Modelland

by Tyra Banks

  The vats then crashed to the floor and morphed into elevators, one per girl. Guru Lauro gestured to them. “Even though Tookie already had dessert, you other Bellas haven’t! Get in, mates!”

  The girls boarded the food-vat carriages. The elevators didn’t go up or down, however, but slid across the floor and transported everyone to a nearby building.

  The sound of gushing water filled the air. The elevator doors opened, revealing a bank of group showers in a shiny facility of chrome and translucent surfaces. But the liquid spurting from the nozzles was anything but clear. One nozzle spurted rich cassis. Another spouted thick deep-brown liquid. Another showerhead’s waterfall was a rich tan hue. The smell tickled Tookie’s nostrils. Lovely scents filled the air. Caramel. Boysenberry. And …

  “Marshmallow!” Dylan swooned, eyeing the fluffy confection streaming from the showerhead. She looked as though she was about to faint.

  “I’m showering you with sweet treats, mates!” Guru Lauro encouraged them. “Go for gold!”

  The girls rushed to the showers—all except the Likees, who stood on the sidelines, sucking their mints. Chaste checked to make sure the Guru wasn’t watching, then knocked down a brunette girl as she gunned for the dark chocolate shower. Tookie ran over to the fallen brunette, scooped her up, and then made a break for the salted caramel stream, cupping her hands under the faucet and burying her face in her palms. Zarpessa stuck her mouth under a maple syrup spray, but her showerhead jammed as it forced out broken bits of pecan pralines. Letting out a frustrated wail, she ripped the fixture from the wall, allowing a solid stream of maple pecan praline sauce to flow directly into her wide-open mouth. Kamalini let about nine heaping tablespoons of pistachio coulis drip onto her tongue, emitted a pleasant squeal, and wiped her chin clean, being extra careful to not let her Headbangor get soaked.

  Dylan dove headlong into the marshmallow shower. The liquid covered her hair and face and melted over her uniform, legs, and arms. There was a look on her face as if her actions were involuntary. “It’s so good,” she kept crying. “Just so good!”

  “Last lick, Bella mates!” Lauro bellowed, and moments later, the showers all dried up. Moans and groans filled the room. “I hope you enjoyed the feast as much as I enjoyed feeding you. Now it’s time for the lesson on Jammers, Chowers, and Poachers.”

  She approached the oyster-and-chocolate-covered Chaste, pulled a green stamp from under her chef/cowboy hat, and pressed it on Chaste’s wrist. “Hey!” Chaste said. She stared at her new brand. Gut Chower, it said in square green letters.

  “You ate very slowly, and when you reached your perfect amount, you stopped, never getting overfull,” Lauro explained.

  “That’s the first time anyone has ever told me it’s good to stop even when something feels really good.” Chaste licked a bit of leftover chocolate off her thumb.

  Lauro glared at her.

  Then Guru Lauro circled the room. Kamalini also got a Gut Chower stamp for eating steadily and continuously and for eating the side of Vitamin C–loaded spiced cauliflower that had come with her samosas. Then Lauro approached the Likees. When the four girls stuck out their hands, their stamps glowed red and said Gut Poacher.

  “We need to talk, ladies,” Lauro said quietly. “You’re restricting nutrients your Bella belly needs. And feeling awful about nutrients you do get.”

  The Likees stiffened. “That’s. Not. True. Guru.”

  The Guru gave them a warm look. “When you want help, I hope you give me a bell.”

  When Guru Lauro approached Zarpessa, only half of the stamp would materialize in the Guru’s hands—the word Gut. “Okay, Zarpessa, I must admit, with all roo respect, your munching habits are doing my head in. For now, one thing’s for sure: you have a gut. So here ya go, mate.” And she stamped Zarpessa plain and simple Gut.

  Then she approached Tookie. A red stamp marred Tookie’s hand: Gut Jammer.

  “You eat with the voraciousness of a preggers Tasmanian devil during her first trimester,” Lauro explained. “However, your stomach is telling me that it’s never full. Is this true?”

  Tookie nodded. This woman really can read my stomach’s mind.

