Nerves still raw over the unexpected (and unwanted) reunion, Cameron stayed off to the side, more comfortable observing for the moment.
When Hunter approached a few minutes later, her first instinct was to bolt, but Cameron held her ground. She tried seeing him as a stranger.
Hunter had changed into loud orange Hawaiian-print shorts. His thick dark hair grew out instead of down. He was cute, but Cameron worried that if she hooked up with him, his goatee would scratch her face.
Yet why was she even thinking about him like that, when she had a much cuter boyfriend back home?
“So you really surprised us back there/’ Hunter said, laughing but not in a mean way.
“Tell me about it.” Cameron ran her fingers through her hair. “I didn’t recognize any of you guys, at all. Honestly.”
It was a feeble excuse and they both knew it. Luckily, Hunter let it slide. “You really have changed.” He looked her up and down in a manner that could not be misinterpreted.
“It was just a nose job,” Cameron snapped. “Will you chill?”
“Sorry.” Hunter tried again, staring into her eyes. “I didn’t mean to piss you off. I’m just amazed is all, because you’re so different. So, like, cool and happy.”
Cameron shrugged. She didn’t want to be attracted to Hunter. It annoyed her that he was being so nice. As if now that she was presentable, all was supposed to be okay?
Like she could ever forget their seventh-grade class trip to the San Diego Zoo. As the class walked past the cages holding the long-beaked cranes, Hunter had grabbed her and yelled, “Look out! One escaped!”
“I know I was kind of cocky back in junior high,” Hunter said, like he knew what she was thinking. “So, um, sorry if I was a jerk.”
“You were a jerk. There are no ‘ifs’ about it.”
“Please don’t hold it against me.”
“Oh, I don’t care,” said Cameron, wishing this were true. She was annoyed with Hunter, but still interested. And annoyed that she was still interested.
“So, where are you going to school?”
“UCSB.”
“No way,” said Hunter. “My brother goes there.”
“Really?”
“Yup. I used to visit him all the time. You’ll do okay there. They don’t call UCSB the University of Santa Barbies for nothing.”
“What?” asked Cameron.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that before.”
Cameron shook her head, feeling bad, like she was missing out on the punch line of a well-known joke.
“UCSB is the land of Santa Barbies—because so many of the girls there look like Barbie dolls,” Hunter explained.
“Oh. I didn’t realize.” As lame as this was, it made Cameron think. Was she cute enough to be considered a Barbie doll? And when Hunter said she’d do “okay,” did he mean just all right, or well? It’s not like she could ask him to clarify.
Just then she heard her name. Not her name, exactly, though. “BEAKFACE!” someone shouted too loudly and from too far away.
Cameron cringed as Nikki approached. “Sorry,” she said, putting her arm around Cameron. “I meant to say, ‘Hello, Beekman.’ I still can’t believe it’s really you. I totally thought of you last month because we were doing etymology in English class, and I found out that Cameron means ‘crooked nose’ in Scottish. How ironic is that?”
It was actually the opposite of ironic. Or at least it had been until a few years ago, but Cameron was too upset to point this out. She’d already known what the name Cameron meant in Gaelic, and she resented her parents for it, as if in choosing her name, they’d sealed her fate. “Um, do you want something?” she asked Nikki. “Because this isn’t really the best time.”
Nikki’s boobs were spilling out of a too-tight white tank top. It was like she was offering them up to the world, wrapped in a red lacy bra that was so visible, it made her tank top completely irrelevant.
Cameron was about to make a joke to that effect, but when she turned to Hunter, she found that he wasn’t even looking at her. Rather, his back was to her and he was talking to Nikki. Leering at her hungrily. Had he really blown her off for the cruelest girl she knew? Nikki was attractive in a skanky way. She only had one thing Cameron didn’t. Well, two things, really: great boobs.
Looking around, Cameron noticed that the party had grown larger. It was as if all the nearby houses had been tipped to one side and shaken, spilling out the beautiful people. All the women dressed the same, in triangle bikini tops with short shorts, miniskirts, or tiny sarongs, as if they all hailed from a country where sleeves were illegal. Cameron felt like her head was about to explode.
