Airhead a-1

by Meg Cabot

  Which was a relief. Because I realized I had a thing or two I wanted to say to him.

  Seventeen

  Except that I didn’t get to. Say what I wanted to say to Mr Stark, I mean. At least, not right away.

  That’s because the minute I stepped off the elevator into Stark Corporate headquarters, a swarm of hairstylists, make-up artists and wardrobe assistants descended on me. Kelly snatched Cosabella away from me, assuring me she’d look after her for the duration of the shoot. And then I — not my dog — was the one swept away for grooming.

  At first I didn’t know what was happening. All I knew was that these total strangers were coming up to me, and this one guy kept pulling on my hair and going, ‘Honey, what happened? They run out of product… on the entire island of Manhattan?’

  And a woman kept peering into my face and being like, ‘So… we’re going for the natural look, are we?’

  And this other woman grabbed my hand — this was all as I was being pulled down a hallway — and went, ‘Yeah, it’s as bad as Kelly said. Get the drill file!’

  Drill file? And were those product and natural look remarks of a snarky nature?

  They were. Soon I was being berated by Norman for my haircare technique (‘So we fall and bump our heads and lose our memory, and suddenly we don’t know how to deep condition any more?’) as well as my skincare regimen by Denise (‘Honey, what happened to that exfoliant I got you last month? You have to use it for it to actually work.’) and, of course, my nail-biting (‘No! Oh, for the love of God, no. Why would you do this? Why, why, why?’) by Doreen. It wasn’t until the guy doing my hair gave it a bit too hard of a tug and I was like, ‘Ow!’ and Norman was like, ‘Oh, did the widdle baby get an owie?’ with all this fake sympathy, that I went, ‘Yeah, actually, I did,’ and I grabbed his hand and ran it along the raised scar at the base of my skull.

  After that, he got very quiet… and much gentler. I don’t know if Norman said something to the others — he must have — because they stopped picking on me too. They also started explaining to me what they were doing. Like the make-up lady — Denise — told me how it’s important to wash your face every night and every morning, and to use a gentle astringent to really get out the dirt. Then, if your skin was flaking, to use a moisturizer… which of course I’ve never used before in my life, because my old skin never flaked, it only broke out from too much oil.

  But apparently I have dry skin now.

  And then Norman told me it was probably better not to wash my hair every day… that it was easier to style and more manageable if I only washed it two or three times a week. And he gave me some powder I was supposed to sprinkle into my hair every morning, and comb through, so it wouldn’t ever look greasy.

  And Doreen the nail lady applied a paste to each one of my nails that quickly hardened to a fake nail that she filed short, then painted black.

  Then she went, ‘Bite them. Go on. Try.’

  And when I stuck my nail into my mouth, I nearly broke a tooth on it.

  ‘You’ll never bite them again,’ she said, ‘so long as you wear these.

  You’ll come see me twice a month so I can fill the gaps as they grow.’

  And then drops were being put into my eyes to get the red out (and I was being gently chastised for crying) while the whole team tried to think of things to tell me that I might have forgotten, like that my skin is too sensitive to wax (like this was actually something that was going to happen), so I have to shave unwanted body hair (including my bikini line, about which Norman said to me, ‘You have to use a BRAND-NEW RAZOR every time,’ which, hello, was totally embarrassing. But also incredibly useful, considering what Kelly had told me in the car about the swimsuit-issue thing), and that processed foods aggravate acid reflux (like I hadn’t noticed), and that (more interestingly) Brandon and I were fully breaking up before my accident because I was sick of him catting around with Mischa behind my back (fortunately they told me this while Brandon wasn’t in the room). None of them seemed to know that Nikki had been catting around behind Brandon’s back with her room-mate’s boyfriend (thank God).

  All this made the time pass very quickly, so I barely noticed my eyelashes were being curled, and my hair straightened, and my toenails painted black to match my new fingernails, and that they were even bleaching my arm hairs (yes).

  Then they went, ‘OK, off to wardrobe,’ and I was sent to a (barely) curtained-off area of the room where three tiny girls, each about a foot shorter than me, started taking off my clothes (without even asking!) and making me put on new things… things I couldn’t even figure out HOW to put on, so it was a good thing they were there actually, to help.

