Chapter 12
THREE MONTHS AGO, IF YOU’D ASKED me what I thought I’d be doing during finals week, hanging out in my underwear at a fashion show with a bunch of the world’s top supermodels would not have been high on my list. In fact, it wouldn’t have been anywhere on my list. And by hanging out at a fashion show in my underwear, I mean, About to go out onstage wearing nothing but. Except that they didn’t call it underwear. They called it lingerie. And it wasn’t a stage: It was a runway. Yeah. I was about to publicly humiliate myself wearing fewer clothes than I had ever worn in public in my life, including in the locker room at school, where I’d always made sure to have on something that covered me from armpits to midthigh at all times, even if it was only a towel. Forget about showering with my fellow students in Tribeca Alternative’s prison-style showers—one nozzle for four to six girls at a time—in the locker room. It was impossible to work up a sweat during what passed for physical education class at TAHS, so there was no need to shower, anyway. Well, impossible for me, considering that, in the past, whenever a volleyball or whatever came near me, I’d always make sure to step calmly away to avoid it. See? No sweat. No need for a shower. Problem solved. Only now it appeared as if karma was sending me a great big power serve for all my slacking off in PE. I not only got to parade around in my underwear at the real deal on New Year’s (an event where I’d be humiliating myself in front of a live audience of four hundred photographers, journalists, cameramen, fashionistas, designers, stylists, art directors, and your everyday run-of-the-mill celebrities such as Sting and John Mayer, and various celebutantes who’d have gathered at the Stark Enterprises Sound Studios in Midtown for the occasion), but I’d have to endure several dress rehearsals, where I’d be half naked in front of assorted sound and camera people, light and technical crew, stylists, and don’t let me forget my fellow models. One of whom—I think her name was Kelley—was peering at me right now as we sat amid the craziness backstage, wardrobe assistants running around, trying to get us all sorted out and fitted with our wings and various assigned bras and panties and thongs so they’d know if they’d ordered the right amount for the Big Night. “Are you worried, Nikki?” Kelley leaned over to ask me, in a Southern accent. “’Cause you look worried. ” “Uh…” I was totally shocked that she was speaking to me. No one had spoken to me all day, except for the stylists, one of whom warned me about my chi. In his opinion, it could have used some realigning. “Maybe a little. ” I smiled queasily at her. I really did think I was going to heave the chocolate-covered strawberries I’d just scarfed from the catering table. Why couldn’t I follow the advice on the list of forbidden foods on the refrigerator back in the loft? Chocolate was definitely on it. “You’ll be fine!” Kelley said. She had huge brown eyes, made to look even larger by the liquid liner around them. “If the lights get to be too much and you can’t see, just feel for the stage with your feet. If all you touch is air, don’t put your foot down. That means you’re at the end of the runway. You don’t want to step off into thin air. You know what happens then. ” She made a splatting noise. This didn’t reassure me. If anything, I felt more like throwing up than ever. I was going to be so blinded by the studio lights, I was going to walk off the end of the runway? No one had mentioned this to me before. I was already completely unsteady on the six-inch platform Louboutins they’d handed me. My sassy “catwalk” strut? It wasn’t all that sassy, it turned out. But I said, “Great, thanks,” anyway, to be nice. “Gosh, Nikki,” Kelley said, looking a little surprised. “You’re the one who told me that about the lights when I was just starting out. Remember?” I blinked. I’d screwed up. As usual. “Of course,” I said, with what I hoped was a fierce laugh. Nikki was nothing if not fierce. Right? Kelley didn’t fall for my alleged fierceness. Well, why should she have? “You really did bang your head and get amnesia, like everyone is saying. ” Kelley looked at me pityingly. “What’s it feel like?” another girl—this one as fair as Kelley was dark—wanted to know as we waited for someone to come over and tell us the director was finally ready for us. I was surprised—surprised Kelley and the other girl were even talking to me. We’d been in the studio for hours for our fitting and rehearsal, but none of them had said a word to me, even though I’d figured, you know, being in the same business, some of the girls had to have known Nikki, and maybe even been friendly with her. But