Best Friends...Forever? (16 page)

 

When I got in the car, Mom said she had some good news for me. "The modeling agency called, and they lined up a fashion show audition for you on Friday," she said. "They said to wear dress clothes and no makeup."

I didn't like to leave the house without mascara, lip gloss, powder to dry up my oily skin, blush to show I was alive, and concealer to hide my blemishes,.

"What store is it for?" I asked.

"Waddlers, Toddlers, and Chickie-doo-doos," she said.

I didn't even know the store had clothes for girls my age. Actually, I thought people stopped shopping there when they were eight.

"Are they insane? Nobody my age would be caught dead…"

"I guess the store now has a section for preteens and juniors they want to market. Besides, if you wanted to model then you'd take every opportunity you could," she said. "Do you think Melani and Rae Ellen from the show started off on the cover of
Vogue?
No, they had to work their way up."

I didn't tell my mom that Rae Ellen was currently suing a photographer she used to work with for posting nude pictures of her on the Internet. Rae Ellen had made her money and connections in modeling by doing underwear ads and posing naked, and some of those pictures were starting to show up. That was something I'd never have to worry about because I would never pose for photos like that.

 

Wednesday, after school, I went to the kiddie store audition. I wore a yellow long-sleeved t-shirt dress my Grandma Dombrowski gave me the year before and hardly any makeup. We walked in, and there were a few other girls my age there.

"Please take your number and line up," one of the women said. Mom stood in the back. I waited my turn and then walked back and forth in front of the judges.

"Fine, we'll let you know. Next!"

Weird, I hadn't even been asked anything. I felt kind of strange as I left.

My agent called my mom later that night and said I didn't get the fashion show, but she wanted to talk to us about the
American
Ingénue
competition. Mom called me over to tell me the news.

"Wait, I didn't get the kiddie show? How depressing," I said, sinking down on the couch.

"Rejection is just a part of all of this," Mom said. "But Mrs. Myeski wants to talk to you, so I'm putting her on speaker."

Mrs. Myeski said that when I signed up for the
Ingénue
competition, the paperwork said that if I made it to the third round — which I did — that I was basically property of the
American Ingénue
company. They had decided to do a "wild card" show with some of the girls who hadn't been chosen to go on to the regional division to give them one more shot at making it to the big statewide competition. The "hair makeover video" in Grand Rapids had been a test audition to see how I'd act on camera and, I didn't know how, but after seeing my video, I was picked to join the wild card show.

"This is going to be a state-run show run on the BVW network in Detroit, so it will be shown in Michigan," she said. "What they're going to do is have a group of girls stay in a hotel for a weekend and give them makeovers. Then they'll have a fashion show where the judges will pick the top five girls. Only one girl advances and gets to go on to be on the show. The other four win prizes, though."

Fabulous. A weekend having nervous diarrhea, backstabbing girls, and getting told I needed another makeover on television. Fun.

My mom hit mute on her phone. "Do you even want to do it?" she asked.

I think she could tell I was getting nervous already. But if I wanted to prove to her I was ready to be a model, and if I ever wanted to be discovered, then I had no choice. It wasn't every day I got offered chances to model on TV, so I had to say I'd do it.

"Sounds like fun."

Mom took Mrs. Myeski off mute and told her I would participate.

"Good, now you will have to consent to doing anything the hairstylists and makeup artists want to do, and that includes eyebrow tweezing, hair dying, and cutting."

"They won't dye her lashes or anything, will they?" asked my mom. "I've heard they can even perm them, and I don't want my daughter going blind."

She assured my mother they weren't allowed to do anything that wasn't regulated, and lash-dyeing was out. She said that, because I was under eighteen, I could challenge anything drastic under the "youth clause" in the contract. As if I'd have the nerve to talk back to a producer or makeup artist. I couldn't even go up and ask for credit when a teacher marked an answer wrong that I had actually gotten right.

I stared at my image in the reflection of the TV. My eyebrows weren't great, but the thought of having somebody try to pluck them sounded awful. I had attempted it once, and it hurt.

"I doubt they'll color your hair," Mrs. Myeski said. "It's such an unusual color that I'm sure that's why the judges noticed you."

She told my mom she'd e-mail her the forms and info and set everything up for me to go.

"Good luck, Landry. This is an amazing opportunity for you."

My head knew it, but my stomach was saying something else.

 

I told my mom I didn't want to let people at school know about the "Wild Card show." She asked why.

"Because it'll be less embarrassing if I don't make it. If no one knows, then no one can laugh at me."

"Hon, don't ever let fear of failing hold you back, because if you do, then you won't try anything."

Seriously? Was this woman
ever
in the eighth grade?

"You don't know what it's like to have people talk about you," I said.

