Modelland

by Tyra Banks

  Chaste guffawed in the audience. Tookie’s stomach did its familiar lurch. MattJoe ducked his head, ran his hand over his bald spot, then quickly measured his features once more. “You have a sharp tongue, Miss Zarpessa,” he murmured. “Perhaps it cuts too sharply,” he added under his breath, his voice cracking.

  He turned to Ci~L. “You’re next.”

  Ci~L shut her eyes. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything. Tookie could feel Dylan breathing shallowly beside her.

  Then Ci~L’s hair started to blow wildly around her face. She opened her mouth to speak: “Yes, lustrous is your hair,” she began. “Agreed, bewitching is your stare.”

  It’s a poem! Tookie realized. But she was also confused. Ci~L was looking at Zarpessa, not at Tookie and Dylan.

  Ci~L continued:

  “Perhaps perfection is your snout.

  Queen bees have stung your handsome pout.

  What lies within your cantankerous head:

  Infected hard pus in ol’ blackheads.

  Strength be with you, ’pessa, as you fade

  whilst the UL’s dance upon your grave.”

  When she was finished, Tookie felt the urge to cry and clap at the same time. Unfortunately, her bound wrists prevented her from applauding. Zarpessa’s eyes narrowed, but then she lowered her gaze and swallowed hard. It looked as though Ci~L had actually gotten to her.

  MattJoe paused from measuring the squareness of his chin and looked at Tookie and Dylan. “You’re on, Bellas.”

  Tookie’s mind raced, and her heart started to beat faster. She gazed at Ci~L in her uncomfortably small uniform. It was clever and generous the way Ci~L had defended Tookie and her friends, but Tookie had a strong gut feeling it was just a consolation prize, a pat on the back before they were inevitably booted out of here or turned into Mannecants. This might be the only time Tookie would be able to tell Ci~L her feelings. And so she took a deep breath, stared into Ci~L’s green eyes, and began to speak in her own special way: in letter form, as though she were writing in her T-Mail Jail.

  “Dear Ci~L,” she said. “When you chose me on The Day of Discovery, you were my savior. When your hand touched mine and not my sister’s, it was surreal. Suddenly, I wanted something so badly that I never knew I really desired. You’re amazing. You’ve accomplished so much. You stand up for what you believe is right. But I lie awake at night thinking about you. Sometimes I’m confused, sometimes I’m proud of you, and often, I think you are deeply troubled, perhaps even mentally ill. But mostly, I tend to think the latter.

  “Zarpessa says she has no idea why my friends and I are here at Modelland. It’s not like I have a clue either. I know people here see a midget and a whale and a ghost and a freak of nature. My friends know it too. Maybe our presence at Modelland is just a big joke. Or something else. A sacrifice.” She paused, glancing up at the room. Her friends visibly shuddered. Zarpessa grinned.

  “Maybe this whole place is only in my dreams and none of you really exist. Still, I’m happy here. I’ve never felt better. But there’s a harsh truth I have to face up to: ideal beauty is the only accepted and celebrated kind. Take my sister, Myrracle. Whenever she walks into a room anywhere, people lose all self-control, laser focused on making sure she’s taken care of, made comfortable, kept happy. And they don’t even know her.” Tookie paused for a moment. “So that is proof within itself that the definition of beauty is universally narrow. While my sister is worshipped, I am ignored, forgotten, the quintessential Forgetta-Girl. We all have a place in life, and for the majority of mine, that’s all I’ve been. And I think that’s all I’ll ever be.

  “Ci~L, Thank you for standing up for me earlier. But please allow me to accept my fate. Your crusade is useless, pointless. Perhaps it’s what is driving you insane.

  “From one Unfortunate-Looking girl to one unquestionably ravishing one, Tookie De La Crème.”

  Beside her, Dylan gasped. In the audience, Shiraz and Piper held each other, tears in their eyes. The Sentura bindings on their wrists released. Zarpessa, who looked overjoyed, opened her mouth to speak, but Ci~L cleared her throat and spoke over her, venom lacing her voice.

  “They have lobotomized you!” she cried, staring straight at Tookie. “We’ve all been brainwashed to think that beauty is this”—she pointed to her own face—“or that”—she pointed to Chaste—“or that or that or that!” She pointed in turn to Bibiana, MeLikee, and Zarpessa.

