Modelland (12 page)

“I have the great honor of welcoming all of you from around the globe to the fashion capital of the world, Metopia,” Mr. Rump boomed into a microphone headset. “Today is the day you have all waited three hundred and sixty-four days for, The Day of Discovery—or T-DOD, as you young folk have come to call it. I want to wish all of you competing for Modelland admission the best of luck. Metopia has a long-standing track record of producing many Intoxibellas, which is why so many of you trek here
from your far away homelands each year. And today, we hope to send many more of you to that special place on the mountain.”

Cheers erupted in the crowd.

“What will be the look of this season?” the mayor asked no one in particular. “Is it the year of the blondes? The brunettes? Perhaps it’s a ginger season.”

“Ginger! Yes!” a strawberry-blonde in a pink gown cried a few feet away. “They never pick ginger!”

“Will it be tanned skin or rosy epidermises?” Rump went on. “Blue irises, cognac ones? Emerald or hazel?”

Tookie used to watch the mayor every year on television on The Day of Discovery, wishing, hoping he’d utter,
Will it be girls with one brown and one green eye?
But it had never happened.

“Will it be the slim-limbed, the slightly curved, the athletically built?” the mayor continued, his words echoing throughout the massive square. “Will it be … you?”

More cheers. “And if you are not chosen, don’t fret. Metopia has many wonderful jobs manufacturing clothes, accessories, and beauty products. Holding a job in a factory is just as worthy of esteem as being an Intoxibella!”

The mayor paused for cheers. He was met with dead silence.

Suddenly, a hand slipped into Tookie’s and squeezed. It was Myrracle’s. Her wide eyes flitted back and forth nervously. “Do I look okay?”

Tookie looked at her sister, suddenly feeling a protective and loving rush. It wasn’t
Myrracle’s
fault their parents were horrible people. Myrracle might not have been the best sibling, but she was all Tookie had. “You look absolutely beautiful,” she said. “Breathtaking. Really. Now, remember, Myrracle. Dance in your spirit but not with your body, ’kay?”

“I know, I know! You sound like Creamy!” Myrracle playfully groaned. Tookie had a sudden revelation: This might be it. The last time she would see Myrracle. “All Day of Discovery candidates. Are you ready?” Mayor Rump called.

A resounding, excited “Yes!” filled the air, so loud that it made the mayor and the Quadrant Council members clamp their hands over their ears. Cowbells clanged again. The crowd clapped in slow unison.

Mr. De La Crème crouched down to Myrracle and held the sides of her face. “Dance in your spirit but not with your body. You want this, baby, right?” Myrracle sucked on her bottom lip, eating off her lip gloss, and then stared blankly into her father’s eyes. “C’mon now, baby. Wake up. This is our destiny.”

Myrracle nodded, shaking out the tension in her arms and legs exactly like she did before her Maven of Movement competitions.

“The time has come!” Mayor Rump picked up a long striped tube and lit it with a match. Sparks began to fly. The tube shivered and bucked. “Lives are about to magically change … forever! Candidates, get ready!”

Rump let the sparking tube go. It shot into the sky and exploded into the clouds, creating a gigantic burst of blues and pinks and golds, visible even in the daylight. Tookie gawked at it, her hand to her mouth. When she looked back at Mayor Rump, his harness had yanked him up into the sky once more. Fireworks continued to explode around him. And then, from his dangling perch, the mayor uttered the very word everyone had waited for all year.

“Begin.”

Thousands of girls stampeded to the square all at once. Heels clacked. Dresses swished. Hairdos wobbled. The T-DOD theme song boomed a pulsating beat.

There was one rule and one rule only: a girl must be walking in order to be chosen.

Other than that, there was no prearranged runway on which the girls could walk, so everyone created invisible ones wherever they were standing. Violence was not encouraged nor was it condemned, and some girls’ parents insisted on adding martial arts training to their walking lessons in preparation for the big day. T-DOD Square was an every-man-for-himself—or, more precisely, an every-girl-for-herself—event.

Scores of girls marched down their own stretches of the square, paused, posed for the cameras (real and imaginary), and then turned around. Trains of walking girls intersected with others. One area behind Tookie was so crammed with street vendors, it bottlenecked into a slow, shuffling line. Some walkers had only enough space to take a few steps before they had to stop and turn. Tookie’s heart went out to a young girl in a ruffled pink dress who seemed way below the unofficial thirteen-year-old age requirement. She marched in place as if she were on a drill team.

