The Daughters (14 page)

“Except I’m going to need this signed,” Andrea added, pulling out a folded piece of paper from the outside pocket of her camera
bag. “By your mom. Before I can give them any photographs.”

Andrea unfolded the paper. At the top was written
NOTICE OF PARENTAL CONSENT FOR MINORS
. It was a permission slip.

“Which means you’re going to have to tell her,” Andrea warned as they started to walk up Broadway. “And if you want me to
talk to them, I’d be happy to—”

“No, that’s okay,” Lizzie cut in, taking the permission slip out her hands. “I’ll tell her tonight.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, it’s time,” she said, folding the piece of paper and dropping it into her bookbag.

“I’ll be away next week—I have a shoot down in Austin—but just fax me the release and we’ll talk when I get back.” At the
corner of Prince Street, Andrea leaned down and gave Lizzie a quick, piney-smelling hug. “Good work today. And tell Carina
and Hudson they really missed out.”

“I will.”

“And don’t worry about your mom.” Then she gestured to the Dean & Deluca on the corner. “All right, gonna go flirt with the
cute barista. He always gives me a discount, thank God. That place is a fortune.” She cracked a warm smile just before she
turned away.

Lizzie rushed down the steps into the N and R subway, her head spinning.
New York Style
? Was Andrea serious? She needed to talk to her mom immediately. If Andrea was really going to send in her photos, then hopefully
her mom would be supportive.

“Mom?” she yelled when she walked in the door. “You home?” She pushed through the swinging door and walked into the kitchen.

In her excitement about her own photo shoot, she’d forgotten about the one that
Celebrity Living
was doing on their apartment that day. Through the archway to the living room, Lizzie saw her mom posed on the beige suede
sofa, her arms splayed out on either side of her and her chin tilted in the air, smiling expertly. Her white Grecian-style
dress fluttered in the air from a fan. A photo assistant held a silk in his hands to bounce off the light from a stand. And
a makeup artist hovered nearby with a tray of lip glosses and powder. A bearded photographer wearing a skullcap stood behind
his tripod and snapped another picture.

“Lizzie? Where’ve you been?” Katia asked. Years of experience had given Katia an almost supernatural ability to speak through
a smile.

“Um, just hanging out with C,” she said. This clearly wasn’t the time to spill the beans.

The photographer snapped another picture and Katia released her statue-like pose. “It’s six o’clock,” she said. “And what
is that?” she asked, noticing the hat.

Lizzie snatched the fedora off her head. “Just something I bought after school.”

“Is that your daughter?” asked a voice, and Lizzie turned to see a redheaded woman with quick, eager eyes walk into the living
room. Lizzie could tell she was the reporter.

“Fiona, this is Lizzie,” Katia said, standing up. “Lizzie, this is Fiona Carter. The writer doing the piece for
Celebrity Living
.”

The woman pumped Lizzie’s hand eagerly. Perhaps a little too eagerly. Lizzie wondered if she’d seen the clip.

“What about a picture with your daughter?” Fiona asked. “The both of you on the couch. It’d be adorable and her uniform is
just darling—”

“No, I don’t think so,” Katia answered quickly.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Lizzie said. “I can do the photo.”

“No, really, it’s just not something we’re interested in,” Katia said firmly, giving Lizzie a confused look. “Honey,” she
said, “don’t you have homework?”

“Yeah,” Lizzie said as she turned and walked out. Sometimes it felt like she and her mom would never, ever get on the same
page about anything. Just as she was starting to accept the camera, her mom thought she wanted to avoid it. Now it would be
even more confusing for Katia if she heard what Lizzie had been doing.

“Your father and I are going out tonight,” Katia called after her. “Want me to order something for you?”

“No, thanks,” she yelled back.

On the way to her room, she stopped in front of the enormous gold-framed mirror that leaned against the hallway floor. She
looked exactly the same as she did most afternoons when she came home—kilt crooked, hair in a thick mass around her face,
her nose shiny—but something was different.

It was her mind. It was quiet. The chorus of voices that usually rose up in her head whenever she looked in the mirror—the
voices that said
I’m so weird-looking, I have to get rid of that, I wish that was different
—all of them were gone. Now it was just her and her reflection staring back at her. No chatter.

