The Next Big Thing (A novel about Internet love, plus size heroines, and reality TV)

by Johanna Edwards

  I gave her a half smile. “Pester Cindy Vander. Antagonize Richard. Send lots of e-mails to Nick,” I said. “You’ll have plenty of ways to keep busy.”

  I grabbed a piece of scrap paper off my nightstand and jotted down the password to my Gmail account. “Here, you’ll need it to access my e-mail,” I said, handing it to her. She folded it up and shoved it into her purse.

  “Thanks again for helping me out with all of this. I’ll pay you back someday, I swear,” I said, dipping my head so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

  “Hey,” Donna scolded playfully. “Don’t get all sappy on me.” She leaned forward and placed her hands on my face, tipping it upward. “Always remember, keep your chin up.”

  “Good advice,” I said. “I don’t want the cameras catching my double chin.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Empty your pockets and turn them inside out,” Zaidee said.

  I obliged, tossing my wallet, keys, and some loose change onto a nearby table. I was standing with her inside a tiny rental house on the outskirts of L.A., along with two male crewmembers—one decked out with an expensive-looking camera, the other so beefy I made him for a bodyguard.

  “I’ll need to look inside your purse,” Zaidee said, picking it up before I could object. She dumped the contents onto the table, and began poking through them. I blushed as she shoved aside a tampon and a package of birth control pills. “Jimmie’s going to do a quick check of your luggage,” she informed me, motioning to the cameraman. He strutted over and unzipped the main compartment.

  Noticing my stricken expression, he quipped, “Don’t be alarmed. Pretend I’m a U.S. Customs’ Officer.”

  He was trying to be nice about it, but I couldn’t help feeling exposed. Having a strange man rifle through your bras and underwear will do that to you. He quickly sorted through my bag, checking all the pockets and pressing his hand along the lining, presumably feeling for any hidden compartments. He looked like the DEA agents I’d seen in movies examining suitcases for narcotics.

  After a five-minute search, he zipped my bag back up and declared he was finished. “All clear,” he announced. He winked at me. “Relax. It’ll all be okay.”

  Before I could respond Zaidee interrupted. “Time to go,” she said, tugging on my arm. “Your limo’s waiting.”

  We drove north on Sepulveda Boulevard, merging onto the freeway and blending in with the light Sunday afternoon traffic. Zaidee followed closely behind the limo, tailgating us in a shiny black Range Rover, as we headed away from the lights of Los Angeles and up into the narrow, twisting streets of the Hollywood Hills.

  The cameraman sat across from me in the limo, filming as I stared out the window, watching the scenery move past. The burly guy I’d assumed was a bodyguard turned out to be a sound technician, and he spent the trip perched next to the cameraman, propping a boom mic over my head. It was a thankless job; I didn’t say two words during the entire ride.

  We cruised along for nearly thirty minutes, driving up a maze of streets, some barely wide enough for the limo to squeeze through, before reaching our final destination, an enormous multitiered house on a street called Bryn Mawr Drive.

  It looked like the kind of place a hip young movie mogul would live; it was tacky in an understated way. For the next fifteen weeks, it would be home.

  Knees shaking, I stepped out of the limo and made my way up the front steps. The cameraman and audio guy followed.

  Zaidee had instructed me to go inside as soon as we got there, so I gingerly pushed open the front door without bothering to knock.

  “Hello?” I called, stepping into the massive front hall. “Anybody here?”

  When no one answered, I continued forward, exploring the first few rooms. The downstairs was sparsely decorated, with beautiful hardwood floors and pristine white walls. The ceilings were high—at least twenty feet—and had been outfitted with gargantuan lighting fixtures. They were glaringly bright, and reminded me of the lights used to illuminate baseball games at night, though not that big. Just off the front hall was a spacious living room, with a bright purple sectional couch, the kind that could easily seat ten or more people.

  A stationary camera similar to closed-circuit television cameras was mounted in the corner of the living room ceiling. It swung around noisily, following me as I paced the room.

  Unnerved, I continued on, exploring the front hall and ending up at the bottom of a large wooden staircase.

