In Too Deep

by Jennifer Banash

  Drew turned back to the screen, his dad’s words swimming around in his head, confusing him. What was wrong with being a serial monogamist? It had never felt right to Drew to simply go out with girls just because he could—it was so much more fun to really get to know someone rather than take them out, hook up, and never talk to them again. He didn’t really see the point. And besides, it wasn’t like he really wanted to represent some cliché of what a sixteen-year-old guy should be. Just because he was supposed to be ass-crazy all the time, just because his hormones were in overdrive twenty-three hours out of twenty-four didn’t mean that he had to be a player. If you played, eventually you got played, and Drew wasn’t interested in being just another conquest. Most of the girls at Meadowlark expected so damn much from a guy they were dating, and one of the things he loved about Casey is that she didn’t expect anything from him—or anyone—and that made her appreciate what she got. For the first time, Drew was starting to see what it could feel like to want to give a girl everything you had—simply because she didn’t demand it.

  And it felt good.

  strike a pose

  Madison stopped before the frosted - glass doors lead - ing to the offices of Verve Model Management and took a deep breath, pulling out a gold Chantecaille compact, and blotting her nose and cheeks with translucent powder that shimmered slightly against her golden skin. School had been interminable, her head filled with images of striding down the Versace catwalk in Milan, Antonio seated in the front row next to Donatella, his dark eyes flashing more powerfully than the white lights clouding her vision . . .

  Except now that she was finally on the threshold of taking the modeling world by storm, Madison was feeling just a smidge more nervous than she would’ve liked to admit—not that there was anything to be nervous about really. When she’d called Antonio the day after their encounter on the street, he’d told her to come right in as soon as she could, the excitement in his voice crackling like static electricity. And besides, she was wearing her lucky outfit—a dark-washed pair of Joe’s low-rise skinny jeans, and a black, wool Prada jacket with a black cashmere tank beneath, and Jimmy Choo pumps that were the absolute definition of hotness with shiny silver zippers running up and down the black leather. The entire ensemble screamed supermodel. So what did she have to be nervous about? This was destiny, and as far as Madison was concerned, her destiny was waiting just behind those frosted-glass doors—in the form of a scorchingly hot Italian guy with model good looks, and the connections to match. Madison pushed open the doors, tilting her chin confidently in the air.

  The monochromatic gray lobby was filled with the bustle of ringing phones and the sharp sounds of stiletto boots tapping against the bleached wooden floors as assistants walked briskly by, their arms full of papers. A row of scarily gorgeous girls sat on a line of stiff-backed chairs, sleek leather portfolios cradled in their matchstick arms. Madison was no stranger to beauty—after all, she’d grown up with some of the most beautiful girls in Manhattan—but the polished, pampered exteriors of the Upper East Side’s elite couldn’t even begin to touch the otherwordly glossy veneer these girls were genetically blessed with. They were so strangely, hauntingly beautiful that it was almost unsettling to look at them for more than a few moments. Did they manufacture them at a factory somewhere in Eastern Europe and ship them to New York when they turned fifteen? Madison wondered nervously as she approached the front desk, clearing her throat softly.

  The Amazonian blond receptionist—who possessed the most hollowed-out, sculpted cheekbones Madison had ever seen in her life—held up an index finger, a headset firmly strapped to one ear, her light gray, almost colorless eyes perfectly complementing the darker gray wall behind her, the shade of storm clouds. Just looking at her, Madison began to worry again—this girl was only the receptionist, yet she looked as if she’d just climbed out of one of the framed magazine covers adorning the gray walls and sat down behind the desk just for kicks. “Shit,” Madison mumbled under her breath as the receptionist turned to her, her eyes sliding up and down Madison’s body from face to feet with cool, practiced ease.

  “Yes?” she deadpanned, a flash of amusement enlivening her formerly dead stare.

  Madison drew up her shoulders and stared her back down, summoning all the confidence she could muster. “I’m here to see Antonio.”

  The blond gave her a half-smile, her eyes turning suddenly frosty.

  “I assume you have an appointment?”

