Etoile (The Mannequin Series) (2 page)

One

Elodie stood against the wall, cigarette in hand, posing for the photographer who had stopped her to ask if he could take her picture for his street style blog. She did not see what the big deal was, as she was simply wearing the standard model outfit of Rag & Bone boots, skinny Nudie jeans, a plain Alexander Wang tee shirt and a leather Rick Owens biker jacket. All in black, of course.

“Can I get a close-up of that?” he asked as he gestured to her gunmetal Dominic Jones centaur ring.

“Of course,” Elodie told him with a smile. She knew better than to be flattered by his attention, as everyone knew that street style photographers were the biggest modelizers of all, but she couldn't help but feel giddy that he had stopped to take her picture.

"Excellent. Thank you so much," the blogger smiled at her as he checked the photos on his giant camera. “Here's my card. Be sure to check out my blog! Your post should be up soon.”

She smiled back and took the card nonchalantly, her underwhelmed expression belying the fact that she would probably end up obsessively checking the site on the hour, every hour, to see if her picture had yet been uploaded. Due to the years of relentless bullying, scrutiny, humiliation and criticism that she had endured, she had developed a particularly nasty habit of analyzing every last pixel of any photo in which she had been immortalized.

Of course, her analysis paralysis, as her therapist had termed it, didn't just end there. In spite of the confidence that she worked so desperately to emit, Elodie Marais was a self-deprecating mess. Her past had scarred her to the point of her having anxiety attacks whenever she felt helpless in a situation.  From her point of view, the only way that she could avoid being hurt or abandoned again was if she could have complete control over her future.

Any sentence that escaped her lips had thoroughly been repeated in her mind a minimum of ten times, and every chic outfit that she had "just thrown on" had its components carefully curated for hours before she wore them out. She could barely function, let alone relax, without the help of barrels of alcohol and hoards of prescription and illegal drugs.

Tucking the thick square of paper safely into her black Givenchy tote, she proceeded on her way to her photo shoot, which was scheduled to begin in an hour. On her short walk on the tree-lined streets of the West Village, she ignored the sprinkling of tourists in fanny packs who unabashedly snapped her picture with their camera phones and ogled at her statuesque presence.

Did they assume that she was someone famous? It made her sad to think that they were probably just taking pictures of her because she was the first photogenic giant that they had come across on their trip to the big city. They had probably just arrived straight from the airport, she thought to herself as she continued to make her way down the long city block. Didn't they know that towering teenaged girls with swishy hair and pin thin limbs were a dime a dozen in Manhattan? Once they encounter their umpteenth model on the street, they probably won't even give that poor girl a second glance, she grumbled inwardly with a slight shake of her head.

Elodie was now nineteen years old and living in a cramped model apartment in Manhattan. She had officially signed with Groupe Models in London three days after her fifteenth birthday, just in time to debut at the Spring/Summer shows at Milan Fashion Week. She had grown exponentially over that summer like a willow tree, and Janet had personally marched her around the city to local agency offices like a prize doll.

The agency heads, casting directors and bookers had fawned over her like a newborn puppy, grooming and training her to perfection. “Bellissima! Walk like this, gattina,” the wrinkled walking coach wearing too many prints and way too much bronzer had directed the lanky girl as she attempted to saunter down a makeshift runway. “You hair is so pretty, dolcezza, I will just give you tiny highlights to make your eyes pop,” the flamboyant hairstylist had cooed to her as he smoothed down her locks. “Here's a tip. Whenever you take pictures, make sure to point your chin down slightly. You have such a lovely chin,” the agency's photographer had taught her with a warm smile. Elodie had gushed inwardly to herself about how everyone was so kind and helpful. Little did she know that, to them, she was just fresh meat and a new source of revenue to be earned.

They had squealed out odd things that Elodie hadn't understood, such as "she's just like an alien nymph lost in a storybook" or "she looks just like a bewildered Blythe doll, I can't get enough of her". She had a crowd of people surrounding and trailing her at all times with schedules and hairdryers and foundation sponges. In the end, Elodie ended up walking in six big shows, which Janet had said was very good for a new face. And she had been shocked by the resulting paychecks.

Of course, her representative agency in Milan and her mother agency in London took large cuts from all of her earnings, citing outrageous charges for lodging, forwarded allowances for food and her cellular phone, transportation, booking fees, photo retouching and comp card printing. By the time that they were done with her, all that she had to show for countless grueling hours of work were frightening amounts of debt.

Following immediately after the shows in Milan was the notorious Paris Fashion Week. Without so much as one good night's sleep, the young girl was shipped off back to France so that she could stomp down those lucrative runways. As Elodie had not yet begun to show any metabolic slowdown, her waifish figure and French roots were a hit with designers from her motherland, much to the jealousy of her stone-faced competitors.

The wide-eyed child had taken in all of the sights and sounds in wonderment, wanting to take mental snapshots of her first major season. Every intricate detail in the couture shows entranced her, and she always found herself looking around to see if everyone was taking note of all of the amazing things that she was seeing. She watched the seasoned models glumly chain smoke cigarettes, wrinkling her nose at the acrid odor. Why would they smoke those? she had curiously wondered, unaware of the fact that she would one day be smoking upwards of one pack a day.

