Emma Catwalks and Cupcakes!

by Coco Simon

  When we got to the city, they dropped me off, and my mom continued on to find parking while the other girls headed off on their adventure. I made my way upstairs in the loft building to what turned out to be a test kitchen and TV studio for cooking shows. Despite myself I half wished Katie had come to the actual shoot. This would be her idea of nirvana.

  There was every cooking instrument you could imagine, and all sorts of baking accessories and machines. There were big bowls of cupcake batter and frosting and toppings that had been premade for the shoot. It looked like a Cupcake Club baking session but on a much higher level.

  “Hey!” Lindsay Miller was there, and she introduced me to her sisters, Marnie and Isabelle. They were as nice as she was and very enthusiastic about the shoot.

  The stylist took me in the back to try some different looks, and at some point my mom came up and settled in with a book. As I’ve said before, she isn’t a huge fan of the modeling business, but she is a huge fan of women earning money. She sees all this as a good head start to my work future.

  The stylist had me in a pale pink linen button-down, small gold hoop earrings, and white jeans. It was a very fresh look and shared a palette with the Three Sisters stores and logo. The sisters loved what I had on and added a pink-and-white–striped apron with THREE SISTERS on it to complete the look. Then I went in for hair and makeup.

  They kept my look natural, and getting ready all went pretty fast. Soon, it was time for the shoot.

  Much to my surprise, Victor and his team walked in.

  “Emma! How lucky am I?” he cried from across the room.

  The ad people and the studio staff turned and smiled at us as we embraced.

  “Hey, Victor! I’m so happy it’s you today. I had no idea!”

  “Darling, thank goodness it’s not that ghastly amateur again. What was her name? Kathy?”

  I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to publicly trash one of my best friends. “Katie. It was her first time. We all have to start somewhere,” I said brightly. I had to change the subject. “And Katie’s a good friend. I’m just happy you and I get to work together today!”

  “Me too, doll.” He linked his arm through mine and brought me over to the kitchen counter for some lighting checks.

  Soon, we were on a roll, with Victor snapping away and the Three Sisters people all looking pleased. Victor kept up a steady stream of compliments: “Love it, Emma! Perfect! Hold that! Yes!” I couldn’t help but think what a contrast this was to the hard time Katie had had the other day.

  There is something to modeling that is a little like acting. You definitely have to find some kind of inspiration for the happy faces and the open looks they wanted from you. You have to give yourself over to it completely.

  We had a break while the ad people and Victor and the sisters reviewed what we’d gotten so far. They had me change my outfit and do another round of shots, and they were even happier with those. I started checking my watch after that, wondering when we might be finished. My friends and I were due to meet nearby at twelve forty-five, and it was already twelve fifteen. I still had to change, get off all the makeup, and walk the few blocks to where they were. I sat in a director’s chair while the team chatted, deciding what to shoot next.

  “Emma, darling!” Victor called. “We’ve got a problem with the files from the first outfit. We’re going to need to get you back into that and reshoot a few of the poses.”

  Oh no!

  I looked down at my watch again. I’d be late to meet my friends for sure. Maybe an hour or more! Ugh, this whole idea was a bad one from the beginning. How many more times did I need to make the mistake of mixing business with pleasure before I learned my lesson?

  But I’m a professional, so I smiled a huge smile and said, “Great. Be right back!”

  Inside the changing room, I whipped off the clothes, being careful not to get makeup on them, and I quickly typed off a text to my friends, saying I was trapped for another hour.

  While I tied the laces on the white sneakers I had to wear, I awaited a confirmation that they’d gotten my text.

  Seconds later Mia replied, Can we come watch? We’re all done here!

  I paused. It might be kind of cool to have them see me. Then maybe Katie could get an idea of what went into it. I could scare her off a bit, so she wouldn’t keep trying to copy me by being a model. Plus, they would think this place was really cool.

  “Let me check,” I said.

  Minutes later, having received permission from everyone, I sent them the address.

  See you soon, typed Mia.

