Fix

by Leslie Margolis

  Hadley reached for it next, saying, “I never saw the pictures from your graduation party. Can I take a look?”

  Cameron put her camera back in its case. “They’re all on my computer, at home.”

  “And they’re all of her and Blake,” Lucy added. “They’re so cute, they seriously make me want to hurl.”

  Having recently been dumped—two days before the senior prom—and having vowed to hook up with no fewer than three random guys in Cabo, Lucy was on an antiboyfriend kick. Cameron understood where she was coming from, but that didn’t make her comments any less annoying.

  “All I have here are my shots from this morning,” she said. “But I’ll be taking a ton of pictures this week. I was hoping you guys would pose for me at the beach later.”

  “How come you’re so camera-happy today?” asked Ashlin.

  “She’s always camera-happy. I mean, she just won the annual photo award for, like, the third year running,” Lucy pointed out.

  “True, but school is out,” said Hadley. “So what’s the deal?”

  Cameron explained, “I just found out that David Champlain is teaching a photo workshop at UCSB.”

  “Who?” asked Taylor.

  “He’s this amazing photographer who was on staff at Vanity Fair and he’s also shot every cool ad you can think of—Prada, Guess, Louis Vuitton. Now he does art stuff. I saw an exhibit of his at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and I just found out that he’s going to be teaching at UCSB. The problem is, this is a one-shot deal. He’s only doing it for the first semester, and when I called the school so I could register, I found out that they have a really strict no-freshmen rule. So I figured I’d send my portfolio to him beforehand and beg.”

  “You’ll get in, no problem,” said Hadley.

  “Yeah,” Taylor agreed. “You always get whatever you want.”

  No one objected to this, and Cameron felt like the sun was shining on her and her alone. Even though she’d moved to Bel Air almost three years ago, she was still surprised, sometimes, that the beautiful people actually liked her.

  Hadley dipped one foot into the pool. “Oh, it’s cold. I thought the heat was on.”

  “It is,” said Lucy as she stood up and retied the straps of her bikini top. “It takes a while to kick in, though. I’m going to take a walk on the beach. Anyone want to come?”

  “I will,” said Ashlin.

  “Us too,” said Hadley, answering, as usual, for both herself and Taylor.

  Cameron looked toward the house. “I’ll meet you guys out there. I want to call Blake first.”

  “Ha, I win,” Taylor laughed as she hopped from one foot to the other.

  “What?” asked Cameron, turning around.

  “We placed bets on how long you’d be here before calling Blake,” Lucy explained. “I thought you’d wait until tomorrow, at least.”

  “I knew it would be this afternoon,” said Taylor. “I figured you’d want to call him as soon as the plane landed, but you knew we’d make fun of you for it. So you tried to draw it out as long as possible.”

  Cameron couldn’t exactly object, since Taylor had called it pretty much on the nose.

  As her friends filed down the cement steps to the beach, Cameron headed in the opposite direction, slipping through the sliding glass doors and into the house. Then she pulled her cell phone from her backpack, flopped down onto the white, overstuffed couch, and put her feet on the glass coffee table (something she’d never have been able to do if Lucy’s parents had been there).

  “Hey, cutie,” she said to Blake as soon as he picked up the phone.

  “Hi,” he replied. “How is it down there?”

  “Amazing,” said Cameron. “It’s so warm, and the beach is stunning.”

  “Rub it in, why don’t you. I so wish I was there.”

  “I wish you were too.”

  “If your friends didn’t have that ‘no guys allowed’ rule.” “It is our last time all together,” said Cameron. “For a while, anyway.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Blake.

  Surprisingly, Cameron felt her eyes tear up. Not because she’d be separated from Blake for five days, but because this was essentially a sad preview to their real good-bye in the fall. Cameron was going to UC Santa Barbara in September, while Blake was on his way to UC Santa Cruz. Sure, they planned to stay together, but it wouldn’t be the same, and they both knew it. The drive between the two schools was four and a half hours without traffic—and there was always traffic.

  “We still have the summer,” said Cameron.

  “True, and I just heard back from the Joshua Tree people. We got a great camping spot. We’ll be the first at the park to see the sunrise.”