  “When in fact, if we reprogram our brainwashed-with-extra-strength-bleach minds, it can be that!”—she jabbed her finger at Shiraz—“and that”—she motioned to Piper—“and this!” She grabbed hold of Tookie’s face. “And—”

  “Fat!” Dylan screamed.

  The class froze. Zarpessa let out a snicker.

  “What?” Tookie and Ci~L said at the same time.

  “Y’all listen to me right now!” Dylan yelled, trembling. “There may be different types of girls in this room from different countries all over this damn different world. But y’all have ONE thing in common! And I refuse to stand here and state the obvious!” She gestured to her body. “Y’all can debate ‘unique features’ this and ‘atypical looks’ that all damn day long, but what in the hell is unique about me? A waist as wide as this damn sphere is round, legs as thick as tree trunks, a butt as big as the Bou-Big-Tique Nation! Oh, ladies, do not waste any more of my precious time with your nonsense word war. Because none of it, not a smidgeon, not a drop, not a damn thing pertains to me!”

  Ci~L looked enraged. “Dylan, beauty is what we believe it to be. If you would just look in the damn mirror, girl, you’d appreciate—”

  “That’s where you’re dead wrong, Ci~L!” Dylan’s lips were quivering uncontrollably. “You may be right about one thing, that beauty is what we believe it to be, but that’s from the neck up! And you know it!”

  Ci~L shook her head. “Oh, so, you’re going to give up that easily, coward? You’re just as bad as they are! You have to defend your body! To the death, if you have to!”

  “Shut up, Ci~L! Just shut. The hell. UP!”

  Dylan ripped the plus sign off of her head and ran to the circle outline in the floor. She frantically jumped up and down on it until it finally glided open, sucking her out of the classroom’s sphere.

  “Dylan!” Tookie, Piper, and Shiraz yelled.

  But Dylan was gone.

  Guru MattJoe pressed a palm over his eyes. “Tookie, your partner has committed acts of insolent yelling, unsavory language, and departing class before being dismissed. But that being said, your arguments, well, they were the most eloquent speeches I’ve heard in quite some time. Your words cut so close, got to the root of what we all feel—well, many of us feel, anyway. Yep, yep.” He paused to nervously clear his throat. “Well done, my dear. Tookie, you have won your first War of Words.”

  Tookie barely heard Guru MattJoe congratulating her. The circle had opened again. “Dylan?” she cried, rushing toward it. But it was Persimmon. She stalked right up to Guru MattJoe.

  “You let her spout her sickening poems without doing anything about it?” she hissed at the Guru. “How dare you! While we work overtime to reform Ci~L, your lackadaisical attitude has regressed her reprogramming by a fortnight! You know who you will have to answer to for this.”

  Guru MattJoe turned away, looking guilty but satisfied. Persimmon re-dressed Ci~L in the gray Ugly Room jumpsuit and replaced the muzzle on her face.

  “Class is allowed to, um, depart!” MattJoe announced. “I’ll see you soon, but now I have to go make a, uh, a special deposit, yep, yep.”

  “Ew,” Chaste snickered. “I can only imagine what kind of deposit he’s talking about.”

  MattJoe ignored her and pressed a button under his stool. All the jewels and other metal paraphernalia stuck to the wall crashed to the floor. The Likee sisters rushed to the sparkling pieces, pocketing items Tookie had a feeling weren’t theirs. Tookie grabbed her T O OKE button and flower brooch before the Likees could steal those too, t
hen followed Shiraz and Piper to the center of the circle and out of the Magnetosphere. Once they were on the ground, they spotted Dylan in the distance, running into the plaid cube balanced on one of its points. They darted off after her.

  They entered the cube through a door just above the balance point. Dylan was climbing a stepladder up ahead. “Dylan!” Shiraz screamed. “Why you run? We want talk to you!”

  But Dylan didn’t answer. The girls scrambled up the ladder after her and entered a hallway that smelled strangely of wet fur. As the girls careened down the increasingly narrow hall, a loud hissing sound reverberated off the walls.

  “Dylan! Are you in here?” Tookie yelled.

  The noisy hiss ended in a piercing screech. The girls ground to a halt. “What was that?” Piper looked at the others with terrified eyes.

  “Do you think it was … Dylan?” Tookie whispered.

