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by Veronica Chambers

  It was my first time hosting an awards show, but the rehearsals had gone well, and as Leslie liked to remind me, it doesn’t take a college degree to read a teleprompter. Although I have to say, it’s a whole lot harder than it looks.

  I had my outfit picked out for the show. An Alice + Olivia minidress because I figured it was a teen thing, not a fashion thing. It was funny. I was technically still a teen, but I felt much, much older.

  That morning, when the doorbell rang, I almost didn’t bother to answer it since I wasn’t expecting anyone. Andy and Syreeta were going to meet me at Lincoln Center to do my hair and makeup there. When I buzzed the intercom, I heard, “It’s Chela; I was in the neighborhood. Let me in.”

  I am here to tell you that while being a supe is a pretty amazing thing, getting your best friend back after a big tuss up is even better. I love my modeling friends, but I love that Chela’s not part of that world and that she was my pal way before anyone ever put me on the cover of a magazine.

  When I opened the front door to my apartment, I could hear a gaggle of noise making its way toward me. Maybe Chela’s sisters were in town again. She had like five sisters, and wherever the crew of them went, it was a party. I got up, still dressed in my Bedhead I Love Lucy pajamas, and saw that Chela was there. But she didn’t have her sisters with her; she had the Baby Phat girls in tow: Melody, Prageeta, and Elsie.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, hugging Prageeta first.

  “Hanif had a meeting with his American publisher, so I decided to come over and see my friends,” she said.

  “Oh, this is cute,” Elsie said, examining my pajamas. “Not at all sexy, but cute.”

  “What are you guys doing here?” I asked, wiping the sleep out of my eyes. “It’s so early.”

  Melody laughed. “Now we know you’re a supermodel. It’s not early; it’s almost eleven o’clock.”

  I looked over at my CD alarm clock; why hadn’t Snoop and Pharrell woken me up? Then I remembered that I’d been up so late studying for my physics final that I’d fallen asleep without setting the alarm.

  “Okay, right,” I said. “I mean, it’s nice to see you, but what are you guys all doing here? Are we going to brunch? Did we make a date?”

  Chela grabbed me by the arm. “No, we’re not going to brunch—we’ve brought brunch to you.”

  Melody held up four shopping bags from our favorite brunch spot. “We got all your favorites: oysters Rockefeller, the Maine lobster roll, the four-flowers juice.”

  It was like some sort of a dream. All the girls coming to see me, my favorite foods, nowhere to go and nothing to do until the awards show that night. They were all crowded around my room, and I thought, This is what I always imagined college to be like—hanging out with a posse of smart, worldly girls.

  “But Sarabeth’s doesn’t do takeout,” I said, my mouth full with the heavenly taste of a cheese blintz.

  Prageeta gave me her biggest megawatt grin. “They don’t do takeout for civilians. But we’re models, darling.”

  Chela said in a mock-hurt voice, “Hey, I’m not a model.”

  Melody said, “That’s okay, you still get perks.”

  We had moved into the dining room so that we could eat on proper plates and use cutlery. (We had begun to tear apart the pumpkin waffles with our bare hands in my utensil-free room.) Luckily, the apartment was outfitted with enough chairs and a table big enough to accommodate our feast.

  “This is great,” I said, knocking back the rest of my four-flowers juice. I’m not sure why they called it four flowers ’cause it was really a mix of orange, banana, pineapple, and pomegranate. The only thing that was wrong with it was that unlike the iced tea, they never gave free refills of juice. “The Teen Choice Awards are going to have to be pretty great to top this.”

  “Well, since you mention it,” Chela said, breaking into a freestyle beat box. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I was beginning to get a little nervous.

  “We’re going to give you a makeover,” Elsie said.

  I looked down at my I Love Lucy pajamas and tugged a strand of my greasy hair. “What? It’s not like I plan on going out looking like this.”

  “We know, niña,” Chela said, putting her arm around my shoulders. “We just want to make sure that when that show goes on live tonight, you look like the supe that you are.”

  Chela and the Baby Phat girls had put together a whole day of beauty for me.

  “To start with, I think it would be good if you took a shower,” Elsie said, pretending to hold her nose.

  “Take a bath,” Melody said. “While you’re in there, you can read this month’s Yoga Journal.” She reached into her bag, a very cute, very covetable Yves Saint Laurent Muse bag, and handed me the magazine.

  “Thanks,” I said, checking it out. I loved taking yoga classes with Melody and was convinced that they were keeping me sane.

  “Think peaceful thoughts,” Melody said.

  I ran a bath and read a couple of the articles in Melody’s magazine while soaking in the tub. I threw on a Four Seasons terry-cloth robe, a gift from Leslie, and walked down the hallway into the living room. The simple, Ikea-style living room had been transformed into a fashion shoot dressing room. I’d heard the racket, but I assumed it was Chela and Elsie showing everyone the latest reggaeton moves.

