As she obeyed, her mind wandered back to school. English had probably started. Who was Todd sitting with? Did he feel bad about their fight, too? With an ache, she wished she was there.
Every time she tried to smile, Dietrich yelled, “No expression!” making her jump. At last Dietrich straightened up. “Five minutes!” he yelled, and lumbered over to his assistant with his camera, muttering in guttural German.
Lizzie headed toward the catering area. She longed to go off in a corner with someone—anyone—and talk about what a stick in the mud Dietrich was, but there was nobody here for her to talk to. She stood alone at the table, scanning the soda selection and trying not to look like she was completely alone. She even missed her mom. Was this what she went through when she was her age? This weird loneliness in a crowded room? How had she done it?
She grabbed a can of Diet Coke and gulped down the fizzy drink, feeling her stomach press against the silk fabric. No wonder so many models had eating disorders, she mused. Always having to wear clothes that probably didn’t fit them.
And then she heard voices near the dressing area.
“I know, but if she really turns out to be a disaster, we can always use Natalie. I just hope she’s available.”
It was Martin. Lizzie froze.
“Should I check?” Christiane asked. “Watching her up there, it doesn’t look too good.”
“Well, she’s definitely not her mother,” Martin continued. “But at least with her we’ll save thousands on retouching.”
“How old is Katia now?” Christiane asked. “Thirty-six, thirty-seven? I heard that last W shoot was a nightmare. They spent thousands just on the crow’s feet.”
“I’m just not even sure she sees it,” Martin said. “But the Czech never age well. Look what happened to Paulina.”
Christiane made a small mirthless laugh. “But at least she knew when to bow out.”
Trembling, Lizzie put the can down on the table. A jumble of thoughts bubbled up inside her head. I made this up, she thought, absurdly. I didn’t just hear this. This isn’t happening.
“All right!” Dietrich yelled. “We start now! Lizzie! We start!”
Slowly she forced her mind to go quiet. With every ounce of control, she made her face go blank as she turned around.
“So we go back to before!” Dietrich yelled, stepping behind the camera. “Go!”
She hurried back to her mark. The people in the studio gathered into one large group, watching her.
“No expression!” Dietrich yelled, pressing the shutter.
She stared at the lens, fixing it with her best dead-eyed stare.
“Turn to the right!”
With a deep ache in her chest, she thought about her mom. Katia was on the plane right now, coming back from Paris, but she wanted her here now. She wanted to hug her. She wanted to smell her perfume. She wanted her to know that she wasn’t old, or overdone, or worn out, and that her daughter loved her.
“I said RIGHT!” Dietrich screamed, snapping her back to the present. He stood up and pulled a hank of hair out of his furious, beady eyes. “Right, goddammit!”
Lizzie gulped. Her right leg started to shake. People were staring at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Then wake up!” he yelled.
Lizzie stood there, too stunned to cry or move. Wait a minute, a voice inside of her said. You don’t need this. You don’t need this at all.
None of this was making her feel good about herself. It was doing just the opposite. And hadn’t that been the whole point of all of this?
If this was what it meant to be someone’s “muse,” she thought—to be yelled at, told to lose weight, criticized, and turned into someone unrecognizable—then she didn’t want any part of it anymore.
As Dietrich glared at her, waiting for her to compose herself, Lizzie looked straight ahead of her and walked off the set. Past the camera, past the astonished assistants, past the silent crowd, past Martin Meloy, who seemed too flabbergasted to speak. She headed straight for the clothing rack. In full view of everyone watching, her hand reached around to her zipper and yanked it down. This time the rip didn’t faze her. She would have gladly ripped the entire thing off her body if it could have gotten her out of here any quicker.
“Lizzie!” Annalise ran over to her. “What are you doing?”
Lizzie picked up her kilt and buttoned it. The scratchy wool poly–blend skirt had never felt better. She pulled her white turtleneck over her face, not caring whether her makeup smeared. It certainly couldn’t have made her look any worse.