Her biggest nightmare had come true. She’d been humiliated in front of a crowd that used to make a sport out of humiliating her. Then she’d come back for more, only to be blown off.
Heading toward the cooler, she realized something depressing. Perhaps she’d already peaked. She was eighteen. Her mom had been discovered at seventeen, while serving chocolate-dipped cones at the Dairy Queen in Wisconsin. A modeling-agency scout had spotted her and three weeks later she was on a plane to New York.
Last summer Cameron had waited tables at the Grill. It was a really big deal that they hired her, because all of their waitresses were so beautiful. The restaurant was around the corner from the William Morris Agency, which is why she’d applied. Executives from Warner Brothers and Universal and Paramount lunched there, and so did the talent agents. Cameron had expected to meet at least a few. The circumstances couldn’t have been more ideal. She’d collected plenty of business cards from older men, too: lawyers, accountants, a dentist, some guy in advertising. Yet she failed to attract the right type of older man. No one from William Morris expressed interest. She didn’t meet one studio executive—not even anyone from Fox Television. She’d waited tables there for two months, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. It was humiliating. A disaster.
As Cameron opened up her beer, she noticed Taylor sitting cross-legged on a rock a few yards from the edge of the party.
“Are you meditating?” asked Cameron, sitting down next to her.
“No, I’ve been benched,” Taylor replied. “And I guess you have too.”
“Huh?”
“Face it, we can’t compete.” Taylor gestured toward the crowd.
Ashlin, Lucy, and Hadley were doing fine—this she didn’t mind. But the fact that Nikki could hold her own in this crowd? It was beyond depressing. It was enraging.
Cameron gulped down her beer, then went to get another. She wondered if this was it for her. Maybe she was destined to become the type of girl who would always have to get her own drinks.
The thought made her shudder, so she pushed it out of her mind.
As she reached for another drink, she heard laughter from across the beach. It was unmistakably Devon and he was making fun of her. She just knew it. Through the dark, Cameron squinted. Devon was kissing Ashlin, who was giggling. Humiliation pulsed through her body. Then, through the hazy drunken layers, it dawned on Cameron. Of course they weren’t laughing at her. She was paranoid. Still, she felt like the butt of some joke, which was almost as bad.
A slow, sick feeling crept up on her, infecting her whole body like food poisoning. Cameron knew this sensation all too well. It was just like being back in La Jolla.
Of course, now it was worse because she knew the other side.
What was going to happen in September, at UC Santa Barbie? What if all the girls looked like Nikki? What if they all wore triangle bikini tops to class? How would Cameron compete? She was wearing her favorite skimpy outfit now, and no one even cared. Forget about her secret desire to be discovered. She couldn’t even keep up.
Cameron left the party. Stumbling back to the house, she collapsed on the couch and turned on the TV. An old MTV Spring Break episode flashed on the screen. Girls in bikinis gyrated, their boobs spilling out all over the place. She flipped the channel and found a Girls Gone Wi
ld infomercial. Human Barbie dolls were everywhere—on TV and right next door. There was no escaping. Even her closest friends had perfect bodies. Well, Hadley and Lucy did, anyway. Ashlin’s arms were on the thick side, and Taylor’s butt was a little flat, but they all had boobs. Everyone in the world did except Cameron, or at least that’s how it seemed.
Turning off the TV, Cameron found her cell phone and called Blake. He didn’t pick up and the call went to his voice mail, so she hung up and dialed again … and again, and again, until he finally answered.
“Do you still love me?” she asked.
Blake groaned. “Cameron, it’s two thirty in the morning. I was sleeping.”
“Do you think I’m prettier than Nikki?” she asked, because in her drunken logic, Blake knew all about what had happened and wasn’t upset that Cameron had been attracted to Hunter, but was insulted that Hunter had blown her off for another woman.
“Who’s Nikki?”
“So you’re saying that I’m not prettier.”