She raised her eyebrows and asked if anyone was picking on me at school. I shook my head, but told her no one was ever happy for me when anything good happened.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I don't know. Well, when I got my hair cut and they filmed the whole thing, people were kinda funny about it — they were all weird about the whole
Ingénue
thing, to be honest. I mean, I'm not saying I expect people to go crazy over it, but it would be nice to have some people be supportive instead of acting like it's dumb or ignoring it — it makes me feel invisible or something."

"Remember when I got the job to transfer to Grand Rapids?" Mom asked. I nodded. "I was so excited that they wanted me for the position. I was the youngest person they ever promoted to that level. And you know what my co-workers said?"

I shook my head.

"One of them, who I thought was my friend, said, 'Oh, I guess they needed a young person to fill a quota or something.' It was like she was dismissing all my hard work and long hours and saying I got the position on a technicality. I remember coming home and picking you up from your friend's house that day. I told your friend's mom about it, and she made a comment about how she would hate it if she had to actually go out and work."

"Huh? I don't get it," I said.

"She chose to be a stay-at-home mom — which is fine, that's her choice, but that didn't give her the right to dismiss my decision to have a job and not stay home full-time. Later, when we found out that your dad wouldn't be able to transfer to work in Grand Rapids, that same lady made a comment about how my 'ambitions would impact you.'"

"What does that mean?"

"Like I was being selfish wanting this promotion, even if it wasn't a good thing for you to change schools, or for us to move away from your father. But I still thought your dad would find something and, to be truthful, I wasn't crazy about how some of those girls in your class back in Chicago were acting. You were lucky to go to such a nice school with privileged kids, but some of them were starting to act…do you know what I mean by 'entitled'? Like they expected things to be given to them because of who their parents were — that sort of thing. Some of those kids had attitudes, and I thought that maybe moving was the right thing to do."

"Okay, so what does this have to do with the contest?" I asked.

"Everyone — even my own mother — told me to stay where I was at work and play it safe. They said the new job might be over my head, and I could fail and then where would I be? I would have uprooted us for nothing. I knew I could fall flat on my face, but I went ahead and did it anyway. And part of the reason was that I didn't want you to grow up seeing me 'play it safe.' Your grandmother is great — she was a wonderful mom – but she didn't take chances, and that made
me
scared to. I didn't want you to grow up the same way."

"But it's different for me. If you failed, there wouldn't be a whole class of people to laugh at you when you came back," I said.

"No, instead I'd hear about it from my side of the family and the Albright side for the rest of my life," she said. "Risk is never easy, but you can't learn anything or grow if you don't try."

"I know, I get what you're saying, but I'm still scared to fail."

"Don't look at it that way then," she said. "Didn't one of your favorite models once say, 'There is no failure — you either win or learn'?"

"Yeah."

"Then there you go. If you want this, then don't let anyone stop you from getting experience. And if they're true friends, then they will support you."

I nodded. "Okay, I will tell my friends, but not the rest. I never knew you went through all of that when we moved here."

She nodded. "You're happy here, right? I mean, besides the being apart from Dad thing. You're okay here?"

She was biting her lip and twisting her hair. My mother actually seemed unsure of herself. I never saw that side of my mom — ever. I nodded.

"Yup, if we hadn't moved I wouldn't have met Peyton and Ashanti and the rest of the girls."

"Don't forget Vladi," she said, smiling.

I shrugged. "I don't talk to him much anymore. It's no big deal. It's just…whatever. We say hi and stuff, but that's it."

I could tell she wanted to ask more, but she knew it was better not to press it. So I got up to go to bed and then stopped.

"Mom?"

"Yeah?"

I gave her a hug. "Thanks."

I knew she was surprised, since we weren't big huggers in our family. "Oh, um, sure," she said, hugging back. "Now just don't forget me when you're famous."

"Right, I'll put you on the list."

"Ha, ha! Get to bed!"

 

I decided to wait to tell anybody until Mom and I went over all the info Mrs. Myeski sent over. Mom told me the
Ingénue
people had some issues with the BVW TV people and decided the whole thing was going to be a webisode event online. I was relieved, because it sounded way less scary than being on TV in front of a lot of people.

She started reading me the paperwork. "It's just one weekend, and it's a group of girls who were selected from different rounds. You just get another chance at being the Michigan representative in the contest and getting scholarship money set aside for college," she said. "Okay, this doesn't say anything about any guaranteed modeling contracts or anything like that. It's just exposure and another chance to get back into the contest."

I bit my lip. Did I even want another chance at the competition? Sure, if I got further in the show then I had a shot at getting my name out there, but it was an awful lot of stress to put myself through. Was it worth it? Why did I want it after all? I was about to say I wanted to pass on it and see if we could argue that clause in the original paperwork, when I stopped myself. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go on, I was scared, but there was something that I found even scarier, and that was wondering, "What if?" for the rest of my life. If I didn't go to Detroit and compete, then I would always wonder what could have been and regretted missing my one big chance. Even if I wasn't sure about modeling anymore, I felt like I needed to prove that I wasn't scared of this. Besides, if my mom could move to another state with me, then I could get through a weekend of
Ingénue
stuff.

