Gorgeous (10 page)

“Is that what
you
want, Allison?” he asked, all calm in contrast to me. “To end our little bargain? Were you hoping I came to return your phone to you?”

“Can I have it?” I asked, untangling my fingers from my hair and unclenching my face. “You can get my parents to give it back?”

He arched one eyebrow.

“Or did you mean the other kind of I could have it back?”

“Is that what you want, Allison?” he asked.

I thought about it. Did I? If I actually could go back, would I want to?

“It’s up to you,” he said.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he said.

I scratched my knotted hair and tried to think, but found I couldn’t. “What do you think I should do?” I asked him. He was the only one there. Who else could I turn to?

“Not everybody has your best interests at heart,” he said. “Hard to tell who’s who, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“So unless you’re sure, you’ll have to trust your own judgment.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “I’m the last one I’d trust. Let me ask you this, then. Just between us—is there any chance I could actually, you know, be chosen?”

“There is always a chance, until you take yourself out of the running.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said back. “We’ll leave it at that, then.”

“I don’t break my deals, either,” I said.

He had strolled over to my door. “Perversity, indeed,” he said, his lips curling into a smile as he left.

18

I
WOKE UP AGAIN WITH
Quinn banging on my door. “I’m leaving in three minutes,” she warned.

I looked at the clock and cursed. She couldn’t have woken me up fifteen minutes earlier? I had to rip off my clothes, pull on new ones, and brush my teeth all at the same time. I just left my room a wreck, for the first time ever. I didn’t even care.

Roxie wasn’t on the bus. Jade slid in next to me when she got on.

“We need to talk,” she whispered.

“Fine,” I said, hiding behind my hair. “Talk.”

She took a deep breath. “This is not about Ty, just so you know. I don’t even like him.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I like David Kornhaber,” she said. “He asked me out yesterday and I said yes.”

“Congratulations.”

“Are you going out with Ty?” she asked.

“No,” I said, still looking out the window, but starting to feel a bit like a jerk, being so cold.

“But you like him.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You make a cute couple.”

I shook my head. Jade always surprised me. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. But, anyway, I’m really worried about you,” she said quietly.

“Don’t be,” I answered.

“I’m your best friend,” Jade whispered. “I love you, and I know you.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “I do. And I know this is not you. You are nice, and reserved. You are neat and innocent and a little awkward maybe, but you are not like Roxie Green, all big and boastful and laughing out loud and strutting around like you love yourself.”

I just sat there. She was right, of course. I had never walked around acting like I loved myself, not for years and years.

“If you want to dump me,” Jade continued, and her voice cracked as she said, “that’s okay….”

“Jade,” I said.

She was crying silently, big round tears streaking down her soft cheeks.

“Jade, come on,” I said. “I don’t want to dump you.”

She sniffled.

“I don’t.”

“Roxie Green is gorgeous,” she whispered. “And she’s fun, I’m sure, more fun than I am, I guess.”

“No, it’s not that,” I said, putting my arm around Jade, who rested her head on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry if I got you in more trouble,” she said.

“Well, you did,” I told her, secretly relieved to know she was the one who told and not Quinn. “But I’ll survive.”

“Good,” Jade said. “Are we okay?”

“We’re okay,” I assured her. We got off the bus and walked into school together. She organized her stuff at her locker while I looked around for Roxie, and tried to think of what to say to her.

I finally saw her as Jade and I were heading in to first period, with Serena trying to squeeze between us.

“Hi, Roxie,” I said.

“Hi,” she answered, and went to her seat.

“Wow,” Jade whispered in my ear. “What’s wrong with her? Is she mad that you’re talking with me?”

“No,” I told her.

“Good,” Jade said, and with Serena trailing after us, we headed into class. I spaced out through the entire thing, watching the clock.

In the hall afterward, Roxie grabbed me by my sleeve. “Listen,” she said. “I’m jealous as hell.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And you should have just told me. What’s with all the secrets? Is that like a thing in this town?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Maybe it’s a culture I just don’t get here,” Roxie continued, her face angrier than I’d ever seen it before. “Like having gazebos. What the hell are those things for anyway? And mudrooms. A whole room for mud? And the squeaky voices you have to use when you say the word
cutest
. Is that it? Are there just gaps in my knowledge? Am I like a foreigner here, thinking I’m waving hello but actually, like, giving people the finger without realizing it? Are we all just supposed to hide behind our manicured hedges and lie to our friends in this polite pit of purgatory?”

