Modelland

by Tyra Banks

  Tookie and Piper approached the check-in counter. A woman who looked about one hundred and fifty years old sat behind the desk. She wore an elaborate sage-green cape made of multiple types of pistols, knives, nooses, and razors, with a hat shaped like a pair of angry scissors. Upon closer inspection, Tookie realized that the blades of the scissors were really blades. Sharp serrated knives. Comforting, Tookie thought. “Uh, excuse me, ma’am,” she began.

  The old woman’s eyes bulged. “ ‘Ma’am’? You called me ma’am? Ohhhh noooo … you should never call me that. My name is Purse Drestookill. Remember that, because from the looks of those enormous feet of yours, I’m sure you’re quite a clumsy one, am I right?”

  Tookie opened her mouth, but no words came out. At Modelland, I guess nurses are called purses, she realized. You shoulda seen that coming, Tookie!

  Purse Drestookill sighed and shuffled some papers behind the desk. “The Corridor Kitties have tetanus on their claws. Pretty soon you’ll be spasming, so you’ll be called shortly.” Then Purse Drestookill put her head down on the desk and aimed her scissor/knife hat toward Tookie. “Place your arm in my head device, please.”

  Tookie backed away. “Uh … excuse me?”

  The woman frowned. “You heard me, little Miss Forehead the Size of the South Seas! Do it!”

  Tookie looked to Piper for help, but Piper just motioned for Tookie to do as she was told. Swallowing hard, Tookie slowly placed her hand through, then her wrist, continuing until her bicep was right between the blades. They came crashing together toward her arm, and just before Tookie was about to scream, a sticker band marked Clawed by Catwalk Corridor slapped onto her wrist.

  “I put a rush on you, Five-Head,” the woman said in a no-nonsense voice. “Wouldn’t want those bubble lips of yours to get gangrene and really have to be amputated. Next!” she said to the injured girl behind Tookie.

  “You should hear some of the ghastly insults she hurls at me,” Piper whispered as they walked toward the waiting area. “Every three days, she thinks up something new—Red-eyed Peas, Frosty the SnowBella, Al-Bella-bino …”

  They fell into seats. Tookie was next to a soaking-wet girl gasping for breath. The girl’s uniform was five sizes too small, hitting her midcalf. It reminded Tookie of Ci~L’s too-small uniform in War of Words.

  “Do you mind if I ask what you’re here for?” Tookie whispered to her.

  The girl flashed Tookie the diagnosis sticker on her arm. Flooding Pants.

  “I washed my uniform in super-hot water today,” she explained. “They told us only to wash it in cold, but it was so stinky from Run-a-Way Intensive 201, I had to. When I took it out of the wash, it was tiny-tiny. My D mates told me to turn it in for a new one, but I was late for History of Modelland class, so I just threw this on. All of a sudden, I was submerged in water. I felt like I was going to drown. Now I can’t get the uniform off, and the floods have been happening like clockwork. I can’t swim, and I can only hold my breath for—”

  Suddenly, water rose from the girl’s feet as if she was in her own private fish tank. The water swelled higher and higher until it completely covered her head. The girl flailed about, eyes bulging, panic-stricken. Purse Drestookill ran over, yanked a razor from her arsenal of weapons, and punctured the bag. The water spilled out onto the waiting room floor. The girl collapsed on her side, gasping for air like a hooked trout. Purses scooped her up and swept her through the Drama Trauma Center doors.

  Tookie turned to Piper. “Okay, that was weird.”

  “Oh, that was nothing,” Piper whispered. “Take a look around.”

  Tookie surveyed the rest of the chaotic waiting room. Across the aisle was a girl with blackened eyes and foul-smelling dark puffs of exhaust coming out of her sockets. Smoky Eyes, her armband read.

  A loud wail filled the waiting area. Tookie turned and noticed Desperada, the girl who hadn’t stopped bawling since she’d arrived at Modelland, collapsed in a corner. Not far from Desperada was Zarpessa, sitting in a chair, poking at bleeding gashes all over her hands.

  Tookie smirked. The cats did a lovely job on her!

  Just then, as if she could sense Tookie was thinking about her, Zarpessa looked up. She shot Piper and Tookie a resentful look, as if they were the ones who’d scratched her skin raw.

