Modelland (35 page)

“Class is allowed to, um, depart!” MattJoe announced. “I’ll see you soon, but now I have to go make a, uh, a special deposit, yep, yep.”

“Ew,” Chaste snickered. “I can only imagine what kind of
deposit
he’s talking about.”

MattJoe ignored her and pressed a button under his stool. All the jewels and other metal paraphernalia stuck to the wall crashed to the floor. The Likee sisters rushed to the sparkling pieces, pocketing items Tookie had a feeling weren’t theirs. Tookie grabbed
her
T O OKE
button and flower brooch before the Likees could steal those too, then followed Shiraz and Piper to the center of the circle and out of the Magnetosphere. Once they were on the ground, they spotted Dylan in the distance, running into the plaid cube balanced on one of its points. They darted off after her.

They entered the cube through a door just above the balance point. Dylan was climbing a stepladder up ahead. “Dylan!” Shiraz screamed. “Why you run? We want talk to you!”

But Dylan didn’t answer. The girls scrambled up the ladder after her and entered a hallway that smelled strangely of wet fur. As the girls careened down the increasingly narrow hall, a loud hissing sound reverberated off the walls.

“Dylan! Are you in here?” Tookie yelled.

The noisy hiss ended in a piercing screech. The girls ground to a halt. “What was that?” Piper looked at the others with terrified eyes.

“Do you think it was … 
Dylan
?” Tookie whispered.

The screeching escalated, growing into a full chorus of growls and hisses. All of a sudden, Shiraz’s eyes widened. “I know where we are!”

At that, words lit up on the corridor’s wall. They looked like they’d been written with ragged claws. Tookie read them silently, her heart sinking to her feet.

“Catwalk Corridor!” Shiraz screamed.

And that was when the first set of claws ripped into Tookie’s flesh.

Tookie grabbed hold of her ankle and felt a warm flow of blood trickling to her foot. She wiped her hand on the pants leg of her uniform. She could hear the hisses and vicious animal noises growing closer. Something furry and blurry moved in the darkness. And then, suddenly, a shining claw reached out again and struck her mouth.
Rip!

“Ow!”
Tookie whispered. The familiar trickle of blood dripped down her chin. Joining the trickle was a tickle at the back of Tookie’s nose and throat. “Achoooo!”

“Bless you,” came a high-pitched female voice with an accent from the slums of the famed country of TooLip. “And hallo, big noggin’. Aren’t yoo an oogly one!”

“Hey there, bigfoot.” Something soft and furry brushed up against her leg.

Tookie tensed. “Who’s there?”

Her throat itched something terrible. Hives broke out on her skin. As her eyes adjusted to the dim hallway light, she saw hundreds of eyes staring back at her.

“Cats!” Piper screamed.

Two striped animals with amber eyes slinked out of the shadows, stalking Tookie, Shiraz, and Piper. Their fuchsia-painted claws extended like switchblades. In even dimmer light, the larger of the two stopped to lick its paws and rear end.

“Whatchoo lookin’ at, nosey?” a voice scoffed. “Can’t I bathe in peace without your ugly butt staring at my beauty and my booty?”

Dozens of felines crept out of the shadows, their tails puffed, their backs arched, their eyes flashing green, amber, and yellow. They hissed and spat in unison.

Tookie’s eyes felt like they were on fire. She was having a monster of an allergic reaction.

The cat’s fuchsia claws extended more, and it prepared to pounce on Tookie. Tookie turned to run, but a massive gate slid from the ceiling and slammed down in front of her, the spikes at the bottom piercing the floor. She was trapped.

Then she spied a fluffy, long-haired white cat lounging lazily on a high shelf. Its sapphire eyes widened. As Tookie peered more closely, a strange realization came over her. This was no ordinary feline. Its face looked
human
. To Tookie’s astonishment, the cat stared straight at her and spoke.

“Can you do a Persian a favor?” it said. “Before my hair gets any
more tangled and ends up looking like your heinous and confused bird’s nest of a head, can you comb mine, please? I haven’t seen my hairdresser in weeks.”

Tookie’s hand instinctively reached up to her own hair, but stopped midway to her head. She felt ashamed that a cat, even one with a human face, could make her so insecure. Not only did the Persian have a human face, Tookie realized, but she looked oddly familiar. A lot like the Intoxibella Anka, who was a favorite at Cappuccina fashion week. At least, Tookie thought, it wasn’t Anka’s overcaffeinated, high-strung best friend Fiona, who drove everyone crazy.