  “Of course,” Madison answered haughtily. All she had to do at moments like these was conjure up her mother, Edie, and it worked every time. It was a good thing, too, because when she’d talked to Antonio yesterday he’d told her to just come on down—she hadn’t even thought to schedule an appointment. And besides, no one ever got anywhere by playing by the rules or making appointments. Rules were for wimps and losers—not glamazons-in-training.

  “Madison, darling! You made it!”

  Madison turned around to Antonio’s smiling, Armani shades obscured his dark eyes. He walked up to her as if the wooden floors were made of butter, taking her hand in his own and planting a smooth, practiced kiss on her knuckles.

  “How long have you been here?” he inquired. Before she could answer, he took both her hands in his own, holding her at arm’s length, taking in the faded jeans that fit her every curve, and the fitted jacket that hugged her torso, squeezing her waist from negligible to nonexistent. “You are a vision, cara, an absolute vision!” Antonio wasn’t looking too bad himself in dirty-washed Diesel jeans and a forest green T-shirt peeking out from beneath a chocolate velvet blazer. “Come with me to my office,” Antonio purred, taking her by the arm. “We have much to discuss, no?”

  “Definitely,” Madison cooed, allowing Antonio to lead her out of the waiting room and down a long, carpeted hall that reverberated with the shrill sound of ringing phones. But before she exited the waiting room completely, Madison couldn’t resist turning around and shooting the receptionist a satisfied smile, her green eyes flashing triumphantly. The receptionist smirked right back, her dark matte lips turning up at the corners lightly, before being distracted by yet another call ringing through her headset.

  Antonio’s office resembled a page out of an IKEA catalog—all sleek, Swedish modern furniture dominated by a white egg-shaped lamp that glowed brightly on his ebony desk—despite the late-afternoon fall sunlight streaming through the venetian blinds, casting horizontal patterns on the gray walls.

  “Sit, cara, sit!” Antonio gestured at the horrendously uncomfortable-looking steel and Lucite chair directly across from his desk. Madison sat, crossing one leg over the other, her heart beating so loudly she briefly went all Woody Allen—practically convincing herself that she was about to keel over in sudden cardiac arrest. She didn’t know what made her more excited—the prospect of being a supermodel, or her proximity to Antonio. He was so totally yummy that she briefly imagined pushing the paper and portfolios that crowded his desk to the floor and pushing him down on top of the slick wooden surface, pulling his T-shirt up with one hand . . .

  “So,” Antonio said, removing his sunglasses with a smile, flashing his blindingly white teeth, “we must talk seriously of your career today. I will have my assistant take some Polaroids, and your measurements, si?”

  “Si,” Madison agreed, positively giddy with excitement. God, when her adrenaline rushed like this it was almost better than drugs, and definitely better than sex—or at least the sex she’d had so far, which admittedly had been less than perfect. That horrible night she’d spent with Drew last spring began to miraculously fade from her memory as she watched Antonio pick up the phone, barking orders in a stream of rapid-fire, authoritative Italian before banging the receiver back in the cradle with the ringing of bells.

  “And I will, of course, give you our contract to take home with you and look over. It is just a standard contract,” Antonio said with a shrug as a pencil-thin brunette in achingly tight skinny jeans entered the room with
a clipboard in one hand, a Polaroid camera in the other. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “I’ll have to talk it over with my mom,” Madison said nervously as the brunette motioned for her to stand up.

  “Yes, yes,” Antonio said with a wave as the phone began to ring again. “Have her call me if you like.”

  “Okay,” Madison said as she stood up, the brunette wrapping a length of cloth measuring tape around her waist, smiling happily as she recorded the results on her clipboard, “I definitely will.”

  “We will set up your test shoot for sometime next week.” Antonio picked up the phone, holding one hand over the receiver. “I will call you with the information.”

  “Test shoot?” Madison said breathlessly, as the tape—which was now around her breasts—was threatening to cut off her circulation entirely.

  “With a photographer,” the brunette clarified, her blue eyes as round as marbles in her pointy face. “To see how you photograph.”

  “I thought that’s what those were for.” Madison pointed at the Polaroid camera the assistant had placed on her vacated chair.

