Poser (10 page)

“This woman's name is Red?” she asked. “Just Red?”

“I guess she must have a last name,” I said, wondering what on earth it could be. Not Plush. Surely not Plush. Anyway, I had never heard it.

“Well, thanks,” she said, smiling. “I've got a day off tomorrow. I might pop over to this Red Plush. Sounds fun.”

She looked at me and then blurted out, “You want to quit modeling, don't you?”

I stared at her.

“I
know
you want to quit. I don't want you to think you're letting me or Macy down. I want you to tell me the truth.”

The truth.

“I'm not so good at the truth, Mom,” I said.

She laughed.

“Try it,” she said.

I took a deep breath. It was hard to get started. But once I did, I got going pretty quickly. I told her the truth. I told her everything.

I told her that if I had to do one more stupid pose, I would scream the place down. I told her that I'd had it with fake-smiling, fake-laughing, fake-running and fake everything. I told her about Chad's hair and Clarissa's psycho-freakiness and lying to my friends and how frustrating it was to not have a real life.

I told her how scared I was that Shay would find out about the modeling. I told her about letting her down by lying when she had trusted me. I told her about talking to the principal and how the monster lie was taking on a life of its own. And I told her I felt sick about the FUNdraiser the next day and the
Shiny, Happy Family
shoot the day after that.

I looked away from Mom's face as I talked. She wanted the truth. She asked for it.

I talked a lot. Even for me. I talked until there was no more talk left in me. Finally, I lay back against my pillows and closed my eyes. Who knew telling the truth was so exhausting?

“Well,” I said, “there you go. You'll never ask me to tell the truth again, hey?”

She sat very still.

“Actually,” she said, “we're going to have nothing but the truth starting now. Thanks for being honest, BB. Sorry.
Luke
. I'm so sorry you've been so miserable. You should have told me. I've noticed lately that you've been sort of moody and unhappy, but Macy and I thought it must just be teenage stuff. You know. I was a teenage terror, so I guess I thought all teenagers go through that.”

“Well, give me time,” I said. “I'm not actually, officially, a teenager yet. Watch out though. Birthday coming up.” We laughed a little. Then Mom smoothed my hair.

“Things will be different now, I promise. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. But I wasn't convinced. Macy the Tank stood in the way of our freedom.

Mom gave me a hug. I felt a little better.

I heard her and Macy talking in the family room. Soft voice, then big RUMBLE, then soft voice, then RUMBLE. They were still talking when I fell asleep.

Nothing would change. Neither one of us was as strong or as determined as Macy.

But at least now it was two against one.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE FUNDRAISER DAY OPENS WITH A BANG (BRACE YOURSELF. IT'S UGLY.)

Mom and Macy were up and out of the house when my alarm went off. This was highly unusual.

Mom had left a note for me.

Luke,

I have a bunch of stuff I have to do today, so thought I'd get an early start. Macy's at a breakfast meeting with some client. Don't worry about anything. We had a long talk, and it's all under control. Talk to you later.

Love, Mom

ps: Eat some breakfast. Here's money for lunch.

Yeah, right. All under control. When had either of us ever been able to control Macy?

It was one of those days when the weather doesn't seem to understand that you're very depressed and that your life is a tangled, stupid mess. It was a clear-blue, sparkling day with frost decorating every tree branch.

I stared dully out the bus window at the winter wonderland and wondered how I was going to get through the day without being revealed as the phony sick kid, and how I was going to get through the
next
day fake-smiling with Chad and Clarissa.

So I was totally unprepared for the bomb when it fell. To those of you literal kids who just jumped to your feet thinking, No way! A BOMB went off?!: relax. And sit down. This is not that kind of book.

All I meant was that something really, really bad happened. And I wasn't ready for it. We clear on that? No actual bombs.

As I turned down the hall to my classroom, Chan hurried up to me with a bunch of papers in his hand.

