The Daughters (20 page)

Her father was definitely right. People
were
too easily swayed. But was it bad for it to feel wonderful?

The orchestra started to play at the front of the room, and the first awards presenter walked stiffly out onto the stage.
She leaned back in her chair and smiled. At last, she wasn’t on the sidelines anymore.

“Martin Meloy?” Hudson repeated.
“Martin MeLOY?”

Lizzie smiled as she popped the lid off of her hot chocolate and licked the dollop of whipped cream on top. She should have
been spending her free period going over her algebra homework from last night—she had barely finished it after getting home
from the Waldorf—but filling her friends in on last night was so much more fun.

“Yep,” she said, blowing on her hot drink. “We’re going over there after school.”

“I can’t believe it,” Hudson said, pulling her collar closer against the chilly October wind blowing down Madison. “Martin
Meloy’s studio!
Nobody’s
allowed in there. Not even the Olsens.”

“Wait, I thought you said he was a creep,” Carina broke in, tearing open a Balance Bar with her gloved hands. “Or a tool.”

“Well, he is a little fake,” Lizzie conceded. “But they all are.”

“And you still want to work with him?” Carina asked skeptically as the wind blew the ends of her blond hair.

“C, this is a
huge
deal,” Hudson piped up on Lizzie’s other side. “You could be the face of his line! His
muse
!” Her ivory coat matched the color of her teeth as she smiled. “Do you know which campaign you’re doing?” she asked breathlessly.
“Fragrance? Accessories? Clothing?”

“Hudson, I don’t even know if I’m doing a campaign.”

“And you’re gonna get
such
a great discount,” Hudson gushed. “And free stuff. You better give me whatever you don’t want. What does your mom think?
Is she psyched?”

Lizzie took a big sip of hot chocolate, unsure how to answer. Katia had seemed a little cool toward Martin’s invitation. “I
think so. But she wasn’t jumping for joy or anything.”

They walked into the school building and took the steps two at a time past a slow-moving group of middle schoolers.

“Maybe she’s jealous,” Carina said. “She’s only human.”

“Oh, come on,” Lizzie said. “She’s the World’s Most Perfect Woman Ever.”

“Yeah, but maybe she doesn’t see it that way,” Carina said.

Lizzie didn’t say anything. The thought of her mom being jealous of her was almost too ridiculous to think about.

Hudson’s phone rang. “Private number,” Hudson said, looking at the screen. “Whoever this is, they’ve been calling me all morning.”
She put the phone to her ear. “Hel-
lo
?” she answered. Then she hung up. “Nobody there again. Weird.”

“Maybe it’s your lov-ah,” Carina joked.

They walked up the stairs, and Carina and Hudson headed off to Spanish. Lizzie was on her way to the lockers when she heard
Mr. Barlow call out from his office.

“Miss Summers? May I see you, please?”

Lizzie grabbed her French books. “Yes?” she asked, coming to stand in the doorway.

Mr. Barlow sat at his desk. The glow from his banker’s lamp cast a green shadow over his white-blond hair. “Your story’s about
five hundred words too long for the contest,” he said. “Two thousand words is the cutoff point. Just trim it a little and
turn it back in. But it’s very good. I think you have a shot at winning this.”

“Really?” she asked. In all that had been going on in her personal life, she’d almost forgotten about the contest. “I was
afraid it might be a little too… realistic.”

Mr. Barlow shook his head. “Don’t be afraid of that. The best writing always comes from your own experience. Even if you’ve
never cut your hair to look like your mother’s,” he added with a smile as he handed the story back to her. “And how’s the
project going with Mr. Piedmont?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Fine,” she said. She and Todd hadn’t spoken since Ava’s party a week and a half ago, but luckily they’d split their screenplay
up into two parts—the same scene, told both from the boy’s and the girl’s point of view. Lizzie hoped that she could just
quietly write her half and skip any more awkward study sessions.

“Well, look who’s here,” Mr. Barlow said, looking past her into the hall. “Mr. Piedmont! Would you come in here, please?”

Todd loped into the office. From the quick sideways glance she stole of him, Todd looked a little more rumpled than usual,
as if he’d slept in his navy-blue jacket and tie.

“I was just speaking with Miss Summers about your project,” Mr. Barlow said. “Are you two making progress?”

“Sort of,” Todd mumbled, looking briefly at her.