  I was beginning to think I was the only one there, when a short-haired girl with a bright smile and olive-toned skin came dashing down the stairs.

  “Hello!” she cried. She rushed toward me, her own cameraman trailing along behind her.

  “Hi,” I called back, feeling self-conscious. The size of the house—and the camera crew—was making me nervous. It was just now starting to sink in: I am actually on a television show.

  “Another person! I’ve been sitting in this house for two hours with nothing to do.” She had a light Spanish accent. “They have all the doors upstairs locked. I think there are three bedrooms, but we can’t go in them. The note says so.”

  “Note?” I asked. “Yeah, all the rooms upstairs are labeled—bedroom suite, bathroom, and so on.” She stopped when she reached the bottom of the stairs and eyed me closely. “I know you,” she said. “I remember you from the casting weekend.”

  “You do?” I asked, struggling to call up her face from my memory. “We saw the doctor together. Kat, right?”

  I blinked in surprise. “I can’t believe you remember.”

  “I’m Luisa Olivares,” she introduced herself, grinning broadly.

  Seeing my confused expression, she added, “It’s okay, you don’t have to remember me.”

  I immediately liked her. She was open and friendly. But I didn’t remember her at all.

  “I am good with faces,” she explained. “Not everyone has that gift.”

  One by one, the other contestants started arriving, and Luisa seemed to know them all.

  “Her name is Maggie,” she whispered to me, as a short middle-aged blonde woman walked in through the front door.

  “Hello,” the newcomer said, setting down her bags. “I’m Maggie Strickland. I turned forty years old last month. I am originally from Cleveland, Ohio, but I currently live in Jackson, Mississippi. I used to work as a chiropractor’s assistant but now I’m a stay-at-home mom. I’m the wife of Thomas and the mother of a wonderful eleven-year-old son named Owen.”

  Her voice was so even and her face so tight, I suspected she’d been practicing that speech for days. I also guessed that, with two already revealed, last names were no longer to be kept a secret.

  Next in was Janelle, a fair-skinned girl who stood almost six feet tall. Her face was covered in freckles and she had long black hair that reached halfway down her back.

  “I’m twenty-nine years old and I have a master’s degree in fine arts. I work as the curator of a museum in Indianapolis,” she informed us. Janelle was unusual looking, in a good sense. She could have been a plus-sized model, if plus-sized models wore size twenty, instead of eight or ten.

  Janelle mentioned she was thirsty, so we moved into the kitchen and began drinking diet Cokes and ice water. The refrigerator was otherwise completely bare, which was good, or I might have had a snack. I didn’t want to be the first girl seen eating on television.

  “What are you guys going to miss most while you’re in here?” Janelle asked, sipping her water.

  “Ooh, that is too easy.” Luisa giggled. “Sex, sex, and more sex. My boyfriend, Jay, is fantastic in bed. He has got the biggest . . . umph you have ever seen!” She raised her eyebrows up and down suggestively. “We do it every single night. Don’t know how I’m gonna make it fifteen weeks with no sex.”

  Fifteen weeks? I felt like telling her to try fifteen months and then come back and talk to me. Great. I was in here with the nympho queen.

  Janelle was taken aback by Luisa’s answer. Her face flu
shed bright pink and she quickly changed the subject. “That’s nice. Uh, I’m going to miss my two cats the most. Frieda and Clarissa. What about you, Kat?”

  I choked up. I knew who I’d miss: Nick and Donna. Just thinking about them made my chest ache. “I’ll miss the comforts of home,” I offered, deciding to keep it impersonal.

  Besides, I couldn’t mention Nick, considering I’d hidden our relationship from Zaidee. “Just being around my friends and family, the people I love.”

  “Here, here,” Janelle said, clinking her glass against my diet Coke can. “Maggie?”

  Maggie had been strangely quiet this whole time and now I knew why. Her eyes were watery and her face was marred with anguish.

  “You okay?” I asked her, concerned.

  “My son,” she said. “Owen. I didn’t think it would be so hard to leave him.”