  Desperada’s wail filled the waiting room again. Purse Drestookill placed a pair of rusted silver bullets in her ears to drown out the noise. Since no one else was paying any attention to Desperada, Tookie stood and limped over. Desperada didn’t even seem to notice her approach, wailing and sobbing so hard she could barely catch her breath.

  “Did you get scratched by the cats?” Tookie whispered. “Are your cuts really deep? They said infection sets in fast. You can go in front of me if you want.” Even though Tookie barely knew Desperada—no one did, as she spent all her time crying—she hated the thought of Desperada being in pain.

  Desperada glanced into Tookie’s eyes for a beat. “I don’t have any cuts. I—I’m sick. My stomach …” She let out a long, deep, guttural groan.

  Suddenly, the doors that led to the Drama Trauma Center burst open. A woman with oatmeal-colored hair done up in dramatic coils emerged. Even amid all the chaos, she wore a soft, placid smile on her face and seemed to … glide across the room. Tookie looked down at the woman’s feet and realized why: she was on roller skates.

  Tookie watched the woman zig and zag through different girls in the waiting room. “I want some of those so I can get to class on time!”

  “Not what you think,” Piper murmured. “Not what you think at all …”

  Zarpessa rose to her feet and ran toward the rolling woman. “Oh, Nurse—I mean Purse! I really need to go first! This crying girl’s racket is really killing me!” She gestured toward Desperada.

  The roller-skating woman looked at Zarpessa. “I am a doctor, not a purse.”

  “Of course!” Zarpessa put on her fakest of fake smiles. “I’m sorry, Doctor, of course, Doctor. But you only handle the small stuff, right? Like knitting up cut knees and putting patches on bumps and scrapes. The big stuff is for a man’s mind. Open-heart surgery, brain trauma, that kind of thing.”

  “It sounds like brain trauma might be something I should check you for,” the doctor shot back. She gave Zarpessa an icy stare and rolled away.

  The woman whizzed past Zarpessa to get a closer look at Desperada. Her uniform was a cloak covered in stiff white bristles like the one Creamy used on her face twice a day in the shower. Her thick stockings resembled an elastic version of the material Tookie had used to deep-clean the pots at B3 when she was on cafeteria duty. Her hair was a rather floppy, odd material … a mop, perhaps? Tookie then got the pun right away. The bristle-brush jacket, the grime-removing stockings, the literal mop head … scrubs.

  “I’m Dr. Erica,” the woman said, taking Desperada’s hands. Dr. Erica frowned at Desperada, then pulled a piece of sandpaper out of her breast pocket. It danced and wiggled in her hands as if alive. After she pressed the sprightly sandpaper to Desperada’s forehead, it wrapped itself around and around her head like a strip of gauze.

  The doctor inspected the paper closely and sighed. “Just as I thought. Temperature is standard, blood pressure is perfect, gastric and skin acidity suggests electrostatic normalcy, but texture of epidermis indicates elevated hormonal activity.”

  She can tell all that from sandpaper? Tookie thought, amazed.

  “Does that mean I’m dying?” Desperada bleated.

  The doctor frowned again. “Not any faster than the standards of beauty, missy. But you are suffering from BW. Boy Withdrawal. There’s a guy, right?”

  Desperada froze midwail.

  “Bingo!” Dr. Erica turned to exit the waiting room.

  “Wait!” Desperada yelled. “Okay, my stomach doesn’t hurt—my heart does! I miss my boyfriend so much I think it might stop! Please write me a note so I can go down the mountain to see him! I don’t know what he’s doing while I’m gone! W
hat if he’s messing with another girl?”

  Dr. Erica clucked her tongue. “Little missy, or little miss-him, no Bella is ever allowed to go home of her own accord. You can’t leave the property just because of some silly guy. What a mistake that always is, whether you’re at Modelland or not. Talk about crippling yourself …”

  “But my heart is killing me! I have to see him, just for a second. I swear, I’ll be back so fast and—”

  “Even if I could, I wouldn’t allow you to do it,” the doctor interrupted.

  Desperada clapped her mouth shut. Her eyes turned from bloodshot red to a cold iron-gray. “Fine, then,” she said stubbornly. “I’ll just leave!”