  “All the tummy stuffing in the world won’t fill out your fragile frame, mate. Not anytime soon, anyway. When you reach your twenties, your rear may begin to plump up, and then you’ll be cryin’ a different tune. Until then—and even after then—be happy with what the looking glass tells ya. It ain’t half bad, kid.”

  Ain’t half bad, Tookie thought. It was as though Lauro had told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world.

  Finally, Lauro walked over to Dylan, who was still licking residual marshmallow off the webby spaces between her fingers. She red-stamped her hand Gut Jammer too. “You’re also a shoveler.”

  “Just today I am,” Dylan said quickly. “I haven’t guzzled like that in I don’t know how long—really. And anyway, can you blame me? I was starved!”

  Lauro gave her an I-know-better look. “I’m also picking up that food has an emotional effect on you.”

  Dylan froze. “No it doesn’t.”

  The Guru held Dylan’s gaze. Dylan lowered her eyes.

  Then Lauro tucked the stamps back into her hat and faced the class. “For the few of you who will make it all the way to Intoxibella status, there are few things that will challenge you more than food. What to have, when to have it, how to have it, whether to have it. Starvation and oversatiation are not acceptable, mates. Models are known for restricting their food or going on binges, but that’s not what we’re going for here. And besides …” Guru Lauro trailed off, making a face. “Those lolli-headed leading ladies restrict as well. Worse than models, in my roo opinion. But here, moderation is what we’re going for. One of the things I’ll be teaching you here is how to find your balance. All your future meals will be designed by me. How you eat is important to your success. I hate to sound like I’m up myself, but this is the most important class you’ll be taking at Modelland.”

  “Yeah, yeah, our last Guru said that too,” Chaste said, rolling her eyes.

  The girl named Bibiana from Terra BossaNova raised her hand. “What do you mean, future meals designed for us? I’m so full, I feel like I don’t need to eat for a week.”

  A smile stretched across the Guru’s lips. She tipped her chef/cowboy hat again, and the same yellow smoke swirled. “Here’s a little present from you to me. The gift of renewed appetite! You’re now so hungry, you could eat the ass out of a low-flying duck!”

  The dessert showers retracted into the floors, revealing an entryway into an enormous room filled with modular tables lying within cutouts in the floor. The wall to the left contained floor-to-ceiling windows, the BellaDonna statue clearly visible through the glass. The wall to the right was made of hundreds of tiny glass doors, each with a mouthwatering dish of food inside it. The doors were separated into color-coded sections and labeled with the three designations that Lauro had given the girls in the shower room: Gut Chower, Gut Jammer, Gut Poacher. The wall in front of the girls boasted the name of the establishment in large letters: EATZ.

  “I get it,” Tookie said. “M is Modelland, O is Opera, D is Dorms, and E is—”

  “Eatz,” Zarpessa interrupted sarcastically. “Wow. You’re so brilliant.”

  Dylan narrowed her eyes.

  “There has to be an L,” Tookie said, ignoring Zarpessa.

  “Yeah, stands for L’idiot,” Zarpessa mumbled under her breath. “Like you.”

  “How about Lame-o,” Dylan spat back, unable to hold it in any longer. “Like you.”

  Zarpessa’s eyes blazed. “Lardass!”

  Chaste snickered.

  Dylan whipped around to face Chaste. “Loose Lucy!”

  “Loudmouth!” Zarpessa retorted, a little bit of spit spewing from her mouth. “Leech lizard!”

  “Lay off! Lay off!” Tookie interrupted, inserting herself between the two of them.

  Dylan turned away, but she was sm
iling wide, having gotten in the last L insult. Chaste and Zarpessa shot Tookie and Dylan looks that seemed to say Just you wait, hags. You’ve done it now.

  An upperclassBella approached the Eatz wall and spoke into a large pair of lips. “AmberJoi of AngelCity, cream of wheatgrass soup and a side of wheat toast with butter.” With a brief chime, a door opened and a steaming bowl shot out. In it was the most hideous-looking grass-green soup Tookie had ever seen.

  “This is the E, Bellas,” Lauro announced. “Your cafeteria. And I am its executive chef. Enjoy, ladies. Dine! Appreciate! But please—try to find balance.”

  “We’re supposed to dine now?” Zarpessa looked nervously from the upperclassBellas to the rotting food all over her uniform. “We look certifiable!”

