lizzy remembered she’d ordered a pizza.

“Who could that be, dear? I told those people out front to call and ask for an interview like everyone else. They’d better not be ringing your doorbell.”

Lizzy watched as Penny walked over to the door to take care of the doorbell-ringing situation. Maybe having a manager was actually a good thing, Lizzy mused tiredly from her perch in the chair.

Penny opened the door and found the pizza guy standing there with a hot, delicious pizza.

“Oh. Lizzy did you order a pizza? I need ten dollars and eighty three cents for the pizza guy.” Wait, check that, Lizzy thought as she stood up to grab her wallet, wondering why her mom didn’t just give the pizza guy some money. Maybe the manager thing wasn’t going to be very beneficial after all.

“Here you go,” she said to the pizza guy, shoving some money at him and quickly grabbing the pizza and shutting the door in his face. Was that rude? She hoped not. She just didn’t want to get caught on film paying for a pizza. The tabloids could probably turn that into some sort of love affair with the pizza guy.

She took the pizza into the kitchen, grabbed a plate, and picked up two slices of warm pizza. Whatever other bizarre things might happen today, she felt certain she could handle it as long as she had pizza.

“Help yourself, mom,” she said, as Penny seemed to wait in the other room for Lizzy to bring her a slice of pizza. Weren’t managers supposed to help the people they manage? Not the other way around?

Lizzy took a seat again in the chair, munching lazily on her pizza. Pizza . . . good . . .

Penny joined Lizzy, careful not to sit on the new couch she’d bought for Lizzy when Lizzy had moved into the house. Penny chose a seat at the dining table across the room from Lizzy.

“I swear, Lizzy. Do you ever eat like a civilized person at the table? It’s what we bought this table for, you know.” Lizzy remembered that her mom had also bought the table for her dining room. Well, she never actually forgot. She’d just lost track of all the things her parents had helped her with over the years. They were generous people. Lizzy was mostly grateful for that.

Lizzy paused in between her two slices of pizza. “Mom?” she asked. “Why am I going on the David Letterman show tomorrow?”

Penny put down her slice of pizza and wiped her hands on a napkin. “What do you mean? Tomorrow is the only day we could do Letterman next week, since Leno insisted on having you for The Tonight Show on Wednesday. Your schedule is filling up quickly these days, my dear.”

Lizzy breathed an annoyed sigh. “No, mom. I mean, why am I going on the Letterman show at all? Why is anyone even interested in me?”

Penny shot Lizzy a quizzical look and fervently wiped her hands on her napkin this time. “Lizzy, sometimes I really wonder where your head is!” She got up from the table and walked over to the couch, leaving her un-eaten pizza behind on the table.

“Lizzy, you are the one who started all of this. I want you to remember that when you go on like this, questioning everything that’s happening so much these days. Remember your quest? That’s what started this whole run of events. You are very lucky that it’s turning out the way you wanted. You know? It really could be a complete disaster. But fortunately, your father and I are making sure that doesn’t happen.”

Lizzy wasn’t following Penny’s logic. “Quest?” she said, hoping for a better explanation of the current circumstances of nonsense for the past week.

Penny gave Lizzy one of those all-knowing ‘mom’ looks. “Yes, dear. Your quest. Your goal to be a reality TV superstar. You father and I always told you to make something of yourself. We knew you had the talent to become anything you wanted to be. We just always hoped it would be something normal, like a doctor, or a lawyer, or Johnny Roberts’ loving stay-at-home wife.”

Lizzy rolled her eyes.

“But,” Penny continued, “you decided you needed to make a career out of reality television instead of doing something normal. And who knew you’d actually be successful at it? Making your way onto so many shows in such a short amount of time! It’s unprecedented, and some would say it’s not even physically possible. But, our little Lizzy has done it anyway. I’m just thankful your father and I have supported you from the beginning. Who knows where you would have ended up if we weren’t here to manage your affairs!”

Whoa, wait a minute . . .

Lizzy responded slowly. “So . . . I’m going on David Letterman’s show to talk about my success of being on so many reality television shows lately . . . “

Penny gave Lizzy a playful pat on the knee. “Of course, dear. Why else? You are quite the phenomenon these days, you know. And of course, your father and I just couldn’t be prouder of you, even if this isn’t necessarily the route we hoped you would have taken to success.” Penny’s compliments weren’t quite always compliments, even though Lizzy knew her mom probably meant well.

Even though the explanation Lizzy just heard from her mom couldn’t possibly make sense in all reality, strangely it began to clear up some things for Lizzy. It was entirely not possible that she could be in this situation, when just a week ago she had been a normal working girl, unknown outside a circle of maybe twenty people. It was physically impossible that she could have been in so many reality situations within a week. It was literally impossible that the world didn’t find this the least bit odd at all. Yet today, she sat with her mom, planning a week of talk shows and interviews, simply because she had somehow stumbled into the world of reality television.

It just didn’t make sense. But Lizzy wasn’t sure she even cared anymore.

“Now,” Penny said, jumping up from the couch. “Let’s go pick out your outfit for Letterman tomorrow. Or should we go out and buy something new? Whatever you want, dear. But we want to make sure you look your best! Let’s go have a look in your closet.”

Lizzy didn’t move as Penny left the room and headed down the hall to the closet. She stayed in the chair and stared off into space.

What if it could be true, she wondered? What if she had somehow become famous, doing the impossible of landing on multiple reality television shows in one season? It hadn’t really been a ‘quest’ of hers, so much as a silly dream she’d had in the days not long ago when she had a job she didn’t like, and a life she was okay with, but not thrilled about. Sure, she’d made a habit of watching as many reality shows as she could stand, and she’d even tried out for a few of them. But she never realistically pursued the idea. It didn’t seem possible or logical to devote much time to the reality television idea.

But maybe, what if, perhaps . . . the idea had actually pursued her . . .

For the rest of the afternoon, Lizzy tried on every stitch of clothing in her possession for her mom’s approval. Lizzy didn’t protest. She knew it would be a lost cause to try to get out of Wardrobe World with her mom, so she begrudgingly put on and then took off every outfit she owned.

Finally, they settled on a clothing combination that satisfied them both: Lizzy’s desire to be comfortable, yet classy, and Penny’s desire for Lizzy to show less skin than Britney Spears would be showing on the same show. Neither of those objectives was hard to accomplish, considering Lizzy’s selection of clothing.

Penny and Lizzy discussed travel plans to be in New York for the show the next morning. Penny was frustrated with Lizzy when she admitted to her mom that she had completely forgotten the flight scheduled for late that evening, sending them on their way to New York.

“Honestly, Lizzy,” Penny said. “Do you ever pay attention to me? We just talked about this last night. I swear, I need to pin your schedule to your clothes.”

In a flurry, Lizzy and Penny packed a suitcase for the overnight trip. Just as they finished getting everything together, and Lizzy had changed into proper travel clothing (per Penny’s insistence), the doorbell rang again. It had grown dark outside. Lizzy wasn’t sure where the day had gone.

Penny answered the door, announcing that their ride was here to take them to the airport. Wow, Lizzy thought. That’s convenient. She hated driving to the airport, and hated when her mom drove to the airport even more than having to drive herself.

Lizzy made sure her house was locked, then wheeled her suitcase to the front door. Part of her wanted to sit back down in her chair and refuse to get involved in the ridiculousness of the situation. But, a bigger part of her had resigned to going with the flow. After all, whatever was going on right now might change again without warning. And when would be the next time she’d be booked on David Letterman’s show with Britney Spears? Never, if ever.

Even if it wasn’t real, it felt real enough for now. Lizzy decided to just follow her mom’s lead, and if nothing else, she would get Britney Spears’ autograph to show her friends later. They would totally get a kick out of that.

Lizzy stepped outside, wheeled her suitcase onto the porch, and locked the door behind her. She turned around and suddenly noticed an even bigger crowd of people with cameras in the street and around her house. Hadn’t they given up by now? Goodness, they were persistent.

Then Lizzy saw why the crowd had grown outside. In the street, parked directly in front of her house was a beautiful white limo.

Great, she thought. Her ‘ride to the airport’ was via a large, attention-getting limousine.

Lizzy looked over to the driveway and saw a man in a black suit and black driver’s hat lifting a suitcase out of her mom’s car.

“Lizzy, leave that for . . . what is your name, sir? Jeffrey. Leave your suitcase for Jeffrey, and get in the car. We’re running late!”

Lizzy watched the scene before her, noticing that now some of her neighbors had joined the mass of photographers sprawled throughout the street and neighboring yards.

“They so hate me,” she muttered to herself, hoping that her neighbors would forgive her once she and the limo had left for the airport. This whole mess was not her fault, but she couldn’t blame the neighbors for being annoyed with the shenanigans going on at the moment.

Lizzy left the suitcase on the porch and headed to the limo, per her mother’s instructions. As she neared the car, the group of people with cameras instantly swarmed in closer, snapping flashes in her face, trying to get as many pictures of her as possible before she got inside the limo.

Jeffrey hurried over to the limo and opened to door for her, shielding her and Penny as they climbed into the back of the limo. He shut the door, and Lizzy watched as he walked back to the porch, grabbed Lizzy’s suitcase, and took it behind the car, depositing it into the trunk of the limo. Lizzy could hear the crowd outside, screaming her name, begging her to roll down the window for another picture.

“Mom! This is insane!” Lizzy couldn’t believe this was taking place in front of her house. It was more like a ‘red carpet' frenzy, rather than a simple ride to the airport.

“Yes, dear. It’s insane. We’ll have to do something about these people loitering in front of your house all day, but for now we just have to get to the airport. We can’t miss our flight to New York!”

Jeffrey the driver climbed into the front seat of the car, and they were soon on their way to the airport. Lizzy sank back into the plush seat of the limo and tried not to think about what was going on. It was very late, she was very tired. . .
And she realized she hadn’t signed one autograph for any of the people in front of her house! Uh oh. People might start thinking she is rude and ungrateful . . .

They arrived at the airport, checked the luggage, and strangely they were then ushered to the gate on one of those special carts that Lizzy had never been privileged enough to ride on before.

“Mom, I thought these carts were for old people or handicapped people. Should we be on this?” Lizzy felt uncomfortable whizzing past everyone else in the terminal, when she was perfectly able to walk to the gate on her own.

“Lizzy, we’re fine. We should just make the flight.” Penny seemed unconcerned about the free ride on the airport cart.

“Oh, I didn’t pack anything to read,” Lizzy said more to herself than anyone else, as she rumbled through her carry-on bag looking for a stick of gum.

“Stop the cart!” Penny called out to the driver. He stopped the cart.

“Honey, run in there and buy some magazines. You have time. It’s a long flight, you need something to read.” Penny waited on the cart while she shoo-ed Lizzy into the magazine stand in the terminal.

Lizzy noticed people were watching her and whispering, so she quickly grabbed a few magazines without really noticing what they were. She paid for them, then hurried back onto the cart, to be quickly whisked on her way to the gate for their flight.

They said goodbye to the cart drive, after Lizzy gave him an autograph. He didn’t really know who she was, and he didn’t actually speak much English. But he could tell she was someone famous by the way other people looked at her, so he’d asked for an autograph in a few words of very broken English.

Lizzy and Penny were the last ones to board the flight, quickly finding their seats in first class.

“Wow.” Lizzy said. “This is nice.”

“Dear,” Penny whispered to Lizzy. “Don’t make a big deal. Act like you belong up here! You do belong!”

Lizzy rolled her eyes and settled in to her seat for the long flight to New York. She enjoyed flying, much more than driving. She was always able to relax on a plane, even able to get some good sleep on most occasions.

Lizzy took a first look at the magazines she’d bought in the terminal. People, Cosmo, and Entertainment Weekly. Excellent choices. Outdoor World? Well, at least it had pretty pictures.

She flipped open the People magazine and was greeted by her face staring back up at her. The caption read, “Lizzy Talbot, darling of reality television, waves to fans on the red carpet of the Teen Choice Awards show.”

Funny, Lizzy thought, I don’t remember being there. But I do look fabulous in those jeans!

“Hey, mom. Look.” She pointed out the picture to Penny.

“Nice, dear. That was so sweet of them to ask you to present an award. We should send them a thank you note.”

Penny pulled out her Palm Pilot and jotted down a note to send the Teen Choice Awards show a thank you note.

Lizzy noticed the guy across the aisle staring intently at her. She quickly turned her attention back to the magazine, and pretended she was alone on the plane.

After she read through most of the interesting articles, Lizzy reached down under the seat in front of her to find her carry-on bag. It was a deep bag, full of many things wasn’t quite sure she had put in there herself. She ruffled around in the bag again, this time looking for a pen so she could fill in the answers on the People magazine crossword puzzle. Her hand brushed across something soft.

“What’s this?” she asked, pulling out the item. Her flannel pajamas had somehow made it into her carry-on bag.

“Mom, did you put these in my bag?” she asked, offering the pajamas to Penny.

“Oh yes, dear. While you were closing your suitcase in the other room, I noticed you’d left your pajamas on the floor by your bathroom. So I just picked them up and put them in your bag. Can't forget something important like your pajamas!” Penny put her headphones back on, listening intently to the piped-in airplane music.

Well, it would be good to have her favorite flannel pj’s, Lizzy thought. She just wished she’d washed them, or grabbed a clean set of pj’s. Especially since now the whole first class section of the plane had seen her flannel pajamas. She tucked the pj’s back into the bag and tucked it underneath the seat again.

As she finished the People magazine and moved on to Entertainment Weekly, she noticed the cover story was a behind the scenes look at the last season of American Idol. The headline read, “Clay and Ruben - Behind the Idol: The true story of America’s favorite mis-matched winners.”

“This should be good,” Lizzy sighed, and scooted down in the oversized, first-class seat to enjoy the article. American Idol was another one of Lizzy’s favorite shows. This is the show she would love to try out for, if only she wasn’t too old to qualify for the show.

Even though she could barely carry a tune, Lizzy loved the idea of making it on the show as one of the truly bad auditions, the ones who are made of fun of in the first few episodes. Those people were the most memorable, anyway.
Of course, she also secretly wanted to win the whole show. Look at Kelly Clarkson now, Lizzy mused. She wouldn’t be “Miss Independent Woman” now without the big win on American Idol.

Lizzy became engrossed in the article, not noticing that she had fallen asleep before getting the whole scoop on Clay and Ruben, behind the idol.

“Lizzy! Come on! We’re going to be late for rehearsal!”

Lizzy awoke with a start, and fumbled around in the bed until she hit the floor. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Floors were hard.

“Lizzy, why do you always have to make us late?” A tall, blonde girl had entered the room and stood over Lizzy, who lay staring up at the girl from the floor. Lizzy realized once again she couldn’t quite recognize where she had woken up this morning.

“Come on, Lizzy. I’ll help you find something to wear.” The blonde girl was dressed cutely in a short skirt and a tight shirt. Casual, yet chic. She was tall, and very tan. Oddly tan, Lizzy noticed.

