by A. J. Stern
“I know you’re very excited for today’s audition, but you need to be where you are and not where you’re not, all right, Frannie?” Mrs. P. said to me.
“All right, Mrs. P.,” I told her. “But I can’t promise it will work.” Which was the truth of the world.
Finally, when I really thought that maybe the day would never, ever get to three o’clock, that this would be the one day in history where it never turned three o’clock, it turned three o’clock! That is when I grabbed my briefcase and followed the other auditioning girls to the auditorium. I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my brain sockets when I saw how many people were there. I saw my mom sitting in the third row, and she waved and pointed to the empty seat she had saved right beside her.
I could not even believe my eyes about what they had done to the auditorium, practically overnight. Instead of the long aisle we walked down to get to our seats, they’d built a long pier, with no lake at the end of it. I didn’t know what piers had to do with modeling.
There was a sign-in sheet where you had to write your name if you were auditioning. I didn’t know if this was part of the audition or not, so I wrote in my best script, Mrs. Frankly B. Miller, just in case. Frankly is what I’m called when I have jobs. Otherwise, I’m just plain Frannie.
Elliott and Elizabeth found me and my mother and slid in with us. They said they were going to clap the hardest for me and Millicent because we were their friends and it might win us the best outfits. Soon, a woman in a sweatshirt and torn jeans came and stood in front of us. She was yelling at us to get our attention, but we didn’t respond to yellers, only clappers. That is why Mrs. Pellington got up and stood next to the woman and clapped her hands and we got quiet.
“Please listen to Laura. She has very important instructions for you to follow.”
“Hi, everyone. My name is Laura Munn.”
“Hi, Laura Munn!” we yelled back at her starting-to-smile face.
“I am producing the fashion show at your school. All of the designers are very honored and excited to donate their fashions, and we have wonderful designs to choose from. My job is to choose the best mother-daughter pairs for the clothes the designers have made. I clearly have my work cut out for me because when I look out at the audience, I see so many beautiful people. Today, you are going to learn how to walk like a model from a top professional.”
That is when I turned to my mom, and we gave each other smiles about this sentence. Mine was a double smile about knowing how to model walk and also about learning from a professional!
“So I will turn it over to Mia Rubel, who trains models how to walk down the catwalk.”
Everyone started looking at one another very confusified. Catwalk? But before we had time to even ask that question with our mouths, a very tall, beautiful, blond woman walked like an ostrich down the runway. She marched all the way to the end, looked out at everyone with a big smile, turned, and then walked back like she was late for a very important meeting. A minute later, she returned and sat on the end of the stage to stare at us.
“Hi to every one of you beautiful girls.”
“Hi,” we all said back (even the moms said hi back, and it’s a scientific fact they are not girls anymore).
“As you just saw, models have very specific walks. What I just demonstrated was the way I’d like all of you to walk.”
There were a lot of gasp sounds.
“When Laura calls your name, you’ll get your photo taken, then you’ll climb up to the catwalk and give us your best walk.”
Laura Munn called out Millicent and Monica, her mom, and we clapped for them. Laura stopped her at the foot of the stage and took a Polaroid picture of each of them. Then she handed the picture to another girl who shook it out and then wrote MILLICENT in black ink across the bottom of Millicent’s photo and MONICA across her mom’s. I was so jealous of that girl. The assistant stapled the picture to a piece of paper and handed it back to Laura, who wrote on it while Millicent clomped down the catwalk. We clapped really hard for her because she was our friend. At the end of the runway, Millicent stood for a millisecond of a meter, then turned and went back to her seat.
“Fantastic!” Laura Munn called out. “Next!” And then Millicent’s mom, Monica, had her turn.
I did not appreciate how little time Millicent and Monica spent on the stage. They did not even stand for longer than a breath when they got to the end of the catwalk. What was fantastic about spending no time on a job like that? When I got to the end of the stage, I was going to stand there for much longer than one half of a secondteen second. What kind of job lasted so short? Not any job I wanted! I was much more serious about jobs than Millicent and her mom, and that is not an opinion.
“I am getting really nervous,” my mom leaned over to tell me.
“Don’t worry, Mom! Just be yourself!” I told her, which is a for instance of something she would have said to me.
Right after I said that, Laura Munn called our names, and moths flew up all around my belly again. I picked up my briefcase, and we walked over to Laura Munn.
Everyone was clapping for us, and we weren’t even on the stage yet!
My mom went first. After she got her picture taken, she walked up to the stage and did the most perfect model walk she’d ever done. When she finished, Laura Munn told her, “That s excellent, thank you.” My mom blushed and whispered in my eardrum, “Go get ’em, tiger,” which made me feel amazing.
After I got my picture taken, you will not believe the horrible thing Laura Munn said: “You can’t carry that briefcase on the runway.”
I was horrendified by this sentence. This was not something I preferred.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because it’s not part of the show.”
“But modeling is a job, and this is my job, and I carry a briefcase to all my jobs,” I told her, which made her smile but did not change her mind.
“I’m very sorry. Modeling isn’t that kind of a job.”