  “I know, mate,” Lauro replied. A roo jerky materialized in front of her again, and she chased after it, pinning it with her chopsticks and popping it in her mouth. “But no Bella’s first day is complete without a stinky, sloppy, slimy trip to the E. Just another part of earning your keep here at Modelland. Bon appétit!”

  Everyone collected their Senturas from a bin and hurried to the wall of goodies. Only Dylan remained where she was, her bottom lip trembling slightly, still covered in marshmallow, her Sentura held limply in her sticky hand.

  Tookie touched her arm. “You okay?”

  Dylan flinched, then tried a smile. “Loved her Didgeri-whatever accent. She was nice, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Something about Dylan seemed … deflated. Tookie wanted to ask what it was, but she was afraid of upsetting her. So she pulled Dylan toward the Eatz wall, trying to ignore the scornful looks from the upperclassBellas. “All of the girls in our class look cuh-ray-zee, so why the heck are them Bellas only starin’ at us? I mean, they actin’ like our genes are contagious or somethin’,” Tookie joked, trying to imitate Dylan in an effort to cheer her up.

  Just then, a loud, collective coo erupted from the other Bellas. The girls nearest the windows rushed to look outside. The rest of the Bellas in the room followed the stampede.

  “Sexified succulence!” someone cried.

  “I’m going to hyper-hyper-hyperventilate!” moaned a girl wearing large sunglasses.

  “I called firsties!” exclaimed Chaste. “And lasties! And tops and bottoms!”

  Tookie and Dylan drifted toward the window. Kamalini stood behind them, trying to peer out too. But there wasn’t an inch of space, and no one seemed to want to move aside to give them room. Finally, Dylan pulled over three chairs and stood on one. Tookie and Kamalini jumped onto the others. Outside the window, three strapping young men walked the length of the building. They held a girder of steel over their heads. A photographer snapped their picture again and again.

  Tookie squinted hard at the rippling muscles and chiseled face of one of the guys. He was staring, mesmerized, at a building to the left of the E. She knew him. It was the boy who’d wanted to help her with directions earlier that day.

  “Anyone know who he is?” a girl screeched, pointing to him.

  I do, Tookie wanted to say.

  “His name is Bravo!” responded another student. “The other two are Webb and Alexander!”

  The girls began frantically tapping the glass.

  Webb and Alexander noticed the girls and smiled, waved, and licked their lips. Bravo shifted his gaze from the building to the girls, but just smiled politely to the group and then looked away. That just stirred up the girls even more. They slammed their knuckles against the glass.

  Bravo tossed the steel girder into the air for a series of action pictures. He caught it once. The photographer snapped the camera. The girls inhaled. He caught it a second time. The girls exhaled. Show-off, Tookie thought.

  He tossed it a third time and the girder slipped out of his fingers and came hurtling down, sharp edge first, snagging the skin on his forearm. The girls cried out in unison.

  Then it happened. Something no one in all of Modelland could have predicted. The bleeding Bravo looked up at the window and focused on only one face.

  A whipped-cream-caked, punch-bowl-headed girl with one green eye and one brown eye, to be exact.

  22

  FUSED FLASHBACK FEMALES

  Bravo’s gaze remained fixed on Tookie. Tookie stood back, utterly confused as to why he was looking at her and only her.

  The girls around her, including Dylan and Kamalini, seemed just as perplexed. Zarpessa let out a horselike snort. “Come on, everyone, don’t you get it? He’s staring at her because he’s never seen someone with such an enormous head.”

  Bravo reached up and made a wiping gesture across his nose. On instinct, Tookie touched her nose too. To her horror, a trail of creamy pea-green slime appeared on her fingers. She’d been staring out the window with a giant whipped-cream booger on her face. She didn’t know whether to run to find a tissue or a bush to hide behind.

  “Can someone explain why you are pressing your nasty hands against our windows?”

  The girls turned to see Persimmon standing in the doorway. “Get in a single-file line,” she demanded. “Now!” The Bellas ran to obey.

  “Where are we going?” Chaste called out as Persimmon spun around and marched into a dark, narrow hallway. In the distance was a bright flickering light. “I was just about to flash my breastosteros.”