  “The Polaroids are just for us,” the brunette said briskly while picking up the camera. “To make sure you’re not a total disaster on film before we spend money on test shots. Now, stand up against the wall and look straight ahead.”

  Before Madison had time to pose, the flash went off like a gunshot, colored spots spinning in front of her eyes, the photograph popping out of the bottom of the camera with a slick, grinding noise. The assistant waved the photo in the air, fanning herself, a bored expression on her fine-boned face.

  “Why aren’t you a model?” Madison asked while they waited for her likeness to appear on the empty surface. “You’re pretty enough.”

  The assistant rolled her blue eyes, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Yeah, right,” she scoffed as she brutally slapped the nonexistent excess flesh of her legs. “With these thighs?”

  Madison shrugged, but inside she shivered a little. This girl was just about flawless with legs like stilts, and she thought she was too fat? Madison frowned as the assistant fanned the photograph in the air again with one hand—the other still hovering obsessively around her thighs. Just what was she getting herself into here—a life of dieting and insecurity? But that’s pretty much the life I’m living right now anyway—without the added benefit of being famous, she reasoned as the assistant stopped her manic fanning and stared down at the now-developed image.

  “Wow—the camera loves you!” she exclaimed, shoving the Polaroid under Madison’s nose.

  Madison stared down at the photograph, transfixed, unable to believe that it was her own face looking back at her, the face she’d seen a million times in the mirror. Madison had always known she was pretty—there was no point in denying it or even in acting humble—but who was this girl with the razor-sharp bones in her face, those green eyes that gazed back at her like the embers of softly-glowing emeralds? So lost in her thoughts was she that she barely noticed when Antonio walked up behind her, staring at the photograph over her shoulder.

  “Belissima,” he purred, grabbing the photo from the assistant’s bony fingers. “I think, cara, that you are going to be a big, big star—and I am hardly ever wrong,” he added, a flirtatious gleam enlivening his dark eyes.

  Madison smiled back, her stilettos barely touching the ground. She felt like she was floating somewhere over the Empire State Building, her stomach a mass of turning, jumping excitement tempered with a sense of calm that she couldn’t quite explain. This was it—her destiny had come to her as she always knew it would. She smiled as she pictured both Drew’s and Casey’s faces when she broke the news.

  Of course, being a supermodel was definitely going to be fabulous—that went without saying. But Madison had the sneaking suspicion that making Drew and Casey suffer was going to be even better . . .

  To: ssj@meadowlarkacademy.com

  From: starbaby@aol.com

  Dear Sophie,

  I was overjoyed to receive your e-mail among the endless spam clogging my inbox! I’ve been hoping to hear from you for some time now—I’d even thought of contacting you myself, but I didn’t want to intrude in your life in any way that might be unwelcome.

  In response to your question, I’d love for us to meet. I’m shooting a film in Los Angeles with Paul Thomas Anderson right now, but it should wrap in time for your sixteenth birthday! Of course, I’d love to come to your party. I can’t wait to get out of L.A.—if I see one more starlet carrying a tiny, sweater-clad dog, I just may lose what’s left of my tiny mind ☺.

  Can’t wait to meet you—I know we’ll have loads to talk about. Please give my love to Phyllis.

  xoxo

  MVN

  get the party started

  “What could she have been thinking ? ” Sophie said with obvious disdain, pointing at a photograph of a girl swathed in a poofy white marshmallow of a dress that looked as if it would be more suitable for a nine-year-old’s ballet recital than a sixteen-year-old attending the biggest party of her life—it positively screamed New Jersey Turnpike.

  “Well, you don’t have to wear it,” Sophie’s mother, Phyllis St. John, said with an exasperated sigh as she smoothed her freshly blunt-cut dark bob with one hand, her diamond and emerald rings sparkling in the light as she obsessively crossed and uncrossed her long legs swathed in sheer, cranberry-hued silk stockings that perfectly matched her nubbly tweed Chanel suit.

  “Thank God,” Sophie snapped, closing the heavy, leather photo album spread across her lap, and took a swig of her Diet Coke, sneezing as the bubbles promptly went up her nose. Sophie crossed her arms over her chest and looked around Randi Gold’s tasteful, subtly chic black and white office.

