The models’ rep might not care how the shoot turns out, but the agency will if the client thinks the work is amateurish, unprofessional. Lauren’s stressed. How am I going to guarantee that the agency—a well-established agency that has used David for multiple campaigns—will like my stuff? That they won’t see through it and know I’m a complete newbie, that I’ve duped them. And before I know it, I’m sitting down, on the floor, back against the concrete wall. Head between my knees.
“Pippa!” Ramona hisses. “What are you doing?”
What am I doing? That’s the question of the hour. “How can I do this?”
“Remember Olivia Bee?” Ramona says, sitting down in front of me.
“Who?” I say, and then I remember. Olivia Bee, the girl who when she was, like, 15, got discovered through her photos on Flickr and got a contract to shoot a Converse sneaker ad.
Only, there’s a huge difference between Converse and … ZePPys.
Or is there? Is it what I make of the ad? I’ve got to make it my own.
“Guys, I think we better start shooting,” Ben says, and I look up and he’s nodding over at the models’ rep, who’s looking around.
That’s all it takes, and I’m up on my feet, ready to own this campaign. I can do this. I’ve been at enough shoots with Dace to know what works and what doesn’t, and these girls, they’re kids. They’re laughing and snapping selfies on their phones. And, as far as I can tell, don’t seem to have any sort of diva-esque attitude. So all I’ve got to do is get them to be zany. And peppy.
“All right, girls,” I say, and the girls actually look over at me. They stand up, and I walk over to them. I explain the campaign, how it’s supposed to go. How Kat’s supposed to be a spy, how Maxi’s supposed to be a socialite. How they’re very serious about their very serious lifestyles. But then, the shoes. They’re wearing these shoes, and they’re quirky, they’re fun. They’re unexpected. The girls nod, totally getting it, and I move them into place. I squeeze off a few frames as Ramona works the lights and the bounce card and Ben works the fan and Lauren fixes wardrobe, and Amy and Jae, the hair and makeup girls, get in there, fixing flyaways and adding more blush, and maybe half an hour later, I pause and we gather round the computer to review the first of the lot. And it’s funny. But the young models in their sort of ridiculous outfits? Dare I say it? They look … a little zany. A little peppy.
Eventually, Lauren says she thinks we’ve got enough coverage and the rep’s out of there in a flash, not even asking to see the photos. The hair and makeup girls start packing up their kits, and Ramona leads the girls to get changed. Ben’s moving the lights out of the way. The girls come out of the bathroom, back in their street clothes, and Ramona starts putting their clothes back on the rack. Ben asks them if they want a snack from the kitchen. I turn my attention to Lauren.
“Wow, this might’ve been the most productive shoot I’ve ever done in David’s place.”
“Really?” I say hopefully.
“Yeah for sure. OK so now you’ve got to pick three photos. So here’s a tip: don’t pick the best ones, necessarily,” she says as we scroll through them. “Maybe one that’s really strong, the other two can just be pretty good. Don’t labor over it. Just send three pretty good ones to the client”—she opens the mail icon on the computer and thankfully, it doesn’t need a password—“OK, great. We can send it from David’s email—they’ll never know the difference. You want to impress them enough that they’re pleased, but leave a few better shots to send through later.”
She checks her phone. “I’ve got to go. Are you going to be OK to do this on your own?”
“Wait, you’re leaving?” But she’s already throwing a few random items—notebook, pen, her phone—into her Marc Jacobs bag and slinging it over her shoulder.
“You can do it.”
And then it’s there: that old familiar feeling, that sense of panic rising up, but a second later, without much effort, I’m squelching it, pushing it down and nodding confidently. “No problem. Thanks for all your help on this,” I say, as though I really am in charge here.
“You were great. OK, I’m out of here.”
She heads out, Amy and Jae following her, and then it’s just Ramona, Ben and me. I wave them over to the computer. We huddle around and start to go through the pics. There’s a nervous energy in the air—none of us are talking about anything else, none of us are really talking at all. We’re just studying the pics in front of us, one by one.