I scrunched up my face at this sentence, and that is when I had my first wondering about this career. I was not sure that modeling was a very good job for someone like me.
I put my briefcase down, then climbed the stairs to the catwalk, which is a for instance of what the professionals call the runway.
I did my walk even better than I did at home, and when I got to the end, I did not turn quickly to head back like everyone else had. I stopped and smiled and waved and twirled and curtsied, and just when I was about to bow, Laura got interruptish and told me to hurry back. Laura didn’t work at this school, so she didn’t know how offendish this was to me. I was probably the most Workerish person she’d ever worked with, and she just thought I was a kid. If she knew how professional I was, then she never would have told me to hurry back. She would have appreciated how long I stood at the end of the stage. She would have understood that what I was doing was working.
When I got off the stage, Laura called me over and told me that during the real show, I was to count to three and then quickly turn around and come back. She said I could not stand on the end of the stage for more than three seconds.
Three? What kind of a terrible job was being a model? Three seconds wasn’t even working. That didn’t even count as a job.
“That’s not a very long time,” I said.
“No, it’s not. Being a runway model is fast-paced work, and it goes by very quickly.”
I do not like fast-paced work that goes by quickly. I like jobs that take a lot of time. I wondered how long Elliott’s job would take. Probably an entire day. I was starting to wonder if I was auditioning for the wrong job. I went and sat back down next to my mom, who said I was very fantastical.
Elliott and Elizabeth each gave me big smiles and a thumbs-up and mouthed the word awesome. Then we watched the rest of the mothers and daughters take their turns.
At the end of the audition, Laura said we all did very well, and that they would be deciding tonight which outfit we’d eac
h be wearing. We were to come back at the same time the day after tomorrow, and we’d try on our dresses.
Dresses? I did not realize that I was going to have to wear a dress. I am not really a dress kind of a person, but maybe because the audition was to match us to the dress, they knew I was not a flowery and pink dress type of girl. Those were not the kinds of dresses I preferred. Maybe it was a business suit dress. I did not love that, either, but it was the best type of dress I could think of to wear. Or a sweatshirt dress. That would be good, too.
Then I heard my dad’s voice knocking in my head. “One step at a time, Frannie,” it said. Which is a for instance of, don’t make plans you don’t yet have.
CHAPTER 4
The next morning, I walked into school and saw a clump of kids staring at the wall. Elliott was in the back of the clump trying to get in, but it wasn’t working. When he saw me he was so excited he blurted out, “They’re up, Frannie! They’re up!” which was exciting, except I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“What’s up?”
“The audition pages. The people who are going to be in the fashion show—they’re up!”
That’s when the moths and butterflies flew back into my stomach, and I inched forward as people turned and left the clump either happy or sad with the news.
When I finally got to the front, I looked at the page, but I was so nervous that the letters took a really long time to even make sense to me. Which is a for instance of why it took me seventy-five years to see that I was listed as number six. I was so happy, I almost hugged Elliott, which is not something I normally do in public.
“I made it!” I told him.
“I knew you would. You were the best model up there. Everyone else was much too fast, but not you,” he said.
This is why Elliott and I are best friends. He understands the important things in the world, like how jobs should take a long time and that short jobs do not feel very official.
“Thanks, Elliott!”
Millicent got a part in the fashion show, too, but I worried she wouldn’t be able to put down her book long enough to walk the runway.
The show was all anyone could talk about all day long. All the teachers were annoyed, not just Mrs. Pellington. If you listened carefully, you could hear our school clapping its head off trying to get everyone’s attention inside. Everyone was excited for the day to end so we could go home and tell our moms! My mom was not going to believe her own ear sockets about this news!
And I was right. She said she was thrilled and couldn’t wait until the next day when we got “fitted” for our outfits. Fitted is a for instance of a word that means “trying on dresses.”
Even though I didn’t like dresses very much, I started to get excited to see mine. Laura Munn told everyone that we’d be wearing dresses she thought matched who we were.
This was a very interesting thing to me. I was very curious to see what kind of dress she thought I was. I could tell, because Laura Munn wore sneakers, jeans, and sweatshirts, that she knew I was the same type of person as her. And that is why I stopped being so scared about what kind of a dress she chose. I fell asleep with visions of business suit dresses dancing in my head.
The next day, after almost two thousand hours of school, Millicent and I ran down to the auditorium to meet our moms. We stood in a line while Laura and her assistant handed out long bags to everyone with our dresses zipped up inside them. Backstage there were mirrors and privacy, and that’s where everyone went to try theirs on. My mom hung my bag up next to hers so that we could unzip our bags at the same time.
“Ready?” she asked me.
I nodded my head yes.
“Set? Unzip!” she called, and we both unzipped at the same time, and we both gasped at the same time, and then at the same time, we both spoke out loud. “Oh, wow!” she said.
And I said, “Oh no!”
My eyes were shocktified by what they saw: flowers. Pink flowers. I could not believe it. Laura Munn, the one fashion person I thought would understand who I was, clearly did not understand me one bit!