Riiiip
. A girl stepped on the train of a walker a few feet from Tookie and tore the fabric right off the dress. Both girls fell forward into a heap. The walkers behind them stepped over their bodies and continued.

Crash
. The De La Crème white and cream blow-up tent went down as two brawling girls entered it.
Oof
. A girl who looked as if she had never walked in heels before stumbled, breaking the tips of both stilettos. Two girls got into a fight at the end of their makeshift catwalk, rolling to the ground. “Kenya, use the Gyaku Zuki move!” her mother screamed. “Reverse-punch the hairy hag! But watch
your
hair, sweetie!”

Tookie wheeled around. The hairy hag was Abigail Goode, sideburns in full glory, faint mustache above her upper lip, unshaven leg hair coating her calves, underarm hair swaying in the wind, and a DOWN WITH RAZORS! picket sign still in her hands. The girl she was fighting with tried out a karate move on her, but Abigail expertly evaded her blow.

Tookie’s jealousy meter skyrocketed. Even
Abigail
was competing?

She looked around some more. Actually, not only were eligible
girls walking, but lots of other people were too. An elderly man on a power scooter shot a gap-toothed smile to the crowd as he steered his vehicle with his hands on his hips. Two down-on-their-luck women dressed in trash-bag dresses and beat-up sweat suits walked while pushing everything they owned in shopping carts, heckling every girl who passed. “Honey, you
wish
you had it like I do.” “Get back, spring chickens—age before beauty, ladies!” Tookie chuckled when she noticed that even some of the protesters ditched their
RUN AWAY, DON’T WALK
signs and sashayed energetically while chanting,
“Women, let’s walk! Smile for the cams! T-DOD, it rocks. Crank the music, let’s jam!”

A few drunken boys from outside the gates got into the action, strutting next to the girls in exaggerated, long-legged lopes. One guy snaked an arm around a girl’s waist, but she swatted him away. The photographers and cameramen scrambled to catch every moment, projecting various images onto the screens next to the stage.

Thump, thump, thump
. The music beat on. The largest screen showed the remaining time left for walking. Twelve minutes, twenty seconds.

“Go, Myrracle, go!” Mrs. De La Crème shouted. Myrracle had staggered a few feet away from the fallen tent and was standing there staring at the melee, eyes bugged, frozen in place. “Don’t freeze up! Wake up, baby. You
have
to do this!”

“Yeah, Myrracle. You can do this. Come on!” Tookie urged, holding her sister by her arms and staring into her eyes, trying to spark a connection. “Dance in your spirit, but not with your body,” she repeated over and over. Then she turned Myrracle around, placed Myrracle’s hands on her hips, and whispered in her ear: “Left, then right, then left, then right …”

Myrracle suddenly broke out of her trance and began to follow Tookie’s instructions. Tookie jumped out of the way to watch her sister. Halfway down her imaginary runway, Myrracle began to wiggle her hips and shake her shoulders to the infectious music that swelled over the sounds of the crowd.

“Don’t dance!” Mrs. De La Crème bellowed, giving Myrracle a pinch. “If you sway one more time, you’ll get way worse than a little pinch! If I have to beat the last pas de bourrée out of you, I will! Now walk, walk, walk like an Intoxibella!”

Myrracle snapped back to focus. Her arms swung gently. She thrust her hips forward, as she’d learned to do in hours upon hours of walking class. She reached the end of her catwalk and came face to face with Abigail Goode. Both girls vied for the same spot to pose. Myrracle stuck out her pointy elbows, bumped her hip, and shoved Abigail hard out of the space. Abigail teetered over in her high shoes, hit her head on the footrest of the old man’s motorized scooter, and passed out cold.

Almost immediately a siren sounded and Tookie heard someone yell, “Girl down! Girl down!”

Myrracle posed for a long three seconds, then raised a shoulder and swirled back around. There was a
don’t mess with me girl unless you want to get hurt
expression on her face as she strutted back toward Tookie and her family.

“That’s my Myrracle!” Mrs. De La Crème jumped up and down and clapped. “Claim what is ours, baby!”

“Uh, I know you, right?”

Tookie turned and nearly jumped out of her skin. Standing next to her was Theophilus Lovelaces. His eyes glistened in the LaDorno sun. He was seeing her, actually seeing her. His eyes
focused right on hers. His words were meant for her. Tookie tried to smile, but she had a feeling her mouth made more of a grimace.

“You’re not participating?” Theophilus asked, gesturing to the crowd.