Tookie sneezed again, and then turned and saw that Piper had been backed against a wall by a gang of hairless sphynxes. “Blank girl needs some color!” they chanted in unison. “Take one of these.…” The skinniest of the cats extended its paw to Piper, revealing a round pill that glowed green. “It will make your skin toasty and rich-colored.”

“And you won’t sleep for days!” a mangy tabby cat added.

Wow
, Tookie thought. The tabby looked like hyperactive Fiona from Icylann.

A Siamese with oddly human lips, large blue eyes, and a conniving smile, which looked a lot like an Intoxibella Tookie had seen in Wrinkle Redux ads, was no competition for Shiraz’s blazing speed. “I’ve coughed up fur balls bigger than you!” the Siamese spat at Shiraz as the girl dodged a paw with ease.

“You look like Intoxibella Phara!” Shiraz exclaimed, noticing the cat’s human resemblance to the model whose famous crescent-moon-shaped eyes sold countless tubes of mascara.

“The repugnant, moronic, miniature midget is correct!” the
Siamese jeered, the hair on her back standing on end. “Phara, the Princess of Verbal Barbarisms,
Modelland
magazine calls me.”

“So wait, you actually
are
the Intoxibella?” Tookie asked.
“How?”

The cats didn’t answer—they’d all noticed something at the end of the hallway. The Catwalk Corridor sign suddenly burned brighter, revealing the arrival of two more girls: Zarpessa and Chaste.

Dozens of cats circled their ankles. A calico zeroed in on Zarpessa, murmuring, “I want this pretty one right here!” Then, to everyone’s horror, it squatted and urinated on Zarpessa’s feet, marking its territory. “This one is Mine. Mine! MINE!”

Zarpessa screeched and ran away, frantically shaking her feet. All the cats laughed.

Tookie sneezed several times. Then she felt a tap on her leg. “Hey, you.” It was the scrawny hairless sphynx. “Want one?” She offered Tookie a pill. “Like me, they’re hypoallergenic, and no side effects, except for a little fun.…”

Tookie shook her head. A shiny-furred Abyssinian that looked exactly like the Intoxibella Daisy-Ellen from FiveHundred bit her leg. “Ow!”

“That ankle was tasty,” Daisy-Ellen cooed, batting her eyeliner-rimmed eyes. “Tasty like sweet cream. I want me some more!”

“Sweet cream?” a black cat that sounded just like the Intoxibella Donyelle exclaimed. “Gimme some of that!”

“Get your own leg!” Daisy-Ellen screeched.

“No, I want this one!” Donyelle yowled, extending her claws.

“Me-owch!”
Daisy-Ellen screamed, and pounced on Donyelle.

The felines landed on top of Tookie’s head. Tookie felt their claws dig into her mouth and she screamed in pain again. She
gazed across the room at Piper. “We have to find a way out of here! Has anyone seen Dylan?”

Piper ran over and grabbed Tookie’s hand. They raced down the corridor. “Come on!” Paws swiped at them from all sides.

When they reached the end of the corridor, Shiraz, Zarpessa, and Chaste stood in the way, staring at something obscured in shadows. They all looked horrified.

“What is it?” Tookie asked, clutching Shiraz’s shoulder.

“Not sure,” Shiraz mumbled, her voice quavering. “But look!”

She pointed at an audience of cats facing the same direction. Loud, wailing purrs came from deep within their throats, echoing through the hallway. Slowly, they all began to make yowling noises at the obscured shadow. They bent down on their front legs and arched their backs, then buried their heads under their paws, as if they were praying to whatever lay before them in the darkness.

Suddenly, a light illuminated the mysterious being. It was an oversized lion’s face. Its eyes were golden and its mouth was practically as large as the wall.

The girls held their breath. The cats remained silent and still. The lion-face’s expression changed from ferocious to enraged. Tookie sucked in her breath even more. The face looked remarkably like the BellaDonna.

“I am utterly ashamed of each and every one of you pathetic, paltry pussycats,” it roared in the BellaDonna’s voice. “You Intoxibellas have been in this incarcerated purgatory for an exponential amount of time and
still
behave like the savage animals I’ve turned you into!”

The cats bowed their heads in shame. The BellaDonna lion exhaled and fire spewed from its nostrils, singing the whiskers of
the front row of cats. The smell of wet and burned fur mixed with the stench of kitty litter.

