The Daughters (11 page)

The sound of hurried footsteps in the hall made Lizzie look back toward the door, and suddenly Todd rushed into the room,
his pale cheeks flushed and his hair wet and piecey. He looked completely embarrassed and a little groggy, as if he’d overslept.
“So sorry,” he stammered politely. “Really. So sorry.”

“Bonjour, Monsieur Piedmont,” Madame said with an edge in her voice, gesturing for him to sit down.
“Asseyez-vous.”

Over here
, Lizzie thought, watching him as he moved into the room, looking for a seat.
Just look over here…

But he stepped past her without a glance. All the way to the back of the room, right into the knot of desks that held the
Alpha Male triad of Ken Clayman, Eli Blackman, and Chris Eaton.

Lizzie turned forward in her desk.

“Since when is he friends with that crew?” she whispered to Carina.

Carina looked back at Todd and shrugged. “He’s a guy, ” she said.

For the rest of homeroom, Lizzie tried to construct a cool, clever, and hopefully funny apology.
I’m sorry I never made it back,
she thought.
Yes, I totally bolted from your house but I really
would
like to kiss you. When can we get back to that?

When Madame had finally reached the end of the list and the bell had rung, Lizzie turned to Carina and Hudson. “I’ll meet
you guys in history,” she said, packing up her stuff.

“Just be friendly,” Hudson said.

“Yeah, don’t be all tweaked out that he didn’t write you back,” Carina put in. “Make light of it.”

Um, as if
, she thought as she scrambled to catch up with Todd in the hall. “Hey,” she said when she was just behind him. “How was the
party?”

Todd turned around. He seemed surprised, as if they were the sort of friends who waved hi to each other but never really talked.
“Hey,” he said, slinging his bookbag over his shoulder. “What’s up?”

“Sorry I never made it back,” she said, plunging right in. “I really wanted to, but we ended up going to Montauk and it was
kind of an emergency—”

“Hey, no worries,” he said, holding up his hand to stop her, as if he were some cool surfer dude. “Things were a little crazy
this weekend.” His eyes darted around the hallway, looking for something, or someone. She waited for more of an explanation,
but he didn’t give one.

“Was it fun?” she asked.

“What?”

“The party.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said distractedly, still looking around. Suddenly he cocked his head as if he’d just had a brilliant thought.
“Hey. I think we need to get to English, right?”

Before she could answer, he turned and started walking up the hall. Lizzie watched him, dumbfounded. This wasn’t like Todd.
He never acted uninterested in talking to her. Was he mad at her?

“Hey, you still owe me a story,” she teased as she followed him down the hall. “Don’t think I’m gonna forget about that.”

“Hey, Piedmont!”

She looked over. Ken Clayman was waving him over to where he and Eli and Chris were standing near the lockers. “Get over here!”
he yelled. “We’re doing fantasy football!”

Todd glanced back at her. “We’ll talk later. Okay?”

She just nodded and watched him walk over to his new friends. A moment later the whole pack of them moved down the hall, nudging
and jostling and laughing. She couldn’t believe it. Fantasy football? He’d been living in England for the past three years.
What did he care about the NFL?

At a loss, she turned to see Sophie Duncan and Jill Rau emerge from the girls’ bathroom, shoulder-to-shoulder, both of their
kilts hanging unfashionably to the knee. Sophie and Jill weren’t the coolest girls in the class—they wore bright pink lip
gloss and had huge public crushes on Zac Efron—but they were nice enough, even if they were constantly gossiping about people.

“And are you totally
sure
?” Sophie asked, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“Yep, Kate and Ilona were talking about it at the deli,” Jill confirmed, rubbing a lip gloss wand over her lips. “It happened
after everyone else went home. So I won. I said they’d hook up the first week.”

“They hooked up the first
weekend
, not the first week,” Sophie countered.

“Same difference,” said Jill.

They were all walking in the same direction, so Lizzie fell into step beside them. “What’d you guys bet on?” she asked.

“Oh, how soon Todd and Ava would hook up,” Jill said casually, smacking her lips together. She gestured to Sophie. “And now
this bee-yatch owes me a Mac Lipglass.”

Lizzie had to force herself to keep moving. Her legs felt like they’d been filled with concrete. “They hooked up?” she asked
as nonchalantly as she could.

