Famous (9 page)

Nasim Pahlavi
What about the pregnant actress?

Jamie Gordan
No sign of her.

Nasim Pahlavi
So instead you use the boyfriend to make up for the photos you couldn't get?

Jamie Gordan
Try not to be so perceptive, okay? ;-)

Nasim Pahlavi
I thought that's what you like about me ;-)

Jamie Gordan
It is!!! So . . . what do you like about me?

Nasim didn't answer right away, and I felt my spirits start to sink. Sometimes it seemed like there was something missing from our relationship. Like on some level we weren't as intimate as we should have been. I told myself that maybe it was just a cultural thing, that Nasim wasn't used to expressing his feelings out loud. But I wasn't sure. I waited a while, then began to feel a little bit anxious, so I wrote:

Jamie Gordan
I hope your silence means there are
so many things you like about me that you don't know where to begin ;-0 ???

Nasim Pahlavi
Try not to be so perceptive, okay? ;-)

Jamie Gordan
LOL.

Nasim Pahlavi
I like that you are caring and honest and don't worry so much about things like grades (which proves that for us opposites attract) or popularity. I like that you are pretty and soft and smart.

Jamie Gordan
Thank you! XOXOX!

I loved what he wrote, even though I had a feeling that “soft” was just a really sweet way of saying I could lose ten pounds.

Elena knocked on my door. “Alex is watching TV. Not alone too long, okay?”

“You bet,” I said, and looked back at the screen.

In the time I'd been turned away, a new IM had come on the screen.

Shelby Winston
Having some people over on Sat night around 10. Hope you can join us. Bring the BF.—SW

“Thanks for agreeing to go to the party with me,” I said to Nasim the next morning as we walked to school through a slight gray mist. It was the sort of gauzy light that had posed interesting possibilities to me back when I'd been taking more “artistic” pictures.

“You already thanked me last night,” he said. As soon as I'd seen the invitation I'd IM'd him, and he'd agreed to go. But now I wondered if maybe he wasn't thrilled by the idea.

“You think it's dumb, right?” I asked.

“To be excited about going to a party? Why would that be dumb?”

“Because it's Shelby Winston's party.”

“Wouldn't you be as excited if it were Avy's party?” he asked.

“Honestly? Not really. I mean, I'd be happy that he invited me and happy to go, but I can't say I'd be as excited.”

Nasim put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “If it's important to you, then it's important to me.”

I slid my arm under his jacket and around his waist, thinking that one could hardly ask for a better boyfriend, and about how lucky I was.

By then we'd passed through the front doors and entered the hallowed halls of Herrin. It didn't occur to me that the blond-haired kid blocking my path actually wanted to talk to me. I started to walk around him.

Nasim took my arm. “Wait. It's your fifth-grade spy.”

Ethan Taylor handed me a piece of paper with a name and address written on it. Then he rubbed his thumb against his fingers—the universal “Show me the money” gesture.

“You get paid when I get paid,” I said in a low voice, folding the piece of paper and sliding it into my pocket. I glanced back down the hall at the school entrance and started to zip my jacket.

“Where are you going?” Nasim asked with a frown.

“To the doctor's,” I said.

It's the strangest sensation when you're the only photog on a stakeout. It felt like there'd been a mistake and that Ethan must have gotten it wrong. I was standing on a sidewalk beside a tall sand-colored building. But the doctor's office had its own entrance—a black door a dozen feet from the building's main entrance—and a well-polished bronze plate next to the door said very clearly,

DR. EMILY CLARKSON
OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY

A woman wearing a fur-lined raincoat passed, walking a pug wearing its own bright red raincoat. The street was filled with cars and yellow taxis, wipers swishing the mist off their windshields.

For better or worse I was committed to this plan. The damage was done. I'd left school without permission and was bound to get grief for it. All I could do was wait and hope this gamble paid off. Women carrying umbrellas came down the sidewalk and went into the office. Cabs pulled up to the curb and dropped people off. After about an hour a limo slid up, and the driver ran around to the
passenger door. My heart started to race. Was it Naomi? But out stepped an elegant older woman wearing a Burberry taffeta trench coat and a hat. False alarm.