  There were literally racks of clothes and shoes and accessories. Moreover, Andy and Syreeta had joined the crowd. Andy had laid out his hair tools all over the dining room table. Syreeta had commandeered a desk and turned it into a makeup station.

  Melody was putting out platters of fresh fruit on the coffee table, and there were two champagne buckets filled with ice, sparkling water, and fruit spritzers.

  “This is unbelievable,” I said, fighting the urge to pinch myself. It was one thing to get the full glamour gal treatment at work and quite another to get it in your own apartment.

  “When we said we’d hook you up . . .” Elsie began.

  “We meant we’d hook you up!” Chela said, finishing her sentence.

  I could feel the tears coming, and I could barely get the words out. “Youguysarethebest,” I said, everything I wanted to say tumbling out in a soppy jumble. “Idon’tknowhowtothankyou.I’mtheluckiestgirlintheworld.”

  “Go ahead, girl,” Syreeta said, putting her arm around me. “Get it all out now. Because once I start doing makeup, you better not shed a single tear.”

  “Wardrobe first,” Elsie said, leading me over to the racks of clothes.

  “How did you guys get all of this stuff?” I wondered. “It’s like I died and went to Bergdorf’s heaven.”

  “We’ve got friends in stylish places,” Elsie quipped. “Now, what were you planning on wearing?”

  I went to my room and came back with the Alice + Olivia dress. Elsie held it up and gave it a once-over.

  “It’s cute, but I think you don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard,” Melody said, pulling out a pair of jeans. “I think you should wear these and a silky halter top.”

  “Okay, that’s a look,” Elsie said. “Let’s pull some shoes to try on with that.”

  Melody went over to the shoe area and picked up a pair of four-inch Sergio Rossi gold heels. She laid it all out on the sofa.

  “Great, that’s look number one,” Elsie said, taking on the role of ringleader/chief fashion diva with pleasure and ease. “Chela, what do you think?”

  “I think Bee does preppy so well,” Chela said, pulling out an emerald green J.Crew silk taffeta skirt and a hot pink cashmere cardigan with a jeweled neckline.

  “Good job, Chela, that’s look number two,” Elsie said.

  “I LOVE that,” I said. “Can I buy that to keep?”

  “We’ll hook you up, promise,” Elsie said. “But time is flying, and we need to make sure we get all the looks together before we decide what you’ll wear. And of course, Andy and Syreeta can’t decide on hair and makeup until yo
u’ve picked an outfit. So Chela, shoes.”

  Chela walked over to the shoes and chose a really sweet pair of ballet flats.

  “No way,” Prageeta said. “She can’t wear flats.”

  “Why not?” Chela said.

  “Because she’s a supe. She’s gotta give them glamazon Amazon ... These would be better.”

  Prageeta handed Chela a pair of high-heeled patent leather Mary Janes.

  Chela looked them over. “These will work.”

  Elsie said, “Okay, London girl, your turn.”

  Prageeta said, “I think Bee is so unique, so un-model–like, that she should do something that reflects more of her independent spirit. That’s why I asked my friend at Decades in L.A. to send me this vintage Anna Sui dress.”

  She pulled out a sleeveless black dress with a ruffled white bib front. It was cool in that Austin-Powers-London-in-the-sixties kind of way. It was the kind of dress that I always dream about wearing in a photo shoot: something so graphic and clean that it’s almost more like a piece of architecture than a dress.

  “That’s gorgeous,” I said.

  Everyone agreed; there were murmurs of approval all around. Trust Prageeta to find something you couldn’t even get in a regular store.

  “It’s hot,” said Elsie. “That’s look number four.”

  “What are you thinking about for shoes?” I asked.

  Prageeta pulled out a pair of thigh-high patent leather black boots. “Aren’t these funky?” she said.

  “They are. And so will my feet be if I wear thigh-high boots in the summer!” I said.

  Prageeta rolled her eyes.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “You’ve got to suffer for beauty.”

  Elsie was the only one who hadn’t chosen.

  “So, Elsie, what do you have in mind?” I asked.

  “I was thinking about how much you’re always talking about your agent, Leslie, and how impeccable she always looks,” Elsie said, pulling out a simple sheath dress. “I think you should channel some of that tonight. Do a bit of Park Avenue princess.”

  “Shoes?” Melody asked.

  “Black Louboutins. Simple black clutch,” Elsie said, pulling out the matching items.

  “Nice,” Melody said. “Really nice.”I gazed over at the different “looks” my friends had pulled for me: 1940s movie star. Rock star casual. Country club cool. Austin Powers mod. Park Avenue princess.