  The doctor smirked. “Just leave, you say? At Modelland, Bellas pay a pricey toll for hopping the fence. You do not want to do that.” Dr. Erica pointed to the exit doors. “Suck it up, girl. And don’t come back here unless you’re being strangled by a choker necklace!”

  Desperada trudged out of the room. Dr. Erica rolled her eyes. “These parents, they’ve got to be careful with how they name their kids.” She sucked her teeth. “Desperada? What did they expect the poor girl to grow up to be?”

  Then all eyes whipped to the door through which Desperada had just exited. A new patient had strolled in. He had glowing skin, a sharp jawline, and deep-set eyes. Tookie’s heart did a flip.

  Bravo.

  There was a fresh gash on his neck.

  All the girls in the waiting area let out sympathetic moans. Piper nudged Tookie. “There’s thumb boy!”

  “Shhh.” Tookie just looked away, mortified.

  Bravo approached Purse Drestookill’s desk. Even she looked smitten, perking up and pushing out her chest … of knives. “Just here to get my stitches removed,” he said. “Don’t fuss over me.” Then he walked over to an oversized chair in a corner, picked up an old copy of Modelland magazine with Ci~L on the cover, and sat. Alone.

  “Next!” Dr. Erica called. She glanced at Tookie. “Looks like that’s you.”

  Zarpessa let out a little whine. “But I have—”

  “Faces before hands, missy,” the doctor interrupted.

  “Good luck,” Piper whispered, shooting Tookie a be brave smile.

  The doctor led Tookie through the double doors and directed her to a white bed in the corner. Tookie sat down on it and immediately sank into the mattress.

  The pillow rubbed against her mouth and she winced. Her lip was hurting so badly now, tears brimmed in her eyes.

  “You’re in agony, aren’t you?” the doctor said.

  Tookie nodded.

  “You hide pain well,” Dr. Erica went on. “Something tells me you’ve been doing that for a long time.” She placed her hands on each side of Tookie’s head and stared into her eyes. “On a pain scale of one to ten, I see you’re at about a seven and a half. Here’s a bit of Zed Med for the agony while I fix you up. I have to warn you, though. The Zed Meds mess with you. They have a Z effect.”

  “A Z effect like getting some Z’s?” Tookie asked. “Like falling asleep?”

  “Not exactly,” the doctor murmured.

  Two strands of the doctor’s mop hair started to lengthen. They snaked through the air and entered Tookie’s nostrils. Tookie’s pain slowly started to subside.

  “Where’d you get your skates?” she asked woozily as the doctor inspected her wounds.

  “These?” Dr. Erica glanced at her feet. “I got them at birth.”

  “Huh?”

  The doctor lifted up her pants leg and revealed that the skates were actually attached to her body, the same color and texture as skin.

  “All doctors here at Modelland have them,” Dr. Erica stated matter-of-factly.

  “It seems like there are a lot of … um … different-looking Gurus around here,” Tookie said softly, thinking of Guru Applaussez and its hand-head and Guru Pacifico with his rubber face.

  “That’s because hundreds of years ago, Modelland took us all in,” the doctor explained, her hands moving quickly over Tookie’s sliced ankle and then her lips. “Anyone born … different. We would be locked up and tested on without this place. If it weren’t for Modelland, my kind and others like me would be freaks. Like her …,” she said, referring to Purse Drestookill, who passed by in the corridor outside. “All I’ll say is … that’s, uh … not a hat.”

  “Whoa,” Tookie whispered.

  “It was a blessing for my kind, because the powers that be at Modelland recognized that skates for feet would be put to good use in emergency medical situations,” the doctor continued. “They figured we could get from one patient to the next with speed and ease. So they trained us all and … here I am. They take good care of us.” She smiled and pointed to a picture of a girl in the corner. “My daughter, Camina Marche, she’s about your age. She’s just like her mama. Got roller skates for feet too. She wouldn’t have a chance in life without this place. She’s in medical school right now.”

  “Where?” Tookie asked. A person with roller-skate feet would be big news in places like Metopia and beyond. She was surprised she hadn’t read a news article about it.

  “Modelland isn’t just what you see when you go from class to class,” the doctor explained. “There is a whole underground world here. Parts of it are still a mystery to even me, and I was born here.”

