Back at Aunt Zendaya’s that evening, I studied everything Destiny Manaconda. I watched all her music videos on YouTube. I read as many of her interviews as I could find. I listened to all her songs, trying to imitate her little trills and the hiccup-like catch she had in her singing voice that I wished I had in mine. I even went back and watched old episodes of Cupcakers to study her mannerisms, the way she looked when she pouted and batted her eyelashes flirtatiously, her wide-eyed “uh-oh” face that always drew laughs from the audience when she was about to cause a hilarious upset. I shut myself in the bathroom, using the mirror to perfect the way she stood when modeling for Calvin Klein. She had talent, charisma, and something I couldn’t just pull out of thin air—superstar glam.
Since we had the next day off, the Yo, Shady-O crew was blowing up our group text trying to decide what we should do together. I begged off, telling them my friend was arriving from Paris and I was spending the day with her. TJ texted separately to ask if he could come along. Even though Hailey Joanne had already suggested we do a mini Trueheart reunion, I told him we were having a girls’ day. I needed Hailey Joanne all to myself for my Manaconda glamazon makeover.
Aunt Zendaya’s doorbell buzzed a few minutes after noon the next day. The car Hailey Joanne had sent to drive me to the Saint Voltaire had arrived! I grabbed my overnight bag before the buzzing stopped, though Aunt Zendaya made me wait for her to be ready. Even though Mom had assured her the Pinkeys could be trusted, Aunt Zendaya, maybe feeling a bit more protective after what happened the day before at rehearsal, insisted on trekking down from the fourth floor to make sure all was on the up and up.
When we stepped outside the apartment building, there, waiting for me at the back door of a gleaming black SUV, was the Pinkey family chauffeur from back home, Mr. Versey! He was as distinguished as ever, with his jet-black hair and snow-white mustache. His eyes sparkled as he opened the rear passenger door. “Miss Mango, so very happy to see you again.”
I couldn’t help myself—I gave him a hug and told him how happy I was to see him, too. He introduced himself to Aunt Zendaya, and I could see that she was impressed. Assured that I was in good hands, Aunt Zendaya waved from the stoop as I was whooshed away in the comfort of the Pinkeys’ luxury SUV.
As we made our way through the traffic from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I told Mr. Versey that I was surprised to see him here in New York. “Why?” he asked. “The Pinkeys always travel with their entourage, of which I am a part.” He chuckled. “Working for these rich folks, I’ve been all over Europe, Africa, India . . . you name it, I’ve been there. Ms. Altovese wouldn’t trust any driver to chauffeur Miss Hailey Joanne and herself but me.”
Ms. Altovese Trueheart-Pinkey was Hailey Joanne’s mother. She was the most glamorous, sophisticated, and gorgeous woman I had ever met. The granddaughter of Irma Beth Trueheart, founder of Trueheart Beauty, a line of haircare products for women of color that made her a multimillionaire before she was twenty-five years old. Ms. Altovese oversaw her grandmother’s empire all around the world. The only thing that rivaled her beauty was her kindness and good taste. Kindness because she was always so gracious and insisted on calling me by my middle name, Delight. Good taste, because she hired my father to cater Hailey Joanne’s birthday celebration the previous spring and her upcoming vow-renewal to her car dealership tycoon husband, Mr. Pinkey.
Mr. Versey went on to tell me that wealthy people like the Pinkeys never traveled alone. They had private jets so they could bring along their entourage, from stylists to cooks to secretaries and assistants. Everyone was on board so the family could be assured of the safety and comfort of home wherever they landed. I gagged. It must cost a fortune to travel with all of those people, but then again I thought, if you’re fortunate enough to have a fortune, go on and live your best life!
The Pinkeys’ butler was waiting as Mr. Versey pulled the SUV up to a private entrance at the back of the hotel. He was a butler and his actual name was Mr. Butler. I used to think this was very funny, but he took himself so seriously that I tried to keep my jokes about it to myself. Mr. Butler the butler led me to a private elevator at the back of the impressively understated lobby. The express elevator to the penthouse felt like I was traveling through one of the portkeys in Harry Potter, causing my stomach to drop to my knees as we were rocketed to the eighty-eighth floor.