“Lizzie,” Annalise snapped. “We’re in the middle of a shoot here!”
“Then fire me,” she said simply as she hoisted her bookbag to her shoulder and walked out of the room.
chapter 27
Out on the streets of SoHo, the sun had come out, and there were wide swatches of blue sky in between the clouds. People brushed past her in a hurry, pushing baby strollers, drinking coffee, still starting their day. Lizzie tipped her face up to the sky and took a grateful gulp of fresh air. Standing outside the studio, she felt like she’d broken out of prison after a life sentence. There was only one place that she wanted to go, only one place that could actually make her feel better now. As crazy as it was, that place was school.
On the 6 train, clattering uptown, she stared straight ahead at a cheesy ad for a dermatologist in Queens, willing her mind to stay blank. She’d try not to think about what had just happened until she saw her friends. They would know how to help her process this. But this time, she knew that she’d done something right.
When she reached school, it was just a few minutes before lunchtime. Before she went upstairs, though, she had to wash Martin’s Night of the Living Dead makeup off her face. She sprinted through the lobby before the receptionist could see her, and ducked into the ladies’ bathroom. Yikes, she thought when she saw her reflection. Her black eyeliner had started to run, and there were deep purple creases above her eyes. She looked like she’d just crawled up out of a grave. No wonder people had been staring at her on the street.
She scrubbed her face with hand soap and dried it with some paper towels. There was nothing she could do about her crimped hair, but she would worry about that later. She tiptoed out and climbed the stairs, listening to the familiar echo of her steps on the limestone. The air smelled warm and inviting, like an old friend. Who knew that school could be so comforting?
She opened the door to the Upper School. The halls were still. Class would be over any minute. Like a thief, she crept down the hall toward the lockers. But the sound of heavy, creaking footsteps behind her made her stop.
“Miss Summers?”
She turned around. Mr. Barlow stood in front of her, taller and skinnier and scarier than she remembered. “You’re here? I thought you had somewhere else to be today,” he said in a voice that sent a shiver through her.
“Not anymore,” she attempted.
“That’s a shame,” he said, folding his long arms. “Because you’re suspended.”
Lizzie swallowed. “Mr. Barlow—”
“We know whoever called the school this morning wasn’t your parent. Those are the rules, Miss Summers. No unexplained absences. Not even for…” His eyes drifted to her bizarre-looking crimped hair. “Jobs.”
“Okay, I had a photo shoot, for Martin Meloy,” she stammered. “But I walked out of it. I’m not doing it anymore. I’m done with it.”
He held up a hand. “And I’m going to have to give you an F for your mythology project.”
“An F?”
“You didn’t show up.”
“I can make it up, though. I did the work. I can just do it later—”
Mr. Barlow shook his head firmly. “No.”
An F. She had never gotten an F in her life. Especially in English.
“Come on, Mr. Barlow. You know that I’m a good student. I mean, you loved my story, right?”
He let out a low, disappo
inted whistle and hung his head. “Not as much as I thought I would,” he said.
“Why?” she asked, starting to get panicked. “What happened?”
“When I gave it back to you, I said you just needed to cut some words,” he said sternly. “Instead, you wrote an entirely new story. In the first version, the daughter was awkward. She felt inadequate around her mother. Now in this one she’s beautiful. And the mother is trying to imitate her. It just didn’t ring true to me. At all.”
“But you said I could go in another direction.”
Mr. Barlow shook his head. “Another direction isn’t a totally new story. The first version felt riskier, more authentic. This one…” He shrugged. “It felt like a cop-out. Like you chickened out. It didn’t feel like you, Lizzie.” He sighed. “They announced the finalists today,” he confessed. “Yours wasn’t one of them.”
Her head was starting to spin. Now her story was out of the competition? “But I can change it back… can you let me change it back?”
“It’s too late, Lizzie. The deadline passed. But I’d like you to read the story that was picked to be the ninth-grade entry.”
