by Coco Simon
Our afternoon was cheerful, relaxing, and productive, especially compared to my morning. Debbie got so many beautiful shots, I actually thought Alexis might cry. At the end, Debbie promised to e-mail the best shots to Alexis, and we signed a release allowing Debbie to use the shots for publicity and on her website. (She said she’d give us credit, and we said we’d do the same.) Then we packed up, cleaned up, and headed home.
I actually fell asleep in the car on the way home and didn’t wake up until our first stop to drop off Alexis. By the time we’d dropped off everyone, I was refreshed.
“Thanks, Mom, for everything today,” I said from the backseat.
She looked in the rearview mirror. “It was a pleasure. I adore your friends, and I am so impressed by how hard you all worked and what a great team you are.”
“It kind of stank, this morning. . . . ” I wanted to discuss it, but I didn’t know what to say.
My mom pressed her lips together. “That just wasn’t a good match. I’ll have to speak to Alana about it. If you want to keep doing this, that is.”
“I think so. . . . ” I wasn’t as sure as I had been. I didn’t know if I wanted to stay in just to prove something or if I actually liked it.
“If that’s the case, then you will have to be more professional. Maybe you could take some classes or something,” said my mom. “I also think it’s a mistake to bring your friends. We certainly won’t do that again.”
“We kind of owe Olivia one, though . . . ,” I said, feeling guilty.
“Of course. But that’s different. She isn’t there to giggle with.”
I thought of Olivia’s mom and her “sparkle” directive. “That’s for sure,” I agreed, and sighed.
Back home, there were three messages from Alana, asking my mom to call her.
“Uh-oh,” I said, listening to the third one.
My mom grimaced, and dialed. “Alana?”
Boy, she must’ve picked up on the first ring. I braced myself, waiting to hear shouting through the phone. I tried to read my mom’s expression, to see if I could tell what Alana was saying. Finally, my mom got a word in edgewise.
“It’s not your fault. No, don’t be silly. She’s fine.” My mom looked up at me, smiling and making a surprised face. “Well, yes, the outfits were inappropriate, but Polly was very nice. No, don’t worry about it. Please. Whatever money you can get is fine. Thanks. Talk soon. Bye.”
My mom hung up the phone and stared at it in shock for a second before looking up at me. “Alana was furious. At them! Polly called her to explain what happened, and Alana freaked out that they’d taken a child and tried to dress her as an adult, and on and on. She wanted to know if you were ‘scarred for life’ and insisted she will get every penny of the original fee for you. Wow!”
I grinned. “No wonder people are impressed when they hear she’s my agent. She’s fierce!”
“We’re lucky,” said my mom. “Now let’s make sure we deserve her.”
For Wednesday’s go-see, my mom learned that it was an open call, so she made me invite Olivia, who was thrilled. Ugh. Even worse, my mom had no one to pawn Jake off on, so he had to come too!
We took the train into the city, and the call was at a big casting company’s office. There were all sorts of commercials and ads being cast at once, so there were hordes of kids in different staging areas. It was overwhelming. One whole group was dressed as elves, which was kind of funny, and another was all in ballerina outfits. I felt like I was in a dream.
Olivia and I got our call numbers and studio assignment, and my mom and Jake tagged along to the holding area. It wasn’t that big of a group waiting, and I didn’t understand why until the door opened at one point and I got a flash of what was inside. Dogs. Lots of them! I suddenly feel great, because I am a dog expert! If this job calls for working with dogs, I have already nailed it!
I smiled at Olivia. “Dogs,” I said confidently.
“What?” she asked, a look of fear creeping over her face.
“It must be a dog food ad or something. There are tons of dogs in there!” I announced happily.
Olivia paled and sank down into her chair. “I hate dogs,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of them!”
And sure enough, when we’re called and ushered in, the room was alive with pooches. I dropped to my knees to play with the first ones to come to me, but Olivia backed up against a wall, terrified. Jake followed me into the room and got down on his knees too, laughing hysterically when the dogs began to lick his face. My mom signed us in and sat on a chair to wait for our test shots.
