“Wait, wait,” Andrea said, lowering her camera. She bounced over to Lizzie on her Chuck Taylors. “Don’t worry about sitting
straight up like that. Just sit the way you normally would. Like, the way you would if your friend was taking a picture of
you.”
“So, you mean, just kind of…” Lizzie let herself slump a little and relaxed her chin. “Like this?”
“Perfect.”
She leaned closer. “I want you to forget anything you ever may have learned about doing this. You and I are gonna make our
own rules—cool?” She turned to Hudson and Carina and yelled, “Okay, who wants to get things started for me?”
“Me!” Carina happily trudged over.
Lizzie watched in disbelief as Andrea handed her camera over to Carina. This woman was going to let one of her friends take
her picture? With her fancy camera that probably cost thousands of dollars? Andrea wasn’t crazy, Lizzie decided. She was totally
cool.
“You just press that button there,” she instructed, handing the camera over to Carina. “It’ll do everything else.”
Carina positioned herself in front of Lizzie as if she’d been taking pictures with a five thousand–dollar camera her entire
life. “You ready, sexy thing?” she asked, hoisting it up to her face. “Make loooove to ze
cam-e-ra
.”
Lizzie laughed. Before she could stop, Carina pressed the button.
Click.
“Great!” Andrea urged. “Keep going!”
“Work it, own it,
work it
,” Carina sang. Lizzie laughed again.
Click.
Carina pressed the button just at the right time.
“Perfect!” Andrea crowed.
“You are
fabulous, darling
,” Carina crooned, coming up close to her. “You’re a
natural
.”
“Carina, stop!” Lizzie said, still laughing.
Then it was Hudson’s turn. “To the left! To the right! You are so beautiful it
hurts
!” she yelled.
Click-click-click
went the camera, as Lizzie smiled and laughed so hard her sides ached.
Finally Andrea stepped in and assumed control. “That was great, Lizzie,” she said, suddenly the cool, calm professional. “Now
look straight at me and smile.”
Still giddy from laughing, Lizzie didn’t have time to get nervous. She smiled broadly into the camera.
Andrea pressed the button.
Click.
“That’s great!” Andrea called out.
Lizzie tilted her head just slightly to the right, smiled even bigger this time, and Andrea clicked.
“Yes!”
She tilted her head to the left.
“Perfect!”
Before she knew it, Lizzie had eased into a rhythm. She had a vague idea that her hair was starting to climb toward the sky
but she didn’t really care. A tiny voice told her to stiffen up, but she let it go. All that mattered was that she was getting
her picture taken, and it didn’t just feel okay—it felt natural. Fun. This wasn’t anything like the onslaught of paparazzi
at Fashion Week. This didn’t feel invasive. It felt easy. Even exhilarating.
Meanwhile Andrea bobbed and weaved on her Chucks, coming closer, backing up, teetering to the side, capturing Lizzie from
all angles. “That’s great, Lizzie! Perfect!”
With every click, she actually felt something inside of her soar.
This woman is taking pictures of me. And this is actually fun.
“Okay, let’s try some serious ones,” Andrea said, lifting her camera. “Let’s have fierce Lizzie.”
“Fierce Lizzie?” she said.
“Brave Lizzie,” Andrea called out. “Says-her-mind Lizzie. The Lizzie from the clip.”
The clip. The clip had started this all. Maybe, she thought, it hadn’t been the worst thing in the world. For the first time,
she remembered what it felt like just before she opened her mouth to speak to that reporter. That delicious feeling of letting
go, of taking her hand off the wheel, of just being herself—with no filters, no voice in her head telling her no. She put
her hands on her hips and leveled her gaze at the camera. She let her smile fade away.
“Yes!”
Andrea moved closer as she pressed the shutter. “That’s amazing! Keep going!”
It was almost like acting a part, and it was working. Behind Andrea, a crowd of tourists began to form. A little girl in the
group caught her eye. She was a little chubby, ghostly pale, and her T-shirt said
I HEART NY
. She stared at Lizzie with wide, fascinated eyes, as if she were a unicorn or some other kind of mythical creature.
Finally, after Lizzie had taken a few more solo shots, Andrea lowered her camera. Her cheeks were flushed and there was a
glistening layer of sweat at her hairline. “That was amazing! Did you have fun?”
