Catwalk (29 page)

I stare right into the camera without blinking and force a smile. “I have to go now, to a job interview,” I inform her.

“For what?” asks Caterina.

I tell her about Laretha Jones’s new boutique opening and how it melds with my desire to be a “modelpreneur.”

“If I’m going to run Purr Unlimited, I’m going to need lots of retail experience,” I explain carefully.

Caterina gets a twinkle in her eye, like she’s proud of me, but in the next second she’s back to trying to sucker someone else into spilling the trade secrets. Better them than
moi
.

I flee from the Catwalk office, my blurry eyes stuck with Krazy Glue to the Design Challenge, when I hear a familiar voice ignite the deserted hallway like a brush fire:

“That sure wasn’t snappy,
nappy
!” hisses Aphro, one of my three official BFFs with whom I currently have a bona fried beef jerky. “What’s up with your weave?”

It’s futile dodging Aphro’s bogus missile; instead, I reach for my outta-control curls and freak at the frizz formation.

“Hmm. Hmm. Told you,” smirks Aphro. Like she should talk: it’s true that I yank my
real
hair compulsively when I’m nervous, but she’s addicted to Dax hair dress (aka ghetto grease) and the scorching hot comb to keep her short, Naomi Campbell–wannabe bob flatter than her training bra.

“What are you doing here? I thought you had to jet,” I say, puzzled by Aphro’s stakeout. This morning, she told us that she had to scurry after school, but didn’t reveal the reason.

“I don’t feel like dealing with
that
drama right now,” she tells me.

“Does it have to do with your family?” I ask, trying to act concerned. Aphro lives in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with her foster parents—the Maydells—and three other foster children, including nine-year-old Lennix, whom she’s really close to.

“No, it doesn’t,” she snaps, snappily.

“Oh, I see,” I mutter nervously, but what I really want to say is
Wish I didn’t have to see you right now!
I just found out from Chintzy Colon, my assistant in the House of Pashmina, that Aphro cackled to Lupo Saltimbocca, our house photographer, about my D.D.L. crush on Dr. Zeus. Dr. Zeus is the nickname for Zeus Artemides, the tasty mink-zebra-hatted deejay, graphic designer, and model, who’s also in our house.

Right now, I’d like to hit smug Aphro over the head with a leftover turkey drumstick from Thanksgiving. Biggie Mouth, on the other hand, is intent on playing tug-of-war with me. “Let me get with it!” she insists, petulantly. Her bangles jangling, she lunges full force for the envelope in my hand, which contains the privy communiqué.

“Don’t come for me, Miss Aphro Puffs,” I retort while holding the envelope out of her long-armed reach. Aphro Puffs is the name of the blang jewelry empire the budding model-blinger hopes to helm. Another hyphenate waiting to happen in our house,
Aphro is the jewelry designer as well as the choreographer and, last but not least, one of our star catwalkers for the fashion show.

I run down the hallway to get away from her claws but Aphro snags my hoodie in a heartbeat.

“Hold up,” she snorts.

I hate that I can’t run nearly as fast as Aphro because of her Wonder Woman legs, despite our being practically the same height—five feet, nine inches—give or take a centimeter. I lean against the wall to catch my breath, coincidentally right under the neon-lime-green-bordered metal plaque by the stairwell, which clearly states in bold black letters:

“Awright,” I sigh, giving in. Together, we examine the contents of the Catwalk envelope like fashion forensic scientists. “ ‘Take things you see every day in your environment and turn them into fashion’?” I read out loud, puzzled pink. “It kinda sounds like the Riddle of the Sphinx, don’t ya think?” I moan, removing the check from the envelope. But before I can shove the
designated ducats into my Hello Kitty wallet, Aphro manages to snatch it for a preview.

While she revels in the zeros on paper, I marinate for a minute.

“Do you think it means take the stuff we see every day and make it represent on the runway?” I mutter absentmindedly.

Aphro reluctantly hands me back the check, her big brown eyes widening, which means she is thinking outside the sandbox. “Stuff we see every day could be regular stuff we wear every day—like that raggedy pink bathrobe of yours covered with balls of acrylic pile, or those silly-cat-head fuzzy slippers. Ya dig?”

“Could be. Or, your noisy bangles. Ya dig?” I retort.