“I swear, Lizzy, what would you do without the rest of us here to get your butt in gear every morning? You may be able to sing, but that’s only part of the competition. To be a true idol, you have to have the whole package. And that means getting where you’re supposed to be on time.” The blonde girl rustled around in a closet, talking the entire time she was buried amongst the bulk of clothes hanging neatly from hangers.

Lizzy watched from her spot on the floor.

Then, Lizzy laughed. She laughed harder than she had in a long time. In fact, she laid out flat on the floor, and howled until she couldn’t breathe. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“What are you laughing at?” The blonde girl stopped matching outfit pieces and stared down at Lizzy.

Lizzy continued to laugh. She laughed so loudly that two more people came to the doorway from out in the hall, just to stare at Lizzy laughing uncontrollably on the floor. One of them spoke.

“What’s up with Lizzy?” asked a large guy with his hat on backwards. Critically placed on his head, and still backwards, incidentally. Almost like it had been meticulously placed to appear casually thrown on his head.

“I don’t know. She just started laughing like that. Maybe she hit her head on the floor when she fell out of bed.” The blonde girl walked over to Lizzy and stood over her again.

A young, skinny girl walked into the room from where she had also been standing in the doorway. “Has Lizzy lost her marbles? I’ve heard stories of contestants freaking out from the pressure. Maybe that’s what happened to Lizzy. She just can’t take it anymore.”

“Lizzy, stop it! The car will be here to get us in ten minutes! Get up!” The blonde girl reached down and tried to pull Lizzy into an upright sitting position.

Lizzy stopped laughing and tried to catch her breath.

“What is so funny?” The skinny girl looked at Lizzy with both concern and disgust on her face.

“Um. . .” Lizzy took a few deep breaths and tried to wipe the smile off of her face. “You wouldn’t get it even if I could tell you.” Lizzy grabbed for the edge of the bed to try and pull herself up into a standing position.

“Yep. Just what I thought. Lizzy has freaked out from the pressure. Should we call the show doctor?” The skinny girl asked this of the blonde girl. The skinny girl seemed to be somewhat naïve, as well as young. Apparently the blonde girl was the one to go to for answers.

“No, I’m fine. Really. I just need a moment in the bathroom.” Lizzy took a few steps towards the bathroom and shut the door behind her, leaving the three people who had witnessed her outburst of laughing very confused and staring at the back of the closed door.

Lizzy looked at herself in the mirror. She almost started laughing again. She took another deep breath to stop the impending laugh attack.

Her outburst on the floor had been caused by the realization of what had happened. Again. She wasn’t absolutely sure, but so far the brief few minutes she had been awake this morning had all the makings of a reality television adventure in the world of American Idol. She vaguely remembered being on a plane to somewhere. She must have fallen asleep, to wake up on American Idol.

Or had she been here from the beginning of the season? Was the plane a dream? Her memory was fuzzy, but she was pretty sure this was another reality television episode, not unlike the strange reality TV adventures she’d been having recently. It was all kind of running together at this point, but whatever the case, she would have to go along for the ride. And this time, Lizzy was excited about it. Whatever bizarre circumstances had landed her here, dude, she was on American Idol!

At least, she thought she was on American Idol, not having much information this early in the day.

She looked down and noticed she was wearing her flannel pajamas. Odd, she didn’t remember putting them on. But then again, she couldn’t really count on what she could or couldn’t remember any more these days. Her world changed as it pleased, and very little of it was actual reality anymore. For now, she would go with it. Gladly.

Ten minutes, Lizzy thought, just as she heard the voice of the blonde girl scream from the other side of the door, yelling, “Five minutes!”

Lizzy opened the bathroom door and stuck her head out into the room.

“Hey . . .” she started, unable to think of the blonde girl’s name. “Uh, where are those clothes you picked out for me?”

The blonde girl bounced off the bed, where she sat perched on the edge anxiously waiting for Lizzy to once again emerge from the bathroom. Lizzy really thought the girl had probably been sitting there staring at the bathroom door for the five minutes it had taken Lizzy to calm down in the bathroom.

“Here.” The blonde girl thrust a pair of cargo pants and a shiny, tight shirt at Lizzy. “We’ll do your hair in the car. Just get dressed and let’s go! They’ll yell at us again if we’re late!” She turned and headed towards the door of the bedroom. “I’ll make sure everyone else is in the car. Be downstairs in five minutes,” she called, her voice trailing down the hallway.

Lizzy didn’t notice what she was wearing until she was out of the flannel pajamas and into the outfit chosen for her by Blonde Girl. Amazingly, it was a fabulous outfit. Hip, yet somewhat classy. And definitely chic. Lizzy liked it. Lizzy always liked cargo pants.

She quickly brushed through her hair, looked around the bedroom for some shoes, and hurried out the door. She ran down the stairs and out the front door, to where she saw two Ford Expeditions waiting in the driveway. Someone was waving to her from the second car, so Lizzy headed that way and climbed into the backseat.

Lizzy looked at the other two faces in the car with her. “So,” she asked. “Do we have everybody?”

The blonde girl sitting next to her took the lead to answer the question. Lizzy decided she must be the ‘mom’ of the group, making sure everyone was where they needed to be, dressed, and accounted for. The girl couldn’t have been older than twenty or so. So far, she seemed surprisingly mature for that age, and even more surprisingly, not too annoying for a star-hopeful blonde girl.

“Yes, we’re all here. Everyone was ready, waiting on you. John, Trish, and Jorge are in the other car. It’s just us girls in here.” She smiled at Lizzy and the other girl, who was not the young, skinny girl. Lizzy made a mental note that by reason of deduction, Trish must be the name of the young, skinny girl, who had to be the lone girl riding in the other car with two guys.

Great, she thought to herself. Six people, one name down so far. Well, two names. Her own name, and Trish.

Lizzy noticed that none of the ‘contestants’ was driving the car. A chauffeur was driving them. Then Lizzy noticed the other person in the front seat was turned around backwards in the seat, facing the three girls in the backseat. He had a camera pointed directly at them.

Suddenly, Lizzy was very nervous about rehearsals for today. Each week throughout the competition, the song selection got harder, and the quality of singing got better and better. The other contestants were really pouring on the heat, and Lizzy felt pressure every week to practice hard, getting each of her songs just right to sing before the judges.

Oh man, the judges, Lizzy thought. She stared out the window and swallowed hard at the thought of going before the judges again later that night. Paula and Randy weren’t too bad, but Simon was always unpredictable. She liked Simon, but she was always worried he’d chew her out on national TV, and in front of her parents sitting in the audience.
Clearly remembering the names of the other two girls in the car, Lizzy noticed Lucy, the blonde girl, and Heather, a funked-out looking punk rock girl with purple hair and a nose piercing, were jabbering on a mile a minute. They were discussing the music theme for this week: Boy Bands.

Every week on American Idol, the contestants had to learn and practice a certain theme of music for the performance show. According to the chosen theme of the week, they would spend time rehearsing with a celebrity musician, crafting the songs into what the celebrity felt was a truly authentic performance. This week, the contestants would work with a star from one of the popular boy bands currently plaguing the airwaves. Lizzy couldn’t wait to see who she would get to spend time with this week.

The Expeditions pulled into the parking lot of the studio. All six contestants piled out of the cars and followed each other into the studio. The cameras captured everything on tape, including when Lucy got stuck in the car door, some of her blonde hair having blown back inside the car as she shut the door.

Lizzy followed the rest of the group through the halls of the studio, and into a large room with a piano. Scattered around the room were more camera people and microphones. There were also some official American Idol producer people in the room, barking orders and slapping make-up on the six contestants. After an initial flurry of activity upon their arrival, things began to settle down, and the contestants were introduced to the celebrity musician and judge for the week.

As Lizzy watched the door, she gasped as she saw a tall figure walk in the door. It was none other than, Joey Fatone, of N’Sync.

“Uh, who is that?” asked one of the guys.

Trish replied, nearly jumping out of her seat with excitement. “It’s Joey! From N’Sync! He’s my favorite!” She nearly cried as Joey Fatone walked over to the group and shook each contestant’s hand in greeting. As it turns out, Trish was the youngest of the remaining contestants, at the ripe young age of seventeen. She was the perfect age for boy band obsession.

“Hello. I’m Joey Fatone. You may remember me from such boy bands as N’Sync.” Joey Fatone was shorter in person that Lizzy would have expected. He smiled at the group as he explained who he was, and Lizzy noticed that his eyes were also droopier than they seemed on TV.

One by one, the contestants were ushered in and out of the room for the next several hours, as each contestant took his or her turn with Joey Fatone, perfecting their performances of boy band tunes. Lizzy waited patiently until her turn. She wasn’t a huge boy band fan, but then again, it wasn’t everyday she got to meet Joey Fatone, either.

From what Lizzy could hear from sitting outside of the rehearsal room, the other five contestants could really sing. Well, except for one of them. One girl seemed to be there purely because she looked like a pop idol. Unfortunately, her good looks didn’t match her vocal ability. Lizzy wondered why this girl hadn’t been voted off the show, yet. This girl was Trish. Poor, cute, young, unable to sing well, Trish.

As Lizzy mentally prepared for her turn in rehearsals with Joey Fatone, she couldn’t help but feel really blessed and amazed at her rise to mediocre fame over the past few weeks as an American Idol contestant. If all continued to go well, she would soon be crowned the winner of American Idol, and her music career would take off. She was determined to be more famous than Kelly Clarkson.

It was all she’d ever dreamed of. And she was only weeks away from making it come true.

Lizzy had chosen two very special songs this week for the Boy Band theme: “I Want it That Way” by the Backstreet Boys, and “Bye Bye Bye” from N’Sync. When her turn came to rehearse her songs with Joey Fatone, she discovered that he was very excited to hear her version of “Bye Bye Bye”.

Joey didn’t have much to offer in the way of suggestions for Lizzy, but he did encourage her to scrunch her face up a lot, and sing through her nostrils. He also showed Lizzy some dance moves to add to her performance. Lizzy adjusted per Joey’s suggestions, and Joey could not have been more impressed with Lizzy’s rehearsal performances. Lizzy knew she had a very special connection with Joey Fatone, and he would be sure to give her some good comments tonight at the performance on television.

After rehearsal, the contestants were herded into the wardrobe room to search through outfits for the evening. Lucy proceeded to ‘help’ everyone find an appropriate clothing ensemble. Lizzy didn’t mind. The clothing selection was overwhelming. She couldn’t remember ever being around so many fabulous and expensive clothes at one time.

They finished getting ready for the show, including hair and makeup, and even a few minutes to eat a catered dinner. Before the show began, they were briefed on the schedule for the evening by a stage manager. They sat in the green room and nervously listened to instructions.

When the stage manager was satisfied that everyone knew what to do, he wandered off to instruct the camera crew waiting in the wings. As Lizzy watched the activity around her, a familiar voice came up behind the group and greeted them with a cheerful hello.

“Hey, guys. Ready for tonight?” Lizzy turned to see Ryan Seacrest, host of American Idol, standing behind them, giving them all pats on the back. “Let’s have a great show!” he said, and wandered back out of the room, looking as though he had something very important to do at that very moment.

Even though Lizzy had been seeing Ryan Seacrest several times a week for the past several weeks, she never got over how tiny he was, or how weird his hair was. One time she had ‘accidentally’ touched the top of his head while he was standing nearby. The hair didn’t move. Ever. Lizzy wondered if it was real.

As Lizzy pondered Ryan Seacrest’s hair, the three American Idol judges walked as a group into the green room. Lizzy smiled as Paula, Randy, and Simon shook everyone’s hands and wished them all good luck. Paula’s outfit didn’t make much sense to Lizzy, but she figured Lucy hadn’t helped her pick it out. Paula really should let Lucy help her with her clothes, Lizzy thought.

And then, just as Lizzy was starting to get really nervous about the looming start of the show, another familiar set of voices grabbed Lizzy’s attention. She turned to see her parents standing outside the door of the green room, calling her name.

“Lizzy! It’s your parents! Come give us a hug, dear. We have to go find our seats.” Penny Talbot was waving frantically at Lizzy from the hallway. Her Dad, Chuck Talbot, stood next to Penny, beaming at his daughter.

“Hi Mom! Hi Dad!” Lizzy jumped up from the green room sofa and ran over to hug her parents. This was the ritual before every show. She was so glad they could be there for every live performance. It made all the difference in the world to have their support in the audience.

“Now, honey. Don’t be nervous. You’ll do fine this week, just like every other week. Oh honey, we are just so proud of you, living your dream of being a professional musician.” Lizzy’s mom was close to tears.

“Mom, I’m not a professional. Yet,” Lizzy giggled at her parents, and received one more bear hug from her dad. He didn’t say anything. He just smiled at his daughter, and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

“Well, we’ll see you after the show. Good luck!” Her parents waved as they walked down the hall and around the corner, headed to their seats in the audience.

“Lizzy, you have the coolest parents,” Jorge said, standing in the mirror to properly adjust a new hat facing backwards on his head.

“I know,” Lizzy replied, thankful to have such great parents who had supported her during the past few weeks of auditions and traveling.

Before she knew it, the show had begun. Ryan Seacrest introduced the contestants, and the first performances were underway. Simon was in a brutal mood, dishing out criticisms left and right. Joey Fatone, the celebrity judge, didn’t have much to say at all. He did like everyone’s outfits so far, though. And the dance moves, also great, according to Joey.
Without being sure she was ready, the stage suddenly manager called Lizzy’s name to go on stage. It was her turn to sing her first song selection, “I Want it That Way.”

Lizzy took the stage and tried not to squint into the bright lights. Simon had railed on her for that during an earlier performance. The music track began, and to Lizzy’s almost surprise, a beautiful, strong, magnificent voice came out when she opened her mouth and began to sing.

Lizzy knew she could sing, but for some reason, this week she was surprised at just how great she sounded. She killed on “I Want it That Way.”

As her last note echoed off the walls of the theater, the crown went wild. They loved Lizzy. And they loved the Backstreet Boys. Lizzy took a few steps forward to her mark at the edge of the stage to receive the judges’ comments. This part was when she was always the most nervous. She could never know what the judges would say, even if she gave the best performance of her life.

“Lizzy . . .” Randy began. “What up, dawg? I’m feelin’ ya tonight. That was good.” He waited for the applause from the audience to dwindle. “You know, I don’t think it was your best performance, but it was good. The bridge seemed a little weak, but overall I think it was okay. Good job.” Randy clapped and the crowd clapped, too.

Sitting next to Randy was Joey Fatone, celebrity judge for this week. He smiled at Lizzy. “Lizzy, that was great. The dance moves were fabulous, and I loved how you scrunched your face up at just the right moments to really put some meaning into the words. Powerful performance. Good job.” Joey clapped for Lizzy.