“Yes,” I yelled back. “Didn’t you get the mailing from the chamber of commerce?”

“I must’ve forgotten to read it!” she shouted.

We stared at each other there in the hall without moving for a few seconds. Everybody else was watching us, too. When I saw her left dimple deepen, I started to smile. She did too, but then stopped.

“Congratulations, you little shit.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Congratulations on what?” Serena asked.

“It’s none of our business,” Jade whispered to her, loud enough for everybody to hear.

“Allison is a finalist to be on the cover of
zip
,” Roxie announced.

Everybody, including me, stared at her.

“Is that true, Allison?” Jade asked.

“No,” I said. “Semifinalist.”

Then the bell rang. We were all late.

Everybody pretty much stared at me the rest of the morning, and so I was totally dreading lunch. I wanted to avoid lurking like a loser near either Jade’s or Roxie’s locker, since neither was talking to me, but I didn’t know what to do with myself. I decided maybe I would go in search of my own locker, and headed toward the gym wing, where I ran into Tyler Moss and his friend Emmett.

“Allison?” Ty said.

“Hi,” I said, keeping my head ducked because I could feel myself blushing at the thought that he’d think I was a total stalker. Also I had zero makeup on, and he had only liked me the two times I’d been careful to do myself up. Not to mention I had recently made out with him.

“You okay?” Ty asked.

“Fine! Oh, sorry about my mom picking up.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “What happened?”

I shrugged. “I cut school with Roxie one day last week and they found out.”

“Whoa,” Emmett said. “My parents would beat my butt if I cut.”

“What did they do to you?” Ty asked, dumping books into his locker.

“Talked my ear off,” I said. “Took my cell phone away. And grounded me for a month.”

The two of them looked at each other.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. I texted you last night,” Tyler said.

“I didn’t…”

“Yeah. Also, I was thinking of having people over this weekend.”

I didn’t know what to say. He didn’t tell me what he had texted, and he didn’t exactly invite me to his party or get-together or whatever, but it did seem like he was implying he would have, if I hadn’t been grounded. Trying to think of something cool to say, I decided to peek in his locker and see if I could comment on any of his subjects. There was a screwdriver on the top shelf of his locker.

“You take carpentry, too?” I asked, weirdly loudly. As soon as it was out of my mouth—well, and then when I saw the baffled look on his and Emmett’s faces—I wished I could retract it. Or at least turn down the volume on it. Since I couldn’t, I got myself in further, saying, “In addition to plumbing?”

“What are you talking about?” Emmett asked.

Unable to speak with my foot so far in my mouth, I pointed at the screwdriver. They both looked up, but didn’t spot anything. “Screwdriver,” I finally managed.

They both looked again, and then Emmett smiled. “You know Ty’s brother, Gideon?”

“No,” I said, at the same time Ty said, “Shut up, Emmett.”

“What?” Emmett said to Tyler. “It’s sweet.” Tyler’s face was dead serious, but Emmett continued, “Ty is a master unscrewer, because—”

“Shut the hell up,” Ty said.

“Okey dokey,” I said, turning to go.

“It’s just…” Ty said. “Nothing against you. Just…family stuff is private, to me.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said back.

“Ask her,” Emmett mumbled.

“Shut up,” Ty grunted back.

Okay, if I had been blushing before, I must have been bright red by then. There was so much blood in my face, my feet were at risk of falling off. “What?” I asked, silently praying this was about to be the first time I was asked out—and that if it was, I wouldn’t do something horrid like faint.

“Nothing,” Ty said. “Where you headed?”

I tightened my backpack straps. “Looking for my locker.”

“What do you mean?”

“Long story,” I said.

Ty smiled, his crooked wise-guy smile. “Okay. We heard this rumor…Are you, like, a model?”

“No!”

“I told you,” Ty told Emmett.

“That’s what everybody was saying,” Emmett argued. “All morning. ‘You know Allison Avery? She’s, like, this big model, on the cover of a magazine; can you believe it?’”

“Rumors,” I managed, but couldn’t continue. The obviousness of how ridiculous the idea of me as a model seemed to them was too awful.

“Never mind,” Ty said to me, and grabbed Emmett, punched him lightly a few times, and headed out the side door.

The corridor was so empty as I walked around the gym wing, my footsteps echoed. All of the locks looked identical, and equally familiar.

