Beneath the Glitter: A Novel (Sophia and Ava London) (9 page)

Sophia took two deep breaths and hauled herself up into a sitting position. Eyes still closed she said, “Okay. I’m awake. Tell them we can do it. But I want a lot of goodwill.”

When they arrived there was a little confusion about where they should go. Someone seemed to have neglected to tell the PA about the switch, and she spent ten minutes on her headset trying to verify that they really were supposed to be there then. Which meant they were late by the time she whisked them over to the trailer set up in front of the snack bar.

Outside the trailer were two men sitting in deck chairs smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Sophia and Ava recognized both of them. The older one, wearing his signature straw cowboy hat and python boots, was Ohlfons Yaz, makeup pioneer from Iceland. The younger one with bleach-blond hair and a tattoo of a spider on his neck was Troy Goddard, the bad boy of French hairstyling. Together they were, oh god, one of LA’s top hair and makeup teams.

Ohlfons got up from his chair, put the cigarette out in the coffee cup, and tossed it sideways into the garbage can.

“You’re late,” Ohlfons said in an intimidating foreign accent. He snapped his fingers. “Come.”

Ava and Sophia exchanged looks. So much for goodwill.

Inside the trailer he pointed each of them into a seat.

“I just wanted to say it’s such an honor for us to have a chance to work with both of you,” Sophia told them. “We’re really big fans of your work.”

Ohlfons sniffed. “How touching.” He took up a position behind their chairs, crossed his arms, and glared at them in the mirror for a full minute.

“Is something—” Ava started to say.

Ohlfons made a quick karate-chop gesture through the air with one hand. “
Pfut!
Quiet. I am thinking.”

They waited in silence for another full minute, his glower growing deeper and deeper. Ava tried to get Sophia’s attention to see if she thought this was ridiculous too, but Sophia was watching him with rapt attention as though he was a magic trick that was about to dazzle her.

Moving behind Sophia’s seat, he took her chin in his hand, turned her face left and right, and scowled.
“Bland bland bland,”
he pronounced in his complicated accent. He sighed and gave a dramatic shrug. “
Fine
. We’ll do what we can.”

Ava was outraged. She sat forward in her chair and was about to say something when Sophia caught her eye in the mirror and shook her head once, definitively. Ava scowled at her but Sophia was immobile.

He repeated the head turning with Ava, muttering to himself about how an artist deserved better material, then he strapped on a leather holster filled with makeup brushes and set to work. “So you think you can do my job?” he asked as he mixed lip pigments together on a little palette.

“Not at all,” Ava assured him. “We just—”

“Quiet. I do your mouth now.”

Hair went a little more smoothly if only because Troy’s French accent made his English entirely unintelligible, and their “New Wave nautical” outfits—
MM
had done the styling for the shoot and delivered on his promise that he’d put them in something good—were supercute.

But they couldn’t escape the latent undercurrent of hostility that seemed to follow them everywhere. Even the production assistants lowered their voices and turned toward one another furtively as they walked by.

As they walked from the trailers toward the tent that held the staging area for the shoot Sophia said, “Are you having flashbacks—”

“To the first day of high school?” Ava nodded. “Yeah.”

They were being shown from the trailers to the staging area for the photo shoot when they ran into
MM
. “Here are my princesses!” he said, giving them each a kiss. “Sorry I couldn’t come find you earlier, we had a problem with the monkeys.”

“Monkeys?” Ava and Sophia asked in unison, but with very different levels of enthusiasm.

“Not for you—sorry Little London—they’re for someone else. Don’t ask me why—” He stopped, stood back with a hand on one hip, and looked from one sister to the other. “Okay, what happened? Tell Uncle
MM
what is going on.”

“Nothing,” Sophia said, shooting Ava a warning glance. “Everyone is just—tense.”

“Which means everyone has been a little snobby to you, right?”
MM
translated. “Take that as a compliment. It means they’re jealous. Just remind yourself of that whenever they do it.”

Ava made a face. “Somehow that never makes me feel any better.”

MM
adjusted the bow at the hem of Ava’s sweater and patted her on the cheek. “They just don’t know what to make of you, princess. To them, you’re hothouse flowers.”

“Ohlfons said we were
bland, bland, bland,
” Sophia told him, trying to imitate his accent. Doing fake accents was one of the skills Sophia wished she had but didn’t, and her imitations usually fell completely flat, but miraculously not today.