Tookie opened her mouth but couldn’t speak. She was dying to say,
Really? Me? Have you lost your mind?
But instead a cross between a yelp, a sneeze, and a burp came out.

“Good for you.” Theophilus indicated the candidates in the square. “This is a little crazy.”

They both turned to Zarpessa Zarionneaux, who strutted confidently right over an open manhole that three girls had just fallen into. Her long, straight auburn hair streamed behind her. Her skin glistened in the sun. She wore a bright yellow dress that seemed electrified, with matching yellow shoes. Tookie assumed it was the ensemble Lizzie had mentioned the other day, the one she and Zarpessa had fought over at the clothing dump.

“She even makes trash look beautiful,” Tookie murmured.

“Hmm?” Theophilus glanced at her in surprise.

“Oh, nothing.” It pained her that her very first conversation with Theophilus was about Zarpessa. She considered telling Theophilus about Zarpessa’s Dumpster digging, but then she clamped her mouth shut. No matter how much she envied Zarpessa, exposing something that awful was just too mean.

“What’s your name, anyway?” Theophilus asked, looking at Tookie again.

Tookie gaped at him. He wanted to know her
name
? Her mouth tried to form the words. She felt Theophilus’s
T O OKE
button in her hip pocket.

Suddenly a piercing voice rose above the din. “Theophilus!”

Zarpessa’s voice.

“I’d better go.” Theophilus tipped an imaginary hat to Tookie. Then he whirled around and marched toward his beloved.

“Seven minutes left!” Mayor Rump bellowed.

A blinding neon-yellow flash filled the sky. The clouds vanished. The sun disappeared. Someone screamed. Everyone shaded their eyes or ducked their heads. Even the walkers paused for a moment and squinted upward. Another whoosh boomed through the air. “The Scouts!” a voice bellowed. “They’re here!”

Scouts? Where? Tookie stood on her tiptoes, her heart beating like mad. People stepped back from a nearby lamppost that had started to vibrate, staring at it with a mix of wonder and terror. The lamppost began to lengthen, like a long telescoping pole.
Snap!
It broke apart and reassembled as a slender, mysterious-looking woman in a black metallic jumpsuit. Her head glowed as if it contained a lightbulb.

“A Scout!” Tookie whispered. She’d never seen one in person before.

The Scout’s head began to blink, as if warning people that something amazing was about to happen. Then the woman marched to a thin girl with cheekbones so sharp they could slice a melon in half, and tapped her arm. The girl clutched her chest in disbelief. The Scout took her hand, and the bright light of her cranium flashed like lightning. And then … 
poof!
They were gone, and the lamppost was back where it had always been.

“Oh, my baby!” the girl’s mother cried, running up to the lamppost, hugging it tightly and covering it with kisses. “My baby, my baby, my baby! First-draft pick!”

More gasps and screams rose in the crowd as the huge clock
in the square ticked past the six-minute mark. Suddenly, Scouts from Modelland were everywhere. An asteroid rocketed to earth, throwing up chunks of marble all around the square and causing nearby runway walkers to flee in hysterics. A stunning Scout emerged from the rubble, with skin that seemed to be made of rough stone. She wore a bathing suit ensemble that appeared to be made of rocks. She tapped a tall, long-haired girl in a plain, dingy cotton dress. The dress wasn’t nearly as fancy as most of the outfits the other girls were wearing, and its front was wet with tears. When the girl looked up and saw the Scout, her jaw dropped.

“Are you sure you have to pick me?” the girl whimpered incredulously.

A pointy-chinned competitor in a poufy-sleeved dress and studded boots pushed to the front. “Pick me, she doesn’t want it!”

The plainly dressed girl’s mother tugged the Scout’s arm. “No, my Desperada does want it! Please take her! I don’t have the money to feed her anymore.”

The Scout nodded and grabbed the sobbing girl’s hand, and they both disappeared into a hole in the ground. Immediately, all the broken marble flew into the sky, reassembled, and then dropped right back to exactly where it’d been before the disruption.

The clock edged past the five-minutes-left mark. The shopping cart of one of the homeless women flew from her hands and rolled wildly around the square. Girls near the cart ran away screaming. The cart flipped forward, and old food and tattered clothes spilled to the ground. A Scout in a dress with rips in all the right places materialized from beneath the decrepit belongings. She strutted to the middle of the square and stopped in front
of a raven-haired girl who was wearing a dress with an enormous bustle. The girl’s mother, who was clad in a muumuu, held out her own arm. “You want … 
me
?”