My Life in Black and White (8 page)

That’s when this man came up to us. He was dressed in black and holding a camera with the biggest lens I’d ever seen.

“Excuse me,” he said to my mother, “is this your daughter?”

When he gestured to me, my mom nodded and smiled.

“She’s stunning.” The man paused for a second, holding his chin and squinting at me, tracing my body with his eyes, like he wanted to be sure of something. “Yes,” he said finally. He extended a hand to my mom. “Zander Kent.”

“Laine Mayer,” my mother said.

He told her he wanted to photograph me and whipped out his business card—
ZANDER KENT, COMMERCIAL AND FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY
. Which of course got my mom all jazzed because, in addition to being runner-up to Miss South Carolina three years in a row, she used to do commercials. In fact, she helped put my dad through law school. Tussy deodorant was one, and then a Folgers coffee ad where, inexplicably, she got to dance with a refrigerator.

When she told this to Zander Kent, he laughed, revealing beautiful, pearl-colored teeth.

“Well…” My mother smiled, giving her hair a self-conscious pat. “That was a long time ago. It’s Alexa’s turn now.”

At which point, Zander Kent snapped my photo. Me, Lexi Mayer, right there on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, surrounded by supermodels. Then he snapped another one. And another. It was crazy—like an out-of-body experience. I knew it was happening, but I couldn’t believe it was happening to
me.

Afterward, I felt giddy. I couldn’t stop smiling. As we walked through the exhibit hall, I could tell Taylor was annoyed because she pretended to be really interested in Picasso, taking a million notes and even drawing little sketches in the margins of her notebook. Taylor, who never cared about school, let alone art history. So after about an hour of watching her become the world’s leading expert on the Cubist movement, I confronted her.

“What’s bugging you?” I asked when my mother was safely tucked away in the restroom.

“Nothing’s bugging me,” Taylor said.

“Obviously something is.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The photo thing? It’s not like I
asked
to have my picture taken. He just came right up and—”

“Whatever.” Taylor waved her pencil through the air. “Modeling’s bogus. Half those girls are bulimic and the other half shoot smack.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

Taylor gave me a look like I’d just fallen off a turnip truck. “How do you think they stay so thin?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s not like I’m going to—”

“
Plus
, they sleep around.”

“You think?”

“Of course. That’s how they get the big jobs.”

Taylor kept going, laying out all the atrocities of the modeling industry. The longer she talked, the more obvious it became that—much as she denied it—the Zander Kent thing had touched a nerve. Big-time. And, bottom line, Taylor’s friendship meant more to me than a few photos.

So that night, I nipped the modeling thing in the bud. When my mother wasn’t looking, I dug through her purse until I found Zander Kent’s business card. Then, I walked to the kitchen sink and stuffed my modeling career down the disposal.

But a few days later, a package arrived in the mail. My mother squealed when she saw the return address and opened it right away. She wouldn’t even let me peek at the photos until she’d seen them. Then she got the crazy notion to run to the mall and buy frames so we could surprise my father with the “big reveal” at dinner. I thought this was a horrible idea, but I kept my mouth shut.

Sure enough, after we had eaten my father’s favorite dinner—brisket, wilted greens, potatoes au gratin—and we’d reached my mother’s “Honey, let me tell you what happened the other day at the Met” portion of the meal, my dad got very, very quiet. He wiped his mouth on his napkin for a full minute. Finally, he set the napkin down. “Tell me you didn’t sign anything,” he said.

My mother’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Tell me you didn’t sign your
name
on a piece of paper. A photo release, a contract, anything.”

“No,” my mom said. “Absolutely not.”

My father sighed. “Good.” Then he launched in: How could my mother have given our address to a complete stranger? What could she have been thinking? Didn’t she watch the news?

“That’s how girls end up in Dumpsters,” Ruthie chimed in.

“Ruth,”
my mother said, shocked.

“What? It’s true.”

“Laine,” my father said. “She has a point.”

“Well,” my mother said, “he wasn’t a
stranger
. Zander Kent is a genuine fashion photographer…. Look.” She reached into the package and whipped out another business card that Zander Kent must have stuck in there. “It’s not as if this gentleman—and he
was
a gentleman, wasn’t he, Alexa?”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

“Well, he was. Very polite. And it’s not as if he just approached us out of the blue. He was
already there
, at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art,
on a legitimate photo shoot.”

“Or…” Ruthie paused for effect, “he was just
posing
as a polite, legitimate photographer. Any pedophile perv with a computer can make a business card.”

“Ruth,”
my mother said.

But my father nodded his approval. “Another great point.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

It was almost comical, like watching a three-way tennis match. My mother would serve up something along the lines of “Modeling is a wonderful way for Alexa to earn money for college,” and my dad would hit back with “She’s only fourteen.” Then, out of nowhere, Ruthie would drop some gem: “You know, Mom … Charles Manson had a camera.”

Finally, dinner ended. But my mother’s campaign continued. She hung the framed photos of me on the wall outside my father’s study. She told him to run a background check on Zander Kent. She clipped out articles bemoaning the rising costs of a private, four-year college education. In short, the woman was relentless. And eventually, she wore my father down. So the two of them came up with a compromise: in nine months, when I turned fifteen, my mother could take me into the city to Zander Kent’s studio, to have professional photos taken.
Head
shots, not
body
shots. After that, we would discuss—
as a family
—the next course of action.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. I knew how keyed up my mother was, and I didn’t want to disappoint her. Plus, if I was really honest with myself, a part of me was just as excited. Because … what if I ended up on the cover of
Seventeen
some day? Or
Elle
? Then I remembered Taylor, how weird she’d been about the whole thing. How afterward, whenever she was at my house and walking by my dad’s study, she’d pretend not to notice the photos of me at the Met.

