The Luckiest Girls

by Nathalie van Walsum Fuson

  Whatever. He. Damn. Wants.

  How long did it take him to plan this meeting once they heard about my movie role? How soon before he realized that I was about to make some real money, and that there might be something in it for him? I’m still a little stunned as I stare at the form when his phone, which he left on the table, gives a ding. On the screen a text pops up. A text from Alicia. My mother.

  “Signed yet?” it reads.

  I’m not even surprised. The only thing I’m surprised at, is that I allowed myself to believe for one instant that they were reaching out to me because they care about me. I tear the Power of Attorney form in half, leave it on the table and get up. I walk out the door and I’m gone before Jack even gets back from the bathroom.

  23

  Maya

  Too much time under the spotlight isn’t good for anyone. It wreaks havoc on the complexion. — From The Supermodel’s Handbook by Gigi Towers.

  * * *

  Sophia and I haven’t talked about the night of Jason’s concert, which is awkward because it seems everybody else has been. After Sophia posted pictures of us in the limo and backstage to social media, tagging me in each of them, my number of followers skyrocketed to over 200,000. There’s a picture of Sophia, Jason and me in Us Weekly and OK! magazine, and the New York Post is hinting that Sophia and Jason are practically engaged. But I think Sophia knows Jason is a dangerous subject to bring up to me, because I don’t find out that she has another date with Jason until I hear about it from Ling. Not just any date, mind you. This one’s for front-row seats at a Lakers game. In Los Angeles! I thought she was going to LA for a booking, but Jason had her flown over just for their date.

  “You didn’t know?” Ling asks. “It was even on E!online.”

  I’m not letting some limp-dick little punk-rock creep drive a wedge between me and Sophia, so I shoot Sophia a text. “Have fun at the Lakers game! So excited for Vogue tomorrow!” followed by a bunch of peppy emojis. Sophia sends me back a selfie making a kissy face at the Staples Center arena, sandwiched in between Jason and, on her other side, Olivia Knightley. Even more disturbing to me than the news that she is in Los Angeles with Jason is the fact that she’s hanging out with Olivia. If there’s any model the media is as excited about photographing as Sophia, it’s Olivia, and I have no doubt that if Olivia were based in New York instead of LA, she and Sophia would be inseparable. Before the end of the night the same picture is posted all over Olivia’s social media as well. A surge of fear comes over me as I realize how easily my role as Sophia’s best friend can be filled by someone else.

  Once again that terrifying sensation of becoming invisible, of being consumed by a huge black maw of nothingness, looms over me. I’m sitting in miserable silence in the TV room while Ling and Brigitte chatter like bluejays, oblivious that I’m quietly disintegrating, and I feel a terrible urgency to root myself back in reality before I disappear for good. I pick up a pencil from the bureau beside me in the TV room and press the tip into my thigh. Slowly but steadily I press harder until the pain takes over my thoughts, pushing away the darkness. There’s only pain now, but it’s a manageable pain, a controllable one, and once again I am present, back from the brink of nonexistence. The small dark red stain of blood on my thigh proves that I’m still here.

  Sophia returns to New York the following afternoon. Since Theo wants to recreate the feel of the pictures we did the Hamptons by sunset, our booking is in the evening. If I were Sophia I would want to crash for a couple of hours, but she’s wide awake and bouncing around the house.

  “I don’t need to sleep, I’m too excited,” she says. “I haven’t slept in two days. We went to the most amazing party last night after the game at the house of this music producer, and Jason and I watched the sun come up, and then he put me on a private jet. I should have slept on the plane but I’ve never flown on a private plane, it was so cool and I didn’t want to sleep through any of it. There was a whole breakfast with champagne and orange juice…” She’s so excited she waves her hands as she’s talking and knocks over the bottles on my dresser.

  “Careful! That’s a $200 perfume you just spilled,” I exclaim. “Are you in love with him?”

  “Well, you have to admit, he’s absolutely perfect,” Sophia smiles.

  I don’t have to admit anything of the sort because I couldn’t agree less. He’s a real asshole, and he treats people like garbage, and he enables his rapist friends. But Sophia babbles on.

