Those eyes darted in Lizzie’s direction, like a cobra’s, as she said, “Look darling, I have a meeting. Another crisis, you know. Yes, lunch would be fab. Talk soon.” She pulled off her Bluetooth and tossed it in between a stack of newspapers and a thick September Vogue. “Well, hello, Lizzie,” she said. “Speak of the bloody devil.”
Lizzie sat down in a Lucite chair in front of her desk. This had almost definitely been a mistake.
“I just wanted to say I’m so sorry about what happened,” she started. “This was all a big mistake. And if there’s anything I can do—”
“Do you have any idea what kind of a day I’ve had?” Natasha demanded, in a tone that suggested she was about to answer her own question. “Do you?”
“Um, actually, uh…,” Lizzie began.
“On an average day, I get a hundred phone calls—a hundred and ten, tops,” she said, gesturing to the sky. “But today, I’ve had one hundred and seventy-five phone calls, all because of you, Lizzie, and it’s not even four o’clock!”
As if on cue, her six-line phone began to ring. Natasha inhaled deeply and pressed her index finger against the inner corner of her eye, as if she was trying to prevent a total nervous breakdown. “Amanda!” she hollered toward the door. “Can you get that, please?” Natasha removed her finger from her eye and took another deep breath.
“You’ve had a hundred and seventy-five phone calls?” Lizzie asked.
“I have had calls from Star, from Us Weekly, from TMZ, from the Daily Mail in London, from Paris, from Tokyo,” she continued, lifting each of her black-polished fingers. “All of them wanting to know why Katia’s daughter said such horrible things about her mother.”
“But my mom said you were taking care of it—” Lizzie said.
“It’s the bloody Internet, for God’s sakes!” Natasha snapped. “Now, I’ve done what I can, but listen to me, Lizzie, listen to me very carefully,” Natasha said, placing a hand on her heaving chest. “I don’t know how you behave at home, but you can’t just go shooting your mouth off when you’re in public. And especially not in front of a camera crew. This is the twenty-first century, Lizzie. Privacy doesn’t exist anymore. Do you understand that?” Natasha shook her head as if privacy was too absurd for even her to contemplate. “And at Fashion Week? My God, you’ve been there enough times, you know how things get. If this were your first time I would have understood, but my God…” She let her voice trail off with outrage. “You have to be smart, Lizzie. You have to think,” she said, vigorously tapping the side of her head. “You have to be more careful about what you say. To call your mother’s designs slutty, Lizzie, I mean, honestly. You have to protect your mother. We all have to.”
“I was just surrounded,” Lizzie stammered. “I got freaked out, the guy ambushed me—”
“You say to them everything’s fine, everything’s good, and that your mother’s an inspiration to women everywhere,” she emphasized. Natasha’s phone rang again. “Amanda?” Natasha yelled toward the open door.
“Have you heard from my mom?” Lizzie asked tentatively.
“Not yet. But I’m sure I will. It’s causing quite a stir.”
“Oh,” Lizzie mumbled.
Natasha turned around to face her computer monitor. “Let’s see,” she said, reading from the screen. “The Post wanted it to be the lead story for their Entertainment section this weekend. Famous mother and daughter catfights through history, or something like that. Star wants to put you and Katia on the cover for next week. Oh, and Tyra wants to do an intervention-type show with you and Katia. When Your Mom Is Hot, and You’re Not. We’re obviously not returning that call.”
A tall, twenty-something girl in skinny jeans and with a hangdog expression knocked on the door. Lizzie could only guess it was the long-suffering Amanda.
“Yes?” Natasha asked.
Amanda trudged into Natasha’s office. “That photographer called again for Katia’s kid. About the ugly modeling?” she announced, placing the slip on her desk. “Don’t worry, I got rid of her.”
There was a long silence. Lizzie pretended to become very interested in the box of Kleenex on Natasha’s desk.
“Amanda?” Natasha said sweetly. “This is Lizzie Summers. Katia’s daughter.”
Amanda went pale as she stared at Lizzie. “Oh,” she said. “Hi. Sorry.”
“You can go now,” Natasha commanded.