“I think you should pick three different styles,” Ramona says. “That way you have a better chance the client likes one of them.”
“That’s a good idea,” I say, and so we all lean a little closer. Ramona points at one, Ben points at another, and we start flagging them, narrowing down the pics, and then going back over them again, the ones flagged red getting an extra yellow flag if they’re going to make it to the final six. And then we choose three, I attach them to an email and hit send.
Then we wait, breathless for the client to reply. Eventually, the computer dings with a new message. I click on the mail icon.
Looks great. Can’t wait to see the rest.
Ramona hugs me first and then I turn, and Ben’s standing behind me and I hug him.
“We did it,” I say, and Ben shakes his head.
“You did it.”
“It’s true,” Ramona says. “You really did it. You were, like, a real photographer.”
I smile, and then I laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Ramona says, looking at me like I’m crazy. I shake my head.
“I don’t know. I just feel … so much relief.”
“You’re a freak,” Ben says, but not unkindly. More, like, in awe. And then he laughs. And then Ramona laughs, and then we’re all laughing. God, it feels good to laugh.
Ben puts his phone on the iPod dock and a second later Daft Punk pumps through the speakers. We start cleaning up.
Ramona’s in the kitchen, tidying up the dishes, and Ben’s lugging a seamless back to the storage room, and every so often one of us moves to the music. And we’re sort of half-dancing, half-cleaning up. Totally having fun.
“I still can’t believe we pulled it off,” I say, rolling up the final seamless.
“Here, let me get that,” Ben says, taking the other end, and we carry it into the storage room. As we lean it up against the wall, the seamless knocks over the shoebox for the second time this week. Ramona bends down, flips the box right-side up, and I crouch down, then sit back against the shelves on the left. I ask Ramona to leave the box for a minute. Ben senses something’s up, and he sits too, the three of us facing each other, a little impromptu pow-wow. And so I spill it—the details of what the shoebox contained.
“Whoa,” Ramona says.
Ben’s silent for a moment. “So … your mom had an affair with your mentor?”
“She claims she didn’t—that it was just a kiss. Chaste.”
“Yeah right,” Ramona says. “Do you have the pic?”
The photo is in my bag. I go out into the studio, pull it out, bring it back into the storage closet. The three of us stare at it awhile.
“She looks pretty happy,” Ben says.
“Yeah,” I say. “But is she happy like, ‘Wow, it’s so much fun to hang out with David Westerly, my good friend, my boyfriend’s friend. So great that he’s not a big jerk, which would be a super drag,’ OR, is she happy, like, ‘Wow, I’m so in love with David Westerly even though he’s my boyfriend’s best friend and this is wrong, so wrong’?”
Silence as we contemplate this. I study the photo—Mom’s body language, her eyes—searching for a clue.
“It could go either way,” Ramona says just as Ben’s like, “We need more evidence.”
After a pause, I point to the shoebox. “We have more evidence. That’s David Westerly’s time capsule of love. There’s probably something else in there.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Ben asks. He looks at Ramona. “Right?”
She looks at me. I nod, and each of us grasps a stack of … stuff, I guess you’d call it? Notes and restaurant receipts and sports game tickets and theater playbills. Birthday cards and postcards and business cards and a single, distressed credit card that expired more than five years ago.
“It’s funny,” Ben says, looking at the photo that started of all this. “If I didn’t know, I’d say the person you’re related to in this photo isn’t your mom, it’s David. You kind of—I don’t know—there’s some resemblance. Like him just being around rubbed off on you, even before you were born? Anyway, photos are totally deceiving. Case in point.”
“What’s your mom’s name again?” Ramona asks, and I tell her.
“Holly Masterson,” she repeats. “That’s a great name.”