Olivia was called first. She inched up to the backdrop, and a handler brought some dogs over to her on leashes. I could see that she was trying not to look scared, but it was not working.
“Okay, just smile and relax, please,” said the photographer.
But as I watched, Olivia could not relax and she could not smile. After, like, three shots the ad person said to Olivia, “Okay, thank you!” Olivia looked stunned that she was already done. “Thanks!” the lady said again when Olivia wasn’t fast enough to move off the backdrop.
“That’s it?” Olivia asked as she walked off.
“Uh-huh. Next?” the lady suddenly called, and I stepped in.
She handed me the dogs’ leashes and asked for a pose, but I was distracted by the animals that wouldn’t seem to do as I said. They were pulling me one way, while the photographer was in the other direction, and suddenly I felt something warm on my leg. No! A dachshund just peed on me!
“Sorry! Thank you!” the agency lady said, and now I’m hustled off the backdrop and handed a wad of paper towels. What? This was my moment to shine! Dogs loved me! But it was not to be.
I mopped my leg and noticed the ad lady and the photographer conferring for a minute. Then the ad lady went over to my mom, and they chatted briefly. My mom called over Jake from where he was wrestling with a bunch of dogs, and I am mortified. Here we were, unprofessional on the shoot again. This time I’m sure they’ll call Alana and then she’ll fire me. Why does Jake always have to ruin everything? I thought angrily.
But suddenly Jake was shrugging, and they were changing his shirt. He was on the backdrop laughing with a bunch of adorable golden retriever puppies rolling all over him, and they were taking his picture. Olivia and I stood in shock, watching, as Jake nailed the job we’d both come in for.
By the time we were on the train back to Maple Grove, Olivia and I were in stitches, laughing over being upstaged by a little boy with no front teeth, and my mom was moaning about having two models in the family. Jake was clueless about what it all meant. He just had fun playing with the doggies, and he said he didn’t mind if his picture ended up in a magazine!
The night ended with me thinking maybe it would be better if I left the modeling career to Jake, who seemed to take it all pretty lightly.
CHAPTER 11
Jaden Sacks!
Mona called me in a complete panic on Thursday afternoon.
“Darling! I’m in a pinch! Jaden Sacks wants oodles of bridesmaids at the launch, and I’ve only signed up you! Help! I need some more gorgeous tweenagers!”
I laughed. “How about the Cupcake Club, since they’re already planning on coming? At least I know they’re free!”
“Sounds great to me, but would you be able to send me a photo? Jaden Sacks’s publicity team likes to approve the models in advance, to make sure they’re consistent with the company image. Not too flashy, you know?”
“Sure. I just happen to have a great photo.”
We hung up, and I e-mailed Mona the link to our new demo website. In the section About Us, there’s a really pretty and fun group shot from the session with my dad. An hour later, Mona called back. “Book them, darling! They’re approved!”
But that night, as I was lying down to go to sleep, my stomach dropped.
Olivia!
I should have invited her too. I didn’t want to, but I kept thinking about her mom, and I kind of felt b
ad for her. Going on all those casting calls is tough for anyone. It would be a nice thing to do.
I climbed out of bed, switched on my light and laptop, and dashed off a quick, kind of neutral e-mail to Olivia, asking if she could e-mail me a head shot, since I might know of a job for her. Of course it was in my in-box first thing the next morning when I checked, and I forwarded it to Mona with the subject line “One More” and crossed my fingers.
At school, Olivia accosted me, again in front of her friends, asking me about the job we’re booking and have I heard back about the dog food one yet. Her gang was all ears, impressed.
I tried to make it sound like she had a chance for the dog food one, which was a flat-out lie, and I prayed that Jaden Sacks didn’t like her look. I was a little mad that I had tried to do something nice and she was just acting like regular Olivia.
It turned out, though, that Jaden Sacks thought Olivia was, according to Mona, “just divine.” If she only knew.
