Modelland (30 page)

Everyone collected their Senturas from a bin and hurried to the wall of goodies. Only Dylan remained where she was, her bottom lip trembling slightly, still covered in marshmallow, her Sentura held limply in her sticky hand.

Tookie touched her arm. “You okay?”

Dylan flinched, then tried a smile. “Loved her Didgeri-whatever accent. She was nice, huh?”

“Yeah.” Something about Dylan seemed … deflated. Tookie wanted to ask what it was, but she was afraid of upsetting her. So she pulled Dylan toward the Eatz wall, trying to ignore the scornful looks from the upperclassBellas. “All of the girls in our class look
cuh-ray-zee
, so why the heck are them Bellas only starin’ at
us
? I mean, they actin’ like our genes are contagious or somethin’,” Tookie joked, trying to imitate Dylan in an effort to cheer her up.

Just then, a loud, collective coo erupted from the other Bellas.
The girls nearest the windows rushed to look outside. The rest of the Bellas in the room followed the stampede.

“Sexified succulence!” someone cried.

“I’m going to hyper-hyper-hyperventilate!” moaned a girl wearing large sunglasses.

“I called firsties!” exclaimed Chaste. “And lasties! And tops and bottoms!”

Tookie and Dylan drifted toward the window. Kamalini stood behind them, trying to peer out too. But there wasn’t an inch of space, and no one seemed to want to move aside to give them room. Finally, Dylan pulled over three chairs and stood on one. Tookie and Kamalini jumped onto the others. Outside the window, three strapping young men walked the length of the building. They held a girder of steel over their heads. A photographer snapped their picture again and again.

Tookie squinted hard at the rippling muscles and chiseled face of one of the guys. He was staring, mesmerized, at a building to the left of the E. She knew him. It was the boy who’d wanted to help her with directions earlier that day.

“Anyone know who
he
is?” a girl screeched, pointing to him.

I do
, Tookie wanted to say.

“His name is Bravo!” responded another student. “The other two are Webb and Alexander!”

The girls began frantically tapping the glass.

Webb and Alexander noticed the girls and smiled, waved, and licked their lips. Bravo shifted his gaze from the building to the girls, but just smiled politely to the group and then looked away. That just stirred up the girls even more. They slammed their knuckles against the glass.

Bravo tossed the steel girder into the air for a series of action pictures. He caught it once. The photographer snapped the camera. The girls inhaled. He caught it a second time. The girls exhaled.
Show-off
, Tookie thought.

He tossed it a third time and the girder slipped out of his fingers and came hurtling down, sharp edge first, snagging the skin on his forearm. The girls cried out in unison.

Then it happened. Something no one in all of Modelland could have predicted. The bleeding Bravo looked up at the window and focused on only one face.

A whipped-cream-caked, punch-bowl-headed girl with one green eye and one brown eye, to be exact.

Bravo’s gaze remained fixed on Tookie. Tookie stood back, utterly confused as to why he was looking at her and
only
her.

The girls around her, including Dylan and Kamalini, seemed just as perplexed. Zarpessa let out a horselike snort. “Come on, everyone, don’t you get it? He’s staring at
her
because he’s never seen someone with such an enormous head.”

Bravo reached up and made a wiping gesture across his nose. On instinct, Tookie touched her nose too. To her horror, a trail of creamy pea-green slime appeared on her fingers. She’d been staring out the window with a giant whipped-cream booger on her face. She didn’t know whether to run to find a tissue or a bush to hide behind.

“Can someone explain why you are pressing your nasty hands against our windows?”

The girls turned to see Persimmon standing in the doorway. “Get in a single-file line,” she demanded.
“Now!”
The Bellas ran to obey.

“Where are we going?” Chaste called out as Persimmon spun around and marched into a dark, narrow hallway. In the distance was a bright flickering light. “I was just about to flash my
breast
osteros.”

“You need to get that filthy mouth of yours cleaned up,” Persimmon said in a disgusted voice.

The fluttering light at the end of the hallway expanded into an immense glowing circle. A Mannecant stood at a reception desk shaped like the letters
H
,
O
, and
A
. The letters moved around in a disorganized jumble, probably making it hard to set anything on the surface. There was a great round room behind the desk, its walls covered in a furry-looking fabric and its ceiling gently pulsing up and down, as if breathing.