But as the months went by, I stopped thinking about Taylor’s role in my decision. The two of us had been having a blast, riding the wave of our ninth-grade popularity all the way to graduation. Two weeks before school let out, I turned fifteen. And my mom called Zander Kent to book an appointment. And I thought,
Well, what Taylor doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
I decided I wouldn’t say a word unless something huge happened, like me on the cover of
Vogue
. If I made it that far, wouldn’t my best friend be happy for me? And if she wasn’t, I could always blame my mother. This whole thing was, after all, her idea.

So my conscience was clear. I allowed myself to embrace the prospect of a real, in-studio photo shoot. Zander Kent was an amazing fashion photographer, and my mother was beyond thrilled to act as my agent. Together, the three of us would work to ensure that my future was bright and all my dreams would come true.

Okay, maybe that’s laying it on a
bit
thick, but let’s just say things were looking up. Until the night of Jarrod’s party, that is. When, you know, small detail: My face became roadkill.

Make Yourself Comfortable

I CAME OUT of the graft surgery with cottonmouth and a crazy dream in my head. I dreamt that I ran into Zander Kent in the art room of my old elementary school. He was wearing a beret, and instead of a camera in his hands, he held a paintbrush. Standing beside him, at one of those miniature kindergarten easels, was Ryan. They were discussing a work of art. I moved in closer, to get a better look. It was a portrait—a girl’s face—but the closer I got, the weirder it looked. One eye on her forehead, another on her neck. A nose without nostrils. Her skin, a nonsensical jumble of colors and textures that shifted like beads in a kaleidoscope.

Dude,
Dream Ryan said, shaking his head.
Girlfriend is
messed up
.

Oh no, my boy,
Dream Zander Kent replied.
That. Is art.

The next week brought more pain meds, not just for my face, but also for the graft site—the place on my butt where the skin had been removed. Now, whenever the nurses came to check on me, they weren’t just looking at my face, they were looking at my bare behind. It was humiliating.

There were also more balloons, more flowers, more boxes of candy to eat, more stupid cards to tape on the wall. And a shrink.

“Why do I need a psychologist?” I demanded when my parents told me. “I’m not psycho.”

“Of course you’re not, baby,” my mother soothed. And my father explained that this wasn’t a judgment on me personally; it was hospital procedure.
Following a traumatic injury—particularly a traumatic
facial
injury—all patients are required to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to ensure their blah blah blah…

“Well,” I said, “I’m not doing it.”

I wanted my dad to tell me this was fine, I didn’t have to—that he would plead my case to the hospital board, find some loophole in the system. But here he was, shaking his head.

“If you don’t do the psych consult,” he said, “you can’t come home. These aren’t my rules, Beans. They’re the hospital’s. They have to cover their bases, legally speaking.”

While I knew he was right, I couldn’t bring myself to agree. And, anyway, the tin of shortbread cookies on the table next to my bed was calling to me.
Eat us,
they commanded.
Eat one, eat ten, keep going.
As I stuffed my face, my mother stared at me with barely disguised horror.

“Why don’t I take these down to the nurses’ station,” she said briskly, lifting the tin out of my lap. “And get you an apple?”

Why don’t you get an apple and stuff it in your pie hole?
I wanted to say. During the past week my mother had been bugging me worse than ever. First, it was Ryan:
Why won’t you take his calls? Why won’t you let him visit? Why won’t you give him a chance to make up?
Then, it was Taylor:
Why won’t you take her calls? Why did you throw ice cream at the wall when she was here?

Now, it was my diet. “This hospital food is pure starch!” she informed me. “Why don’t I run out to D’Angelo’s and get you a salad? A yogurt? A protein bar?”

What’s the point?!
I wanted to scream. I would never be a model. I knew that. Even without looking in a mirror, I knew. I could tell by the way my mother glanced away every time one of the doctors or nurses checked under the gauze. By her overly chipper comments.
Things are really healing nicely, Alexa! You’ll be back to your old self before you know it!
I wanted to grab a cookie and bean my mother in the head.

But what good would that do? It wouldn’t change anything. Short of building a time machine to transport me back to kindergarten, where I could tell Taylor to shove her offer of friendship up her fickle, treacherous ass—which would then, obviously, set my life on a completely different track—I was stuck. And if I was going to be stuck, I might as well be home. In my own bed. In my own room, which didn’t reek of disinfectant and canned peas.

So I agreed to the psych consult.

The pediatric psychiatrist was a woman, which I didn’t expect. All of the other doctors I’d seen had been men. She was also the first one without a lab coat. Instead, she wore a yam-colored sari and jeans. Her shiny black hair was center parted, pulled back in a bun.

“Hello, Alexa,” she said, rising from her desk to greet me. “I’m Dr. Kamath.”

“Hello,” I said. My voice sounded high and flimsy in the fluorescent-lit office, like Tinkerbell’s. If Tinkerbell had a voice … Did she? I couldn’t remember now. Did she talk or just tinkle?

“Alexa?”

“Yeah.”

Dr. Kamath smiled. She gestured to several chairs and told me to sit wherever I’d like. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said.

Comfortable
. Right.

How comfortable could I be, sitting on one side of my butt? When the other side was covered in gauze so thick I felt lopsided? This was my first time venturing out of my bed and into another wing of the hospital. I’d been wearing a johnny for so long I’d forgotten what it felt like to have on real clothes, to sit in a chair like a normal person.