  “You need to get that filthy mouth of yours cleaned up,” Persimmon said in a disgusted voice.

  The fluttering light at the end of the hallway expanded into an immense glowing circle. A Mannecant stood at a reception desk shaped like the letters H, O, and A. The letters moved around in a disorganized jumble, probably making it hard to set anything on the surface. There was a great round room behind the desk, its walls covered in a furry-looking fabric and its ceiling gently pulsing up and down, as if breathing.

  “I know where we are!” Zarpessa boasted. “The OoAh!”

  A breathy voice from high above whispered “Oooo-ahhhh!” with great satisfaction. The letters of the desk moved to spell OOAH. The smell of blood oranges wafted through the air.

  “This is the place where seasoned Bellas go to have their aching joints soothed after their intense 7Seven Tournament training,” Zarpessa told them self-importantly while staring at herself in the mirror behind the reception desk. “It’s also where instructors and visiting Intoxibellas go to be primed and primped. We have one of these attached to my bedroom at home, you know. But it’ll be so much more fun to experience this with all of you!”

  Tookie and Dylan both rolled their eyes. Yeah, right, Tookie mouthed.

  Six blank-eyed Mannecants appeared from invisible doors, towels in their hands. Persimmon turned to the Bellas. “You will break up into groups of three girls. Each group will be led by its own Mannecant. And the rules are … well … enjoy yourselves. That’s it.” She seemed very pained to issue such a command.

  A Mannecant waved an ornate hand mirror over the group. Instantly, light in one of six colors fell onto the girls. Three Bellas glowed burgundy, making them a group; Zarpessa, Chaste, and Bibiana were color-coded fire-engine-red. Tookie, Dylan, and Kamalini, the last girls in line, glowed canary-yellow.

  The Mannecants’ plastic bodies shimmered with the colors that matched their group. A yellow-glowing Mannecant approached Tookie, Dylan, and Kamalini. “Follow, please follow,” she said in a barely perceptible monotone.

  The yellow Mannecant walked them briskly down one of the many paths that split off from the round room. The other groups of girls went down different hallways. Tookie let her hand drag along the soft white wall. “Cashmere,” she whispered. Creamy had had a suit made in the stuff a few years ago. Of course, only a month or so later, she’d discarded it, deeming it past its prime. Thinking of Creamy, Tookie got a pang. What is she doing right now? Does she miss me at all?

  “What kinda place has cashmere on its walls?” Dylan whispered.

  Kamalini nodded. “I know. It’s ridiculous. Shameful, even.”

  The Mannecant led Tookie, Dy
lan, and Kamalini into an expansive rectangular room with a metal floor and walls. Rows and rows of polished stone slabs filled the room, dozens of Bellas lying atop them. Tookie recognized some of the girls from Mastication, but there were others there she had never seen. All the girls were completely nude except for Tookie, Kamalini, and Dylan.

  “The OoAh will remove your soiled clothing, shoes, and underwear,” the yellow Mannecant informed them.

  Dylan stopped short, looking warily at the other girls in the room. “Is there a private area I can use to change? I don’t want all these chicks lookin’ at my booty.”

  “I too feel quite uncomfortable with the idea of getting disrobed while so many look on,” Kamalini seconded.

  Tookie didn’t want to get naked around all these people either.

  “Lie down on the last three slabs there,” the Mannecant instructed flatly, pointing.

  The girls hesitantly obeyed. Dozens of hands came up from under the slabs and removed their clothes. The hands were just like those that had dressed Tookie in the THBC bubble and Ci~L at Run-a-Way. Tookie covered her private parts with her own hands. Kamalini did the same. Tookie felt cold, vulnerable, and certain everyone was staring at her, so she fixed her gaze on the ceiling instead. Someone had written something on the tiles in black pen. GEENA HAS TWO SECRETS. ONE: SHE HATES Ci~L. TWO: IT RHYMES WITH DESTROY.

  Next a strong cushion of air pushed the girls above the stone slabs so that they hovered over their tables. Warm water spewed down from openings above them. Water rushed up at them as well, seemingly gushing from the surface of the stone. The water changed from soapy to dingy to soapy to clear, finally becoming a citrusy orangish spray. Tookie closed her eyes, trying to relax and not fret about her exposed, awkward body.