“Allee!” a voice called from behind me. I turned around. It was John, from my humanities class. “You never called me back last night.”
“You called me?”
“Yeah. Sabrina was on the other line. She didn’t tell you I called?”
“No. Did you need the list of topics for our papers? They’re due Monday.”
“No. I, uh, I called because, I know it was last-minute, but uh…” His ears were turning red. “I just thought, you know, maybe you didn’t have plans…. I meant to ask you earlier, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to see if you were free….”
Oh. John called to ask me out. On a date. I hadn’t been on a date since last year, when I went out with Lance for a few months.
“…Anyway, I gotta work tonight. But, uh, maybe some other time?”
“Um, sure, that’d be great.” He was cute. Why hadn’t I ever noticed the brown hair and green eyes combo? I would have totally gone out with him. We talked for a few minutes until he said something about having to get to his job at the Super Saver and took off toward the parking lot.
Wow. I never even knew he was interested.
Although I would have found out sooner if Sabrina had given me the message. But she hadn’t. Because she forgot. Because she was too busy blabbing on the phone all night to her little buddies about what to wear for today. Because Sabrina only cared about Sabrina.
How hard was it to remember to give someone a message? I could have gone out with him last night if I’d known about his phone call. Dinner and a movie, probably. Maybe even a full-throttle make-out session. But no, I was holed up in our shoebox of a room, scrunching up toilet paper into flowers for my art project and researching Neolithic civilizations for my humanities paper.
When I could have been on a date. With John. If my sister had given me the damn message.
I could feel my face getting hot. A knot of anger was twisting my insides.
That selfish, stupid little brat. There she was, near the front of the line, joking around with some guys. One of them would probably ask her out. She got asked out all the time. Not like me.
The knot was spreading, coursing through me. How could she just have forgotten to tell me? It wasn’t important enough, I guess. I wasn’t important enough.
One of the guys whispered something in her ear. She pushed him away in a flirty way, smiling up at him.
I was going to kill her.
I didn’t even realize I was walking toward her until I bumped into some girl dressed like a Brat doll, knocking her photos to the floor. She shouted “Hey!” as I pushed past her, but I didn’t stop. I was fuming more and more with every step. All the people in line were a blur. I shouldered them out of my way, ignoring the whines of “Hey, she’s cutting.” Finally, I got to her, right at the front of the line. My hands were balled into fists. “Did I get a phone call last night?” I shouted in her face.
She looked at me with horror. “What are you doing here?”
“A phone call. Did I get one?”
She answered through her trophy smile. “I don’t know. Can we like, discuss this later?”
I knew we were being watched by the people behind the table, but I didn’t care. “I can’t believe you! Your dumb friends were so important you couldn’t get off the phone for one second to tell me John called?”
“Allee—”
“He called to ask me out. Me, not you, for once. How could you not tell me?”
“Allee, not now,” she said, still in stiff-lipped ventriloquist mode.
“How many times have I given you your messages, Sabrina? How many times? I always, always give you your freaking messages!”
Her smile was gone. She whispered, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you, just don’t do this now.” Unbelievable. She was still only thinking of herself. I hoped I’d blown this for her. I really did. It would serve her damn self-centered selfish self right.
I was about to storm off when I heard, “Holy handbag, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” A man wearing blue eyeliner and blue-tinted aviator sunglasses perched on his completely bald head was sitting behind the table. He touched the arm of the man sitting next to him. “Jay, look what the wind blew in.”
“Hallelujah. It’s about time,” Jay said. He was African-American, with a platinum blond coif. He smiled up at me. “What’s your name, honey?”
Normally if a man had addressed me as “honey” I would have written him off as a sexist Neanderthal, but seeing as this Jay person was, in a sense, one of the girls, the rules didn’t apply. Besides, his smile was open and friendly. He looked nice. “Allee,” I said.
“I’m Jay.”
“She’s just my sister,” The Fluff said, shouldering me off to the side a little. “I’m Sabrina. Did you see the close-up picture of me?”
