Modelland

by Tyra Banks

The Scout looked at the De La Crèmes and nodded majestically, looking both strong and feminine at the same time.

  “Please take her!” Mrs. De La Crème gushed.

  “We would be honored!” Mr. De La Crème cried.

  Three, two …

  And then the Scout reached out her long, slender, radiantly decorated hand and beckoned.

  To Tookie.

  10

  BOU-BIG-TIQUE NATION

  The entire De La Crème family stood dumbfounded. Tookie stared at the Scout’s outstretched hand. Was this some kind of cruel joke?

  All sorts of possibilities flashed through Tookie’s mind. Blood pulsed hard from her heart to her head. She glanced at the question-mark-shaped crack in the ground. It seemed very appropriate at this moment.

  The Scout’s hand reached closer.

  Mrs. De La Crème scuttled onto the car’s hood with the nimbleness of a mountain goat. “Oh no, no, no, my most honorable Scout,” she spouted. “This is not the girl you came for.” She pushed Tookie aside. “You want my Myrracle!”

  A sparkling slip of paper appeared in the Scout’s hand. Studying it, she first eyed Myrracle, arching her body toward the girl so that mere millimeters separated their faces. Then, in a flash, the Scout turned to look at Tookie. She returned to Myrracle, triggering a hopeful smile on Mrs. De La Crème’s quivering lips. Then she scrutinized the paper in her hand again.

  “What’s taking you so long?” Myrracle blurted out. “You want me! I’m The Myrracle! I’m wearing the SMIZE! I’m on that list, right?”

  Myrracle reached for the list in the Scout’s hand. Whap! The Scout jerked back so quickly that one of her necklaces swatted Myrracle’s hand away.

  Myrracle let out a sharp squeak. “Ow! Creameeeee! She smacked me with her thing!”

  Mrs. De La Crème squared her shoulders. “Oh no, you did not just whack my Myrracle. I may not know who the hell you are, but I do know you have lost your diamond-encrusted mind!”

  The Scout’s body tensed, and in the blink of an eye, Mrs. De La Crème changed her tune. “But, I mean, lovely bejeweled goddess, you do indeed know best. You can whack, slap, smack, clobber, knock out, even give my Myrracle a black eye. Do as you wish. Just choose her!”

  Myrracle pointed accusingly at Tookie. “She’s the one you should be smacking! She doesn’t even care about Modelland!”

  “Yes I do,” Tookie said softly. “Not that any of you have ever asked.”

  But her words were drowned out by the howls of the crowd, the blares of car horns, and the earsplitting bonnnnnng of the giant clock in the middle of LaDorno’s square as it marked the official end to The Day of Discovery.

  The Scout consulted a glittering piece of jewelry on her wrist that resembled the top half of a crystal snow globe. It changed colors slightly with every second that passed. Then she extended both hands to Tookie, waving them impatiently.

  “Oh, um … okay,” Tookie said uncertainly. It felt like she was in a dream as she reached for the Scout. But just before they touched, two strong hands shoved her from the side. She tumbled off the car, falling straight into Mr. De La Crème’s arms.

  He quickly pushed Tookie back up on the roof. “Creamy, what are you trying to do, kill the girl? They want one of our daughters—isn’t that good enough? If she wants Tookie, let her take Tookie!”

  Mrs. De La Crème glowered at him. “Oh, so now the circus freak is your daughter?”

  Mr. De La Crème looked up at Tookie. “Tookie, don’t listen to her. You know I love you, right? Always have, always will. You’re Daddy’s special baby girl.”

  Tookie’s chest burned. Daddy? Special? Love? She had a strong feeling he didn’t mean it, but she couldn’t help letting his warm words affect her anyway.

  “Just go,” Mr. De La Crème told Tookie. “For all of us.”

  As if it had been waiting to be released her entire life, a single tear dropped from Tookie’s eye. Did he want her to go because he just wanted to be rid of her? Was he truly proud of her and thought she really deserved this? Or was he now willing to be her daddy because she was the Scout’s choice?

  Suddenly, something in the crowd caught her attention. There on one of the huge screens was her face. Her six-head. Her multiple-personality-disorder hair. Her mismatched eyes. This image was projected all over Metopia—all over the world. Hundreds of bewildered spectators in LaDorno Square stared at the screen. Thousands of hopeful girls wailed to their mothers, Why does she get to go? She’s crazy-looking! Millions of people all over the world saw Tookie’s image right now and thought, What the …?