Aphro lets out one of her signature snarkles—a cross between a pig’s happy snort and the scary squeals that emanate from a roller coaster at the moment when it sharply plummets at a ninety-degree angle.

“Obviously, this will be the first order of business at our Catwalk meeting,” I sigh.

I zip up my Free People pink kitten hoodie carefully, wondering how much time Aphro’s been spending with Lupo. “How come you never pick up your celly lately?” I ask, but I already know the answer to that one. Judging from the latest cackle I’ve peeped, I suspect that my best friend has been jumping into Lupo’s mouth
mucho
lately. (His last name,
Saltimbocca
,
literally means “jump in the mouth” in Italian. I swear!)

“Why—you my long-lost mother now?” she says, defensively.

I’m not going to let Aphro bait me. I know she doesn’t know where her real mother is. The last time she saw her, they were snuggled together on the couch, watching
The Wizard of Oz
and eating graham crackers, before a caseworker came and took Aphro away with her little blue vinyl suitcase in tow. She never saw her mother again.

Aphro continues to stare at me with her sizeable pout puffed out. I decide it’s time to attack: “You obviously have been in the loop with Loopy—a
lot
. And, I can’t believe you flapped your lips to him!” I hiss at her, making a slur of Lupo’s name.

“What, you jealous? You should just get with Zeus already and stop pretending you’re the Princess of Pink all alone in your Chicken Little castle waiting for the ceiling to collapse,” Aphro snarls, leveling her “Bed-Stuy glare” at me.

“Zeus has a girlfriend, so how desperado should I behave? Duh?” I say.

“That’s never stopped you from following the yellow-brick road before,” Aphro says, challenging me.

“If it’s all right with you, I’m going to my job interview
—late
,” I announce, coldly, before marching off.

“Let me go with you,” Aphro says, her voice softening as she trots behind me.

“No!” I whisper sharply, turning around to put her on blast. “You’re so secretive—and shady, too! You say you don’t like Lupo. ‘He’s too short. He talks funny. His nose is too big.’ But now you’re kanoodling with him?”

“We had lunch—fusilli. It’s pasta shaped like corkscrews—like your hair when you’re not pulling it out!” snaps Aphro. “And who says I like him? I’m just trying to get some photos for my portfolio, okay?”

I glare at Aphro. Lupo promised he’d take feline fashion shots of us for our modeling portfolios—but “us” seems to be transforming into “her.”

“I should have known there was an angle to your dangle,” I say, nodding.

“As if you would ever go out with a short guy either,” counters Aphro. “You’re only feeling Zeus cuz he’s model material.”

“At least I’m honest about it!” I blurt out, walking away.

Aphro pleads with me. “Lemme go with you. I just can’t deal with a situation right now.”

I’m tempted to force Aphro to show her hand like in a poker game, but I give in.
“Awright,”
I say, mocking her, “you’d better click your heels and follow me down the yellow-brick road.”

Once we get outside, I’m startled by the two lingering Dalmation dogs huddled by the pink gates. Directly across the street from Fashion International is Dalmation Tech High School, stomping grounds of computer and mechanically inclined students. They inhabit grungy gray hallways that no self-respecting fashionista would dare darken. Every day after school, members of their pimply student body camp outside the fabbie pink gates of Fashion International, licking their chops at the sight of budding fashionistas in the hopes that we’ll throw them a bone
—not
. By four o’clock, however, they’ve usually scrammed—with their tails tucked between their baggy-panted legs.

“Can’t believe they’re still here,” snarls Aphro, rolling her eyes at the partners in cyber crime clinging to each other in the hopes of bolstering their computerchip-operated egos.

The shorter one raises his eyebrow at me.

“Puhleez, who are you trying to hoodwink?” I snap without flinching.

Shortie’s confidence crumbles like Piggly Wiggly blue cheese. His smirk vanishes and he stares down at his dingy “No Edition” sneakers.

Aphro sticks her arm through mine as we skip away.

“You ain’t all that,” snipes the taller one, receding like the Grim Reaper into his gray hoodie.

Looking back, Aphro shouts, “Yes, we are!”

When we reach the Fortieth Street entrance to the subway, Aphro reminds me to call our crew to give them a “catty” update: “Felinez has probably given birth to five purses by now.”