  “Wait, why would we be up that early?”

  Blake laughed. “You’re gonna love it.”

  “Know what I love?” said Cameron. “Indoor plumbing. You really shouldn’t underestimate it.”

  This was a game they sometimes played. Cameron acted like a high-maintenance heiress, while Blake played the rugged outdoorsy guy exasperated by his girlfriend’s demands. Neither acknowledged that in many ways they genuinely did live up to the stereotypes they were mocking, because that would have spoiled the fun.

  “Camping is awesome,” said Blake. “Trust me.”

  “That’s what you said about Leo Carillo, before our tent was invaded by ten thousand red ants.”

  “Oh, please. I only counted three.”

  “Three hundred you mean.” Cameron sighed an exaggerated sigh. “Don’t you know that for every single ant you see, there are a hundred more waiting in the wings?”

  “Paranoid much?”

  “I’m not making it up. It’s a fact.” Cameron was emphatic.

  There was often an inverse relationship between what she insisted was true and the actual truth, but Blake knew better than to argue.

  “Okay, fine,” he relented. “There were three hundred ants. It could have been a lot worse, though. It could have been three hundred cockroaches.”

  “Gross!” yelled Cameron.

  “All you needed was more time to adjust. Camping for one night doesn’t really count.”

  “If it doesn’t count, then why couldn’t we go to Jake’s Barefoot Bar for dinner? They make my favorite fish tacos on the planet and we were only eighteen miles away.”

  “You can’t go to a restaurant when you’re camping.”

  “Your logic is flawed,” Cameron replied. “Because you already said it didn’t count.”

  “Okay, fine. It’s silly of me to argue with someone who’s always right. I’ll make it up to you. We’ll go to Jake’s as soon as you get back from Cabo. Straight from the airport, I promise. Now I’ve gotta run or I’ll be late for work.”

  “Call me tomorrow,” said Cameron. “And don’t OD on garden burgers.”

  It was a necessary warning. Blake waited tables at the Banana Leaf Café, a vegetarian restaurant in Venice. When he worked, he was allowed to eat all he wanted for free, and more than once he’d come home stuffed to the gills and too sick to go out.

  After hanging up, Cameron walked back to the master bedroom she was sharing with Lucy and turned on the shower. The cool, steady stream of water was a refreshing break from the hot sun, just as Cabo was a refreshing break from her regular life. Not that her regular life was so bad. After all, Cameron had a sweet, gorgeous, and totally devoted boyfriend, amazing friends, cool, lenient parents, and a sister who was maybe a tad dorky, but still very chill. Plus, she had an entire summer of freedom. All she had to worry about was working on her portfolio and maintaining her tan. The possibilities stretched endlessly before her, kind of like the vast Sea of Cortez, which she could see from the shower window.

  Cameron was just stepping out of the stall when she heard Lucy burst into the room and announce, “You won’t believe our luck. Totally hot guys at three o’clock.”

  “What?” Cameron wrapped a white, plush towel around her body and headed out of the bathroo
m.

  Lucy stood in front of the mirror over the dresser, brushing out her hair. “You know how our neighbors rent out their house sometimes?” She pointed her brush to the left, presumably toward said neighbors’ house.

  Cameron shrugged. “Um, no.”

  “Well, they do,” said Lucy. “And this week it’s rented to a bunch of hot guys, and it’s perfect because there are six of them. One for each of you and two for me. And don’t you get all moral on me. Blake is in LA, which is a thousand miles from here. Plus, cheating when you’re in a foreign country is technically not even cheating.”

  “I didn’t realize.” Sure, Cameron played it cool, but she couldn’t ignore the flutter of curiosity this news brought. New guys were the best kind, so full of possibility.

  Lucy egged her on. “Flirting isn’t cheating. Enjoying yourself isn’t cheating.”

  Not that Cameron needed to be convinced. “Fine,” she said. “Just let me get dressed.”

  “Okay, but hurry up.” Lucy started for the door but then paused and glanced over her shoulder. “So how come you never told me that the guys from La Jolla were so hot?”