“I know where we are!” Zarpessa boasted. “The OoAh!”

A breathy voice from high above whispered “Oooo-ahhhh!” with great satisfaction. The letters of the desk moved to spell
OOAH
. The smell of blood oranges wafted through the air.

“This is the place where seasoned Bellas go to have their aching joints soothed after their intense 7Seven Tournament training,” Zarpessa told them self-importantly while staring at herself in the mirror behind the reception desk. “It’s also where instructors and visiting Intoxibellas go to be primed and primped. We have one of these attached to my bedroom at home, you know. But it’ll be so much more fun to experience this with all of you!”

Tookie and Dylan both rolled their eyes.
Yeah, right
, Tookie mouthed.

Six blank-eyed Mannecants appeared from invisible doors, towels in their hands. Persimmon turned to the Bellas. “You will break up into groups of three girls. Each group will be led by its own Mannecant. And the rules are … well … enjoy yourselves. That’s it.” She seemed very pained to issue such a command.

A Mannecant waved an ornate hand mirror over the group. Instantly, light in one of six colors fell onto the girls. Three Bellas glowed burgundy, making them a group; Zarpessa, Chaste, and Bibiana were color-coded fire-engine-red. Tookie, Dylan, and Kamalini, the last girls in line, glowed canary-yellow.

The Mannecants’ plastic bodies shimmered with the colors that matched their group. A yellow-glowing Mannecant approached Tookie, Dylan, and Kamalini. “Follow, please follow,” she said in a barely perceptible monotone.

The yellow Mannecant walked them briskly down one of the many paths that split off from the round room. The other groups of girls went down different hallways. Tookie let her hand drag along the soft white wall. “Cashmere,” she whispered. Creamy had had a suit made in the stuff a few years ago. Of course, only a month or so later, she’d discarded it, deeming it past its prime. Thinking of Creamy, Tookie got a pang.
What is she doing right now? Does she miss me at all?

“What kinda place has cashmere on its walls?” Dylan whispered.

Kamalini nodded. “I know. It’s ridiculous. Shameful, even.”

The Mannecant led Tookie, Dylan, and Kamalini into an expansive rectangular room with a metal floor and walls. Rows and rows of polished stone slabs filled the room, dozens of Bellas lying
atop them. Tookie recognized some of the girls from Mastication, but there were others there she had never seen. All the girls were completely nude except for Tookie, Kamalini, and Dylan.

“The OoAh will remove your soiled clothing, shoes, and underwear,” the yellow Mannecant informed them.

Dylan stopped short, looking warily at the other girls in the room. “Is there a private area I can use to change? I don’t want all these chicks lookin’ at my booty.”

“I too feel quite uncomfortable with the idea of getting disrobed while so many look on,” Kamalini seconded.

Tookie didn’t want to get naked around all these people either.

“Lie down on the last three slabs there,” the Mannecant instructed flatly, pointing.

The girls hesitantly obeyed. Dozens of hands came up from under the slabs and removed their clothes. The hands were just like those that had dressed Tookie in the THBC bubble and Ci~L at Run-a-Way. Tookie covered her private parts with her own hands. Kamalini did the same. Tookie felt cold, vulnerable, and certain everyone was staring at her, so she fixed her gaze on the ceiling instead. Someone had written something on the tiles in black pen.
GEENA HAS TWO SECRETS. ONE: SHE HATES Ci~L. TWO: IT RHYMES WITH DESTROY
.

Next a strong cushion of air pushed the girls above the stone slabs so that they hovered over their tables. Warm water spewed down from openings above them. Water rushed
up
at them as well, seemingly gushing from the surface of the stone. The water changed from soapy to dingy to soapy to clear, finally becoming a citrusy orangish spray. Tookie closed her eyes, trying to relax and not fret about her exposed, awkward body.

“Ooh,” Dylan said beside her.

“Ahh,” Kamalini said, and they all giggled.

The yellow Mannecant gave the girls what looked like green strapless terry-cloth minidresses with asymmetrical hems. The little towel frocks read
Oooo
on the front and
Ahhh
on the back. “Put these on, please. We will care for your Bella uniforms and return them to you cleaned and pressed.”

The girls put on the towel dresses, and then the Mannecant led them on a tour of the OoAh.