The elevator doors opened, and for the second time in my Hailey Joanne experience, my eyes popped at the grandeur in front of me. The entry hall had a three-story vaulted glass ceiling that filled the space with light that gleamed off the marble floor. There were fresh-cut orchid arrangements everywhere, their fragrance delicately scenting the air around me. It was a castle in the sky, high above the city.
Mr. Butler the butler informed me that there were six king-size bedrooms, four queen-size bedrooms, all with en suites (their own bathrooms!); a dining room for twelve, two powder rooms, two wet bars, and a library up a winding staircase that led to a wrap-around deck, from which you could see a three hundred sixty degree panorama view of Manhattan. I wasn’t sure why he was telling me all this until he took out a tablet that had a layout of the space and asked, “Which bedroom would you prefer, Miss Mango?”
I gulped and told him I’d like the one closest to Hailey Joanne. He touched the screen and highlighted an adjoining room, asking if it would be satisfactory. I grinned and said, “Satisfactory and then some!” Stone-faced, he led me through the penthouse to the bedroom wing. All of the walls, furnishings, carpets, and hardwood floors were in shades of white, off-white, gray, and beige. Peeking into one of the open rooms, I saw a red accent wall and an elaborate area rug to match. It was all so tasteful and elegant. I felt out of place with my jeans, sneakers, and faux vintage Freddie Mercury T-shirt.
He stopped in front of a door, opened it, and turned to me. “Miss Hailey Joanne is experiencing a severe case of jet lag and is still in bed. Make yourself comfortable and she’ll be with you in a few hours, I’m sure.” With that, he turned on his heel and went back down the hall without making a sound.
I stepped into the room, which was as white, gray, beige, and elegant as the rest of the penthouse. The king-size bed was massive! I dropped my overnight bag, ran across the room, and did a grand jeté leap onto it. I felt like I’d landed on a cloud in the heavens, especially after sharing a futon with Aunt Z for the previous few weeks. As I lay there, I thought back to what Mr. Butler the butler had said . . . Hailey Joanne would be with me in a few hours? No way! I sat up, looked around, and spied the door that adjoined Hailey Joanne’s room. I headed toward it, determined to wake Hailey Joanne from her transatlantic stupor. We had a LOT of work to do if we were going to transform-aconda me into a superstar in one day!
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A Star Is Reborn
I knew waking Hailey Joanne would not be easy. She was used to doing things her own way in her own time. Before we became friends, she was the leader of the Cell-belles, a group of snooty girls at our school who shunned anyone without a cellphone. She used to make fun of my name and tease me every chance she got. Hailey Joanne and my ex-best friend forever, Brooklyn, tried to humiliate me by signing me up to audition for the school play without my knowledge, but it backfired on them because I got the lead role! Impressed, Hailey Joanne uploaded my audition to YouTube and when I went viral, she and I actually started to talk and become friends.
I approached the door between our rooms and opened it, careful not to make a sound. The door must’ve been soundproof, because the second I opened it, I was assaulted by a snore that could best a jackhammer in a noise pollution contest.
I entered Hailey Joanne’s dark room and stood still, getting my bearings and wondering how I should wake her. I could jump on the bed and say, “Ta-da! I’m here, girlfriend!” Or I could creep up to the bed, tap her on the shoulder, and say, “Wakey-wakey for goodness sakey!” Then again, I could use the song Dada used to sing to get me out of bed in the mornin
g when I was in elementary school: “Get up, get up, you sleepyhead! Get up, get up, get out of bed!” No, that wouldn’t be fair, because I used to bury my head under my pillow and scream to get him to cut it out.
Deciding to take the gentle and quiet approach, I crept up to the massive bed on my tiptoes. Just when I reached her bedside, Hailey Joanne sat straight up and yelled, “Who’s there?!” I screamed! She screamed! I backed away from the bed so fast, I fell on my butt. She leapt up so she was standing on the bed, brandishing what I thought was a weapon but turned out to be a remote control. Suddenly the lights came on and there she was, looming over me, her hair standing on end like one of those little troll dolls, her eyes covered by a sleep mask. I screamed again!