I waited in the mist, my hair practically soaked. Lunch time came and went. My stomach growled and my feet throbbed from standing so long, but I couldn't give up now. What if I left and Naomi showed up a minute later? Another hour passed. More women came and went. At the building's main entrance, a doorman wearing a brown uniform noticed me and scowled, but I hid my camera under my jacket so he wouldn't know why I was there.

The longer I waited, the more doubts plagued me. Maybe Ethan was right about the address and doctor, but Naomi's appointment was yesterday and I'd missed it. Or maybe it wasn't until tomorrow. Was this worth ditching another day of school for? How much trouble would I get into?

And then, in the middle of all my dithering, a cab pulled up and out stepped Naomi Fine wearing a baseball cap and an open zip-front hoodie, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a jumper under the hoodie, and maybe that was or wasn't a baby bump, but her breasts looked large and full, and something about her face shouted “Flush of motherhood!”

Knowing instinctively I'd have to make it a profile shot because there wasn't enough baby bump to see from the front, I took out my camera and started to shoot. I
could tell this was something Naomi Fine could not have expected, because she was wearing that hat and plain clothes. After all, she was supposed to be on location in Toronto, and there should have been no way a stranger would have recognized her, right? She actually stopped on the sidewalk and gave me an absolutely classic look of utter astonishment.

And there it was—the money shot.

Less than a minute later I was in a cab headed to Carla's office because this shot was big, Big,
BIG
! and I was totally freaked that something terrible might happen before I could get the photo to her—like the camera might unexpectedly die or an earthquake might hit New York, or the entire solar system might be swallowed by a black hole—but none of those things happened, and Carla was waiting outside her office for me with an umbrella because I'd called ahead and told her what I had.

Carla was more ageless than old. My best guess was that she was between sixty-five and seventy-five, but you'd never know it from the way she acted. She was short and plump and had enough energy to keep a small city lit for months. As soon as I got out of the cab we raced up to her office like two giddy kids who'd just gotten their hands on a big bag of candy, and I watched over her shoulder, my nostrils filled with the mixed scents of Chanel N
^o
5 and stale cigarettes, while she transferred the shots onto her Mac Pro. I felt instantly and totally
relieved, because now even an earthquake couldn't stop us, and Carla scrolled down to the money shot and let out a scream and jumped up and hugged me and we both danced around the office like crazy people.

And then she was on the phone to the top editors because this shot was so hot she didn't even dare put it in lo res on her private website.

And the bidding began.

By the time I left her office two hours later, we'd sold my first cover shot to
People
magazine.

And my first year of college was probably paid for.

Although, honestly, I was seriously wondering, why bother with college?

It was dinnertime when I sailed into the kitchen. Mom was on the phone, still wearing her work clothes. I waved my hands excitedly, gesturing for her to get off so I could tell her the news. The expression on her face was icy. “She just walked in,” she said into the receiver. “I'll speak to her. Thank you.”

“Mom,” I began to say, “you won't believe—”

“That was Mrs. Krohn, the school secretary,” Mom sharply cut me off. “Where were you today?”

“Well, uh, I was at school for a second,” I said. “But I had to leave.”

Mom cocked her head and raised an eyebrow, silently demanding an explanation. I was happy to provide it.
“Because I got some information about Naomi Fine? The actress? The whole world wants to know if she's pregnant and I—”

“You cut school to go take pictures?” Mom asked, emphasizing the incredulity in her voice so I'd know how PO'd she was.

