Modelland (36 page)

“My
people
?” Piper objected. “I don’t want anyone seeing my whole group when they look at me. I want them to see me.” She reached into her pocket. “I kind of can’t believe I’m showing you all this. It’s one of the two items I kept from home.”

She passed a photograph to Tookie. It was a girl wearing bronze-colored foundation. Her eyes were deep brown. Her lashes were caked with heavy black mascara, and her eyebrows were filled in with dark eye pencil. On her head was thick chestnut-brown hair.

“It’s me,” Piper said. “In foundation and a wig. Colored contacts. I hold on to these pictures. I look
normal
in them.”

“Oh, Piper,” Dylan said.

Piper gently touched Tookie’s cheek. “I’ve always wanted skin like you have. Still do. But I’m trapped in this skin forever.”

Suddenly, Tookie remembered Piper’s puzzle of her mom and dad—the one she had tried to hide. Tookie leaned over and wiped Piper’s face with a tissue. Tears were streaming—quite beautifully, in a strange way—from her rose-colored eyes.

Shiraz stood up. “I small. Not normal small, but very, very small.” Then she raised her arm high into the air. “Tall, my parents were. Both of them. Papa and I, we best friends. He called me his runt. Peanut. Dwarf. Preemie. Affectionate, he said it was. But for Shiraz, the words hurt. They did not feel good like the affection words. To keep up with his long leg, I had to run fast, fast, fast. And we do everything together! Travel for singing show on road. We famous in my country. Shih-Pappa, we were called. We dance and sing, for audiences big! Bring home country’s best candles, for sick mommy! But I not good enough.” She lowered her eyes. “In the end, I not good enough at all.”

“Why would you say that?” Tookie asked.

“Because he leave me,” Shiraz said. “At school in Canne Del Abra, here at the Modelland, to be first, I always try. When you go first, you can never be left behind. Every day of the life, Shiraz has been that way. Every day of the life since Papa left me. After Mommy died from sick, Papa die too. But not from sick. Die from broke heart. Which mean he no love his Shiraz Shiraz. Only Mommy. I just his runt, his midget, his dwarf, his preemie for road show.”

Tears flowed from everyone’s eyes now.

Shiraz pulled a square of paper from her pocket. It was a small leaflet for Shiraz and her father’s act. In the photo Mr. Shiraz stood with pride, holding his petite daughter on his left shoulder. But there was a gouged-out hole where his face should have been.

Shiraz sighed. “Papa leave me. So I cutting him out of my life, leave him too.”

“And yet you keep the picture with you,” Piper said.

Shiraz blinked, then looked away.

Dylan turned to Tookie. “Your turn, okay?”

Tookie closed her eyes and thought of what she could tell her friends. She stood and left the bathroom. Within moments she returned holding her
T-Mail Jail
. The book had always been something she’d wanted people to see, but now that she was actually going to show it to someone, she felt horribly uncomfortable.

“I write letters to people in this book,” she said, settling down next to the girls and opening the book. “Letters I never intend to send. My innermost feelings. And I wrote this one a long time ago to someone I hated.”

Tookie turned to a blank page. She brought the book within an inch of her cut mouth and breathed a flow of hot air. Words instantly appeared. This was her most secret of entries. The one she didn’t like to reread. Quietly, she began:

The girls didn’t say a word.

“I feel so guilty!” Dylan said, breaking the silence. Piper and Shiraz reached in to Tookie and hugged her tightly.

Dylan held onto the paper roll mounted on the wall to support herself. “I’ve had issues with my body my entire life, but I never,
ever
wanted to be dead.”

“Me neither,” Shiraz said.

Piper sighed. “And here I am, since the very day I entered Ci~L’s pouch, envious of you because of your skin. Don’t you realize how special you are? How
amazing
?”

