This is Chad Pearson?

The story opens at the Electric Palace, where the girls of Odyssey have packed the showroom to watch fourteen television sets at once, every one of them tuned to Heartbreak Condominiums, the hit show starring teenage heartthrob Nick Grant as crime fighter Chad Pearson. Erica Clark and her friends hang on every scene. Bart Rathbone, who runs the store, does not recognize the star at first, but when Erica tells him that Chad Pearson is on practically every magazine cover in the country and that probably every girl in Odyssey adores him, Bart hears a business opportunity knocking.

Soon Bart is on television himself, announcing the Win a Day with Nick Grant contest. A month from now, one lucky winner will spend an entire day with the star, and chances to enter are absolutely free - with a ten-dollar purchase. Erica's four packs of batteries come to only $8.62, so she throws in fifteen fuses to make the cut.

Connie Kendall has been to the Electric Palace too, running an errand for Whit, and she comes back to Whit's End calling the place a madhouse. She thinks the whole frenzy over some TV star is ridiculous, though Whit gently reminds her of the crushes she once had on a TV detective and a pop singer. Then Bart draws the winning name from the barrel, and to the horror of a hundred hopeful girls, it belongs to Connie Kendall, who is not even there. Connie is stunned to learn she entered at all: her eleven dollars of supplies for Whit earned her a ticket without her knowing it. Erica has missed meeting Nick Grant by a lousy dollar, and Connie, who has never watched the show, can barely remember the star's name.

The big day arrives with a limousine, cameras, and a crowd. Nick thanks everyone, gets Connie's name wrong, and dutifully plugs Bart's store. Erica begs Connie to let her tag along, and Connie shrugs and agrees. The day quickly becomes a circus. Bart trails the pair everywhere, hollering for one more photo, and Dale Jacobs of the Odyssey Times asks Connie how her day is going before it has even started. When Nick asks what she thought of his show, Connie confesses that she does not watch it, and that the one episode she did see struck her as kind of dumb - in real life, people do not knock out a whole gang of karate experts with a frisbee and a spatula.

Stung, Nick sets out to prove himself. He insists he studied karate for the part and demonstrates by flipping poor Bart to the ground. At the carnival dart game he spends forty dollars winning Connie a prize she points out he could have bought for half the money. When she says so, Nick finally boils over and demands to know just how hard he has to work to impress her. That, Connie tells him, is exactly the problem: he should stop trying to be Chad Pearson around her and just be himself. Nick answers, honestly puzzled, that this is himself.

Dinner at Whit's End is no calmer, with Bart snapping pictures over the pizza order, so Whit quietly suggests an old trick: excuse yourselves to the restroom, climb out the back window, and meet at the park. It works. Alone at last, Nick thanks Connie for being the first person in a long time to treat him like a person instead of a celebrity, and admits he misses being a normal guy.

Then Erica turns up with a crowd of friends and demands that Nick perform motorcycle-style stunts on a borrowed bike, the way Chad Pearson would. Nick refuses. A stuntman does those tricks on the show, he says. He can ride a bike, but the way normal people ride one. He is not Chad Pearson. He is just himself. And with that he walks away from his own audience.

Connie catches up with him and tells him she has never been more impressed by him all day, because it is the first time he has been honest about who he is. Nick opens up completely: even Nick Grant is not real. His real name is Albert Leach, a name his agent traded away for something cooler, and sometimes he feels like he is not a real person anymore, living as if every move he makes will be in tomorrow's newspaper. Connie tells him every human being has the right to be himself. When the reporters close in, she covers his escape so he can finally have some time alone, and the two part as friends, with an invitation to write and maybe visit him in Hollywood someday.

Bart, of course, still wants his headline, and pushes Connie to tell the reporters how thrilled she was to spend the whole day with Chad Pearson. Chad Pearson, Connie says, is nothing. She likes Nick Grant much better.