The Standout

by Laurel Osterkamp

  “Pancakes,” I mutter, as I push him away. “I thought we were going to get pancakes.”

  Yuri is breathing hard but he manages to speak softly. “Yes.” He runs a hand through his hair, and then points to the bathroom. “You wash up first?”

  At breakfast I ask Yuri about his home in Russia, and he talks and talks, which is great because it means I don’t have to explain why my life has turned into a cautionary tale. Plus, listening to him really is interesting, and I pretend nothing has changed and that I’m still the only girl in New York who thinks of him as just a friend.

  When we exit the cafe he says, “You call me later,” and then he pulls me close. His gentle kiss leaves the lingering taste of maple syrup. “You stay with me again tonight. Or not, but call and tell me, yes?”

  I nod and pass my fingers over his finely chiseled cheekbone. Pretending we are just friends will only become more and more difficult. “I’ll call you later. And thank you, Yuri. For everything.”

  One more kiss. “Last night made me happy, Zelda. I talk to you later, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  I travel on a cloud rather than the train, but when I get to Clarkson School of Design I’m thrust quickly back to earth. Julie is standing outside the building, smoking a cigarette, alone this time. I see her before she sees me, but her face lights up once she registers my presence. She launches her cigarette to the ground and stomps it out, and then comes barreling towards me. Before I have time to say anything, she throws her arms around my shoulders and hugs me, hard.

  “I am so sorry about yesterday,” she says. “I was such a bitch. Are you okay? Have you made up with your mom yet?”

  I take a step back. “I’m fine. Yuri let me stay with him last night, so I wasn’t homeless.”

  Something flashes on her face. Maybe anger? Maybe concern? “Stay with me tonight, okay? You can stay for as long as you want.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’s not a nice guy.” Her nicotine breath reaches my nostrils and I wince, but she must misinterpret my reaction, because she takes on a soothing tone. “You’re so inexperienced, Zelda, that it will be hard for you to understand. You want to trust him, but trust me, you shouldn’t.”

  So she’s already given up pretending that she and Yuri got back together. “What are you even doing here?” My voice is as abrupt as my question.

  She smiles. “One of the models has mono. They called me this morning and told me to come in.”

  I move my head around, searching for the right response. “Well, we should get inside.”

  Julie puts her arm around me, all buddy-buddy like, and I let her guide me towards the door. A production assistant is waiting for us and looks way too stressed for this early in the morning. “Hey girls, there’s been a change,” she taps a pencil against her clipboard. “Zelda, you’re with Amos now, and Julie, we don’t need you. You can go home.”

  There’s a tense, silent moment and Julie sets her mouth into a grimace. “What are you talking about?” Each word comes out so tightly that it could be its own sentence. “They called me this morning and said I would be with Amos.”

  “That was before Robin got kicked out.”

  “What?” Now she really has my attention. My stomach clenches and I grab onto the edge of the reception desk. “Why would they kick out Robin?”

  The PA shrugs but I can tell she’s savoring the juiciness. “I guess she got caught bribing the judges. And she stole Kyla’s scissors. Can you believe it? She seems so nice.”

  I grip the desk’s smooth, rounded wood even harder and my hand slips away without enough traction. “No. No! That can’t be right.” The world is spinning too fast, but Julie’s feet are planted, firmly and defiantly.

  “Let me get this straight,” she says, “you guys are picking Zelda, over me?”

  “Yeah,” The P.A. says. “I mean, it’s not my decision, but they are definitely choosing Zelda over you.”

  “This is all a mistake,” I struggle out. “Robin wouldn’t bribe the judges.” I turn to my best friend. “We can work this out, Julie, I swear.”

  “Fuck you.” She’s so measured and controlled, like that expletive has been brewing for years and it’s now finally dripping out. “You fell on the runway. You’re a disaster, Zelda. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me, yet they pick you? Everyone always picks. . .” She shakes her head, refusing to finish the thought.