The place was a labyrinth of narrow hallways decorated with silks, fine chenilles, and more cashmere walls. Lanterns glowed from every alcove, incandescent butterflies providing the light. The scent of blood oranges hung heavily in the air, and the girls felt soft sand underfoot. Down some hallways, they saw elaborate makeup stations and steaming baths. In one, an upperclassBella sat in a pedicure chair and commanded, “Environment: tropical island with pink sand and turquoise waves!” Suddenly, the fabric on the walls melted away, revealing an idyllic island setting, complete with a shining sun, warm breezes, rose-colored sand, and an ocean so blue it looked a swimming pool.

Tookie, Dylan, and Kamalini gasped. “That is a special feature of the OoAh,” the Mannecant told them. “One can change her surroundings to whatever she likes. Try it.”

“Please, Madame. Environment: home,” Kamalini asked politely.

The walls started to reflect an immense room.

“Oops, never mind, Madame,” Kamalini said hurriedly. The room immediately turned back to its spa atmosphere.

Tookie bravely stepped forward next. “Environment: inside a whipped cream factory! With beach waves crashing outside the window!”

In an instant, the room transformed into an enormous space with walls and floors made of cream. Machines surrounding the area churned out endless types and flavors—light and heavy, caramel and coffee. There was a five-stories-tall picture window with a perfect view of the sea’s surf-worthy waves.

Tookie smiled shakily. She wished Lizzie could see this. “Exodus,” she whispered. “Exodus …”

“All right now,” the yellow Mannecant said, grabbing Tookie’s arm and moving down another hall. “We must keep going.”

They walked down a long corridor full of treatment rooms. Bellas murmured with pleasure, but when Tookie looked in one room, a Bella was lying on her stomach with an enormous boulder crushing her spine. “The latest in hot stone treatments, years before civilians will hear about it,” the Mannecant explained.

In another treatment room, a Mannecant was peeling a layer of skin off a Bella’s face. The skin came off in a perfect mask, pigment, pores, and all, and when the Mannecant pressed it up against a plastic-molded head, the mask opened its eyes and smiled. “Facial slough,” the yellow Mannecant guiding the girls said. And in yet another room, a Bella stepped inside a giant clamshell. The clam’s valves snapped shut rapidly, trapping the Bella inside.

“Let me guess,” Dylan said. “Body wrap?”

“Body
snap
,” the Mannecant said. “But close enough.”

They walked into the next room, a giant space that had a large circle painted in the middle of the floor. Three women dressed in ornately patterned flowing muumuus sat very close together in the corner. Their hair was fused into one huge beehive.

Dylan whispered, “I wonder if their actual heads are connected.”

Their eyes were closed, and their beehive hairdo turned
in slow, meditative circles. They seemed unaware of anything around them.

“Flashback Females,” the Mannecant whispered reverently. “They have the ability to take a person to a time in her life that has already happened. You cannot
change
the past—only witness it. Most Bellas find it very therapeutic. You can take your friends with you into your flashback, and they will see and hear everything that happened also. But if one of you wants to do it, your whole group must follow. The doors seal once someone has stepped into the circle, trapping everyone inside. No exceptions.”

Dylan looked excitedly at the others. “Should we do it?”

Tookie shifted from one foot to the other. She couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted to relive.

“I’m not lettin’ you chicken out, girl!” Dylan exclaimed, looking at Tookie. “If you don’t go, Kamalini and I can’t do it. You wanna do it too, right, Kamalini?”

Kamalini pulled in her bottom lip.

“C’mon, Kamalini. You in?” Dylan pressed.

“Well, okay,” Kamalini said hesitantly. “But … but … if you can see the flashback I want to see, I have to prepare you. I am … ashamed of my house. Please understand.”

Dylan chuckled. “Who are we to judge if your family’s hittin’ a rough patch? I live in a store! Now, what about you, Tookie?”

“Okay,” she said, instantly regretting it.

“Which of you would like to go first?” the Mannecant asked.

“I guess I will,” Kamalini volunteered. “So I can get it over with quickly.”

She walked farther into the room. One of the Flashback Females
stood, approached Kamalini, and led her to the circle. As soon as Kamalini crossed its yellow boundaries, the iron and concrete doors in the room banged shut, making Tookie flinch.