Paula Abdul, who had somehow added a strange hat to the already odd outfit she wore, gave an enthusiastic thumbs up to Lizzy. “Lizzy! Wow, you know, I don’t know what Randy’s problem is, but I thought that was great!” Lizzy could always count on Paula for a rave review. “In fact, I have to stand up and clap for you. The dancing, the vocals – it was all amazing. Girl, you’re going all the way!” Paula stood and clapped a single-person standing ovation for Lizzy. The crowd went wild.

Lizzy mouthed a ‘thank you’ to Paula.

Everyone then turned their attention to Simon, who sat with his arms crossed and sporting a huge scowl across his face. “Lizzy . . . “ Simon said, not changing his posture. “Randy and Paula must have gone completely mad, because that performance was absolutely dreadful.” Simon’s British accent always made everything he said sound ten times worse than it probably really was.

Simon went on, “First of all, who chose ‘Boy Bands’ as the theme for this week? It’s completely absurd. No one in their right mind can perform any of these songs seriously without sounding like someone is beating a wounded horse.” Simon was just getting started. “And secondly, Lizzy your performance would make a beaten, wounded horse sound good.” The crowd booed loudly. “Seriously! I mean, come on. Were you all listening to the same thing I just heard? Dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. Lizzy, I hope your second performance tonight is a hundred percent better, because right now you deserve to go home.”

The crowd booed even louder, and Lizzy stared at Simon. She knew better than to say anything in response, and fortunately she could think of nothing at all to say. She turned and walked over to Ryan Seacrest at the side of the stage.

“Wow, Lizzy. What’s up with Simon tonight? He really took out some angst on you. His tight t-shirt must be pulling out his chest hairs again. How do you feel?” Ryan joked and spoke to Lizzy.

“Well, I gave it my best, and I appreciate what Simon has to say, but really it’s up to the fans to decide if I sound better than a wounded horse or not. Right?” Lizzy received a cheer from the crowd for this bold statement. Simon smiled and laughed a little. Lizzy spotted her parents, her mom crying, her dad beaming at her. They gave her a thumbs up.

“Well,” Ryan continued with the prompt to commercial, speaking into the camera, “we will have to leave the horses to the audience, as you say. If you’d like to vote for Lizzy, just dial 1-800-IDOLS-04. The polls will be open for two hours after the show, so please hold your voting until the end of the show. And you might want to wait to make your decision after you see Lizzy perform her second song during the second half of the show. Up next, Jorge turns up the heat in here with some 98 Degrees. We’ll be back!”

Lizzy walked off the stage to the green room. She was embarrassed by Simon’s comments, but thinking about it, she was more determined than ever to show him she was going to be the next American Idol. She had one more song tonight to prove it.

And she wasn’t going to let herself cry because of what Simon said.

Lizzy waited in the green room for the last two contestants to perform their first songs. After the second round of songs began, Lizzy had gotten her emotions under control, with a firm desire to blow the competition away when it was her turn again.

The stage manager called her again, and she made her way on stage. Lizzy decided to hold nothing back, and she sang her rendition of “Bye Bye Bye” with immense passion and emotion. Joey Fatone had a tear in his eye as he listened to Lizzy sing the song made famous by his band, N’Sync.

The crowd erupted in loud cheers and applause. The judges lavished compliments on her. Simon told her she had made up for sounding like a beaten, wounded horse with her first song. Even Ryan Seacrest was speechless at her performance. Tonight was Lizzy’s night.

The contestants filed onto the stage at the end of the show, as Ryan told the viewers to vote via AT&T text message. The group smiled and waved and made signs to the cameras for loved ones back home. Lizzy felt triumphant. She felt sure she would not be voted off this week. In fact, if the competition ended tonight, she knew she would have it won.

The six contestants made their way to the parking lot to climb back into the Ford Expeditions for the drive back to the American Idol House. Trish wouldn’t stop crying, obsessing over two bad reviews from Simon in one night. Lizzy only partly felt sorry for Trish. After all, she really did sound bad, and Simon’s comments were right. But they were also mean, and Trish being a youngster took it harder than the rest of the group.

After the contestants arrived back at the house, they each headed up to their respective bedrooms. It was late, and they had a big day tomorrow, full of interviews and photo shoots and public appearances. Then, in the evening they would head back to the studio for the show to announce who would be going home that week. They each looked at each other with both pride and jealousy. They had formed a bond throughout these several weeks, and it was sad when one of them had to leave each week. But, they were also each interested in winning the competition. Lizzy felt sure she was more interested in winning than anyone else.

She’d waited her whole life for this. Nothing would stop her now.

Lizzy made her way upstairs to her bedroom, finding her flannel pajamas lost amongst the covers on her bed. She climbed into the pj’s and then into bed, thankful for a soft bed and a good night of rest.

Tomorrow would be a big day, of that she was certain.

Lizzy felt something kicking her. She opened her eyes and noticed she was sitting upright. She seemed to be in a chair. The kicking continued.

She looked around and noticed she was still on the plane, her mother snoring lightly in the seat beside her. Someone was kicking her chair from the row behind her seat. Lizzy turned around and peered over the back of the seat, giving the evil eye to the kid who was furiously kicking his feet at the back of the chair.

The kid stopped kicking.

Lizzy turned around and sat back down in her seat. Just then she heard the familiar ‘bing’ of the intercom system, and the pilot’s voice came on over the speakers announcing their arrival into the New York City airport. Lizzy felt the plane begin to descend.

Hmmmm, Lizzy thought. Had the American Idol adventure really just been a dream? She apparently hadn’t lost any time, or perhaps just the few hours of the flight, as though she’d only been asleep instead of again, out in L.A. on another reality television show in another bizarre circumstance. Surely, it had to have been a dream. There was no way she could have physically been removed from the plane while it was in flight, performed two songs on American Idol, then magically appeared back in her seat on the plane, as though she’d never left. Someone would have noticed that!

The dream had seemed very real, though. Lizzy could almost still feel the adrenaline of her magnificent performance in front of a live studio audience full of people screaming her name. But she was glad to have finally awakened in real time for the first time in over a week. If it wasn’t real, that was fine with Lizzy. But she did wish that something would begin making sense. She’d almost given up trying to sort anything out, and instead just hang on for the ride.

Just a dream! Lizzy was relieved. And she knew her mom would be thankful that they hadn’t missed her appearance on David Letterman’s show.

The plane landed and Lizzy and Penny gathered their carry-on items and walked off the plane. Lizzy tucked her magazines into her bag so she could finish reading them later. She’d fallen asleep before she could even get to the latest Cosmo quiz.

As they entered the terminal after exiting the plane, they headed to baggage claim. Lizzy noticed that as she walked beside her mom, people were staring at them both. She reasoned that people were staring at her mom because she had a nice cowlick of hair sticking up on the back of her head from sleeping crookedly in her seat on the plane. But she didn’t understand why people seemed to be staring at her even more intently than they had over the past couple of days. She tried to ignore it and continue walking towards freedom from the airport.

At baggage claim, they saw a man in a dark suit and a chauffeur hat holding a white sign with ‘Talbot’ spelled out on it in large black letters. He was there to meet them, courtesy of the David Letterman Show, and escort them to the hotel. The man in black took their suitcases and showed Lizzy and Penny out of the airport and into another beautiful limousine, this time a black limo, parked and waiting outside.

Instead of taking Lizzy and her mom to check into their hotel, the limo driver said they would be going directly to the studio for the taping of the show. As Lizzy watched through the windows of the limo, she noticed it was light outside. Daylight, as a matter of fact.

That’s odd, she thought. I swear we got on that plane last night. Did it take all night to fly from Texas to New York? Lizzy didn’t think that seemed right, but no one else seemed to find it odd, so she didn’t say anything to her mother, who was frantically using a mirror in the limo to try and fix the cowlick hair problem.

“Lizzy, why didn’t you tell me my hair was sticking straight up in the back! Honestly. It’s like you want me to be embarrassed sometimes.” Penny seemed agitated at her hair situation. Lizzy didn’t say anything in response.

Penny continued to fuss with her hair. “You know whose hair is really cute lately?” Lizzy honestly didn’t know. “That Paula Abdul. I don’t know why people make fun of her so much. She’s just the sweetest thing, and her hair for the show the other night was just fabulous!” Penny was talking as though all of this was making sense.

Lizzy stared at her mom. Did she just say what I thought she said? Lizzy still didn’t say anything. Lately, her mom appeared to Lizzy to make very little sense with these random outbursts. But then again, her mom lately also seemed to be the only one in Lizzy’s life who really did have a handle on the pseudo reality and bizarre trend of the daily plot changes of Lizzy’s life. Her mom just seemed to go with the flow, as though each little twist was actually the way things were supposed to be.

So very strange, Lizzy thought. And even stranger that my mom is a fan of Paula Abdul’s hair.

The limo arrived at the studio, and the driver in black opened the car door and help Lizzy and Penny out of the car. They were greeted by a production assistant and hurried inside to a dressing room, where they waited for further instruction. Penny helped Lizzy change into her outfit for the show, and then they continued to wait.

Lizzy still wasn’t sure what she was supposed to talk about on the show with David Letterman. She didn’t have a handle on the ridiculous path her life had taken recently, even though the world around her seemed to be really impressed with everything she’d done in the past week.

Do I talk about my rise to fame? I have no idea how that happened. Do I talk about my experiences on the different reality shows? I don’t really know what my experience has been. Do I talk about how none of this makes sense to me and I have no idea where I will wake up and who’s reality television show I will be in on any given day? That would likely freak everyone out and possibly end her up in a mental facility of some sort. Was there something else she was supposed to talk about? Had she and her mom gone over this already? Lizzy had no idea where to go with a conversation coming up sooner than she felt ready for, on a big late night talk show.

She looked across the dressing room at her mom, who was busily taste testing everything in the fruit basket sitting on the table in the middle of the room. Leave it to her mom to be too distracted by what’s in the room to be nervous about anything. “Isn’t this a lovely basket, dear? We should empty the fruit out of it and take the basket home when we leave. I know the perfect spot for this in your living room.”

A knock on the door distracted both Lizzy and Penny from the fruit and the basket.

“Come in?” Lizzy answered.

The door opened and in walked a very tall man, balding, with glasses. It was David Letterman.

He walked over to where Lizzy sat on a couch and bent down with his hand outstretched. “Hi, Lizzy. I’m David Letterman. You may remember me from such late night talk shows as The David Letterman Show.” He grabbed Lizzy’s hand and shook it while smiling at her with that famous, gap-toothed grin of his.

Is it just me, or is everyone introducing themselves to me in the same strange way these days? All of the greetings from famous people sounded the same to Lizzy lately. It was very odd.

She stood and shook David Letterman’s hand. “Hi,” she said, finally remembering she should respond with something more than a handshake. “I’m Lizzy Talbot. That’s my mom, er, manager. Um, that’s Penny Talbot.” Lizzy nodded over to her mom who was now standing, smiling a huge smile, expectantly waiting for her turn to shake the hand of David Letterman.

“Hi, Penny, mom, manager. It’s nice to meet you.” Letterman shook Penny’s hand, then straightened his tie. “I just wanted to introduce myself to you both and welcome you to the show. I’m looking forward to chatting with you, Lizzy. I appreciate so much you granting us the first tell-all interview after the American Idol mishap. It should be a good show.” With a small wave, David Letterman turned, walked out the door, and closed it behind him.

Lizzy stared at the closed door. American Idol mishap? What was he talking about?

“Mom, what is he talking about? American Idol?” Lizzy needed some answers before she went on stage in front of all of America.

“Now, Lizzy. We talked about this. I know you didn’t want to make a big deal about what happened, but we decided it’s time to make a public statement about it. America loves you, so you have nothing to worry about. That David Letterman seems like a nice man. Just answer his questions. You’ll be fine.” Penny walked over to Lizzy and straightened the collar of her shirt. Wait, was this even the same outfit she and her mom had picked out the day before, for her to wear on the show?

The sudden realization that the American Idol dream she’d had on the plane may not have been a dream after all hit Lizzy like a ton of bricks. She needed to sit down. She was about to go on television and talk about a ‘mishap’ that happened on a show that she didn’t know she’d been on, except for a vague memory of a dreamlike adventure that could have actually taken place, and she had no idea what that mishap could be.

Lizzy’s muddled thoughts were interrupted by another knock on the door. She thought for a second, and decided that whoever was on the other side of that door could stay out there. She didn’t want to talk to anyone else for a few minutes. She needed to get a grip on the situation before she embarrassed herself in front of David Letterman, a studio full of people, a national television audience, and worst of all, her mom.

“Lizzy, answer the door!” The knock came again, and Penny called to Lizzy from the back of the dressing room, where Lizzy assumed there must be a bathroom where Penny was no doubt fussing over her hair again.

“Come in,” Lizzy said with great fear to the back of the door.

The door opened and in bounced a girl. She wore too much makeup, skin tight, brightly colored clothes, and Lizzy noticed that too much skin was showing around her belly button and general mid-section. She was also smacking loudly on a piece of gum.

“Hi. Are you Lizzy Talbot? I’m Britney Spears. You may remember me from such number one radio hits as ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ and ‘Oops, I Did it Again.’” The girl, who apparently really was Britney Spears, plopped down on the couch next to Lizzy. “I really wanted to meet you when I heard we were both going to be on the show. I’m such a fan of reality TV, so it’s totally cool that you’re here. Sorry about that whole American Idol thing. That sucks. Ooh, can I have an apple?” Britney reached over to the fruit basket and grabbed a red apple. With her other hand, she caught the piece of chewing gum as she spit it out of her mouth.

She took a bite of apple, then continued talking to Lizzy. Lizzy just sat and watched, not sure what to do or say. Britney was much smaller and almost slightly more innocent-looking in person. Lizzy was surprised by this. “Listen. I’ve done a million of these shows. And I know you’re like, totally obviously older than me. Everyone knows that now, I guess, huh? So you probably don’t need any advice from little ol’ me, because you’re older and wiser and stuff. But, I hear this is your first big interview show, doing a tell-all about the big brew-ha-ha, right? So I just wanted to say don’t be nervous. Just be who you are and don’t worry about what other people think. We’re all on this spiritual journey together, and we just have to grow and express ourselves in our own ways.” Britney took another bite of the apple. “At least, that’s what my new best friend Madonna tells me. Isn’t she so brilliant? I love her.”

Lizzy blinked. She was sitting on a couch with Britney Spears, while Britney Spears ate one of Lizzy’s apples and gave advice to Lizzy. Check all the other bizarre moments of the past week. This had to be the most bizarre moment she’d had yet.

Britney didn’t wait for, or seem to expect any response from Lizzy. She stood up from the couch. “Anyway, welcome to NYC. And have a great show. Let’s hang out after, cool? Great outfit, by the way. You are so brave to go on stage completely covered up!” Lizzy thought Britney might be joking with that last statement, but sadly, she realized Britney was actually not joking at all.