  Randi was one of Manhattan’s premier party planners, focusing exclusively on upscale sweet sixteens that not only broke the bank, but usually left Daddy crying to his accountant. Towering over the competition at six foot four, and tipping the scales at well over two hundred and fifty pounds, Randi was a force of nature with a personality to match. He smiled at Sophie and Phyllis with lips that shone with just the tiniest application of sheer gloss, and smoothed down his pink and white-striped tie that perfectly matched his baby pink dress shirt with French cuffs, four-carat diamond cufflinks sparkling at his wrists. He smoothed back his close-cropped blond hair with a hand heavily laden with diamond rings. To Sophie, Randi looked like a huge, bloated, and blond Baby Huey—or a character out of Alice in Wonderland. She half expected his brother, Tweedledee, to come barreling through the doorway at any moment . . .

  “Would you be interested in renting out some wildlife for the event?” Randi asked, pulling out a brochure from a private zoo upstate that leased exotic animals to film productions and the occasional ultra-lavish birthday event, his fingers like plump, pink sausages. “The ocelot has been exceptionally popular lately—it has that leopard style, but much more sleek, the pattern more refined.”

  “But aren’t they . . . dangerous?” Sophie asked as she pictured herself walking into the party flanked by two totally muscular, bare-chested men walking a pair of ocelots that prowled across the floor, the cats shackled to long, silver leashes, the chains studded with intricate rows of Swarovski crystals.

  “I guess they could be considered a bit of a liability,” Randi said, rising from the sleek, sexy curves of his white leather office chair, the back of which was encased in a hard, reflective shell of perfectly smooth black fiberglass. “A girl lost a finger to one not too long ago,” he went on, his voice conversational, showing no hint of concern. “But thank God she did—I heard the beast took a most hideous and garish diamond ring off with it. An animal that looks that good couldn’t help but have a tremendous flair for fashion, wouldn’t you say?”

  Sophie shrugged and looked down at her own fingers, her perfect oval-shaped nails tipped with a smooth curving line of white. A thin silver ring holding a small but perfectly clear and exquisitely cut diamond sat on the first fin
ger of her right hand. It was a far cry from a fashion violation, Sophie thought, remembering the day she went to pick it out with her mother (supposed mother, Sophie corrected herself) just after her thirteenth birthday. Nothing a fashionista jungle cat would want to do away with. But she certainly didn’t want to run the risk—Sophie knew from experience that it was often the people with the most unfortunate taste who were the most intensely vindictive.

  “I think we’ll skip the ocelots,” Sophie said, looking over to her fake mom, who was examining the rings on her own fingers, a far off look in her eyes.

  “What about doves?” her mother said, looking up from her jeweled hands and back to the exotic animal farm brochure that Randi had handed to her. “A whole flock of doves, flying out of cakes or boxes or vases as the guests all walk into the room. What about that?”

  “Doves could be fun,” Randi said thoughtfully, his hands floating over the elongated, curved paperweight that sat on his desk, which seemed to have been carved from a single, impressively sized and beautifully grained piece of ebony, mother-of-pearl detailing running along its top edge.

  Sophie shuddered and shook her head quickly from side to side. Doves? White birds in general belonged at weddings and funerals—not fabulous, exclusive sweet sixteen parties.

  “But how about flamingos instead?” Randi wondered aloud, his blue eyes glazing over dreamily. “A hundred flamingos flying around a swiftly flowing, pink-white blur of a room. You dressed in pink—but not cute little-girl pink,” Randi said, his hands flying into action, each pale-skinned finger a lithe tropical bird, pecking its way through the pile of glossy brochures covering his desk. “I want you in something that’s more high school sexpot meets elegant French colonialist. A hint of Indo-china. The scent of jasmine.” He flipped viciously through a thick three-ringed binder, Sophie’s anxiety mounting by the second as someone’s dream dress flew by with each turning page. Where was hers? The pages stopped, his hands finally relaxed. “This,” he said, his voice full of ceremony, “this is the dress for your party; the dress for you.”