Just Listen(58)

"When are we taking pictures?" one of the redheads asked. "I'm tired of being Daytime Casual; I want to wear a dress."

"In a second!" Mallory snapped, irritated. "First Annabel has to see my room. Then she can advise us on our looks."

She started to pull me toward the stairs, the other girls clomping along behind us. "Is Owen here?" I asked.

"Somewhere," she said as we started up the steps. The dark-haired girl was beside me now, studying me with a serious expression, while the other three whispered behind me. "You should see the pictures we took last time at Michelle's, they were so good! I had this one where I was European Flair? It was fabulous."

"European Flair?" I asked.

She nodded. "I wore a beret and a plaid skirt, and posed with a loaf of French bread. It was awesome."

"I want to be European Flair," the girl in black said. "This dress is boring. And how come you always get to be Evening Elegant?"

"Just wait a second!" Mallory hissed as we came up on a closed door. She stepped in front of it, clasping her hands to her chest. "Okay," she said. Her eyelash had come loose again. "Prepare yourself for the ultimate model experience."

This did not sound very promising. I glanced behind me; the other girls were all staring at me, still. I turned back to Mallory. "All right," I said slowly.

She reached down, twisting the knob, then pushed the door open. "Here it is," she said. "Can you believe it?"

I couldn't. The wall in front of me, like the ones on either side, was covered from top to bottom with pictures from magazines. Model after model, ad after ad, celebrity after celebrity. There were blondes, brunettes, redheads. High fashion, prom fashion, casual fashion, showbiz fashion. One beautiful, high-cheekboned face after another, striking a pose this way, that way, every possible way. There were so many pictures, cut out and edges overlapping, that you couldn't even see the wall behind them.

"Well?" Mallory said. "What do you think?"

Truth be told, it was all completely overwhelming, even before she pulled me forward, pointing at one specific face. It was only after I moved closer that I realized it was mine.

"See," she said, "this is from the Lakeview Models calendar last year, when you were April, and posed with the tires? Remember?"

I nodded, and then she was pulling me a few feet to the right, pointing again. Meanwhile, the other girls had scattered, the redheads flopping onto the nearby bed, where they were flipping through a stack of magazines, while the blonde and the dark-haired girl jockeyed for position on the chair that faced a nearby vanity.

"And this," Mallory said, her finger inches from the wall, "is the Boca Tan ad that was in the program for a basketball game I went to last year at the university. See, your hair is blonder there, right?"

"Right," I said. I looked slightly orange, as well. So strange. I'd forgotten all about that. "It sure is."

Another tug, and the photos blurred as we moved again, this time in the opposite direction, coming to a stop on the far left. "But this one," she said, "is my all-time favorite. That's why I have it right next to my bed."

I leaned in closer. It was a collage of shots from the Kopf's back-to-school commercial: me in the cheerleader uniform, on the bench with the girls behind me, at a desk, on the arm of the cute boy in the tux. "Where did you get photos?" I asked her.

"It's a screen capture," she said proudly. "I burned the commercial to a DVD, then uploaded it and saved the images on my computer. Cool, huh?"

I leaned in, looking even more closely, remembering, as I did each time I saw the commercial, that day in April when I'd shot it. I was so different then; everything was different then.

Mallory dropped my hand, leaning in beside me. "I just love that commercial," she said now. "At first, it was because of the cheerleading outfit, because I was really into that this summer? But then it was all about the clothes, and the story… I mean, it's great."

"The story," I said.

"Yeah." She turned to look at me. "You know, that you're this girl, and you're going back to high school after a great summer."

"Oh," I said. "Right."

"At first, it's, like, all the stuff that happens right at the beginning of school. Like cheering at the big game.

And studying for tests, and hanging out with all your friends on the quad."

Hanging out with all my friends on the quad, I thought. Right .

"And then," she said, "it ends with the first dance, where you get the hot guy, which means the rest of the year will be even better." She sighed. "It's like you have this great life, and get to do all this cool stuff. All the stuff high school should be. You're like—"

I looked at her again. Her face was inches from the pictures, still staring. "The girl who has everything," I said, remembering the director's words.

She turned to face me, nodding. " Exactly," she said.

I wanted to tell her, right then, that this wasn't true. That I was far from the girl who had everything; that I wasn't even that girl in the pictures, if I ever had been. No one's life was really like that, one glorious moment after another, especially mine. A real set of snapshots from my back-to-school experience would be something else entirely: Sophie's pretty mouth forming an ugly word, Will Cash smiling at me, me alone behind the building retching in the grass. This was the real truth about me going to back to school. The story of my life.