“That was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life,” Lizzie said. “Thank you.”
“No, Lizzie, thank
you
,” Andrea said, giving her a hug. “You’re a natural. I knew you would be.”
“Oh my God!!” Hudson yelled, running over. She grabbed Lizzie and shook her arm. “You were amazing! You can do this, you know
that? You’re
good
at it!”
“You crushed it, Lizbutt,” Carina announced.
“I felt so comfortable,” Lizzie whispered.
“And you have it in you,” Hudson assured her. “I could see it as you were posing. This other side of you just came out. You
could really do this.”
“For reals,” Carina added.
“You do,” Andrea seconded. “You really do. I’d be interested to hear what you think of the shots. I’ll send you some, okay?
I bet you’ll love them.”
They said their goodbyes to Andrea, and Carina and Hudson kept up their excited banter as the three walked toward Sheep Meadow
and the west side.
“Well, you guys, let’s not get carried away yet,” Lizzie cautioned.
“No, I think I want to get carried away,” Hudson said. She turned toward the Meadow on their left, filled with sunbathers
and kite-flyers and people sitting on blankets in their work clothes, soaking in the last rays of the sun. “Hey, everyone!”
she yelled. “This girl’s gonna be a star!”
Needless to say, nobody turned around, but Lizzie beamed anyway. She looked past the Meadow, up at the crowded skyline of
midtown just beyond the park and the hotels along Central Park South hovering above the trees. You couldn’t hear the traffic
this far into the park, and for a moment, the city didn’t look real. New York was always changing like that. One moment you
were overwhelmed by the in-your-face hustle of it—the traffic, the garbage, the noise, and the people scrambling down the
streets—and then you entered the park, or looked out the window of Carina’s penthouse, or stood on the roof of Todd’s building,
and the city could look as insubstantial as a dream. Inside Lizzie, something stirred. Maybe her friends were right. Maybe
she could do this. Maybe Hudson’s words might prove true.
“You have to do that again, okay?” Carina asked as they walked past the hansom cabs lined up in front of Tavern on the Green.
“If you don’t, I might not be able to be your friend anymore.”
“Well, I will say this, I’m exhausted,” Lizzie said. “I don’t know how my mom does this.”
“Get used to it,” Carina said, her chocolate eyes twinkling.
She said goodbye to her friends on Central Park West and turned down her block, feeling the wind caress her face. At the corner
of Columbus she looked across the street and saw paparazzi gathered in front of her building. They’d been gone for a while,
ever since her parents left for Paris, but now they were back, and something had them excited, pressing their cameras to their
faces. A black stretch limo with the trunk still popped open idled at the curb.
Her parents had just come home.
She rushed past the photographers calling their editors, and took the elevator upstairs. She opened the front door and almost
tripped over her mother’s gargantuan Louis Vuitton suitcase in the foyer. They were definitely home. Lizzie felt jittery.
She wasn’t sure if she was ready to see her mom yet. Or tell her about what she’d just been doing. But she knew that she would
probably have to apologize for her dramatic outburst the night before they left.
“Mom?” she called out.
There was the terse
clip-clip
of spike heels approaching from down the hall, and then her mother appeared in the hallway. “Hi, honey,” she said. Even after
a nine-hour flight, she looked stunning in full-legged tweed trousers and a sleeveless silk chiffon blouse. Not one blond
hair had escaped the updo she always wore on planes.
“How are you, honey?” Katia asked, coming toward her. She leaned down and tentatively wrapped her delicate arms around Lizzie’s
shoulders. Lizzie breathed in her mom’s trademark scent—a tuberose and lily perfume blended exclusively for her by a perfumery
in Paris—and realized how much she’d missed her.
“I’m good,” Lizzie said. “How was the trip?”
“Productive.” Katia straightened up and pushed some of Lizzie’s hair off her forehead. Her mother was still at least three
inches taller than her. “I got Katia Coquette into Bon Marché and Galeries Lafayette. And the L’Ete shoot went well. I missed
you, though.” Lizzie looked up at her, waiting. Even though she wanted nothing more than to apologize and put the fight away
forever, she had no idea what to say.
