fandomtownies | Arms Hotel Ballroom, Monday Evening

The hotel's staff had never worked a Darling birthday party before. By the time Juliet was done working them over and making sure everything looked right and sounded right and was almost as good as it would have been in New York, it was entirely possible they never would again. Still, the room looked amazing, so Juliet figured it was worth it.

The ballroom had been set up for a party, with a DJ booth to the side of the stage where Hannah Montana was scheduled to perform, a dance floor taking up most of the center of the room, and a few tables and chairs off to the side for wallflowers. Most of the drinks available were non-alcoholic, but there was probably some champagne around if you asked nicely or bribed the bartender. A gold -and-silver banner hung over the stage:

Happy 17th Jeremy & Juliet!

(And yes, there'd been some spirited discussion as to whose name went first. Alphabetical order carried the day.) A ~~completely handwavy~~ email had been sent out days before inviting the student body to the party; now all that was left was to wait for the guests.

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Okay, George wasn't really good at -- well. There could be a huge list of things George wasn't good at, and it would run several pages and cover plenty of subjects, but suffice it to say, "parties" would rank highly on that list.

But she was going to be here, because she kind of liked Jeremy and in a liked-liked way shut up and okay she wasn't sure she'd ever met Juliet before but that didn't mean she couldn't come to the party, did it? Because -- okay, if it did, then she'd slink out the back and pretend she had never been here.

She had found a fancy top (http://www.greatglam.com/pd-team-love.cfm#) to go with dark jeans and low heels, and she was pretty sure she was dressed wrong. Overdressed? Underdressed? Too skanky? Not skanky enough? It was like a game show. She'd discover what way she fucked up when she got a good look at the crowd.

For now, she had presents, and she was going to ... hover. That was almost mingling. More or less.

"You're George, right?" Juliet said, with a smile that didn't reveal much about what she thought of George's wardrobe. "It's so nice of you to have come!"

She'd started out pulling for Jeremy/Miley, but she was inclined to like anyone who seemed to make her brother happy

"Hi," George said, trying not to look like a deer caught in headlights. Possibly succeeding. "Yes. George. And you're Juliet?"

Please let her be Juliet. She was 99% sure, but to fuck something like that up would be kind of bad.

"... Happy birthday," she amended, hastily.

Wow. Juliet was ... all kinds of together and stylish in ways that George was never going to manage. It was a little intimidating.

Juliet nodded. "Thanks! I'm really happy with how things came together. Of course, seventeen isn't as big a deal as sixteen or eighteen, but it's still nice to do something."

She had no idea she came across as remotely intimidating to anyone other than paid staff, but she would have been flattered by the idea.

"Birthdays are always good," George said. "Sixteen is driving and eighteen is smoking, so you've got to have the big party for seventeen. It sounds cooler anyway."

Great, now Juliet would think her brother was possibly-maybe-dating an idiot.

"I, uh, brought gifts?" she said, offering up the packages. "... But they kinda suck."

They did. She was broke. Juliet could just toss them if she wanted to. No hard feelings.

"... okay, put them over on that table," Juliet said, pasting a smile on her face even though she wasn't used to people declaring their gifts sucked up front. Usually you figured that out after you got them home and then scrambled desperately for a good thank you note.

"Thanks anyhow? You really didn't need to give me anything. I know you're more Jeremy's friend."

She didn't add how this was nothing next to their sixteenth or what they'd probably do for their eighteenth. She could tell George was self-conscious enough. but it was getting filed away under why possibly-maybe-dating poor people is really hard.

"Did you like the concert?"

"Oh, I wanted to," George said. "I just ... I'm not good at shopping for people. I should have asked Daisy, but she's back in Seattle."

Also, she hated Daisy and sort of hoped maybe wild dogs were attacking her or something. But man, Daisy would have actually known what the fuck to buy rich people as gifts.

Oh. And. Now she had to lie, convincingly, about the exercise in audio torture. Okay!

"It was ... really ... exciting," she said, nodding in an effort to look enthusiastic. "I'm not ... really ... familiar with her stuff? But I know of her, I mean, obviously. How did you get her for your party?"

"Miley did it," Juliet gushed, totally buying the feigned enthusiasm. "She saved Hanah surfing, isn't that amazing? So now they're like BFFs."

Sure. John Lennon got shot in the chest, Janis Joplin OD'd, but Hannah Montana, she got rescued from a surfing accident. The gods of music were laughing their asses off somewhere.

"That's ... incredible," she agreed. "So she gets ... perks and things? Like, calling in favors for private concerts? That's pretty sweet."

The only I-know-a-celebrity story she knew, secondhand, were all of Daisy's stories about having blown most of the male leads of 1930s Hollywood, which ... were not really helpful conversationally.

"Apparently she knew who Jeremy and I were?" Juliet confided, lowering her voice. "I'm not going to complain about it, if it gets us a private concert. I'm just sad I didn't get much of a chance to talk to her."

"Maybe you can get her phone number from Miley?" George suggested. "Maybe she's just all weirdly private or something. Some celebrities are like that, I guess."

Not that she knew. Except that apparently, most male leads in the 1930s had been very easy.

"Aren't you guys famous?" she asked. "Jeremy said something about that. Not as famous as she is, but I think rich people count as semi-celebrities as a default even if they aren't."

Awesome logic, George. A+.

"No, we are," Juliet assured George. "If we were back in New York the gossip columns would have sent a few photographers to this." She shrugged airily. "You get used to it, you know?"

It was worth noting that Juliet and Jeremy thought they were far more famous than they actually were. But they had been on the gossip pages a couple of times, and would make it their much more once they were adults.

George shuddered. "Wow, that would ... get annoying," she said. "I've been in the paper a grand total of once, and it was --" Shit. For getting hit by a satellite.

"-- kind of a fluke," she finished. "Something that happened to me, not anything I did. 'Local Girl blahblahblah.' Doesn't really count."

Edited 2011-10-26 02:14 (UTC)

"Oh, what happened?" Juliet asked, interested. "And I don't mind it so much. But I want to be an actress. Maybe it's different for other people."

Okay, shit. Time to tapdance. She was trying to think up some bizarre oddity she could make up that would sound vaguely interesting but that she could fake details about, when she realized she just had to tell the truth, with some of the severity smudged around.

"Falling debris," she said. "From an airplane? Just ... a bit of the plane broke off and little bits rained down from the sky. I got hit. I was the only person who got hurt, and I'm fine now. I don't even have a scar."

Well, she didn't. And she needed to add that before Juliet asked to see it.

Arms Hotel Ballroom, Monday Evening

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