  “But what about Bellas?” Tookie asked. “Modelland has such strict rules for Bellas to enter. They have to look a certain way. Perfect …”

  The doctor gazed at Tookie curiously. “Do they? I have a confession to make, missy: when I first saw you, I thought you were an injured new Guru, not a Bella. Especially with how you helped that sad, desperate girl. Plus, with your protuberance of a forehead and wild dual eye color and poufy hair, kind of like mine … well, you know. But word has traveled about the four, uh … interesting-looking new Bellas this year, so I quickly realized my assumption was wrong when I saw you were with Piper.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m not really sure why I’m here either,” Tookie admitted. “But seriously. The rules for Bellas, they’re so different from the rules for Gurus … and that doesn’t seem fair. It’s not fair. Why is there such a double standard?”

  “I don’t know.” Dr. Erica shrugged. “I know it’s wrapped up in some old Modelland history, though. I wish I could help you. But your guess is as good as mine. And that’s all that doctors do, anyway. Make educated guesses. Get yourself educated, missy, and you’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”

  With that, the doctor announced, “Bleeding’s stopped. But before I stitch you up, I want to give you some stronger Zed Med. Lips have lots of nerve endings … pleasure and pain ones.”

  The doctor’s tickly mop-hair strands entered Tookie’s nose again, a bit deeper this time, and she could feel them reaching her throat and numbing her skin. “I’ll tend to some others while this sets in,” she said. “Oh, and I know you heard me talking about how children grow up a certain way depending on what their parents name them. Dig deep to see if your name is something to follow or fight against. Tookie. The last syllable sounds like key. Maybe you’re searching for something, and you have the power to unlock it or set it free. I tell Camina Marche to think about her name all the time.

  “Okay, missy, I’ll be back in a few.”

  She whipped back the curtain to reveal a long line of beds.

  Tookie woozily turned her head to the left as two roller-skate-footed doctors and four purses flopped four new patients onto a single bed. It was the Likee sisters, and they were bucking and kicking violently. Bizarrely, their teeth were enormous, and their blue, green, pink, and purple hair had grown long and morphed into long, flowing Mohawks.

  “The Likees practically live in here,” one of the doctors restraining the girls said to Dr. Erica. “None of them can stop hoarding fashion that’s not theirs.”

  Tookie caught a peek at HerLikee’s arm band. Clothes Horse.

  Dr. Erica sighed. “Take them to the Intensive Couture Unit and let them
hold some hay and straw handbags. That should calm them down.”

  The Likees were taken away, making whinnying noises. Just seeing them reminded Tookie of something, and she turned to Dr. Erica. “Do you think you could replace a missing filling while I’m here?” She poked her tongue into the spot in her mouth where her filling used to be. She had a feeling the Likees—the Fraud Quad—had pilfered it after War of Words class.

  Dr. Erica nodded, then left. After a few minutes she brought a new patient back from the waiting room. Tookie’s eyes widened. It was Bravo. Her heart started to speed up. It’s just the Zed Meds, she told herself. It’s not because he’s here.

  Bravo stopped at the edge of an empty bed. “Doctor, I really don’t need to lie down, I’m just getting my stitches taken out.”

  Dr. Erica placed her hands on her hips. “The last Bestostero whose stitches I removed fainted right into my arms. Just lie down and relax. Look at it like a mini vacation from building the stadium.”

  Then she disappeared.

  Bravo glanced in Tookie’s direction, raising his eyebrows in surprise. He looked like he was going to say something, but then Zarpessa materialized at Bravo’s bedside. “No need to wait alone,” she said in a silky voice. “I’ll keep you company until the doctor removes those manly stitches of yours. You poor, poor baby!” She reached out to touch Bravo’s neck.

  More injured girls limped over to Bravo’s bed. “Must take lots of muscles to pose with those big tools,” one uttered in a deep voice.

  Ignoring them, Bravo walked over to Tookie and sat down on the edge of her bed. Tookie stared straight ahead, not knowing what to do.

  “What’s he doing sitting with her?” a snarky voice hissed.

  “Is that her forehead’s normal size or is it swollen?” another voice cackled.

  Bravo cleared his throat, and Tookie snuck a woozy peek at him. “Hey,” he said.

  She pushed through her numbness and daze and mustered a sloppy smile. “Hey.”