“Sort of?” Mr. Barlow barked.

Uh-oh
, Lizzie thought.

“You know I think we have it under control, Mr. Barlow,” she offered. “If we need to get together again—”

“You are required to meet
twice
for this assignment,” Mr. Barlow pointed out. “Which, I may remind you, is due on Monday.”

“Then I could get together tonight to work on it,” Todd offered, sounding slightly defeated. He turned to her. “What do you
think, Lizzie? You free tonight?” She couldn’t help but notice that his hair was adorably messed up and the knot of his tie
was askew.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Tonight can work,” she said coolly.

“Today’s Wednesday so you two better get moving on it,” Mr. Barlow said, unfolding himself creakily from behind his desk.
“I was just giving Lizzie back her story. She did a very good job on it. As did you, Mr. Piedmont.”

Todd suddenly swallowed and looked down at the acid green carpet. “Thanks,” he said, looking mortified for some reason.

“Would it be okay if I kind of tweaked this a little bit?” she asked Mr. Barlow. “Maybe just smooth out some of the story?
End up in a different place?”

“Sure, sure,” Mr. Barlow said, getting distracted by the front page of the
Times
on his desk. “Good luck, you two.”

They walked out into the hall, and when they got to French class, Todd sat in the empty chair next to her. It was the closest
they had been to each other since Ava’s bathroom.

“So tonight around seven?” she asked him. “We can do it at my place.”

“Great. And hey, I want to show you something,” he said, unzipping his bookbag. “Close your eyes.”

“Where’s Ava?” she asked him. Seeing him alone for this long was a rare event.

“She has the flu. Just close your eyes.”

She sighed and shut them. She didn’t seem to have any choice. “Todd, I really need to check my homework for a second—”

“Okay, open.”

There was a blue box on her desk, like the ones she’d seen in Todd’s bookcase. “Open it,” he said.

She opened the box. Inside was a hardback book with a slightly tattered, familiarly blue dust jacket. It was
The Great Gatsby
. And it looked like a first edition.

“Oh my God,” she said, almost afraid to touch it. The book’s jacket was creased and wrinkled, and peeling apart at the edges.
It looked ancient. “You found it?”

“Yep. You can take it out,” he said.

She ran her fingers over the smooth, delicate dust jacket, and carefully opened the book. On the title page was a dark squiggle
of ink. She stared, dumbfounded, at the signature. “You got a signed first edition?”

Todd smiled at her. “My hookup in London really came through.”

She ran her fingers over the ink. Fitzgerald had touched this book, held this book, and signed this book himself. It was the
most precious thing she had ever come across. “I can’t believe you have this.”

“I don’t have it,” he said. “
You
do. It’s yours.”

She gaped at him. “What? I can’t take this! How much did this cost?”

A deep red blush pulsed in his cheeks. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, shrugging. “It’s for you to start your own collection.”

“I can’t take this, Todd.”

“Well, if you want, we can share it,” he said, cocking his head and peering into her eyes in a peculiar way.

Her heart thudded in her chest. Her palms got sweaty. HE LIKES YOU, said a voice inside her, as loud as a siren.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Oh, and we’re on for tonight then?” he asked cheerfully, taking out his French book.

“Uh, yeah,” she managed to say. “Sure.”

As she put the book carefully back into the box, and then into her bookbag, she knew that it was time to stop playing the
We’re Just Friends game. She was going to tell him how she felt—tonight. Ava or no Ava. After all the games and the missed
signals and the weird broken pauses, she had her answer. And for the first time, she finally had the courage to give him hers.

Later that afternoon, Lizzie sprinted through the cobblestone triangle of the meatpacking district, her kilt flying around
her knees and the wind blowing through her unruly curls. She was fifteen minutes late for her life-changing meeting with Martin
Meloy.

Panting, she turned the corner onto Washington Street and saw the low, block-long, aluminum-green warehouse, and on the bottom
floor, the windows of the flagship Martin Meloy store.

She bypassed the store entrance, emblazoned with twin silver M’s, and ran around the corner to a nondescript glass door. Anyone
could walk into Martin Meloy’s boutique and buy wallets and perfume and his coveted clothes, but only the chosen fashion elite
knew about this door, which led to Martin’s private, multi-million-dollar five-story studio. She felt a little shiver as she
pulled the door open. As Katia Summers’s daughter she wouldn’t have been able to swing this invitation. But now that she was
Katia Summers’s model-daughter, everything was different.

