by Tyra Banks
“What we do here?” Shiraz asked.
“This is where you register,” Ci~L explained.
The girls watched as an ash-blond Bella approached the mosaic face. “Veekay of NorDenSwee,” she said, referring to an icy land.
The mosaic face abruptly sprang to life, its bulbous eyes opening. “Validated!” it yelled. A green light appeared, a striped barrier lifted, and Veekay advanced to a holding area beyond the gates.
“Franca of Cappuccina,” the next girl in line said.
“Authenticated!” the face deemed. Franca joined Veekay.
“Kamalini of Chakra,” said a girl wearing an intricately embroidered chartreuse wrap dress made of endless yards of the finest silk. One arm was full of gold bangles, and her eyes were decorated with a SMIZE, which fluttered every time she blinked.
“Documented!”
A girl with toned golden thighs stepped forward. “Bibiana of Terra BossaNova.”
“Confirm-iated!” The face scrunched up, seeming to know full well that confirmiated wasn’t a word.
Tookie, Piper, Dylan, and Shiraz moved up the line. In front of her, Tookie spotted a familiar girl with pin-straight auburn hair in a golden-yellow dress with matching shoes. She had brilliant white teeth and an attitude as thick as the afternoon air in Peppertown. Tookie sucked in a breath. No. This can’t be happening.
“Zarpessa of Metopia,” the auburn-haired girl trilled haughtily.
“Corroborated!”
“Zarpessa?” Tookie blurted out.
Zarpessa turned at the sound of her name. Her eyes clapped on Tookie’s, and horror rippled across her lovely face. Then, without saying a word, she turned and marched to a holding area.
So she did see me at the Dumpsters, Tookie thought. Clearly, Zarpessa doesn’t want to relive that moment.
A few more girls passed on through, one of them a tall raven-haired girl wearing way too much makeup and a sequined miniskirt that was hacked all the way up to her butt cheeks; nothing but two giant faux diamonds covered her chest. “Chaste Runnings, from Beignet,” she lilted seductively into the mosaic face. She shimmied a little, showing off her round, pert butt.
Then it was Tookie’s turn.
“Tookie from … um … Metopia,” she whispered at the mosaic.
“Louder!” the face boomed.
“Tookie … uh … Metopia? Peppertown?” she said a teensy bit louder.
The face paused. Here it comes, Tookie thought. The revelation of the Day of Discovery administrative error!
The painting smiled awkwardly and yelled, “Sub—um … substantiated.” But it didn’t sound so sure of its decision.
Before the face could change its mind, Ci~L ushered Tookie into the holding area. Then Ci~L walked back to the face, leaned down, and whispered something into where its ears would be if it had any. The other Scouts accompanying their Bellas stood on their toes to see what the famed Triple7 Intoxibella was doing.
At first, Ci~L laughed, as if the face had told her a joke, but then Tookie noticed that Ci~L’s lips weren’t moving—she wasn’t really whispering anything to the mosaic at all. What was happening, however, was that one of her jeweled tentacles was making contact with the face. A surge of sparks traveled from the tip of the tentacle to the mosaic’s mouth. The face looked temporarily stunned. All of its tiles were suddenly scrambled.
“Shiraz, Dylan, Piper!” commanded Ci~L. “Come up here. NOW!”
Shiraz approached the face. “Say your name, Shiraz,” Ci~L urged.
“Shiraz, from—”
“Vindicated!” the face trilled, before Shiraz could finish.
Then Ci~L yanked Dylan up to the face. “Name!” Ci~L insisted.
“Dylan, from Bou—”
“Predicated!”
Ci~L pushed Piper forward and positioned her dead center. “Speak now!” Ci~L barked.
“Pi—”
“Justificated!”
The tiles fell back into place. Other Bellas stepped up, not even noticing anything was amiss. Ci~L shoved Piper, Dylan, Shiraz, and Tookie into the holding area. She pushed them so hard, Tookie tripped over her big feet, nearly tumbling to the grass. Dylan helped her up.
“What was that about?” Dylan whispered to Tookie.
“What, don’t you like the express lane?” Ci~L snapped harshly … but then winked.
Tookie stared at her, puzzled. Was Ci~L on their side or not?
The last of the new Bellas marched into the holding area. Tookie counted one hundred girls in total. She also kept a running tally of the number of SMIZEs. Six. The seventh was Myrracle’s. She was supposed to be here, not Tookie.