  The screeching escalated, growing into a full chorus of growls and hisses. All of a sudden, Shiraz’s eyes widened. “I know where we are!”

  At that, words lit up on the corridor’s wall. They looked like they’d been written with ragged claws. Tookie read them silently, her heart sinking to her feet.

  “Catwalk Corridor!” Shiraz screamed.

  And that was when the first set of claws ripped into Tookie’s flesh.

  25

  ONE BEE-YOTCHHH

  Tookie grabbed hold of her ankle and felt a warm flow of blood trickling to her foot. She wiped her hand on the pants leg of her uniform. She could hear the hisses and vicious animal noises growing closer. Something furry and blurry moved in the darkness. And then, suddenly, a shining claw reached out again and struck her mouth. Rip!

  “Ow!” Tookie whispered. The familiar trickle of blood dripped down her chin. Joining the trickle was a tickle at the back of Tookie’s nose and throat. “Achoooo!”

  “Bless you,” came a high-pitched female voice with an accent from the slums of the famed country of TooLip. “And hallo, big noggin’. Aren’t yoo an oogly one!”

  “Hey there, bigfoot.” Something soft and furry brushed up against her leg.

  Tookie tensed. “Who’s there?”

  Her throat itched something terrible. Hives broke out on her skin. As her eyes adjusted to the dim hallway light, she saw hundreds of eyes staring back at her.

  “Cats!” Piper screamed.

  Two striped animals with amber eyes slinked out of the shadows, stalking Tookie, Shiraz, and Piper. Their fuchsia-painted claws extended like switchblades. In even dimmer light, the larger of the two stopped to lick its paws and rear end.

  “Whatchoo lookin’ at, nosey?” a voice scoffed. “Can’t I bathe in peace without your ugly butt staring at my beauty and my booty?”

  Dozens of felines crept out of the shadows, their tails puffed, their backs arched, their eyes flashing green, amber, and yellow. They hissed and spat in unison.

  Tookie’s eyes felt like they were on fire. She was having a monster of an allergic reaction.

  The cat’s fuchsia claws extended more, and it prepared to pounce on Tookie. Tookie turned to run, but a massive gate slid from the ceiling and slammed down in front of her, the spikes at the bottom piercing the floor. She was trapped.

  Then she spied a fluffy, long-haired white cat lounging lazily on a high shelf. Its sapphire eyes widened. As Tookie peered more closely, a strange realization came over her. This was no ordinary feline. Its face looked human. To Tookie’s astonishment, the cat stared straight at her and spoke.

  “Can you do a Persian a favor?” it said. “Before my hair gets any more tangled and ends up looking like your heinous and confused bird’s nest of a head, can you comb mine, please? I haven’t seen my hairdresser in weeks.”

  Tookie’s hand instinctively reached up to her own hair, but stopped midway to her head. She felt ashamed that a cat, even one with a human face, could make her so insecure. Not only did the Persian have a human face, Tookie realized, but she looked oddly familiar. A lot like the Intoxibella Anka, who was a favorite at Cappuccina fashion week. At least, Tookie thought, it wasn’t Anka’s overcaffeinated, high-strung best friend Fiona, who drove everyone crazy.

  Tookie sneezed again, and then turned and saw that Piper had been backed against a wall by a gang of hairless sphynxes. “Blank girl needs some color!” they chanted in unison. “Take one of these.…” The skinniest of the cats extended its paw to Piper, revealing a round pill that glowed green. “It will make your skin toasty and rich-colored.”

  “And you won’t sleep for days!” a mangy tabby cat added.

  Wow, Tookie thought. The tabby looked like hyperactive Fiona from Icylann.

  A Siamese with oddly human lips, large blue eyes, and a conniving smile, which looked a lot like an Intoxibella Tookie had seen in Wrinkle Redux ads, was no competition for Shiraz’s blazing speed. “I’ve coughed up fur balls bigger than you!” the Siamese spat at Shiraz as the girl dodged a paw with ease.

  “You look like Intoxibella Phara!” Shiraz exclaimed, noticing the cat’s human resemblance to the model whose famous crescent-moon-shaped eyes sold countless tubes of mascara.

  “The repugnant, moronic, miniature midget is correct!” the Siamese jeered, the hair on her back standing on end. “Phara, the Princess of Verbal Barbarisms, Modelland magazine calls me.”