“Hello, Lizzie, Martin’s expecting you,” said a receptionist behind a steel sliver of a desk. She gestured toward the lobby
with her fountain pen.

“Thanks,” she said, unbuttoning her peacoat and hoping she wasn’t too sweaty.

She walked into the spacious, white lobby. Tufted couches and chairs in purple and magenta dotted the room. A fake tree rose
out of the floor, extending its branches in all directions. And in the center was a twisting gold and diamond-studded staircase.
As Lizzie climbed the steps, she couldn’t help but think of Mount Olympus, from the myths they’d been reading about in English
class.

“Hello, Lizzie,” said a girl who was waiting for her at the top of the steps. She was tall and thin, with expertly flatironed
brown hair and a fresh-scrubbed, freckled face. Lizzie wondered for a moment if she was one of Martin’s models. She definitely
could be. “I’m Annalise, Martin’s assistant,” she said in a velvety smooth voice. “They’re waiting for you in the salon.”

“There’s a salon here?” Lizzie asked, looking around the large open room, where designers hovered over drafting tables.

“No.” Annalise smiled gently. “The
Salon
. As in, the French term for a gathering of creative people. Martin is a big fan of the French. Their history, their philosophy,
their food… Can I take your bag?”

Lizzie eyed her dirty bookbag. “Uh, that’s okay.” The less that Annalise noticed her bag, the better.

“Well, then, follow me,” she said, walking—or rather, floating—down the hall. “Martin is so excited to have you here,” she
whispered over her shoulder. “He’s been talking about it all day. I’ve been with him for years and I’ve never seen him so
excited about one of his girls.”

“His girls?”

Annalise gave her another sweet, patient smile. “I’ll let him explain it.” Annalise came to a stop at the open door. “Here
we are.”

Lizzie walked inside. Katia sat on the couch, dressed in a knee-length pencil skirt and high black boots, her blond hair drawn
into a severe bun. She was frowning, but before Lizzie could reach her, Martin suddenly appeared in the doorway. In his distressed
velvet jacket he looked like a punk Willy Wonka.

“Lizzie,” he said, tugging her inside with both hands and giving her a European-style double-cheek kiss. “So good to see you.
I hope you found it okay. I’m
delighted
to have you.” Martin smiled, exposing his blindingly white teeth. “Your mother and I were just talking about you,” he said
kindly. “Please. Sit down. Can I get you a cappuccino?”

“No, thank you,” she said.

The salon was actually just an office, with furniture that looked like it had been stolen from Versailles and then updated
for the twenty-second century: suede chairs with gold-leafed legs, a gigantic armoire with filigreed pulls. A gold velvet
sofa stretched against one wall in one long, undulating wave, and the window facing them looked out over the placid gray surface
of the Hudson. But like the lobby, the room felt cold and untouched. Lizzie sat tentatively on the sofa next to her mom and
kissed her hello.

“Martin has something he wants to say to you,” Katia told her. “Go ahead, Martin,” she said.

Martin took off his velvet jacket. Underneath was a simple black T-shirt that showed off his gym-sculpted arms. “When I saw
your photo in
New York Style
, Lizzie,” he said, pacing the floor, “I knew exactly what was going to inspire my next collection.
You
. Your face. The way it makes you think. The way it seizes your attention. The way it veers between awkward and stunning.
The way it breaks all the rules.”

Awkward and stunning?
she thought. What the heck did that mean? Lizzie snuck a glance at her mom. She was watching Martin with an inscrutable expression.

“
You
are what my clothes are all about,” he went on. “Straddling the line of what’s acceptable, what’s beautiful. Making people
think.
Provoking
people.”

He leaned closer to her, close enough that she could see the wrinkles and bags under his radiant eyes. She wondered for a
moment if Martin Meloy actually slept. “Here, look at this.”

He picked up a piece of poster board that was leaning against the wall. With a start, Lizzie saw that it was a collage of
pictures of her. Her
New York Style
cover. Her
Rayon
shoot. The first photo that had run in
New York Style
. Plus every paparazzi shot that had been taken of her in the past five years: photos of her with her mother at screenings,
at Fashion Week, at the supermarket. Pictures that had made her cringe. Pictures that had made other people cringe.