MM
gave a bark of laughter. “Well, he should know. His real name is John White and he’s from Topeka, Kansas. Doesn’t get much blander than that.”

Ava gaped at him. “That’s not true.”

“I swear on my new Varvatos work boots,”
MM
said, bending down to touch them. “They’re lickable, right?”

“Completely,” Ava agreed.

MM
looked them over from head to toe, made two minor adjustments, and left them at the mouth of the tent. “Will you two be okay? I’ve got to go organize the ‘Mumbai militia’ look for the next model but I’ll come check on you as soon as I can.”

“We’ll be fine,” Sophia assured him.

“Thanks to you,” Ava confirmed.

They ducked through the white plastic flaps of the tent into a wide-open space. Pallets of equipment in black boxes were lined up along the sides of the tent and a bank of tables with computers ran down the center. Thick cables in all colors snaked across the floor of the tent like a tropical root system. The front of the tent had no wall and opened instead to a panorama of Los Angeles, sweeping from Hollywood all the way to the ocean.

Although it was daylight there were three massive lights directed at the open space, where a rapper named Trapper Keeper was finishing his shoot. Careful to avoid tripping on any of the cords, Ava and Sophia found two seats against the far wall of the tent and sat down to watch.

Trapper Keeper was wearing a one-piece suit of long underwear with a tuxedo printed on the front and he was being pelted with rose petals being blown in his direction by a wind machine as a woman with bright blue hair moved around him getting pictures.

The art director, a tall man in a fedora with a scarf looped around his neck, paced up and down behind the bank of computer monitors, a plaid-shirted assistant following at his heels. The art director had a plastic bottle of Tums in one hand that made a clicking noise like maracas when he walked. He stopped abruptly, flipped the Tums open and tilted it directly into his mouth, chewed, grimaced, and called to the photographer. “That last series were winners. I think we’ve got it. We can strike this set.” He turned to his assistant. “Get Ohlfons and Troy in for touch-ups.”

Ava and Sophia had been on photo shoots before, but this was by far the most elaborate, and it was fascinating to watch as a crew now swarmed over the set and made it disappear like ants at a birthday picnic. Ohlfons and Troy came in and started talking to the photographer with the blue hair, taking surreptitious glances in Ava and Sophia’s direction.

“They’re just jealous,” Ava said to herself. She shook her head. “No, still not making me feel better.” She turned to Sophia. “I’ll do the dishes for a week if you go up to Ohlfons and say ‘Hi John. Been to Topeka recently?’”

“You do the dishes anyway because you can’t stand to see them in the sink,” Sophia reminded her. “Look at that, I think we get to pose with telescopes.”

Ava slumped in her chair. “We could have had monkeys.”

“Telescopes are a lot easier to work with,” Sophia pointed out.

“But I love animals.” Brightening up, Ava said, “Liam is an animal lover too. That’s the two hundred and eleventh thing we have in common.”

Sophia shot her a worried glance. “Promise me that you will never ever tell another person that. Especially him.”

Ava got to work making sure the hem on her skirt sat exactly straight across her thighs. “Sure. Okay.”

“You already told him.”

“We’re up to number three hundred and six.”

“What’s that? Breathing? Chairs?”

“Duh, no,” Ava huffed, elbowing Sophia. “Movies with talking animals.”

Sophia was just lowering her head into her hands when their attention was diverted to a group of people who swept through the middle of the shooting area and into the tent.

Leading them was a tiny girl in massive high heels with her blond hair in old-fashioned curlers. She held a lit cigarette in one hand and a Slurpee in the other. She wore tight leather pants, four-inch black studded pumps, and a white tank top with nothing under it sheer enough to allow you to read her famous tattoos, including the one that said W
HITNEY
♥ L
IAM
F
OREVER
.

The art director rushed up to her, his scarf and his assistant following close behind. “Whitney, darling!” he cooed, giving her a kiss on each cheek. “My god, don’t you look delicious.”

Whitney was surrounded by her own small posse which appeared to be made up of one terrified-looking assistant and four reporters. She gestured to them now, telling the art director, “I was just saying, I don’t think anything is sexier than curlers and a cigarette. I mean, it just screams debauch, trailer parks, broken homes, making out at the Laundromat, the whole nine. Sexy sexy sexy.”