But things with her mother were clearly more tentative than she thought. Lizzie turned into her room and dropped down on the
bed, burying her head in Sid Vicious’s fur. Maybe telling her about the modeling gig—and asking for her permission to take
it even further—was asking for trouble. Suddenly she remembered that she had to go over to Todd’s tonight to work on that
project. Two weeks ago she would have prayed for this. Now she wished there was any way she could get out of it.

“Sid… can we just trade places for a day?” she asked her cat.

Sid stood up, arched his back, yawned, and jumped off the bed. “I take that to be a no,” she said.

When she stepped off the elevator into Todd’s apartment a few hours later, Lizzie was surprised to see that the foyer was
dark.

“Hello?” she called out.

“Up here,” a voice called out.

She looked up to see Todd standing on the second floor, leaning over the banister and looking extremely cute in a red Vampire
Weekend T-shirt and faded Levis. “There’s pizza,” he said. “Pepperoni and plain. You hungry?”

“No, thanks.” She walked up the stairs, feeling her knees tremble a little with nerves. “We should just get started on this.
I’ve got a lot of other homework tonight.”

At the top of the stairs he looked her up and down and smiled. Unlike the last time she’d been to his house, she was wearing
her decidedly unsexy ripped jeans and an extra-large Mr. Bubbles T-shirt. “Hey, lemme take that,” he said, reaching out for
her bookbag. “That looks heavy.”

“That’s okay, I got it,” she said, stepping back. She wasn’t going to let him be all charming. “So… where shall we go?”

“Uh, in here,” he said, as he led her into his room.

Lizzie looked around in awe. Todd’s old bedroom had been just big enough to fit a set of bunk beds and a built-in desk and
bookshelf. But this room looked like the presidential suite at the Mercer Hotel—and was just as cool. Half of it was set up
like an office, with a chocolate leather sofa along one wall, a sleek glass coffee table, and an imposing steel desk topped
by a gleaming Mac Pro. The other half had a king-size bed, a flatscreen, and a large, bleak painting of an orange spot against
a gray background.

“Wow,” Lizzie remarked, dropping her bookbag on the couch. “This is your
room
?”

“And look at this,” he said, gesturing toward a door. He led her into an adjoining room and flipped on the light. “What do
you think?” he asked, grinning.

It was a room lined with books,
crammed
with books, hardbacks and softcovers, new and old, on shelves that rose all the way to the ceiling. Lizzie had never seen
so many books in her life, not even at the Strand bookstore downtown.

“You’ll never have to go to Barnes & Noble again,” she said, turning around in circles. “This is unbelievable. It’s like Gatsby’s
library.”

“It’s my little hobby,” he said.

“Hey, what are these?” she asked, walking over to a pair of glass bookcases that stood separate from the rest of the shelves.

“
This
is what I really wanted to show you.” Todd bent down next to her, so close that one of his arm hairs sent her skin bristling.
He opened one of the cases and she saw a series of boxes with one familiar title after another stamped in gold on the spine.
The Old Man and the Sea
.
Nine Stories
.
The Catcher in the Rye
. “They’re all first editions,” he said. “I collect them. Some of them are even signed.”

“You have a first edition of
Catcher in the Rye
?” she asked, agape.

“Yep.” Todd slid one of the boxes out. “Here.”

He opened the box and nestled inside was a goldish-brown book. She took it out. The dust jacket felt soft and velvety, as
if years of being held had ground it down into something more precious. “How’d you get this?” she stammered.

“My dad used to take me to this dealer in Camden Town. He had everything.”

Lizzie flipped the pages, breathing in the smell of old ink. She wondered if Ava was as impressed by this as she was. She
doubted it.

“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said, handing the book back to him. “But why don’t you have
Gatsby
? That’d be my first pick.”

“I tried,” he said, taking back the book. “It was always the one book the guy didn’t have. And I wanted a signed copy. Those
are pretty hard to find.” He put the book back on the shelf with special care, as if it might disintegrate.

“This collection is amazing,” she said.

