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“Wassup, Chela. I blew it,” I said, when I finally found the phone.

“Hello, Bee?”

It wasn’t Chela.

“This is Leslie Chesterfield. You didn’t blow it. You’ve got the job.”

I know. You totally saw this coming, right? But you have to understand. Things like this don’t happen to me.

“Bee, are you there?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Are you at Dean and DeLuca?”

“Uh, yes.”

Now I was starting to get nervous. Were they spying on me? If she mentioned the chocolate chip muffin, I was totally going to lose her number and forget all about this whole modeling thing.

“Great. Then maybe you can come over in about half an hour. We’ll discuss all the details, and I’ll draw up a contract.”

I said okay, hung up the phone. Then called Chela. She wasn’t there; I left a message. Feeling just a little bad for betraying our pact, I left a message for Brian and another for Aunt Zo. Desperate to speak to a real live person, I called my mom.

“Don’t you have physics on Thursday afternoons?” my mother said.

Trust her to memorize my schedule.

“Mom, I’m being offered a modeling contract for Prada.”

“Hmm, Prada,” she said. “Let me do some research on where their factories are and how the World Bank assesses their manufacturing policies.”

“Mom, do you even know what Prada is?”

She was quiet for a second, then she said, “They’re not coming up in my database. Maybe I’m not spelling it correctly.”

“I’m hanging up now, Mom.”

Which I did. Which tells you everything you need to know about my mother and why Columbia is not nearly far away enough from Philadelphia to spare me from her misery. I did get into Stanford. I could’ve gone there, I thought as I tried, very daintily, to finish my chocolate chip muffin.

I pulled out my phone and called my dad at his office.

“Dad, I got a modeling contract.”

“A part-time job at a department store? That’s great, Bee. Your grandmother used to go see the models at Wanamaker’s. I think they served sandwiches.”

“No, Dad, it’s not that kind of modeling. This is for a photo shoot. I think it’s going to be in a magazine or something.”

“Well, that’s great, Bee.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I’ve got a meeting next Tuesday at the Natural History Museum next week. Can I buy my best girl lunch?”

“Absolutely.”

“You know I always told you that
B
stood for ‘beautiful.’”

Which is true. I liked to joke that the
B
in my name stood for ‘below average,’ but my dad always says the same thing, “I call you Bee ’cause you’re beautiful.” Which tells you everything you need to know about Dad.

In high school, I knew this really rich girl named Siohbahn. Her mother had done something really incredible like invented the BlackBerry. Anytime someone asked her a question like how much her boots cost or if it was expensive to go skiing at Vail, she always said that it was “gauche” to talk about money. Aunt Zo says only people who actually have money think talking about it is so déclassé. This is all to say that I’m going to give you the real scoop. I don’t give a rip if it’s gauche or déclassé.

I walked into Leslie’s office, and she told me that they were booking me for three days at “five a day.” She said, “It’s not much, I know. But you’ve never done this before, so you don’t have a quote. Hell, you don’t even have a portfolio. Technically, the advertising agency is taking a big chance on you. But the upside is that while the money is low, the perks are high. The shoot is in Italy. They’ll fly you business class and put you up for four nights at the Villa d’Este.”

All this time, I’m thinking the free trip is cool. But these people want to pay me five dollars a day. If I wanted five dollars a day, I could’ve stayed at home and done household chores for my mother, who, not for nothing, is not too busy for third world causes but is too busy to take out her own recycling. So I decide to try to negotiate. “Can I bring a friend?” I ask.

Leslie looked seriously bothered, “Bee, this is a business trip, not a social trip. It’s very important that you don’t get that confused. Everyone thinks that modeling is so glamorous, but as you’ll soon discover, it’s really hard work.”

This is the point where I should’ve just shut up, but I figured what did I have to lose? “But if you’re only going to pay me five a day . . .” I said.

Leslie smiled. “I think I can get seven. Which after commission means you still clear more than twenty.”

Okay, Bee, I thought, you’re good at math. They couldn’t possibly mean seven dollars a day. They must mean seven hundred a day. But seven hundred a day for a three-day shoot is a little more than two thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money, especially for someone who’d never modeled before.

I looked down at the contract and saw all the zeros and then it hit me. “Five” was five thousand. A day. American. And I’d just negotiated my way up to “seven,” which was seven thousand. A day. American.

“Cool,” I said, trying to play it off as if I made that kind of cheddar all the time, when in reality they were going to pay me half of my tuition for three days’ work. I took a deep breath and said, “Where do I sign?”

I walked all the way from Bleecker Street in SoHo to my apartment on 118th Street. I passed a gazillion stores, and I kept wanting to run in and buy something. It was freezing cold, but I didn’t feel a thing. I was rich! I was filthy, stinking rich! I didn’t have to worry about charging that stuff from Victoria’s Secret, Laura Mercier, and Forever 21 on my dad’s card. I could pay him back.

Seven thousand dollars a day. Three-day shoot. One day of travel on either end. I got paid for those days too. That was thirty-five thousand dollars. The agency took fifteen percent, and Leslie said I’d have to put a third away for taxes, but still. I’d clear twenty thousand dollars for five days’ worth of work. No wonder rich people thought it was gauche to talk about money. I didn’t tell a soul. Could not get the words—
twenty thousand dollars
—to come out of my mouth.

