Braless in Wonderland (10 page)

“Um, this.” She took her agenda book off the table, then tiptoed backward, whispering, “Sorry to interrupt, y'all. Love ya,” and she was gone. Uta took another look at my book, slower this time. She told me about the shoot that she and the art director for
Dietra
were planning, and that was when I knew,
knew
I had to book this job.

It was an Alice in Wonderland fashion story.
Alice in Wonderland!
That had to mean something, didn't it? The very book I was reading to Robby when I left home. My all-time fave. This had to be fate. I told her all about how much I loved that story.

But she must have thought I was full of it and just telling her all that to get the job, because she answered by saying, “I'll be in touch with the agency,” in the same flat way I'd heard all the other clients say it. Maybe fate was playing a practical joke on me. Now I kinda felt like an idiot for going on and on about how much I loved Alice.

Still, Uta Scholes was the nicest client I'd met. No wonder every model in town wanted to be seen by her. It wasn't just because she was the photographer booking models for a major magazine. It was because she treated models like people.

Uta, book me please book me please book me pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease…

So this was Claudette. African-American, long and lean. And super-sexy. I was on the futon, balancing my laptop on my knees, with my books and papers next to me, trying to work on my AP World Lit paper. But I wasn't getting much work done. My eyes kept roaming to Claudette sashaying all over the room. From every pore of maple syrup skin to every corkscrew curl framing her face, she was the sexiest girl I'd ever seen. She was twenty-one, and the way she moved and talked made her seem
über
-sophisticated, like she was living a life of hopping jet planes and popping champagne bottles. Except she was holding this stuffed bear. She hadn't put it down since she got here. And I couldn't get over the barely-there dress she had on. It had to be a nightie she was just passing off as a dress. I was trying not to stare, but I got the feeling she wanted me to, wanted everyone to.

It was practically impossible to concentrate on school stuff with Claudette distracting me. Brynn and Summer were sidetracking me too, talking and getting ready to go out.
I should just give up tonight,
I thought, taking a sip of my orange juice. I was pretty sure Brynn was coming down with a cold or something and I didn't want to catch it. She'd been sniffing a lot.

And Brynn was always in the bathroom. I didn't know what she did in there, except when she was using laxatives, and then,
ew
, unfortunately, we all knew what she was doing in there. Summer was in the bathroom now. She had the door open so she could still talk to everybody while she unraveled the twisty curlers in her hair. “Lord have mercy, Claudette, what are you wearin'?”

“It's a Vittoria Vega. Isn't it fabulosity?”

“Your whole cooter's hangin' out.”

“What else is new?” said Brynn, pulling on her Abercrombie
ALL ABOUT FUN
shirt. “We're lucky Claudie's got underwear on.”

“That's underwear?” I asked. “I thought it was a shoestring.”

Claudette sat next to me and played with my hair. “You have great hair.”

“Thanks.” She was very touchy-feely. It was a little bizarre. She had hugged me the second we met.

“Allee, have you met Mars?” she asked, taking the laptop right off my knees and setting it down on the coffee table. She lay down on the futon, throwing her legs over my lap. “Say hello to Mars.” She wiggled the stuffed bear at me.

My textbook and all my papers slowly slid to the floor. Great. I had those organized into specific piles. Couldn't she see I was in the middle of something? “Nice bear,” I said. “Is that Mars?”

“Yes,” she said, hugging it to her. “Mars is my—”

“Home planet,” Brynn interrupted, swiping the bear out of her hand. “It's where you're from, you friggin' fruitcake.”

Brynn waggled Mars over Claudette's head, then ran into the kitchen with it. Claudette jumped up from the futon, shouting, “Gimme Mars! Gimme!” and she smacked Brynn in the butt.

“Ouch! Hey, hands off, you lezzie.” Brynn laughed.

Lezzie? I guessed Claudette was gay. Which was totally fine. I was completely comfortable with lesbians, not that I'd ever met any that I knew of, unless you counted the time I got Rosie O'Donnell's autograph at Disney World. But I just knew I was comfortable with them. Although was she hitting on me with her legs in my lap? Because I'd have to tell her I didn't play for her team.

Brynn tossed Summer the bear, Summer tossed it to me, and I tossed it back to Brynn, who plopped down on the floor in front of me, landing on my notes and crumpling them. Then Claudette did the same thing, sitting cross-legged next to her. Brynn tossed her the precious Mars bear. “Glad you're home, Claudie. Yale here is no fun. Total buzzkill.”