Mom started filling out the paperwork, and I went to my room to read fashion blogs and calm my nerves. I saw I had a message. It was from Vladi.

 

V.Yagudin:
Hey
—
Hope you
'
re doing okay. I heard you were hanging out with Steve
'
s sister.

 

I could have written back right away, but instead I texted Kendall and asked her what she had said to Vladi. She wrote back that she told him we went shopping and how cool I was to hang out with.

I asked how he responded, and she said he told her I was sweet and one of those people who was nice to everyone.

Oh yeah, I sound like the girl every guy wants to date: "nice" and "sweet." I was sure that was why everyone liked Yasmin McCarty — her sweetness. Hah!

"
He said he liked you because you were different from other girls
,
and then he said he was sick of fake, mean girl
s and mentioned my friend, Liv.
"

Oh, so maybe that
did
work in my favor. How did anyone figure boys out? I thought he'd go for the Livs of the world. I wrote back and asked if he mentioned Carey or Yasmin at all. She said those girls never came up, so she didn't know.

I wrote Vladi back, saying that Kendall was great and everything was good and asked how he was doing.

 

V.Yagudin:
Pretty good. School
'
s okay.
We had a dance recently
,
and i
t wasn
'
t much fun.

 

The dance with Carey? I asked why it wasn't fun. He asked if he could call me or if it was too late. I told him it was cool.

"Hey," he said when I answered. "You asked about the dance, and I — I just didn't like the group I went with. They seemed kind of stuck up and fake or something. It was just a weird vibe, if that makes sense."

"
Yeah, I get it."

"I went with someone — not a girlfriend or anything like that, but she wasn't that nice to her friends. She reminded me of how you used to talk about Ericka — like she was supposed to be your friend, but she'd say stuff that you didn't know how to take. Kendall said something about them being 'frenemies' or something."

"Yeah, I guess that's the right word for it," I said. "It stinks not knowing where you stand with someone who is supposed to be your friend."

"
It seemed like all those girls in that group were like that. You're not that way, though. I felt kind of dumb because I went along with my friends when they were saying you were way less mature than the high school girls, and then we hung out with these girls, and I was like, 'This is what mature girls act like?' No way. You are way more mature than they could ever dream of being. I'm sorry I ever…you know…went along with them. I just…I never meant to hurt your feelings, and I didn't agree with what they were saying. It was just easier to go along with the crowd or something."

I didn't say anything because I didn't know
what
to say. Sure, I was glad he was apologizing, but I didn't know if he was trying to say he wanted us to be friends or anything more. It wasn't that I was afraid to ask him myself; I just wanted him to get all his feelings out, because my emotions were all over the place. In my heart, I wanted to be the girl he liked, but I was also scared that if I was the one, he might break up with me again because of his stupid friends.

"Um, do you think you could…or we could…you know, be friends again?" he asked.

"We can be friends. I was hurt the day you called me. That was the same day Ashanti and I got into a fight, too. It was the worst day ever, and then you called. I was all excited to hear from you, and then you started saying all the stuff about your friends saying I was too young and all."

"Oh man, I'm sorry. Are you two talking again?"

I told him she and I were fine and that everything was good with India, Peyton, and Devon, too.

"Don't take this wrong and this may sound weird, but I could never be a girl. Seriously, you guys — it's like one minute you're all cool with each other, and the next no one's talking to the other one. And then you go back to saying you're best friends. How does that even work?" he asked.

"Don't ask me," I said, and we both started laughing.

"So…do you have a boyfriend
now
?" he asked.

I wanted to be mysterious and say I was talking to a couple people, but that would make me as bad as those fake girls, so I said no, and asked if he was seeing anyone.

"No, but there's this girl I like."

Ugh, kick to the gut. No, no, nononononono. Why was he calling me then? Did he want girl advice? Oh wow. He was probably telling Kendall I was sweet because I was easy to talk to and thinking he could get guidance from me on how to talk to girls he actually liked. I was so dumb sometimes.

"Oh? Who?" Please, don't be Yasmin. Please, don't be Yasmin.

"Well, I never met anyone who was…Oh Landry, my dad just came in. I have to go. I'll talk to you later, okay?"

Wait, what? He hung up? Stupid fate! Was he putting it out there he still liked me, or was he about to ask me for advice on how to talk to a girl he actually did like, seeing as I was so "sweet and nice?" I wanted to text Ashanti for advice, but it was past my phone curfew, and I had to get to bed.