The art director and indigo-haired photographer who had joined them both bobbed their heads in enthusiastic agreement.

Sophia leaned toward Ava. “Did she really just say that curlers and a cigarette are sexy?”

“Yes,” Ava confirmed. “And housing projects.”

“I wonder how many things she and Liam—”

“Stop right there,” Ava warned her.

“What’s important is the real,” Whitney went on, making a fist with her tiny hand. “Authentic. That’s what Tastemaking is about. Risk taking. Going beyond, above, below. Not being afraid to break the norms, ask hard questions, say unpopular things. Am I right?”

The art director gripped the container of Tums to his heart. “As always, darling. Trenchant. Beautiful.”

Whitney nodded, her eyes half closed like she was in a trance absorbing the praise. Then they snapped open and she looked around. “What’s going on here? Where are my monkeys? Why isn’t this ready for me?”

The art director gave her a brittle, nervous smile. “But darling, you said you wanted to move your shoot to the afternoon.”

“Whittle Whitney changed her mind,” Whitney told him in a baby voice. “Don’t tell whittle Whitney you don wan her.” She snapped back to her regular voice. “Because I can leave and not come back.”

The art director chewed the Tums he’d just poured into his mouth and grimaced. “No darling, of course we do, it’s just that we have the London sisters ready to shoot next. I know, why don’t you—”

Whitney pivoted on her heel and stared at Ava and Sophia. “This is what I have to fight against? The dummying down of fashion discourse? It’s appalling that anyone like those two”—extending an arm with a tattoo of both a teddy bear and a bald eagle, she pointed at them—“should be considered Tastemakers. What kind of taste do they have? I’ll tell you: average.”

Whitney turned back to address her crowd at large. “As you all know,
I’ve
done something with my life.” She pounded herself on her chest twice with her little fist. “I’ve been nominated for awards. I’ve made people weep. If you want a role model, pick someone who has lived. Who has loved. Who knows that makeup isn’t what you put on your face to look pretty, it’s what you do when you dare enough to piss someone off. That’s why I’m an ‘it’ girl.” She zeroed in on the art director. “I’m going to my trailer. I’ll be ready in forty-five minutes. I hope you are.” Switching to her baby voice she pursed her lips and said, “Whittle Whitney hates to wait.”

She was nearly at the entrance to the tent when she realized the only person following her was her assistant. She turned around. “Well?”

One of the journalists said, “We’re just going to stay and get the London sisters’ reactions.”

Whitney shrugged. “They are the precious minutes of your life, not mine. Waste them how you want,” she said, and left.

The reporters turned toward the London sisters for a response. Ava and Sophia’s shock that Whitney was the one getting the monkeys, followed by their shock that she even knew who they were, had partially distracted them from what was going on. But they quickly became aware that the entire atmosphere on the set had shifted, becoming almost eerily silent yet with a hot pumping undercurrent of expectation, like an audience at a prizefight waiting for the first round to begin.

Sophia felt Ava stiffen next to her, heard her breathing quicken, and saw the fixed, almost glassy look in her eye as panic gripped her.

“It will be okay,” Sophia whispered, gripping her sister’s hand. “Don’t worry.”

Ava nodded, once, but she still had the haunted look in her eyes and Sophia knew why.

When Sophia’s sorority sisters had found out about her videos they’d been not just supportive but thrilled for her. They’d spread the word and blogged and tweeted their favorite moments. But when people at Ava’s school found out, they had been merciless. It had started with a few stupid comments, people walking behind her and mimicking her videos, or asking questions like “Ava, what if my eye shadow doesn’t match my shoes?” But it had escalated from there to constant taunts and threats and then to violence. For the first time in her life, Ava’s resilience seemed to falter, and she refused to leave her room, sitting in a corner in the dark.

All she’d wanted to do was disappear, be invisible. To make the jeers and the insults stop by not standing out at all.

Fortunately she was able to transfer to a new school where her new classmates were a lot more accepting. But the bad memories couldn’t be erased, and they all came flooding back to her now, the same desire to hide, the same sense of her complete unworthiness. Who was she to be a Tastemaker, to be a Webstar? They were right, she was a fraud, she didn’t deserve this, she was nothing, no one—