He gestured for her to follow him into his office, where he picked up a stapled printout from his desk. “It’s Mr. Piedmont’s.”
Now she was sure someone up there was laughing at her. She took the story, feeling her scalp start to burn with shame.
“He wasn’t afraid of being vulnerable,” Mr. Barlow added.
“Thanks,” she said, fighting back tears.
Mr. Barlow placed a warm, steadying hand on her shoulder, as if he could sense that she was overwhelmed. His kind blue eyes looked down on her, twinkling like marbles.
“I’m sorry, Lizzie. But I hope you learned something from all this. You’re a talented girl. Too talented to have gotten this distracted. You could have gotten an A on that project, and you could have been a finalist for that contest. But you lost your way a little bit here.”
The bell rang. She stared at the floor as her face burned. Doors opened, releasing voices and footsteps into the halls. This confrontation was coming to an end, thank God.
“Take care of yourself,” he said. “And I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
Still keeping her head bowed, she turned on her heels and walked out. She had gotten an F. She was suspended. Even her writing had turned bad.
This had to be the worst day of her life. But underneath the sadness, she felt a glimmer of hope. Mr. Barlow cared about her. He knew who she was, even if she had temporarily forgotten. She was Lizzie the Writer. That was her real self. Now she just needed to get back to that.
“Lizzie! You’re here!”
Lizzie turned around to see Hudson and Carina running toward her. Carina stopped short, agape at her hair. “Whoa. You look like something from Saved by the Bell.”
“What are you doing here?” Hudson exclaimed. “What happened to the shoot?”
Lizzie pulled them toward the stairs. “Can we go to the diner, you guys? I kind of need to get off school property. Like now.”
“Why?” Carina asked.
“I just got suspended,” she replied.
Hudson looked stricken. “You got what?”
“Come on, you guys, let’s go,” she said, heading to the stairs.
They hurried down the main staircase and walked to the diner. On the way there, Lizzie attempted to fill them all in on the shoot that morning.
“I’m sorry, but if anyone made me wear tons of purple eyeshadow, and crimped my hair, and then said I needed to go see a nutritionist, I’d punch them right in the mouth,” Carina said as a waitress put a plate of fries in front of them.
“C,” Hudson said.
“I’m serious,” Carina said, popping a fry into her mouth. “I mean, I get that he has a vision but he’s still a total douche.”
“Tell me about it,” Lizzie quipped.
“Bottom line is, you were supposed to be his muse,” Hudson said. “He picked you because of who you were. Not so he could improve you.”
“Actually, that’s not really why I walked out,” she confessed, taking a large bite of her buttered bagel. “I mean, all of those things were kind of annoying, yes. But the real reason is that I overheard Martin talking about my mom.”
Hudson and Carina stopped eating and looked up at her. “What’d he say?” Hudson asked, her eyes wide. Lizzie could tell that she was horrified for her.
“That she was old. Over the hill. Stuff like that.” Lizzie pushed her cole slaw around with her fork.
“Ugh,” Hudson said.
“I know. My mom tried to warn me, too. But I was so into it and so excited and I so wanted to believe them all, that I just didn’t listen to her. I guess I just really wanted to feel pretty.”
As close as they were, and as many times as she had joked about her looks, she had never admitted this to her friends. But Carina and Hudson watched her, without judgment, just listening, waiting for her to go on.
“And I did, working with Andrea,” she went on. “And then it all just made me feel uglier. And if my mom’s being talked about like that, then how can anyone feel good about themselves in that world? So I think it’s time I go back to the old Lizzie. Old Chia Pet Lizzie. And just accept it.”
Carina leaned her elbows on the table. “Lizbutt, you are pretty. You’re gorgeous. And maybe this all happened so you could finally believe that. And just remember it the rest of your life and, you know, move on.”
Lizzie grabbed a fry and dragged it through Carina’s ketchup. “Deep thoughts with Carina Jurgensen,” she said in a mock-serious voice.