At Fifty-ninth Street, I decided to walk through the park. Central Park is the best place in New York to go when it’s cold and snowy. It’s always packed, like an urban Disneyland—full of kids and people sledding and ice skating. I even saw this guy on cross-country skis once. I thought about going to Italy: flying business class, staying at a fancy hotel. It sucked that I couldn’t bring a friend, but it was worth a try. Leslie had said that with the money I earned, I could “take my boyfriend to Puerto Rico.”

Maybe that’s what I would do. When I did the job and showed Brian the magazine, he would take me back and I could invite him on a romantic weekend getaway to Puerto Rico. I wouldn’t even have to tell Chela until I was sure that Brian and I were completely solid. If things worked out with me and Brian, she wouldn’t get mad at me. She was my friend, and your friends always want what’s best for you, right?

The next day I went to see my adviser. She said that she couldn’t excuse me from a week’s worth of classes but that students with professional careers were not uncommon at Columbia. She said that I needed to go to each of my professors, explain that I had a job in Italy, and ask if they could please give me the course work to complete in advance. This was fine with everyone except for my physics prof, Petra Trotter.

I’m not just saying this because physics is kicking my ass. Prof Trotter is a strange bird. She’s Canadian, which means she speaks English perfectly fine, but she says things like “aboot” instead of “about.” She also grew up in the wilderness of Canada, which she talks about all the time, like it’s the reason she’s a math genius. Actually, her childhood in the wilds of Canada is the reason she’s such a freak. She’s always making faces, weird, exaggerated faces like the kind you make behind someone’s back or when you’re mimicking an animal at the zoo. Case in point:

I said, “Professor Trotter, I’ve got a job in Italy, and I need to be gone from Monday through Friday of next week.”

Professor Trotter scrunched up her mouth and sniffed, like she smelled something terrible or she was a baboon at feeding time. “Well, what’s that aboot, eh?”

I said, “I’m going to miss two of your lectures next week and was hoping that you’d give me the assignments in advance. I know I only got a B on the last quiz, but I’m going to hire a tutor as soon as I get back from Italy.”

She rolled her eyes and let out a big exaggerated sigh. “But that’s a little like a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound, isn’t it?”

A few FYIs:

One, there’s no way in Hades I’m not going to Italy.

Two, I would hardly call a 3.2 average a “gunshot wound.” It’s a B. It’s not great if you’re on the major track, like I am. But it’s not that far off, and I’m going to fix things.

“Well, Professor, what do you suggest I do?”

Her mouth twitched from side to side. She raised an eyebrow. She threw both hands in the air. The woman was incredible, like some sort of fanatical mime. After a few more facial tics, she said, “Well, you’d do well to skip the job and come to class, wouldn’t you?”

I took a deep breath and then told the itsy bitsiest of lies. “Professor Trotter, I have to take this job in Italy. It’s my only source of income, and I have to work as much as possible if I want to be able to come to Columbia next year. This is a very expensive school.”

This made a dent. She shrugged. She puffed up both cheeks, then moved the air around from cheek to cheek. Then finally,
finally
she gave me the assignments.

As I walked out the door, she said, “It’s a crying shame when students have to work instead of concentrate on their education, isn’t it? But what are you going to do? It’s a money-driven society, eh?”

Little did she know, I wasn’t doing this for the money. Not really. I was doing it for Brian. Wait till he saw me, modeling in some high-fashion magazine. I knew I had this goofy cat with a mouthful of canary look on my face, but I couldn’t help it. I was going to get Brian back. I was going to Italy on a modeling job, and I didn’t even have to humiliate myself on
Top Model
to do it. Things were definitely looking up.

9

Bee Takes Flight

Did
I mention that the closest I’d ever been to Europe was the It’s a Small World After All ride at Disney World? I could hardly tell what geeked me out more: the fact that I was about to go on my first modeling job or the fact that I was headed to Italy. If the Chesterfield Agency hadn’t sent a car to pick me up and take me to the airport, I would’ve never made my flight. I would’ve gotten on the subway and instead of taking the train to JFK, I would’ve ended up at Yankee Stadium. I swear. I’m not wrapped too tight these days.

Then they flew me business class. Well, on Alitalia they called it “executive class.” Ha! I’m not an executive. I’m a seventeen-year-old freshman who got really, really lucky in Dean and DeLuca.

Aunt Zo warned me to pass on the free champagne they give out on international flights and not just because I’m underage. “It flows like water up there, and you don’t want to arrive at your first job drunk,” she said. But I made myself completely happy with OJ, the gnocchi that came on a real plate with real silverware, and the cannoli they served for dessert.

When we landed, I was met at the gate by a woman named Giovanna from the advertising agency in Milan. She looked more like a model than I did. Tall, thin, movie star hair, and movie star sunglasses. She kissed me on both cheeks and said,
“Benvenuto, bella.”
Giovanna had a porter get my bags, then she led me through customs. Since I was there for work, we didn’t wait in a single line. Giovanna just spoke Italian rapidly and we stormed through.

A navy blue Mercedes was waiting for us, along with a driver who was so handsome that for the first time in months, I completely forgot about Brian. He drove us to the Villa d’Este. And what can I say? It’s not a hotel, it’s an
experience
.

First of all, it’s not really a hotel: it’s a castle, sitting on this beautiful lake. When you walk in, it’s like a museum: stone walls, sculptures, paintings, Persian rugs. You take this winding staircase, like the one in Daddy Warbucks’s house in
Annie
, up to your room. My suite looked out on the lake and had a private swimming pool. (Giovanna insisted it wasn’t a swimming pool, it was just a big Jacuzzi.)