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Authors: Rachel Maude

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Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly

BOOK: Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly
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Text copyright © 2008 by Rachel Maude

Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Rachel Maude and Compai

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Poppy

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at
www.lb-teens.com

First eBook Edition: October 2008

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN: 978-0-316-03994-9

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

For Gabe and Jess

The Girl: Charlotte Beverwil

The Getup: Crimson satin sheath by Narcisco Rodriguez, diamond briolette necklace by Chopard, and black patent slingbacks with matching black patent bow clutch by Christian Louboutin.

The Girl: Janie Farrish

The Getup: Backless gunmetal silk gown by Dries Van Noten, stacked diamond cuffs by Van Cleef & Arpels, silver mirrored leather peep-toe pumps by Chloe Eloise Ricoperto, and silver/gold tone lizard clutch by Bottega Veneta.

The Girl: Petra Greene

The Getup: Organic tulle toga by Behnaz Sarafpour, diamante platform sandals by Stella McCartney, and narcissus flower coronet by Nature.

The Girl: Melissa Moon

The Getup: Oh No She Didn’t.

“Thank you! Thank you so
much
!” Melissa Moon cried to her adoring audience. Except she hadn’t quite reached the microphone, so from
their
point of view she was mute as a puppet — a brightly glossed mouth flapping a series of silent O’s punctuated by the unexpectedly loud
“. . . uch!”
Melissa refused to fret. Of course, they’d
assume
she’d expressed her thanks, and hadn’t, for example, told them they were “Too ugly! Too ugly to
touch
!” This was the Academy Awards, after all, and her audience knew as well as she did: No Ugly People Allowed.

Well . . . at least not in the first two rows.

Melissa hugged the small gold man-trophy to her chest, wedging him deep into her jutting shelf of cleavage, while directly behind her, her esteemed colleagues gathered into a giddy half-moon.
POSEUR
, their new fashion label, had just won the Oscar for Best New Fashion Label — a category invented just for them. For the occasion, esteemed colleague number one, Janie Farrish, wore a stunning bias-cut gown in gunmetal satin, perfectly complimenting her elastic height and willowy limbs (and successfully disguising her somewhat wimpy personality). The petite and porcelain Charlotte Beverwil chose a strapless floor-length sheath in deepest crimson, a color as fiery and dramatic as she was (behind her cool and placid demeanor, that is). And Petra Greene, the reluctant Goddess of the group, donned an ethereal, one-shouldered toga dress in shimmering champagne tulle, her honey-hued locks crowned by a fragrant coronet of white narcissus, the flower symbolizing vanity (which Petra was anything but). Not that anybody noticed the flowers, the satin, or the crimson. Tonight, all eyes were on Melissa, who — for reasons she could not recall — had appeared in her underwear. She toyed with feeling embarrassed, and then brushed off the impulse. After all, she
had
worn her Agent Provocateur leopard-print stretch chiffon pushup bra with the matching low-rise bikini. And really . . .

Could you get more red carpet than that?

“This is just too amazing!” She gushed (into the mic this time) while the other three girls dutifully retreated from the limelight. As director of public relations, Melissa handled
all
POSEUR
communication — including (she’d hissingly reminded them as they mounted the polished ivory stage stairs) Oscar speeches. “When I was a little girl” — she cleared her throat, assuming a serious tone — “growing up in the dog-eat-dog streets of South Central Los Angeles, I would not have dared to dream that I would one day wind up here, behind this podium, accepting this . . .” She held the small-yet-weighty Oscar aloft, and her dark almond eyes, which flaunted real fox-fur eyelashes, batted away her sparkling tears. “This incredible award!”

The star-studded audience churned into an exuberant round of applause, and diamonds, like sea spray, glittered on their wrists: clearly they were moved by her tale of woe. So many obstacles. Such struggle! Of course, Melissa was more
born
in South Central than she actually
grew up
there (she’d boasted one uber-exclusive Bel Air address or another since the age of three). But, seriously. Why bore them with technicalities?

“My hope,” she breathed, clenching her paraffin-pampered fist, “is that our success with
POSEUR
serves to inspire young girls all over the world. No matter who you are, or where you come from — if you
believe
in yourself, if you
work hard
— you can rise above your circumstances, and . . .”

But before she could say
become a star,
her attention diverted to the opposite end of the pavilion, where two great doors had just swung open, thudding dramatically against the adjacent wall. With a swell of creaking hinges and rustling fabric, the illustrious members of her audience craned around in their deep red velvet upholstered seats, murmuring loudly. There, on the crest of the long, unfurled red carpet, a mysterious figure emerged from the gaping theater entrance. Melissa shielded her eyes and tried to make out his or her identity, but the blinding white glare of the spotlights rendered this effort futile.

“Um,
excuse
me,” she huffed, continuing to squint behind the visor of her hand. “I
happen
to be in the middle of a history-making Oscar speech?”

She glanced commiseratively to her audience, inviting them to share her incredulity, and found the rows of velvet seats empty. Her audience had disappeared! With a startled gasp, she whirled around. Janie, Charlotte, and Petra remained huddled together, smiling and clutching their awards, but Melissa could tell at once:
something was wrong
. Their clothes hung without movement, and their eyes stared, unblinking, and dull as stone.