  Trembling, Tookie remembered the words Wingtip had whispered to her outside the Esplanade the day before: Dream big. Even you. Perhaps this was what he meant. This was the biggest dream any girl could have. Especially a Forgetta-Girl.

  Tookie swallowed hard, and her trembling hand finally met the Scout’s bejeweled one.

  A flash of golden yellow light surrounded them. A strong sucking sensation pulled at Tookie’s feet, then her legs, and then her stomach and back. Her body tumbled into a brilliant, sheer fabric that spewed from the Scout’s fingers. More fabric surrounded her, enveloping her bottom and legs, and the force of a billion hands lifted her up and buoyed her into the air. Suddenly, Tookie was in some kind of translucent mesh pouch.

  She looked down through the gossamer fabric. LaDorno Square swung beneath her. Myrracle fell to her knees on the car’s hood, letting out a scream so piercing Mr. De La Crème covered his ears. Mrs. De La Crème’s brow was dripping with sweat. She gripped her head and the veins in her hands looked as if they were about to burst. She raised her hand in the air like it was a pistol aiming for the Scout. “You think you are flying high and mighty, but I will whack, slap, smack, clobber, knock out, and give your bedazzled ass a black eye!”

  It was too painful to watch them anymore. Tookie shifted her gaze ahead. The Scout floated in front of her, her arms stretched out behind her in a V, the fabric of the pouch protruding from the tips of her shimmering fingers. The grand buildings around LaDorno Square moved swiftly past. As Tookie sailed up and up, people looked dumbstruck, as if they were wondering why on earth such an odd-looking girl was in a Scout’s pouch.

  Tons of parties were taking place: in a fifth-floor window, Tookie saw silver-haired men in shiny silver suits and young women in the finest gowns, all holding bright, bubbly concoctions in their hands. Higher up she waved to a group of grinning children with cake-smeared faces. One cherub-faced girl was pressed so hard against the glass that Tookie worried she might push through some unseen crack and plunge to her untimely death.

  This is a dream, Tookie kept repeating to herself. I’ve dozed off during the ceremony. I’m going to wake up and Myrracle will have been chosen. She squeezed her eyes closed tight and then popped them open. But she was still in the strange pouch.

  The streets of LaDorno spread out in a grid beneath her. Not surprisingly, every other part of LaDorno was virtually unpopulated at this particular hour, nearly all of its residents crowded around the square for T-DOD. It was strange to see no pedestrians, no buses trundling past, no cars waiting at the stoplights. But then Tookie noticed a red flash—a figure darting down a dark alleyway.

  Tookie pressed her face hard against the translucent fabric. The figure ran crookedly down the alley, arms spread wide. Then the person abruptly stopped and looked straight at the pouch.

  “Lizzie!” Tookie’s jaw dropped. “We have to stop!” she yelled to the Scout. But the Scout kept flying.

  Tookie grabbed a handful of the pouch’s fabric and pulled with all her might, trying to tear a hole in the side. A horrible thought struck her: What if Lizzie saw my face on those humongous screens? What if Lizzie saw me willingly take the Scout’s hand? What if she thought I skipped out of Exodus because I wanted Modelland more? “I didn’t know about this, Lizzie! I swear!” Tookie screamed.

  But Tookie and the Scout were too high in the sky for Lizzie to hear her. Lizzie’s tiny
body jerked to the side in a big twitch. After a moment, she lowered her head and began to run once more, the shadows swallowing up her crimson head. Soon she was nothing but a small dot.

  “Lizzie …,” Tookie whispered, overcome with shame and guilt. She stood and curtsied, saying farewell to her one and only friend.

  They moved fast through LaDorno, traversing the Resort Quarter, the Luxury District, and Platinum Row. As they neared the base of the mountain to Modelland, the Scout slowed in front of the Obscure Obelisks and stopped so abruptly that Tookie tumbled backward. Then the Scout took a sharp turn and headed straight down.

  Tookie scrambled to the front of the pouch. The ground was approaching fast. A rush of air pushed against her body, the g-forces distorting her face and making her cheeks flutter. A horrible wail rang through Tookie’s ears, and after a split second, she realized it was her own terrified scream. We’re really going to crash, she thought hysterically. She squeezed her eyes tight and braced herself for impact.