Without a word, Amanda walked out. Natasha turned toward Lizzie and gamely attempted a smile. “I was going to tell you about that,” she said. “A photographer saw you on the clip. She thought you had a unique look,” she said, hooking her fingers into air quotes around the words.
“It was for ugly modeling?” Lizzie asked. Maybe it was time she finally embraced this.
“That’s just the slang term for it,” Natasha said. “It’s real-person modeling. Using people who aren’t traditionally beautiful to sell products. It’s starting to get some attention here and there in the ad world. But speaking as your publicist, too, it’s out of the question,” she said, crumpling the message slip. “I want you to stay away from anything and anyone with a camera. The longer you make yourself scarce, the sooner this circus will go away. And really, Lizzie… would you want your mother to think that you turned this into a career opportunity?”
She tossed the slip toward the trash can at the side of her desk just as the phone rang again.
“Oh God, hold on,” she said, glancing at the screen. She clipped on her Bluetooth. “Hello?” she whined. “Yes, hi. Yes, I know it looks bad. But my God. Slutty isn’t the f-word,” she said, swiveling to the side.
Lizzie looked back at the trash can. There, on the carpet, just inches from Lizzie’s feet, was the slip. Natasha had missed the can. The crinkled piece of paper lay just inches from her foot, begging to be picked up. Suddenly she wanted to see the words in writing: “ugly modeling.” Maybe it would help her finally accept it.
In one seamless motion, she leaned down, snatched up the slip, and stuffed it into the front pocket of her bookbag.
“Yes, I know it’s Katia, but I don’t understand why this is news,” Natasha said, still looking out the window. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Sudan?”
Lizzie got to her feet. This seemed the right time to make her exit. She waved at Natasha, who still hadn’t seen her get up.
“She’s a teenager!” Natasha screamed. Lizzie took off down the hall.
When she reached the lobby, Carina and Hudson had their noses buried in issues of InStyle.
“Let’s go, you guys,” Lizzie said hurriedly, as the receptionist watched her closely.
Hudson and Carina joined her at the elevator bank. “So what happened?” Hudson whispered.
“Natasha says she’s finally taken care of it,” she said.
The elevator doors opened with a whoosh.
“But have either of you guys ever heard of ugly modeling?” she asked. She didn’t know why, but saying “ugly modeling” filled her with a sense of defiance, even purpose. So the whole world thought she was ugly. There was actually a certain relief in it.
The doors closed. “You mean, people so weird-looking they’re hot?” Carina asked.
Hudson nudged Carina hard in the arm. “People who are different-looking. It’s the new thing.”
Lizzie felt for the slip in the pocket of her bag. “Some photographer called Natasha about me and said I had a unique look,” she said. She pulled out the slip and smoothed it open. “I just can’t tell who it is,” she said, trying to read Amanda’s scribbling.
Carina grabbed the slip. Her dad was constantly leaving notes for her in his barely legible handwriting. “That says Andrea Sidwell,” she said, reading. “One fifty Crosby Street.”
“Oh my God, Lizzie,” Hudson said dreamily, placing a hand on Lizzie’s wrist. “She wants you to be a model?”
“Well, a weird model, apparently.”
“You have to do it,” Hudson said, shaking her head. “This is fate. Y
ou have to.”
“No way,” Lizzie said, pressing the lobby button over and over.
“Why not?” Hudson asked.
“Because Natasha said it was a bad idea. And it probably is, with the whole YouTube thing happening. And, come on. An ugly model? Is that something I want to be?”
“Look at all those people who model for American Apparel,” Carina reasoned. “They’re weird-looking. And hot.”
“That’s because they’re in their underwear,” Lizzie reminded them. “No, I’m not doing it.”
The elevator doors opened, and they walked through the lobby.
Outside, the streets were crowded with the start of rush hour. A red double-decker bus filled with smiling tourists lumbered by. Despite Natasha’s tirade, Lizzie felt better. Calmer. She’d move on from this. And, she was even a little bit flattered. A photographer wanted her to be a model. Even if it was ugly modeling, nobody had ever asked her to do that before.
“If you don’t want to do it,” Carina said, “then why’d you save that slip?”
Lizzie put the slip back in her bookbag without saying anything. Carina had a habit of making points that were impossible to debate. And then she heard her iPhone chime. She pulled it out. It was a Facebook friend request and a message from Todd.