“Just a sec, honey.” He looked me up and down, then said to Baldie, “This one’s got snap, crackle, pop, all right.”
“Fo sho,” agreed Baldie. “And at least she’s not wearing one of those long dresses like all these other girls. Those were like, two years ago in Miami.” Did he momentarily forget about The Fluff standing in front of him wearing one? “I can’t wait to get out of the boonies.”
Shame. Shame on my sister’s face, painted in salmon-colored splotches all over her cheeks. And shame on me and my total freak-out explosion, stealing her moment. She really wanted to be chosen. She was too innocent to realize this was all bogus.
My rage was gone now, replaced by something else I could only describe as a blood-is-thicker-than-water, sistah-sistah protective instinct. I wanted to tell Baldie that he didn’t know anything, that Sabrina Rosen, aka the fresh frosh, was a trendsetter at our school and an A-list hottie whose butt they should have been kissing. I opened my mouth to tell him all that when Baldie grabbed my arm. “Wait. Don’t you have any snaps?”
“Snaps?” I asked.
“Snapshots, as in photos,” he answered with clipped precision, the way you speak to a child of the special needs variety. “Where are your pictures?”
“She didn’t bring any,” The Fluff said, pushing her way in front of me. “It’s mine you want to see, remember?” She tapped on the table where her pictures were scattered. “I know the flyer said to bring two, but I thought you’d have a better perspective of how I photograph with more angles.”
“Mm-hmm,” Jay said to her in the same manner my mother “Mm-hmm”s us when she’s pretending she just heard what we said but is really listening to Oprah. “Allee, how tall are you?”
“Five eight.”
“No, you’re not,” Baldie said, turning to Jay. “She’s a bit more. I’ll measure her.” He bolted out from behind the table with a measuring tape and got behind me. “Take off your flip-flops. Stand up straight.”
I turned around and stared at him. He stared back. These people were rip-off artists. I mean, hello, he was just capitalizing on insecure young women who were looking for validation through their physical appearance. I should have told him that. Although, from what I could see, this guy had such an attitude, I doubted anyone could tell him anything. I’d have probably had better luck explaining feminism to Hugh Pervner and the staff at Playboy.
He waved the measuring tape at me and raised his eyebrows. Oh, what the hell, why not let him measure me? I was here. And honestly, I was kinda curious. Although if Baldie thought I was like one of these suckers in line, he had another think coming.
He measured me from top to bottom. “What about Sabrina?” I asked him.
“Yeah, what about me?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “Hello, hi, I’m the one auditioning.” They totally ignored her.
“About five eight and three-quarters,” Baldie said.
“She’s five nine,” Jay said. “What about the rest?”
He wrapped the tape around my hips, waist, and chest. There was a sudden hush from the line, which, of course, happened while he was measuring my chestal area. A growth spurt last summer had surpassed my
mammary expectations when I spurted from an A to a C. I noticed Hillary from the corner of my eye, chewing on her lip. No worries, Hills. I was no threat to her bodacious territory.
“Thirty-five, twenty-four, thirty-five,” he said. Flashes went off in my face. Jay was taking pictures with a digital camera. A tingly warmth came over me. These people actually thought I was the prettier one. It was like Freaky Friday, only I’d switched places with my sister instead of my mom.
This was so not for real. “Am I being punked?” I asked, glancing around. “Seriously. This is one of those shows, right?”
The Fluff started glancing around. “Yeah, are those sunglasses a hidden camera?”
Jay looked up at her, leaned forward, and quietly told her, “Honey, you’re a pretty girl. You might want to try the beauty pageant circuit.”
Uh-oh, knife to the heart. My sister thought beauty pageants were the corniest, most degrading things ever. It was one of the few things we agreed upon. I reached for her hand, but she shook it away. “But look how I photograph. Look at my pictures. You’ll see—”
“You’re not right for our clients. I’m sorry.”