  But instead of hitting the sidewalk, they merged into it, disappearing beneath the streets. Tookie rolled to the back of the pouch, legs over head. When she opened her eyes, they were in a narrow, dimpled tunnel with pale green walls. It looked to Tookie like the inside of a plant stem. The air smelled like it did before a thunderstorm. A loud whomp-whomp-whomp vibrated in her ears.

  Tookie and the Scout shot forward even faster, the pouch bouncing up and down. Just a few seconds later, the fabric darkened, turning black and shiny. Muffled music filled the air, growing louder and louder, until Tookie recognized it as the T-DOD theme song, set to banjos.

  A green-tinged fluorescent light appeared at the end of a tunnel. It grew brighter and brighter, and soon Tookie found herself face to face with cash registers, credit card machines, Modelland magazines, and hundreds of checkout lines. In front of her the Scout’s paper-flat, gem-studded and now shiny-black-patent-leather-clad body rolled out of an enormous black rubber mechanism. All at once, Tookie understood: the Scout had just unrolled from a conveyor belt! They must be in some kind of store! Then she looked around.

  “Oh. My. God!” Tookie gasped aloud. “I’m in—”

  “Bou-Big-Tique Nation walking ladies!” a chipper-voiced man boomed over the PA. “It looks like we’ve got a zirconia-encrusted Modelland Scout on the loose!”

  Thousands of girls screamed with excitement. Voices bubbled through the air.

  “Where is she?” a girl screamed.

  “I think I see her in aisle 453 near the purple lightbulb section!”

  “No, she’s in the auto parts aisle!”

  Tookie looked through the pouch, taking in Bou-Big-Tique Nation for the first time. She’d read all about the place—it was the most convenient of convenience stores, for everyone lived inside the giant store! Small houses peppered the perimeter as far as Tookie could see, and a wide upper-level balcony filled with larger houses encircled the entire place. To her left was a large section of motor homes for sale. A bored salesman sat under a sign that read READY TO TAKE YOUR FAMILY ON A BOU-BIG-TIQUE VACATION TOUR? EXPLORE THE OTHER SIDE OF THE NATION IN STYLE! The rest of the square footage contained mile upon mile of merchandise. But no one was shopping.

  Everywhere Tookie looked, girls were walking.

  They were in a different part of the country, in a different time zone. It’s still T-DOD here, Tookie thought.

  Scores of girls sashayed through the aisles, shoving each other and screeching whenever they crossed paths. Every girl wore a single color from head to toe. A curly-haired strawberry blonde with a gap between her teeth was dressed in all mint-green. A bronze-skinned girl wore metallic gold from her headband to her false eyelashes to her shoelaces.

  Tookie’s Scout was the only one doing any shopping at the Bou-Big-Tique. Her head darted left and right. Then the Scout homed in on a girl about an eighth of a mile away. It was weird—whatever the Scout saw and heard, Tookie could see and hear too. Like the tiny ticks in the tick farm display way down aisle 135 and the tapping of a girl’s foot at a messy counter marked THE NATION’S CUSTOMER SERVICE, which was clear across the store.

  The girl stood behind the counter. Her name tag said Dylan. Dylan was shaped like a bottle of Bou-Big-Tique cola and had a heart-shaped face. Her lips were full and naturally raspberry-colored, and her lavender-blue eyes sparkled. Her thick, healthy, golden-blond hair stretched to her butt, and she wore it in two ponytails, one on each side of her head. Her monochromatic outfit was the exact hue of her lavender-blue eyes. An apron with strips of blinking lights displayed BOU in bold across her chest, BIG in block letters down her right thigh, and TIQUE in script across her buttocks.

  A little girl ran up to Dylan. “Dyl, why can’t I walk? I’ve been practicing my strutty-strut.” She twirled around Dylan.

  “DeeDee, you know you can’t walk today, babycakes. You’re only five years old. Plus, Mama would go cuh-ray-zee on me if she saw you anywhere near that loony-bin farm of desperate chicks.”

  The little girl pouted. “Can I walk with you, then? Right here? She won’t know.”

  Dylan smiled good-naturedly at her little sister. “Okay, babycakes. Stand on my feet.”

  As if on cue, a crash sounded down an aisle. “You stole my walking style!” a girl in an ivory outfit screamed to the strawberry blonde, lurching for her and knocking over a display of motor oil. Gallons of slick ooze were now creeping across the tile floor.

  “Strawberries and Cream are mixing it up in a blender on aisle number one ninety-seven,” cackled a voice over the loudspeaker. “I wonder what that juicy smoothie is gonna taste like!”