either these girls were just too shy (doubtful, given their outgoing personalities) to say hello, or Nikki had done something to piss them off—which, knowing Nikki, was the most likely explanation. “How’s what feel?” I asked, starting to freak. Not that this girl was speaking to me. But that she knew. Only how could this gorgeous girl, sitting there so coolly in a water bra and thong, have found out about my surgery? Or maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she was a plant, sent by Stark, to try to screw me up. See if I’d talk. Yeah. That’s how paranoid I’ve gotten. It’s amazing what happens when you start thinking you’re being spied on all the time, the tricks your mind starts playing on you… “The diamond bra,” the blond girl said, when I didn’t say anything for a minute. “You’re wearing ten million bucks on your chest, Nik. What’s that feel like?” I looked down. Oh, yeah. I was completely cracking up, that was obvious. “Oh,” I said. “It’s really uncomfortable. Diamonds, being the hardest substance on earth, aren’t the best material with which to make a bra. Well, technically, that’s aggregated diamond nanorods. But you know what I mean. ” Oh, wow. I sounded like the biggest nerd. And nothing like Nikki Howard… The blond girl—whose name, I seemed to recall from the stylist, was Veronica—just stared at me. But thankfully, Kelley seemed to get a kick out of my reply—as did a couple of the other models nearby—and giggled. “Diamond nanawhatevers,” she echoed. “What have you been doing since I last saw you?” Kelley wanted to know. “Taking science classes at night school?” “Well,” I replied. “Not night school, exactly, but high school—” It was at that moment my non-Stark brand cell phone rang. I checked it to find a text from Frida. I’m sorry, Frida had written. Plz don’t b mad! I luv u! U should c me, I can’t stop crying! Plz call back! Honestly. I would give anything to have the biggest crisis in my life be that my big sister said I couldn’t go to her holiday loft party. I mean, suppose Mom could see me now, in a ten-milliondollar diamond bra and sheer, black lace-trimmed panties? Oh, and did I mention the angel wings? And PS, I was so not calling back. I was having my own personal drama right then. I did not need to get sucked into my little sister’s, which could wait until my own was finished. Which would be never, at the rate things were going. “That’s an awesome phone,” Kelley said admiringly. “And what’s the name of that ringtone?” I looked at her in surprise. “You can download it for free off the Internet,” I said, knowing how lame I must have sounded to these twenty-something models. Just wait until they found out my ringtone is called Dragon Battle Cry and from an online RPG called Journeyquest. Except…they didn’t seem to care. In fact, Kelley gasped and handed me her Stark brand phone. “Ooh, me,” she said. “Do me? I want. ” “Me, too!” the other models squealed. All but Veronica, who looked around at her friends like they’d lost their minds. Have some dignity, her look seemed to imply. “Ladies!” Alessandro, the show’s stage director, clapped his hands to get our attention. “It’s time! Exactly like we rehearsed last time, all right?” Except, of course, when we’d rehearsed, we’d been in our regular clothes because the lingerie hadn’t arrived yet. Not to mention our wings. Also, it was hard to hear him, thanks to the pulsing beat that had started out on the runway. “Oh, and the musicians are here now,” Alessandro said unnecessarily. “So let’s see if we can walk in time with the music now. ” All the girls who’d gathered around me, wanting me to download the geekiest ringtone possible onto their phones, had run off to get into their places for the show, and Shauna, my agent Rebecca’s assistant, had hurried over to whisper, “Okay, now, Nikki? Don’t freak out, but they’ve made a last-minute change. When you come out wearing the diamond bra, Gabriel Luna is going to play his new song, ‘Nikki. ’ I said don’t freak out. ” “What?” I couldn’t hear her, because of all the noise onstage. But I was pretty sure she’d just said the hottest new sensation on the Stark record label, who’d just happened to have written a song about me, was going to be singing it when I came out on-stage wearing nothing but wings, a bra, and a pair of panties. A diamond bra and panties. A song about me. This was really not what I needed to hear just then. I had been successfully avoiding Gabriel Luna for weeks now. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him. I actually did. But like with Brandon, not in that way. I liked someone else that way. So I didn’t really need to be hanging out with some other guy—especially one who was writing love songs about me—when my heart belonged to another. Who, okay, it turned out was in love with another girl—a dead girl—and might happen to be a supervillain. But no relationship is perfect. “Rebecca said not to tell you about Gabriel before,” Shauna said with an apologetic smile. “So you wouldn’t get nervous. ” I just stared at her. I wasn’t nervous. Not exactly. The truth was, I wasn’t nervous at all. I was pretty sure I was having a nervous breakdown. “Try not to think about it,” Shauna said, spinning me around to face a line of tall, impossibly thin girls all getting ready to go onstage. “Take deep breaths. Just concentrate on your breathing!” My breathing? What was she talking about? Gabriel Luna, on whom my little sister, Frida, and all her friends were crushing in the biggest way—That accent! Those eyes! That dark hair!—was going to be singing a song about me while I was prancing around in front of him in my underwear, and I was supposed to concentrate on my breathing? I was hyperventilating. I needed to stop breathing so much, actually. Like I didn’t have enough problems with Christopher and Steven and Nikki’s missing mom and all. Now I had to deal with this? And sure, most girls, such as my sister, would die to have a song written about them by a guy like Gabriel. I would, too… …if it hadn’t just been manufactured to propel the singer to the top of the charts. It wasn’t like Gabriel’s song meant anything. He barely knew me. We’d had a few, mostly chance encounters. We’d never even been out on a date. We’d never even kissed. Well, for any significant amount of time. It wasn’t like he was in love with me. And even if he was, it didn’t matter, because of Christopher. In front of me, the girls were taking off, one by one, like graceful butterflies, swooping out from backstage and onto the runway and into the blindingly bright lights, which the tech crew was still adjusting in the rafters of the vast, dark studio, which seated hundreds. Those seats were empty now, but on the big night… Okay, try not to think about that now. I was attempting to control my breathing, and not think about what was going to happen when I stepped out there… And then suddenly, the girl in front of me—I didn’t realize it was Veronica right away because her wings had masked her face up until just then—turned to say, “You know, Nikki, you have some nerve. ” I looked at her blankly. “I’m sorry?” “Yeah, you better be sorry,” she said. “After what you did. I can’t believe you have the guts to even look me in the face. ” What I did to her? I’d done nothing all day but memorize my blocking and eat chocolate strawberries and feel like I was going to throw up. I’d barely said a word to anyone… Oh, wait. She must mean what Nikki did to her. “I’m sorry,” I said. This time I meant it as an apology and not Excuse me. “I really don’t remember what you’re talking about—” “Oh, right,” Veronica said. The music was so loud, I could barely hear her. But I could read the hatred in her eyes clearly enough. “You might have all the other girls eating out of your hand, with your weird ringtones and your oh-I’m-so-nervous routine,” she said. “But I know the truth. I know this whole amnesia thing is a scam. And I know you’re still in touch with Justin. ” I blinked at her. “What? Justin who?” She better not have meant Justin Bay, Lulu’s ex…and Nikki’s, too, incidentally. Or maybe not incidentally, since it turned out Nikki had been seeing him behind Lulu’s back. And now, apparently, behind Veronica’s back, too. Veronica glared at me. “Don’t play dumb with me. I know you still e-mail him,” she spat. “And I’m just warning you. You better watch your back. ” Wait…what? That made no sense at all. “I don’t e-mail anyone named Justin,” I insisted. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Although that made it like most of the things in my life these days. I wished I were wearing a little more clothing. I might have felt less exposed. However, at least I knew if she tried to stab me or something, my diamond bra would stop any sort of blade. And probably most bullets. “I can assure you—” “I know it’s you,” Veronica snapped back. The music was thumping, and the girl in front of her had just taken off for her turn down the runway. “You stay away from him. Do you hear me?” “I’ve never—” It didn’t matter, though. She was gone, sashaying out onto the stage in front of me, the ends of her wings drooping onto the high-polished metallic floor. Great. So I had yet another enemy. What was wrong with Nikki, anyway? What was she doing, going after her friends’ boyfriends, when she could have had any single guy she wanted (except Christopher Maloney)? Were single guys not enough of a challenge for her? She had