  “So wait, you actually are the Intoxibella?” Tookie asked. “How?”

  The cats didn’t answer—they’d all noticed something at the end of the hallway. The Catwalk Corridor sign suddenly burned brighter, revealing the arrival of two more girls: Zarpessa and Chaste.

  Dozens of cats circled their ankles. A calico zeroed in on Zarpessa, murmuring, “I want this pretty one right here!” Then, to everyone’s horror, it squatted and urinated on Zarpessa’s feet, marking its territory. “This one is Mine. Mine! MINE!”

  Zarpessa screeched and ran away, frantically shaking her feet. All the cats laughed.

  Tookie sneezed several times. Then she felt a tap on her leg. “Hey, you.” It was the scrawny hairless sphynx. “Want one?” She offered Tookie a pill. “Like me, they’re hypoallergenic, and no side effects, except for a little fun.…”

  Tookie shook her head. A shiny-furred Abyssinian that looked exactly like the Intoxibella Daisy-Ellen from FiveHundred bit her leg. “Ow!”

  “That ankle was tasty,” Daisy-Ellen cooed, batting her eyeliner-rimmed eyes. “Tasty like sweet cream. I want me some more!”

  “Sweet cream?” a black cat that sounded just like the Intoxibella Donyelle exclaimed. “Gimme some of that!”

  “Get your own leg!” Daisy-Ellen screeched.

  “No, I want this one!” Donyelle yowled, extending her claws.

  “Me-owch!” Daisy-Ellen screamed, and pounced on Donyelle.

  The felines landed on top of Tookie’s head. Tookie felt their claws dig into her mouth and she screamed in pain again. She gazed across the room at Piper. “We have to find a way out of here! Has anyone seen Dylan?”

  Piper ran over and grabbed Tookie’s hand. They raced down the corridor. “Come on!” Paws swiped at them from all sides.

  When they reached the end of the corridor, Shiraz, Zarpessa, and Chaste stood in the way, staring at something obscured in shadows. They all looked horrified.

  “What is it?” Tookie asked, clutching Shiraz’s shoulder.

  “Not sure,” Shiraz mumbled, her voice quavering. “But look!”

  She pointed at an audience of cats facing the same direction. Loud, wailing purrs came from deep within their throats, echoing through the hallway. Slowly, they all began to make yowling noises at the obscured shadow. They bent down on their front legs and arched their backs, then buried their heads under their paws, as if they were praying to whatever lay before them in the darkness.

  Suddenly, a light illuminated the mysterious being. It was an oversized lion’s face. Its eyes were golden and its mouth was practically as large as the wall.

  The girls held their breath. The cats remained sil
ent and still. The lion-face’s expression changed from ferocious to enraged. Tookie sucked in her breath even more. The face looked remarkably like the BellaDonna.

  “I am utterly ashamed of each and every one of you pathetic, paltry pussycats,” it roared in the BellaDonna’s voice. “You Intoxibellas have been in this incarcerated purgatory for an exponential amount of time and still behave like the savage animals I’ve turned you into!”

  The cats bowed their heads in shame. The BellaDonna lion exhaled and fire spewed from its nostrils, singing the whiskers of the front row of cats. The smell of wet and burned fur mixed with the stench of kitty litter.

  The BellaDonna lion continued. “The Catwalk Corridor was created as a correctional facility for you to reverse your abominable behavior—to be domesticated. This is a jail to teach you to stop being such catty wenches. Because in the land of Intoxibellas, whether down below in society or up here at our beloved Modelland: There. Is. Room. For. Only. One. Bee-yotchhh.” She made the last word sound like an extended, pissed-off meow.

  “And you, my despicable dears, are looking right at her,” the lion boomed. “I am ashamed that you malicious models cannot utter one single positive phrase to those you come upon. You will remain confined to the corridors until you change your evil ways! And not a day before that redeeming day will I release the curse that has been put upon you. Return to your pens, now!”

  The cats ran toward the lion-face and jumped into its golden eye sockets. As the Daisy-Ellen-faced Abyssinian jumped through one of the openings, she yelled, “Watch out, De La Crème. This kitty-cat got a taste of your sweetness and wants more of your cream!”

  After all the cats vanished, the lion opened its mouth even wider and extended its tongue out like a cushy red carpet. Its jagged teeth dripped saliva, and its hot breath blew through the girls’ hair.