Britney turned and headed back out the door. Lizzy noticed that the back of Britney’s shirt actually had no back to it at all. In fact, Lizzy couldn’t quite understand how the shirt was staying in place. It seemed to hover in just the right spot of its own free will.

“Glad I didn’t wear that,” Lizzy said to herself as soon as the door was shut again, and Britney Spears was safely out of the room. “How embarrassing if we’d both worn the exact same nearly-nude shirt on the same show!” Lizzy smiled. That thought made her laugh.

“Who was that, dear? Anyone important?” Penny had rejoined Lizzy in the front area of the dressing room.

Lizzy stopped giggling. “Oh, well, you just missed Britney Spears. She stopped by to meet me.”

Penny looked absolutely heartbroken. “Oh no! I missed Britney Spears? What was she wearing? Someone needs to have a talk with that girl. She seems too sweet to be dressing and acting the way she does. One day someone is going to take advantage of her. Lizzy? We are going to invite her to dinner and see if we can’t be a good influence on her. Okay?”

Lizzy smiled at her sweet, naïve mom. “Shouldn’t be a problem, mom.” She loved that Penny always looked for the best in people, even when it was an extremely annoying habit. Lizzy’s mom always believed that anyone could straighten up and do the right thing if they had enough sense talked into them. And trying to talk sense into people was one of Penny’s special talents.

In fact, Lizzy had often jokingly thought about the idea of having a reality show where ten out of control celebrities are locked in a room with her mom for a month. Whoever could survive the ‘life lessons’ given by Penny would win the jackpot. How funny would it be to see someone like Bobby Brown, or Robert Downey, Jr. spend a month confined with a sensible, no-nonsense mom, and come out of that a fine, upstanding citizen? Lizzy giggled to herself at that thought.

“What are you laughing at, dear?” Penny was staring at Lizzy.

Lizzy hadn’t realized she’d laughed out loud. “Oh, nothing. Um, I’m just excited to be on the show.”

“Of course you are, dear.” Penny was busy eye-balling an end table by the door. She stood up and moved the table to the other wall, nestling it beside a large chair. She then rearranged the coffee table in the center of the room, neatly stacking some magazines and moving the lamp from the table to another corner in the room. She stood back to survey her work. “There. That really opens up the room, don’t you think?”

Lizzy’s mom apparently couldn’t go anywhere without messing with the decorating.

Before Lizzy could respond to Penny’s plea for decorating validation, a production assistant knocked on the dressing room door to call Lizzy to the stage. It was time for Lizzy to face David Letterman and whatever questions he had about the ‘mishap’ that was apparently a huge media focus and popular topic of conversations. Lizzy took a deep breath and followed the assistant to the stage.

“Ladies and gentleman,” she heard from David Letterman’s voice, “America’s reality television sweetheart, Lizzy Talbot.”

Applause erupted and Lizzy found herself walking out onto the set of The David Letterman Show. It felt very surreal to Lizzy. She had seen this set on TV hundreds of times, but never from behind the scenes. There a lot more lights than she every noticed on TV. It was very bright, as she squinted out into the room and carefully stepped onto the shiny floor.

She walked towards Letterman, who had stood up and walked our from behind his desk to greet her. He grabbed her hand and kissed her cheek, as Lizzy had seen him do with every woman who had been on his show, and he then ushered her over to the plush chair sitting next to his desk.

“Hi, Lizzy. Nice to see you,” Letterman began.

Lizzy found her voice and made herself stop staring at the cameras. “Hi, Mr. Letterman. Er, David. Um, hi. Nice to be here.” Despite the pep talk from Britney Spears, Lizzy was nervous.

Letterman laughed. “Mr. Letterman? That’s a new one. Hey Paul, she just called me Mr. Letterman. Or should it be, Mr. Schaffer?” The audience laughed. Lizzy laughed, too.

“Well, Miss Talbot,” Letterman continued, with more laughs from the audience. “You’ve made quite a name for yourself lately, haven’t you? Making the reality show tour, eh? How’s that goin’?”

Lizzy didn’t know what to say that. She didn’t actually know if that were true or not, or how it was going.

Letterman reached across his desk and collected a stack of magazines. “Let’s see, here you are on People magazine, front cover.” He held up the People magazine. Lizzy had never seen it before. “And here’s a story about you on that Bachelor show.” He held up another magazine for the cameras.

Then Letterman held up the magazine that Lizzy had been reading on the plane. It was the same Entertainment Weekly that had the story about American Idol: Behind the Idol, but instead of seeing a picture and story about Clay and Ruben, Lizzy was staring at a picture of herself. Letterman was still talking.

“And then we see you on American Idol, and that’s when all hell starts to break loose. Am I right?”

Lizzy still didn’t understand what she was seeing. That article had not been about her when she read it on the plane, but now the headline read, “Lizzy Talbot and American Idol: The Age Factor.” How could the article be different?

“So, I have to ask, did you just not know how old you were before you made it onto the show, or were you unclear about the rules of the show, or did you intend to lie about your age? The whole thing seemed like a big misunderstanding when you watch the tapes of the show, but you know, it seems kinda fishy to me.”

Lizzy didn’t say anything. She honestly didn’t understand the question.

“I mean, come on,” Letterman continued. “You’re making it on all these other reality shows, and then you make it onto American Idol. But before we get to the good part of the season, the end, when we don’t have to listen to you kids singing anymore, it comes out that you’re twenty-seven years old and too old to even be on the show! That’s gotta put a damper on your reality television show spree, doesn’t it?” Letterman looked at her expectantly. Obviously Lizzy needed to say something.

“Well, Dave, I . . . it was a mistake.” Lizzy thought that was a pretty safe response. She was starting to understand what this big ‘mishap’ was. She’d always wanted to be on American Idol, but she never tried out because she was too old. Yet, somehow, she’d made it on the show, and only after she’d made it to the final six contestants, did anyone then notice she was too old to be there. Of course, she had no idea how any of that had happened. Although this would have been a perfect time for her to have that little tidbit of information.

“Yeah, I’ll say,” Letterman responded with a sarcastic laugh. “Some mistake.” Paul Schaffer made some noise on his piano for comic effect. Letterman laughed at Paul, then continued. “So, whose mistake was it? I mean, sometimes I forget how old I am, but only when it’ll get me something good.” The audience laughed again.

The rest of the conversation was a muddled mess to Lizzy. Letterman actually changed the subject when it became clear that Lizzy wasn’t going to give him a straight answer about the hugely publicized age mishap. He talked to Lizzy about her other reality shows, and Lizzy responded to the best of her recollection, not really sure if she was answering questions based on dreams or reality. But, her responses were a hit with Dave and with the audience. It all seemed to make sense to them. They seemed to love her, yet she didn’t quite know why. Apparently she had been involved in a major reality television fiasco, yet the world appeared to be okay with that.

She was famous, and she didn’t know why. She was loved by America, and she didn’t know why.

“Well, Lizzy. It was lovely to meet you. Best of luck. I hope you’ll come back and see us sometime. You’re a lovely young lady.” Letterman reached out and took her hand again, this time planting a light kiss on the back of her hand.

“Thanks, Dave. It was great to be here.” Lizzy waved to the audience and the cameras went dark for a commercial break. She stood and carefully walked across the set to the backstage area, anxious to get out from in front of the lights and cameras.

Lizzy was very glad her time with David Letterman was over.

Lizzy stumbled through the halls behind the set of the show, looking for her mother. Stagehands and production assistants bustled busily around her. The show was still going on a few feet away from her, on the other side of the walls of the set. She could hear the sounds of loud bass and dance-beat drums, followed by the yips and grunts of Britney Spears as she began performing one of her latest songs. Lizzy rolled her eyes. She wanted to get out of the studio before Britney bounced back off stage and came looking for Lizzy to ‘hang out’ with her.

Lizzy turned a corner and bumped into Penny.

“Oh, hey Mom! Did you see me? How’d I do?” Penny was on her cell phone. She held up a finger of silence to Lizzy.

“Yes,” Penny was saying. “That sounds fabulous! See you then.” She pushed a button on the phone and stashed it in her purse.

“Sorry, dear. What were you saying? That was one of the producers of Regis and Kelly. You’re booked on the show tomorrow morning. Regis is very excited. Turns out he’s a huge reality television fan, and he’s been watching your career ever since Average Joe. He loves you! In fact, Kelly may not be there to host tomorrow. The producer was saying something about tonsillitis or appendicitis or some other ‘itis’. I couldn’t really hear him. But I did hear him say that they may want you to co-host with Regis tomorrow, so we’ll need to go shopping this afternoon and find you something suitable to wear.”

Lizzy was caught off guard. “Wait. Regis? Co-host? More television shows? Is that really a good idea, Mom?” Lizzy felt like she had barely made it through that last interview with David Letterman. She wasn’t sure she should tempt fate by planning more interviews, when she still wasn’t sure what was going on in her life anymore. She had fallen into a pattern of finding out about her life through magazines, television shows, and other people. It seemed that everyone else knew what was going on way before Lizzy ever caught up with the group and the current events. Things changed too quickly for her to get a grip on the reality of the situation. More interviews about things she didn’t know seemed like a very, very bad idea.

Suddenly, hanging out with Britney Spears that night sounded much more appealing to Lizzy than co-hosting a talk show with Regis Philbin at a freakishly early hour of the morning.

“Lizzy. This is all just part of your dream, dear. You wanted fame, you got it. We have to give the media what they want or else all of your hard work will be a total waste. You were great just now with Letterman, by the way. I saw the whole thing from the green room. Charming! My phone started ringing off the hook the second you walked off stage. People calling to book you on more shows. Oh! There it goes again.” Penny’s conversation was suddenly interrupted by the sound of her phone ringing in her purse. She reached in and grabbed the phone.

“Penny Talbot speaking. The Oprah show? Oh yes! Lizzy would love to visit with Oprah on her show. Let me check her schedule . . . ” Penny turned and walked back towards the green room, apparently speaking with someone from the Oprah Winfrey Show. When had her mother become so media savvy? Lizzy wondered with awe as she watched her mother disappear into the green room. Wait, when did her mom get a cell phone?

Lizzy suddenly noticed that the sounds of music coming from the stage had vanished. The audience was clapping. Uh oh, she thought. Britney will be back soon.

Lizzy hurried into the green room after her mother, finding a quiet seat in the corner to wait for Penny to get off the phone. She wanted to leave the studio as soon as possible.

Penny finished the call, booking Lizzy on Oprah for Wednesday of next week, and the two of them headed out the back of the studio to the waiting limo. The driver took them to the hotel, where they checked in and dropped off their luggage in a beautiful suite on the tenth floor. Lizzy had never been in such a nice hotel room, complete with a kitchen, a phone and television set in the bathroom, and a magnificent view of Central Park.

“Wow,” she said to herself, staring at the phone next to the toilet. “Imagine what kind of important calls Mom could take care of in here.” The view of the phone by the toilet was almost more impressive to Lizzy than the breathtaking view of Central Park, which she’d never actually seen before, except on TV.

The next activity for the afternoon was a trip to Bloomingdale’s to find an outfit for Lizzy’s appearance on Regis and Kelly. The limo driver took them right up to the front entrance, then waited outside in the car for them to finish shopping. It sure is handy having one of these limo guys, Lizzy realized. She could get used to this.

Lizzy wasn’t much a shopper, so she let her mom and the sales lady take care of choosing the right outfit. Lizzy tried to stay hidden in the dressing room, avoiding the curious stares of other shoppers. It seemed everywhere she went lately, people were watching her. She still hadn’t gotten used to that, yet. But then again, it didn’t seem like it had been that long since the staring in public trend had begun. Lizzy wondered if she should be used to it, or if she would ever get used to it.

Was it even real? That was the real question. Were these ‘fans’, for lack of a better word, truly fans of the Lizzy she really was? Or was this ‘bizarro’ Lizzy living out a dream she’d always had, but not truly connected to the Lizzy she thought she had been just over a week ago. When she thought about it too much, it made Lizzy’s head hurt. It still didn’t make sense, and didn’t appear to even try to make sense.

All she could figure was that she had discovered a way to make it onto many of the popular reality television shows, and that this did not seem strange to anyone in the world. And truthfully, the longer this went on, the less strange it seemed to Lizzy. Maybe this was the way things were really supposed to be? She couldn’t really say she missed her old life, except for the anonymity. But then again, it was nice to be recognized and wanted. Popular, even.

Wow, Lizzy thought. Would she have a great story to tell at her ten-year high school reunion next year. She smiled at the Romy and Michelle type scenario playing out in her head. Except in Lizzy’s version, her boastings about being famous and the first person ever to be on every reality show on TV were real.

Lizzy realized she was laughing loud enough to be heard again. She snapped back to the present, finding herself in the limo with her mom. Penny was staring at Lizzy.

“Lizzy, I swear. I don’t know what goes on in that head of yours. But you need to stop that senseless giggling all the time. People will begin to think there is something wrong with you.” Lizzy found Penny to be funny sometimes when she was trying to be stern. Lizzy laughed a little harder.

“Sorry, mom. Just thought of something funny. That’s all.” Lizzy went back to gazing out the window at the bright lights and dark streets of New York City nightlife, a sly smile still on her face. It was getting late. Lizzy was ready to call it a day and go to sleep. After all, she apparently had a big day of possibly co-hosting a national morning show tomorrow morning.

The limo dropped Lizzy and Penny back off at the hotel. They carried their purchases into the lobby and rode the elevator up to their suite. Lizzy was glad for the quiet and privacy of the room. No one was staring at her here. And it didn’t matter who she really was. She was just Lizzy for now. Sleepy. And hungry.

They ordered room service, discussed the plans for tomorrow morning, then split up into separate bedrooms on either side of the living room. Lizzy loved her mom, but she was glad for the break. She wasn’t used to her mom being around all the time. It was nice, but draining.

She closed the bedroom door behind her, then she rummaged through her suitcase to find her pajamas. “Oh wait,” she said, remembering that her mom had thoughtfully tucked them into her carry-on bag. She found the bag and dug out the pajamas, half expecting them to smell too bad to wear to bed. She couldn’t remember the last time they had been washed.

But, the pj’s smelled great, she noticed. Nice and fresh. Odd, she thought. The pj’s should have been walking out of her bag on their own. But she quickly thought nothing more about it, as she wearily climbed out of her clothes and into her favorite pajamas. She was immediately at ease in familiar surroundings.

“These pj’s never fail me,” she said out loud, noting that for the first time in a long while she could speak out loud and not be overheard by her mom, or a fan, or a reporter, or someone else close by. She was alone. She had her pj’s. She was in a fabulous hotel room. It was great.

Well, she was mostly alone. Had she been at home and alone in the house, without her mom in an adjoining room, Lizzy would have skipped the tooth brushing ritual again and hopped straight into bed. But, lethargically knowing that with her mom in such close proximity, Lizzy feared her mom would somehow know in a psychic way if she didn’t brush her teeth before going to bed. So, reluctantly, Lizzy found her toothbrush and went into the large bathroom to brush her teeth. She stared at the phone near the toilet while she brushed.

