Survival of the Fiercest

by Anna Carey

  In the far corner of the room, Gunther stood next to a long catering table covered with miniature sandwiches. He downed a wheatgrass shot with one quick gulp. “And dat ez why you do ze good deeds—ze karma, Evette!” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ze karma!” Evette studied her manicure, seemingly oblivious to Gunther’s lecture.

  Lola let out a deep breath, staring at the round little man who was about to change her life. She thought about the time Martin Cromwell told all the sixth-years she was anorexic, the time the rag mags put a picture of her picking her wedgie on the web, or the time she overheard her father whispering to her mum in the kitchen, wondering if “she’d grow into it.” It was all in the past. From now on she was Lola Childs: Supermodel.

  She ran toward him, her arms outstretched for a hug. “Gunther!” she cried.

  “You ahhh feeelthy!” Gunther jumped backwards as he spotted her. Lola grabbed his wrist but he shook her off like she was some rabid animal. “Wat did you do?” He frantically searched the pockets of his white trousers, pulling out a small bottle of hand sanitizer. He poured it all over his arms, rubbing it in like it was suntan lotion.

  Lola’s cheeks felt hot. “You told me to be one with the gutter,” she cried, looking from Gunther to Evette. “You said no bathing.”

  “He just meant he didn’t want you to shower. You look like you’ve been sleeping in the subway station for the last week.” Evette grabbed some Lysol from under the catering table and sprayed it in the air around her.

  “You smeeell like ze poo-poo!” Gunther paced back and forth, muttering furiously. “I can’t do zeees. She ez feelthy. Ze hair ez greasy oil.” He smoothed back his thick black hair, took three wheatgrass shots off the catering table, and downed them one after the next.

  “I’m sorry…” Lola mumbled. “Please. I can wash my hair.”

  “No!” Gunther screamed, his eyes wide behind his thick glasses. “It ez too late—everyone eez here.” He gestured to the other end of the warehouse, where the lighting crew was standing, watching him flail his arms in frustration. A man wearing headphones subtly snapped a picture with his iPhone.

  “I’m sorry,” Lola repeated, feeling a lump in the back of her throat. She never should’ve taken that shower, or poured olive oil all over her hair. Now she’d have to go back to the town house—the party—and explain to everyone why she’d been fired by one of the greatest fashion designers in the world. Cate would tell the story at every Christmas dinner from now on, laughing as she described Lola’s greasy hair. As soon as her mum came home from Tahiti, Ayana would ring her, specifically requesting Lola never set foot in the Ford building again. It was bad enough she’d embarrassed herself—she didn’t need her mum knowing what a twit she’d been.

  Gunther’s eyes were bulgy, watery, and red. He squatted on the floor, his face a deep pink. “I am not ze maniac, I am not ze maniac,” he muttered quietly, to no one in particular. “Evette—my bag!” Evette pulled a paper lunch bag out of her red leather purse. Gunther was scribbled in Sharpie across the front of it. He kept his eyes on the floor as he breathed in and out, filling it up like a balloon.

  After a few more breaths Gunther set the bag down, his cheeks bright red. “It ez ze universe, Evette! It ez ze universe teeeesting me! Universe say: Gunther, you still ze maniac? I say no.” Gunther stood up, adjusting his thick glasses. There was a new calm over his face as he pounded his little fist in the air. “We will do ze shoot!”

  Evette’s gaze fell on Lola’s hands. They were caked in bronzer, like she’d been clawing her way through dirt. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Gunther covered his heart with his hand. “Rodrrrrigo!” he called across the warehouse. A man with a handlebar mustache stood up. “Get ze dress!”

  Lola let out a deep breath. Maybe she was “feeelthy.” Maybe she hadn’t followed Gunther’s orders exactly. But Gunther saw something in her, and whatever that something was, she’d show it to him again. When he saw her pose…he’d be thrilled.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lola emerged from the curtained-off section of the warehouse used as a dressing room. The makeup artist had tried to remove as much of the foundation as possible while Rodrigo, the stylist, fitted her in the first of four original Gunther Gunta evening gowns. The gray “gutter-inspired” dress was spotted with brown paint, as though she’d trudged through a muddy field. “I love it,” Lola cried, spinning around once. Even with her hair greased up with olive oil, even with bronzer caked under her fingernails, she’d never felt so beautiful. She was a model now—a model for Gunther Gunta.