The BellaDonna lion continued. “The Catwalk Corridor was created as a correctional facility for you to reverse your abominable behavior—to be
domesticated
. This is a jail to teach you to stop being such catty wenches. Because in the land of Intoxibellas, whether down below in society or up here at our beloved Modelland: There. Is. Room. For. Only. One. Bee-yotchhh.” She made the last word sound like an extended, pissed-off meow.

“And you, my despicable dears, are looking right at her,” the lion boomed. “I am ashamed that you malicious models cannot utter one single positive phrase to those you come upon. You will remain confined to the corridors until you change your evil ways! And not a day before that redeeming day will I release the curse that has been put upon you. Return to your pens,
now!
”

The cats ran toward the lion-face and jumped into its golden eye sockets. As the Daisy-Ellen-faced Abyssinian jumped through one of the openings, she yelled, “Watch out, De La Crème. This kitty-cat got a taste of your sweetness and wants more of your cream!”

After all the cats vanished, the lion opened its mouth even wider and extended its tongue out like a cushy red carpet. Its jagged teeth dripped saliva, and its hot breath blew through the girls’ hair.

Shiraz looked around. “What we do now, Tookie?”

“Oh, screw it,” Tookie blurted out. She walked up to the tongue, stepped on it, and walked toward the teeth. “I guess we follow the taste-bud road. Anything to get to Dylan. C’mon, guys.…”

Piper, Shiraz, and even Zarpessa and Chaste tentatively followed
Tookie past the teeth into the throat of the lion … and emerged in the hallway of the D.

“What in the hell was
that
?” Tookie whispered. And when she turned around, Catwalk Corridor and the BellaDonna lion-face were gone.

The girls walked into Dylan’s room and found ILikee, MeLikee, SheLikee and HerLikee all in one bed. The quadruplets wrinkled their noses in unison.

“Yuck!” SheLikee exclaimed.

“Horror,” MeLikee said.

“Movie,” HerLikee said.

“Approaching!” ILikee finished.

Then they added, “You. Are. Disturbing. Naptime.”

“Where’s Dylan?” demanded Tookie.

The Likee sisters smirked.

“She’s. In. The. Bathroom.”

Tookie, Piper, and Shiraz sprinted down the dorm corridor. They heard a groan echo through the tiled space.

“Dylan?” Tookie called.

The groan was coming from the toilet stalls. Knees touched the cold marble floor at the last stall nearest the wall. Tookie opened the door. Dylan was crouched over the toilet moaning. Her hair hung down, obscuring her face. The tips of her hair were dripping wet. The floor was splattered with bile and bits of expelled half-digested food.

Tookie hesitated, then kneeled down to Dylan’s level. Dylan turned to face Tookie, revealing bloodshot eyes and a bleeding nose. Along with the ends of her hair, the front of her uniform was soaked. Tookie hoped it was mostly from tears, but she knew better. “Dylan?” Tookie said softly. “You okay?”

Dylan looked at Tookie and then her body involuntarily heaved, her head returning to the toilet. “It … came back …,” she sputtered when she was finished.

“What did?” Piper rubbed Dylan’s back.

“I had it under control for three years. But what you were sayin’, Tookie, and what Ci~L … It brought it all back.”

Tookie shut her eyes.

Dylan’s hunching shoulders drooped even lower. “I’m usually good now with the way I am, but that magnet forced me to stare at Zarpessa. And, well, I wanted to have what she has.”

Tookie, Shiraz, and Piper encircled Dylan and hugged her tightly. “And n-n-nobody looks like me here, a-a-and—”

“Nobody tiny here like me either, Dylan,” Shiraz said softly.

“And the last I looked,” Piper said, “I was playing solo for the Albinism Modelland World Cup.”

“Dyl, we all have our … stuff,” Tookie said quietly.

Dylan looked up, tears still in her eyes “Yeah, but that’s the obvious stuff. It’s not true vulnerability. True friendship is about bein’
really
vulnerable. About sittin’ around a toilet and, uh … I don’t know … lettin’ loose.”

“Okay, well, um …” Piper looked at her hands and rubbed their pale skin. “I mean, I don’t like … well, actually I
hate
that I am … what I am. I pretend to detest my mom because of her political views, but the truth? I hate my mom because she married my father, a person with albinism. If she had just picked someone normal, I might not be this way. I wouldn’t have had to live in that damn dome. I wouldn’t be a pale freak who has to worry about my skin burning or being eaten by LeGizzârds.”

“But Piper,” Dylan protested, looking at her like she was crazy. “You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met. Your people are like geniuses.”