“He went to a lot of concerts,” Ben observes. “Pearl Jam, Nirvana, the Pixies, Radiohead, Oasis, Beastie Boys. Run-DMC at Madison Square Gardens—these are a lot of big shows at the time.”
Did Mom go with him to these shows? It’s funny to think about my mom at a concert—without Dad.
“You know what we need? A love letter. That would be the smoking gun,” Ben says.
“Holly Masterson,” Ramona’s saying, again.
She has a paper in her hand. She shows me the back—and there’s my mom’s name. In black letters.
“That’s her,” I say. “What is it?”
“Flip it over,” Ramona says.
I do, and I’m looking at a ghostly black and white outline of a creature, something like an alien, small body, large head.
“It’s an ultrasound,” Ramona says.
A string of numbers lines the bottom. A date, I realize when I see the year. I do the math. Six months before I was born.
I stare at it. Finally, I put the photo down on the concrete ground.
“Guys,” I say slowly, “I think this is me.”
Ben and Ramona don’t want to leave me alone, but I tell them, “I’m fine!” though is anyone ever fine when they say they’re fine?—but anyway, I tell them I want to go to Emmy’s to talk to her, and so they head back to the dorm, and since I don’t want to risk getting caught at David’s, holding the ultrasound photo, if and when he ever shows up, I sit in the stairwell at the other end of the hall, the one that leads to the lofts on the other side of the building, and stare at the photo.
And then I do the one thing I was never supposed to do.
I text Dylan. But seriously?
REASONS TO BREAK AN ILL-THOUGHT-OUT COMMUNICATION BAN:
Finding out your father may not actually be your father.
Then, I stare at my phone. But the screen doesn’t change. It’s like it’s frozen. No response. Nothing. Nothing? I get we had THE RULE and that he’s busy being WITH THE BAND, but seriously? It’s not like I texted Hey, whatcha doing? Or even I miss you.
What I texted was I think David is my real father. Which, to be fair, is pretty much as cryptic as cryptic texts go, since Dylan doesn’t even know who David is. Like, maybe he’d remember, if I’d texted David Westerly, that he was the photographer-friend of my dad’s (though not likely), but I didn’t, I just texted “David” and he doesn’t even know that David’s a mentor in the program. Why? Because of the ILL-THOUGHT-OUT COMMUNICATION BAN. See how much happens in less than two weeks?
Still. You get a text that seems like it may be rewriting family history from your girlfriend who you love, and you don’t respond just to check that it wasn’t some sort of random autocorrect and that she’s OK before going back to the ban?
I feel angry, then sad, then hurt. I’m basically working my way through a 12-step recovery program in about 12 seconds.
I hit the FaceTime app and call Dace.
When she answers I hold the photo up to the phone.
She leans in, squinting. “What is that?”
“A baby. Kind of. An ultrasound. I think … it’s me.”
Dace leans even closer to her screen. “What?”
I give her the details.
“Wow. Wow. So this, plus the kiss …”
“I don’t know what to think. I’m being crazy, right? Like the kiss was no big deal, and somehow David got a copy of my ultrasound from my mom and dad. Like, maybe my dad came right here after they got the ultrasound—he had a shoot, or he wanted to show David ’cause he was super excited—and he left it here, and he thought he lost it and David never knew he had it and years passed and David found it and always meant to pop it in the mail. But he never got around to it. It’s not like he’s moved five times and purposely packed it up and took it to the new place. He probably has unpaid parking tickets from 16 years ago, old socks with holes, right?”
Dace looks totally perplexed.
“Right, Dace? I need you to say, ‘Yes, it’s totally plausible, that makes sense, you’re overreacting, it’s nothing more than that.’”
After a long pause, Dace says finally, “Yeah well, you’re not gonna get that from me. Honesty Pact, being your best friend, and all …” She stands up.
“Where are you going?”
She grabs a pad of yellow legal paper off her desk. “Let’s make a list.”
“Of what?”