“Yeah, at Todd’s party,” Sophie said. “Which is technically
not
the first week of school, by the way,” she reminded Jill.

“Yes, it is,” Jill said back to her.

“Todd’s party?” Lizzie asked in disbelief.

“I knew it would happen,” Jill put in. “I mean, she was all
over
him last week. And who else is Todd gonna go out with?”

The two of them turned into a classroom, leaving Lizzie in the hall. The bell rang. Doors shut. Everything went quiet. She
couldn’t move.

Todd and Ava.

Hooking up.

At his party.

Hours after she’d left him there.

She stood for minutes in the deserted hall, letting this sink in. At first it didn’t seem possible. But then she remembered
the distracted look in his eyes, the way he’d practically run away from her just now, and it made a sick kind of sense.

Finally she hitched her bookbag further up her shoulder and made her way up the hall. Todd had thought Ava was a cool girl.
Cool enough to hook up with only a few hours after she’d left his house.

But he likes me
, a small voice inside of her said.
He likes ME.

And then another voice spoke up and drowned that first voice out.

Not as much as you thought he did.

Lizzie held it together until lunch, when she and Carina and Hudson slid into a booth at the diner around the corner on Madison.

“So he’s about to kiss you, you leave, and then he hooks up with Ava the same night?” Hudson asked, her fork poised over her
cottage cheese and melon. “It just doesn’t add up.”

Lizzie glumly plunged her straw up and down in her iced tea. “Maybe he
wasn’t
about to kiss me,” she said.

“It’s my fault,” Carina said quietly over a gigantic platter of fries. “I should never have sent you that text.”

The diner was so packed with kids that it was hard even hearing herself think. In the next booth over Lizzie could see the
Icks, sharing a plate of fries and giving them steely cold stares.

“It’s not your fault, C,” Lizzie said, trying to sound positive. “I’d already freaked out. He probably thought I was grossed
out by him or something.”

“You could tell him you weren’t,” Carina suggested, dragging a fry through her ketchup.

“Now?” Lizzie asked. “You know how it is when a guy starts going out with Ava—they’re lost forever. She’s like the Bermuda
Triangle.” She poked at a floating lemon slice with her straw. “And maybe he wasn’t that into me in the first place.”

“Well then, that’s his loss,” Carina concluded, placing both elbows bossily on the table. “
He’s
the idiot here, not you.
You
are hot and smart and completely
un
forgettable. Ava was probably throwing herself at him. Just because he was dumb and unoriginal enough to take her up on it
doesn’t say anything about
you
.”

“I know, but it still feels awful,” Lizzie said quietly, swallowing back the tears.

“Hey.” Carina’s trademark smile of mischief appeared as she leaned back against the vinyl booth. “Call that photographer.
It’s the perfect reason to do it.”

“Now?”
Lizzie gave Carina an are-you-totally-insane scowl.

“Yeah. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I think I still have that card…,” Hudson said, diving into her bag.

“Wait! I can’t just decide I’m going to be a model because some guy turned out to be a jerk.”

“You’re
not
gonna turn into a
model
,” Carina moaned, dramatically rolling her eyes. “We’re talking about getting some pictures taken. To boost your self-esteem.
And to put up on your Facebook page and make him insanely jealous.”

“Oh, and another thing,” Hudson added, still digging in her bag. “Jupiter’s in your tenth house right now, which is
huge
for your career.”

“But I don’t have a career.”

“Here it is.” Hudson produced the card from her bag. She handed it to Lizzie. “See? It’s not even wrinkled.”

Lizzie ran her fingers once again over the bumpy type that spelled out Andrea’s name.

“I still don’t get it,” Carina said, shaking her head. “What were your reasons for saying no again?”

Lizzie put the card back down on the table. “Natasha said not to.”

“Do you really think it’d hurt your mom to get a few shots taken?” Hudson asked sweetly. “You haven’t even spoken to her since
the fight.”

Lizzie mulled this over. Carina was right. There was no reason for her to be worried about embarrassing her mom anymore. But
then there was the reason Carina and Hudson didn’t know, and the one that she didn’t want to mention to them: what her mother
really thought of her. That she was weird-looking. That she was someone to feel sorry for. And she trusted her mom’s opinion
more than she trusted Andrea’s.