No fun
.
Buzzkill
. I hated having that rep. It was like The Fluff calling me
Miss Overachiever
or Hillary High Beams and her
You're always so, like, Queen Serious.
Why did everybody have to label me?

“Brynn, you be nice now, ya hear?” Summer pointed at her with an eyelash curler. “Don't pick on Allee just 'cause she don't party with us.”

“Who, me?” Brynn fluttered her eyes and imitated Summer's accent. “Why, Ah wouldn't dream of picking on sweet, little ol' Allee.”

Exactly why was fun the end-all, be-all Holy Grail to these people anyway? Their kind of “fun” was the show-offy kind, the club-name-dropping, party-till-you-puke kind. More like pretentious, shallow BS than actual fun. I yanked my papers up from under Brynn's rear end. She didn't even bother to move. One page ripped. Okay, that was it. “You know, you guys go club-hopping every night so you can drink and smoke and grind on the dance floor with guys you don't even know, just so you can get no sleep and wake up hungover and barfing.”

“So?” Brynn said.

“That's supposed to be fun?” I asked.

“Hell, yeah!” she yelled.

“What is the point?”

“The point?” Brynn grinned as if I'd said something funny.

“Yeah. The point.”

“The point, Allee bo ballee, is that you're so uptight you're not capable of having fun. That's the point. I don't think you could have fun if we paid you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“That's what you think.”

“That's what everybody thinks,” she said. Did they? Well, what did they know? I had all kinds of fun, it just didn't involve stupidity. Tomorrow, for my birthday, which none of them knew about because I didn't feel like telling them, I planned to buy myself a book at Murder on the Beach bookstore and have an Oreo/read fest in the afternoon. I really didn't care what Brynn or any of them thought.

Okay, that was a lie.

Because the sad fact was, I shouldn't care, but I did. And it bothered me that I cared, because my mother constantly worried about what other people thought, and it really bugged me, so I tried not to be like that. But I couldn't stand them thinking that I was boring. Dull. Who wanted to be called that? Nobody. “I'm fun,” I said, sounding weak, even to myself. “I just have a different idea of what fun is compared to you guys.”

“Yeah, glued to your books or computer,” Brynn said. “You're a barrel of laughs.”

I pretended to read my notes, hiding my face behind my sheet of long hair so they couldn't see how wet my eyes were getting, how red my nose must have been.

Brynn lit a cigarette, blew a smoke ring, and announced to no one in general, “Man, I was so sick at my booking this morning, I don't know how I got through it. Too many Jell-O shots last night.”

“Be careful with them Jell-O shots,” said Summer. “They got sugar. Tell ya what, you gonna wake up the next day with a belly.”

Brynn said, “I just have a salad with balsamic vinegar. The balsamic's a diuretic, so's you pee it all out.”

I swear, they couldn't have one conversation without it turning to diet or weight. Now Claudette was lighting one too, leaving me no choice but to crank open the jalousie windows before their smoke took over the room. Brynn and Claudette slipped each other a
look.
“Just trying to prevent cancer,” I said, sitting back on the futon, hating myself for saying it, hating myself for sounding exactly like the dull boring bore they thought I was.

Brynn rolled her eyes and opened my World Lit textbook to a picture of Shakespeare. “Who's that drag queen?”

“The Bard,” Claudette answered, totally surprising me.

“The what?” Brynn asked.

“Wasn't The Bard married to Janet Jackson?” asked Summer.

“Naw, that's DeBarge,” said Brynn. “Saw it on VH1.”

“Whatever.”

“The Bard is William Shakespeare, you maroons,” said Claudette.

“What do you know about Shakespeare?” I asked her.

“I was an English major in college. Only lasted one semester, but I can help you with that paper if you want.”

Help me? Now that was funny. “Thanks, I got it covered. What school did you go to?”

“Georgetown.”

“In D.C.?”

“Mm-hmm, that's where I'm from.”

I wanted to ask her why someone with her intelligence was wasting it here and was she planning on going back to college? Georgetown was a good school. The closest I came to asking what I wanted to ask was, “Why are you modeling?”

She looked at me funny, hesitating for a few seconds. “Sounds like something my father would ask me.” She stretched and gave me a big, Cheshire cat smile. “Because I can. And because modeling lets me express myself. I believe in showing my fabulosity at all times. Show your fabulosity, that's my motto.”