  “Poor thing,” Luisa said. “That is rough.”

  “We had a long talk about it and I said, ‘Mommy has to go, baby, but it’s for your own good.’ Owen knows I need to lose weight. I’ve got to improve my health so I can see my baby grow up.” Her voice caught. “He’s probably at home crying right now because Mommy isn’t there to eat dinner with him.”

  “Isn’t he twelve?” I asked, thinking Owen probably wouldn’t appreciate “Mommy” talking about him like this on national television.

  “Eleven,” Maggie corrected.

  “I’m sure he’s okay.”

  “Daddy and him are gonna burn the house down by the time I get back. Neither one of them even knows how to cook.”

  “They’ll be all right,” I assured her. “They’re probably playing Xbox and eating pizza as we speak.” This didn’t seem to make Maggie feel much better, but at least she didn’t cry.

  For a long while, nobody else showed up. I was starting to wonder if it would just be the four of us, which would have made for a pretty weak show.

  Then it happened. “Kat!” I heard a familiar voice shriek. Startled, I whirled around and allowed myself to be embraced by Regan.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she gushed, plopping down on one of the kitchen stools and stealing a sip of my diet Coke. “I was hoping you’d made it. I’m Regan Borrail,” she said, beaming at the rest of the group. “Just think of me as the Irish President Vegan,” she quipped, and then began launching into the County Mayo story.

  I felt a pang of guilt as I realized how much I’d been hoping she hadn’t made it. I picked up my soda can and wiped off the top with my sleeve. I thought about Sarah, and how desperately she’d wanted to get on. I prayed her face would be the next through the door.

  It wasn’t.

  The next contestant was a tall blonde with huge boobs and a surprisingly toned body for someone appearing on a show named From Fat to Fabulous. She looked like a porn star momentarily losing her battle with the bulge. “

  Hey all, I’m Alyssa Combs,” she said, and then proceeded to hug and kiss each of us on the cheek. It felt awkward and artificial, but when she came around to me I leaned in and embraced her back. I couldn’t afford to be labeled as an outsider right off the bat.

  “How many more contestants do you think there are?” I said to no one in particular.

  Alyssa shook her head. “I’m it.”

  “No way,” I said. “There’s got to be more.”

  “Zaidee told me when I came in I was the final one,” Alyssa explained. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “Six of us,” Luisa remarked. “I was thinking more.”

  I glanced around. It seemed impossible that the cast was so tiny. I remembered my conversation with Sarah at the audition. “They’ll probably pick between ten and fifteen of us,” she’d guessed then, and it had seemed a logical conclusion. How could a reality show possibly film with so few contestants? I didn’t have much time to ponder it, though, because everybody was talking a mile a minute.

  “How much weight do you kids want to lose?” Alyssa asked. “Thirty, forty pounds?”

  “I wish,” I mumbled. My goal was closer to a hundred.

  “Lordy, I hope I can lose eighty,” Luisa said. “I weighed myself before I left for California and I’m 213 pounds. I never weighed this much in my life. He wants me to be 130 pounds and then he will propose.”

  “How tall are you, Luisa?” I asked. She grimaced. “I am five-foot-four. So you see, it’s no good.”

  “So, where is everyone from?” Regan asked, changing the subject. I suspected she wanted to move off the topic of weight. “And what do you guys do for, like, careers? I was born in Rhode Island but I grew up in Boulder, Colorado. I’m a first-year college student, majoring in sociology. I want to be a social worker or a high school counselor.”

  “Hey!” I exclaimed, catching what she’d said. “My parents recently moved to Denver. That’s pretty close, huh?”

  Regan nodded. “Like half an hour. Have they visited Boulder yet?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I know of. They don’t really travel much. The big move from Tennessee to Colorado will probably satisfy their wanderlust for the next decade.”

  “Boulder’s so gorgeous, you have to tell them to go. I can show them around if you want,” Regan offered shyly.

  “I’m from Norwood, Massachusetts,” Alyssa cut in. “But I work in Boston. I’m a stringer for the Boston Globe.”