  Then they would look at what I was in and one of them would take a Polaroid and run out of the curtained area and then come back with a yes or no. Finally they settled on this diaphanous white dress that was so low cut it would barely stay on, and these silver stilettos, and no earrings, and finally I was let out of the curtained area and led down a long, plush carpeted hallway, past a lot of stylishly dressed people who stared at me — up at me, mostly, since I was so tall in my stilettos — and a few of whom said, ‘Hi, Nikki.’ I tried to say hi back, but whenever I did, I’d get a shocked look. I guess Nikki wasn’t known for being particularly friendly while on a shoot.

  Which I could sort of see why, considering how people poked and pulled her.

  Then finally I was led up to a door that had the words ROBERT STARK, CEO written on them in silver letters. And the door was thrown open and I was in Mr Stark’s office at last.

  Except that Mr Stark’s office was in total chaos because of the photo shoot. There were power cords running criss-crossed all along the carpet, and giant klieg lights set up all over the place, shining down hotly on everyone, and skinny guys in black shirts and jeans everywhere, and girls in ponytails with fancy glasses holding cups of latte, and big blackout cloths draped over the floor-to-ceiling windows that must have offered a panoramic view of all of Manhattan.

  And in the centre of it all was a huge mahogany desk, at which sat Robert Stark in a white shirt unbuttoned about six inches to reveal a lot of grey chest hair. And behind him stood his son, also wearing a white shirt open to reveal his completely hairless chest. Both men looked tanned (thanks, I knew from Denise, to bronzer, which she’d also smeared all over me — and I mean, all over… there is apparently no room for modesty in modelling) and handsome in the lights. Robert Stark, though, looked impatient, while his son just looked bored.

  I was getting ready to go up and introduce myself and ask if we could have a word together in private — because maybe if Mr Stark met me and saw what I was like, he might reconsider the whole making my parents pay back the two million dollars if I didn’t honour Nikki’s contract with Stark… and also might tell me why he’d given Nikki a computer that was loaded with keystroke-monitoring software.

  But just as I was about to take a step in Mr Stark’s direction, someone grabbed me and wrapped me in a fierce hug.

  ‘There you are!’ cried a woman’s voice — gravelly, and big, to match the hug. ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe how long it’s been! I wanted to come see you in the hospital, but they had those damned family visitation-only restrictions! But I’m her agent! I’m family, I told them. No deal. Well, let me look at you.’

  I was held at arm’s length while a dark-haired middle-aged woman, whippet-thin, in a cream-coloured skirt suit examined me from head to foot.

  ‘Gorgeous, as always,’ she concluded when she was done checking me out. ‘Couldn’t be more gorgeous. Oh, but you don’t have the foggiest idea who I am, do you? You really did get a bump on the head!’

  ‘Um,’ I said, glancing past the woman at Robert Stark, who was complaining to someone about the cufflinks on his tuxedo shirt, which appeared to keep coming undone. ‘You’re Rebecca, my agent?’

  ‘That’s right, that’s right!’ She flung her arms around me again.

  ‘Rebecca Lowell! Thank God you’re a
ll right. If anything had happened to you… well, I don’t know what I’d have done!’

  ‘Run straight back to that trailer park in the Ozarks to see if she could find someone else to pluck from obscurity,’ said a man in leather trousers with a pencil moustache drily.

  ‘Oh, hush,’ Rebecca said to the leather trousers man. To me, she said, ‘I know this is probably all very overwhelming. But you’ve always been a natural and I know you’ll snap back in no time. And speaking of being a natural… how excited are you about SI? Oh, Nikki, when I heard, my heart… well, I just thought I’d cry!’

  ‘Step away from the talent, Rebecca,’ Pencil Moustache said. ‘Now that she’s here we can finally get to work.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Raoul,’ Rebecca said, still hanging on to me. ‘It’s just that when I think how close she came to death—’

  I wondered how she’d react if I told her her client Nikki really had died. Just not legally in the state of New York.

