Plus (17 page)

Elsie jumped in. “I’m proud of my curves. They’ll buy me a house in the Hamptons someday.”

“We’ve got to accept that we’re different sizes,” Melody said. “I mean, look at flowers. What if there was only one kind of flower? Wouldn’t it get boring looking at tulips all the time?”

We all rolled our eyes.

“We’re also making good money,” Elsie said. “If someone offered you a chance to be a size two but you’d have to return every dime you made modeling, would you do it?”

Prageeta hesitated. “A size two forever?”

“Yes,” Elsie said. “A size two forever.” We all took a minute to think about it. All of the Baby Phat girls were so gorgeous, but I don’t think one of us could say we hadn’t had a moment, or two, or three, or ten million, when we wished we were thinner.

Elsie said, “Well, I can tell you right now that I wouldn’t do it. Plus is where my business is. I got my mind on my money. And my money on my mind.”

Melody turned to me. “What about you, Bee?”

What about me? I’d never been
that
skinny. I had a hundred grand in the bank, I’d gotten a posh trip to Italy, and I was on a billboard in Times Square. Being a plus-size model gave me a life, and one day, going to medical school would give me a life after modeling.

“I’d rather be plus,” I said.

But Prageeta wasn’t going to let me off the hook so easily.

“So you feel good about being a size fourteen? Don’t you ever look at skinny girls and want to be like them?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I look at you and I wish I had skin like yours, but I don’t. I wish I had naturally blond hair like Elsie’s, but I don’t.”

“Which brings me back to the flower argument,” Melody said.

“Being a plus model made me see myself as beautiful for the first time ever. I know it’s the cheesy beauty pageant answer, but I’d love it if girls saw us in ads and thought, I look like that, so I must be beautiful too.”

“Don’t you ever wish you were a real model?” Prageeta asked.

“A real model?” Elsie said. “I
am
a real model.”

“No, you’re a model for chubby girls,” Prageeta said.

“I’m not hating. I’m one too.”

“Come on, P,” Melody said. She and Prageeta had clearly been down this path before. “Give it a rest. You’ve got a great life. You’re a top model. You’ve got this super-smart famous fiancé. You’re in a major national ad campaign. No one is going to shed any tears for you.”

Prageeta put down her chopsticks. We’d pretty much demolished the platter of sashimi from Nobu and had moved on to calamari salads.

“This is the real,” she said. “From here to here, I feel gorgeous.” She indicated her face. Which was, for the record, stunning. “From the neck down, I feel fat.”

That’s when Melody just lost it. “You know what, Prageeta? You’re not fat. You’re, what, five-eight? What do you weigh? A buck seventy?”

Prageeta nodded.

“Look at all of us: we wear off-the-rack designer clothes!” Melody said. “Do you want to know what fat is? Fat is my mom back in Pasadena. She’s five-foot nothing and she’s pushing three hundred pounds. She’s fat. She’s people staring in the grocery store fat and kids making faces behind her back fat. My mom is the eat in bed, stains on her sheet, her sweat smells bad kind of fat. She’s not even fifty years old and she’s got high blood pressure and hypertension and she’s borderline diabetic. I save half of every dime I make so that I can take care of her when her body gives out on her, which is going to be sooner rather than later. That is what fat is. It’s not being gorgeous and getting fussed over and making twenty-five thousand dollars a day.”

We were all silent. I thought about how serene and perfect I always thought Melody was, how she carried her yoga mat with her everywhere and wasn’t obnoxious about it. It’s just that in modeling, there’s a lot of waiting around, and in those moments you could find Melody off in the corner, doing her yoga thing. I had no idea how much she was carrying around inside. Memo to self: Never say, “I feel fat,” again in front of Melody.

We were all eating our calamari salads in silence when Elsie reached over and touched Melody’s hand. She said, “That’s really rough about your mom.”

Melody said, “It’s okay.”

Elsie said, “But I gotta ask you. Is your rate really twenty-five thousand dollars a day?”

Everyone burst out laughing. And for the rest of the night we discussed the kind of numbers it seems that girls never do, not the number on the scale, but the numbers on our bank statements. We talked about day rates and agent commissions, mutual funds and retirement accounts. All of the girls had been modeling much longer than me, and because I’d been afraid to discuss how much I’d been making with anyone else, I’d just left it all in my savings account.

“Making two percent interest?” Elsie said.

“I just started six months ago!” I reminded her.

And before I could even ask, she went to the desk in the living room, took out a pen and a notepad, and handed it to me.

“Take notes, girlfriend.”

Which is exactly what I did.

After dinner, we all helped to wash up. There wasn’t a whole lot to do. The food
had
all come from Nobu. It was more that nobody wanted the evening to end.

“It’s like we’re in a girl band or something,” Prageeta said. “Nobody knows exactly what it’s like to be us.”

I asked if anybody else was headed uptown on the West Side, but nobody was.

“Bummer,” I said. “I hate to take the subway by myself.”

Melody said, “It’s eleven o’clock at night. Don’t take the subway by yourself. Ever.”

“Cabs are expensive,” I said.

“Right,” Elsie said. “And you make a lot of money. Not to mention cabs are a deductible expense.”

So I hopped in the cab and listened to my messages. There was just one. It was from Chela. She said, “I just want you to know that I had dinner tonight at Asia de Cuba, at the bar, by myself. The lobster fried rice is really good. You should try it sometime.”

