Indie Girl (3 page)

“Wow, you look fab,” she said. “I skipped phys ed. Cramps. How was it?”

“Look, we need to sit up front, okay?” I said, ignoring her question. “I want Aaralyn Taylor to be looking right at me.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” she answered. “Nobody’s here yet. As soon as these guys finish setting up the room, we can go in and sit down. Nervous?”

“Kind of,” I replied. “I know you think I’m crazy, but this is the moment I’ve been waiting for.”

“Indie, you think I don’t know that you’ve saved every issue of that magazine? That you keep folders crammed
with pictures of each season’s must-haves? I love pretty clothes as much as the next girl. But you’re insane.”

“Yeah, but you love me anyway,” I said, grabbing her by the hand and dragging her into the auditorium.

I had told my mother to pick me up a little later than usual today. I had warned her that I would probably be deep in conversation with Aaralyn Taylor when she got there, and that I might need a few extra minutes to wrap things up. My mother, as she always did, rolled her eyes and proceeded to ladle out the homemade yogurt sweetened with wildflower honey she was serving for breakfast.

She had asked me why I had skipped the NASA speaker the day before, and why I wasn’t scheduled to be in on the Silicon Valley insider the following afternoon. I wasn’t sure how to explain it to her. Somehow, between the heaping spoonfuls of cut papayas drizzled with lime juice and the jam-smeared croissants that followed, I didn’t find the opportunity to inform my mother that the main reason I wanted to attend Aaralyn Taylor’s talk was so I could meet her in person before I went to work for her. Summer break wasn’t too far off, and I wanted to have something lined up—something more enjoyable than taking appointments at the dentist’s office, like Kim was planning. I wanted to spend those glorious summer days going to interviews and fashion shoots and
product launches all around town. It was going to be fabulous, and I was going to be part of it.

“It’s nothing, Mom,” I said, responding to my mother’s concerns. “I just think she’ll be interesting, that’s all. And you know how I much I like fashion.”

I could barely contain my excitement.

Yet, at the moment that the talk should have been starting, there was still no sign of Aaralyn Taylor.

In the corner of the podium, I spotted the school’s career counselor, Ms. Jennings, in deep discussion with Mr. Baker, the vice principal. They looked flushed and anxious. I glanced around the hall, and noticed that only about a quarter of the seats were filled. A sense of alarm started to rise in my belly. Maybe Aaralyn Taylor wasn’t coming. Maybe she was called away on some exotic photo shoot in Tahiti or had a last-minute interview with Chloë Sevigny or broke a heel on one of her Blahniks. Whatever the reason, I would be devastated if she didn’t show up.

“Let me go find out what’s going on,” said Kim, rising from her seat, obviously in her element as a seeker of truth of all things high school-related. She returned a few minutes later, a look of mild amusement on her face.

“Drama,” she said with a flourish of the hand. “Seems that a hoax e-mail went out canceling today’s event. I didn’t get it. Did you? How bizarre! So that’s why there are so many no-shows, and now the diva won’t get out of her car because she was told that it wasn’t a full house. She’s furious!”

“So now what?” I asked, getting sucked into the saga of it all.

“Mr. Baker is going out there again to try and talk her into coming in anyway. She wanted to reschedule, but he’s telling her that there are enough people who made it. So it’s up in the air for now.”

Fifteen anxious minutes later, Ms. Jennings strolled onto the podium, her face more relaxed, and stood in front of a tall microphone.

“Hello everyone, and thank you for coming,” she said. “There’s been a little mix-up this afternoon, so we appreciate your patience as we tried to smooth things out. Anyway, we are delighted that Ms. Aaralyn Taylor, the founder, publisher, and editor of
Celebrity Style,
the most successful fashion and celebrity magazine of the last few years, has agreed to come and talk to us about the business of fashion reporting.”

I turned to Kim, and gleefully punched my fist in the air.

“Please give a welcoming round of applause to Ms. Aaralyn Taylor,” Ms. Jennings beseeched.

I clapped wildly, the sound of my palms slapping
together louder than everyone around me. I straightened my back, not wanting to miss a second of Aaralyn’s entrance, needing to catch every movement she made.