“Not good, Spin, not good. In fact,” he added, shoving the papers at me, “probably really, really bad. I took down as many of them as I could, but look...” He gestured down the hall, where sheets of paper were taped to every locker, every door, every window.

I looked down at the paper. It was a photocopy of one of my modeling shoots from about six years ago. It was for a bridal magazine, and I was a fake ring bearer. I was wearing fake glasses and a small (and, as I recall, too-tight) tuxedo with a fake flower in the buttonhole. I was holding a small pillow with a fake wedding ring stuck on it, smiling up at the women around me. The fake bride and all her fake bridesmaids were smiling down at me. It hadn't been a bad shoot. Everyone had been nice.

But let's face it: it's not the kind of thing you really expect to see papering the walls of your junior high when you are busy worrying about your fake sickness.

Someone had written GUESS WHO?? at the top of the page.

I looked around. The photocopies were everywhere.

It had come.

Doom.

The moment I'd been dreading my whole life.

Through the rising panic, I heard my brain say,
You still have time to run! The bell hasn't rung yet!

But somehow, my feet started walking toward the classroom.

What are you guys doing?
screamed my brain at my feet.
Crisis here! Run! RUN AWAY!

My feet don't hear very well, apparently. They walked all the way down the hall to the classroom. Past kids who were whispering and grinning and staring. Past nice girls looking sorry for me, past guys looking guiltily relieved that they weren't going to be today's victims.

Frey swung around from his locker, saw me and said through the apple in his mouth, “Hey, Spin! Hockey today!” Apparently he hadn't noticed the three thousand sheets of paper covering all the nearby surfaces.

I managed a smile. Good old Frey.

Hockey today. He was right. Today was my first hockey game ever. Coach was even buying us pizza after the game. In the midst of my life shattering and crumbling into dust, I'd forgotten that fact. It made me feel better. Frey caught up with Chan and me, and we all walked into the classroom together. Did they wait to walk in with me to help me out? Did they walk in with me because they knew it'd be hard? I'll never really know. But at that moment, walking in with my friends was WAY better than walking in alone.

Shay was waiting. The whole class was waiting. There was a stillness in the air.

“Well, GUESS WHO's here?” shouted Shay, his evil little face bright and expectant.

“Hey, Shay,” I said casually, dumping my backpack on my chair.

He frowned.

Ahhh
, I thought.
The trick is to stay casual
. Hard when your heart is pounding and your face feels hot.

I pretended I needed all my concentration for unpacking my backpack. But ignoring Shay never made Shay go away.

“Have you happened to notice this
gorgeous
photo, Spin?” Shay could barely contain his glee. He slammed one of the posters on my desk, right underneath my face.

“Check out the little guy in the tux! He's SOOOOO cute!”

I turned and looked at him. What I saw wasn't pretty. He was going to humiliate me as much as he could. He was going to torture me.

And then something in me snapped.

I'd had all I could take.

Here I was, caught in this monster lie, doomed to model endlessly, and Shay was determined to humiliate me, to beat me to a pulp, mind-bully style.

Well, it wasn't going to happen.

There's a depressing song my mom used to play, and one of the lines is
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
. Or something like that. That's how I felt. I had nothing to lose. Rock bottom. Maybe it sounds pathetic, but when you hit rock bottom, you realize there's nowhere to go but up. All my nervousness and fear melted away. I felt oddly calm.

I smiled, as if he was paying me a genuine compliment. It was one of those hard, stiff smiles that had no humor in it. It was a smile that said,
Watch out, Shay, I'm coming for you.

“Aw, thanks, Shay,” I said loudly. “You know, you just might fit into that little tux in a few years. Like, for grad or something. I can see if they still have it.”

There was dead silence. Everyone looked stunned.

Nobody talked like that to Shay. Even Frey stopped chewing and just stood there with a mouthful of apple.

I continued. Recklessly.

“And you never told us you had a subscription to
Bridal Dreaming
magazine!” I said. “That's where the photo came from. Dreaming about being a bride, Shay?”