  ‘Yes, well, I’ll take good care of her for now, Bec.’ The man she’d called Raoul took me by the arm and said, ‘We’ve met before, Nikki, but you don’t remember, I see. Which is a crushing blow from which I doubt I’ll soon recover. Never mind. Hop up on to this desk here so Pete can check the lighting —’

  Obediently, I hopped up on to the enormous mahogany desk — after first checking to make sure my diaphanous dress was covering everything it was supposed to be covering. Which it wasn’t doing the world’s best job of. My nipples were kind of showing…

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Raoul said, totally noticing what I thought I was doing so subtly. ‘Never mind that now, we’ve all seen it before. Now roll over and stick your heels in the air — elbows up, chin in your hands — Norman, hair.’ Norman darted forward to arrange my hair as I let Raoul twist me into a completely uncomfortable — even painful — position on the desk. ‘Yes, that’s better. All right, gentlemen, places.’

  I couldn’t see what was going on behind me, because I was trying to hold my painful pose. But I suppose Mr Stark and his son went back to their places, since Raoul said, ‘Good, good. Let’s take some Polaroids.’

  Well, I thought to myself as the photographer, Gwen, started snapping away. This isn’t so bad. Why had Lulu laughed so much when I asked how hard modelling can be? It’s not exactly difficult… although my neck kind of hurts. And I think there’s some mascara in my eye. And –

  ‘Nikki, Nikki,’ Raoul said. ‘Can you try not to look like you’re in pain? I know you are, darling, but don’t think about it. Think about lovely things, will you? Lovely thoughts, lovely face —’

  I realized with horror that I’d been grimacing. I immediately plastered a huge smile on to my face.

  ‘Not quite that lovely, Nikki,’ Raoul intoned. ‘This isn’t a Sears portrait studio. Relax your mouth. Think dewy… Denise, can you make her lips more dewy? There. There. Now, a few more —’

  And then Raoul and everyone gathered around to look at the Polaroids as they developed. So I started to sit up. Now, I thought, would be the perfect time to speak to Mr Stark –

  ‘Nikki, darling,’ Rebecca called sweetly from somewhere beyond the circle of white light thrown by the kliegs, so I couldn’t see her, ‘where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Um,’ I said. ‘To change back into my real clothes?’

  ‘The shoot’s not over,’ I heard Brandon say with a smirk. ‘It hasn’t even begun.’

  ‘But —’ I looked at the dozens of Polaroids now being dropped indifferently to the floor.

  ‘Test shots,’ Brandon said. ‘God. What, did you get a little too much wind between your ears riding around on the back of that scrub’s scooter?’

  I bristled. ‘For your information, Gabriel Luna is a very hard-working singer-songwriter, and not a scrub… unlike some people I could mention.’

  Brandon stuck out his chin. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘For your information, I’ve got several production deals in the works right now… not to mention I’m recording my own album.’

  Yeah, I wanted to snarl. With your dad’s money. But I didn’t dare, with his father standing right there. Checking his emails on his — non-Stark-brand — Blackberry, but still. He could have been listening.

  Knowing what I knew about Nikki’s computer, I didn’t doubt he was.

  ‘No bickering, children,’ Rebecca called from the darkness beyond the desk. ‘And Raoul will tell you when you can relax, Nikki.’

  And that’s when I began to realize why Lulu had laughed at me when I’d said modelling was easy.

  There is nothing easy about it.

  Unless you think it’s easy trying to look dewy and think lovely thoughts while twisting your body into the most uncomfortable position possible at the same time you’re trying not to mess up your make-up or expose a nipple while wearing five-inch heel shoes and trying not to notice how incredibly hot your jerk of an ex-boyfriend is.

  Because allow me to assure you, it’s not.

  Especially when you’re doing it for the first time, and in somebody else’s body.

  Eighteen

  It was nearly two hours later before Raoul got enough shots he thought he could use. I had to do a bunch more different poses. Some of them involved me biting into a big red apple. That was fake. And tasted like dirt.

  Another pose I had to do involved hanging off Brandon Stark’s shoulders like I was one of those baby rhesus monkeys, clinging to their mothers. I said I thought that pose was kind of misogynistic, because it implied that women are helpless and need a big strong man to support them.