The phone rang. Summer bolted out of the bathroom to answer it. “Hello? Hey, Dimitri.” She brightened up with a big smile, as if he was in the room. “Oh, good. Brynn, me, and you are on option for Monday and Tuesday for that catalog.”

“What's the rate?” Brynn asked.

“Two. But we gotta keep it quiet 'cause other agencies are only gettin' fifteen hundred for their girls.”

So if their options didn't get dropped, they were going to get booked for two full days. That was four thousand dollars. Elmo-hair wanted them, but not me. Not one client had wanted me. My passport came in the mail today, another reminder I was supposed to be traveling, working, making big bucks.

Hello, depression. A wave of it washed over me, crashing down to my toes. I couldn't wait for them to leave so I could swim in it.

It must have shown on my face, because Summer said into the phone, “So, Dimitri, anything for Allee?…You're expecting lots of TV castings for her next week? Okay, I'll tell her. Love ya.” She hung up and went back to the bathroom mirror, finger-combing waxy ringlets all over her head. “Allee, it looked like you and Uta Scholes were gettin' on like peas and carrots. She might book you.” Just hearing Uta's name made my insides flutter. I wanted that booking so badly it hurt my bones.

“Stop blowing sunshine up her ass, Summer,” Brynn said. “Uta's looking for Alice in Wonderland. Allee's not even blond. Uta's gonna book you.”

“You never know,” said Summer. “Although she did want commercial types who could cross over and be edgy and I'll tell ya what, that's me. I'm commercial and fashion, but Allee, you're jest mostly commercial.” How did she know this? Was there some kind of index somewhere with our pictures on it and labels underneath that said “commercial” or “fashion”?

Summer walked over to the kitchen, opened the cabinet over the stove, the one full of hair accessories, and pulled out a blue headband. “Uta said she wants an Alice with a twist. Looky here, do I look like Alice?” She put it on and I realized, with a sinking heart, that she looked like the most beautiful Alice I'd ever seen, straight out of the storybook. I wanted to punch her stupid, Alice-y face.

Claudette jumped up off the floor and snatched the headband off, messing up some of Summer's curls. “Hey!” Summer shouted.

Claudette crowned herself with the headband like it was a tiara. “If she wants Alice with a twist, then she shouldn't go with the same old vanilla. Everybody prefers chocolate, you know.”

Summer tugged the headband off Claudette and put it back on herself. “Ludacris didn't want no chocolate. I got booked for his video tomorrow.”

“Hey, Claudie, why didn't you get that?” Brynn asked.

“I'm probably not black enough. That's what BET told Momma when she sent my reel to them for that VJ gig. It doesn't matter for print that I'm mixed, but for TV they always want you to fit into a type.”

Summer tossed the headband on the floor. It landed on a pile of shoes and magazines. “Don't that suck about TV? I'm a killer actress. And I don't get near enough acting auditions because I don't fit into the type they're lookin' for. It ain't fair.”

Claudette flounced onto the futon. “You'll still be the token white girl at that video job tomorrow, you know.”

“I'll still get to meet Ludacris and make five hundred. Call time's at seven-thirty, so I'm jest goin' out tonight for an hour.”

“Why go at all?” I asked.

“I found out photographers from all the local magazines'll be at the club tonight—
Ocean Drive, D'Luxe.
Clients too.”

“How do you always know stuff like that?” Brynn asked. “I swear, Summer, you got more inside scoop than Luca, and he knows everyone on the beach.” Summer didn't answer, just gave her a close-lipped smile. I could tell it irritated Brynn. “So tell us, Miss FBI, where are Vodka and Tonic these days?”

“I heard the DeWalt Hotel paid 'em fifty bucks just to sit at the bar in their new restaurant, you know, to dress up the place. The owner saw them two on the street and offered 'em cash.”

Nobody said anything for a few minutes. I guess we were all thinking how scary it must be to hit the lowest rung of modeling, if you'd even call that modeling. Summer poured water into the nearly empty hand soap container. She did cheap stuff like that, like brush her teeth with baking soda instead of toothpaste. Here was a girl who spent five hundred bucks on a pair of Manolo Ball-nicks or whatever-his-name-is, paid a ton for some big-deal personal trainer to the stars, and yet I was pretty sure she'd used the same paper cup since I'd gotten here. Weirdness.