“Yeah, well, I’d better call my mom first—cuz she’ll
charge
five more purses she can’t afford if she doesn’t hear from me!” I counter.

Once I get my mom on the phone, I remind her that I’m headed to a job interview and will be home late. She reminds
me
not to talk to any strangers, despite the fact that I’m almost sixteen and quite familiar with her shrill drill. Then she proceeds to ply me with the latest statistics: “Seventy-six new sexual predators in our neighborhood,” she says, curtly. I focus on the background noises instead of my mother’s voice: the shrill beeps from an electronic cash register and women’s voices—probably customers. My mom works as an assistant manager at Forgotten Diva Boutique, a plus-size clothing store, on Madison Avenue. My mom now senses I’m lost in la-la, because she raises her voice. “I want you to go online tonight and print out the updated list and give it to Chenille, too.”

“What are the chances of me printing out the faces of sexual predators if I can’t get my computer to work, huh? Do you have any stats for
that
?” I snap at her, impatiently.

“Just turn the computer off for a while; sometimes that works,” offers my mom, feebly, “and watch that tone, you hear me?”

“Okeydokey,” I say, squashing what I really want to say:
How about a dial tone!
Things between my mom and me are supa-tense right now, because she’s not sure about this whole Catwalk competition thing. She also seems tired all the time—which is probably why she snaps at me instead of talking.

“She thinks that I’m gonna be pressuring her for funds to front our fashion, that’s what it is,” I say out loud, flipping my cell phone shut. “I wish I could shut her off for a while.”

“I hear that,” Aphro says, giggling, twirling her lariat necklace, “but I sure hope
she
didn’t!”

I wait until we get off the subway at the 135th Street station to call Felinez. She is so desperate for info she sounds like she’s been chomping on piñatas.

“Three hundred dollars,
mija
!” Felinez screams into the phone after I break down the booty like a proud pirate. She’s screaming so loud, I have to take the phone away from my ear. Aphro and I are standing in front of the window of a supa-fly boutique called Montgomery, on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and 136th Street.

“Aphro puffs,” I coo, pointing to a black satin appliqué of a black girl with big round eyes and Afro puffs sewn on the front of a white T-shirt.

“Omigod, I have to have that T-shirt!” Aphro declares. “I’d better get a j-o-b to snag that—okay.”

Meanwhile, I continue to fill in Felinez: “I know—you’re in charge of buying accessories supplies, but don’t get too hide-happy,” I warn her.

As for the Design Challenge, Felinez already has a plan for bagging the Benjamins: “
Mija
, it’s the garbage can! Something you pass every day, right? That three-hundred-dollar bonus is ours!”

“You must be sipping salsa sauce. So we’re supposed to design trash can lids that can be worn as headgear?” I ask, baffled.

“No! The stuff inside!” Felinez screams excitedly.

“Of course, I should have known,” I moan. I met Felinez “Fifi” Cartera in the first grade in the Boogie Down, where I lived until last year. Ever since, the two of us have made quite a pair of hyperactive kittens: when I get nervous, I yank my hair, while Fifi Dumpsterdives to find materials she can recycle into pouches, purses, belts.

Now I can hear her older sister Michelette screaming in Spanish. “
Dejame!
I’m not getting off the phone!” Felinez retorts.

Michelette works at the Champagne video store, where she has her pick of films, but all she does is obsessively watch episodes of the Colombian soap opera
Betty, la fea
. Exasperated, Felinez drags me into their
latest Bronx tale. Apparently, Michelette is threatening to move to Bogotá with their aunt Flamingo, which would leave Felinez and their younger brother, Juanito, in the lurch, since their parents travel most of the time in a cover band called Las Madres y los Padres.

“Why would she want to live with someone who doesn’t even have a DVD player?” I ask, puzzled.

Suddenly, a truck backfires and sends me practically diving right into the metal trash can on the corner. The burly men in the truck even have the nerve to start whistling at us.

“Maybe it’s time to call Geico!” I snarl at them, then end the call to Felinez.

“Did you call Angora yet?” Aphro asks, getting me back on track.

“For the second time,” I insist, “I’d have better luck paging the Easter Bunny.”

As we turn the corner, Aphro starts to say something, then backs out: “Never mind.”

“What are you hiding?” I ask her, getting spooked out by her secret. “Does it have to do with something at home?”