  “What?” Suddenly unsteady on her feet, Cameron grabbed the edge of the dressing table. While it seemed too dramatic a gesture, she couldn’t help herself. She felt jolted whenever any reference was made to La Jolla, which reminded her of her former life: the one where she wasn’t beautiful and popular, the one where she was in fact teased and ridiculed. It had been more than three years since then, but the pain was still raw.

  “You heard me,” said Lucy, staring at her curiously. “Take a look.”

  Cameron stepped out onto the balcony and saw a group of guys playing touch football on the beach down below.

  “Can you believe how lucky we are?” Lucy followed her outside.

  Cameron nodded silently. Lucy was right. The guys were cute, but that wasn’t why she kept staring, and that wasn’t why she suddenly had a very bitter taste in the back of her throat.

  The problem was, Cameron knew these guys. Every single one of them. They were Braden, Emmett, Hunter, Devon, Max, and Travis, the very same people who had once made her life so miserable.

  “Will you hurry up and get dressed?” said Lucy, nervously watching as Hadley and Taylor approached the guys.

  Cameron didn’t move. Nor did she say anything. She couldn’t.

  “Wait, what are you staring at?” asked Lucy. “See that one with dark hair and the goatee? He’s mine. I also call the one with the shaggy blond hair. And the one with the short dark hair …”

  Feeling quite suddenly like she’d woken up after a night of pounding tequila shots—which is to say, fuzzy-headed and on the verge of puking—Cameron walked back inside. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” asked Lucy, hands up in an exaggerated shrug.

  “Nothing,” Cameron whispered.

  “Well, are you coming?”

  “I think,” said Cameron, flopping down onto her back and staring up at the ceiling, “I think I’m going to need a minute.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Allie Beekman had been told that Dr. Glass was many things: a top Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, the husband of supermodel Venus Alder, and a virtual miracle worker. This was all very hard to believe, because to Allie he seemed like nothing more than a slick older man with a too-bright smile.

  His office was full of leather and glass and shiny metal. There were sharp right angles everywhere, and there was nothing organic, nothing living or breathing, in the entire place except for Allie and her mom. She wasn’t yet willing to grant Dr. Glass regular human-being status. His features were too chiseled, like the statue of David she’d seen in her art history textbook. Also, he wore his shirt unbuttoned too far, exposing a tan chest that seemed surprisingly smooth for someone his age.

  The fish in the tank behind Dr. Glass were floating belly-up on the water’s surface. For Allie, this did not inspire confidence.

  Not even after she realized that the fish were plastic, and that it was a joke. Postmodern, probably. At least that’s what Cameron would say, although Allie wasn’t entirely sure why.

  Her opinion of the doctor did not matter, though, since no one had asked her for it.

  “I just want to make sure it’s natural-looking,” said Julie, Allie’s mom, for the third time in fifteen minutes.

  “Of course,” Dr. Glass replied, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. And perhaps for him, it was. “I’ll give her a nose that fits her face.”

  “I hate noses that look like they were done,” Julie continued. “I don’t want people to look at her and think, nose job.”

  Then why am I getting one in the first place? Allie wondered, but only to herself.

  “You’ve nothing to worry about, Ms. Davenport.” Dr. Glass flashed his blinding white smile. “Your daughter is in excellent hands.”

  Allie looked down at the doctor’s hands and cringed.

  “I’m sure you have these on file, but I brought pictures of my older daughter, Cameron.” Julie pulled a stack of photos from her purse and handed them to Dr. Glass. “You probably don’t remember, but you fixed her nose three years ago.”

  “Of course I remember.” Dr. Glass glanced at the top picture for a millisecond before handing them all back. “How’s Cameron doing these days?”

  “Wonderful,” said Julie, her blue eyes lighting up. “She just graduated from Bel Air Prep and she’s on her way to UC Santa Barbara.”

  “Fantastic,” said Dr. Glass.

  “She also got into UPenn,” said Julie. “But she has her heart set on staying in Southern California.”