“But what if I—”
“You’re too short,” interrupted Baldie.
“I could do petite modeling.”
“You still need to be five seven for petite modeling.”
“I’m five seven.”
“No, you’re not,” Baldie said. “You’re a little under five six, probably five five and a half.” How did he know that? She was exactly five five and a half. She’d made me measure her last night. “And the only thing five five is good for is furniture ads or a magician’s assistant.”
Jay said, “Forget modeling, Serena. It’s not for you. What you should be is an actress/spokesperson. We have a big convention coming up in Las Vegas. Over a hundred talent agents will be there, and the attendance fee is only three hundred dollars. Take a brochure at the end of the table.”
Baldie added, “Bit of advice, though, Precious? Lose all that makeup. Keep it fresh. You’re not Christina Aguilera. You’re trying too hard, so take it down a notch, more like your sister here, know what I’m saying?”
Her lip was quivering. She wouldn’t look at me. She scooped up her pictures and took off.
Baldie gave her a little wave. “Best of luck.”
I made hard eye contact with Baldie. “I can’t believe you didn’t give her a chance. She’s the prettiest girl here.”
“Being pretty and being a model are two different things.”
“Yeah, but she wants to be one really badly.”
“Precious, nobody chooses modeling. It chooses you.”
“Is there someone else who can see us?” some girl whined from down the line.
Jay held up the digital camera. He and Baldie stared at it, commenting.
“Amazing skin. Like caviar and pearls.” Wow, my skin was like caviar and pearls?
“Great teeth.”
“And hair. It’s every color from chocolate to butter.”
“She’s commercial, not fashion.”
“Oh, def. Very commercial.”
Jay looked up and snapped another picture of me. “I’m just going to take a couple more. We need a profile, front-on, and full-body.” He was waiting for me to do something. I felt silly, but I tossed my hair like I was in a shampoo commercial. “Good, hold it.” Snap. “Now smile. Chin out.” Snap. “Shake your hair again. How do you get such fabulous highlights? You must have a great stylist.”
Highlights? I got my hair cut once a year. Mom insisted that I do it every December for NASA’s annual nondenominational holiday barbecue. I jogged on the beach a lot. That could explain it. “No stylist. It’s sun.”
“Sun? I’ve never heard of it. Where can I buy some?” I grinned. Snap. “Great teeth, Allee.”
“Are your parents here?” Baldie asked.
“No.”
“What size shoe are you?”
“Ten.”
“Good. You’ll be five ten in no time. How old are you?”
“Sixteen. I’ll be seventeen next month. I skipped first grade, so I’m younger than—”
“Great smiling shots. Momma will love her. In fact, let’s send these to Momma today.”
Momma? Who the hell was Momma? A pistol-packing, cowboy-hat-wearing tobacco-spitter came to mind. Actually, who cared who Momma was? None of this was legit. By this time next week I’d probably have a steaming pile of junk mail from cheesy modeling schools.
The Fluff was waiting for me on a bench by the entrance, looking extremely pissed off. When I started walking toward her, she shot me an angry look, got up, and stomped out the door, without looking back.
chapter 4
Right now my life was more drama-packed than a Telemundo soap. First there was the Abuela problem. Last weekend we were finishing our usual Sunday dinner of DiSalvo’s pizza when Abuela came home from some funeral, sniffing and waving a lace hankie around. Maybe she really could have been an actress, because I happened to know she couldn’t stand the lady who died. And she kept going on and on about how she’s so much more golden than all the other golden girls who were there. “…Ana used to walk around like she was the last Coca-Cola in the desert, and look at her now, in a wheelchair, and she’s younger than me. I could salsa all night long, I could do a hundred jumping jacks (yumping yacks), cook a ten-course gourmet meal, sing an aria…” and blah-blapity-blah-blah. For someone who sat around in a recliner glued to the TV all day, she was really wasting all her talents. Anyway, none of us were paying attention until she said, “I met a nice man at the wake. A very nice man.”