Some of the kids started to snigger, and all of a sudden the room felt less tense.

“At least I'm not
starring
in it,” Shay said. He had a point, and he knew it.

He leaned in closer, in mock concern.

“Tell us, Spin, how it feels to be a boy model. We would really
love
to see some of your other, more recent, work.”

You know me pretty well by now. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not stupid. There was no way I was going to blab my life story because Shay had got hold of one photograph.
He has one photo. ONE
, I kept reminding myself.

But there're about two million more he could dig up soon
, a tiny voice in my brain said.
When that website of Macy's goes live
. I hate that tiny brain voice. It never, ever whispers good things.

I hesitated.

Edie came in. She picked up the sheet on her desk, looked at it and sighed.

“Oh, wait, don't tell me,” she said in her slow, bored voice. She closed her eyes and put her fingers to her forehead like she was telling our fortunes.

“Spin does this thing when he was a little kid, probably because his mom forced him to, and Shay's torturing him about it. Am I right?” Have I mentioned that Edie is
the
coolest girl in school?

She looked around. Some kids nodded, grinned and started to drift away to their own desks.

“Yep, Edie. Bingo,” said Chan.

Edie glanced over at Shay. “You're so boringly predictable,” she said, stifling a yawn.

Shay sensed that he was losing the edge in the confrontation. This made him aggressive.

“I'm just asking Little Mr. Ring Bearer here how long he's been secretly modeling, that's all.” Shay was always better behaved with Edie around. He made it sound as if it were a serious, legitimate question.

The whole class looked over at me expectantly.

It was now or never.

“Oh, probably for as long as you've been reading
Bridal Dreaming
, Shay,” I said.

There was a beat of silence, then everyone laughed. Even Edie.

The bell rang. I couldn't believe I had got the last line in. Okay, I couldn't believe I even
thought
of a last line, let alone a pretty good one.

Ms. McCoy came in, looking mad.

“Who is responsible for the state of the hall and this classroom?” She picked up one of the sheets. “‘Guess Who?' What is this? Well, obviously, it's Luke.” She looked over at me. “Cute picture, Luke. Somebody else must have thought so too, having run off what looks like several hundred copies. It better not have been on the school photocopier.”

She turned to Shay wearily.

“Shay, this is obviously your work. I know your handwriting. Go and collect every single last one of these and put them in the recycle bin in the teachers' lounge. And don't touch anything else in there. Or eat anything. Actually, just give them to Mrs. Barnes at the office desk. Then report to the principal. As usual.”

“No problem, Ms. M., got it covered,” Shay said, like he was being very helpful. “I'll be a
model
student,” he added from the doorway, giving the class a big wink. You have to hand it to Shay. He's quick.

Everyone laughed. Shay probably wanted it to be mean laughter. But it wasn't.

It was just normal laughter.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I INVENT A NEW VERSION OF DODGEBALL(ALL HEAD SHOTS ALL THE TIME)

Never,
ever
has a day been so long.

Well, maybe it has been for guys at war, or people trapped in an avalanche, or kids forced to visit really, really boring relatives...But you know what I mean. It was the longest day for
me
. It was unbelievably long.

Shay called me Tux whenever he saw me and kept mock-framing me with his hands like he was taking pictures.

I infuriated him by asking him bridal trivia. “Hey, Shay, what's new in veils?” or “Quick, Shay: three tips for a winter wedding!” It was all very childish. Tiring too. Because every time I asked him some bridal question, I had to think up another one for the next time he bugged me.

My recklessness was melting away. Worry moved in, stretched and settled down on my mental couch. Shay had obviously just come across that photo by accident. I didn't know where: doctor's office? Dentist's? Who stocked magazines that old? But you could bet that he'd be googling my name to dig up more dirt. And when Macy finalized her website, it would be disastrous; he would see every photo I'd ever had taken. Every shoot.
Everything
.

Models by Macy would bury me.

* * *

My class had the whole afternoon to visit the FUNdraiser events.