But she knew that Carina was right. She had to move on. Maybe she’d never be totally at peace with her looks. Maybe she’d always wish she looked different. But she’d never again let other people decide who she was—ugly, different, awkward, stunning. All that mattered was what she thought of herself.
“Oh, I have news,” Hudson said quietly. “I think I know who gave that tabloid my number.” She pointed her fork past their heads. “Exhibit A in the corner.”
Lizzie craned her head around and saw, ensconced in a booth in the corner, Hillary Crumple. In a chunky orange roll-neck sweater, and an even messier ponytail, she looked even more devious than usual. She was pretending to talk with her friends but darting creepy obsessed looks at them every few seconds.
“Oh my God, you’re totally right,” Carina said.
“Yep, I bet you she did it,” Lizzie said.
“But how?” Hudson said, trying hard not to stare. “How would they get to her?”
“They can get to anyone,” Carina said ruefully. “All I know is, you’re no longer nice to her. Got it, Jones?”
“Loud and clear,” Hudson said, plucking a fry off Carina’s plate. “And maybe your revenge obsession isn’t as weird as I thought it was.”
“Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you guys,” Lizzie remembered. “I’m getting an F for the project, too. I’m sure Todd’ll be thrilled.”
Carina and Hudson exchanged a wary glance.
“What?” Lizzie asked, spearing her pickle with her fork.
Carina and Hudson looked at each other again. Something was going on.
“Spill it,” Lizzie said.
Carina folded her arms on the table. “Todd’s dad was arrested. For stealing money from his company. Or something.”
Lizzie put down her fork. “What?”
Hudson nodded soberly. “It happened this morning. Todd left school about an hour ago. He was pretty freaked out.”
Lizzie looked out the window at a young mom trying to zip up a jacket on her toddler. The art on the walls, the penthouse apartment, Todd’s books… the out-of-control spending. As much as she didn’t want it to, it all made sense.
“Lizzie? You okay?” Hudson asked.
“Is he all right?”
Hudson shrugged. “He didn’t say anything to anyone. He just left.”
“Apparently it’s all over the news,” Carina
added. “I never thought I’d say this, but poor Todd.”
She thought of Todd alone in his apartment—no father, no mother. It wasn’t even a question. “I gotta go, you guys,” Lizzie said, getting up. “Sorry. I’ll pay you back.”
“You’re going to see him now?” Hudson asked carefully.
“Lizzie,” Carina said. “The guy was a jerk to you.”
“Maybe,” she said, throwing on her jacket. “But he’s my friend. And I have a feeling I may have been wrong about him.”
“Then go,” Hudson said, smiling.
Lizzie hugged her friends quickly and raced to the door. Out on the street, she pulled out her phone and called him. It rang and rang and rang, before it finally reached voicemail.
“Hey, this is Todd. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you—”
She hung up. Of course he wouldn’t be picking up his phone. She had to go find him, wherever that might be.
A cab with its lights on was headed up Madison. She stuck out her hand and stepped as far into the street as she could without getting hit. The cab stopped right in front of her, and she got into the backseat and slammed the door.
“Where to?” asked the driver.
Todd probably wouldn’t be home—who would be there with him? He wouldn’t be with his dad, wherever the police were holding him. Who else did he have to go to in a crisis? Who else besides her?
His brother. That’s where Todd had been coming from, that very first day she saw him. He went to NYU. Had he mentioned the dorm? All she could remember was the corner.
“Bleecker and Thompson,” she said to the driver. “As fast as you humanly can.”
The driver made a sharp left toward Fifth Avenue, sending Lizzie falling against the door. Beside her on the seat, her open bookbag fell over. An avalanche of papers, pens, tissues, and books spilled out, all over the seat.
She righted herself, clipped on her seat belt, and started to shove the mess of papers back into her bag. No matter how often she cleaned it out, there was always a mess of loose papers in there—they seemed to multiply somehow.
And then the title page of Todd’s story caught her eye. She turned it right side up.