She shuffled from casting to casting and got barely any sleep during the entirety of her stay, the bags under her eyes expertly camouflaged by strategic applications of concealer and highlighter before the shows. The girl found nary a moment to eat as she was thrust into couture gowns and marched down brightly-lit stages. But who needed food when she was feeding off of the excitement of it all?

After strutting down her last runway, the Valentino Haute Couture show to be exact, an enthusiastic Elodie had pranced into the backstage area in her sneakers and waved goodbye to all of her new friends with a big grin. An older model named Lily had patted her on the head with a sad smile, which had perplexed the then-simpleminded Elodie. What did the beautiful girl have to be so sad about?

Despite her excellent season of walking in seventeen shows and even earning a profile on the New York Magazine Models Directory, she still found that she was left with an exorbitant amount to pay off to her three different agencies. Ever the optimist, the young girl had shrugged the number off, assuming that she would be able to pay it back many-fold in due time. Especially since she was going to be a world-renowned modelling sensation. She was sure of it.

Once her whirlwind stint in Paris was over, she had returned to London to work with Janet, choosing to live in an overpriced model apartment there rather than return to her depressing existence in Châteaudun. Being a dramatic teenager, she had declared that she simply could not bear to return to the small town and face Felix or her obnoxious classmates.

After all, once word had spread when she had first secured her modelling contract, her quiet school life had been flipped upside down. The boys around her would not leave her alone, following her through the hallways and asking her to pose for them.

When she went to the bathroom, she would hear the girls gossip viciously about her while sneaking cigarettes outside of her stall. One of her few former friends, a mousy girl named Berenice, had even started a rumour that Elodie had fabricated the whole story and was actually being sent to Serbia to work on a plum farm.

The day before she was to leave for London, she had heard Marine Villeneuve casually mention to Emmanuelle Thomas that Elodie had the ugliest knees that she had ever seen.

How could a girl become a model with those knees? Marine had demanded loudly while she washed her hands. The cruel girl had then gone on to comment on Elodie's face, stating that she had always thought the model hopeful looked like a cat who had sipped some sour milk. How could Felix have ever liked someone like Elodie Marais, she pondered aloud as Elodie listened from behind the stall door with bated breath.

Emmanuelle had then made a snarky quip that Elodie had probably been wearing pants when the scout had met her. Perhaps even a mask of Kate Moss's face, she had added with a cackle. The two had then left the bathroom in a fit of giggles, the door slamming loudly in their wake.

Elodie remained seated on the toilet seat for the remainder of the day, not bothering to eat lunch or return to her desk. She simply sat on the seat for hours, staring at her wrinkled knees, which she would resent for many years to come, as fat tears dripped onto them. In that moment, she decided that she never wanted to return to her miserable existence in that school. While she had once loved classes and learning, she had grown to resent the lycée and its entire student body as a whole.

And then there had been Felix. He had artfully ignored her for the many months that had passed since that cold winter's day, and Elodie's heart had grown cold towards him. But as she had finally peeled herself from the toilet seat and begun walking home from school at the end of that day, she felt a light tap on her shoulder.

"Salut, Elodie," he had said with a tremor in his voice. She had turned around to stare at him with a blank expression as he continued. As he spoke, she felt nothing but a hollow feeling where her heart used to beat warmly whenever he was next to her. Even as he stood but two feet in front of her, his raspy voice sounded as if it were coming from miles away.

He was sorry for having been so distant, he had said, and that he would really like to speak with her after she returned from Milan. She had given him a tight smile and assured him that they would, to which he had nodded excitedly with the grin that used to make her heart flutter.

And with that, she never saw him again.

Janet had proved to be somewhat of a mother figure for Elodie, forcing the young girl to finish her studies online via the CNED so that she could sit for her baccalauréat. "I don't want you to be one of those dumb girls who ruins her future for this," she had said. "You're going to have a degree to your name, or I'm not going to book you for anything!"

So Elodie made her deals with Janet and worked out of London as a  real model. She booked fashion and beauty editorials in major magazines and worked hard to build her portfolio and reputation. Elodie was given opportunities that she could have only dreamt of on her tiny little bed in the group home. She modelled couture that cost more than her life, posed with exotic animals in breathtaking locations and travelled all around the Eastern Hemisphere. The Japanese market, in particular, loved her, and she spent three hectic months in Tokyo shooting bubbly commercials and cartoonish beauty campaigns.

After considerable success in Europe and Asia, Janet decided that it was time to let her rising star move on to bigger and better things.  So, just as she turned seventeen, Elodie followed Janet's advice and signed to Elle Model Management in New York City, one of the biggest and most prestigious agencies in the world.

In Manhattan, Elodie shuffled endlessly between castings and her model apartment, making few acquaintances other than her handlers and roommates. Many of the other rookie models around her were still fresh and excited, often chirping with each other during the excruciating wait periods before castings. Despite her young age, however, Elodie was already as jaded as a retired movie star.

She often wondered what the other young models were so excited about. Had she ever been that happy and hopeful? A good majority of the new girls, particularly the Americans, were starting their careers out in New York, not having had the extensive experience in the Eastern Hemisphere that Elodie and many of her European counterparts had been given. Thus, they had yet to be ripped apart by casting directors, looted by their agencies, used and abused by the older male models and harassed by smarmy photographers.

They'll see it soon enough, Elodie often thought to herself as she watched the perky bright-eyed girls from Kansas and Missouri chat amiably with each other in the crowded waiting areas. In a few months' time, they won't have anything to smile about either.