“You’re drunk.”
“So what. You still haven’t answered me.”
“I have to be at work at seven a.m. Um, drink a lot of water, okay? And get some sleep.”
“Wait!” said Cameron. But Blake had already hung up.
Fabulous. Even her boyfriend thought she was ugly. As Cameron lay on the couch, she felt her spirits sink lower and lower. She was trapped in psychological quicksand.
She looked down at her too-flat chest. Just two hours ago she’d thought her top was sexy. Now it looked like something a child would wear. An ugly child. People pretended there was no such thing, but Cameron knew this was a lie, because she’d been one.
Her new nose had changed her life, but obviously it could only take her so far.
Cameron’s head ached. She got up to find some aspirin and a glass of water and noticed Ashlin’s copy of Flavor of the Month. She was too drunk to see straight, and it was total trash, but still, something in that story of transformation appealed to her. It wasn’t like Cameron was so unfamiliar with it. Picking it up, she flopped back down. She tried to read but passed out before she’d made it past the first page.
CHAPTER SIX
“The Japanese tea garden on our left was generously donated by Steven Spielberg/’ Nancy Shepard, the volunteer coordinator, explained. “And this small koi pond was built by the president of the Directors Guild. His parents are residents here.”
The Motion Picture Home of Los Angeles was actually twenty miles north of the city, in an entirely different area code and with an entirely different landscape. Its rolling green hills were dotted with low buildings. All of them had white stucco walls and red tile roofs, like miniature houses. With its group dining hall, activities center, and weekly bingo game, the old-age home seemed to Allie like a camp for very old people.
It seemed like a pleasant enough place to be, and Allie was glad, since she’d be volunteering there every afternoon until her surgery. She’d always planned on getting her school-required community service hours out of the way before school started. When she realized she wouldn’t be able to work at Coach McAdams’s soccer clinic, her mom had found her this job instead. Compared to working at the camp, it sounded kind of dull, yet Allie’s mom had raved about the Motion Picture Home. It was very exclusive for a retirement community, only open to people who’d worked in the film industry. Her mom cared about that sort of thing. “Maybe your father and I will end up there someday,” she’d joked.
Allie and the other two volunteers, Jenna and Bebe, practically had to jog to keep up with the brisk and efficient volunteer coordinator. As Nancy walked, her long dark braid swung back and forth across her back like the pendulum of a very precise clock.
“The bungalows are essentially self-contained one-bedroom apartments,” she explained, “while the villas are more like hotel suites. Most of your time will be spent in the recreation center, playing games with the residents and reading to those who are blind. You’ll also be delivering meals to the ones who can’t leave their beds. Tonight you can wheel some of the residents from the dining hall to the screening room.”
“Screening room?” asked Allie.
“We show movies here every night,” Nancy explained as she handed each volunteer a clipboard with a list of names. “Tonight is Gone with the Wind. Allie, I need to warn you about Al. He’s the third resident on your list. Please be careful, because he’s a little fresh for a ninety-two-year-old.”
“They’re done with dinner now?” asked Allie, glancing at her watch.
Nancy nodded. “Yes. Please follow me.”
“Didn’t you know? Getting old means finishing dinner at five,” Bebe whispered.
The three volunteers giggled.
“Something funny?” Nancy asked, turning around and looking at them with raised eyebrows.
“Nothing,” Jenna said, quickly.
Once in the dining room, Nancy introduced Allie to her first “customer.”
“Bernie Stevenson, please meet Allie Beekman, one of our new volunteers. Allie will be taking you to the movie. Will you show her where to go?”
Bernie’s head was wrinkled and bald on top, with tufts of white hair that sprang from the sides and from his ears like cotton. The liver spots on his hands reminded Allie of muddy raindrops. “I worked on Gone with the Wind,” he said cheerfully, as if this were a new way of saying hello.
“Really?” Allie wheeled him past the rose garden and over a wooden footbridge.