  “It’s actually not bad,” Evette decided, puffing on a cigarette as she looked Lola up and down. “It’s very ’90s grunge—don’t you think?”

  Gunther was standing by the garbage trucks, his short arms folded over his chest. “I am not going for ze ’90s grunge, Evette.” He gestured for Lola to stand by the garbage truck and picked up his Nikon camera.

  Lola stared at her reflection in the lens. She’d watched so many shoots and runway shows growing up that she had all of her mum’s moves memorized—the way she turned and rested her chin on her shoulder, the way she put her hand on the back of her neck and stared directly into the camera. She went through each one, slowly, carefully, as Gunther clicked away.

  Gunther let out a low growl, the same sound Heath Bar made whenever Cate walked in the room. Lola kept posing, trying to ignore it, but it kept getting louder. She rested a foot on a mound of garbage bags, which felt like they were stuffed with newspaper. When she tossed her oily hair over her shoulder, it stuck to the side of her face. She shook her head to get it off and a strand of hair got stuck in her mouth. It tasted like olive oil.

  “Arrrgh,” Gunther finally cried, throwing the camera onto the concrete floor. The lens broke off, rolling toward the door. He pulled at his hair and stomped his right foot several times. Lola stepped back, afraid. “I cannot do zeees. It ez crepe, Evette, crepe!” With that, he stormed out of the warehouse, slamming the door behind him.

  “Crepe?” Lola asked, glancing around the room. The crew had all turned to watch. By the catering table in the corner, Rodrigo held a bagel to his mouth, frozen.

  “Crap, Lola.” Evette dropped her cigarette on the floor and stomped it out with her foot. Her black eyes narrowed. “He thinks you’re crap.”

  Lola’s eyes swelled with tears. She’d been so dim. Last night she’d talked to Abby online for an hour, keeping on about how Gunther had told her she was “freeeesh looking,” or how Kyle would be barmy when he saw her billboard in Times Square. This wasn’t her chance to be a supermodel, it was her chance to do the same thing she always did: act like a silly, awkward twit.

  SOME GUYS GET ALL THE GIRLS

  Saturday evening Stella stood in her closet, trying to decide on an outfit for the party. After Cate returned from her haircut she’d stormed up to her room. Stella intercepted her in the stairwell but she’d insisted she didn’t want to talk about Myra, or the party planning, or anything anymore. She’d said she wanted “to have fun tonight.” But as Cate closed her door in Stella’s face, she couldn’t help feeling like whatever “fun” Cate had, it wouldn’t include her.

  She walked her fingers over her clothes, finally pulling an Anna Sui dress from the hanger. She tugged hard, but the skirt was caught on something. Stella felt the wall, freeing the hem from behind a small rusty latch. She pushed the clothes aside, revealing a door of some sort. But it was sealed off with paint.

  Stella knelt down and examined the small trapdoor. It reminded her of that story her father used to read to her and Lola when they were little—about Narnia, and the kids who went to another world through a passage in their wardrobe. After that they’d spent every afternoon in the hall closet, wearing their mum’s old fur coats and pretending they were exploring a winter wonderland filled with talking badgers and magical fauns. Stella stuck her fingernail in the groove of the door frame, breaking the seal. As she ran her finger all along the ed
ge, chips of green paint fell to the floor like confetti. She leaned against the door, but it was stuck.

  She imagined a dusty stone passageway leading to paradise. Maybe a yacht on the French Riviera, or the pebble beach in Positano her grandmum took her to every summer. If nothing else, maybe she’d have room to expand her walk-in closet. She pushed hard against it once, then again, and finally there was a ripping sound. Then she fell face-first onto a wood floor. She looked up and saw…a fit bloke in plaid pajama pants. He was standing in the middle of the room, his hair sticking up in different directions, like he’d just rolled out of bed. Forget the French Riviera—this was paradise.

