Gorgeous (15 page)

24

I
WOKE UP
T
UESDAY INTENDING
to confront Jade about why she would lie to me about Roxie. I tried to work myself into a fury as I messed with my spiky hair in front of the mirror:
This is it,
I kept saying to her in my mind.
I can never be your friend again. No matter how cranky or difficult I have ever been, how tough it has been to put up with moody me all these years, I have never lied to you, never done anything even close to this betrayal
. I went over it so many times, it was rubbed sharp and deadly, a perfect and irrefutable argument that would, and should, destroy Jade.

But by the time I was heading toward the bus, I felt done already. Maybe I was just tired. As the bus sloped down the hill toward her stop, I thought,
Okay, here we go.
She and Serena sat down in the seat in front of me, their heads bent together, whispering.

Maybe she misinterpreted what she saw, I told myself. Maybe she wasn’t trying to make up something that wasn’t there; she just saw Roxie behaving in a way that seemed obviously slutty and out-of-bounds to her, and she honestly wanted to protect me. Or maybe she was trying to turn me against Roxie because she didn’t want to lose my friendship.

Whatever. I didn’t say anything. I just let it slide. For once it wasn’t because I was afraid of making Jade angry or disappointed at me. I kind of felt bad for her, a little, and maybe also beyond it.

I walked around school much looser all day, saying hi to people, even smiling occasionally. Maybe it was less humid or the pollen count was down, something like that. Or maybe I had just hit the point where I was over Jade’s shit.

That was the one scary thing I did on Tuesday—because not confronting Jade kind of felt like letting that friendship go.

My math final was actually easy. As I wandered down the hall after it, I texted everybody in my contact list a correction:

About what I said Sat night about Roxie Green? I mistyped. What I meant to say was that Roxie Green is an amazing friend and the most fun person I’ve ever met. I regret the error. Love, Alison Avery

It was weird how many people texted back stuff like,
you are an amazing friend too
, or,
whatever you say—do you guys want to come over for a pool party Sat nite?

I had decided to crawl back into my hole, but I couldn’t seem to find it. As gorgeous as the weather was, mid-eighties with low humidity, even that wasn’t pissing me off.

When Susannah Millstein asked what I was doing over the summer, and I told her I didn’t know, mostly hanging out, she smiled and said she had gotten her parents to let her pull out of Tennis Intensive at Duke University to have some downtime. She asked if maybe I’d like to hang out some, and when I said sure, I actually meant it.

Weird.

Seventh period, when I explained to my English teacher, Mr. Katz, that I had needed to leave school early the day before for, um, personal reasons, he got all flustered and said no problem, and let me take the final out in the hall while the class watched a movie version of
Candide
all period. When the bell rang, I handed in my bogus essays along with my autobiography in six words:

Sold my cell to the devil.

He laughed out loud. “Like Faust, but your cell instead of your soul?” he asked.

“Um, yeah,” I answered, remembering the name vaguely from something we were supposed to have read.

“Excellent. Well, I hope it works out better for you than him.”

“Jury’s still out.”

I performed my Gouverneur Morris thing for the assembly Wednesday, and got an honorable mention. It would have been nice for once to be the winner, but what did I really expect? Anyway, there was a certificate. I put it on the counter when I got home and waited to see if anybody was going to magnet it to the fridge.

Thursday morning, there it was, amid the forest of my sisters’ test papers and commendations.

Embarrassingly, it mattered a tiny bit to me, as stupid as that is. Still, it was the one thing I’d actually worked on all year, so, whatever.

Anyway, it kind of cracked me up all morning, in and out of my last finals, thinking how proud I was to have a crappy sheet of paper on the fridge with my name Sharpied in on the (name) line, and that’s why I was apparently smirking as I walked with Roxie out to the field at lunch.

In answer to Tyler’s question.

But I didn’t answer. I just shrugged, and then he asked if he could talk to me. My fingers went icy as I walked with him toward the back fence.

I hadn’t really spoken to him since getting on the train Monday morning, had avoided him pretty much, because I figured, now that I had put the word out that no, I was not a model, that some rumors actually are false, he wouldn’t have much use for me. And since I was done humiliating myself—had determined, in this last week of school, to turn over a new leaf and not walk face-first into windmills—there was no reason to cross paths with Tyler Moss if I could possibly avoid it.