  • • •

  I looked over when my friends trudged in, but Victor said, “Emma! Yoo-hoo! Over here, please!” so I couldn’t look again. I could see out of my peripheral vision that they were standing with my mom, though.

  Victor was really hamming it up as he shot this round. I sometimes think photographers do all that just to keep themselves interested. He kept up his running commentary of “Yes, darling, beautiful, fabulous. Look over your shoulder. Softer hands. Perfect! Tuck the chin. Just right. Mmm-hmm. Turn your left shoulder a bit left and tip forward. You’re brilliant!”

  At this point I can follow these commands in my sleep, but if I were just starting out, I knew I’d find it superconfusing. Victor and I got into a mind meld for a while, and I could tell the shots he was getting were pure gold. He kept me moving around the set, though, and kept it going, tweaking the lighting to make me “glow” more and asking for all sorts of poses.

  It was when we were almost done that I heard “Oh no!”

  Victor stopped shooting and turned around, the mood broken.

  The ad agency person had clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.

  “Is everything okay?” Victor asked coldly. He was annoyed at having his concentration broken, I could tell.

  The ad person had no choice but to explain. “We had a group of young baking sisters scheduled to come in for a shoot this afternoon. It was supposed to be like a tribute to these baking sisters. Only they had to cancel because one of them has appendicitis, and their mom couldn’t drive the others in.”

  Everyone looked around at one another, unsure of what to do or say.

  Then I took a deep breath. “My friends and I could do it,” I offered. Then I looked at them. Mia looked psyched, Alexis looked surprised, and Katie looked mortified. “They’re right over there. They’d love to be in it!” I lied, pointing. “And we have a business back home, baking cupcakes for events and parties. So we know our way around a kitchen.” At least that part wasn’t a lie.

  Everyone turned to look at them, and when Victor spotted Katie, he turned to his assistant Green Hair and said something in her ear, and she snickered and rolled her eyes. Right then I hated them both, especially the assistant. Luckily, Katie hadn’t seen them.

  “What do you say, kids? Would you like to jump into costume and hop onstage? With your guardians’ consents, of course,” asked the ad agency lady. “No pressure.”

  They checked quietly with one another, and then Alexis spoke for them all. “Sure. We’ll help out,” she said.

  “On one condition! The sisters have to tell us how to make their vanilla ice cream–flavored frosting!” joked Katie.

  “Never!” cried Lindsay, also joking.

  The girls were whisked away to the changing rooms, and everyone relaxed for a few minutes while we waited for them.

  I went to check in with my mom, who was e-mailing permission forms to the other parents. There was a small buffet table next to her, and I grabbed half a sandwich, just to nibble on since my energy was starting to flag.

  She looked up. “Are you okay with this?” she asked quietly.

  I inhaled deeply. “Yes, I am. It’s different when it has to do with cupcakes. Also when it’s all of us together. It’s not the same as me going head-to-head against a friend for a job.”

  She looked at me for an extra long time, trying to d
ecide if I was being honest.

  “I swear, Mom. I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise. For real,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, but it was in a tone of voice that implied she didn’t totally believe me.

  I paused, thinking about it for a minute. It had been a little impulsive of me make that offer. Maybe I needed to start being more protective of myself and my activities. Why did I always want to share with friends? I didn’t know.

  But the flip side was, it was always more fun with friends around, and I did enjoy when my two worlds collided for a little bit. Friends and modeling aren’t a natural combination, but when you added cupcakes to it, it made it all right.

  I stayed away from Victor and Green Hair during the break. I didn’t want to let any of their anti-Katie negativity into my head. Luckily, this afternoon shoot was meant to be done with amateurs anyway, so having the Cupcakers there wasn’t that much of a strain.

  The ad lady came in and gave us all an overview of what they were looking for. Then Lindsay and her sisters came into the kitchen setup and gave us instructions on what to make and how to do it. And finally, Victor and his assistants used masking tape to block out our “marks,” which tell us where we needed to stand and which way we needed to face to get the full shots they wanted.