“Oh, they’re beautiful. Aren’t they beautiful, Frannie?” my mom cried.
No, I wanted to say. They are not beautiful. They are very flowerish and girly, and it is a scientific fact that I am not flowerish and girly, but that is a rude thing to say, so instead I didn’t say anything.
My mom was already trying on her dress. And to think, just two days ago she didn’t really want to do this at all and I did. Now it was the other way around. When she was finished zipping up, she turned to look at me, and she really did look actually amazing. That is a for instance of why I gasped in a big gulp of air and said, “Wow, Mom. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you, Frannie. Now, try yours on. I want to see how it looks on you.” Which was something I did not want to see. But I did it, anyway, because it’s a scientific fact I didn’t have much choice. When I was done, I looked in the full-length mirror, and my mom stood behind me to look at me.
“Oh, Frannie, you are stunning. Simply beautiful.”
My mom’s eyeballs must have broken off their sockets because I did not look stunning or simply beautiful. I looked like a disgusting and awful flower store.
CHAPTER 5
Laura and her assistant walked around oohing and aahing at how good everyone looked in their dresses. She walked over to me and my mom.
“Oh, you both look fabulous!” Laura told us. My mom thanked her, and I harrumphed. “Are you ready to go through hair and makeup now?” she asked us.
Hair and makeup?
“Oh, how fun!” my mom said.
I did not want anyone doing my hair or putting one ounce of makeup on my face. This is not the type of girl I am at all.
I looked over and saw Elizabeth laughing and holding brushes and bobby pins, which looked much more exciting than wearing a flower dress.
And Elliott was helping with hanging things up, and the other boys were rolling lint brushes over things. I was so jealous of all of them.
There were a couple of other people who were part of Laura Munn’s “team,” who were putting stickpins in people’s dresses and using chalk to draw on them all over the place.
I even saw someone take scissors and cut some strings off. This was a very interesting part of modeling that I did not know about. I liked drawing and cutting things much more than I liked modeling things. I wondered what that job was called because that seemed like a job I would love.
The woman doing the cutting and drawing called Elliott over, and she handed him the chalk and scissors to hold. Elliott was the luckiest person I’d ever known. He had the best job in the entire universe. It was the only time I ever wanted to be his assistant.
Then Laura and her assistant talked about us like we were not there. They said the Weirdiest things like, “I think we should play up her eyes, and let’s add some texture to her hair. Did we remember to bring the dry shampoo?”
Dry shampoo? I had never even heard of such a thing. Then one of them ran over to Elizabeth, and she showed her a bottle of something that must have been dry shampoo. Elizabeth Sanders knew about dry shampoo and I didn’t? What else was there to know? I had to work backstage. It was so much better than walking down the runway.
Laura started picking up sections of my hair, twirling it around, and discussing how to make my hair “work.” This was very confusifying. Was my hair going to get a job? Hair couldn’t work, could it? Then Laura brought me over to the hair person.
“My name is Delilah, and I’m so excited to do your hair to match your beautiful dress,” she said. No one could have said anything more Worse to me in my entire lifetime.
I did not want her to make my hair match my dress. I reached out and grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and squeezed it. She understood all about me, and she said, “Don’t worry, Frannie. It’s only for one day. It will be over really quickly.”
I nodded, but even one day with flowers all over myself felt too long.
Delilah was the meanest person I’d ever met because of what she did to my hair. A for instance of what I mean is that she put a lot of flowers in my hair. I thought a hair person made your hair better, not worse! So far, being a model was the Worst job I ever had and the only one I wanted to quit.
When Delilah put flowers in my mother’s hair, my mom was very happy because she is much more girly than I am. Then I went into makeup. Elizabeth asked if she could come with me, and Delilah told her yes.
The makeup person was a man, which was why he didn’t know how to put on makeup. Kevin painted my entire face with cream, then fluffed my cheeks up with powder, and then wiped pink smudge on my cheeks and slicked the rest of the pink onto my lips.
When he was done, my face felt heavy, like he drew a whole other face on top of the face I already had. When I looked at myself, that’s when I really felt like I had another face on my face. I hardly recognized who I was!
My face looked like it wanted to be a clown, and my hair looked like it fell into a flower garden.
I could feel the tears rolling up the inside of my head toward my eyeballs. I tried to suck all my tears back into my head before they spilled out all over the place.
I was very humilified to be seen wearing this outfit and having makeup on my face and flowers in my hair. This was not who I was, and I did not want to show myself to everyone in the world wearing things I would never in a million years wear. I did not want to be a model at all. And I did not appreciate that Laura Munn thought I matched pink and flower things!
“Oh, you look marvelous!” Laura said when she saw me.
I knew I was supposed to smile and say thank you because that is polite, so that is what I made my face do.
“All right, everyone,” Laura said. “This is what you’re going to look like for the show tomorrow. I hope you all like it. Take care of your outfits. You are in charge of them. Tomorrow, you will eat dinner in the cafeteria at five PM. Please arrive here by six PM and not one second later. The show will start at seven PM on the nose. All right?”