Pop Princess Read Online Free PDF Page A

to be a pop singer, or a gospel singer. She wanted to be a country singer.
    â€œShut up!” I said when she dropped that bomb.
    â€œWatch my dust, girl, I am going to be the first black female country singing superstar this candy-ass nation has ever known. I’m gonna be Charley Pride and Esther Phillips, Patsy Cline and Ella all in one.”
    â€œWho?”
    Trina had always been like a walking encyclopedia of music history. She knew every obscure song from every important singer imaginable. Beantown Kidz was produced at a local public television station and did not, contrary to rumor, make any of its kid performers any kind of real dough, but Trina had invested what little B-Kidz money she earned to fund an incredible CD collection back when she was her little high school honor student self.
    â€œRead some history sometime, Wonder. The Kaylas of today couldn’t be around if not for the Petula Clarks of yesterday.”
    â€œWho?” I repeated.
    Trina rolled her eyes and said, “Never you mind. Dig this. I am moving to Austin, Texas, when I finish college. Gonna hang out with the real songwriters, quality artists, see? None of that Nashville sellout bid’ness for me.”
    â€œI’ll buy your records,” I said. I would, too.
    â€œLooks like I might be buying yours first!”
    As we walked inside the restaurant, I muttered, “Check out the guy at the counter, Treen,” using Lucky and my old nickname for her. “Major crush.”
    Trina eyed Doug up and down, then her gaze wandered across the tables, inspecting the customers. “This is sure one white town you live in,” she muttered back.
    â€œTell me about it,” I said, embarrassed. Cambridge seemed like a United Nations town in its diversity compared with white-bread Devonport.
    â€œHi, Doug!” I said when we got to the counter. I tried to act all casual but my voice had that annoying enthusiasm I seem incapable of squashing. I had a T-shirt on over my bikini top, but he was on instant guy cam—his eyes went right to my chest. Mine went right to his bicep-muscle serpent tattoo.
    â€œYeah—Wanda is it?” he mumbled.
    A group of girls were giggling at a nearby table. I turned my head and saw Jen Burke, the new bane of my existence. My first week at my new school had been made miserable by her. For some random reason, Jen and her clique of popular girls had targeted me as their victim for the new school year. That I had been a B-Kid was apparently the bug up Jen’s ass.
    Every kid from New England has seen Beantown Kidz at least once, probably a lot more. I wasn’t particularly great on the show—Kayla, Trina, and Lucky were the real standouts—but I was known as “the cute one” so I got lots of letters and one marriage proposal when I turn eighteen from a movie star who’s originally from Boston whom I won’t name because I thought the whole proposal was somewhat disgusting and inappropriate. But since I had grown up and moved away from the Boston area, people rarely recognized me anymore, for which I was grateful. Unfortunately for me, Jen was not one of those people. Furthermore, she seemed stuck in some B-Kidz backlash that looked to severely infect my junior year at Devonport High. What is it about pretty girls named Jen, anyway?
    Worse, Jen and I shared a crush. According to Katie, who knew every coupling in the town of Devonport dating back to Molly Ringwald movie days, Jen had been hot for Doug during the last school year and had even hooked up with him at a couple of parties. These groping sessions had never turned into an actual boyfriend-girlfriend thing, but Jen was always making a play for him. That Jen had the major hots for Doug could be seen every day the past summer when she trounced from the beach to the pizza joint and suggestively slurped Diet Cokes and ogled Doug with her buds while Doug tried to work. She must not have realized Ms.