Suddenly, the giant gears on the gates began to turn, generating a deep rumble that Tookie could feel in her feet. Slowly, the gates opened inward.
Ci~L bent down to the girls. “All-righty then. My job here has been completed, for now. Back to the torture chamber for me. And the beginning of it for you.”
Shiraz looked alarmed. “Torture for you and us?”
Ci~L shrugged. “Beyond your wildest nightmare. And as for me, I got myself into this mess.”
“What mess?” Tookie inquired, hoping she didn’t sound prying or rude.
But Ci~L just turned away. With a flash of golden light, a hole opened in the ground. Ci~L fell backward into it and was gone.
One by one, all the other Scouts melted or flashed away, leaving the new Bellas alone. The gates continued to roll open. Tookie squinted to make out her very first glimpse of Modelland.
Through the still-narrow slit, she saw that it was like nothing she could ever have imagined.
14
ARANCIA ROSSA DI SICILIA
The gates creaked open to reveal a path through a large entrance hall. Lining the entrance on both sides of the hall were about twenty statues of women, each more glorious and stunning than the one before.
Tookie, Shiraz, Dylan, and Piper slowly walked down the path, awestruck and a little frightened. The statues were massive, and all were in very distinctive poses. One with chin-length hair was doing a split midair. Another with a high ponytail that draped all the way to the ground had limbs that roped around her body like a pretzel. A sign above the figures read IF YOU DO NOT RESPECT US, WE WILL SHAKE, RATTLE, AND ROLL YOU.
Who are they? Tookie thought. What are they?
After they exited the hall of statues, they entered a large clearing. Laser fireworks zinged above them, forming the letters B-I-E-N-V-E-N-U-E one at a time, then W-I-L-L-K-O-M-M-E-N, and finally B-E-N-V-I-N-G-U-D-A. The words fluttered to dust, which tickled the girls when it touched their skin. The scent of rich, sweet citrus filled Tookie’s nostrils, making her mouth water.
“I smelling something good!” Shiraz waved the scent in the air toward her nose.
“It’s arancia rossa di Sicilia,” Piper explained clinically.
“Arancha-what?” Dylan snorted at the air hard.
“I think it’s blood orange,” Tookie said tentatively. “The pulp looks like blood, but they taste so good.”
“This place is so beautiful, it’s blowin’ my mind! Don’t faint, girl,” Dylan chanted to herself. “Don’t faint.”
A crystalline all-glass skyscraper stood before them. It towered high into the sky, shaped like a giant M. The building glowed from the inside, as though radioactive.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Shiraz sang out, stretching her arms and spinning around.
“I’ll give ya my firstborn if ya stop singing everything,” Dylan muttered, but then she shot Shiraz a good-natured smile.
A line of ten girls in matching attire waited in the distance. They looked older than the new Bellas and appeared to be from all different parts of the world—some had blond hair, others had hooded eyes, and others had ebony skin. Strangely, however, their different skin tones and hair colors aside, they kind of resembled each other. They wore two-tone-yellow pointy-shouldered vests and matching leotards over tight pants, their Senturas looped around th
eir waists twice. Shiny diamond-shaped badges fastened to their chests read MODELLAND BELLA TOUR GUIDE.
The troop of uniformed girls surveyed Tookie, Dylan, Shiraz, and Piper as they neared, shooting questioning looks at each other. The question was obvious: what are those four doing here?
I’m wondering that myself, Tookie thought nervously.
“Come, come!” the tour guides called to the advancing girls. Tookie headed toward them. Smooth, seamless gold paved the plaza in front of the M building. As she began to cross it, the ground started to move a bit, wobbling and shimmering ever so slightly.
“Reflection inspection!” one of the uniformed girls bellowed. Suddenly, the gold surface bubbled and curved upward around the line of uniformed girls. With astonishing speed, the material melded into perfect three-dimensional gold versions of each of them.
“Oh my Lordy.” Dylan clutched her breast.
The guides surveyed themselves in their gold reflections, fixing a hair out of place and a smudge of lipstick. The liquid-gold substance mimicked them exactly, a mirror image in three dimensions. Then the guides’ reflections quickly dropped back into the ground, which reverted to a flawless, smooth, caramel-colored surface.
“Now you!” one uniformed girl said to the cluster of new Bellas.
