Modelland (8 page)

“Just go. For all of us,” he said, waving her away.

Tookie’s feeling of being needed was replaced by an emptiness that now burned deep inside her. She resisted the urge to plead with her father and instead turned away and went back to bed.

Now it’s time to dish about LaDorno, dahlings, the most desirable quadrant in all of Metopia. Sunny skies. Pleasant seventy-eight-degree temperatures at all times—except on the beaches, where it’s a wonderful eighty-five. Warm, sweet-smelling seawater. Low humidity, without a cloud for miles. And when you breathe in, you inhale only fresh, crisp, unpolluted air. You want to live in this place, right?

You and the rest of the world, dahling
.

See, bliss comes with a price in LaDorno: only the richest and most successful Metopians get to live there. But how do you qualify to reside in LaDorno? Well, the quadrant’s council puts you through a series of privacy-invading tests to prove your worth. Oh, they’ll scour your bank accounts, examining every purchase. They’ll interview your friends,
your family, your employer, even the gentleman at the newspaper stand from whom you buy your
Moneyed Metopian
magazine every week. They’ll visit your house and check the labels on all your belongings. If they discover a knockoff handbag? Stamp—a big red
DENIED
on your LaDorno residency application. If they notice that your prized Pekingese doesn’t have the perfect pedigree? Stamp
—
DENIED
.

One thing to know, though, is that there is a sect of people that does not have to be subjected to LaDorno’s sadistic entrance challenges in order to be allowed to live within the quadrant’s guarded gates. And who might they be? I’m sure you’ve guessed it by now, but let me clue you in: the names of these sacred souls begin with
I
and end with
-ella.
And guess what
.

We’re just about to sneak a peek at a few of them
.

7Seven of them, to be exact
.

The following morning, Tookie slumped in the back of the family car as her mother pulled into a space at the Sapphire Esplanade, LaDorno’s premier mall. As she walked to the entrance with her mother and sister, Tookie was sure everyone was staring at the unusual De La Crème trio—one of them was a stunning blond girl who was so beautiful it was difficult to look at her for too long, another was a woman with a tanned-skinned, nubile body but the face of a pretty monster, and the third was a gangly girl with gargantuan hair and googly, mismatched eyes. Tookie often noticed how people stared at them, perhaps wondering whether they could possibly be related. It was as if, when her parents’ DNA replicated at conception, all the subpar, defective strands had fused together to make Tookie.

The Esplanade contained every high-, medium-, and
low-fashion store imaginable, as well as a butterfly sanctuary and an entire wing dedicated to beauty products. Today it was brimming with shoppers, many of them dressed in T-DOD–themed gear. T-DOD posters covered every available surface. An enormous screen on an exterior wall showed Days of Discovery from years past, with thousands of girls walking frantically in LaDorno Square.

“Come on,” Mrs. De La Crème said, dragging Myrracle and Tookie through a set of automatic doors. Tookie inhaled deeply. One of her favorite parts of the Esplanade was the smell: a jumble of
parfums
and
eaux de toilette
, fountain chlorine, and a variety of ethnic cuisines from the one hundred and six restaurants scattered among the stores. If she had her way, she’d sample barbeque sauces from the food court while her mother and Myrracle haggled over the perfect T-DOD dress.

T-DOD pandemonium assaulted them immediately. Hundreds of mothers and daughters pawed frantically through the mall, their foreheads beaded with sweat, the bags heavy under their eyes and on their arms. These lower floors of the mall near the main entrance consisted of bargain-basement seconds and clearance outlets.

Mrs. De La Crème pulled Myrracle and Tookie up six escalators, past the mid-fashion floors to the top level, straight to the Jurk flagship store, which carried couture frocks designed by Jeremy Jurk, the most lauded clothing artiste in the world. He refused to design any apparel but dresses.