  Katie could not get over the test kitchen and its supplies. If we had one problem, it was that she was a little distracted by all the goodies it held and what she could do with them. Alexis was a ham, but it worked. She was joking around and making funny faces, but it got everyone laughing, including the adults, and created a relaxed atmosphere. Mia was the most nervous at first. She kept smiling a tight, awkward smile, and this time it was she who caused Victor’s frustration. But she eventually settled down and lost herself in the decorating process when they handed her some baked cupcakes to decorate and a whole palette of toppings and decorations to use.

  We worked for about an hour, all of us in pink and white, with striped aprons. Like always, we got into a rhythm as we worked together and lost track of time, and ourselves. We became the well-oiled machine that is the Cupcake Club.

  By the end Victor was calling out compliments to us, even Katie, and when he said, “That’s a wrap!” all the adults burst into applause.

  For us it was like waking from a dream. We were a little dazed and distracted, but it had been really fun, and we had a great pile of beautiful cupcakes at the end of it, which Lindsay offered around for everyone to eat.

  Alexis pulled aside Marnie, the sister who seemed to handle the day-to-day of Three Sisters, and basically interviewed her about the cupcake business and their margins.

  Katie grabbed Lindsay and asked all about recipe development. I could see their heads bent together as Lindsay made notes on a legal pad, and Katie copied them into her phone.

  Mia and Victor hit it off, and they were chatting away, laughing their heads off.

  I snuck away into the changing room and used baby wipes to take off the makeup. I put on my plain old jeans, my simple T-shirt, and my own sneakers, and then I just sat for a moment, relaxing. It had gone well. Thank goodness!

  When I went back outside, the ad lady was hugging me, saying how grateful she was for my help and how I’d saved the day. She promised to up my rate and include a “finder’s fee” for getting my friends into the act. The Miller sisters hugged me too, saying I had been a perfect choice, and it was fate that I’d come into their store that day while Lindsay was there.

  My friends piled out of the changing room, still fully made-up but enjoying the novelty of their looks, and we all hopped into the huge freight elevator with my mom to head out.

  “Bye, darlings!” Victor called as we left. I blew him a kiss. I needed him as a friend, professionally speaking, even if I didn’t always agree with his behavior.

  Once we left the building, Katie was all aflutter: She’d gotten the vanilla ice cream–flavored frosting recipe and learned the key ingredient was cornstarch!

  Alexis was thrilled: Marnie Miller had asked her to stay in touch, saying they could use an intern in their office and maybe Alexis could come in and see how it all runs.

  Mia was ecstatic: Victor had given her his card and was interested in shooting some of her fashions for her portfolio for free!

  “Emma, you’re the best friend ever! Thank you for making all this happen!” cried Mia, throwing her arms around me.

  “Thanks, Em. You rock,” said Alexis.

  “Where would I be without you?” said Katie. “I mean it!”

  I glanced at my mom, who was smiling proudly at me. She winked. “Time for some lunch, then cupcakes, right?”

  “It’s always time for cupcakes!” I said.

  CHAPTER 10

  Catwalks and Cupcakes

  It was on the car ride back that we first noticed the fallout.

  Alexis reached up to the front seat and wordlessly handed me her phone. I glanced down at it, and my eyes widened. It was a stream of comments posted on the link she’d put up about Katie’s modeling.

  They all said the same thing: “This girl’s not a model. Come on! If she can do this, anyone can!”

  And worse, much worse: picking apart her looks and her figure and her poses—everything.

  My mouth went dry, and my stomach clenched. I looked at Alexis, frowning worriedly. Then I glanced at Katie, who’d fallen asleep against the car door, her head resting on the window.

  “What do we do?” I whispered.

  “Take down the links,” said Alexis.

  Quickly, I logged into my accounts and removed my posts. The comments disappeared with them. Alexis conveyed everything to Mia, who looked aghast, and did the same. There was only one problem. Katie’s phone was in her hand, and we didn’t know her password anyway.

  How were we ever going to prevent her from seeing all that meanness?

  We stared nervously at one another and at Katie’s phone. Finally, Alexis reached over and tried to slide it out of Katie’s grasp, but Katie woke right up. Mia gave a little gasp. She couldn’t help herself.