A rush of emotion overcame Tookie. First she felt numb, then she wanted to run, then her body went limp and sank into Piper’s arms. It was the most wonderful thing anyone had ever said to her. But as she hugged all three girls, she got a twisting pang deep in her heart for Lizzie. She missed Lizzie so much.

The girls remained in a tight group hug on the cold floor of
the bathroom. Then Dylan sat up. “You know, I think our group needs a name.”

“What you mean?” Shiraz raised an eyebrow.

“You know, like a show of solidarity,” Dylan explained.

Piper thought for a moment. “The Vulnerable Four. Or maybe The V4?”

“How ’bout Krapper Sisters?” Dylan joked, looking at the soiled toilet and disgusting floor they all were sitting on.

“What about the ULs?” Tookie suggested.

Dylan frowned. “That’s what Zarpessa calls us … Unfortunate-Lookin’s.”

“So what? We can take the power back. Have it mean something else. Like … 
Unique-Lookings.
”

“I kinda like it,” Dylan said slowly, “but I hate that
U
and
L
are a big part of
U-G-L-Y.
”

“Good point,” Tookie said. “What about … the Unicas?” She pronounced it “you-KNEE-kuz.”

“Seems fitting.” Piper’s eyes gleamed. “I like it!”

“Me too!” Shiraz said.

“Well, hot damn, we stinkers got a name!” Dylan shouted with glee. “And yeah, y’all, we
do
stink. Badly!”

“I will attest to our present collective foul odor,” Piper said, trying to sound clinical. “But what needs immediate attention is our dear Unica sister, Ms. De La Crème.” She pointed to Tookie’s face. “That waterfall of blood flowing from your lips needs a stitch or two … or twenty.”

“Those mean cats slice you good,” Shiraz lamented.

Tookie touched her lips again. Blood was still trickling from her Catwalk Corridor wounds.

“I’ll take her to the Fashion Emergency Department Store—the FEDS,” Piper offered. “This sun-sensitive, pigment-free, pale-faced inhabitant of Modelland
and
newly ordained Unica, who has had
many
burns healed there, knows the way.”

“Watch out for that corridor catty thingamajigga!” Dylan yelled out. “Y’never know where it might pop up!”

“I’d have no problem running into it again,” Tookie said, laughing. “As long as I could watch that cat pee on Zarpessa one more time!”

The cool air outside was a welcome change from the stuffiness of the bathroom and the kitty-litter stench of the Catwalk Corridor. The pastel yellow flowers on the Beautification Boulevard pathway to her classes now seemed to Tookie an even more brilliant saffron and electric lemon. Perhaps, she thought, the world had become a brighter place now that she’d revealed the scariest skeleton in her closet.

Piper hurried Tookie along. “Come on. Thirty-three point four seconds is all it takes.”

“All it takes to
what
?” asked a friendly, bouncy voice behind them, followed by a familiar giggle.

Tookie and Piper turned to see a couture-clad ZhenZhen running
in their direction. Her outfit was made entirely of autumn-colored leaves. Today her hair was almost all black, save for one streak of Ci~L–like auburn at the front. Her eyes widened at Tookie’s lip. “Owie. Catwalk Corridor, right?”

Tookie nodded.

ZhenZhen clucked her tongue. “You have to learn how to strut even under their scrutiny. Those catty divas have to learn how to behave.”

“So they’re trapped as cats because they’re wicked mean on the outside, right?” Tookie asked.

ZhenZhen nodded. “When they stop yelling insults, being lazy, showing up late, ingesting narcotics, they get turned back into people.”

“So is that what the newspapers mean when they say an Intoxibella is taking an ‘extended vacation’?” Tookie asked. She read stories like that in the
Peppertown Press
all the time.

ZhenZhen laughed. “Sure. But the Catwalk Corridor hardly ever works permanently with the types who are sent there. Once trouble, always trouble. You just have to stay away from them.” She glanced at Tookie’s lip again and winced. “That looks
awful.
”

“It probably looks worse than it feels,” Tookie lied. In truth, her lip felt like it was about to fall off.