The store was packed to the gills. Everyone spoke at once, their high-pitched voices mixing in the air and sounding like a squawking flock of wild geese. Dresses lay helter-skelter over the
racks, on the counters, and on every inch of floor space: Feathered dresses; sequined dresses; tiered, bustled, and ruffled dresses. Dresses with sweetheart necklines, dresses with one shoulder; off-the-shoulder, strapless, and open-backed dresses. Halters. A-line and asymmetrical dresses. Sundresses and cocktail dresses. Prom dresses. Ombres. Metallics. A few girls ran around the department with three dresses on their bodies at the same time, for fear their final pick would get snagged by someone else.

“This is the perfect one!” one girl shrieked, holding a pale lavender frock in her hands.

The girl’s mother pushed a ruched red dress into her hands. “Look, Janeef, I know what’s best for you for The Day of Discovery. I was Miss Metopia twenty-six years ago. Hello! I know fashion.”

Amid all the noise and the tussling, Tookie felt a pang of longing. Normal mothers helping their normal, single-color-eyed daughters. Tookie thirsted for a drink of it.

Mrs. De La Crème and Myrracle pawed through the dresses, clearly on the hunt. Myrracle pulled out a short green fringed frock. “Too flapper,” Mrs. De La Crème deemed, wrinkling her nose. Next, Myrracle held out a crushed-velvet dress with black sequins and a tuxedolike white front with ruby buttons dotted down the center. Mrs. De La Crème shook her head. “Are these dresses for The Day of Discovery or the cabaret?”

“What kind of dress are you looking for?” Tookie ventured, trying to be helpful.

The rack let out an earsplitting screech as Mrs. De La Crème threw a score of hangers to the floor. “Something very specific. I’ll know it when I see it. Myrracle must wear an original and it
must
not clash with the SMIZE.”

“What about p-p-pants?” Tookie suggested. Now,
that
would be original.

“Pants?” Mrs. De La Crème stared at her in horror. “Pants are not majestic.”

Then Mrs. De La Crème’s gaze clapped on something across the store.
“There,”
she said, moving toward a nude-colored strapless gown with tons of tulle.

She pulled it off the rack. Though it had a Jurk label on it, there was another label that said
Vintage
. Tookie knew Mrs. De La Crème would drop it immediately—a vintage dress was as bad as a ripe banana, an object way past its expiration date—but instead she pressed the dress to Myrracle’s body. “Yes, Myrracle, this is it. I can feel it in my gut.”

After Mrs. De La Crème had paid for the dress, they left the Esplanade and exited onto a street teeming with vendors hawking Day of Discovery souvenirs. One cart was dedicated to T-shirts, hats, and a variety of trinkets bearing the WHERE THE HELL IS Ci~L? slogan Tookie had seen on the sidewalks on her walk home.

Tookie paused, staring longingly at the Intoxibella’s face on the cheap T-shirt, beguiled by her hypnotizing matching green eyes. Ci~L was the only Intoxibella in history to grace the cover of
Modelland
magazine twelve times in a row, every month for an entire year. There were six top cosmetics brands in the world, and Ci~L had had contracts with all of them—simultaneously. One season, all of the designers during LaDorno fashion week had decided to have Ci~L be their only model. Ci~L starred—solo—on eighty-two runways that season.

So where had she gone?

The shady vendor eyed Tookie. “Hey there, funny-lookin’ girl, wanna buy a piece of Ci~L?”

“Uh …” Tookie turned away nervously. Then she noticed someone familiar sitting on a bench only a few feet away from the mall’s entrance. A man she’d seen on her walks home from school. He had broad, football-player shoulders, but today he was so drooped over that his body made a shrimp shape on the bench. His skin was faintly wrinkled, and his root-beer-brown eyes looked sad. He mumbled softly to himself, just like he always did, and held on to the laces of an enormous battered wingtip shoe slung over his shoulder. That shoe was why Tookie had given him a secret nickname: Wingtip.

Wingtip’s head shot up. His eyes met hers for a brief second, suddenly clearing. Tookie froze. She wasn’t used to being seen.

A disgusted snort sounded to her right. “Ugh, what riffraff they allow into LaDorno,” Mrs. De La Crème scoffed, sneering at Wingtip. She pinched Tookie’s arm. “What have I told you about making eye contact with the demented? Turn away! He’s dangerous!”