  Allie rolled her eyes. Her mother told everyone that Cameron also got into Penn. She seriously doubted that Dr. Glass cared, or that he even remembered her. Before she came in, Allie had done some research, so she knew that besides nose jobs—rhinoplasty, to get technical—he also did breast and chin and cheek and pectoral and calf implants and face-lifts and eye tucks and tummy tucks and liposuction and Botox. Her mother had booked Allie’s appointment four months in advance. Dr. Glass was that busy. So how many noses had he done, she wondered, since her sister’s? If he did three a week, working for fifty weeks a year, that added up to a hundred and fifty noses. Times three years equaled four hundred and fifty.

  “So she’s smart and beautiful.”

  “Yes, thanks to you.” Julie smiled as if Dr. Glass had performed the surgery out of the goodness of his heart, rather than for his normal fee of eight thousand dollars. (Allie had looked that up too.)

  “That’s why we came back to you for Allie,” her mother continued. “We’re hoping you can do the same for her.”

  “I do a lot of families and it’s always an honor,” said Dr. Glass. “Now do you have any more questions?”

  “Yes,” said Julie. “Aren’t you going to show us how she’ll look after the surgery? When we came with Cameron, we got to see her altered image on a computer.”

  Dr. Glass frowned for the first time. “The digital-imaging machine is broken. But you can come back next week so you’ll know what you’re getting.”

  “Oh, good,” said Julie. “We’d definitely like to see.”

  “By the way,” said Dr. Glass. “I caught The Deepest Bluest Sea on HBO last night. Your performance was magnificent. It had my wife in tears.”

  “Thanks.” Julie tucked her blond hair behind her ears and cast her gaze downward. “That was a long time ago.”

  Allie never ceased to be surprised by her mom’s bashfulness. Before she had kids, Julie had been a well-known actress. She’d even been nominated for an Academy Award once. Yet whenever anyone mentioned it, she acted like she wished they hadn’t.

  “Well, I don’t want to keep you two.” Dr. Glass stood up.

  “Will it hurt?” Allie asked quickly. It was her first question, the first time she’d spoken since they arrived.

  “You’ll be under anesthesia,” said Dr. Glass, waving his h
and to dismiss the thought. “You won’t feel a thing.”

  “But what about after?” asked Allie. “Will it hurt then?”

  “You may feel woozy from being under for so long.”

  “How long?”

  “Two hours, maybe, but you’ll never know it. You’ll come in here at seven thirty and you’ll walk out by eleven.”

  “There are no side effects, then?”

  “No. The splint will come off in four or five days, and in three weeks the major swelling will go down and you’ll be as good as new. Well, mostly. You’ll be slightly swollen for six months to a year after, but that’s minimal.” Dr. Glass smiled. “You’ll hardly notice.”

  “Three weeks?” Allie glanced at her mother, worriedly. “But I’m supposed to go to soccer camp on July thirtieth.”

  “That’s up to the doctor, dear,” Julie said.

  Looking down at his calendar, Dr. Glass shook his head. “That’s only two weeks after your surgery day, so no, I wouldn’t recommend it. Your nose will be too fragile at that point. If you get hit in the face with the ball, it could break all over again. We’d have to start over from scratch.”

  “The whole team is going to Colorado,” said Allie. “I have to be there.”

  “Isn’t the camp three weeks long?” asked Julie. “Maybe you can go late.”

  “Or perhaps we can fit you in sooner,” said Dr. Glass. “Why don’t you speak with Madison, my patient coordinator, on the way out?”

  “Thank you, Dr. Glass,” Julie gushed as she stood up. “We’ll do that.”

  “I have one more question,” said Allie, turning in the doorway. “What if I don’t like it?”

  “Like what?” asked Dr. Glass.

  “My new nose.”

  Dr. Glass tilted his head to one side and looked at her, really looked at her, and not just her nose or her mother, for the first time. “What do you mean?”

  He seemed truly perplexed.

  Allie felt her cheeks heat up. Still, she had to ask, “Um, can you put it back to how it was, if I don’t like it?”

  Julie interrupted her. “Allie, don’t be silly. You’ll love your new nose.”

  “Trust me,” said Dr. Glass. “I’ve been doing this for a very long time. You have nothing to worry about.”