Todd smiled sheepishly as he turned back toward his room. “I guess there are some perks to my dad’s midlife crisis.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know we didn’t always live like this,” Todd confided. She followed him back into his room. He fiddled with his iPod on
his desk. A soft, slow rock song began to play on the speakers on either side of his bed. “He thinks spending money’ll keep
him young,” he went on. “Or dating a twenty-two-year-old model.”

Lizzie sat on the edge of his bed. His bed. Almost without thinking, her pulse began to rise.
Calm yourself
, she thought.

He flopped down on his back next to her. “Her name’s Chloe,” he said, grimacing. “Fake boobs, fake teeth, and she’s really
into India.” Todd made a
yecch
sound. “My dad used to laugh about guys like that. Now he’s one of them.”

“Maybe it’s just a phase.” Without thinking about it, she leaned back on the bed so that they faced each other.

“Except I get to watch him in it day and night.” He stared past her at the painting on his wall. “It’s just depressing. Seeing
him so different. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have come back here.”

“
I
think you should have come back here,” she said.

Todd’s enormous blue eyes looked at her so closely she almost stopped breathing. “You do?” he asked.

“Hey, this song’s pretty,” she said abruptly. “What is this?”

“Band of Horses. I saw them in London at the Hammersmith. Wait.” He touched her arm. “Listen to this part. Right here.”

Just then the song opened up into a shimmering chorus:

When eyes
…
can’t look
…

At you any other way
…

Any other way

Any other way

“Such a good part, right?” he asked. His face was so close that she could see his white front teeth just past his parted lips.

“It’s pretty,” she murmured.

The chorus repeated:

When eyes can’t look
…

At you any other way

She lay on her side, her head resting in her hand, facing him while they listened together. The music crowded around them
both, enveloping them, carrying her softly away…

Until the squawk of a cell phone made her jump. It was a sped-up version of the James Bond theme. Todd’s phone on the desk
was ringing.

“Hold on,” Todd said, sitting up. He reached past her for the phone. For a quick second, she saw the name on the screen. AVA.

She sat straight up. The room spun as she felt a massive head rush.

“Hey,” he said quietly into the phone. “Can I call you back in twenty minutes?”

She got up, went to the couch, and sat down next to her backpack. Of course it was Ava. He had a girlfriend. How could she
have almost forgotten that?

“Okay, I’ll call you right back,” she heard him say, and he hung up.

“So do we want to do a short story, a play, a screenplay?” she asked, all business, unzipping her bookbag. “Or a television
series? That might be more fun.”

Todd seemed taken aback. “Um, a screenplay might be cool,” he said, sounding a little disappointed.

“Great,” she said, taking out her notebook. “Just what I was thinking. Okay, what’s the premise?”

The music had changed into something loud and jangly. Todd got up and turned it down with his remote. The moment was definitely
over. She wasn’t a girl who stole guys away from their girlfriends. She and Todd were going to be just friends if it killed
her.

But as they plotted out a story for their project, she scribbled an urgent note to herself at the top of the page.

BUY THAT BAND OF HORSES SONG!!!

“So there’s
one
good thing about working for my dad,” Carina declared the following Saturday as the three of them stood in line at a Korean
deli. “Remember I said I’d get back at him? Well, I think I figured out how.” She placed her toasted sesame bagel and Snapple
bottle on the counter and handed the elderly woman behind the cash register a hundred-dollar bill. “Can I get change?” she
asked.

Hudson and Lizzie traded a look behind her in line. “You’re gonna ‘get back’ at him?” Lizzie said, holding her turkey and
Swiss wrap. “Are you serious?”

“What are you going to do? Draw on his Basquiats with Magic Marker?” Hudson asked, taking a green apple from the basket on
the counter.

“This isn’t a joke, you guys,” Carina said, unwrapping her buttered bagel. “Coach Reynolds was so upset I couldn’t play this
season he actually called my dad up—at home—and
begged
him to let me stay on the team. But he didn’t even listen. And then today I had to practically give blood so Creepy Manservant
would let me leave the office and come meet you guys. And it’s Saturday!” Carina brushed her hair off her shoulders and took
another buttery bite. “It’s insane. I have no
leverage
in this family at all!”