  “He’s a huge star, he just won the MTV Music award, and the Teen Choice music award, and he’s worth a hundred million dollars. And we look great together.”

  If those are her criteria, then sure, he’s the whole package. But it doesn’t sound like love to me. However, if she’s airborne with happiness then I’m not going to be the one to pull her back to earth.

  We meet Theo and the Vogue crew on a rooftop in Battery Park overlooking the harbor. This is one of the first warm days of spring, which is lucky because we’re shooting summer fashions. I can’t help worrying about my body. I’ve put on three pounds since my meeting with Dr. Noronha, only because I don’t want to give Gigi a reason to send me home. But Theo isn’t Dr. Noronha. He doesn’t want me three pounds fatter, he wants me as light as a thistle.

  “Gigi’d never send you home, silly,” Sophia says as we change into our first outfit under a canvas tent set up to serve as a changing room. “You’re one of her favorites.”

  “Maybe, but Dr. Noronha scared the shit out of me. He made it sound like I’m about to drop dead of a heart attack any second.”

  “Oh, baloney. I’ve heard the same thing from doctors all my life. They don’t know anything about what’s normal for us.”

  She’s probably right. She’s even thinner than I am and she’s got more energy than anyone I know. Although today I have a pretty good idea where that energy comes from. I can tell she’s hopped up on something. She’s antsy and she can’t keep her eyes focused anywhere for more than a few seconds.

  “What did you take?” I whisper. “You’re acting weird.”

  “What do you mean? I’m just excited.” She gives a sniff and rubs her nose.

  “Are you on coke again? You are, aren’t you?”

  “Give it a rest, will you?” she retorts. “I’ve been working non stop for weeks, and I haven’t slept in days, so pardon me if I need a little help getting through this shoot.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m just worried about you.”

  “Well, stop it.”

  We both finish getting dressed in silence. Then Sophia softens. “I don’t need you to mother me, okay? I just need you to be my friend.”

  “Okay. Whatever you want.”

  “I want you to have fun. You’re allowed to have fun, Maya. It’s a beautiful day, it’s Vogue, we’re the luckiest people in the world! Why don’t you do some too? It’ll get you out of this funk you’re in.”

  “No thanks.”

  Sophia makes a sound of irritation as she exits the tent, and my heart aches with the knowledge that she’s angry with me, she thinks I’m a bore, she’s tired of me. I watch as Sophia spins around the set radiating youthful energy, and Theo, delighted to be working with his favorite model, indulges her bouncing around like a young gazelle until he finally calls us to get in position. He arranges us in a pose on the balcony, overlooking the southern tip of Manhattan. A reflector to our right bounces the light from the setting sun onto us. When Theo begins to shoot, I try to flow into each subsequent pose in synch with Sophia, but she’s being so fidgety that I can’t figure out what she’s doing.

  “Sophia, slow it down,” Theo calls. “I’ve got very low light. Don’t move so fast.”

  A few minutes later Theo calls out again. “Focus, Sophia. Relax your face. Quit twitching like that.”

  Sophia never needs this kind of direction. I wonder if anyone else can tell how wired she is. Theo finishes the shot, but he doesn’t look happy. When he releases us Sophia jumps up, as though s
he’s been coiled like a spring the whole time. She almost skips back into the changing tent.

  The next shot is a single of Sophia, and because the light is dropping, Theo wants us both ready. I stand a few feet out of the frame watching Sophia as she works this shot, waiting for my turn. Sophia, wearing a long white dress, stands in front of a low wall at the edge of the roof, her hair loose and blowing in the wind. She looks like an angel against the skyline of downtown Manhattan, but she can’t stand still, and paws impatiently at her hair as it gets in her eyes.

  “If you can’t concentrate I’m putting the dress on Maya,” Theo barks. I’ve heard him yell at crew members plenty of times, but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him lose patience with Sophia.

  “Okay, man, chill out,” she says. “”God, everyone’s so crabby today.” She raises her arms over her head, bent at the elbows, and turns to a three-quarter angle as she gazes at the camera. She touches the side of her face, parts her lips, and flips her hair over her shoulder.