She strode in through the right-hand door to the auditorium, the one that led straight to the podium. She was even more striking in person than in the picture on her magazine’s masthead. Her long reddish-blond hair was pulled back into a high ponytail. She was dressed in a cropped tweed lavender jacket, which I could immediately identify as from Chanel’s new spring collection, and wide-cut white linen pants. On her feet were high-heeled mules in the same color as the jacket. A thick silver charm bracelet hung off one tiny wrist, large silver hoops gleamed in her ears. She was pristine.

“She looks pissed,” Kim whispered as I nudged her to be quiet. “She probably gets packed houses wherever she goes and now she’s here at this pathetic showing.”

“Hush!” I hissed. “It’s about to start.”

Aaralyn positioned herself in front of the microphone, took a sip of water from a glass set on the lectern in front of her, and started to speak.

“First, I’d like to thank Doris Jennings and Matthew Baker for inviting me today. And of course, I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for the fact that I have a personal connection with someone at this school.”

My heart stopped. Someone here at school knew Aaralyn Taylor
personally?
I turned around to face the
aisle adjacent to mine, following Aaralyn’s gaze in that general direction. There, I saw a shiny blonde head nod, the pretty face underneath it beaming proudly, a casual wave of a slender wrist. I knew that girl.

“Yes,” Aaralyn continued, now finally smiling. “Brooke Carlyle—who I’m sure is well-known here for her impeccable wardrobe and overall genius, is my niece. I guess a passion for fashion runs in the genes!”

I had never spoken to Brooke Carlyle—or rather, she had never spoken to me. She was the leader of a pack that Kim called “the blonde bubbleheads,” even if they weren’t really bubbleheads. They were girls with such hefty allowances that they only wore Marc Jacobs and Zac Posen, came to school in their father’s Hummer and mother’s Jaguar, and were all named Britney or Skylar or Tiffany. Or Brooke.

But everything made sense now. Why, indeed, would Aaralyn Taylor pick this particular school to deliver a career address? And now that I thought about it: Why was she advertising for a summer intern here, of all places? Because of Brooke as well? I suppose, in an odd way, I had much to thank Brooke Carlyle for. I should have been grateful, but I suddenly started to feel uncomfortable; all this time I thought I was the only person here who had such a strong affinity with
Celebrity Style.
But now, just a few seats away from me, someone else had one that was far more concrete than mine.

“Anyway, on to the matter at hand,” said Aaralyn.

In a crisp, no-nonsense tone, she reminisced briefly about being fifteen, when she decided that she would one day leave her hometown of Bakersfield and live in a big, bright city: New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles.

“And so I came to LA when I was fresh out of college, worked as an assistant at one of the big talent agencies, got some real hands-on experience at two other entertainment and fashion magazines, and then finally started
Celebrity Style.
I’d say going to college really helped me because I got a management degree, and that’s what I needed most when it came time to set up my own magazine. But I also really took the time to learn about fashion—the business of it, as well as what great design really is. It’s not just a superficial thing for me. I take it very seriously. Now, I’ve been told that we’re giving magazines like
Vogue
a run for their money!”

I was entranced. She talked about how she struggled in the beginning, setting up the magazine using a loan from a wealthy uncle. It took her five years to pay him back. She talked about how hard it was to get advertisers to come on board, how she had to personally convince them that she knew what she was doing.

“There were so many magazines,” she said, looking suddenly wistful. “There were tabloids and there were the gorgeous fashion and celebrity glossies. The newsstands were packed. Everyone told me that the last
thing the world needed was another fashion magazine. But the more they said that, the more I wanted to prove them wrong.”

The turning point had been about two years ago, when she landed an exclusive about one of New York’s most important designers doing an inexpensive collection for a discount chain, and enlisting an A-list actress to be his model. She had heard about it from an old college friend who worked for the store, and so got her hands on the story well before her competitors.

“I scooped them,” she said, a smile reappearing on her face. “And it felt good. Suddenly, everyone was talking about us. That’s all it took—publishing a great story in advance of anyone else. We haven’t looked back.”

She paused for a moment, said “thank you” and looked around the room. Mr. Baker approached the microphone, which was Aaralyn’s cue to step back.