  I mostly just said that because draping myself over Brandon that way reminded me of how fun kissing him had been, and made me want to kiss him again, which, considering how mad he was at me about Gabriel — and the fact that I’m crushing on someone else entirely — didn’t seem like it would be the best idea.

  Raoul didn’t take my advice anyway though. And Rebecca took me aside and asked if I had a fever.

  ‘Because normally you know better than to criticize an art director’s vision,’ she said.

  I pointed out to her that the media is notorious for infantilizing women in their images of us, and asked if it didn’t bother her, as a feminist, that she was partly contributing to that.

  She looked at me and went, ‘Are you taking any kind of medication for your head injury? Because if so they need to up the dosage.’

  I could sort of see her point. I mean, if I didn’t do the pose, they’d just hire some other model to do it.

  Still, it was totally embarrassing having to smush my boobs up against Brandon like that. Not that he seemed to mind…

  That was the problem. My embarrassment aside, I didn’t mind much either.

  And I think Brandon started to get over his being mad at me about the whole riding-on-the-back-of-Gabriel-Luna’s-Vespa thing, because after about half an hour of my smushing my boobs into his back, he whispered, ‘Hey What are you doing after this?’

  I was caught totally caught off guard, and asked, ‘Who? Me?’

  ‘No,’ Brandon said very sarcastically. ‘I’m talking to Pete, the lighting guy. Of course you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. I guess I’m just going back to the loft. Why?’

  ‘Cool,’ Brandon said. ‘Maybe I’ll stop by.’

  I felt myself starting to blush. I didn’t know a whole lot about guys, but I knew what Maybe I’ll stop by meant. Or at least, I was pretty sure I did. Considering where my boobs were.

  I had a good idea where they’d be later too. I was positive I wasn’t going to be able to stop them from being there. Not if I knew Nikki. Or at least, how she got when guys started kissing her. They tossed the word wanton around a lot in those romance novels Frida — and, OK, I have to admit, I — liked to read.

  Well, wanton pretty much summed up how Nikki got whenever a guy stuck his tongue in her mouth.

  OK. My mouth.

  But what about Christopher? I mean, he was the one I really loved, and I�
��d never even once managed to get within kissing distance of him…

  Oh God. This was all so confusing.

  I tried to think up some excuse as to why Brandon shouldn’t stop by the loft later, and finally seized upon a perfect one.

  ‘The thing is,’ I whispered, ‘I’m going to bed early. I’ve got school in the morning.’

  Brandon made a face — until Gwen, the photographer, asked him to please stop. ‘School? You’re kidding me, right?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Tribeca Alternative High School. My first day. I want to be nice and well rested. And, well, you know. What with the accident, and all—’

  ‘I thought the school thing was just a PR stunt,’ Brandon said.

  I jerked my boobs off him in shock. ‘A PR stunt? Who said that?’

  ‘Nikki,’ Gwen called, ‘don’t move, please! Pete’s just adjusting the lighting —’

  ‘Well,’ Brandon said, ‘that’s what people are saying—’

  ‘Education is necessary for anyone to grow as an individual,’ I said.

  ‘I’m going to school so I can go to college some day, not as a PR stunt.’ And not just so I can check up on my best friend, who I happen to be crushing on, and make sure he hasn’t found some other girl, either.

  ‘Kelly!’ Gwen yelled.

  ‘Nikki,’ Kelly called to me, ‘could you get back in your place, please?’

  I got back in my place, draped over Brandon’s back. But I wasn’t happy about it. People were saying Nikki Howard was going to high school as a PR stunt? That was terrible! And so untrue! I could see I needed to speak to Brandon’s father, now more than ever. He couldn’t keep the truth about what had really happened to Nikki to himself now. He just couldn’t. It wasn’t fair.

  But it was really hard to get Mr Stark’s attention, because every time he wasn’t posing for the cameras, he was on his (non-Stark-brand) cellphone yelling at someone, or telling one of the many people in the room to get him someone else’s phone number, or an espresso. Finally, after what seemed like another five hours — my feet were throbbing, and my mouth muscles twitching from smiling so much — Raoul said, ‘That’s a wrap, people! You can all go home!’