“Yes, but—”

Mom shook her head, as if she wasn't interested in my explanations. “What do I have to do?” She tilted her face upward and raised her hands in exasperation as if pleading with a higher being. “Tell me, Jamie. What
do
I have to do? Do I have to take away the camera? Ground you? I'm tired of this stupid game you're playing. You're
not
a paparazzo. You're a young woman who happened to get lucky once. And then that stupid magazine decided to make a spectacle of you because you're so young. And now you're living in this fantasy world where you actually think you're a professional. It's as if you're still playing with dolls, Jamie. You're
not
a photographer. You're just a little girl with a camera. Can't you understand the difference?”

The kitchen went silent. I knew I could have gotten mad. I could have yelled back. But in a strange way, I understood where she was coming from, and I wasn't mad. Everything she said was true. It
was
strange and unreal. I
was
just a kid with a camera. That's exactly what I felt like. And yet . . .

I took out my cell phone, dialed Carla's number, and held it out toward my mother.

“What are you doing?” Mom asked with a frown.

“I want you to speak to Carla.”

Mom stared at the phone and shook her head. “I have nothing to say to that woman. She should be ashamed of herself. All she's doing is perpetuating this fantasy.”

I was still holding the phone, but I had not yet pressed send. “You don't want to know how much money I made today? You don't want to hear that I just sold a cover to
People
?”

My mother's forehead furrowed as she looked at me uncertainly. I guess she was realizing that either I was telling the truth or had gone really, truly, certifiably insane. Finally she said, “Are you serious?”

I nodded at the phone. “Ask Carla.”

Mom shook her head and sat down wearily at the kitchen table. “I don't want to talk to that woman. I'm tired of playing games. Put the phone away and tell me what happened.”

I sat down and told her how I had staked out Dr. Emily Clarkson's office until Naomi Fine arrived.

“How did you know she'd show up?” Mom asked.

“She's in the middle of a movie shoot in Toronto,” I said. “It costs hundreds of thousands a day to shoot a movie. They don't give stars days off, so if Naomi came to New York to see her doctor it meant it must have been a
really pressing issue. She took a private jet. It made sense that if she was pregnant, she'd have to get to the doctor fast and then fly back.”

Mom stared at me in wonder.

“Mom, it's not rocket surgery. It's obvious. Everybody assumed that she was pregnant. It's just that I was the only one who figured out who her doctor was.”

Then I told her how much money
People
had agreed to pay for the shot. Mom's jaw dropped. She looked as if she'd lost her breath. Even though she thought the celebrity magazines and TV shows and tabloids and websites and the whole American obsession with celebrity in general were completely loony, she understood how big this was.

“And you know what's really whacked, Mom?” I said. “You're completely right. I
am
just a girl with a camera. And I
am
living in a fantasy world. But the crazy thing is, so is everyone else.”

That night I lay awake in bed, way too excited to sleep, my thoughts racing. I was about to win the equivalent of Olympic Gold for paparazzi—a
People
cover! It was amazing and unreal, and I both knew and didn't know what I'd done to deserve it. I didn't blame my mother for having doubted me. Looking back, it was incredibly lucky that I went to the same school as Ethan Taylor, whose mother was Naomi Fine's eye doctor.
(And yes, he sure did get his one hundred dollars.) But I also believe that luck doesn't just happen. You have to create opportunities for it. I didn't have to get my camera ready when I sensed something might happen with Tatiana Frazee in Cafazine. I didn't have to track Ethan down. I didn't have to gamble on ditching a day of school to hang around outside Dr. Clarkson's office. And the other thing is, no one wants to hear about all the times I stood around on stakeouts for hours but got nothing for my efforts except sore feet and a head cold. That's where persistence eventually pays off. If you keep trying and trying, sooner or later you'll probably get lucky. Like the Lottery ad says, “You've got to be in it to win it.”

That Saturday Nasim's parents went to the opera, and he made me a traditional Persian dinner of naan, yogurt, lamb, and vegetable kebabs with rice. We ate by candlelight in the Pahlavis' formal dining room, an ancient tapestry of a princess and a unicorn hanging on the wall beside us.

We talked about school and friends, but it wasn't long before the subject turned to my forthcoming
People
cover. The truth was, it was difficult for me to think about anything else.