Catwalk (5 page)

“Is the odorizer shaped like a bunny?” I ask. I’d be surprised if her dad let her buy anything normal. Their whole house looks like an Easter treasure hunt—from rabbit salt and pepper shakers to porcelain eggs from Bergdorf Goodman.

“No, but he made me hop to the counter carrying it,” Angora chuckles, shaking her head.

“You look so pretty in that top,” Felinez says to Angora, who’s wearing a fuzzy scoopneck sweater with short sleeves. She always manages to look so cuddly.

“Yeah, it’s just the right salmon color—like expensive smoked lox, instead of Bumble Bee!” I heckle.

“Five purr points,” coos Felinez. Purr points are our ratings system, used for everything from boys to bustiers.

Angora plops her book on its edge till it teeters over. “What’s that?” Felinez asks.

“The House of Gucci,”
Angora, who reads voraciously, states. “What a
frothy
bunch. Far more eccentric than the Addams family. I mean, when they got into a fight, they threw five-hundred-dollar handbags out the window!”

“Yeah, well, the only house I’m interested in right now is my own,” I mutter nervously.

“The House of Pashmina. Well, I’ll be
dirndl!
I love the sound of that,” Angora says, blinking rapidly, then posing, reminding me of the test shots she did when we first met freshman year in modeling 101. Angora posed with her white Ragdoll cat named Rouge, and they almost looked like sister and brother with their matching blue eyes and pristine auras.

“There’s no way a certain person is getting
nominated,” Felinez starts babbling, under her breath but loud enough for inquiring minds to latch on to.

I look toward the stalls just to make sure no one is eavesdropping. I mean, the walls in our school really do have pierced ears.

“Just transpose the letters in her name and you’ll come up with the two words that best describe her!” Angora says smartly.

I pause for a moment trying to catch on, but I come up blank. “Chin and Neitzche?” I ask, chuckling.

“No, I wasn’t talking about her,” Angora corrects me.

“Well, I was,” Felinez says. She
despises
Chintzy.

Suddenly, I catch Angora’s spelling drift: “OH!” I snicker, cupping my paw to touch hers in recognition of pure genius at work. Felinez realizes at the same moment that Angora is referring to Shalimar.

“Sham. Liar!”
we screech in unison.

“Awright, it’s showtime,” I say, signaling for us to go our separate ways. I’m off to textile science, while Angora is headed off to voguing 101. It has taken me two years to convince her to strut her gait. “Promise me you’ll pose instead of pout,” I say, trying to encourage her. I know Angora could vogue if she would stop feeling so insecure about freestyling. “Just dig into your spicy heritage!” I assure her.

“Thank you for that genealogic encouragement,
chérie
, but I can’t move like you!” Angora says, already starting to pout.

“Ah—you promised,” I warn her.

“Okay voilà!” she retorts. “Just keep expecting miracles to be whipped up like soufflés!”

I run off to my class, with Angora’s taunt teasing my eardrum. I guess I do expect miracles. Shouldn’t everybody?

By second period, I’m ready for my close-up at the Catwalk general assembly meeting. Angora, on the other hand, is ready for a meltdown. I wait outside Studio C to retrieve her from voguing 101, but she bolts out, staring blankly ahead like a zombie. She doesn’t even register my gagulation over the tastiest Toll House morsel in fashion town exiting before her. This fashionista is taller than most of the guys, which means he’s model material, as opposed to the rest of the shorties at our school. I discreetly check out his chiseled cheekbones and the zebra-striped mink hat plunked on his head, both of which hype his purrlicious appeal. So does the portable supersonic sound system he’s carrying under his arm. Much to my chagrin, however, Shalimar suddenly appears next to the beauty with a boom box, ready to suck him up like sushi.

“It was a thousand-dollar ice cream sundae!” Shalimar brags, peering into his piercingly blue slanty eyes, which are framed by thick blond eyebrows. It’s obvious that Shalimar is still searching for a new taste sensation despite the fact that for her sixteenth birthday, her
parents took her to Serendipity 3 restaurant on the Upper East Side, where she got to indulge in the world’s most expensive sundae. All morning, I’ve been hearing dribbles (but seen no nibbles, mind you) about this Golden Opulence Sundae: five scoops of Tahitian vanilla ice cream covered in 23-karat edible gold leaf, then topped with chunks of rare Chuao chocolate.

“Is there
anything
she won’t devour?” I whisper to Angora. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were taking a voguing class with the Mad Hatter!”

Angora is too vogued out to care about the latest object of my ogle. “If one more person asks me why I’m not in intermediate voguing with
Pashmina
, I’m going to hold a press conference!” Angora marches away quickly, sending Morse code distress signals with each clomp of her powder blue suede UGG boots. By the time we hit the second floor, she’s out of breath and has to rest by the Hall of Fashion Fame passageway.

“Are you okay?” I ask. Angora’s asthma goes into full throttle when she’s kaflustered.

“I’m just fine and dandy. I hid in the back of the class so Mr. Blinghe wouldn’t call on me. I think I need a chin splint from hiding my face in my palm—that’s all,” Angora says, struggling to regain her normal breathing.

“It was just the first day—and I’m sure Shalimar’s shade didn’t help,” I offer.

“Oh,
plissé
! I can forget about modeling in a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, okay? I don’t need Je-T’aime’s crystal ball to read the
Women’s Wear Daily
headline of the future: Angora prance? Not a chance!”

Je-T’aime is Angora’s dad’s Creole psychic from Louisiana. He doesn’t make a move without her. In Angora’s case, I decide to coax the wilting magnolia into putting one UGGed foot in front of the other. If I get elected, I’ll need my star model to be prance-ready by spring, and that’s why I’m hoping that voguing classes will help Angora unleash her inner feline fatale. According to Willi Ninja, the unspoken fashion rule is: if you can vogue, then you can work the runway for points on the Dow Jones, okay.