  If I try to respond I’ll just sound hurt and whiny. No, staying silent is the only way I can choose strength. So I’m standing here, like the mannequin I’ve become, as Julie storms out. I don’t follow her; there would be no point. Instead I rush to find Robin.

  She’s in the workroom, packing her stuff, keeping her head down. Everyone stares at her with accusatory eyes, and the injustice of the situation overwhelms me.

  “But you’re innocent!” I cry, speaking to the entire room.

  Robin looks only at me and not at Gabe, who has a camera shoved in her face. “I’m sorry. I know this totally screws you over too.”

  I almost laugh at her concern. “Don’t worry about me. Amos’s model has mono, so I’m not out. They’re shifting me over to him.”

  “Oh.” Robin puts some spools of thread into her sewing kit. “Well, good. Amos’s great, so that should work out.”

  “But I want you.” My urgency is a tidal wave ready to crest. “Don’t worry, Robin. I’ll do some snooping, and I’ll catch the person who’s behind it, and then they’ll bring you back.”

  Robin seems to be in a daze as she pulls out her phone and reads a text. But when she looks back up at me, her expression is grave. “Don’t snoop around, Zelda. We don’t know what this person is capable of. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  “Somebody pushed you. Somebody framed you. And I’m finding out who!” I yell this, hoping everyone hears and everyone knows how serious I am. I even meet eyes with several of the designers. Who knows who the saboteur might be? “Don’t worry, Robin. This isn’t goodbye.”

  We hug, she gives me a silent, shaky, farewell smile, and then she picks up her stuff and is gone.

  But I’m still here.

  Part V

  Chapter 62: Robin

  I’m outside the Clarkson School of Design, gripping my cell phone. My possessions are at my feet and the people walking past have to dodge around me and my stuff. It’s windy and my hair whips into my face and sticks to my eyes, but I manage to dial the right number, despite my shaking fingers.

  Nick picks up on the third ring. “Robin?” His voice is tentative. “They’re letting you call me?”

  There’s no time to revel in the sound of his voice or to say how much I’ve missed him. “I was kicked out, Nick.” I talk fast so he doesn’t have the chance to assume that this is just about me getting eliminated. “They think I sent one of the judges $40,000 as a bribe, so I’ve been asked to leave.”

  His breath catches. “Hold on. That stuff about the bribe was slander. Monty got it taken off the website because it’s all fake.”

  “Fake?” I wish I had something to smash right now. “This is real, Nick! Why the hell aren’t you taking this seriously?”

  “I am taking it seriously.” His voice is the type of deadly calm that comes in the middle of a tornado.

  But I’m done being calm. “Someone put $40,000 into your bank account to use as a bribe for my success on the show. Someone accessed my computer and posted that slutty montage of me online. Oh, and someone miraculously filmed us having sex and she posted that too! So in other words, this person is systematically ruining my reputation while you bury your head in the sand!

  “My head has not been in the sand!”

  “You promised you would take care of this for me and you didn’t!”

  “I’ve been trying, okay? It’s not so easy!”

  I brush my windblown hair away from my face and I already regret what I’m about to say. “It’s only difficult because you refuse to believe that Andrea is
involved!”

  There’s a fatal pause before he answers. “We are not arguing about Andrea again.” I can’t decipher what, if any, emotion fills Nick’s voice. He sounds like he could be a customer service representative looking into my inquiry. I hear the clicking of his keyboard, so I imagine him, sitting at his desk in the real estate office he’s trying to escape, half a cup of coffee by his computer and a pile of contracts waiting to be filed.

  Make this day go away. “So,” I finally ask, “did you check? Is there anything in your account activity?”

  “This makes no sense.”

  “What do you mean?” My throat is tight with tension.

  “Who would put forty thousand dollars into my account? Who would even have access to that? I don’t get it.”

  I could splinter apart from stress. “So it’s all there? The transfer in and the transfer out?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Nick, how could you let this happen?” For some strange reason my voice is level and self-possessed, but my stomach is roiling and runny. Nick will probably assume that I enjoy blaming him. Yet it hurts like I’m pulling out all my teeth, sans Novocain.