  “Hi…” he said. Then he glanced behind Stella, where strips of flowery wallpaper hung over a gaping square hole. “We have a front door, you know.” He let out a little laugh, squeezing the orange and blue Nerf basketball clutched in his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Stella said quickly, brushing plaster snowflakes off her dress. The room was bare except for a four-poster bed and a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner. “I found this door in my closet and thought it was a secret passage or something.”

  “I hated that wallpaper anyway.” He peered into the hole. “And technically it is a secret passage…to my bedroom.” He smiled, then sank the ball into a small net perched above his window.

  The word bedroom hung in the air between them. Stella felt like her stomach was filled with moths. This boy was cute and funny, and from now on the only thing that would separate them, night after night, was an unlocked door. She stepped forward and stuck out her hand. “I’m Stella Childs.”

  The boy took it in his own. “I’m Eli Punch.” Stella stared at their hands, clasped together, feeling the heat creep into her cheeks. So this was the mysterious Eli Punch. The neighbor from Westport, Connecticut, with the father who’d played basketball for the Clippers. The connoisseur of chocolate pudding. No wonder Cate was obsessed with him. “You’re Cate’s sister?”

  “Stepsister,” Stella corrected, finally letting go. “From London. I just moved here.”

  “Me too.” Eli picked up the ball again and slam-dunked it in the net. “Is the Upper East Side all you hoped for and more?” He smirked.

  Stella heard the question but didn’t bother answering it. Her gaze had settled behind Eli, where a framed poster was resting against the wall. “Magritte,” she said, as if she’d just recognized an old friend standing in the middle of Eli’s bedroom. The painting was called The Empire of Light, II, and it had been her favorite, ever since she’d visited New York last fall and seen it hanging in the MoMA.

  “Yeah,” Eli said. “You like him?”

  “I love him.” She walked over and rested her fingers on the glass. The picture was of a street in darkness, but the sky behind it was bright. “It’s brilliant, the way it’s day and night at the same time.” When Stella walked around New York on a nice day, she sometimes imagined she was in a Magritte painting. The sky in London was often gray, but here it was a clear blue, with perfect white clouds that looked like spoonfuls of marshmallow fluff.

  “I’m obsessed with art.” Eli smiled. He squeezed behind the cardboard boxes and slid out two other framed posters. “I’m just terrible at it.”

  “Rothko,” Stella said, pointing at an abstract painting with orange and red rectangles. “And Kandinsky.” Stella had painted a smaller version of Squares with Concentric Rings for her art class at Sherwood Academy, when they were learning how to do reproductions. She’d given it to her dad before they left for New York, even though she and he both knew, without saying, that he didn’t deserve it.

  Eli rested his hand against the wall, leaning in so that his face was close to Stella’s. “How do you know so much about art?”

  “I paint, and draw….” Stella trailed off, noticing the foot of space between them. She hadn’t been that close to a boy since Pippa’s New Year’s Eve party last year. She’d snogged Henry Cunningham on her roof deck, Big Ben just visible in the distance.

  “You should show me your work sometime.” Eli rapped his knuckles on the glass frame.

  Stella smiled. Eli Punch could sink a basket from across the room and he knew who René Magritte was. “I will.”

  She glanced at her Movado watch. She could’ve stayed in Eli’s room all night, keeping on about the John Currin exhibit she’d seen at the Whitney, and how she loved The Scream, even though she got the chills every time she looked into the creepy ghost man’s eyes. But the party was starting in less than an hour and she was still unshowered, wearing her Topshop sweatpants and a T-shirt. “I better go.”

  “I’ll see you tonight?” Eli asked. “I’m coming to the party.”

  “Of course.” Stella ducked through the small door and glanced back at him, noticing for the first time how big his smile was. “And from now on…you know where to find me.”

  She closed the door behind her and fell against it. Ever since they’d moved in, she’d hated her room. She hated that she had to climb four flights of stairs to get to it. She hated that the ceilings were slanted and she had to duck so she didn’t hit her head. But she was starting to think it was the best room in the house.

  A PICTURE’S WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

  Andie walked around the living room with Clay, feeling like she was in a mosh pit. The party had started less than an hour ago, but already the town house was packed with ninth-graders from Haverford and Ashton Prep, and it seemed like every other person was clutching one of those silly Polaroid cameras. Cindy and Lola were sitting under the Chi Sigma Mu banner. Lola was still miserable from the failed shoot, but every once in a while she snapped a candid of Cindy blowing her nose. A brace-faced couple made out on the couch, completely oblivious to the three Haverford boys taking pictures of them.