It wasn’t just “honorable mention” on the social studies presentations I was busy congratulating myself about. I was feeling pretty proud of my newfound self-preservation instinct.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I told Ty, feeling way impressed with my own maturity. “It’s okay.”

“What’s okay?” he asked. He was all kind of blotchy and nervous-looking, poor thing.

“You were briefly, whatever, into me—if you were—under false information. You thought I was a model. I’m not; I never was. So you don’t owe me an explanation or whatever. It’s been fun, the end. Let’s not drag it out, right?”

I held out my hand to shake his, half joking, to ease the awkwardness. He was a good-looking, sarcastic jock; I was a gawky, intense girl who briefly had delusions of grandeur. There really was no reason for us to waste more of each other’s time.

“I never hooked up with Roxie Green, if that’s what you still think,” he said.

“No,” I said, and decided to just be blunt. I was hungry and my lunch period was only forty-three minutes long. “Ty, let’s be real. You even admitted it—you like me because of how I looked, and that I was a model, but that was all a fake; it never really happened. Tomorrow’s the last day of school and we won’t see each other all summer. So let’s just leave it as acquaintances, right?”

Ty looked at his sneakers. “Okay, I like you because of how you look; it’s true,” he said. “I’m sorry if that’s shallow, but I do; I can’t help it.”

“It’s not that it’s shallow,” I tried to explain. “It’s just—”

“Yeah, but,” he continued, kind of ignoring me, “I also like you because you’re funny and weird, and every time I’m with you, you surprise me, and also because your hero was, what did you say? ‘A one-legged drunken carouser who in spite of his own bad impulses managed to write the most important and generous document in history.’ Right?”

“I can’t believe you remembered that.”

He shrugged. “A one-legged gorgeous girl swinging a plunger in the corridor is pretty memorable. What?”

I just shook my head. “I don’t get it.”

“What’s to get?” He smiled halfway, crooked. “Those are the three things anybody would look for in a girlfriend: hotness, humor, and a kick-ass hero.”

I managed not to ask,
Did you just say the word
girlfriend?
Because I think you said
girlfriend, by asking, instead, and randomly, “Well, who’s your hero?”

“My brother, Gideon,” Ty said without a moment’s hesitation.

“Your brother?”

“He didn’t write the Constitution, I admit, but his smile lights up the world.”

“Talk about a kick-ass hero,” I whispered.

“Will you go out with me?” he asked me.

“No,” I said.

He looked so shocked and hurt, I hurried to explain.

“I’m not…It’s not that I don’t like you,” I said.

“Just not in that way?” he guessed wrongly.

“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “In that way. Exactly in that way. I’ve liked you in that way for, like, the whole year.”

“So then, why—”

“You just…You have this idea of me,” I said. “You think I’m, like, cool, or strong, independent. Maybe even, you know, pretty.”

“Yeah?”

“But you’re wrong,” I said. “I’m not. I suck. You are, like, gorgeous and funny and a jock and smart and totally dedicated to your disabled brother. I’m petty and cranky and awkward and weird-looking. All of which you would realize within days, maybe minutes, and then you’d break up with me and I’d have to spend the rest of the summer in a worse funk than I usually am in.”

“Way to look on the bright side,” he said, smirking a tiny bit.

“The bright side and I don’t get along so well.”

“Maybe you’re wrong,” he said. “What if you don’t suck? What if you’re actually way cooler than you think, funnier, more gorgeous, more generous? Maybe your one big fault is that you just have no idea how great you are.”

I shook my head. “Trust me.”

He watched his sneaker kick at the grass. “Fine. Well, whatever. Have a good summer.”

“You too,” I managed.

He started to walk away, and though my knees were freaking out I managed to stay upright.

A few steps away, he turned and walked backward, saying, “Call me if you realize you’re good enough for me. We could have some fun.”

I managed a smile and an “Okay,” but I didn’t mean it. I knew that was something I’d never realize. Maybe he could tell, because he shrugged, like giving up, then turned around and didn’t look back.

25

D
AD HAD DECIDED WE WERE
grilling that night for dinner, so the rest of us were setting the table and making the salad and everything was chaos. Phoebe was drifting around all tan and happy, having spent the morning at her cute boyfriend’s mother’s nursery repotting plants, and then the afternoon with a bunch of friends swimming together in our pool. Her long blond hair was still damp against her bronze shoulders. Dad kissed her on her head as she stood beside him, holding the platter and humming in her sweet off-key voice.