Hailey Joanne lifted the mask. She squinted at me and said, “Mango? What in the world . . .?” Relieved, I slumped back on the carpet, and after taking a moment to catch my breath, I started laughing uncontrollably. Then Hailey Joanne started laughing and joined me on the floor. We rolled around, hugging each other and cackling in each other’s faces—until I had to pull away and cover my nose. Hailey Joanne asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Morning breath, girl. You seriously need to do something about that right away.”
She swatted at me playfully and headed toward her en suite. “While I do my toilette, dial nine on the phone and tell Mr. Butler we want dinner for two.”
“Dinner? It’s only one in the afternoon.”
Hailey Joanne posed dramatically with the back of her hand on her forehead. “Sacré bleu, I’m still on Paris time. Order un déjeuner pour deux, s’il vous plaît.”
I knew she was just showing off the French lessons she’d been taking all summer, so I just said, “Huh?”
“Oh, mon Dieu!” she giggled. “Pardonnez-moi. Order lunch for two, if you please, while I brush my teeth.”
As she headed away, I laughed. “You might want to use a brush on your hair while you’re at it, mademoiselle!”
Lunch was epic! Served on the veranda by the waitstaff, we ate Bavarois d’asperges vertes (asparagus mousse with a cumin and coriander mayonnaise and shards of ham), for the main course a cassoulet (a delicious casserole with beans, pork sausage, and chicken breast), a cheese plate, and for dessert, crème brûlée a la confiture (caramel cream with jam). I couldn’t believe French people ate so much rich food for lunch, but Hailey Joanne told me, “In France, the midday meal is the biggest meal of the day. Dinner is much lighter and easier to digest before bed.”
Whatever the rules were, everything was delicious and I used my phone to take a picture of each beautiful dish to share with Dada, who I knew would appreciate them. Hailey Joanne told me all about her weeks in Paris, the shopping, the sightseeing, and Marc Hervé Guillon, the teen son of her mother’s favorite couturier. “He is divine. The perfect gentleman, uber gorgeous, and best of all, as I was boarding our jet to fly home, he hugged me and whispered in my ear, 'Je t’aime.’”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“What does it mean?”
“It means 'I love you’!”
A big part of me felt relieved that Hailey Joanne was interested in another boy and had moved on from TJ. Spending so much time with him here in New York, I wasn’t sure if I still only wanted to be friends with him. I could completely be myself with TJ, and I really liked spending time together. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but maybe the needle was moving away from friend-friends toward something more . . . at least for me. I didn’t know how he felt. Still, I needed to make sure Hailey Joanne was really moving on, so things wouldn’t be weird between us, so I asked, “Did he really mean it? I mean, like was it romantic love or just 'love you like a friend’ love?”
“Why would I waste my time telling you about it if it were just 'love you like a friend’ love? We went everywhere together. I saw Paris through the eyes of a true Parisien. Mother didn’t like it. She wanted the trip to be all about the two of us exploring the city together, but I mean, really? If you had the chance to explore the most romantic city in the world, who would you chose to tour with? Your mother, or a living, breathing, hunk of Brie with broad shoulders, hazel eyes, pouty lips, and an accent to die for?”
I was about to answer when Mrs. Trueheart-Pinkey swept onto the veranda. Hailey Joanne shushed me and shook her head, a quick warning to not continue talking about her crush. Mrs. Trueheart-Pinkey, wearing a silk wrap, came toward me with her arms outstretched. I stood, though I sat on my impulse to curtesy. She was so elegant. She leaned in, air-kissing me on each cheek, and said, “Delight, how marvelous to see you again! And how advantageous that we’d all wind up in New York City at the same time. You must excuse my appearance, but I’m between fittings and thought I’d come up and see how you’re doing. I trust your show is going well.”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Trueheart-Pinkey. It’s going fine.”
“Why so formal?” she said, “You can call me Ms. Altovese.”
I could actually hear Hailey Joanne rolling her eyes. Ms. Altovese took a seat at the table and asked Mr. Butler the butler to bring her a fruit plate and a cappuccino. Then she turned to us. “What were you two just talking about so intensely?”