  “Hmm?” she said. “Are we home?” She wiped her eyes and looked out the window. Then she looked at all of us staring at her. We must’ve had awful expressions on our faces. “What?” she asked. “Was I drooling? Snoring?”

  I took a deep breath. I owed it to her to deliver the news. “Katie . . . You remember how we talked about modeling being kind of a ruthless profession? And how you can’t please all the people all the time?”

  “Yeah?” she said, confused.

  “Well . . .”

  “Not everyone loves your ad campaign,” said Alexis, basically ripping off the proverbial Band-Aid. “Sorry. I couldn’t drag it out,” she said to me. Then she turned to Katie. “If I were you, I’d take down your post right now. Don’t read any of the comments. Just take it down and move on.”

  “Girls?” said my mom, who tries to stay out of our conversations in the car. (She says she tries to be invisible because that’s when she gets all the info we wouldn’t normally tell her. Annoyingly, it kind of works.) “Everything okay?”

  “Um . . . ,” I said.

  But Katie was already reading the comments, her face going pale.

  “ ‘Unprofessional,’ ” she whispered so quietly we could barely hear her. “ ‘Ugly’? ‘Fat’? ‘Tacky’?” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh no!” Her eyes welled with tears, which quickly spilled down her cheeks.

  “Um, Mom?” I said.

  “Pulling over,” said my mom, checking her mirrors and putting on her blinker. Then she said sharply, “Take the phone away.”

  Alexis grabbed the phone from Katie, and Katie let her, bringing her hands up to bury her face while she sobbed quietly. We were silent. We didn’t know what to say or do. My mom parked in the breakdown lane of the highway, then climbed out and flung open the door to the backseat, all very fast, like she used to when my little brother, Jake, would feel carsick. She took Katie in her arms, tight, and r
ocked her and patted her head and rubbed her back while Katie cried.

  My mom stared grimly at the rest of us while we exchanged scared looks with one another. After a few minutes, Katie’s sobbing subsided, and my mom pulled out a pack of tissues from her purse and gave it to her. Katie’s face was a mess of running makeup from the photo shoot. I felt awful for her. She hiccupped.

  “Why are people so mean?” she asked sadly.

  “They’re jealous,” said my mom. “Plain and simple. And it makes them feel powerful to criticize others.”

  I thought of Victor and his snarky comments earlier about Katie. I could see that what my mom said was true. Some people build themselves up by knocking down others, but it’s a bad way to be. I winced, thinking of how mean I’d been to Katie about her bedhead and everything on the day she got the job over me. It had made me feel better to knock her down, and that was terrible of me.

  “I’m so sorry, Katie,” I said.

  She blew her nose and sighed. “I shouldn’t have read the comments. You were right. I’ll never unsee them.”

  “What kind of losers take the time to comment like that?” asked Mia.

  “There are all kinds of people on the Internet who like hiding behind their computers and saying mean things about people. They’re called trolls. It’s a big problem. The thing is, and I know this sounds like a cliché, but you can’t take it personally,” said my mom. “They’re just looking for someone to knock down for the slightest reason. It could have been anyone. It could be me tomorrow!”

  “Or me!” I added.

  Katie shook her head. “I hope not.”

  My mom took a deep breath. “Let’s get you home now, okay? You need to see your mom and talk it out with her.”

  Katie nodded. The idea of seeing her mom brought fresh tears to her eyes.

  “Katie, you’re a beautiful girl. Don’t take any of those comments to heart. Promise me?” Mom said.

  “I’ll try,” agreed Katie.

  I bit my lip as I looked at her. It hadn’t happened to me yet (not counting the one time a wedding dress designer was mean to me because I had a broken nose at a fashion shoot), but sooner or later it would. This was where it helped to be a professional. I’d built up lots of good feedback so far in my career, so if I get some negativity, I can just focus on the positives. Also, I can see myself playing a role in the shoots, so it’s not really me who’s in the ad, if that makes sense. It’s my character, Emma the Model.