“Yes, I was the assistant director at the time, but I went on to direct many, many films. Classics.” He rattled off a list of movies that Allie hadn’t heard of, but she nodded anyway to be polite. She was glad he was so chatty, because usually old people made her feel flustered. She didn’t know how to talk to them. All her grandparents had died years ago, so she didn’t have any practice.
As she wheeled Bernie into the theater, he waved to a thin man wearing a plaid shirt and a tan beret. “I’ll sit by Stan, over there,” he said.
“Okay, here you go, Bernie,” Allie said, carefully putting on the brake the way Nancy had demonstrated.
“Thank you, Jenny.”
“My name is Allie.”
He tilted his head to one side and blinked at her with murky blue eyes. “You look like a Jenny.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Can I call you Jen, for short?”
“Um, sure,” said Allie. “I’ll see you later.”
Allie hurried back to the dining hall to pick up a woman named Muriel von Deisel, who wore a crisp white pants suit, a platinum blond wig, and heavy bracelets that looked like gold handcuffs.
“What are they showing tonight?” she asked.
“Gone with the Wind” said Allie.
Muriel frowned down at her bracelets. “I’ve seen that one.”
“Do you not want to go?” Allie looked around, not sure if this was actually an option.
“Of course I want to go. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know.” Allie pushed the chair forward.
“Watch it. You’re speeding.” Muriel spoke sharply.
Allie slowed down, which wasn’t easy, since they were moving downhill. She hadn’t realized that wheelchairs were so heavy.
“I have a granddaughter who’s about your age.”
“Really?” asked Allie.
“She never visits,” Muriel replied.
Allie’s next customer was Al, and he didn’t seem like a pervert at all. At least not at first. The poor old guy dropped his pen on the floor as soon as Allie introduced herself. Allie picked it up and handed it to him, but then he dropped it again. This went on and on, until she realized he was dropping it on purpose so he could watch her bend over.
“Cut it out,” Allie said, not knowing whether to scold him or to laugh.
Al shrugged. “Sorry, but I’ve gotta entertain myself somehow.”
Allie managed to get everyone else into the screening room without incident. When she
was finished, she found Nancy clearing tables and directing some of the waitstaff in the nearly empty dining hall.
“I’m all done here,” she said, handing in her clipboard.
“Thank you, Allie,” said Nancy. “Can you do me a favor and go pick up one more resident? Her name is Eve and she lives in bungalow seventeen. It’s the large one, surrounded by sunflowers.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not going to be easy,” Nancy warned her. “But don’t take no for an answer.”
Allie hadn’t noticed bungalow seventeen before, which was strange since it was surrounded by a well-tended garden. Besides the giant sunflowers, there were African violets in the window boxes and small palm trees lining the cobblestone walkway. Allie knocked, but there was no answer. She peeked into the window by the door and saw the outline of a person sitting in the dark, faintly illuminated by a small desk lamp. She knocked again, calling, “Hello?”
“Nobody’s home,” the woman inside yelled.
Allie laughed and knocked again. “Um, I’m here to take you to the movie.”
“I said no one’s here.” Her voice was deep and scratchysounding, like she had a sore throat.
“That’s kind of hard to believe. Mind if I come in?”
“Well, I’m in no condition to stop you if I wanted to,” the woman replied. “And for the record, I do want to stop you.”
Allie opened the door. Eve’s bungalow was larger than the others and it was also messier. An overflowing bookshelf lined one wall. The others were covered with oil paintings. Allie had never been to Europe, but she imagined that it looked a lot like the pictures on Eve’s walls. The back ones showed the countryside: pale blue skies, fields of red and yellow tulips growing on low rolling hills. The wall opposite showed urban scenes: crowded cafés and rows of apartment buildings on cobblestone streets, with colorful laundry strung between windows.
From what Allie had seen during her tour, she knew that the other residents’ rooms were decorated fairly sparsely. Most looked like they were occupied by people who had either just moved in or were planning on leaving soon. She’d seen plenty of family photos and old movie posters, and even a bunch of faded black-and-white headshots, but nothing else of this scope and scale.
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