  I clench my free hand into a fist, telling myself that this all a misunderstanding, that it has to be one. But I can’t hold back what I’m about to say. “Do you realize what this means for me? I will be a laughing stock! I’ll be a notorious cheater! Nobody is going to want to work with me or buy clothes from me. You have turned me into a joke!”

  Nick’s voice is a low tremble. “This isn’t my fault. I knew nothing about it!”

  The sidewalk is crowded and someone accidentally grinds her spike heel into the edge of my toe. For a moment there is searing pain and I don’t edit myself; the words fly out like crazy, quacking ducks. “But Andrea knows all about it, Nick! She has to because there is no other explanation!”

  “Watch what you say, Robin!” Nick’s incredulity burns my ears. “Andrea would never do that and there’s no way she has forty thousand dollars just lying around!”

  I don’t like his tone so I do my best to emulate it. “No, no of course not! I forgot that Andrea is an angel who can do no wrong.”

  “Andrea would never purposefully hurt you!” Nick rarely raises his voice but now his decimal level is at least a seven. “I know my sister and it’s just not possible. If you want someone to blame, blame your ex-lover’s dead wife! Or blame some other ex-lover of yours, one whose wife is still alive. That’s a lot more plausible than blaming Andrea.”

  Oh no, he didn’t! “So I’ve slept around so much that I deserve this?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  His words are a punch in the gut. “Wow. If that’s how you feel, maybe we’re making a mistake, getting married.”

  Nick breathes in and out. I bet he’s closing his eyes, trying to stay calm. The idea infuriates me.

  “I can’t talk to you about this right now.” His voice is so still that I want to shake the phone like it’s a bottle of pop and make it erupt with his anger. “I have to go.”

  “Fine!” My answer is boisterous enough for us both. “Call me when you have time, Nick. The last thing I want is to be a nuisance.”

  He ignores my sarcasm. “Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”

  And then he hangs up.

  How did I manage to ruin my career and my relationship in the space of an hour? Only I could manage this level of self-destruction. And now I’m on a New York street with nowhere to go, my one saving grace is there’s no camera stuck in my face. Since I wasn’t eliminated in the normal way, I’m not expected to stay at a hotel with the other ousted contestants, but my options right now are pretty crappy and pretty limited.

  So I do the only thing I can think of to do. I call Ted.

  Chapter 63: Robin

  “I still don’t understand why I didn’t come to Philadelphia,” I say. “I need a place to stay, not a chaperone.”

  Ted emits an exasperated sigh. “It’s complicated, okay? But if you want my help, here I am.”

  How can anyone be such a mess of contradictions? My big brother sits atop the hotel’s brown polyester bedspread, trying to figure out who is behind the Rotten Robin website and he’s helpful but uncooperative, considerate but thoughtless, protective but self-involved. I simultaneously love and hate him. And of all my friends and family members, he is the last one I would choose to have by my side during a crisis. Yet, here he is and I should feel grateful but I don’t. “I never said I wanted your help. I said I wanted a place to stay.”

  “And now you have one.” Ted gestures around the dim, airless room he booked for us, with its two queen-sized beds and windows that will need a crowbar to pry open. He sits cross-legged, Buddha-style, swiping at my tablet. “At least they let you keep this,” he murmurs.

  I’m just not strong enough to contain the bitter sarcasm. “Yeah. My career and my engagement are both over, but hey, I get a free tablet, so everything is okay.” I want to sob, or yell, or pull out my hair because never has my life been less okay than it is right now. I pace, trying to ease all my crazy energy before I explode from anxiety, but I give up, collapse onto the free bed and stare at the textured beige ceiling.

  Ted glances in my direction. “Don’t knock the tablet. It’s the only way we have to do research.”

  “I don’t care about the tablet. I think Nick is done with me.” I lay my arm over my eyes and welcome the darkness.

  “He’s not done with you. He’s just reeling from all the drama.”

  I uncover my face and sit up. “How do you know?”