  I loved them all, and I had a ball trying them on. Chela was playing DJ, and hip-hop, salsa, and reggaeton blared through the apartment. I pretended my hallway was a runway and I strutted my stuff, not the way Savannah Hughes would do it, but the way I did it, in each and every outfit. “Do you,” Chela was always saying. As I tried on each outfit that my friends had picked for me with love and affection, I did me—and it felt good.

  The minute I slipped on the dress Elsie had picked, I knew it was the one. The top of the dress was leaf green; the bottom half was a solid navy block. It was like a Rothko painting, and it felt so comfortable.

  I walked down the hallway putting a little extra “sashay shante” into my walk. When I got to the living room, all the girls started hooting and hollering.

  “That’s fabulous,” Melody said.

  “I want it,” Prageeta said, which was her way of saying the same thing.

  “That dress puts a little sauce into her walk,” Chela said, nudging Melody with her elbow. “Did you notice how she walked out here like a girl who just got some? Now, that’s how you host a television awards show.”

  “It’s good,” Elsie said.

  “It’s better than good,” I said, giving her a big hug. “It’s the one.”

  Elsie asked Andy to sweep my hair into a high ponytail. Then, to give it some extra vavoom, he attached a hairpiece—an extra-long ponytail that made it seem like my hair hit the top of my butt.

  Syreeta did my makeup—really soft cheeks and lips but super–bright blue and green eyes and pink, glossy lips.

  Chela even did my nails in a color that Elsie picked although she said, “It’s killing me to paint them in this boring clear shade.”

  “It’s not clear,” Elsie said. “It’s ballet pink.”

  Chela swiveled her neck. “I guess that’s why I don’t like ballet. Ballet pink is boring pink.”

  By the time I was sitting back and enjoying my manicure, it was after six o’clock. Where did the day go? I wondered. Then I remembered: it didn’t go, it flew because I was hanging with my real best friends.

  The Teen Choice Awards were a blast. It seemed like every star I’d ever seen a music video of or in a movie or a TV show was there. It was really hard not to geek out backstage, but when I was onstage, all I had to do was look in the fifth row and see my mom, my dad, and my aunt Zo smiling up at me and I felt mega-calm again. Sometimes, when you’re in a huge auditorium like Lincoln Center, you can get something known as crowd blindness and you can’t make out specific faces in the crowd. But my mother was wearing this ginormous hand-beaded Zulu headdress that not for nothing was totally blocking Jessica Simpson’s view. So my family was pretty easy to spot.

  Even though we stopped for commercial breaks and the tech guys were constantly adjusting lights and mikes and sets for the musical numbers, the evening flew by so quickly. Before I knew it, I was giving out the last award, for Best Kiss.

  I looked at the teleprompter to read the nominees. But instead of the list of names that had rolled during rehearsal, the prompter just said, Enter DJ Drop and Roll.

  I turned to the left of me and there he was, Kevin. He was wearing this really sharp black suit with a bright yellow shirt, and he had a mike in his hand.

  I looked in the third row, and I could see that Melody, Elsie, and Chela were stomping their feet and screaming. All of a sudden, the day of beauty they’d given me had a much bigger purpose than just hosting the award show.

  He was walking toward me, and I felt that fluttery butterfly feeling like when you think a boy likes you and you know you like him but you’re not really one hundred percent sure of anything.

  “Y’all know who it is. DJ Drop and—” Kevin prompted the audience.

  “Roll,” they screamed back.

  “I didn’t hear you. DJ Drop and—”

  “Roll,” the auditorium screamed.

  “Y’all like my outfit?” he asked the crowd. “I’m dressed in the colors of my favorite Bee,” he said, putting his arm around me. Then he started to rap ABOUT ME. Right there. On live, national TV.

  He said:

  “DJ Kev’s on fire, but baby girl brings the heat. Since the first day of class, honey dip was sweet. Then she got into modeling and blew up the spot. Love them curves and them swerves, Man, y’all know she is hot.

  We done had some beef, but I’m gonna put it to rest. I’ve been waiting too long to put my love to the test.”

  Then he kissed me. Right there. On live, national TV. Even though all those people (including my parents, I mean, REALLY) were watching, I didn’t feel embarrassed or awkward, like which way would I turn my nose and what happens if one of us slobbers too much. At the risk of sounding too corny, it was like our lips were made for each others’, and I realized that I’d been wanting to kiss him for a very long time. We even took home the evening’s last trophy. The Teen Choice Award for Best Kiss: Bee Wilson and Kevin Manning.

  I do kind of worry that it’s all downhill from here. I mean, not for nothing, it kind of puts a lot of pressure on that second kiss when your first kiss with a guy is seen by fifty million people nationwide and wins an award and stuff. But as Chela would say, these are high-class problems. I’ll cross that bridge, I mean that kiss, when I get there.

 

 

 
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