On Saturday, as Icon’s five thousand dollars sat in their bank account rather than my pocket, we all trooped over to The Special Day, cupcakes and tiered stand in hand. My dad drove us, because he said my mom has gotten to see more of me lately than he did, and he wanted to grab some snapshots of the big day, anyway.
Mona and Patricia and their team were even more aflutter than I’ve ever seen, and all the furniture in the store had been pushed against the walls, to make room for the crowds. Olivia was there waiting for us with her mother, and between the two of them, it was hard to tell who was more ecstatic. I felt good about calling and including her after all, mostly because it might make her mom a little nicer to her.
We scrambled inside; set up the huge cupcake display, which Mona swooned over; and then headed back to have our hair done. Mona hired a professional hair stylist for the day, and we all lined up to be lightly worked over by the curling iron.
Then Patricia whisked us away for our look lineup. I retrieved my slip from its usual hanging spot and put on my first dress. It was a floaty, linen dress, with just a tiny bit of stitched detail at the hem, and a wide, pink sash. I loved it. It could not be more comfortable to wear, and pretty! It was something I would have picked out for myself. As Patricia finished tying a big bow in the back, I slipped on white ballet slippers and headed out to show my dad.
But when I got out to the main salon, I saw him chatting with Mona and another woman I didn’t recognize. I started to approach them, and then Mona spied me and waved me over, calling, “Darling, come!”
“Darling! Isn’t she divine?” she said to the other woman. “This . . . is Jaden Sacks!”
“Oh! Oh my gosh! Hi! Wow! It is so cool to meet you! I’m just . . . I love, love, love your dresses! I wish I could wear them every day. Like, even to school!” I knew I sounded silly and I was gushing, but it was all true. Jaden Sacks smiled.
She wasn’t as old as I would have thought—maybe in her late thirties. She had golden hair to her shoulders, cut in a swingy kind of shag, and she was tan, with bright blue eyes. She was very petite, and when I shook her hand, I was surprised by how light and thin it was. She had real artist’s hands—graceful and delicate. She grinned warmly and her eyes sparkled, and I felt like we were sharing a great joke, like we were instantly friends.
“I have a lot to thank you for!” she said, in a surprisingly girlish voice.
“Me?! Why?”
“Your ad was a huge hit! Our flagship store got one hundred and seventy-two calls looking for the dress you wore in that ad. One of the reasons I was hoping to meet you was to see if you and Mona would mind if we bought the shot and ran it nationally.”
“What? Really?” I thought of Olivia and her “national ad” information. “Great. I mean, you’ll have to speak to my agent. . . . ” I looked around for my dad.
“Oh my gosh! An agent! They start so young these days!” Jaden joked. “Who is your agent? You?” She looked at my dad, who was standing behind me.
But he shook his head. “No, I’m her father. Emma’s agent is someone called Alana Swenson.”
Jaden put her head in her hands, like she was devastated, but she was joking. “Of course it is. She wouldn’t let someone like you escape her radar! I’ll call her on Monday. She owes me a lunch, anyway, since we used only Swenson girls at our last runway show!”
“I bet she loved that!” I said, laughing.
“Oh, she did.” Jaden laughed back. “Ka-ching!”
Patricia came scurrying up to say the bridal models were all ready and the bridesmaids nearly so and did we want to open the doors yet. I turned to look outside, and there were so many people standing beyond the doors that I couldn’t even see past them. Wow! I gulped.
“I’ll let you go. Congratulations! See you after!” I said to Jaden. And I scurried back to the dressing room.
Mrs. Allen was there, whispering directives to Olivia, but Patricia booted her out, and Olivia relaxed after that. The next half hour went by in a blur as we did our fashion show before a couple hundred people, and then we could relax as we mingled.
The Cupcakers thought the whole thing was a hoot, but they were exhausted at the end.
“This is really hard work!” said Alexis. “Just being on your feet this long is tiring!”