Tookie stuck her toe on the surface. Solid. She walked slowly onto the gold. The other girls from her pouch followed suit. As the golden liquid rose before them, Dylan started to move and pose. She’s good, Tookie thought. But then, instead of mimicking Dylan’s body, the gold formed a giant question mark.
Tookie looked at her own golden shape. It had become a question mark too. So had Piper’s and Shiraz’s. Every other girl in the plaza had a normal gold doppelganger standing before them.
“Ha! The ground is more confused about them than I am!” Zarpessa snorted. The girl named Chaste, whose diamond pasties were threatening to slip off, snickered.
“I’ve never seen the Reflection Pool use punctuation before,” said a voice behind Tookie.
Tookie and her three pouch-mates spun on their heels. Behind them stood a strikingly beautiful, incredibly tall girl wearing the two-tone leotard uniform. She had long, shiny reddish hair with lots of bounce and body, dark brown almond-shaped eyes that turned up in a friendly way, and a smile on her face that made her look as if she was on the verge of bursting into laughter—the kind that laughed with you, not at you.
“Excuse me,” the pretty girl said. “I’m looking for Tookie De La Crème from Peppertown, Metopia.” She had a BayJingle accent.
“Um … that’s me,” Tookie said shyly.
The pretty girl squinted, perplexed. “You’re Tookie? You look … uh … well, anyways, hi! I’m so happy I found you!” She thrust out her hand. “I’m ZhenZhen. It is my destiny to be your Modelland Bella tour guide today.” Then she smiled slyly and whispered, “Well, maybe not exactly my destiny. I swapped my group for yours. But hey, destiny’s what you make it, right? I mean, you flew here in Ci~L, didn’t you? I just had to meet you. I’m kind of obsessed with her.”
Before ZhenZhen could finish gushing, Guru Applaussez, which was passing in a rush, yelled, “ZhenZhen, authenticity and originality are très importants to couture, as they are to identity! Return your cheveux to its color of origin or you’ll be removed from Bella tour guide duties!”
ZhenZhen rubbed her forehead and blinked, as if she was creeping quickly toward a panic attack. “But I look best with this color.”
Guru Applaussez’s hand-head reddened. “If you do not return to your natural color, I will send you to the BellaDonna.”
“Okay, okay!” And then ZhenZhen’s hair morphed from soft reddish-brown waves to pin-straight, waist-length coal-black hair parted down the middle. “Ugh, I hate when they make me change my hair back,” she said morosely. “Look, if Ci~L had long black hair, I wouldn’t mess with Mother Nature, okay? So it’s not about what looks best on me. It’s about what looks best on Ci~L, which in turn looks best on me.”
Dylan was eyeing ZhenZhen like she should be locked up in a mental facility.
“Ci~L select us too!” Shiraz said enthusiastically, pulling Piper and Dylan in for a tight hug.
ZhenZhen grinned at all of them, snapping out of her funk. “Lucky! You all spent intense, intimate time with Ci~L. You got to speak with her, to touch her, to be chosen by her. If I could roll back time and be newbie Bellas like you all and get swooped up in Jingle Square by Ci~L, oh goodness golly gracious, that would be amazing! When I was eleven, I actually tried to change my name to Zhen~L, but my parents refused to let me.
“Okay, on with the Bella tour.” ZhenZhen pulled her shiny, diamond-shaped badge from her chest and peered at it. With a series of clicks and clacks, the badge unfolded until it was the size of a magazine.
ZhenZhen studied it intently. “So, Tookie, I’ve got your name here, but your buddies aren’t on my list. That’s weird.” She rubbed the surface of the card as if that would somehow make the names appear.
Shiraz, Dylan, and Piper looked at one another nervously. Tookie felt a stab of worry too—she didn’t want anything to happen to them.
Then ZhenZhen’s eyes widened at something across the courtyard. Ci~L had appeared once more, standing next to a glowing building. She raised one jeweled tentacle at ZhenZhen and gave her an eerie, wide-eyed look.
“Uh, wait a minute.” ZhenZhen held the card out. “There are three new names here: Dylan of Bou-Big-Tique Nation, Piper of SansColor, and Shiraz Shiraz of Canne Del Abra. Look at that!”
The girls let out sighs of relief. Tookie wondered if Ci~L had had something to do with it. But she couldn’t think about it for too long; when she looked up again, ZhenZhen was halfway across the courtyard, leading them over to a group of new recruits.