I tried a few at random, using combinations of my birthday, but nothing opened for me. I wandered down to the cafeteria feeling like a complete and total loser, and sat there eating my lunch and pretending to study my science textbook.

All afternoon, people stared as I approached and whispered as I passed. Jade, Serena, and Roxie continued to ignore me, but in a nauseatingly polite way. It seemed to be a nice bonding experience for the three of them. I even saw Jade whisper something to Roxie after sixth. I just wanted to die. It was the slowest school day ever.

And then when I got home, Phoebe was waiting there for me, to spill out her troubles—something about the boy she liked liking her. It made no sense; it was just like bragging, but with a complaining voice. I almost had to smack her in the head, but I would’ve had to touch her shiny-straight blond hair, and that would just have been too much. She followed me to my room and made a snarky comment about how it was a mess and what was wrong, because it finally dawned on her that maybe she wasn’t the only person in the world with stress, that maybe people were coping with things even worse than the boy you liked liking you.

I slammed her out and flopped down on my messy bed to throw myself a private pity party. Down the hall, I could hear my phone playing a sad little tune.

19

M
OM CAME INTO MY ROOM
a little later and sat down on my bed. I tried to wait her out, let her tell me why she was there, but eventually I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I asked, “What did I do now?”

Mom took a deep breath and held my phone out in her palm.

“I can have it back?”

“The thing is possessed,” she said.

“You have no idea.” I scooped it out of her palm and gripped it in my own. It was heavier than I remembered it being.

“It won’t stop chirping and burping and blaring out dance beats, all night long. How many gazillion friends do you have, calling at all hours?”

“Zero gazillion,” I mumbled. “Zero.”

“Well, they sure call you a lot, Allison, for a bunch of zeros.”

We lay there against my pillows for a while, not talking.

“Doppio macchiato, huh?”

“Never again,” I said.

Mom laughed, then sighed. “So you got your picture taken at a modeling thing?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It was really weird.”

“I bet!” she said. “You didn’t…They didn’t ask you to take your clothes off or anything, did they?”

“No!” I was picturing myself dropping my sweatshirt on the floor, but I knew that wasn’t what she was worrying about. “No, it was just, like, three seconds. Smile! Faster than when Daddy takes our picture on vacation.”

“Oh,” Mom said. “And it was an audition?”

“Kind of.”

“What were you auditioning for?”

“Really it was Roxie Green who was auditioning. I was just along for company, I guess. But, like, a cover feature on ‘the New Teen’ or some such crap.”

Mom laughed. “You know what I love about you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“You see through all the b.s. other girls would totally fall for. The New Teen. What a crock! And they yank in what, five hundred girls?”

“Over a thousand.”

“Jeez. And how many even have the slightest chance of being ‘the New Teen’?”

“Twenty,” I whispered.

“Exactly. It’s just cruel. Just a publicity stunt, probably, marketing subscriptions to these poor teenagers who never had the slightest chance.”

It had never even occurred to her that I could be one of the twenty. She was off on a corporate tangent. I lay forgotten beside her on the bed.

“And so stupid!” she continued. “What kind of aspiration is that, anyway, to be a model? What, to be a clothes hanger? Ridiculous. I never understood the appeal.”

“You can make a boatload of money,” I argued pointlessly.

“You can make more money other ways,” she said, sitting up, getting way into this. “On average it’s probably more cost-effective to work at Starbucks. But how many girls would do anything to be a model?”

“Lots,” I said, draping my arm over my face.

“Exactly. And why?”

“To be seen,” I mumbled.

“Exactly,” she said. “To be looked at. It’s as if they don’t exist if they aren’t famous or something. So sad. But you—you just see right through the hype, the false promise of fame, glamour, beauty, don’t you?”

“Me? Sure,” I said. “Right on through it.”

“How many girls are flopped across their beds crying and hating themselves because they can never measure up to the impossible standards of beauty held out in those crappy magazines?”

“Uncountable numbers of us,” I said.

Mom laughed again and said, “You are wicked.”

“Probably,” I said.

She sighed. We had run out of stuff to bond over, now that we were done trashing the only thing I’d ever gotten chosen for.

“How’s the lawsuit going?” I eventually asked her.

She shrugged. “How’s adolescence?”

“That bad?” I asked her.

“If memory serves,” she said, “maybe even worse.”