“That’s just too cool,” she mumbled through a mouthful of toothpaste.

Once the teeth had been properly taken care of, Lizzy switched off the light in the bathroom and fell into bed. It was a nice, soft, big bed. Much better for sleeping than the stiff airplane seats where she’d last snoozed. She wriggled around in her flannel pajamas, letting the soft fabric tickle her skin. Finally settling into a comfortable place on the bed, Lizzy drifted off to sleep, excited visions of Regis Philbin dancing in her head.

Maybe, she thought before fading into dreamland, something will happen and I won’t have to co-host the show tomorrow. She didn’t feel ready for co-hosting responsibilities, even if just in a guest-hosting role.

With the hope of some sort of interference occurring before tomorrow’s taping of Regis and Kelly, Regis danced out of Lizzy’s head, and Lizzy was hard asleep.

The sound of two girls fighting is what woke Lizzy. At least, that’s what she thought she heard, as she was jarred from a deep sleep by the piercing, high-pitched voices of two girls arguing from a distance. Was her mom arguing with someone in the other room? That didn’t sound like her mom. But who could it be?

Lizzy knew what had happened before she even sat up. She took a deep breath and slowly rolled onto her back, then sitting up in another small twin-sized bed. She wished that when she fell asleep in a nice, big bed, she could still wake up in a nice, big bed.

She opened her eyes and looked around the room. Across the room sat another twin-sized bed, covered in mounds of clothes, with sheets and blankets strewn all over the floor. It was a small room, and Lizzy quickly noticed that she was alone in the room. The voices she still heard were coming from another room.

Suddenly, a girl appeared at the door. “Lizzy? Will you get in here and see if you can break this up? Challant is after Monique again, and it’s getting ugly. And Tyra will be ticked if she hears we’ve been fighting again.” The girl was definitely too skinny, and she had perfect skin and hair. She was beautiful, like someone right out of a GAP commercial.

“Challant? Um, Tyra?” Lizzy found herself staring at the girl, intrigued by how perfect she looked even though it had to be early in the morning. Wait, was Challant somebody’s actual name?

“Yeah. Tyra. Tyra Banks? The one who made all this happen for us?” The girl gave Lizzy an odd look. “Challant is at it again, pulling that ‘high and mighty’ crap she does to intimidate everybody. We are all here to win the modeling contract, but we don’t all need to be a witch about it.” The girl stood in the doorway with perfect posture, extremely tall but not slouching in the slightest. “Anyway, Challant made Monique cry again this morning, making fun of her because of the photo shoot yesterday when Monique had that huge zit that showed up like a road flare on her finished shots. Will you come in here and get in Challant’s face like you did the other day? That seemed to shut her up for awhile, at least.”

The girl turned and walked down the hall towards the commotion, leaving Lizzy to try and piece the situation together again. Just like she’d done several times now over the past week. Strangely, Lizzy was getting used to the scenario, but it still freaked her out for awhile every time she woke up in a new place with new people in a new situation.

Ok, Lizzy thought, slowly standing up beside the bed. These are the facts as she knew them so far: tall perfectly beautiful girl, witchy mean girl, crying intimidated girl, zits are a disaster, photo shoot, modeling contract, high drama, Tyra Banks. It all sounded silly and familiar, and oddly resembling Lizzy’s surprise favorite reality show from the summer – America’s Next Top Model.

“Holy cow,” Lizzy said, as she headed towards the bedroom door, tripping over shoes and clothes. “I’m stuck in the strangely competitive world of modeling, and Tyra Banks is apparently in charge. This should be good.” She didn’t know whether to laugh, or to be very afraid. The reality show had been funny, bringing a summer full of great laughs and unexpected fascination for Lizzy. But Lizzy was the wrong person to get stuck in that kind of world. She was mildly pretty, but not stunningly beautiful. She was awkward and clumsy, she could care less about fashion or excessive grooming. She was cynical about everything having to do with the Wide World of Modeling. And she absolutely didn’t care to get involved in catfights with prissy girls who obsessed about zits and bad hair days.

Thinking of bad hair days, Lizzy caught a glimpse of herself in one of the seven mirrors on the walls of the tiny bedroom. Ooh, she thought. Very bad hair this morning. She definitely didn’t belong in this reality. It had to be a mistake.

As though the other reality trips hadn’t been a mistake? Lizzy just didn’t know anymore.

But, remembering how much fun America’s Next Top Model had been to watch, she figured she could either have some good fun while she was here, or it would be a total miserable disaster. She was soon to find out.

Lizzy cautiously poked her head out the door and looked down the hall. She could see a living room area, and this is where the still arguing voices were coming from. Lizzy tiptoed down the hall towards the sound of the shrill voices.

“Lizzy! Will you get in here and tell Challant to shut her hole? We’re tired of listening to her. No one cares that she’s never had a zit in her life.” This came from another freakishly tall girl standing across the living room near a kitchen, eating a banana. She had long dark hair, and she was wearing the skimpiest pair of pajamas Lizzy had ever seen. She assumed they were pajamas and not just leftover lint from the dryer, loosely hanging together by some unseen force of nature. This dark-haired girl also stood completely straight and tall, without slouching. Lizzy was suddenly very self-conscious in her flannel pajamas, still hunched over and crouching in the hallway. She entered the room and stood up a little straighter.

Lizzy had no idea what to say to anyone, much less to Challant, whichever one she was. Lizzy counted five girls total, including herself. Tall dark-haired girl, tall redhead girl (who had spoken to Lizzy earlier in the bedroom), sitting probably tall crying girl, who was sobbing on the couch in the corner, and tall Amazon girl, literally the tallest and biggest, yet stunningly beautiful girl Lizzy had every seen. Then there was average-ly tall, flannel pajama-clad, bad hair Lizzy.

What a group, Lizzy thought to herself.

Everyone in the room was expectantly staring at Lizzy. Apparently she was supposed to do something to fix the Zit Crisis situation. She still wasn’t thinking clearly, and she really didn’t know what to do.

“So . . .” she started, looking hesitantly at no one in particular. “What’s going on?”

Amazon Girl spoke up. “I was just making the point that in this business, perfection is the key to beauty. Can I help it if I’ve never had a zit in my life? Unlike the Mega-Zit Monique had yesterday . . .” Monique let out another sob from the corner.

Lizzy looked at Amazon Girl, who she was certain had to be Challant. “And that’s important this morning, why?” Lizzy used as much sarcasm as possible in her question. She felt Challant probably deserved it.

Challant turned and glared at Lizzy. “It’s important because I’m trying to help Monique understand why I am so much better at this competition than she is, and why I will deserve to win. How is she going to learn to be a better model if we don’t take the time to teach her? I don’t want her to feel bad about the giant zit that ruined her pictures yesterday. I was just trying to be honest about why my pictures always turn out perfect. No zits. It’s just the facts. I can’t help it if she started crying. Again.” Challant rolled her eyes in Monique’s direction. Monique pouted.

Suddenly Lizzy noticed a camera pointed at her from the ceiling. And another camera across the room bolted in the corner. She saw a camera person hovering inconspicuously in a nook in another corner of the room, which looked like it had been built just to hide a camera person. She realized every move and word in the room was being recorded. And for some reason, that seemed normal.

Lizzy stood up even straighter and walked confidently over to where Challant stood. She was tired of Challant’s bully tactics. Ever since the first day of the contest, Challant had brought an attitude to the New York loft apartment that had set all of the girls on edge. Every week, she picked on someone. Sure, she was great at the competitions, and she looked great on film. But her personality drove all of the girls crazy. Challant was just plain mean. And Lizzy would take it no more.

Challant was several inches taller than Lizzy, but Lizzy walked right up to her and looked her square in the eye. “Look, Challant. You may not have any zits. And you may think that makes your face perfect. And you may think that makes you better than everyone else here.” Lizzy was just getting fired up. “But in case you haven’t noticed, I wanted to let you know that your nose is crooked.” She stared Challant down as Challant opened her mouth to say something.

Lizzy went on. “Yeah, we all know it. We can all see it. You keep saying how perfect you are in every way, but we all see that bump on your nose, every time we do a head shot session. You may have tried to cover it up with a nose job and lots of makeup, but honey let me tell you, it still sticks out like a sore thumb. An ugly, crooked, bumpy, sore thumb.” And with that, Lizzy turned and walked into the kitchen.

Challant didn’t say anything, but her eyes began to well up with tears. She turned quickly and ran down the hall, closing herself in the bathroom. Monique smiled.

“Wow, Lizzy. You really let her have it. I can’t believe you spilled the beans about how we all see her crooked nose.” Tall dark-haired girl spoke with a mouthful of banana.

Lizzy looked for something to eat. “Well, I’m tired of her attitude. If she wants to dish ‘witch’, well, I can dish it back.” Lizzy had no idea where she was getting this stuff, but for some reason she had adapted the attitude of a model wannabe.

“Hey girls!” Tall redhead called from the living room. “We’ve got another note from Tyra! Come see!”

The girls bounded into the living room, with the exception of Challant, who was still holding herself hostage in the bathroom. They opened the note and read instructions to be ready and downstairs by 7a.m. The competition for the day was runway walking.

Oh, no, Lizzy thought. She may have the attitude of a good model, but she definitely did not have the coordination to walk like a model on a runway in high heels. Even though she felt like she mostly fit in with this situation, it vaguely seemed like she was out of her element in the world of high fashion and modeling. But hadn’t she always dreamed of being a model?

“What time is it?” Monique asked. They all looked at the clock on the wall. It read 6:45.

Crap. Why couldn’t Lizzy ever wake up in time to actually properly get ready for the day? She seemed to be always running around at the last minute, throwing herself together to get out the door.

The girls scrambled off of the couch and into the three bedrooms. Someone knocked on the bathroom door to tell Challant to be ready in fifteen minutes. They frantically threw clothes around in search of the right things to wear. The pawed around on the floor in the hunt for matching shoes. They primped and fussed and curled and applied, all in record time. As the wall clock in the living room showed 7:00, all five girls made it to the bottom of the stairs in the lobby of the loft apartment building, just in time to be greeted by a car waiting to take them to their modeling destination of the day.

The cameras followed close behind.

As they entered a large room in one of the many high-rise buildings of New York City, the girls were greeted by none other than Tyra Banks.

“Hi, girls. I’m Tyra Banks. You may remember me from such America’s Next Top Model competitions as last week’s Strategically Placed Feather Boa Competition. Welcome to the Runway Walking Class, where today you will learn how to walk down a modeling runway in ridiculously tall, high heel shoes.” Tyra introduced herself for the cameras again, as though the girls did not know who she was, even though they’d seen her almost everyday for the past four weeks.

Lizzy had blown the competition away last week in the feather boa competition, but this week she feared the combination of high heels and walking gracefully would be her demise. She worried that no good could come from this.

Tyra continued. “Now, pay attention, girls. I want to introduce you to Vincent vonKlaus, runway walking expert and advisor to the world’s most successful models. Anyone you see on a runway today has likely had a lesson from Vincent. Listen closely to him, girls. He can make or break your careers.”

The girls chattered excitedly amongst themselves, as Tyra directed their attention to the flamboyantly dressed man entering the room with a flourish. He wore a cape, despite not being an actual superhero. And the hat he wore sported a feather. He entered the room as though he was floating on air, and the girls realized this man needed to be taken seriously, despite his appearance.

“Good morning, ladies. Welcome to my runway workshop.” Lizzy expected Vincent to have some sort of European accent. But, he didn’t, although he did speak with an odd dialect of some sort. Not an accent, exactly, but definitely not your everyday plain old American non-accent. Lizzy wondered from where such an eccentric, yet highly respected man could have originated. And strangely, Lizzy found herself admiring Vincent’s cape.

The girls were in awe, as they took in the sight of Vincent vonKlaus. Tyra hugged him warmly, then turned once again to the girls, who waited expectantly for details about what they would be doing for the rest of the day.

“Vincent will be handling your runway walking lesson for today. He will do whatever he can to help each of you become perfect runway models. However, it is up to you to pay attention, ask questions, and practice. This evening, the next round of judging will take place. You will demonstrate what you’ve learned today, and then answer some simple questions about something completely off topic.” Tyra let the impending doom of another judgment hang heavily in the air for a moment of dramatic effect. “Now, I leave you with Vincent. Work hard, because tonight one of you will have to leave America’s Next Top Model . . . forever.” With that, Tyra gave them a stern look of modeling superiority, and the she turned and left the room.

The girls were now alone with Vincent.

Lizzy found it hard to breathe. She needed to think. Tyra’s announcement had suddenly made her nervous, more so than usual when it came to judgment days. Lizzy could not bear the thought of what would happen if she did not become America’s Next Top Model. It had always been her dream to be a famous supermodel. But, as a lifelong klutz, she had always struggled with the simple task of walking gracefully.

Today, Lizzy had to overcome this handicap, to continue her quest to be America’s Next Top Model. With her inner pep talk instilling a renewed sense of determination, Lizzy took a deep breath and turned her attention to Vincent. She must learn all she could from this very wise, extremely fabulous man.

The girls were first fitted with a brand new pair of ridiculously tall high heel shoes. Challant, already being the tallest girl in the group at six feet tall, now towered above everyone at a height of six foot seven inches tall. Lizzy had no idea they made shoes with a seven-inch heel. But each of the girls now tottered gingerly around the room on a pair of their very own seven-inch heels. Lizzy hugged the wall, afraid to tumble to the floor from such a height.

Next, the girls listened as Vincent explained the logistics of successfully walking down a runway. He brought diagrams and lecture notes. He taught them proper stretching techniques and meditation prayers that would help them ease down a runway with the utmost grace and poise. Finally, he demonstrated to them the proper way to walk down the runway, impressing the girls with how beautifully and softly he was able to glide down the runway that had been set up for them in the middle of the large room. For a big man with giant feet, he was surprisingly graceful and agile in a pair of specially made high-heeled shoes.

The girls watched in awe.

Finally, it was their turn to try. First, they practiced the fundamentals Vincent taught them, without the high heels. Then, they added to the challenge and each attempted a run down the walk in the seven-inch heels. Challant mastered the task flawlessly, prancing down the runway as if she were born on a runway wearing seven-inch heels. She seemed determined to prove to the other girls that she was the best in front of Vincent, as payback for the crooked nose incident earlier that morning.

The other girls awkwardly tottered down the runway several times, each time getting better than the last time. Lizzy, however, found herself having a hard time with the whole experience. She was having trouble just standing up in the tall shoes, much less incorporate grace and poise into walking down a narrow wooden path. Each time she felt as though she was walking down the narrow plank of a pirate ship to her certain demise. She might as well just jump. There was no way she would win the competition tonight.