  I got the distinct feeling she expected us to be really impressed by this fact, but no one even acknowledged it.

  “I was born in Cuba, but I’ve lived in Houston since I was nine,” Luisa said. “I work in pharmaceutical sales.”

  “That’s a big, big field right now,” Alyssa said knowingly. “Are you bilingual?”

  “Bi . . . sexual?” Luisa repeated. “Sorry, girl, you’re not my type.”

  “Ha ha,” Alyssa said, rolling her eyes. Luisa began speaking to her rapidly in Spanish. “Answer your question?”

  “I wasn’t being offensive,” Alyssa protested. “I was just saying there’s a big market for bilingual pharmaceutical sales reps. I wrote an article about it for the Globe.”

  Luisa grunted.

  I cut in, telling them that I worked in public relations. “I almost went that route,” Alyssa said. “A lot of journalism majors do. The pay’s way better than what you can make as a reporter.”

  “Not where I work,” I scoffed. “Not only does my boss pay peanuts, but he micromanages the hell out of—”

  Immediately, I caught my mistake. I had promised to talk the company up, not bash it.

  “Why don’t you quit?” Maggie asked, giving me the perfect opening to correct my blunder.

  “Hood and Geddlefinger Public Relations is one of the strongest PR firms in the country,” I boasted. “When we take on a client, we do it right. The people we represent get amazing press. We’re great at spinning articles.”

  Everybody stared at me in silence, and Alyssa cocked an eyebrow. “

  I’m from Memphis, by the way,” I said quickly, immediately following it up with my standard line, “And no, I’m not an Elvis fan.” Only Maggie and Janelle laughed. Regan looked puzzled, and said she thought Elvis was from California.

  We were a strange, mismatched group. For the life of me, I couldn’t image how anyone—even the most skilled editor—could craft a show out of our lives. But here we were, smiling and grinning at each other. The cameras were rolling, capturing the minutest details of our existence.

  And very soon, millions of viewers would be sitting in their homes, watching this very conversation and hanging on to our every word.

  Chapter Twelve

  A voice came over the house intercom system, summoning the six of us to the living room.

  Janelle winked at me. “Here goes nothing,” she said.

  We walked the short distance from the kitchen to the living room, and found Zaidee waiting.

  The coffee table was now covered with various pieces of videography equipment. She gestured for us to sit down.

  I noticed that a doctor’s
scale was positioned in the corner of the room. I didn’t recall seeing it when I entered the house.

  “Hello, my lovely little reality girls!” Zaidee enthused. “Welcome to From Fat to Fabulous. I know you’re dying to get settled in, but before you do, I want to talk with you for a minute, go over some things about the show. This is a bit on the technical side, but I’d like you all to have a basic understanding.”

  She walked over and sat down on the edge of the coffee table. “This is what’s called a mic pack,” she said, holding up a black-boxed microphone like the ones we’d worn at the auditions. “Each of you will be required to wear one of these at all times. I think you’re all familiar with how they work, but I’ll go over it briefly just in case. This part is called the belt pack transmitter,” she said, pointing to the box. “In laymen’s terms, it’s what allows us to receive and record your every word. The wire, which should be concealed beneath your shirt, connects the transmitter to your lavalier mic, or lapel microphone, if you prefer.”

  She quickly demonstrated how to fasten it onto our clothing.

  “If you’ll go ahead and put these on,” she said, passing them out to us.

  With shaking hands, I hooked up my mic pack. I looked around the room—the lights were glaring and the camera crew was scrambling, capturing every move we made.

  Zaidee’s words kept playing over through my mind: record your every word. After so many years of feeling like a supporting player in a world full of leading ladies, suddenly I was the center of attention.

  “You are required to wear your microphones every minute of the day. There are two exceptions—you can take them off to sleep and to shower. Nothing else. As soon as you wake up in the morning you’ll need to put your mic pack on,” Zaidee said. “Even if you’re lying in bed staring at the ceiling, I want you miked.”

  It seemed a little extreme, but nobody objected.

  “What about when we’re, you know, using the bathroom,” I asked. A few of the other girls laughed.