to go after guys who were taken? It was tough being one of the most beautiful women in the world, I guess. When almost every guy you met fell all over himself trying to get with you, you naturally found yourself only drawn to the ones who didn’t. But why did that nutcase think Nikki was still e-mailing her boyfriend? “Nikki,” Shauna hissed at me. “Go!” I realized the music had changed. It wasn’t the pounding technopop it had been a minute before, when all the other girls had been heading out onto the stage. It had turned into a more mellow, haunting melody. A second later, I heard a deep, British-accented male voice singing from the stage: “Nikki, oh, Nikki…The thing of it is, girl…in spite of it all…I really do think…I love you. ” If I hadn’t been hyperventilating before, I was definitely about to then. Oh, great. Gabriel Luna, a guy I’d met maybe four or five times in my life, loved me? Yeah. I didn’t think so. Well…it was just a song. Just the song that, as soon as it hit the airwaves when this show goes live New Year’s Eve, everyone was going to be humming, instead of the Stark Quark song. Or at least, I supposed that’s what Gabriel Luna and Stark record label were hoping. “Nikki,” Shauna said again. “Go. ” I went. I wandered out onto the runway in a daze. I was trying to remember my sassy catwalk strut, but it was really hard when all I could think about was Gabriel Luna loves me? Really? No. No, he couldn’t. Every time I saw him, I was doing something boneheaded, like getting carried around by Brandon Stark, or being in a hospital, recovering from a transplanted brain. He didn’t love me. This was all just a publicity stunt. A Starkengineered publicity stunt. After all, that’s why he was in this country and not back in his native England in the first place, right? To further his career? But as I moved out more centrally onto the stage, and I saw him there with his guitar, wearing a faded blue shirt beneath a brown suede jacket over jeans, I could sort of see why Frida and her friends were so gaga over him. I mean, he looked really cute. And he was looking right at me, not smiling, not frowning, just looking, super-intently, as he sang, “It’s not the way that you walk, girl…the way that you smile or the way that you look…it’s just the way you move me…the way that you move me…that makes me say, Nikki, oh, Nikki…The thing of it is, girl…in spite of it all…I really do think…I love you. “ All I could think was what I thought every time I saw him, which was, Oh, my God. Frida’s right. He is kinda hot. But at the same time, I realized he wasn’t my kind of hot. If that makes any sense. I was trying to keep my gaze on where I was going—down the runway—but the truth was, I could hardly see two feet in front of me, the lights were so bright, plus they were reflecting up off the diamonds in my bra—and that was a lot of reflection, let me tell you. There were diamond rainbows dancing everywhere before my eyes. I couldn’t see a thing as I looked out toward the lights—nothing except rainbows. I tried to remember what Kelley had told me about feeling with my feet for the edge of the catwalk so I didn’t sassy-strut my way right off it. But it was hard to do that without inching along like I was walking the plank on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World. Alessandro seemed to realize I was in trouble and shouted from somewhere out in the vast emptiness of the studio, “Yes, Nikki! You’re doing fine! Now…turn!” I turned on his command, trusting he wouldn’t lead me astray. And he hadn’t. Suddenly, I was facing away from the lights, and I could see again. What I saw was Gabriel at the opposite end of the catwalk. He was grinning at me a little now. Only through some trick of the lights, for a moment his dark hair looked gold, and his blue eyes seemed, just for a second, to belong to someone else. “The thing of it is, girl…in spite of it all…I really do think…I love you. ” God! What I wouldn’t give to hear those words coming out of Christopher’s mouth. About me. Not me the way I was, but me the way I am now. And okay, maybe his song was only a publicity gimmick. But I knew that somehow, coming from Christopher, I’d have believed those words. I’d have believed them in a second. Why, oh why, was it Gabriel and not Christopher saying he loved me? And then suddenly, right as Gabriel was hitting his third chorus of I love you’s, my foot landed on something that was not catwalk or air. I didn’t know what it was, but it was soft…and it was slippery. And it caused my feet to go flying right out from under me. Only, since I wasn’t really an angel, and my wings didn’t actually work, I didn’t just float lightly off into the air. I came crashing down, hard.