Hailey Joanne spoke up. “Mango was just telling me all about her show and . . . um . . . you were about to tell me about, uh . . .”
I figured this was as good a chance as any to tell them about my desperate need for a complete superstar makeover. So, I told them all about Destiny Manaconda singing my song and how she dazzled everyone and how I felt like a plain rice cake next to a chocolate soufflé.
“Oh, Delight, I’m sure you don’t have any reason to feel insecure.”
“You’re a great singer and actor. That’s why they wanted you for the part in the first place,” Hailey Joanne added.
“Actually, they tried to cast her before me. The only reason she’s not in the show is because she’s doing Summer Jam concerts all over the country every weekend.”
Ms. Altovese reached her bejeweled hand across the table and touched my cheek. “You’re beautiful and talented just the way you are.”
“Thank you, but the way I am was okay for a middle school show. Now I’m in New York City and I need to change, to be more glamorous. Destiny Manaconda is perfect and that’s what I need to be, too.”
I watched as Ms. Altovese and Hailey Joanne exchanged glances. Then Hailey Joanne grinned and said, “Well, glamour is our business. If we can’t transform you, no one can, am I right, Mother?”
Ms. Altovese’s eyes began to sparkle as bright as the diamonds on her fingers. “Of course, we can. And you’re in luck. Our glam squad is downstairs waiting to be put to task. Giving you a complete glamorization will be job number one!”
It ain’t easy going from basic to goddess. The glam squad worked on me for hours, starting by attaching long clip-in extensions to my hair, which they then cut, curled, and styled. They added individual extensions to my eyelashes, one at a time, gave me a teeth whitening treatment, attached jewel-encrusted fake nails to my hands, and did facial treatments that removed every blackhead and pimple from the surface of Planet Mango. Then they applied layer upon layer of makeup, contouring and reshaping my face until I was almost unrecognizable to myself!
Once the physical transformation was complete, including a designer outfit and heels from Paris that I borrowed, Hailey Joanne and Ms. Altovese began working on my inner transformation. I came out of the dressing room wearing the new outfit, thinking I looked amazing. Ms. Altovese asked me to walk across the room. When I did, she and Hailey Joanne gave me a look—the kind you’d have after opening a carton of sour milk.
Hailey Joanne started, “Mango, you can’t pull off an outer transformation if you don’t change the way you see yourself on the inside.”
For the rest of the day, I was critiqued and tutored on how to walk, hold my head high, and enunciate when I spoke. They taught me how to move with the grace of a princess, not just an ordinary girl from around the wa
y. It was hard work being this new kind of me! I realized that Hailey Joanne must have been trained to imagine herself a superstar since before she could walk, and that’s why she held herself the way she did, and spoke, walked, and talked the way she did without even thinking about it. I was usually comfortable just being my regular self, but I had to step it up to compete with a star like Destiny Manaconda. I was determined to blow everyone away at the final dress rehearsal tomorrow.
At bedtime, my new clip-in hair was wrapped tightly to my head and covered with a silk bonnet. Hailey Joanne showed me how to sleep on my back with my face pointing up, so as not to ruin my makeup, since the glam squad and Ms. Altovese were leaving early the next morning to do a photo shoot in the Hamptons. It was not easy sleeping so stiff, because normally I sleep on my side, scrunched up in a ball, unconsciously slobbering on my pillow. But somehow I fell asleep, and when I woke up, my makeup was still on, my hair fell around my shoulders in waves, and I could truly relate to my idol, Beyoncé, when she sang, “I woke up like this!”
I pretended I couldn’t face2face with my mom because the Wi-Fi in the hotel wasn’t very good. I knew she’d have something to say about the brand new me. My mom was more of a down-to-earth type. A little lotion and maybe a smear of lipstick and she was ready to go, which was fine for regular people. But I was about to become a star and I needed to look and act like one.
After a quick breakfast by myself, since Hailey Joanne was still on Paris time, Mr. Versey drove me to the theater for rehearsal. I couldn’t wait for the company to get a load of the brand-new, glammed-out me!
Summer in the City Page 15