“Yeah, and all that smiling,” said Katie, who seems to be smiling all the time, anyway.
“I loved it!” said Olivia, and it was true. She had seemed happy. Maybe runway work was the thing for her. I wouldn’t mind too much if Mona ended up using her too. It might be nice to have a little company at the trunk shows. “Of course, it’s nothing like a national ad shoot for TV, when they have all the buffets lined up. . . . ”
I groaned, and everyone laughed.
Olivia looked up and blushed.
Before we all changed, my dad, who’d been taking pictures all day, asked the Cupcakes to come outside, and he got some great shots of the Cupcake Club with Jaden Sacks and Mona in front of the store.
The pictures turned out so great that when he e-mailed them to Jaden and Mona later, they picked one to run in an ad in the Gazette.
A month later my family had a big Sunday dinner to celebrate Jake’s dog food ad in the new issue of Parents’ Life magazine and the full-page ad in the Gazette of all the Cupcakers with Mona and Jaden.
The best part was at the bottom of the bridal ad. It said:
jadensacks.com
thespecialdaysalon.com
thecupcakeclub.com
I had dialed back on my modeling career a little by then. My mom had told Alana we’d only do tween stuff, and only on weekends, and only with at least a week’s notice. And Alana was fine with that.
Olivia worked a trunk show at Mona’s with me one weekend, and it was fun to have her there. She was a lot nicer when she was alone, and she was a lot more relaxed when her mom wasn’t around. I could kind of see how Mia liked her at first, and I kind of felt badly that her mom could be so hard on her. We went on our lunch break together, and it was my treat, with money from my last photo shoot. We had apricots and seltzer water from the Fruit & Nut stand, and cupcakes for dessert!
But the next Monday at school, she was back to her old self again. As I walked to my locker, I could hear her talking about the fashion show at Mona’s.
“Emma was okay, but anyone could tell she was inexperienced,” she was saying. Bella and Callie were hanging on to her every word. “I was the star of the show, if I do say so myself. Everyone was staring at me, and I heard Jaden asking Mona who I was. That’s why I wasn’t in the print ad. They wanted to save me, so I could do an ad by myself, without being lumped in with all the, well, regular girls. Poor Emma! I’ll probably have to replace her at The Special Day, but it was going to happen eventually. She’s just not ‘model material.’ ”
I couldn’t believe it! After all I had done to try and help her out. I was steaming. I walked right up to her and tapped her on the shoulder. Olivia blinked and looked startled for a moment, but then went right back in
to her act.
“Oh, Emma, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean for you to hear that,” she said. She touched my arm lightly. “But maybe it’s better coming from a friend, you know?”
I looked at Bella and Callie, who just stared at me and nodded sadly.
“I think you’re right, Olivia,” I replied, “that sometimes criticism is better coming from a friend. But you aren’t my friend. I tried to do something nice for you after you didn’t get booked on any jobs and after Alana Swenson didn’t take you on as a client, and I asked Mona to include you in The Special Day event. I’m sorry you weren’t in the ad that ran. They were looking for someone less fake-model looking and . . . well, someone with a bit of sparkle.”
I felt a little bad right then, because Olivia turned really pale and looked like she wanted the floor to swallow her up. I almost started to say something about being a baby model as her last job, but I stopped. I had said enough to make my point. There was no need to stoop down to her level.
I smiled my best “model” smile and turned to walk down the hall, like it was a big runway. I thought of my mom, who thought I always sparkled no matter what, and I kept walking toward my friends, who didn’t care if I was a model or not. I thought of going to The Special Day and putting on the pretty dresses with my friends Mona and Patricia and just having fun. I thought of how excited I was that the Cupcake Club had booked a bunch of new jobs, thanks to our website. I smiled a real, genuine smile. And then I laughed. Because if Miles was there, I know that smile would have been “the keeper.”
Back to Reality
Spring break was over and it was back to reality.
I happen to love reality, but my friends weren’t so thrilled about it this morning.