You ran out before I could remind you about tomorrow night. You’re still coming over right? 7 o’clock.
“Oh my God, you guys,” Lizzie said. “Todd just texted me. To remind me about tomorrow night.”
She showed her friends the message. “I knew it!” Carina cried. “He wants you.”
“Are you gonna friend him? You have to friend him!” Hudson squealed.
Lizzie pressed the Confirm button. She and Todd Piedmont were now officially friends. But maybe, just maybe, Lizzie thought, they were on their way to being more.
chapter 7
“Here, Lizzie, try this one,” Hudson said the next afternoon, as she plucked a lace-trimmed lavender camisole from the pile on the shelf.
“It looks a little low-cut,” Lizzie said doubtfully.
“That’s the whole point,” Carina cut in, as she swiped the cami from Hudson and added it to the top of the stack of tops in Lizzie’s arms. “And please tell me you’re gonna flirt with him tonight.”
“Yes, it helps if he knows you like him,” Hudson teased, her gigantic silver hoops dangling merrily on either side of her heart-shaped face.
Lizzie felt her stomach turn over. In exactly seven hours, she would be walking into a possible date with Todd, or at least a Planned Hang-out Alone in His House, and she was woefully unprepared. She’d corralled her friends for an emergency trip to Big Drop in SoHo, except now they were making her even more nervous, and so was the store. A teenage girl slammed into her as she rifled through the racks with her mom.
“What if this isn’t a date?” Lizzie said, fingering a stretch jersey top. “Then it’ll be a little ridiculous for me to be flirting with him.”
“Right, this isn’t a date,” Carina muttered. “Because he really needs you to help him put out Doritos.” She pulled a long black dress with spaghetti straps off the hanger and held it up to herself. “Do you guys like this?”
Hudson frowned. “Do you really need that?”
“For the school dance in a couple weeks,” Carina said with a shrug as she slipped it off the hanger. “Whatever.”
“Here, Lizzie, try this one, too,” Hudson said, tossing her a sparkly top with crisscross straps.
“All right, I’ll be right back,” Lizzie said. She needed to go before Hudson picked out any more clothing she didn’t have the courage to wear.
She yanked the curtain shut and looked in the mirror. Her eyes bugged out, her nose looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and her hair, thanks to the muggy weather, was starting to look like the Bride of Frankenstein. Maybe a sexy top couldn’t hurt.
The lavender cami was the first one she tried. It gapped a little in the chest area, unsurprisingly, but as she twisted this way and that in the mirror, it didn’t look bad. In fact, it was kind of pretty. The color set off her hair and warmed up her pale skin. As usual, Hudson’s style sense had been right.
“What do you guys think?” she said, sticking her upper body through the curtain.
Hudson pulled Lizzie all the way out of the room and looked her up and down. “Big thumbs-up. C?”
Carina looked her over with the black dress still in her arms. “Yep. Totally hot.”
Lizzie turned to look in the store mirror. It did look good on her… but would Todd think so? She tried to see herself through his eyes. Was her skin too white? Maybe she should have dug out the Jergens self-tanning lotion from the back of her bathroom cabinet. And her upper arms… why did they have to be so thick and shapeless? She turned around. She’d almost forgotten about the weird cluster of moles on her back in the shape of the Little Dipper. And then what would Todd think if she showed up in this? They’d been childhood buddies, for God’s sake. She’d never worn anything fancier than a pair of jean cut-offs and a T-shirt in front of him.
“I don’t think it’s me,” she decided.
“What?” Hudson blinked her green cat eyes. “It’s perfect on you.”
“It’s kind of…”
“Sexy?” Carina said. “That’s a good thing.”
“I don’t think so, guys,” she said, and scurried back into the fitting room. She could feel her friends giving each other looks on the other side of the curtain. But it was her body, wasn’t it? It was up to her if she didn’t want to go over to Todd’s house looking like Ilona Peterson.
She tried on the rest of the tops, but none of them fit or worked. After they waited for Carina to buy her dress, they walked out into the stream of tourists on Broadway.
“Okay, that was lame,” Carina finally said.
“You’re the one who just bought something without even trying it on,” Lizzie pointed out.
“But you looked so beautiful in that color,” Hudson said. “Why didn’t you like it?”