Inside, while making the salad, Mom asked Quinn how her meeting had gone. I didn’t even know she had such an important meeting, she didn’t tell me about it, but apparently it was with her advisor to talk about her summer job working in a camp for underprivileged kids. Quinn was all excited about the job. She carried the big wooden bowl out, and Mom had the tongs she’d gotten on a trip last year to India.

I carried the mustard and the vinegar, following them.

Mom interrupted the Phoebe–Dad duet to tell him to listen to Quinn’s wonderful story. Dad ate it up. He loves do-gooder stuff like donating and soup kitchens and all that. He asked Quinn a hundred questions and listened carefully to every answer, nodding with such a proud face, casting glances at Mom like,
Isn’t she just remarkable, our shining star?

Quinn stood at the head of the table with her hands on the smooth sides of the salad bowl, talking about how good it felt to be making a difference in the lives of these kids.

I dropped the jar of mustard and it shattered all over the patio.

It was totally an accident. I watched my parents give each other looks and take their deep breaths. Before I could even apologize, my phone rang.

“Saved by the bell,” Phoebe whispered, kneeling down with a roll of paper towels. She was just trying to be sweet and helpful, I knew; there was no reason to grunt at her.

Alas.

I recognized his voice immediately. It was the way he said my name, slow and sure, like he knew me better than I was admitting knowing myself, exactly the way he had said it while stretching his long legs out in front of him while sitting on my couch, trading me gorgeousness for my cell phone.

But this time, after my name, even though I didn’t answer, he said, “Congratulations.”

I, of course, thought he was talking about Tyler asking me out, and/or my self-protectively smart decision to reject him before he could (eventually, inevitably, heart-breakingly) reject me. So I just said, “Thanks.”

But the voice said, “You are a finalist.”

“In what?”

He paused, then said, “
Zip
magazine. The New Teen.”

I stood there blinking (my real talent) while my whole family looked at me like,
What’s going on
? Or maybe,
Why are you rudely preempting your sister’s beautiful story of altruism?

“My assistant will text the address and details, but we’d like you to come in for the final shoot and interview, with me, on Saturday. Noon.”

“With you?”

“I’m the editor in chief.”

“No way.”

“Who else would I be?” he asked, and hung up.

I closed the phone.

“Who was that?” Mom asked.

“The devil,” I said.

“Allison,” Mom said, a warning brewing in her voice. “I asked you a question.”

“And I answered,” I said. “I’m a finalist in the modeling contest.”

Phoebe, gotta hand it to her, immediately jumped around whooping and yelling, hugging and congratulating me, while the other three stood there dumbfounded and kept asking if I was telling the truth.

I assured them I was. Dad turned away to flip the chicken breasts on the grill. Mom, meanwhile, grilled me: what did that mean, what was this magazine anyway, what had I done to make the finals of this competition.

I tried to answer calm, cool, and collected, but it was hard. I was really wishing I could have a minute just to myself to jump around and shriek (or maybe Phoebe could be there, because she was so purely happy for me it was crazy). A finalist? ME? Seriously?

I could tell Mom was trying to get the information largely to avoid the obvious question of
Why would they choose you, honey?

I answered every question as best I could, and as factually. No, I hadn’t done anything more embarrassing than cry, a little, but not (seeing Dad’s alarmed face) because of anything the photographer did or asked me to do, just because I felt so inadequate. But my clothes stayed on.

If I won? Well, I said, of course probably I wouldn’t win, but if I did, I would get to go to Nice, France, for one week over the summer with one of my parents, all expenses paid, for an extended photo shoot. Mom and Dad glanced at each other and Phoebe sat down, her chin cupped in her fists, watching me like it was a star sighting.

Quinn was still standing there with her hands on the sides of the salad bowl, looking like she’d been painted there by Vermeer.

“And,” I said, “if I win, which I probably won’t, of course, but if somehow I did? I would win a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship.”

Well, that got everybody’s attention. They all stared at me.

I smiled and said to Mom, “I’d give it to you. All of it. I’m sure your lawyer could figure out how to transfer it to you. I know times are tough right now, and it would feel great to me to be able to help out.”

I think Mom might have misted up, I really do; it was only a second or part of a second, but time almost slowed down, and I watched a small tear form itself in Mom’s eye and I swear it was a tear of pride. I really think that I did not make that up afterward to console myself.