Dad snorted. “A man? At your age, Maria?”
“What, you think I’m a dinosaur?”
“Yeah, you’re a pterodactyl! You’re a pterodactyl!” Robby shouted. Did I mention he was a dino-holic? It was obsessive. He’d been wearing the same stinky dinosaur socks for four days.
Abuela ignored him and widened her mascara-encrusted eyes as if a horde of TV cameras were zooming in on her for a close-up. “Well, you’ll never believe this.” She stopped for a theatrical pause, then said, “He’s getting me a yob.” It took me a full five seconds to realize she was referring to employment, and I was still recovering from that info when she cried, “At Wal-Mart! Allee, mi vida, we’ll be working together!” I didn’t know what she said after that due to the inner shriek of hysteria echoing through my brain.
The man was Artie Kovic, a greeter who’d been there forever. So now, for the past week, Abuela had been “working,” which meant she was sitting next to Artie, watching him hand out carts and stickers. What sucked the most was that Wal-Mart kindly matched our shifts, so now I was stuck driving Miss Lazy.
The Fluff was loving it all. Whenever Abuela and I left the house in our matching blue vests, she went, “Gee, I didn’t know polyester was in this season,” or “Are those from Wal-Mart’s ready-to-wear collection?” And that was about all she’d said to me in a week. She hadn’t even asked me to help her with any homework. I actually missed helping her too. She just couldn’t get over the fact that I’d stolen her spotlight for once, even though I hadn’t meant to.
And then there was Robby, getting out of his bed and crawling into mine every night. He was too afraid to go downstairs to Mom and Dad’s bedroom so he came to me, all trembling and clutching his giant T. rex, freaked out from a bad dream. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t had that little bed-wetting problem.
On top of everything, something was up with my parents. They were really quiet lately. Sometimes Dad looked like one of those cigar-store Indians, arms crossed, lips pursed, Chief No Talk. I heard them talking sometimes, in the kitchen usually, but whenever I walked in, they’d stop. They had some big secret. Oh, God. I hoped Mom wasn’t preggo again (ew, disturbing visual, deny, deny, deny). Another kid. That was all this family needed. It was crowded enough around here.
I swear, between my parents’ secret conversations, my sister giv
ing me the cold shoulder, Robby in my bed, Abuela in my car and at my job, no clue where I was going to college, and graduation in front of me like a brick wall, I was suffocating. The words Ican’tbreatheIcan’tbreatheIcan’tbreathe chugged through my thoughts like a train sometimes. The other night I went running at ten o’clock just to get my ya-yas out.
I wished I could wake up and be someone else.
We’d all been called into the family room, even Robby and Abuela. Mom and Dad were sitting on the couch. “There’s something Mom and I need to discuss with you all,” Dad said. My sister bit her lower lip and gave me this look. It was the same look she used to give me during a scary movie when she wanted me to hold her hand, or when a bad storm rattled our bedroom windows and she wanted me to hide in the closet with her. I got up from the ottoman, stepped over Robby rolling around on the floor with his T. rex, and sat next to her on the love seat. Her eyes thanked me. Maybe after this meeting we could finally talk.
Mom took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, and looked at me. “Remember that day you went to see those model scouts at the mall?”
The Fluff brightened. “Did they call?”
“Yes, they did. They’ve called a few times.”
My sister bounced forward. “What did they say? Did they change their minds about me? Do they want me?”
Mom bit her lip, not answering. She turned to Dad, who said, “They said you were very pretty but that you need to grow some more. You can try again in a few years, sweetheart.” Dad cleared his throat. “Actually, Allee, it’s you they’re interested in. The scouts showed this agency your pictures, and apparently they—this agency—would like to meet you.”
Huh?
My parents were waiting for me to say something, but what was I supposed to say? None of this modeling stuff was true. It couldn’t be. I was afraid to look at my sister. She was the only one with a response: “OOWWHAAAT?”
Braless in Wonderland Page 3