“It just wasn’t me,” Lizzie said, hoping that might kill the subject.
“But it was!” Carina argued, almost colliding with a man walking out of Dean & Deluca with an iced coffee.
“You don’t see yourself the way we do,” Hudson said diplomatically.
They turned east onto Spring Street and walked toward NoLIta. Lizzie loved SoHo—the cobblestone streets, the ancient warehouse buildings, the mixture of tourists and artists and models. A man stepped out of Balthazar Bakery with a loaf of French bread and pedaled away on a bicycle, as if this was Paris.
“Well, maybe I don’t see myself the same way, but my eyes are my eyes,” Lizzie said. “I don’t know how to change that.”
“I do,” Carina said, unwrapping a LUNA Bar she’d pulled out of her bag. “Call that photographer.”
“What photographer?”
“The one from yesterday, from your meeting with Natasha,” Hudson chimed in.
“No, wait,” Carina said, stopping dead in her Jack Rogers flip-flops. She pointed straight ahead of her. “We’re in her neighborhood. She was on Crosby Street, right? One fifty Crosby Street.”
Carina had a photographic memory. Sometimes it was a little scary.
Carina walked closer to the corner. “That building says one-oh-five—”
“We’re gonna go there?” Lizzie asked with alarm. “Now?”
Carina shrugged, her shoulders grazing the tips of her blond hair. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t even know if I want to do this,” Lizzie said. “I haven’t decided.”
Carina headed down the block. “Don’t think about stuff so hard,” she said.
Lizzie could feel herself getting sucked into the C Cyclone, as she and Hudson called it, but there was little she could do about it.
“Here it is,” Carina said, coming to a stop in front of an ordinary glass door. “Andrea Sidwell,” she read off the list of residents tacked next to the front door. “
Fifth floor.” Calmly she rang the buzzer.
“Carina!” Hudson said. “Stop!”
Carina dismissed them with a wave of her hand. “We’ll tell her it’s you. She’ll be psyched.”
“But I don’t know what to say!” Lizzie argued.
Hudson took Lizzie by the hand. “I’ll try and help,” she said calmly.
Through the intercom there came a crackle of static and then the sound of a long, steady buzz. Carina grabbed the door handle and pulled it right open. “We’re in,” she said, her eyes bright with adventure. Carina lived for stuff like this.
“Oh God, help me,” Lizzie whispered.
On the fifth floor they walked out of the elevator into a long, curving hallway. A door at the end was marked A. SIDWELL. STUDIO. “This is such a bad idea it’s not even funny,” Lizzie said.
“It’ll be fine,” Carina whispered. She pressed the doorbell.
A few seconds later the door opened, and a woman with friendly blue eyes, ripped biceps, and a messy blond ponytail stood on the threshold. In baggy workout pants, bare feet, and a black T-shirt that said SILVERSUN PICKUPS, she looked like a college student, though Lizzie figured that she was in her early thirties.
“Well, hello,” she said happily, looking down at them without a shred of surprise. “So I guess you’re not the delivery guy from Dean & Deluca.”
“Are you Andrea Sidwell?” Carina asked in her most direct and adult voice.
“I am,” she said in a mock-serious tone.
Carina nudged Lizzie forward. “This is Lizzie Summers,” she announced.
Andrea stared at Lizzie for a brief, amused moment, as if she was pretty sure this was a joke, and then she blinked. “Hey, Lizzie.” She stuck out her hand and grasped Lizzie’s. “I’m Andrea Sidwell,” she said with a radiant smile. “What an awesome surprise. Come on in, you guys.”
Andrea turned to walk down a narrow entry hall, and the three of them followed. “Sorry about the mess, guys,” Andrea said over her shoulder. “I wasn’t expecting guests. But I know you can deal.”
The hallway opened into a spacious, high-ceilinged loft flooded with sunlight from large casement windows that faced the street. An M.I.A. song played on the sound system, just loud enough for the beats to pack a wallop, while a few fat votive candles lit in the corner gave off a fresh piney scent. A makeshift set had been set up in the center of the room, complete with light stands, tripods, a fan, and a giant roll of white paper that served as a backdrop. Framed black-and-white portraits hung on the brick walls.