“The facts. Fact: David has an ultrasound of you.”
“OK.”
“Fact: David is a lefty.”
At least I know Dace has been listening during my gushfests about David. Dace puts her pen in her mouth and types something into her computer, then looks back at me. “Did you know only 1 in 10 people in the world are lefties? And that you can’t be a lefty unless there’s someone in your family who’s also a lefty. Who in your family is also a lefty?”
My chest hurts. “Are you making this up?”
Dace shakes her head, leaning into her computer. “No. Fact: David is from Philadelphia.”
“Yes, but lots of people are from Philadelphia.” I open my browser and Google the population of Philadelphia. “To be exact, 1.5 million people.”
“But not your mom or dad.”
“It’s true.” I bite my lip. “And well, they’ve never even been there.”
“What?” Dace asks. “They’ve never been to the place they named you after? How did I not know this? I just assumed they were pulling a Posh and Becks, you know, for where you were conceived. Like Brooklyn Beckham. Only not so glam.”
“They always said they just liked the way it rolled off the tongue.”
“Um, Phil-a-del-phi-a doesn’t roll off the tongue.”
“OK, but we’re forgetting the other facts. Write this down: Mom hates David.”
Dace shakes her head. “Not valid. You hated Ben two weeks ago. As far as Dylan knows, you still do. And look how much things have changed in a week and a half.”
“I’m just being nice to him. I’m being a nice person.”
“Mm hmm. I’m just saying … what if you were your mom, and Dylan were your dad? Ben would be David.”
“I’m not having sex with Ben. I’m not even having sex with Dylan.”
“Yeah, but you’re 16, not 21. And remember my theory: hate isn’t the opposite of love. Indifference is. Hate means there’s still passion.”
“OK, what’s your point? What are you saying? That my mom and dad have been lying to me my entire life?”
“I’m just saying … what if?”
“Oh god.” This what-if is too big to ignore.
CHAPTER 15
The next morning I’m not doing any better with the big what-if factor. I consider staying in my room but Ramona talks me out of it, which is probably for the best, I guess, so that I don’t let my mind go straight to the whirlpool of what-ifs, but going to class doesn’t do anything to take my mind off David, Mom, Dad and that ultrasound.
Still, I somehow manage to keep it together in class, through lunch, through our field trip to the Guggenheim. I even keep it together when Ben and Ramona and I are taking the subway back and Ben looks over at me midway through the strobing, shuddering ride and sees me gripping the metal po
le in the center of the train and biting my lip and he edges a little closer and just as we’re entering a dark portion of the ride he wraps his free arm around me and holds me, tight, close, not saying anything, and I close my eyes and I think about my dad and my mom and the nice guy and the bad guy and the way love is crazy, which is a saying I’ve heard many times before and not understood. Love is crazy. Sometimes you fall in love with someone and it doesn’t make sense. Is that what happened to Holly Masterson?
I’m sitting on Emmy’s front steps, still keeping it together, when she gets home from work. “What a great surprise!” she says. And then I break. It’s massive, ugly-cry time. One hiccup of a lung-splitting sob. Another. Emmy drops her bag on the sidewalk and rushes to me.
“What happened? Who? What? Oh god.” Emmy is legitimately freaking out. And I realize that I’m alone, in New York, sobbing on her steps. That can’t look good.
“I’m OK,” I splutter, so she doesn’t think I’ve been mugged. Or worse. “I just need to talk.”
She sits beside me on the steps, pulling me into her, squeezing me tight. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s get you inside.” She pulls me up, and I follow her into her building. Once upstairs, she closes the door, pulls my coat off me. “Tea?”
I nod, kick off my boots and put my hat and mitts on the chair by the door, then walk over to the couch. She puts on the kettle, then comes over and sits beside me. I swipe at my eyes and blow my nose on a tissue she hands me. Then I hold out the ultrasound photo. She takes it. Studies it, turns it over, looks at me.
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