“You need to get to the Fashion Emergency Department Store before that gets infected,” ZhenZhen said.

“En route now,” Piper said.

Tookie had noticed a large duffel bag slung over ZhenZhen’s shoulder. “Are you going somewhere?”

ZhenZhen nodded. “My Go-See-Go. I’ll be gone for a month. It’s part of our final exam.” She twisted her mouth nervously. “We meet with clients and stuff. We even get to stay in our own
apartments. And all day, we ‘go see’ if we’re really capable of booking jobs. It’s a test to see if we can make it in the real world. Some girls drop out at this point—they get into drugs, they get caught up with the wrong guys, all kinds of stuff. But I’m gonna try my best. The Go-See-Go weighs heavily in the final selection of the 7Sevens—and that’s approaching at the end of the quadmester!”

“So when you do this Go-See-Go, you’re gonna be
you
, right?” Tookie said. “Not Ci~L? Because if you knew the real Ci~L, I don’t think you’d be so fixated on her.”

“Tookie’s right,” Piper said. “Ci~L’s recent behavior borders on spooky.”

ZhenZhen waved her hand dismissively. “Spooky’s the new edgy. Whatever my girl Ci~L does is good for me.” Then she leaned closer. “Tell me exactly what she is doing to freak you out. It’ll probably work well for me at Go-See-Go!”

“ZhenZhen!” an upperclassBella called from a few yards away. “C’mon!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” ZhenZhen answered. She looked at Tookie and Piper once more. “I’m so glad I’m leaving, to tell you the truth. I was going stir-crazy here. I almost took the emergency ZipZap to LaDorno!”

Tookie and Piper exchanged a confused glance.
Huh?

“I’m just kidding. Only an idiot would use that thing. So many girls died using that emergency exit trying to get to LaDorno during the big stadium fire,” ZhenZhen explained, noticing their looks. “I think it’s somewhere near the stadium. It’s super dangerous.”

“Why?” Piper asked.

ZhenZhen leaned closer. “Well, it’s only a rumor, but they say
this ZipZap is … 
different
. That there’s a fork in the zipper that you can’t control. Sometimes going left takes you to LaDorno, but sometimes it takes you straight into the Diabolical Divide. Rumor has it that those girls who used it during the fire went straight to the Divide and that’s where they died.” She shut her eyes tight. “I bet that’s why they closed it off and hid it.” Then she shrugged and glanced at Piper. “You never answered me. What takes thirty-three point four seconds?”

“Burning my skin in the sun,” Piper admitted. “Multiply that by twelve if I have an umbrella. That’s why I know the way to the Fashion Emergency Department Store so well. I should buy real estate there—it’s practically my second home. They put a super-long-lasting sun shield called BurnBattler on my skin, eyes, and hair. All I have to do is return every three days for a new application.”

“Wow, I wish they could fix expando-hair,” Tookie swooned.

“Oh, the girl who tells me to love and accept
my
natural self and the hair that grows from
my
scalp now wants a super-long-lasting mop fix of her own!” ZhenZhen smirked playfully. “So I’m supposed to Run-a-Way walk your walk, but what about you?”

Another group of excited yet nervous final-year girls rounded the corner. They were dressed not in uniforms but in expertly styled individual outfits, all with a Mother Nature theme. A few of them looked like they were a hair away from being Intoxibellas. Tookie worried for ZhenZhen, who was beautiful but not as polished as her classmates. “ZhenZhen!” the tallest girl in the bunch yelled. “The shuttle’s leaving now!”

“Okay, okay, okay.” ZhenZhen gave Piper and Tookie tight hugs and ran off toward the group of upperclassBellas. Tookie’s
eyes followed her. She had never met anyone who smiled and giggled nearly all the time.
ZhenZhen could be an honorary member of the Unicas
, she thought. Then she caught herself.
Of course, ZhenZhen is far too stunning to be a member of our wacky crew
.