After a full day of walking and standing and falling and crying, Vincent finally released the girls from the training session. With an exasperated sigh he told them, “There is nothing more I can do here,” and he picked up his cape and swooshed out of the room. The girls grabbed their too-tall shoes, and headed down to the car for a ride back to the Models’ Apartment.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon, the girls quietly practiced their walking back and forth in the hall of the apartment. Lizzy kept falling and bumping into things, receiving snickers and laughs from Challant. The other girls banded together, helping each other and trying to remember the helpful tips Vincent had taught them. None of them wanted to go home that night, least of all Lizzy. The thought of having to leave the competition at this stage was truly upsetting to her. She’d worked so hard to get this far. How could she face her family if she failed at being a model on national television?

The cameras caught all of these dramatic moments on film. It was a tense afternoon for the girls. But through the emotions and the tears of nothing in particular, they continued working and walking, until each of them had blisters on their feet from the too-tall shoes.

Soon, it was time to go to the judgment. They got dressed in their evening modeling outfits, as instructed by the Tyra Mail they received mysteriously sometime late in the afternoon. They each grabbed their very special high heel shoes, and headed down to the car for the ride to the judgment studio. The girls were quiet as nerves took over.

Tyra greeted them once again when they arrived at the studio. She introduced the judges again, as she did every week, including this week’s guest judge, Vincent vonKlaus. Vincent was wearing a different colorful cape, and a bejeweled beret replaced the hat he wore earlier.

In random order, the girls were selected to demonstrate their runway walking skills. Lizzy was third to walk, narrowly missing a spill at the end of the runway when her momentum almost toppled her forward. But she maintained her composure and successfully dismounted the runway for the first time all day. Lizzy smiled, and prepared to answer the judges’ off topic questions of the day.

“Lizzy,” Tyra began, very seriously. “If you are selected as America’s Next Top Model, how will you use your modeling skills for good, rather than evil?”

Lizzy thought for a second. “Well,” she said slowly, taking her time to answer the question properly. “Even though I want to be the best model I can be, I also want people to know me for being kind and smart.” For some reason, Lizzy didn’t really know where she was going with this, but it needed a big finish. “So . . . I would start a Runway Walk-a-thon for professional models to raise money by walking on a runway for as many hours as they could, sponsored by rich people who like to watch people walk a lot. The money would go to kids without shoes. And I’d start a charity shoe company to make high heel shoes for the everyday people. Even poor people deserve to have nice shoes and tall heels.” Lizzy took a deep breath. What a great idea, and it just came to her out of the blue!

She looked at Tyra and the other judges, noticing that Tyra actually had a tear in her eye. “Lizzy, that is beautiful. I once had almost the same exact dream, except it involved Victoria Secret lingerie for poor people. Even poor people deserve to have nice panties.” She smiled at Lizzy, and that concluded the question and answer session.

Lizzy knew that she hadn’t killed on the runway, but she had totally cleaned up in the question and answer competition. She breathed a sigh of relief as the last two girls took their turns in front of the judges.

Finally, it was time to face the judges’ decision. The five girls filed in to stand in line before Tyra and the other judges. Tyra began with a speech about the week’s activities, including scolding the girls for the episode in the apartment that morning. Models may be tough to get along with, but it was unacceptable to treat each other in such a mean way. Lizzy stared at the floor, subtly nodding in agreement. Challant scowled. Monique cried.

When Tyra finished her speech, she began calling the girls up one by one, giving them their evaluations in the high heel runway walking competition. Challant was called first, scolded for her attitude, then rewarded with announcing her passing into the next round. She breathed a confident sigh of relief, then took her place back in line.

Each girl was called up until there were only two girls remaining, Lizzy and the Tall Redhead. The moment was very tense. Lizzy and the Tall Redhead took two cautious steps forward and faced Tyra.

“Lizzy,” Tyra said, looking Lizzy straight in the eye. “While your answers to our off topic questions today were great and very model-worthy, you performance on the runway was definitely not the caliber of what it should be for a top model. Vincent tells me you worked hard today, but if you’re going to make it in the modeling world, your hard work has to amount to improvement. You absolutely have to master the runway skills.” Lizzy nodded, and swallowed the giant lump in her throat.

“Tonya,” Tyra went on, looking now at the Tall Redhead. “Your runway walking was pretty fluid, although a little rough in places. You handled the tall shoes pretty well, and you walked with confidence, even though you still need a little work on your technique. But your answers to our questions seemed distracted and hollow, almost as though you didn’t understand the questions. It is important when you’re a top model to know things like the President of Peru, and the combined team free-throw shooting percentage of the Dallas Mavericks. You never know when you will need to have those facts without warning at a photo shoot, and today you proved to us that you just don’t have that information. And no, the President of Peru is not Juan Valdez.” Tonya the Redhead looked close to tears.

Looking at both girls, Tyra continued. “The girl’s name who I say next will continue in the competition, while the girl’s name who I do not say will have to pack and leave immediately. Good luck.” With a dramatic pause, Tyra continued staring at both girls. Lizzy and Tonya looked nervously at each other, then at the floor.

“Congratulations, Lizzy. You are still in the running to be America’s Next Top Model.” With a tear in her eye, Tyra made the announcement. It was a dramatic moment, as Lizzy breathed again for the first time in the past two minutes, and Tonya broke down into hysterics. She was escorted out of the room by Monique, who was also crying, but for no apparent reason.

The remaining four girls were silent as they rode back to the Models’ Apartment. Without a word, they went into their bedrooms and prepared for bed. Lizzy found her crumpled up flannel pajamas and sought them out for comfort. She had narrowly escaped termination in her quest to be America’s Next Top Model, and what she needed now to get over the drama of the day was her favorite flannel pajamas, and a good night’s sleep. The Tall Blonde girl had already slipped into the other twin-sized bed across the bedroom from Lizzy’s bed, somehow making room for herself in the bed without disturbing the mound of clothes already occupying the bed.

Lizzy settled into her tiny bed and closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she thought, is a new day with a new competition. She didn’t want to have another close call like today. With some good rest, she would be back in action and ready to win, bright and early tomorrow.

Making a wish that Challant would wake in the morning to find a gigantic zit smack in the middle of her zit-free-to-date forehead, Lizzy soon fell asleep.

The sound of a very loud crash woke Lizzy, startling her so much that she sat straight up in bed with a force that launched her out onto the floor, wrapped in blankets and sheets. Stunned and not sure if she wasn’t now broken into a million pieces, Lizzy tried not to move. She really needed to quit landing on the floor so often in the morning. It couldn’t be good for her health.

“Lizzy! Are you okay? Call 911!” Lizzy’s mom was screaming. Suddenly Lizzy was being rolled over onto her side, her mom staring intently into her face. “Lizzy? Do you recognize me? Where does it hurt?”

Lizzy noticed that her mom wasn’t the only new face in the room. A large man dressed as a security guard was standing over her, peering down with a look of concern on her face.

“Mom? What’s going on?” Lizzy tried to sit up, although her quick trip to the floor had left her somewhat disoriented. She was fairly certain, however, that these extra people had not been in the room moments before.

Lizzy looked over at the door and noticed it seemed a bit damaged, partially hanging off the hinges. “Mom, did you break the door?”

Penny looked worried. She held tightly to Lizzy’s hand. “Lizzy? What day is it? Look at me, honey, and tell me what day it is.” Lizzy hadn’t known what day it was for almost two weeks. Even if she hadn’t experienced any head trauma from the morning jolt to the floor, she could not answer the question posed to her about the day of the week, or month, or year, for that matter.

“Mom, I’m fine. What’s going on? Did you break into my room? Why?” Lizzy was very confused, and suddenly realized that she was laying sprawled on the floor in her flannel pajamas while the large security man continued to stare at her. She pulled the blanket over herself, seeking comfort and some small bit of modesty. The security guy took the hint and quietly left the room.

“Lizzy, when you didn’t come out of your room all morning, I got worried. I over slept. We missed Regis, and I don’t know how we’re ever going to make that up to him, incidentally. I hadn’t heard from you all morning, and I knocked and knocked and knocked, but you never answered the door. At first I just figured you needed some extra sleep, so I left you alone. Then I saw what time it was and that we were really late for Regis, and I got scared and had the security guy come up and let me into your room. Then I saw you lying there on the floor . . .” Penny’s voice trailed off into a whimper.

“Mom, my door wasn’t locked. Why didn’t you just open it to see if I was in here?” Lizzy’s mom had a habit of over-reacting sometimes.

“Well, I didn’t know, honey. I just panicked a little, I guess. What if you had been in here, lying on the floor unconscious or needing help? I had no way of knowing. You didn’t answer my knocking!” For a second, Penny seemed offended that Lizzy would not answer the knocking on the door, but that passed quickly and Penny resumed her worried mother routine.

Lizzy took a breath and looked her mother straight in the eye. “Mom, I’m on the floor because the sudden break down of the door woke me up and scared me into tumbling out of bed. Before that, I was peacefully, soundly asleep. Nothing wrong at all.” Lizzy paused for a second. “Wait, did you say we missed Regis? How did we miss Regis?”

Penny looked at Lizzy and let go of her hand. “Well, it’s almost noon now, dear. We must have both missed our wake-up calls because we needed to be at the Regis studio by 5:00am. Oh, he will be so disappointed! I need to call and see how I can smooth over the situation. We don’t want to upset Regis! I hope he didn’t have to host the show all by himself.”

5:00am? Suddenly Lizzy was very glad they had missed Regis. That is just too early to be on TV, she thought.

“Ok. Um, well Mom why don’t you go call Regis and straighten everything out. I’m going to get off the floor and get dressed.”

Penny stood up. “That’s a good idea. I’ll call Regis. You get dressed. But don’t take too long. We have that meeting with the MTV people at two o’clock.”

Lizzy stopped fumbling with the blankets keeping her tangled in a heap on the floor. “What? We have a meeting with MTV?” Again, Lizzy felt like she was playing catch-up with her life, never sure what was going on til someone told her what was happening next. She felt like she was constantly watching episodes of her own life acted out, as though it was on television with the rest of the reality shows.

Penny turned back towards Lizzy from the doorway. “Yes, Lizzy. MTV! You’ve been waiting for this meeting all week! Remember? They’ve been watching you all season and they wanted to pitch an idea to us about you having your very own reality show. Like that Jessica, uh . . . Simpson girl? Remember? Lizzy, we talked about this. It’s on your schedule.”
Lizzy was stunned. “Mom, are you serious?” She was suddenly very excited. Not sure how any of this made sense, but excited about it, nonetheless.

“Yes, Lizzy. Of course I’m serious. MTV has seen your work on all of these other reality shows, and after you were so entertaining on that Top Model show, they’ve been calling non-stop to get a meeting with you. They think you can be the next Jessica Simpson. Except without the singing. You don’t sing, do you dear? Maybe we could work on that.” Penny turned, muttering to herself about putting together a CD, and headed out of the room.

Lizzy finally struggled her way out of the mass of blankets and sheets and stood up. MTV wanted her to do her own show? No more of these other shows? Jessica Simpson? Lizzy was just excited to be mentioned in the same sentence as Jessica Simpson.

Lizzy stopped to think. Her mom had just mentioned America’s Next Top Model, but as far as Lizzy could tell, she hadn’t missed a day. And the focus of yesterday had been her mishap on American Idol. Had America’s Next Top Model really happened? The ‘reality TV dreams’ were getting more and more real, and better detailed. But she usually woke up having missed a day in her ‘real’ life. Lizzy was starting to see a pattern. Whatever reality show she watched or read about or that was on her mind, when she fell asleep she seemed to be a part of that show. Could that be right? Could that be happening? Could that be in any way physically possible? Time seemed to move on in the ‘real’ world, despite her trips from one show to the next. But whenever she woke from a ‘reality dream’, those dream-like episodes that took her into the worlds of the reality shows and that seemed so realistic, it was as though the ‘real’ world had watched her and kept up with her reality show adventures. Strangely, none of it seemed weird or impossible to anyone.

None of this could actually be possible, Lizzy thought, heading towards the shower. But if she could get her own reality television show, the dream she long had as her hope for a way out of boring, suffocating desk jobs, she would believe anything she needed to believe to make that happen.

Lizzy flipped on the light in the bathroom and looked herself in the eye in the mirror. She had a vague recollection of a life she once had, stuck in a job she hated, watching reality television, passionately wishing she could be on a reality show someday, but knowing that could never be possible. Had she really done that? Had she really had that life? And since then, had she really been on not one reality show, but many reality shows? What had happened to the life she thought she might have had not so long ago?

Who cares, Lizzy thought. This life is pretty fun, although hard to get a grip on. But at least she wasn’t bored. And she had fans. She’d always wondered what it was like to have fans.

Lizzy took a deep breath and continued eyeballing herself in the mirror. “Lizzy,” she said to her reflection. “You have done all these things. You are famous. You are in the world of reality television. Believe it.” She spoke with authority, trying to convince herself to believe the strange events of the past couple of weeks, and hoping that it was more than just a dream.

She didn’t want it to go away. At least, not until she’d had a chance to play the whole thing out. Oddly enough, Lizzy’s ‘reality’ was a reality she wanted to keep for awhile.

“At least it will be a good story to tell my grandchildren someday,” Lizzy mused with a grin as she stepped out of her flannel pajamas and into the shower. She wondered if there were any more Bachelor-type shows she could go on to win a husband, so that she would actually have grandchildren one day.

Lizzy took a quick shower, the excitement about a meeting with MTV almost too much to justify wasting time underneath the water of a shower. She dried off and looked through her suitcases for the perfect MTV outfit: something nice enough for a meeting, but hip and cute enough to show them she was MTV material. She settled on a pair of hip-hugging black pants, and a bright pink shirt.

She examined the finished product in the mirror. “I want my MTV,” she said, admiring how MTV-esque she looked. There was no way the MTV people would not want her to star in her own reality show. It was as good as done.

MTV sent a limo over to the hotel to escort Lizzy and Penny to the MTV studios for the big meeting. Lizzy was nervous with excitement. She was glad her mom was with her. She had to hand it to Penny, she was doing a great job as Lizzy’s manager. It was a little tiring to have her mom around all the time. But when she thought about it, Lizzy was grateful to have her there. Without her, Lizzy would never know where to be or who she was meeting with or what to do.

They arrived at the studio and were escorted into large conference room with a wall of windows overlooking Times Square. Lizzy stopped for a moment to gaze out the window at the many people and cars of traffic, busy on the street below. I can’t believe I’m here, she thought, remembering all the times she’d seen shows taped at the MTV studios on television. She took a deep breath and found a seat in a chair next to her mother, who was busily searching her purse for a piece of gum. Penny never seemed to get nervous, Lizzy noticed. Either that, or her mom was just really good at not knowing she was nervous.

The door to the conference room opened and in walked three men and one woman, wearing suits. Lizzy had almost expected these MTV ‘executives’ they were to meet with to arrive wearing jeans and t-shirts and flip-flops. She was surprised to see well-dressed business-looking people arrive for the meeting. Clearly, MTV was serious about Lizzy. Lizzy got a little more nervous at that thought.