Anyway, that possible fraction of a second was interrupted when Dad, the Zen master, kindergarten Teacher of the Year, nicest guy in the world, slammed down his grilling tongs and said, “Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely not what?” I asked.

“My daughter is not prostituting herself to—”

“Daddy!” Phoebe interrupted, objecting, but he plowed right past.

“That’s right, prostituting herself! What do you think selling your body is called?”

“Jed,” Mom said, for once trying to calm him down. The world had flipped in an instant.

“We do not need the money that badly, Claire!”

“That’s not the—”

“We can live perfectly well in a small house, without all the tinsel and glitter. I will not pimp out my daughters to chase shallow dreams of fame and fortune; I won’t!”

“It’s ten thousand dollars, Jed,” Mom said. “It is obviously not going to make a dent, and you know it. The ten thousand dollars is far from the point, and it would belong to her, not us! Would you let Allison talk? You and I can discuss this later.”

Dad turned back to the grill.

Mom and Phoebe and Quinn turned to me. But I had nothing really to say. My grand gesture, my huge success, wouldn’t even make a dent. It was nothing to them. I could never be good enough, even if I won.

I shrugged. “No big deal,” I muttered. “Obviously.”

“It is, Allison,” Mom said, leaning forward and taking my sweaty hand in her cool one. “We’re very proud of you. Tell us about this competition. A finalist!”

“No, you’re not!” I said. “It won’t make a difference anyway, even if Dad let me go and do it. Just forget it. Let Quinn talk more about helping underprivileged children. Then you guys can feel proud.”

Dad slammed the grill shut. “You know what, Allison? We do feel proud of that. We feel proud that Quinn is reaching out to other people, trying to make the world a better place, working toward something that is bigger than herself.”

“Congratulations,” I said to Quinn.

“Jed!” Mom yelled.

Dad took a deep breath. “It’s not that we’re not proud of you, too, Allison. It’s just that you don’t need to give us money. Live a good life; be a good person. Money and strutting your body around are shallow goals, too shallow for you.”

He wiped his hands on his apron and came toward me, arms outstretched. “Okay, Lemon?”

“No!” I yelled. And I ran away from him. I ran away across the backyard, past the pool, around the tennis court, across the grass, then around the house to the front. I stood at the top of the driveway, looking down it, to where it turned toward the street, and contemplated putting one foot in front of the other and never looking back. Where would I go?

Did I have the courage to run away?

Or even the desire?

Where did I want to be?

The answer was clear to me as soon as I formulated the question. I went in the door near the kitchen and up the back stairs, across the upstairs den to my room, where I stripped off my clothes and curled up tight in my bed.

I woke up knowing that someone was in the room with me and that it was dark. To my surprise, it was my mother and not the devil.

“When are you supposed to go?” she asked me.

“Saturday at noon,” I said. “I’ll just call them tomorrow and say I can’t…”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Mom said.

I sat up. “But Dad…”

“Daddy loves you very much,” Mom said. “He feels very protective of you, and, honestly, very angry at me about some money issues that have nothing to do with you but which you brought up unconsciously. But that is not your problem; it’s ours.”

I rubbed my eyes. Mom was sitting on my couch, where the devil had sat. “Are you really here or am I dreaming?” The question I had never managed to ask him, I asked her.

She laughed. “I’m really here, Allie Cat.” She came around and got on my bed, folding her slim long legs under her as she snuggled in. “And I am so proud of you.”

I lay down with my back to her and said thanks.

“Not just for becoming a finalist. I didn’t know you were interested in modeling.”

“Neither did I,” I admitted. “Figures the one thing I seem to be good at—”

“You are good at so many things—”

“Stop,” I interrupted. “I’m not and it just makes me feel worse if you—”

“I didn’t mean to belittle your earning power, Allison.”

“Alas,” I said.

She giggled behind me, then said, “Point taken. But let me tell you this, daughter of mine. I am proud of you for wanting not just to help, but to make money on your own steam. That is a good impulse, and I’m not saying that doing good in the world is anything but great, but there is power to be had in making your own money, and I applaud you for understanding and pursuing that power, as well as for your generosity in offering to share it.”

We lay there for a minute before I said thank-you again.

I was just drifting off to sleep when I heard her say, “And I’m impressed that one of those dumb magazines is smart enough to spot a real beauty. We’ll show ’em who’s gorgeous Saturday at noon, baby.”

“Okay,” I think I said, or maybe I just dreamed that.