  Ted rubs both eyes with one hand, using his thumb and his index finger, like he’s in pain. “Look, I’m the last person you should talk to about this. Any advice I give you will be wrong.” There’s a deep line of concentration creasing his forehead and his jaw is a spring that could snap. I think back, to how unhappy both Ted and Tina seemed that morning at breakfast before I left for the show.

  “Are you and Tina splitting up?”

  Ted lets his hand fall to his lap. “I really don’t want to talk about it. We should focus on proving your innocence.”

  Well, I guess that answers my question.

  After a couple of seconds he speaks. “I wonder if there’s any chance someone broke into your house and stole Nick’s passwords.”

  “You mean someone other than you?”

  He jabs the air with his index finger. “I only told you that story so you’d realize my credibility. You’re not allowed to hold it against me.”

  “I don’t care that you broke into our house. But I do care that you just automatically accuse Nick.”

  “It turned out I was right!”

  The words explode from my lips. “It wasn’t Nick!”

  “Then who was it, Robin?” Ted matches my volume and tone. “I’m sure I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s not a dead girl who was last seen boarding a bus in rural Greece.”

  I close my eyes and see Clara, mounting the steps of a Greyhound and unknowingly walking to her death. But that image soon morphs into something else - Nick, Andrea, and me, having a backyard picnic, celebrating a March heat wave.

  Is everything about my life a lie?

  I open my eyes and exhale a big burst of air. “Let’s try and prove something, okay? I need real evidence before I talk to Nick again.”

  Chapter 64: Zelda

  “I had nothing to do with it and you can’t prove otherwise,” says Kyla. She pushes her large, dark-rimmed glasses up her nose. They’re hipster/nerd type glasses, which I’ve only ever seen her wear while she’s sewing. Maybe Kyla is a hipster but she’s way too snarky to be a nerd. I’ve been talking to her for around thirty seconds and already she’s snapped at me four times.

  “You never tried to hide how much you dislike Robin,” I retort.

  Kyla swings her long mane of hair from one shoulder to the other as she pins pleats into the skirt she’s creating. “If I was going to frame her for something, don’t you thi
nk I’d be a little more subtle about it?”

  There’s a reason I’m a dancer and not a detective. I suck at this. Meanwhile, Kyla’s body language states that I’m dismissed and I don’t have the chutzpah to challenge her. Yet as I start to walk away Kyla interrupts my exit. “Hey,” she croaks, “you know who you should ask? Your friend. . . Nadia’s model.”

  “Why? What do you know?”

  Kyla speaks through a mouth of pins. “I don’t know anything and if you say I do, I’ll destroy you, got it?”

  “Umm. . .okay?” I square my shoulders and straighten my posture. Even if I’m completely intimidated, I can still act like I’m not. “But why should I ask Julie about Robin?”

  Kyla spits the last of the pins onto her work table and stretches her jaw. “The other day I saw her going through Robin’s stuff.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kyla explains, and I realize that everyone here is out for themselves. They are all glad Robin is gone. She’s one fewer person to compete with and that’s the nature of reality television. Maybe that’s the nature of life.

  But I text Julie. So sorry about everything! You’re right about Yuri and I’m a total disaster. Can I still stay with you?

  She must have calmed down in the hours since we talked, because she texts back and tells me to come over after I’m done for the day. I tell her that I will, and then I text Robin with Julie’s address. Come by at around 8:00. I have a feeling you’ll get all your answers.

  One way or another, we will get to the bottom of this.

  ****

  The doorman lets me in, alerts Julie, and I take the elevator to the fifteenth floor. My stomach is like a snow globe: shaken, upset and waiting to resettle back into reality. I have no idea what kind of Julie I will find on the other side of her door.

  Her shiny face is the first thing I see when the elevator doors open. “Hey!” Her voice is perky, her smile is bright, and even her hair is in a swishing, energetic ponytail. So this evening she’s playing the part of happy best friend. I step onto the solid floor and she loops her arms through mine, guiding me to her apartment. “I bet you haven’t even heard!”