“Yeah, but for you that’s not saying much,” I said. “You were probably like Phoebe, all smooth and pretty and lucky in every way.”

Mom chuckled. “No.”

“Or like Quinn, brilliant, perfect, well behaved…”

“Grandma called me a lot of things when I was a teenager,” Mom said. “But well behaved was not one of them.”

I lowered my arm and turned to look at her. She was kind of smirking a little, but her eyes were sad.

“Fighting the world is not always easy,” she said. “I always felt like I had to prove myself. I still do. You, too?”

I nodded.

“You’re going to be a big success someday, Allison Wonderland. You mark my words.”

I held my breath. I wanted to stop time, right there, before she got to the next part, which would probably be a criticism, or at least a qualification:
If you would just stop screwing everything up; if you would just please not be so difficult; if you could manage to be more like Quinn.
But so far there it was, just
a success
. And she hadn’t called me Allison Wonderland since I was a little kid, when I went through a brief easy period.
You’re going to be a big success someday, Allison Wonderland.
This felt less real to me than negotiating with the devil. I held very still, balancing the words carefully above my head. I didn’t want to do anything that would make me find out I’d been dreaming this time.

She stood up. “A big success,” she repeated, as she covered the distance to my door in six long steps. “And when you do make it, when you succeed—and you will, Allison—I will be so proud of you.”

She left, her words echoing in my head.

When I succeed, she will be proud of me.

I lay there for a while repeating that to myself, and then remembered I’d gotten my phone back. When I grabbed it and checked my messages, this is what I saw:

All 17 messages have been deleted.

Screw you,
I texted back, but, with no number to send it to, deleted it and dropped the phone on my bed.

I took a shower, listening to the echo of my mother’s words. I dried my hair, put on moisturizer, repeating to myself:
When I am successful, she will be proud of me
. I was staring at myself in the mirror, wondering if she was right that someday I could be a success, and what it would feel like for her to be proud of me, when I heard my phone beeping.

You have 1 new voice mail.

It was a message from the woman at
zip
, saying, “We are trying to reach Allison Avery. The message on this phone is cryptic. If this is the correct number, or if it is not, please call back and confirm that Allison Avery will be at our studio for a photo shoot next Monday at two p.m.”

I stood there, dripping in my towel, trying to figure out what to do.
When you are a success, and you will be, I will be so proud of you. But not until then,
she didn’t have to add.

Fine, then.

I would prove to her, to everybody, to Tyler and Emmett and Jade and everybody else at school, to Phoebe and Quinn, Grandma and Dad and especially to Mom—who’s
interesting-looking
now? Maybe the ugly duckling isn’t just ugly. Maybe the experts know more, and chose me. Out of all those poor deluded schlubs, they wanted me. Me.

I grabbed the phone and hit the Send button to dial them back. While it connected and started ringing, I was thinking how weird, that maybe in this horrible town where I never fit in because the one thing that matters at all is being gorgeous, the most gorgeous girl is me.

Me? Gorgeous?

It was too ridiculous to even say inside my own head, so as the woman’s voice mail picked up, I thought about the ten thousand bucks. What would Mom say when I handed her the check? Would she cry? Hug me? Tell me she couldn’t take it? Even if she refused, she’d have to be impressed with me, right?

You are a success, Allison Wonderland.

Yeah, except that first she’d have to ground me for the rest of my life for going to the callback. The voice mail message finished.
Beep!
They would totally kill me if I cut again and went into the city, and no way would they give me permission. I shut the phone and dropped it on my bed.

Still in my towel and shivering, I was also in a sweat.
Forget it,
I told myself.
I’m not the gorgeous type. It was fun and kind of funny. Now it’s over.

As I headed back to the bathroom to dry off, my phone buzzed again. I dashed back to it, sure the woman from
zip
had seen my number and caught me. What to do? But no, it was a new text, from Roxie:

U there yet?

My hands were shaking.
Yes,
I typed, and lamely added,:)

In three seconds my phone beeped, and I read her response:

Chamber of commerce?

I quickly texted back:

U still mad?

Almost done, though still WAY jealous, you gorgeous lunk. Any other secrets u’r hiding?

I started to answer no, but then thought about the fact that my mother had gotten fired, our family finances were apparently in tatters, that I couldn’t go to Tennis Europe because we couldn’t afford it, and and and…

Yes,
I texted back instead.
Many.

Did Ty ask u out?

That, I wd’ve told u!