  A female Bou-Big-Tique security guard bicycled down to break up the brawl and to keep the flow of walkers moving. Strawberry promptly punched the security guard in the eye, and a new brawl ensued.

  The speakers crackled again. “Girls and ladies, chicks and dames, the Strawberry on aisle one ninety-seven is one sexy knockout! We need assistance! Can someone please back that thang up and get over here now?”

  Dylan sighed and whispered something in her sister’s ear, then marched toward the altercation. Swinging her hips to dodge frantic walkers and lifting her arms to squeeze between displays, Dylan looked graceful and very sexy even as she slid in the oil spill.

  “Come on, ladies!” Dylan shouted at Strawberry, who was swinging punches at anyone nearby. Six instigating girls continued to prance and strut around the ruckus.

  Dylan’s mere presence seemed to calm Strawberry. Dylan put her hands on her hips, cleared her throat, and spoke like a referee. “Okay, so since the day you were born here in the Bou-Big-Tique hospital, nursed on wombat milk, you’ve dreamed of going to Modelland. Am I correct?”

  The girls nodded.

  “And has Modelland magazine ever mentioned that it prefers girls with high hopes of bein’ the next welterweight champion of the BBT Nation?” Dylan asked.

  The girls shook their heads.

  “Then let’s get back to fulfillin’ ya dreams, ladies. Y’all are all busted-lookin’ now from your championship fight, but pull your confidence from your insides. That’s gotta count for somethin’.” And then under her breath she muttered, “Cuz whoo, chile, y’all look cuh-ray-zee.

  “Let’s put one foot in front of the other,” Dylan continued. “Swing them hips … not too much … don’t slip in the oil … there ya go.” The girls formed a line behind Dylan like an army following its captain.

  “Now repeat after me,” Dylan said. “If I don’t get chose for Modelland’s fam, they can kiss my butt, I won’t give a damn!”

  Swoosh. Tookie felt a tug, and suddenly the Scout made a beeline for Dylan’s marching lineup.

  All the girls saw her at once. “It’s happening! Pick me! Pick me!”

  But the Scout swept past all of them and stopped at Dylan. Dylan froze in her tracks, looking confused. The Scout extended her neck, pushing her face within a millimeter of Dylan’s, just as she had done with Myrracle and Tookie. Satisfied, the Scout
stepped back and reached toward Dylan.

  Dylan stared at the Scout, in a bug-eyed trance. “You’re …”

  She looked behind her.

  “… here …”

  She eyeballed an immense crowd forming silently around her and the Scout.

  “… for me?”

  “They’re taking Dylan!” a distant voice announced. A rolling wave of murmurs headed Dylan’s way and grew louder.

  Dylan’s mouth dropped open. A look of understanding washed across her face. “But what about my brothers and sisters?” Dylan gestured to a tiny house near the dental and feminine-hygiene aisles. “I got four of each. I look after them.”

  Suddenly, a woman who looked just like Dylan, only about twenty years older, pushed through the spectators and hugged Dylan’s shoulders. There were proud tears in her eyes. “Don’t worry, baby. This is your time.”

  “Um, seriously, Mama? I’m going to Modelland? Me?” Dylan ran her hands over her generous hips, then shrugged. “Maybe a little—or should I say a lot—of some Bou-Big-Tique booty is just what Miss Modelland needs!”

  The Scout nodded and the whole of the Bou-Big-Tique erupted into cheers and applause.

  And then Dylan fainted, crumpling to the ground. Everyone gasped.

  “Don’t worry!” Dylan’s mother waved her arms frantically. “She does that when she’s excited or scared or in shock!”

  The Scout reached down and lifted Dylan in her arms. Blue, green, and red fireworks exploded above them inside the store. The music pumped louder. Then the golden light that Tookie had seen in LaDorno appeared again. Suddenly, a foot rammed into Tookie’s waist. Dylan was in the pouch next to her, just like that.

  The blonde jumped when she saw Tookie. “Hey, girl! I’m Dylan! Whoa! I never seen eyes like that before. Interestin’. Who are you?”

  Tookie flinched. She wasn’t used to people paying attention to her. “Um, I’m Tookie,” she fumbled. She tried to smile.

  The pouch lurched to the left, and the Scout lifted off. Both girls tumbled about as they shot up through the roof of Bou-Big-Tique Nation. The last thing Tookie heard was a crackle over the loudspeaker.