  Andie stood back as two ninth-grade boys wrestled on the floor, grinding personalized Chi Sigma Mu chocolates into the Persian rug. They rolled over, trapping Andie and Clay in the corner.

  “I got you,” Clay said. And without another word he picked Andie up and set her down on the other side of the rug. Then he hurdled over the boys.

  “Thanks,” Andie said, rubbing her hips where Clay had held her. Even if he’d already given two wedgies (one to Jake Goldfarb and one to Austin Thorpe’s younger brother, Corey), he looked objectively cute in his plaid green Urban Outfitters button-down…and Andie wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Paige Mortimer had talked her ear off about how Clay was such a “catch,” even begging her to set her up with his older brother Jackson. Everyone was obsessed with Clay, and Andie couldn’t help but be just the tiniest bit excited by all the attention.

  “Photo op!” Shelley DeWitt called, shoving a Polaroid camera in Clay and Andie’s face. Clay grabbed Andie’s shoulder, pulling her so close her nose was buried in his armpit. “We need one of you two!”

  Andie shielded her face with her hand. “I’m not feeling very…photogenic.” She peered through her fingers at the corkboard on the wall, which was covered in pictures. There was a glamour shot of Blythe, Priya, and Sophie pouting their lips, Beta Sigma Phi scrawled in the space below with purple Sharpie. There was another of Austin Thorpe’s bare butt, on which someone had drawn eyes and a nose and written Buttface Thorpe. Andie imagined a picture labeled Andie <3’s Clay, her cheek snuggled into the crook of Clay’s arm. Even if Paige Mortimer and Shelley DeWitt were impressed with her new “boyfriend,” there was one person who wouldn’t be: Kyle Lewis. He’d be there in an hour, and she couldn’t have photographic evidence of her fake relationship pinned up for everyone to see.

  “Come on, Sloane,” Clay said, squeezing her shoulder so hard it burned. But Shelley was already gone, darting across the room to snap a picture of the Ashton drama club jumping up and down by the fireplace, wailing “La Vie Bohème.”

  As they strolled into the foyer, Andie spotted Blythe. She was leaning against the wall with Priya and Sophie, and they were all wearing Alice + Olivia V-neck shirts in the three primary colors. She’d s
pent three years wishing they’d be friends with her. She couldn’t just walk by without showing off her new boyfriend (even if he was fake). “Hey, guys,” Andie cooed. “You know Clay Calhoun, right?”

  Blythe grabbed Andie’s arm. “You’re not dating him—are you?” she whispered.

  “Yes, I am,” Andie bragged. Technically, she was dating him…at least until nine thirty. In forty-five minutes Clay would leave, and in an hour Kyle would arrive. They could hide out in her dad’s study. Kyle would strum Winston’s old Larrivée guitar from the ’70s, away from the wall of Polaroid pictures, away from Clay Calhoun’s personal fan club, and away from Lola.

  Sophie bounced on her heels, as if she just realized who Clay Calhoun was. “O M to the G! Your mother plays Dr. Chartreuse Delacorte on that soap, Saving Love!”

  Clay glanced at his Nike sneakers, his shaggy hair falling in his face. “Something like that.”

  “Hey, everyone!” a voice called. Danny Plimpton, a usually shy seventh-grader from Haverford, stood at the top of the stairs and waved. He was wearing dress pants and a shirt and tie, even though almost everyone was in jeans. Lola and Cindy hovered in the living room doorway to watch. “Look!” Three camera flashes went off as he slid down the polished mahogany banister and crashed into Betsy Carmichael. Her punch went flying through the air.

  The marble foyer echoed with laughter. Paige Mortimer doubled over like she was about to pee her cropped Theory pants. Cate had just walked in wearing a sequined Phillip Lim mini-dress, her dark brown hair swept up, her mouth open in shock as she spotted the bright red tidal wave dripping down the ivory wall. “It’s not funny,” she cried, her hands balled into fists. “Someone’s going to have to clean that up.”