I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten that I was supposed to meet her. When did I turn into the sort of girl who blows off her best friend? The cab stopped at a red light, and there was a bus stop ad of me, Melody, Prageeta, and Elsie. I know it was mean, but I couldn’t help but think maybe I’d outgrown my friendship with Chela. Maybe the Baby Phat girls were my new best friends.

17

Bee-twixt and Bee-tween

The
next day, I was walking down Fiftieth Street on my way to a go-see when this girl I knew from high school came running up to me.

“You probably don’t remember me,” she said, as if high school had been ten years ago instead of just last year.

“Of course I remember you,” I said.

Her name was Marisa Bailey, and her dad was some crazy rich banker. She’d been a cheerleader, president of the French club, and prosecuting attorney in Mock Trial. She’d done a lot of things in high school, but the one thing she never did was speak to me.

Now Marisa was in my face like we were the best of pals. She said, “I saw at seven a.m. that you were going to be on the
Today
show, and I figured you’d be on between eight and nine a.m. ’cause that’s when all the, you know, culturally relevant guests are on. So I took a shower and hopped on a train and got down here as fast as I could. I mean, I just had to meet you.”

“Marisa, we went to high school together for four years,” I said.

“I know, but we never got a chance to hang in high school, and I always regretted that,” she said. “Then I saw you in
Seventeen
a few months back and I’ve been, you know, looking out for you.”

“Really? What for?” I didn’t mean to be a bitch, but pretending to be completely nonchalant about someone as popular as Marisa Bailey was a heck of a lot of fun.

“Well, since you’re at Columbia and I’m at NYU, I was thinking that, you know, we could chair an intramural fund-raising event together. Maybe something involving fashion?”

“That would be cool,” I said, trying to be polite.

“Maybe we could do some sort of student fashion show. You know, I’ve always been interested in modeling myself.”

“Listen, Marisa, I’m late for an appointment,” I said, looking at my watch. “I’ve got to go.”

“Oh yeah, of course, I understand,” she said. “You have my number, right? Call me.”

Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen.

Truth be told, I hadn’t thought one iota about Marisa Bailey since I started at Columbia. But back in high school, I thought about her all the time. Especially when her dad chartered this boat and had a huge graduation party that my high school pal Sophie was invited to and I was ceremoniously not. Chloe said she asked Marisa if she could bring me along but Marisa had said the guest list was “limited.” A limited guest list on a ship the size of the freaking
Titanic
.

I spent the night of Marisa’s graduation party seeing
Space Station
at our local IMAX theater with my dad. Cool flick, but not so cool that I wasn’t just a little bitter. I had hoped that one day Marisa Bailey would be sorry she had snubbed me, hoped that she’d be sorry that she’d had the chance to be my friend and had dissed me big time. I used to daydream about her seeing me on
Oprah
, not on one of those shows when the guests are just pitiful and you can tell that
Oprah
just wants to shake them for not having the sense that God gave them. No, I was going to be on
Oprah
discussing how I came up with a cure for breast cancer, and Oprah would be giving me that “You are so damn smart I can barely stand it” smile she reserves for people who truly impress her. The smile that says, “The next time I throw a big fabulous party at my house in Santa Barbara or on a yacht for Maya Angelou, you are soooo invited.”

I used to watch
Oprah
every day after school, and it would always trip me out when she said, “God can dream bigger than you ever can.” But that just goes to prove that Oprah Winfrey never told a lie. Because in all of my revenge fantasies, I never once pictured Marisa Bailey kissing my butt as we stood next to a bus stop ad of me at Rockefeller Center. Whoever said that revenge is a dish best served cold never had the pleasure of becoming famous in six months flat.

The next week, Kevin asked me to go with him to the MTV Awards. We’d been talking on the phone, but between his schedule and my schedule, we’d never actually gone out.

“The MTV Awards are kind of a big deal for a first date,” I said.

“I hate this industry stuff,” Kevin said. “It’ll be good to be out with an old friend.”

That’s where the confusion set in. When we talked on the phone, we flirted up a storm. But when Kevin said things like I was an “old friend,” I thought, Okay, I’ve got it wrong. I’ve totally misread him.

To add to the drama, the MTV Awards were on a Tuesday and I was scheduled to take a makeup of Professor Trotter’s physics exam, which I’d missed because I was shooting my first Cover Girl commercial. I went to see Professor Trotter, but she wasn’t having it.

“Excuse me, Professor,” I said, sticking my head into her office.

“Are you not clear about what materials the final on Tuesday evening will cover?”

“No, that’s not it,” I explained. “It’s just that I’ve got a work thing.”

I could feel my face getting hot ’cause I’m not a very good liar. But I figured that walking the red carpet with Kevin was worth its weight in publicity gold. That made it a work thing, right?

Professor Trotter crossed her eyes at me. “I may be getting up in years, but I’m not an idiot. The reason you are taking the final on Tuesday night is because you missed the exam on Friday morning for a ‘work thing.’ Do you really expect me to reschedule the exam again? That’s as far away as a puffin ever flew.”

“Excuse me?” I had no idea what a puffin was or what it had to do with me and Kevin.

“That’s a no, Miss Wilson. No. See you tomorrow night.”