  “Better,” says Theo. “Give me more.”

  Sophia obeys. She rises on her toes and does a beautiful twirl, and as Theo clicks away Sophia’s face is almost beatifically happy. She looks deep in her own reverie, bathed in pinkish-gold sunlight, and as she flows from one pose into another it looks like she’s found her groove, but I am the only one who knows that she’s high as a damn kite and the knowledge makes me scared.

  “That’s it, Sophia, more,” Theo calls, the camera clicking furiously, and Sophia keeps moving. She arches her back as he extends her arms to the sky.

  Exactly what happens in the next moment no-one can agree on, even though it will remain branded in my mind for the rest of my life, haunting my days and waking me screaming from my sleep. It lasts mere seconds, but it feels like time is at a complete standstill. Theo would later say Sophia tripped over the hem of her dress. His assistant would say she stumbled backward over the wall. What everyone agreed on was that, in one instant Sophia was there, and the next she was gone. She landed twelve stories below us. Of all the covers Sophia graced, her most famous cover photo of all was the one that both the New York Post and the Daily News featured on the front page, of Sophia sprawled on the sidewalk, the white dress spread around her, with not a mark on her face, as beautiful in death as she was in life.

  Me, I remember it differently. I remember freezing in terror as I saw her smile and spread her arms and reach toward the sky and arch back, back, back…and then she was gone without a sound. Yes, I’m certain of that part. She didn’t scream when she fell. No one else can vouch for that, perhaps because they were all screaming themselves. But I was close enough to her to be sure. Perhaps, under the influence of whatever she was on, she really did think, just for a moment, that she could fly.

  24

  Jane

  When the police cars leave, when the reporters outside the door give up on anyone from the house showing their faces, when the curious crowds have thinned, the house is silent. The other girls huddle upstairs like victims of a natural disaster, clinging to each other, sobbing. But no sound carries as much raw pain as the primal wailing that comes from Gigi’s room.

  Her bedroom door is closed and no one will go near it, but I push it open. Gigi sits on the floor beside her bed, her skirt crumpled like a linen handkerchief, her hair disheveled, head in hands, and her face sticky with tears and snot. I sit beside her, and she clings to me like a person drowning, sobbing as though all the tears that she hasn’t shed in her life are bursting through a broken levy. Her body, usually so austere and intimidating to me, is frail and light in my arms.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she says, which doesn’t make any sense.

  “It’s okay,” I say, even though I have no idea what she’s talking about. “It’s going to be okay.” Such an idiotic thing to say, but what else is there?

  Then the large, familiar figure of Betty appears in the doorway. She crouches down beside us and murmurs in her Irish brogue, “There, now, hush dear, I canna stan’ to see you hurtin’.” Betty helps Gigi to her feet and onto the bed. Together we remove Gigi’s shoes and pull the covers over her. Gigi won’t let go of my hand, so I lie beside her, holding her head in my arms against my chest. We lie like this for what seems like hours, until I feel Gigi breathing rhythmically against me and know that she’s cried herself to sleep. Careful not to wake her I slip out of the bed and go downstairs. I missed dinner so I’m hungry. To my surprise Betty is still here. She usually goes home right after she serves dinner.

  “You hungry, child? There’s some fish soup if you’d like it.” She opens the refrigerator and reaches inside. “I’ll heat up a…oh, to the devil with the fish soup. I know you hate it. How about a lovely grilled ham and cheese sandwich?”

  “I’d like that very much. Thank you.”

  While Betty prepares my sandwich I sit perched on a stool in the kitchen, my knees pulled up to my chin and my arms wrapped around my legs.

  “How is she doing, then, our Gigi?” Betty asks.

  “She’s sleeping,” I reply.

  “Good. Sleep is good for ‘er, the poor thing. I’ve never seen ‘er so distraught, not since your ma Victoria passed away.”

  “Really?”

  “T’be sure. T’is a terrible thing to lose a child, even if they haven’t spoken to one another in years. Maybe t’is even worse then.”