Emmett asked me out,
she texted to me.

!!!! Did u say yes?

Yes.:)

Call me,
I typed, my thumbs tripping over each other.
I want details!

We talked for over an hour. The whole time, as she told me every detail of her conversation with Emmett on their walk home after school, I just kept thinking how lucky I was that she had (mostly) forgiven me.

“Anyway, I’m psyched for you,” she insisted, turning back, unfortunately, to the subject of me. “Most auditions they don’t choose you—so this time it wasn’t me. You can’t take it personally or you’d be pummeled into a pulp every day of your life.”

“Maybe that’s my problem,” I told her. “I do take everything personally.”

“Yeah, so that explains why you’re kind of pulpy, I guess.” She laughed, then stopped. “But seriously, why wouldn’t you just tell me?” she asked.

I had no good answer other than “Um, because I am a jerk? And because maybe I never had a generous friend before, so I don’t know how to cope with it.”

“Oh, Allison,” she said. “Well, anyway, I really am so happy for you. Though maybe we could work toward less pulpiness?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Gets in your teeth, ew. Hate pulp.”

Was she such a good person, I couldn’t help wondering, or was it that she was so friendless and desperate that she still needed me even though she hated me? Then I hated myself for thinking such nasty, shallow stuff.

But the devil was right: Telling who has your best interests at heart is not an easy trick.

The next few days of school went much smoother—it was, like, weird to say, but, like, everybody liked me. People were kind of kissing up to me, even. Boys checked me out, and not in an
ew, what is with your hair
way, either. I admit, I was wearing T-shirts and shorts instead of big tennis team sweatshirts or either of the hoodies I’d gotten from people’s bat mitzvahs the year before, the way I had been all year. I was brushing my hair every morning (I know, very impressive), and on Friday, I bobby-pinned the front off to the side. It looked a little funky, but the girl on the front of the new copy of
zip
had it like that, so I knew it wasn’t a completely hideous thing to try, in theory anyway. Three girls, including Susannah Millstein, complimented me on it.

Jade was back to treating me like her best friend and being excited for me about Tyler Moss, though at lunch she and Serena were hanging in the Model UN room with David Kornhaber and that crowd. She invited me, but I made the excuse of needing air. I tensed for her reaction. She didn’t slide her eyes away, disappointed; she said okay and grinned at me. Just another weirdly happy thing in a week stuffed full of easy smoothness. If I didn’t bruise so easily I might’ve pinched myself.

Outside, since Roxie was walking around holding hands with Emmett, I got to spend some time with Tyler. I couldn’t stop myself from asking him, repeatedly, about the screwdriver. He gave me a different wise-guy answer every time (“I have an after-school job as a bartender,” “I’m in the screwdriver club”), but he didn’t look annoyed, so I asked again. On Friday, he didn’t smirk. He said, “You really want to know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I do, at least.”

“My brother, Gideon? He’s eleven. Yeah, well, he’s got Down syndrome. You know what that is, right? He has mental retardation.”

I nodded. He smelled like fresh air.

“So, anyway,” he continued. “Gideon is not that great at a lot of stuff, like school or sports or anything. What he likes to do is tighten screws. So…”

“So?” I asked.

“So I loosen screws.”

We were sitting on a bench near the far fence, and he was leaning his elbows on his knees, talking very quietly toward his sneakers, so I wasn’t sure I was getting the whole thing. “You do what?”

“When I get home, you know, I go around and loosen screws on stuff—doorknobs, chairs, the TV remote—and he goes around checking.” Ty shrugged. “It makes him happy. Anyway, Emmett found that little screwdriver in his mom’s toolbox and brought it in for me. That’s why it was in my locker.”

We sat there for a while then, listening to the sounds of people talking, yelling for the ball, flirting, joking. He tilted his head and looked up at me sideways, and asked, “What?”

“That’s the nicest thing I ever heard.”

“Shut up,” he said.

“I thought you were all wise-guy obnoxious.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said.

“I’ll get over it,” I told him. “Your brother is so lucky to have you.”

“No way,” Ty said, suddenly serious, maybe even angry.

“Yes, he really is,” I argued. “Can’t you take a compliment? It’s true.”

“No,” Ty said, and looked away. “Everybody says that. But it’s not…Look, I’m not saying I suck; I’m okay. But what people don’t get is that really I’m the lucky one.”

“Well, sure, but—”