“That was a very illuminating and interesting talk,” Mr. Baker said, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his thick neck. “Now, I’m certain some of our students are eager to ask questions. I’m happy to open the floor.”

I turned to look around and saw just two hands up, way at the back. Brooke hadn’t raised her hand either. Some show of family loyalty that was, I thought. Kim pushed my elbow upward, hoisting my arm into the air. I had come in with a list of questions engraved onto my brain, but now that I was here, I couldn’t think of any of
them. But it was too late; thanks to Kim, my hand now hovered in the space above my head.

“Yes, in the front,” said Mr. Baker. “Maybe you’d like to stand up so we can all hear you?”

I trembled as I rose to my feet. Aaralyn was looking straight at me, her face stony, her eyes a cold blue.

“Yes?” she said, forcing a smile.

“Um, er, what would you say it took to really make it in the world of fashion journalism?” I asked, now remembering one of the questions I had practiced for days. “Would you say there is one quality that a person should have to get ahead in the field? Talent? A good eye? The ability to write concisely?”

Aaralyn briefly closed her eyes, before pressing her mouth closer to the microphone.

“It’s very competitive,” she said. “There are thousands of young girls who dream of covering the shows and meeting movie stars. And, truthfully, it takes more than talent and writing skills. It’s a bit like Hollywood,” she said, smiling faintly. “Most of the time, it’s all about who you know. In fact, sometimes it seems that who you know trumps any actual ability. It’s a sad fact of the entertainment and media business.” She looked out at the audience. “Next question?”

I suddenly got a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was Aaralyn telling me not to bother, that unless I had the right connections, I didn’t have a shot of
making it? As I thought about it some more, I realized that that didn’t even make sense. If that’s how she really felt, then why bother to advertise for an intern? If only people who knew the right people ever got those jobs, then why seek outside that circle? Her words left me cold. It wasn’t what I expected to hear. I stood, immobile, rooted to the spot.

“But … but,” I started to stammer. I wanted to correct Aaralyn Taylor. I wanted to tell her what my father had always told me: that hard work and being conscientious and loving what you did were the keys to success. He had never said anything about having connections.

Mr. Baker interjected before I had a chance to say anything else, and moved on to the next question. I nodded and sat down. Between Aaralyn’s depressing answer and the fact that there was one girl at this school who would always know her better than me, no matter what happened here today, the enthusiasm I had harbored for weeks had suddenly fizzled.

I had come here hoping that Aaralyn would tell me that intelligence and determination—both of which I knew I had plenty of—would take me to where I wanted to go, would guarantee me an opportunity to work in this field. I had wanted her to reassure me that I wasn’t wasting my time and dreaming of impossible goals, that it didn’t matter if my father was a neurosurgeon and my mother a homemaker and that their combined fashion
knowledge amounted to which fabrics would shrink in the clothes dryer. I wanted to hear that it was irrelevant that we lived in the middle of suburbia, on the pretty paved streets of Agoura, forty miles away from Beverly Hills and Robertson Boulevard and Melrose, and thousands of miles from New York City—all the places where fashion really happened.

And I realized then, with a sobering certainty, that being on a first-name basis with one of the salesgirls at my local Old Navy wouldn’t qualify as an “inside track.” For all the lack of any contacts and connections to the fashion world, I might as well have proclaimed my desire to be the first teenager on the moon.

“That was fun,” Kim said, gathering her things from under her seat, at the end of the talk. I was still staring at the podium, where Aaralyn was talking quietly with Ms. Jennings and Mr. Baker, their heads bowed together as if in a football huddle, shielding their conversation from the students slowly filing out. Brooke was standing nearby, clinging to her aunt, both of them pretty and shiny, not a crease to be found between them.

I stood up to leave, looking at the clock and realizing that I still had ten minutes before my mother would be waiting for me outside, her nose in the book she always carried around for times when the lines at the bank and post office and supermarket checkout were longer than expected. She only managed to read a few pages a day, but
using just those tiny slivers of time, when most people would be daydreaming or checking their voice mail or deleting junk messages on their BlackBerry, my mother was able to make her way through just about every novel on the Man Booker Prize short list. I had always admired that about her—her thoughtful use of time, the way she embraced the wider world without necessarily having to feel like she had to be loud and bold about it.