  This is the first time I’ve really spent time with Betty. I think there may be a lot more I can learn from her, both about Gigi and about my mom. But not tonight. We don’t need to talk about another death while we’re all coping with Sophia’s.

  “You know, this is a really excellent sandwich,” I say, my mouth full. “I mean, you may not have a lot of occasions to make sandwiches, what with these girls and all their crazy food hangups, but if you ever feel like making another one of these” — I point to the sandwich — “I'm here for you.”

  Betty laughs. When I finish she takes my plate from me and I go upstairs. After I brush my teeth I go back to Gigi’s room. She’s still asleep. I get in bed with her. I don’t want her to be alone when she wakes up.

  Gigi hasn't breathed a word while watching the film that Jazz, Niko and I completed, and when it ends, I switch off my laptop.

  "That’s everything, then. That's the finished version,” I say.

  Still Gigi is silent.

  “We’re not going to enter it in the New York Film School competition, of course. Niko and Jazz agree with me. It would be like we were taking advantage of Sophia’s death and we’d never do that.”

  “Too bad, really. You and your friends made a good job of it. I’m quite impressed.”

  “I thought you’d hate it. It doesn’t put the agency in a very positive light.”

  “No, you’re right, it doesn’t. But if you set out to show the truth, then you succeeded.” Gigi presses her fingertips to her eyebrows. “The truth was always there, of course. If I knew about Sophia…no, that's a lie. If I had to admit that I knew about Sophia's drug use, maybe she'd be alive today.”

  “Or maybe not. Sophia was always going to do whatever she wanted to do.”

  “I could have threatened her with expulsion from the agency. But then she would have just gone to another agency. Everyone wanted her.”

  “Gigi — maybe, if you actually follow through on what you always said — refuse to book your girls with photographers like Theo, people who sexually assault girls or pressure them for sexual favors or push drugs, no matter how important they are— then maybe other agencies will follow suit.”

  “If I did that I would have to refuse some of the most influential people in the business. I would lose a lot of clients, and many of the models. I could lose the agency,” she says. “But I’m not sure I care anymore.”

  “Maybe at first. But a lot of people would support you, and if enough people sided with you, you could bring about real change.”

  Gigi sighs. She doesn’t look convinced.

  “Jan
e, all those reporters out there, they’re dying to blame somebody for Sophia’s death. They’re going to try their best to lay open everything that’s wrong with the industry. And I’m at the top of the industry. They’re going to crucify me.”

  “Unless…” I suggest, “unless you lay it open first. I mean they can’t expose anything about you if you’ve already shared it.”

  Gigi is quiet for a moment. I see a trace of the savvy, intelligent woman that I know emerging through the fog of sorrow.

  “My teacher said that documentary films need to advocate for something,” I continue. “You could use this film to advocate for health standards in the fashion industry, to illustrate the pressure the girls face and the kind of changes that need to happen. It could be your platform, Gigi. What if you started a whole social movement?”

  Gigi thinks for a while.

  “It could work,” she murmurs, half to herself. “Let’s see…Dateline has been after us for a story. But of course Anderson Cooper is an old friend. Yes, CNN would do very well.”

  I see my chance and I lunge for it. “Gigi, please let me help. I want to stay in New York with you. I don't want to go to boarding school. Please, Gigi. Don't send me away. I'll stay out of trouble. I'll keep out of the way, you and the models won't even know I'm here."

  Gigi sighs. "Is that what you think? That you're in the way? It isn't about that, Jane. I’m not a nurturing person. I wasn’t good at it with your mother — she told me her whole life what a rotten mother I was — and I’m not good at it with you."

  "But if you can take care of half a dozen girls that you're not even related to, then why not me?"

  "Because I'm not afraid to fail with them. At the end of the day, I don’t care about them, not really. Oh, I care about their careers because it’s my career, I care about their success because it’s my success, but I don’t love them. If I lose someone to another agency or if she doesn’t make it in this business then there’ll always be another pretty girl. But with you, Jane, it’s different.”