This group of girls inspected Dylan, then Shiraz, then Piper, then Tookie. Their eyes grew narrower and their brows more furrowed. Whispers began.
“Oh, sister, we are getting BitterBalled by those girls,” Dylan muttered.
“BitterBalled?” Piper raised an eyebrow.
“BitterBalls are in aisle five ninety-two at the Bou-Big-Tique,” Dylan explained. “They clear up all sorts of gastrointestinal problemos, but Lordy, the expression your face gets stuck in while your belly is gettin’ healed is a stinker.”
“I see your point, Dylan,” Piper admitted. “These young ladies probably think we cheapen the prize.”
ZhenZhen and the girls stopped at the group Zarpessa and Chaste were in, which didn’t have a Bella tour leader. “I’m head tour guide,” ZhenZhen said, “and I’ll take you two groups from here. Stay with me! I wouldn’t want you to get clawed on your first day.” She laughed nervously.
Clawed? Tookie wondered.
ZhenZhen led the girls down a long, crescent-shaped path toward the left side of the M building. “The entire golden area in front of the M building is called the M plaza,” she recited. “The M building houses the BellaDonna and all of the Modelland administration and who knows what else. One must never go inside unless explicitly invited.”
She gestured to her left. “All the way down this path and directly on the other side of the M building is the O, where later the BellaDonna will welcome you. Can you guess what it stands for?”
“Ovaries?” Chaste called out slyly.
“Obi?” tried a girl from Fuji.
“Ox tongue!” Shiraz yelled.
“Oddballs?” Tookie whispered.
“No!” ZhenZhen grinned. “The O is for …” She drew it out, pausing for effect. “Opera!”
Shiraz’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Opera? We get to do the singing here at the Modelland too? Oohwee! I sing lead!”
“Unfortunately, Shiraz,” ZhenZhen lamented, “you will not be the star of that show.”
Then ZhenZhen launched back into her tour script. “The BellaDonna is the latest generation of the Modelland royal line and has commanded the school for ten years. The statues that lined the entrance
hall? Past BellaDonnas.”
The group strolled down the path until they came upon a circle of floating images of the world’s current most famous Intoxibellas. There was a special section for the newest 7Sevens, the ones Tookie had seen at the demonstration the other day: Evanjalinda, Simone, Sinndeesi, Leemora, Katoocha, Bev Jo, and Exodus. Seeing Exodus’s name sent a pang through Tookie’s chest. Our escape plan. Lizzie. What was she doing now? Where had she gone?
“Why that one all staticky?” Shiraz whispered, pointing to one.
“Maybe I can fix it,” Piper suggested. “Who is it?”
ZhenZhen bit her lip. “It’s my glorious and most magnificent Ci~L. But I can’t speak about why her image is fuzzy. It hurts my heart too much.”
Tookie and the girls looked at each other. “Please tell us,” Tookie said.
“God, don’t you know anything?” Zarpessa piped up, catching up to them from the back of the group. “Ci~L went rogue. My colorist’s aunt’s sister’s grandfather’s daughter knows her, and she said Ci~L lost her mind trying to beat to her own crazy drum.”
ZhenZhen winced. “Oh, please don’t say it like that.”
But Zarpessa breezed on, enjoying knowing something the others did not. “And my uncle’s daughter’s best friend’s designer buddy told me that the reason Ci~L is back at Modelland is because she’s being punished for being off message.”
Chaste looked impressed at Zarpessa’s knowledge. All the girls in the group chattered with this new bit of gossip. Tookie’s ears burned with the sounds of different languages swarming around her.
Words from Kwaito, the land of safaris and tribal dance filled the air. “I wonder how they’re punishing her.…”
Phrases from TooLip, the land of windmills, engulfed her. “Do you think she’ll lose her Intoxibella status forever?”
Two girls muttered in Pyramidian, “Has Ci~L truly lost her mind?”
Chaste snorted. “Ci~L’s gone loony. She brought them here.” She gestured to Tookie and the others. BitterBalls for sure.
“Enough gossip!” ZhenZhen said angrily. She bolted ahead of the group, holding herself stiffly, and turned down a narrow sidewalk off the main path. The group stood in front of an enormous wall of twisted trees and plants with rapidly moving large bulbs and ivylike vines. All made of fabric, Tookie assumed. As they watched, the vine wall sprouted immense burgundy- and eggplant-hued metal thorns.