Tookie shrugged. Wingtip didn’t seem so dangerous to her—though the fact that he spoke to himself did frighten her a bit. Lizzie spoke to herself too, but only during her episodes, the moments when she went far, far, away to a scary place in her mind that Tookie couldn’t enter.

She snuck a glance back at Wingtip. At his threadbare suit, his crusty clogs, his sad smile, and the single shoe slung over his shoulder. He was still looking at her too.

“You all right?” he asked.

Tookie’s jaw dropped. Now he was
speaking
to her? But before she could say anything, a boom sounded, echoing off the tall buildings. A brisk wind stirred, whipping Tookie’s hair into super-expando mode and fluttering her skirt. Tookie peered into the sky.
It had suddenly darkened, as if a storm was coming. The clouds weren’t black, though—they were golden.

“Oh my God,” Tookie whispered. Golden clouds could mean only one thing.

Everyone turned and gaped at the mountain in the center of town. All at once, huge waves of the mountain’s golden fog began to vanish, and beams of gold light that transformed to golden shadows cascaded down the ridge and swept over every street. Tookie heard a soft, alluring giggle in her ear. She felt a swipe of satin brush up against her arm. The smell of blood oranges filled the air.

“It’s happening!” a woman yelled, rushing out of the mall.

“The shadows!” cried a man who’d been washing windows on a high platform.

The fog on the mountain had completely evaporated, revealing the top of the mountain, which glowed like a metropolis at dusk. Hovering above the mountain was an illuminated eye with its SMIZE flourishes made up of millions of birds from a myriad of species. Tookie had seen the phenomenon before, but never this close. A sleek yet enormous hand of smoke looped around the entire mountaintop and proceeded to spell a word with its white plumes of smoke.

M-O-D-E-L-L-A-N-D
.

Everyone spilled out onto the sidewalk to watch the spectacle. Cars stopped in the middle of the street, the drivers gawking out their sunroofs. An elevated train halted in its tracks. All the passengers stared out the windows, their mouths open.

“I see I have your attention!” boomed a familiar Gowdee’an-accented voice. It seemed to be coming from the sky itself. Lightning bolts shot from letter cloud to letter cloud, turning them
from white to red to blue to green to yellow. “This is the BellaDonna speaking,” the voice continued.

Everyone oohed and aahed. The BellaDonna was the grand dame of the Land on the mountain and the final decision-maker about all candidates.

“The Day of Discovery is less than one sunset away,” the BellaDonna went on. “And so, the time has come to present to you this year’s newly minted 7Seven. This is a glimpse at what your future might be,
if
you are so lucky,
if
you are so divine,
if
you’re one of the most special girls in the world! Each and every girl on the planet has a chance to be one of the enlightened. Could it be you?”

“Yes!” Myrracle screamed, jumping up and down in the parking lot.

Clouds swirled in the sky. Lightning bolts danced and snapped. “In a moment you will lay your eyes upon this year’s graduating class of Modelland,” the grand voice explained. “As you all know, only seven girls graduate from Modelland each year, and those talented seven join the ranks of the only famous people, known throughout the world. The Intoxibellas.”

Intoxibellas
. The word sent an uncomfortable shiver up Tookie’s spine. They were so dazzling, so enchanting, so beautiful, so influential and magical that they were simply, well … intoxicating.

The voice grew louder and louder. “Without further ado, I present the Stunning, Statuesque, Strobotronic Stars with Stupefying Stratospheric Struts! The 7Seven! Please worship them as the Intoxibellas they have now become!”

A swirl of smoke and blue fire swept around the bottom of the mountain and spiraled to the top. As it traveled, the swirl revealed a translucent three-dimensional image of a copper-haired girl with copper-colored eyes. Around her waist flapped her Sentura, the
belt made of shimmering gold fabric that all the Intoxibellas wore. According to Modelland lore, Senturas allowed Intoxibellas to activate their inherent power. Young girls all over the world wore replicas of them as part of costumes and dress-up games. Even Tookie had, when she was ten years old.