Everyone in the room greeted each other, and the meeting began. The executives started by praising Lizzy’s good work on her other reality shows, and by telling her how much they’ve enjoyed watching her. The one lady executive spoke for awhile about how Lizzy’s personality, age, and appearance was just what they were looking for to appeal to the rising age of the MTV generation. The current audience majority was now slightly older than the original 18-25 age demographic than the original MTV generation, and MTV felt Lizzy would be a great addition to the MTV programming line-up in a reality show of her very own.

All of that was complete mumbo-jumbo to Lizzy until she heard the phrase “in a reality show of her very own.” That was music to Lizzy’s ears.

The executives passed a proposal over to Lizzy, outlining a twenty-one episode season of a show featuring her life, much like the premise of Jessica Simpson’s show, Newlyweds. Cameras would follow her around and each episode would be based on the things she encounters in her daily life. MTV and its audience want to get to know Lizzy and Lizzy’s life. And through that, Lizzy would become a star.

The best part of the proposal, Lizzy noticed, was the part where it mentioned paying Lizzy lots of money to send cameras into her world and broadcast that to the realm of reality television. She was also given partial creative control over what the world sees of her world. Lizzy liked those ideas very much. So long, boring desk jobs, Lizzy thought as she skimmed over the money part of the proposal again.

Getting paid to live her life everyday. That was a beautiful thought for Lizzy.

The MTV meeting ended with a lot of handshaking and the signing of preliminary paperwork. Lizzy felt sure she and her mom had read through everything and understood what was about to happen. It had finally come to be a reality: Lizzy’s very own reality television show.

Lizzy and her mom were driven back to their hotel, where they packed and headed to the airport to catch a flight home. The flight came at the end of a long, but very exciting day. Lizzy and Penny found their seats in first-class again, which Lizzy noted was truly the only way to fly, and they settled in for a long flight home. Lizzy moved around in her seat by the window, getting comfortable.

Lizzy and Penny chatted for awhile about the exciting meeting they’d had earlier with MTV. Penny was busy jotting down notes, planning things that needed to be done within the next few days in order for everything to come together for the beginning of taping for Lizzy’s new show. As they continued to chat about the show, a man from across the aisle leaned over and tapped Penny on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” he said. Lizzy and Penny looked over at him, startled that someone would interrupt their conversation. Had they been talking too loud?

Lizzy took another look at the man, and suddenly recognized who he was. It was Phil Keoghan, host of one of Lizzy’s favorite television shows, The Amazing Race. Lizzy loved this show because it took the contestants and the viewers on an adventure around the world to many places Lizzy hoped to see for herself someday.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, but my name is Phil Keoghan. You may know me from such reality television shows as The Amazing Race.” He paused to let that sink in, and Lizzy immediately remembered his New Zealand accent. She’d always thought it sounded a bit odd, but knowing he was originally from New Zealand, Lizzy decided his accent could, in fact, be a New Zealand accent.

Phil continued. “You’re Lizzy Talbot, right?” he said, pointing to Lizzy sitting on the other side of Penny. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m a big fan of yours. Any chance you’ll be doing my show sometime? We’d love to have you on Amazing Race.” Phil flashed a big smile. He was very proud of his show.

Lizzy smiled back at Phil. “Hi, Phil. I’d love to do your show sometime. Always been a big fan. Hopefully I can do it one day. I’m sure it would be fun.” Lizzy didn’t quite know how to take such a compliment from another celebrity. She had celebrity fans, but none had asked to collaborate on any projects with her.

Phil kept smiling. “That would be great, Lizzy. Well, I’ll let you two get back to your conversation. Nice meeting you.” He turned back towards his seat and busied himself with a book. Lizzy noticed it was a Lonely Planet travel book.

You know, Lizzy mused to herself, celebrities are just so nice! She hadn’t been prepared to be so warmly received by these famous people she kept meeting. Whoever said celebrities were not nice people was just plain wrong.

Lizzy and Penny finished making a few plans, Penny making notes about the plans in her Palm Pilot. The two of them got quiet, and Penny was soon in her own world, listening again to the piped-in airplane music through the headphones plugged into her seat. Lizzy rummaged through her carry-on bag, looking for her chapstick. She reached in and once again pulled out her flannel pajamas.

“How did these get in here again?” Lizzy thought she had packed them in her suitcase.

Penny pulled the headphones out of her ears. “Oh, you left those on the floor again, honey. I went through your room to make sure you hadn’t left anything while you were out in the hall talking to the luggage guy, and I saw your flannel pajamas on the floor. You really should be more careful, dear. Aren’t those your favorite pj’s? One day you’ll leave them somewhere, and then you won’t have them anymore. I won’t always be able to pick up after you.” Penny put the headphones back in her ears and closed her eyes to listen to the music.

Lizzy stuff the flannel pajamas back into her bag, found the chapstick, then settled back into her seat. She snuck a glance across the aisle and saw that Phil Keoghan had fallen asleep, his chin resting uncomfortably on his chest. The plane was quiet and peaceful. Lizzy laid her head back and closed her eyes. She just needed to rest for a minute before getting back to that People magazine crossword she never finished on her last flight. . .

Suddenly, Lizzy realized she’d been sleeping. Oh no! She woke with a start and sat up with a start. She looked down, noticing she seemed to still be in a seat like the one she was in just a minute ago. Wherever she was, it was moving. The plane she’d been on had been moving, too. This was good, so far.

Phew, Lizzy thought. It seemed she had just dozed for a second. She didn’t want to fall asleep, in case she had another dream that took her on another reality trip. She still didn’t quite believe that the dreams were real, or that her reality changed every time she fell asleep. But she didn’t want to take any chances doing anything right now that might ruin the plans she had for her new show on MTV. Lizzy was very excited about that show. If she had to stay awake for the rest of her life, she would.

She rubbed her eyes and yawned, noticing her mom still sat beside her. All was well, it seemed. What a silly thought, falling asleep and losing her show. She’d worked hard for her show. Everything was falling into place in her life. Just like she’d always wanted.

Lizzy noticed her mom was looking at a Lonely Planet travel book, similar to the one Phil Keoghan had been reading earlier. That’s odd, Lizzy thought. Since when was her mom interested in traveling to . . . Russia? Lizzy stared at the back of the Lonely Planet book. Her mom was reading a book about Russia!

Lizzy blinked her eyes and turned to look out the window. She saw ground, trees, and snow rushing by outside. Ground? She realized she was no longer on a plane. She was on a train, traveling at a high speed to . . . somewhere. She looked across the aisle and noticed a camera person pointing a camera at her. Her mom turned to her and spoke.

“Lizzy, glad you’re awake. Now, when we arrive in Moscow, the Road Marker clue tells us we have to get to a specific spot somewhere in the Red Square to find our next clue. Will you read over the clue again and tell me where you think that spot might be? I can’t get much from this travel book. Goodness, I had no idea the Red Square was so big!”

Lizzy stared at Penny, then at the camera. The Amazing Race! She noticed another couple across the aisle, also pouring over a travel book. Lizzy suddenly realized what was going on. She and her mom were partners on The Amazing Race. . .

Lizzy tried to think fast. “Uh . . . not now mom. Not feeling well. Need more sleep.” Lizzy shifted her body towards the window in her seat, hunched down, and closed her eyes. This time, she wanted to fall asleep.

“Lizzy, if you want to win this game, you have to put a little better effort into what we’re doing. I’m tired of doing all the work!” Penny was frustrated with Lizzy’s desire to sleep.

Lizzy didn’t answer. She tried hard to fall asleep again. As much as she loved The Amazing Race, she didn’t want to play out an episode of the show. She had her own show to worry about now! She might never get back to it if The Amazing Race took over for a day.

Surely if she fell right back to sleep without doing anything else, she could wake up back in her seat on the plane where she must have dozed off. Dozing wasn’t really sleeping, at least not in the sense of a deep, dreaming sleep. If she could get back to that world, right away, she felt sure everything would be fine.

Lizzy’s worlds were starting to collide now, it seemed. Even with the cameras on in the ‘reality dream world’, Lizzy could vaguely keep a sense of what had just happened. She’d been on a plane headed home, and now she was suddenly on a train headed to Moscow. This time, she wanted to control the situation. She wanted to get back to the life she just had moments ago, where she felt her real life was. And, where she had her very own reality television show.
Lizzy kept her eyes closed and concentrated very hard.

Must get back to sleep. . . must get back to sleep . . . must fall . . . sleep . . .

Lizzy forced her eyes open. She straightened up in her seat and leaned forward to make sure she was fully awake. Once she was definitely awake, she noticed she was still in her seat on the plane, Penny sleeping soundly beside her, Phil Keoghan drooling on his shirt across the aisle.

Lizzy took a deep breath. It worked! She was back on the plane, hopefully as though she’d never left, or done anything to change the way things had been before she’d dozed off for a brief time to join The Amazing Race.

Lizzy needed to stay awake. She reached up and hit the button for the flight attendant. She’d never done that before, but being in first class, Lizzy decided she could take advantage of the luxuries provided for her there. She asked the flight attendant for some coffee, and she looked for something to occupy her attention for the remaining hour of the flight.

The flight attendant brought her coffee, and Lizzy sipped it while working on the People magazine crossword puzzle. To her amusement, the finished crossword revealed the secret star’s name, which Lizzy delightfully discovered was her very own name.

Lizzy smiled. She knew she was a real star when her name was the trivia question secret star hidden inside the People crossword puzzle.

The plane landed. Lizzy and Penny walked off the plane to find Jeffrey the driver waiting for them with another limo, to take them back to Lizzy’s house. It was late. Lizzy and Penny rode in silence, thankful to be home again after a long trip.
When they arrived at Lizzy’s house, she noticed the crowd had gone. Lizzy was relieved. She was in no mood to deal with excited fans at this late hour. Jeffrey unloaded Lizzy’s luggage and helped her carry it into the house. Penny waited in the car.

“Lizzy!” Penny called from the limo. “I’ll call you in the morning and we’ll begin packing your stuff. Busy day tomorrow! Get some sleep!”

Lizzy wasn’t quite sure what her mom meant by “packing her stuff” but for now, she was tired and she needed a break from her mom. She loved her mom, but sometimes she just needed a break.

The limo pulled away, and Lizzy was once again alone in her house, thankful for the silence and familiar surroundings. She wheeled her suitcase into the bedroom and opened it to begin unpacking. She looked around for her carry-on bag and realized she’d left if by the front door.

As Lizzy went to grab the carry-on bag, she thought about her situation, her life. She was so tired, but remembering what had happened when she’d dozed off on the plane for a few minutes, Lizzy was hesitant to go to bed. While it had been fun to be a part of so many of her favorite reality television shows, darting in and out of so many different stories and realities was beginning to wear on Lizzy. Was that really her life? She liked where she was now. In fact, for the first time in a long time, Lizzy maybe felt happy.

Could it be the fame? The attention? The variety? The excitement? Should these things make her happy? Lizzy didn’t know. But one thing she could be sure of, television had saved her again. This time, in a very different way. Instead of just watching the shows she loved in order to escape, television had actually become her escape. She was on the airwaves, free from a life she once had where she struggled with a job that she didn’t like, in a time when she wished for something much more than what she had.

Lizzy brought the carry-on bag back to her bedroom. She opened the bag, then stopped. Something was bothering her about the bag, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

“Aah . . .” She sighed, getting a whiff of what was in the bag. The flannel pajamas were finally starting to smell their age. “Eeyew,” Lizzy said, remembering that she hadn’t washed her set of favorite pj’s since this whole reality television adventure had begun, or at least for several weeks. If things were really as they seemed, this particular set of pajamas had traveled many miles and had been a key ingredient in many varied situations. No wonder they were Lizzy’s favorite.

Hesitant to touch the grimey pajamas, Lizzy opted for dumping the bag out onto the floor instead. The pajamas fell out onto the floor, as well as the other contents of the bag. She picked out what she needed, careful not to touch the flannels, and she left the pajamas where they were, in a heap in the floor near the wall.

Lizzy brushed her teeth, even though she was too tired to brush them. She’d decided that if she was going to be on television and in the public eye on a regular basis, she should take good care of her teeth, even when she didn’t want to. In fact, Lizzy thought, maybe I should get them whitened. All the celebrities were whitening their teeth these days, it seemed.

She put away her toothbrush, then walked over to her dresser to pick out a clean set of pajamas. Her runner-up favorite pj’s weren’t flannel, but they were comfy and good for sleeping just the same. She slipped into the pajamas and climbed into bed. She’d missed her bed. It was good to sleep in a familiar place again.

Before turning out the lamp by her bed, Lizzy made a conscious decision. She would go to sleep, because she was exhausted and needed the rest. But if she caught herself in another reality dream, she would force herself back to sleep in the dream, and then back to a state of being awake in her reality. Somehow, that made sense to Lizzy. She flipped the switch on the lamp, and fell asleep in her safe, dark bedroom.

**************

Lizzy rolled over in the bed. She stretched out, reaching as far as she could to the four corners of the bed with her arms and legs. She breathed in deep, then exhaled slowly, still with her eyes closed. She felt rested, relaxed, and comfortable.

Then, the doorbell rang.

Lizzy reluctantly opened her eyes and listened to the doorbell ring again.

“Nooooo . . .” Lizzy moaned, desperately not wanting to have awakened into another reality show dream. What show could possibly be left? She’d been in all of the good shows. Anything else would be more of a nightmare than a dream.

The doorbell rang again, this time urging Lizzy out of bed. She kicked her legs out of bed and angrily stood up. Who could that be? Lizzy didn’t care. She was starting to worry that the chance at her own reality show may have slipped away into another dream world, rudely awakening her into another reality where she could exercise no control.

Lizzy stumbled towards the hall, tripped over a shoe, and caught herself by bumping into the doorway of her bedroom. She paused for a moment to collect herself, then stopped completely to notice that her surroundings were very familiar, and what had just happened was very familiar. She’d tripped over that shoe and bumped into that doorway almost every morning since she’d lived in that house!

Lizzy was thrilled to discover that she had awakened in her own bed, in her own bedroom, in her own house. She looked around to make sure, then she let herself smile a very big smile. She was home! She hadn’t gone anywhere in her dreams last night. In fact, she felt more rested than she had in several weeks. Lizzy had a good night’s sleep. She could hardly believe it.

The doorbell rang and Lizzy snapped out of her excited revelation to answer the door. She looked through the peephole and saw her mother standing on the porch.

“Hi, Mom,” Lizzy greeted cheerfully as she opened the door.

Penny stepped inside the house, looking at Lizzy with an examining eye. “Were you still sleeping? Why are you smiling? I rang the doorbell seven times. Have you forgotten what today is? I swear, Lizzy. If it weren’t for me, nothing would get done around here.” Penny walked into the living room and sat down on the couch.