“If I didn’t think you could be as fierce as Tidy or Tyra, I would tell you to move back home with your mother and master the art of hyping hush puppies!”

“Perch. Prance. Payday!”
Angora giggles, repeating another of my mantras. Then she pulls out her inhaler to rebalance her oxygen intake. “His name is Zeus,” Angora adds nonchalantly.

“What was he doing with the beatbox?” I ask.

“He’s a deejay—‘hip-hop addict,’ that’s what he called himself. Mr. Blinghe made us introduce ourselves because ‘voguing is about connecting with others,’ ” Angora repeats wearily.

“Does he want to model, too?”

Angora nods.

“Now, there’s a new hyphenate,” I offer.

“What do you mean,
chérie
?”

“A model
and
a deejay. What should we call him?”

“Speaking of hyphenates, take a look at this one,” Angora says, perking up. She whips out the
Little Brown Book
, the magazine for Bloomingdale’s insiders. (Her father’s Funny Bunny antics have their perks now that parents are dropping carrots on his likeness, sold at Toys ‘R’ Us.) Angora opens to the page featuring Nacho Figueras, an Argentine polo player and the face of Ralph Lauren’s new men’s fragrance.
“Purrr,”
I hum approvingly. “A professional polo player
and
a model. I think Zeus is tastier, though. Oh, I got it—what about ‘model-spinner’?”

“I like that,” Angora says, smiling sweetly at the photo collage of Tidy Plume.

“Your eyes are prettier because they peer deeper into the soul,” I coo to Angora.

“Her breasts are bigger though. I want those breasts,
chérie
,” Angora counters.

“It’s an indisputable facto that A-cup means A-list.”

“Then add an addendum to our Catwalk Code: B-cup means more Benjamins!” Angora quips.

“Sounds like a
booby
trap to me.”

Senior-year design major Nole Canoli and his five-member entourage turn the corner and walk ahead of us into the Fashion Auditorium. Elgamela Sphinx, the model in the bunch, towers over the rest of them and breaks out her supermodel-in-training smile. “Hi Pashmina and Angora,” she coos.

As for Nole Canoli, the word on the street is he could be the next Gianni Versace. That means, a designer who is bling-worthy. Nole has a pudgy round face set off by his thick black Gucci glasses. He also has an egg-shaped head that probably glows in the dark because it’s so giganto and closely shaven. Oblivious to our presence, the bling-worthy one walks into the auditorium. “It’s turning into a real Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade,” I observe.

Angora nods knowingly as I reminisce about my fave cartoon balloons. When I was five years old, my mom finally rescued us from the gingerbread house before Grandma Pritch cooked Chenille and me in her oven. I started kindergarten a few weeks later, and on Thanksgiving the three of us went to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I held my mother’s hand tight because I thought if I let go maybe she would float away. My little hands were freezing, but I was in heaven watching all the gigantic balloons travel by. Sonic the
Hedgehog. The Weebles. Snoopy. The only one missing was my favorite, Miss Piggy.

Angora nudges me from my childhood memories to clock Nole Canoli in action. “Anyone with that much hot air
has
to be deflatable.” Nole air-kisses Liza Flake, who attends the Fashion Auxiliary program for hairstyling. Every chance she gets, you can spot her whipping out her turquoise faux crocodile portfolio, which is filled with test shots taken by photographers who use hairstylists, makeup artists, and fashion stylists to transform the models being tested into primp-ready posers. Rounding out the Canoli entourage are makeup artist Kimono Harris and hairstylist Dame Leeds, both in the auxiliary program. “Mini Mo,” as the supa-petite blusher is called by her friends, always wears China red lipstick and her dark, straight hair is cut in a geometric precision bob, sorta like Aphro’s (except Mo’s hair requires no “assisterance” from Revlon Realistic Relaxer). Probably the most pampered member of Nole Canoli’s entourage, however, is Countess Coco, whose tiny head topped with a foxy mane sticks proudly out of the black Prada bag thrown over Nole’s right shoulder. She’s a purebred Pomeranian with bulging eyes and equal attitude.

Speaking of entourage members, as we descend into the doorway of the auditorium, Aphro, who is seated midway, finally waves us down like a desperate
housewife in Times Square trying to hail a cab. Even from rows away, we can hear Aphro’s armful of silver and gold bangles jangling to their own fashion jingle.

“Scratch, scratch!”
coos Aphro, sitting next to Felinez. They both extend their cupped hands and we all cross paws. Then Aphro unleashes one of her signature snorts—a laugh so hearty it sounds like a happy hog lapping up slop at its trough. It’s part of what makes the mighty Aphrodite such a purrlicious Babe. Aphro majors in Jewelry Design and invented her own hip-hop moniker by adopting “Biggie” as her middle name. She wants to start a jewelry company called Aphro Puffs. Let’s just say that the self-proclaimed “model-blinger” takes the advice of our marketing teacher, Ms. Harness, very seriously: “You’re never too young to start branding yourself.”

Angora and I plop down in the cushy hot-pink theater-style seats next to our crew.

“Okay—time to thread the needle,” Aphro pipes up, which is Catwalk code for taking care of business. “Let’s take bets. What’s the supa-dupa surprise gonna be—a person, a place, or a
thang
?”

“Winner gets a Mambolatte,” Felinez chimes in.

“Oh—all right. I think it’s gonna be a person. A special mentorship with someone like—ooh, I got it—a French designer in Paris, like Yves Saint Bernard!” Angora says satisfied.

“Um, I think it’s gonna be a place,” Felinez says
confidently. “Like the Catwalk winners get to stay at the Four Seasons Hotel in Paris, where they’ll plan a party?”