But maybe that was even more reason to do this, she thought. Maybe she needed to prove her mother wrong. To prove
herself
wrong. To prove that someone out there thought she was pretty, at least in kind of a twisted way. And doing this sure beat
analyzing the Todd Piedmont Fiasco until the end of time.

Lizzie shrugged. “Fine.”

Carina handed Lizzie her phone. Her friends didn’t take their eyes off her face as she dialed. It rang three times, and then
someone picked up.

“Hello?”

Lizzie recognized Andrea’s friendly voice. She thought of the best way to put this.

“Hi, this is Lizzie Summers,” she said.

“Lizzie!” Andrea said warmly. “What’s up?”

Her friends were staring at her, waiting, daring her to chicken out. She knew, finally, that she didn’t want to.

“I think I want to do it.”

“I hope she doesn’t think I’m a pro at this because of my mom, you guys. Or that I even know what I’m doing.”

Flanked by Carina and Hudson, Lizzie turned off Fifth Avenue and entered Central Park. It was a beautiful Indian summer day,
with clouds that looked like pieces of torn cotton candy and a light, mild breeze that made the tree branches sway in slow
motion. It was a perfect day to get pictures taken, Lizzie knew, even though, five days after the call to Andrea, she suddenly
wasn’t sure if she wanted to do this.

“You’re gonna rock this,” Carina assured her as they walked by a harpist sitting on one of the benches near the Seventy-Second
Street entrance. “You have the genes. You could catwalk Naomi Campbell under the table, for God’s sakes.”

“Um, I’ve never even
tried
to catwalk,” Lizzie replied.

“You’re doing this for you,” Hudson reminded her, retying a vintage Hermès scarf around her head. “Think of it as a self-affirmation
exercise.”

“Oh God,” Carina sighed as they waited for some speeding bicyclists to pass. “You’re going to have to stop reading your mom’s
New Age-y books, okay?”

“Thanks for coming with me, you guys,” Lizzie said.

Hudson took her by the wrist. “And miss history in the making?” she asked, winking. “No way.”

They walked the shaded, winding path that ran along the Boat Pond until it bottomed out into the redbrick-paved plaza in front
of Bethesda Fountain. “There she is,” Carina said as they walked into the open plaza.

Andrea sat perched on the edge of the fountain, an ice cream sandwich in one hand and her BlackBerry in the other. A square-shaped
camera bag lay at her feet. When she saw them she stood up and waved her sandwich in the air.

“Okay, I didn’t know what all of you wanted, so I got a Drumstick, a Fudgsicle, and a King Cone,” Andrea said as they walked
up, and she pointed to the ice creams she’d laid out on top of her bag. “Who wants what?”

Carina went right for the Drumstick—she loved anything with nuts—and Hudson took the Fudgsicle. Lizzie grabbed the King Cone.
It was the first time Lizzie had ever seen a photographer actually encourage a model to eat.

“Isn’t it gorgeous out?” Andrea gushed, looking up at the sky. “It’s the perfect day to take some shots.” She tossed her wrapper
into the trash, unzipped her camera bag, and hefted a weighty Mamiya camera the size of a volleyball into her hands. Looking
at it, Lizzie could see why Andrea’s arms were so toned.

“All right, where do you want to get started?” Andrea asked, pulling off the lens cap. She squinted in the sun. “Maybe we’ll
start in front of the fountain and then just move around?”

“Just so you know,” Lizzie said, swallowing her ice cream, “I’m not like a pro at this or anything.”

“Good!” Andrea exclaimed, smiling. “That’s what I like to hear!”

Lizzie finished her cone, handed her bookbag to Hudson, and sat down on the rim of the fountain. She could feel the coolness
of the water behind her. The floor of the fountain glittered with what looked like a thousand drowned pennies.

“Oh, Lizzie? Can I ask you to let your hair down?” Andrea gestured with her camera. “I want to be able to see it.”

Lizzie reached up and pulled out her elastic, releasing her Brillo curls. Out here in the heat it was only a matter of time
before they swelled into a helmet.

“Great,” Andrea urged, holding the camera to her face. “Your hair is so beautiful!”

Are you nuts?
Lizzie thought as she settled into the Pose: back straight, chin tucked in, shoulders down. It was the very first rule of
modeling, and one that Katia had taught her years ago, even though she’d never really used it.