Why
are y’all just standing there like a bunch of mannequins?” As if to answer, Charlotte’s arm creakingly dislodged at the shoulder, and clattered — pure plastic — to the floor. A sound like a moth wing fluttered inside Melissa’s ear and, fighting off a paralyzing twist of dread, she turned around again. The faceless intruder loomed only a few feet away, shadowy hands gripping the corners of a large sack, the gaping sack-mouth moving toward her like a toothless shark. In a spasm of self-defense, Melissa threw her Oscar with all her might, realizing only too late what she had done. As the sack’s mouth closed around her prize, she choked out a noise of regret. Warm breath filled her ear like a soupy fog, and a cool voice whispered:

“Trick or treat . . .”

Melissa startled awake with a long and terrified scream. She looked around, palm pressed to her wildly bucking heart, and took a moment to orient herself. She was in an absurdly opulent bedroom, in a palatial cliffside house, in exclusive Bel Air, California: nothing out of the ordinary here, right?

Exhaling her relief, she collapsed against some of the sixteen rose-and-cream-silk boudoir pillows piled high against her ornate, cream-and-gold Louis XVI headboard, and patiently waited for her father to come console her. She strained to hear the distant rumble of his footsteps, the low drone of his concerned voice, but the only sound to break the Saturday 2 a.m. quiet came from Emilio Poochie. Her somewhat asthmatic cream-and-tan Pomer-anian lay sprawled at the foot of her bed, snoring like a micro-machine truck.

This was seriously not okay.

Whipping aside her hibiscus pink silk Frette sheets, she padded a quick path across her hand-knotted ivory Indian silk rug, cracked open her solid oak bedroom door, positioned her Strawberry Rosebud Salve-slathered mouth inside the two-inch gap of space, and (oh yes she did) she screamed again. Eleven seconds later, her half-asleep dad appeared at her door, wavering above his half-dead Bugs Bunny slippers, and fumbling for the hall switch.

“What happened?” Seedy Moon’s distinct nasal voice, one of the most renowned in rap music today, cracked thickly with sleep. He found the switch and winced into the light. “You okay?”

“It’s nothing, Daddy,” Melissa reassured him from the bed, having perfectly rearranged herself into a position of dreamy repose. Her down-stuffed rose-bouquet duvet muffled her words. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Seedy’s eyebrows tied into a knot of suspicion, and his dark eyes slid about her high-ceilinged, birdcage-shaped room. “Cafeteria Lady in here?” he asked, referring to Melissa’s boyfriend of four months, Marco Duvall. Upon first meeting Melissa’s father, Marco made the grave mistake of wearing a hairnet, hoping to impress Seedy as a fellow reformed thug — maybe earn his respect. Sadly for him, the only thing earned was his not-so-thuggish nickname.

“No, Cafeteria La . . .
Marco
is
not
here,” Melissa scoffed. “And just ’cause he snuck in my room that
one
time . . .”

“One time is one time too many,” Seedy cut her off, whipping aside the sliding mirror door of his daughter’s wall-to-wall closet. He frowned, prodding the dark hanging clothes with his bunny-clad foot.

“Daddy, would you
stop
?” Melissa reached to drag the still-slumbering Emilio Poochie into her lap. She hugged him close, diminishing her voice to a plaintive squeak. “I had a real bad dream.”

“You did?” Seedy plopped on the edge of her featherbed-topped mattress and she instantly relaxed into a smile; the tug of her father’s weight on the end of her bed never failed to comfort her. Seedy smiled, too, squeezing the blanketed lump that was her foot. “What about?”

“Well . . .” She rubbed the furry point of Emilio’s ear between her forefinger and thumb. “It started with I won the Oscar . . .”

“Oh no . . .” Seedy laughed. “
That
dream again?”

“Okay, would you please
listen
?” She scowled, waiting a punitive beat before she resumed. She recounted the whole dream-turned-nightmare, taking care to omit nothing, not even the most seemingly insignificant detail (well, except that bit about the underwear). “And after that” — she widened her almond-shaped brown eyes for dramatic effect — “I woke up screaming.”

“Huh.” Her compact-yet-muscular father squeezed his interlocked fingers, free of their customary jewel-encrusted rings, between his soft gray sweatpant-clad knees, and frowned. “Seems pretty obvious to me. I mean, we’re getting into October now, right? It’s a spooky time . . . Halloween around the corner . . .”

“Daddy!” Melissa grimaced with disapproval. “Halloween hasn’t been ‘spooky’ since, like, the Middle Ages. And besides, that is the
obvious
interpretation. You got to get
beneath
all that. Crack the surface!”

“Okay, okay, lemme think.” He closed his eyes, pushing his fingers deep into the sockets. After a moment, he removed his fingers and blinked.

“I got nothing.”

Melissa smacked her overstuffed down comforter, launching a light-as-breath feather into the air. “It’s about the person who broke into my contest.
Obvie!

By contest, of course, she was referring to the raffle
POSEUR
had organized for their now infamous label launch (also known as the “Tag — You’re It!” party) one week ago, last Saturday. They’d been having major trouble picking out the perfect name for their new label, but (a few cat fights and one silent treatment later) Charlotte Beverwil proposed a simple solution: instead of naming it themselves, why not leave it up to their guests? It was, as Miss Frenchie-pants Charlotte herself might say,
un bon idée.
They mailed pink-and-black-lacquered invitations with small white tags attached, as well as instructions for the invitee to fill out the tag with the label idea of their choice. As their guests arrived to their swank-a-dank venue (the Prada Store on Rodeo), they dropped their completed tags into a clear globe-shaped safe (Melissa had chosen the globe to best convey her modest goal: to take over the world).

But “safe” their tags most definitely were not. Someone had busted the globe wide open — someone had
tagged
the
tags
— and scrawled one word,
POSEUR,
across each one.

BOOK: Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly
12.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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