Lizzy closed the front door and followed her mother into the living room. “What’s going on today, Mom?” She almost hated to ask, but she decided to go ahead and speed up the process of getting to the bottom of the situation. She was in a good mood. Things seemed normal for a change.

“Lizzy,” Penny said, rolling her eyes. “Honey, if you’ve decided this really isn’t that important to you, then you should have told me before I made all of the arrangements. This is part of the agreement, but if you’re not going to cooperate, we can just call the whole thing off. I’d just as soon leave you here, but it’s up to you.” Lizzy was still confused, so she said nothing. She leaned against the wall, waiting for her mom to continue.

Penny stood up from the couch. Lizzy noticed her mom was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, something she couldn’t ever remember seeing her Mom wear. “Now. Lizzy. The packers and movers will be here in an hour. Anything you don’t want them to pack, you’ll need to pack yourself. I have a trunk full of boxes out in the car. I’m here to help and to keep an eye on things, but there are still a lot of details to be worked out, so you need to get moving so we can get everything done on time. We have to have you in L.A. and set up in your new house in a week!”

Suddenly Lizzy remembered her new reality show. Was it part of the deal to shoot the show in L.A.? Maybe Lizzy hadn’t read that contract as closely as she thought she had.

“Lizzy! Quit staring off into space. I know this is sad, leaving your first house. But you’re not really leaving the house, since you’re not selling it. You can always come back. But in order for the show to work, you need to be in L.A. So, we are just packing what you need to feel comfortable in your new house for as long as you’re needed out there. Lizzy, we’ve already been over this. Go get dressed! Cry about it later! I’m going to go get those boxes out of the car.” Penny headed out the front door.

Lizzy stared into space for another minute, then headed back to her bedroom to change into clothes for the day. She was moving to L.A.? Right now? Well, Lizzy reasoned, as long as she didn’t have to sell her house, she could spend some time in L.A. Might be fun, she thought. And if it makes for a good show, then she would rise to the occasion and make the sacrifice to live in a house in L.A.

She wondered where the house would be, and if she would even like it. Had she picked it out? Had someone picked it out for her? She couldn’t remember, but it probably didn’t matter. Lizzy was going to be on TV! Her dream hadn’t gone away in her dreams. Things were as they should be. Lizzy was moving to L.A.!

After Lizzy changed her clothes, she began looking around her room to decide what she needed to pack. She heard her mother come back in the front door with some boxes. Lizzy pulled out her suitcases and began to move her clothes from the closet into the suitcases.

Penny came into the bedroom, talking on her cell phone. “Lizzy dear? I’m speaking with one of the producers from MTV. We’re trying to work out some pre-production issues for your show, so we can get it up and running as soon as possible. They want to start running some promos for it starting next week, during Newlyweds reruns.”

Lizzy stopped digging through the back of her closet to wait for her mom to get to the point of what she needed from Lizzy. She scooted out of the closet and rested on the floor, propping herself up with her hands and watching her mother try to carry on a conversation with both the MTV producer and with Lizzy at the same time.

“Honey, we need a name for your show. The producers are thinking, The Lizzy Talbot Show? What do you think?” Penny looked at Lizzy expectantly, nodding to communicate that she should agree with the producers.

Suddenly Lizzy noticed her hand was resting on something soft near the front corner of the closet. She pulled her hand out, recognizing a pair of pantyhose that she’d discarded into the closet. She looked at the pantyhose in her hand, and remembered getting ready for an interview during one morning that seemed like a long time ago, and finding a run in her hose just as she triumphantly pulled the hose onto her leg. She smiled, trying not to laugh, but giggling a little, anyway. She couldn’t help it.

“Pantyhose,” she said, an idea suddenly hitting her.

Penny was looking down at Lizzy on the floor, waiting for an answer. “What, dear? Did you say something? The producers are very busy . . .” Penny tried to communicate for Lizzy to hurry up with her answer.

Lizzy held up the pantyhose so her mom could see them.

Penny seemed confused. “Yes, Lizzy. I see that. Are you going to pack those? Throw them away. Now, about the name of your show? Can we focus for a minute?” Penny was not amused by the pantyhose.

Lizzy stood up, still holding the rumpled pantyhose. She looked her mom straight in the eye and smiled. “Lizzy Hated Pantyhose. That’s the name of the show.”

Penny stared at Lizzy. “Um, can I call you right back? We need just a moment,” she said into the phone. She pushed a button on the phone and turned to Lizzy. “Lizzy? Are you not taking this seriously?”

Lizzy laughed. “Yes, Mom. I’m very serious. Lizzy Hated Pantyhose. It totally works! The Lizzy Talbot Show is boring. My title gets people’s attention. It’s funny! It has meaning!” She knew her mom would not understand about the pantyhose, but it really didn’t matter. The pantyhose were a symbol of a life she once had, when she dreamed of having a reality show one day. Even if it was just a silly dream back then, it was really happening now. Her hatred of pantyhose had kept the dream alive. Even though she would always hate pantyhose, she owed a lot to the hose.

With an exasperated sigh, Penny said, “Fine. I will call them back and tell them your idea. But don’t be disappointed if they hate it.” She turned to walk out of the bedroom, then stopped as her foot kicked something on the floor.
“Oh, Lizzy. Are these your flannel pajamas? Is that where that smell is coming from? You know what? I’m making an executive decision. These are going in the trash. I don’t think washing them will help the smell, and you never remember them anyway!”

Lizzy protested. “Mom! Those are my favorite pj’s!” Suddenly, another thought occurred to Lizzy. She hadn’t worn the pj’s last night, but every night that she did wear them, her dreams took her to a different reality television destination. Last night, she’d stayed in her own bed, in her own house, waking up just like a normal day. No reality television adventure. Could the pajamas be playing a part in this sequence of events? Could they be magical flannel pajamas? It seemed a bizarre possibility, but Lizzy didn’t want to take any chances. If she ever wore those pajamas again, it could ruin everything.

“Fine, Mom. Take them. Throw them away. I have new favorite pajamas now, anyway.” Lizzy took a step back, careful not to come in contact with the pajamas on the floor.

Penny bent down and picked up the pajamas, tucking them under her arm. “Very good, Lizzy. Out they go!” She pushed a few buttons again on the phone and held it up to her ear, slowly turning to walk down the hall and finish her business with the MTV producers.

Lizzy turned back to the packing task at hand. She could hear her mom on the phone down the hall. “Yes. Hello. It’s Penny Talbot again. Well, yes this is what Lizzy suggests. She thinks it would be fun to name the show Lizzy Hated Pantyhose. Now, I know that’s a little off the wall, but . . . oh. You like it? Funny? Quirky? Hip? Well, I knew you would like it! It’s settled, then. Lizzy Hated Pantyhose. Now, about the theme song. Who is writing that?” Penny’s voice trailed off as she headed into the living room.

Lizzy looked at the pantyhose, still in her hand. She walked over to her suitcase and dropped them in. Yes, she was packing those. But only those. They would serve as a reminder, as her mascot heading into L.A. and into a brand new life. All other pantyhose in the house were headed for the trash.

Lizzy was done with pantyhose. At least in the sense of wearing them.

The doorbell was ringing. Again. Why must people always ring the bell in the morning? Can’t they call first? Or better yet, wait until afternoon?

The shone in brightly through the tall windows in Lizzy’s new bedroom. She’d spent two nights in her new house in L.A., both of them gloriously restful and taking place entirely within the confines of her new home. The house was beautiful and spacious. It even had a pool in the backyard. Lizzy had never had a pool of her very own before. Even on the reality shows, she had to share it with other people.

Lizzy was settling into her new life in L.A. All of her stuff was in the new house, unpacked, ready to go. Her parents had a house nearby. Close enough for them to keep in touch about Lizzy’s schedule and other manager/celebrity-type issues. But far enough away so that her mother wasn’t over at the house all the time. After all, it was Lizzy’s reality show. Not Lizzy’s and Penny’s show.

Lizzy’s dad seemed to just go with the flow of everything around him. He was proud of Lizzy, and he seemed to like L.A. He’d bought a convertible and spent his days driving around, taking in the sights, and working in the yard of their house. He refused to hire a gardener. He liked to get out and do it himself.

In the few days Lizzy had spent in her new house, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something about it was very familiar. She was certain she’d never been in the house before. She’d never even been to L.A. before three days ago. But still, something about the house or the neighborhood seemed familiar to Lizzy. She hadn’t had time to venture out much, yet. Unpacking and getting organized for the cameras to be around had kept her inside and very busy for the past several days.

Maybe she had watched too much reality television, and the house seemed familiar because it looked like every other house on all of those shows. That had to be it.

The doorbell rang again, and Lizzy slipped into a robe and hobbled down the stairs. She crossed a very large foyer and looked through the peephole to see who was ringing her doorbell at that ridiculous hour of the morning. It was 10:30, for goodness’ sakes!

Unable to see clearly through the peephole to see who was on the porch, Lizzy opened the door. She was stunned. There, on her front porch, stood Jessica Simpson.

Lizzy didn’t say anything.

“Hi. I’m your neighbor. My name is Jessica Simpson. You may know me from such MTV shows as Newlyweds.” Jessica Simpson was standing on Lizzy’s porch, speaking to Lizzy!

“Um, hi.” Lizzy couldn’t think of anything better to say, but she suddenly realized why her house seemed so familiar. She looked past Jessica to the house across the street, which was none other than the house she’d seen on television so many times. It was Jessica Simpson’s house. Lizzy lived across the street from Jessica Simpson!

Jessica Simpson!

Of course, Lizzy’s dream had been to live next door to Jessica Simpson. But she figured across the street was just as well. Lizzy and Jessica and Nick could become friends, even with a street between them.

Jessica was still standing on the porch, looking at Lizzy. “Well, I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood. I noticed you have cameras following you around, too. Isn’t it great? Reality TV is so fun!” As Jessica mentioned the cameras, Lizzy began to notice the crew of cameras surrounding them. Some had apparently followed Jessica from across the street, others apparently belonged to Lizzy. There were cameras and camera people everywhere.

“Um, do you want to come in?” Lizzy didn’t know what to do, but it seemed natural to invite Jessica in to her home as she stood at the door in her pajamas. Her soft, cotton, non-flannel pajamas.

“Oh, I’d love to. But I can’t,” Jessica responded with her trademark pout and a hint of the whining that Lizzy had grown to enjoy. “I have a busy day. Nick and I are painting a wall, and it might take all day. Then, I have to get a massage. Or maybe I’m getting a massage and Nick is painting the wall? I can’t remember. Anyway, do you want to come over for a bar-be-cue later? Nick got a new grill and I’m making a salad. Oh, I’d better get started on that. It’s getting late. Just come on over tonight! Do you need directions to get there?” Jessica had turned and started walking down the front steps towards the street. Her wobbly high heel shoes made a funny clicking sound on the pavement.

“No, I don’t need directions.” Lizzy was certain she could find her way across the street to the Simpson house. “See you later!” Lizzy waved to Jessica as she and her camera crew headed back across the street.

Lizzy stepped back inside the house and closed the door. She paused for a minute before moving away from the door. Did that really just happen? Was she going to hang out with Nick and Jessica tonight?

Of course it happened. Of course she was going to hang out with Nick and Jessica. This was reality television at its finest, where dreams come true and the Sweetheart of Reality Television lived across the street from The First Couple of Reality Television. All was as it should be. Lizzy and Jessica and Nick had come together, cameras in tow.

Dreams, in all reality, had come true.

************


The phone rang. Lizzy answered it without hesitation. Nothing surprised her anymore. Things had been steady and predictable for a long time, but in a good way.

“Hello?”

“Lizzy, we’ll be over in a minute. Nick is out with the bees again.”

“Ok. No problem. I’ve got everything set up. Show time in ten minutes. Tell him not to shoot them with the water hose first this time. That makes them mad.” Lizzy hung up the phone.

What had she ever done before Nick and Jessica? They were her new best friends, but Lizzy almost couldn’t remember life without them. They were so cool!

Their weekly ritual was to get together and watch their own shows on MTV. They lived their lives firsthand, and separate from each other, but somehow, seeing it again on television was a whole new adventure. Lizzy may be a part of reality television now, but that hadn’t taken away from her desire to watch as much of it as possible.

She went into the living room to make sure there were plenty of snacks set out, and to make sure the room was neat enough for the cameras. One thing about being filmed all the time, Lizzy definitely kept her house cleaner than she ever had before reality television hit her home.

She sat on the couch and waited. A minute later, she heard the front door open. Jessica and Nick had a key to her house. Lizzy had a key to their house. It made perfect sense. They were best friends!

“Hey, Lizzy,” she heard Jessica’s voice. “Sorry we’re late. I was trying to make cookies. I think they got a little burnt.” Jessica set a plate of charred cookies down on the table. They were flatter than paper, and burnt to a crisp. Nick flopped down on the couch.

“What happened?” Lizzy picked up a cookie to examine the oddity.

“I thought the recipe said one tablespoon of baking soda. Isn’t that what that ‘t’ means? If they meant ‘teaspoon’, they should have said ‘teaspoon’. Not just ‘t’.”

“Shows on.” Nick said, picking up the remote. “Can we talk about flat cookie recipes later? I need to concentrate on the shows tonight. Am I starting to look fat? The cameras add ten pounds, right?”

It was the same sort of situation and conversation that happened every week. Lizzy loved it. But, one thing was different this week.

“What’s that?” Jessica pointed to something in a frame hanging on the wall above the television set.

Lizzy smiled. “It’s my inspiration, and the reason I am here with you right now.” She got up and walked over to the wall, taking the frame down to show Jessica what it was.

Lizzy had framed the pantyhose, to display them proudly above her large screen TV. She knew it was a silly idea, but it seemed appropriate. She may hate pantyhose, but this particular pair of pantyhose was worth a lot to Lizzy. They deserved a place of honor.

Jessica looked at the pantyhose with a confused look on her face. “Huh. Oh, hey Lizzy, that reminds me. Do you have any pantyhose I can borrow? I never buy any, but I need some for a costume party I’m going to tomorrow.”

Lizzy laughed. “No, sorry. I can tell you I definitely do not have any pantyhose you can borrow.” She put the framed hose back on the wall above the TV, and headed back to the couch to watch her show.

“Oh wait!” Lizzy jumped up from the couch and ran into the kitchen. “Can’t believe I almost forgot.” No night of reality television was complete with her ultimate best friend and faithful companion for so many years, Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. She opened the freezer, found her friend, then shut the freezer and headed back into the living room.

Lizzy plopped down on the couch, arranged herself into a comfortable position, pried the lid off of Blue Bell, and settled in just as the theme song to her show sang out from the surround sound speakers hooked into her television set.

Now this is the way to experience reality, Lizzy thought.

The sound of the television announcer took over the room, and the three reality television stars grew quiet to watch.

“Last week on Lizzy Hated Pantyhose . . .“









***THE END***