“Look, honey,” Katia said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I spoke to Natasha. I know you went down to see her. And I’ve thought
about the fight we had, and, well, maybe you’re right.” Her greenish-blue eyes were steady and sincere. “Maybe I haven’t thought
of how difficult it must be for you. The attention, the cameras. Sometimes I forget that I chose this life for myself and
you didn’t.” Katia touched Lizzie’s hair tenderly. “And I’m sorry about what I said. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she said quietly. “Really.”
“So from now on, you don’t have to be a part of those events anymore if you don’t want to be. That’s my life. Not yours.”
Lizzie blinked. For a moment, she wondered if her mom had taken too many melatonin on the plane. “Okay,” she finally managed
to say. “Thanks.”
Katia hugged her again. “So, no more fighting. Oh, I brought you back some things from Paris. Just some makeup from L’Ete.”
Lizzie never wore the buckets of makeup her mom brought back for her. She usually just gave it all to Hudson. “Great,” she
said.
“And I’m ordering in pizza for you and Dad,” she said, backing up toward the kitchen. “He’s in desperate need of junk food,
he says. We can catch up more at dinner. I’m glad I’m home, honey,” she murmured, and then she pressed through the door and
her statuesque frame disappeared.
Lizzie hurried down the hall to her bedroom, still in shock. She hadn’t expected her mom to apologize first. Now she felt
a little embarrassed about the photo shoot with Andrea. If her mom knew that what she’d said had been hurtful, and apologized
for it, then had Lizzie really needed to get those pictures taken by Andrea, just to prove a point about what her mom had
said? And what if Natasha was right—what if the pictures got out and somehow made her mom look bad? After the YouTube clip,
the last thing she wanted to do was embarrass her mom again. So for now, she wouldn’t say anything, she decided. It was just
a one-time thing, anyway.
Lizzie walked into her room, dropped her bag on the white shag carpet, and kicked off her shoes. On her computer was a message
from Hudson.
U WERE AMAZING!
Lizzie smiled.
Couldn’t have done it without u
, she wrote back.
Then she lay down on her bed next to Sid Vicious and patted him on the head. He opened one cranky blue eye.
“Today was a good day,” she told him softly, just before she drifted off for a nap.
The only problem with playing the game I Completely Forgot I Knew You is that eventually the person you’re trying to ignore
sits down next to you in English and forces you to talk to him.
A week after her shoot with Andrea in the park, Lizzie was busy proofreading the second draft of her short story and listening
to the rain patter against the classroom windows when she heard someone sit next to her.
“Hey, Lizzie. What’s up?”
She looked up. Todd eyed her cautiously as he took out his books. It was the closest she’d been to him since that night at
his house two weeks ago, and her heart did a little flip. Ever since that horrible morning when she’d heard about him and
Ava, she’d done a complete Todd-ectomy, cutting him out of her life. She breezed past him in the hall without eye contact;
showed up late to every class so she could choose a seat as far away from him as possible; smiled at him only when she had
to in the vaguest, I’m-just-being-polite way. She’d even stopped looking at his Facebook page, just in case there was some
way he knew how many times she looked at it and also because the gifts and hugs and cute wall posts from Ava were just too
much to handle. Her cold-shoulder routine had worked. She could tell how nervous he was now.
“Not much,” she answered.
“That your story?” he asked eagerly.
“Mr. Barlow read the first draft and had some notes, so I just did a second draft,” she said coldly, but giving him a slight
smile. “I’m turning it in today.”
“Cool,” he said, nodding. “I turned mine in already. But maybe I should have given it to him to look at first—”
“Oh my God!” a voice shrieked. Lizzie looked up to see Ava walking toward them.
“Kate’s telling me that I have some weird bug in my hair! Do I? Look!” She dropped into the seat on the other side of him,
and as Todd turned his attention to Ava’s possibly contaminated curls, Lizzie went back to her story. Ava had turned into
Todd’s warden. Every class she sat next to him; every free period she followed him to the computer lab or the lounge. After
school, they hung out for hours at Goodburger with Ken and his friends. Even if Lizzie had wanted to still be friends with
Todd, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.
The classroom door closed with a bang, and Mr. Barlow crossed the room on his stilt-like legs. His hair looked even whiter
than usual.
“All right,” he said, perching his bony posterior on the edge of the desk. “Who wants to tell me the difference between a
myth and a story? Anyone?” His watery eyes searched the room as if looking for enemy fire.