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The stewardess came around to ask for our meal orders, but Aunt Zo had already packed a feast from Zabar’s: roast beef sandwiches with blue cheese dressing, tomato and cucumber salad, kettle chips, and Godiva chocolate.

“Zo, the food in business class is actually not that bad,” I told her.

“I know, but I’m a musician. I’m used to traveling like a gypsy. I bring my own food. I’m prepared to be routed and rerouted.”

She looked so beautiful. For years, she’d worn her hair in this pixie cut, but she was letting it grow out. Andy, my hairdresser, had given her this cool scissor cut, and her layers were cool, very rock and roll.

“You look like a dark-haired Sheryl Crow,” I said admiringly.

Zo laughed. “Good. Maybe I’ll run into Eric Clapton in London.”

“Don’t any of your musician friends know him?”

“Probably. Speaking of friends, you haven’t mentioned Chela in ages.”

I fidgeted with my personal video screen.

“You two have a tuss up?”

I guess tuss up is as good a term as any for the fact that I’d gotten back together with Brian and was sneaking around behind her back. I’d dumped him, but I’d been so busy with work and school, I hadn’t gone dancing with Chela in weeks.

“Something like that,” I said.

“It can’t be easy for her, your sudden fame, when the two of you used to be so close.”

I rolled my eyes. “What am I supposed to do, call her up and say, Sorry, I’m no longer lonely and pathetic and able to hang out with you 24/7? I’ve got a life now, and I’ve been kind of too busy to be your chubby sidekick.”

Zo gave me a stern look. “Is that how she made you feel?”

“That’s how I felt.”

“But do you think she purposefully tried to keep you down?”

This gets back to the whole lying thing. If we’d been on the phone, I could’ve been deceitful: Yes, I would’ve said, Chela is gorgeous and I always felt like a big cow compared to her. But sitting next to Aunt Zo, ten thousand feet above the ground, I couldn’t lie. I had to tell the truth.

“No, she was a great friend to me.”

“Then call her.”

“Okay, I will,” I said, and I meant it too.

The agency set us up at this cool hotel where after checking in, you could have a goldfish delivered to your room. We named ours Ben, in honor of Aunt Zo’s new boyfriend, who was a clarinetist in the touring company of
Wicked
. Zo and I had dinner at Yo! Sushi, a funny restaurant where you sit at a counter and this conveyor belt of sushi goes around and around. You just pick what you want as it comes by. I had an early call the next day, so I went to bed while Aunt Zo caught up with some of her musician buddies. “We’re night owls by nature,” she said as she took off for her second dinner date of the evening at ten p.m.

The next morning, I showed up at the studio and met the director and her team. It was kind of a weird situation. I’d never been in a music video before. I knew that the lead singer of the band—they were called Guess Again Girl—had been in New York and seen my billboard in Times Square. Jess, the director, had this concept to shoot me as a painting in all the museums from all over the world. The lead singer, Garrett, would wander in and out of museums and sing to me in the paintings. It sounded pretty cool—there was going to be lots of blue screen, lots of elaborate costume changes.

“It’s going to take bloody forever,” Jess said, explaining why it was a four-day shoot.

“No problem,” I said. “I’m used to waiting around.”

It was a whole new crew of people to get used to. But there must be some law that the hair and makeup people become a model’s best friend. Because in no time, I was chatting to the lead hair guy, Karl, and the lead makeup guy, Mickey, as if they were long lost friends.

The first setup was a reproduction of John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, a painting Aunt Zo had actually taken me to see at the Met in New York. It was apparently the Paris Hilton videotape of its time, although it’s just a painting of a woman in a long strapless black dress. Karl put a red glaze in my hair and then Mickey gave me a fabulous glamour look. Three hours later, I was ready. Three hours after that, the band showed up.

“Sorry we’re late,” Garrett said, kissing Jess on the cheek. The other guys in the band mumbled apologies as well.

Garrett came up to me, looking like a nineteenth-century painting, and actually got on one knee and kissed my hand.

“My muse,” he said. “I’m Garrett, and those other geezers are Lance, Mario, and Benny.”

I waved hello to the band.

Mickey gave all the guys a dusting of face powder, and literally ten minutes later, they were ready to go. No makeup. No hair. No stylists. I’d always thought that the scruffy rock star thing was contrived. That it took ages to get that lived-in look. Not these guys.

The set was made to look like a museum gallery room, the genius of which, Jess explained, is that all over the world, gallery rooms look the same. One set would work for all four locations. They were just changing the paintings, the extras, the costumes.

The song was called “Picture in a Frame,” and since it was off of the upcoming Guess Again Girl album, I hadn’t heard it yet. In the video, Garrett wanders around the gallery, singing the song. There are all these extras looking at paintings and sketching while the other guys in the band play their instruments in the corner and everyone pretends not to see them. In the first setup, Garrett is singing to a reproduction of Sargent’s Madame X. In the second setup, the painting comes to life and I’m there, leaning on a chestnut side table, trying to look elegant and swank and 150 years old. I’d never had anyone serenade me before; that was kind of nice, even if there were dozens of people standing around and watching us.

The next day was even crazier. I was meant to be a portrait by Velázquez come to life. The museum was the Prado and the painting was Queen Margherita on Horseback. The queen part was cool. I had this fluffy white collar around my neck and this amazingly intricate burgundy brocade gown, and while I didn’t wear a crown (apparently not horseback riding gear), they pulled my hair up in a bun and covered it with this sexy little silk net. The problem was the horse. She was lovely, her name was Paula, and she was golden brown with white spots and either amazingly well behaved or drugged out of her horsey little mind. Either way, I was happy. The thing is that in my long brocade gown, it took three people to hoist me on top of Paula, and once I had mounted her, I discovered this fear of heights I’d never had before. I was terrified that I would fall or that Paula would start bucking and I would fall and she would trample me. So when Garrett started singing, I apparently had this dazed and terrified look on my face. I loved the song and had no problem looking at him dreamily before. But I could barely focus on him now as he sang:

“You’re just a picture in a frame

I’m no match for your games

I bet the house, how could I win?

Now I’m out and the other guy’s in

All I’ve got’s a picture in a frame.”

Jess called cut, then she came over to me. “What’s wrong, Bee?”

“I’m just a little nervous, that’s all,” I said.

“You look beautiful,” Garrett said, coming up to me and kissing my hand for the second day in a row.

“The horse is perfectly tame. Have you met her trainer, Louden?”

Louden, a scrappy-looking old guy in a tweed cap and a plaid vest, came over and shook my hand. His accent was heavy.

“Don’t you worry about Paula. You could trust her to carry a newborn baby safely to London Tower on her back.”

“Uh, okay,” I said.

Jess suggested we take a break, and the three photo assistants helped me dismount the horse.

I was sitting in a corner, trying to do the yoga breaths that Melody had taught me, when Benny, the guitarist, came over to see me.

“You going to be okay, Bee?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“I brought you over some potato salad.”

FYI, just because I’m a plus-size model doesn’t mean I eat like it’s going out of style.

“It’s ten o’clock in the morning,” I said.

“My mum made it,” he said, pouting a little.

I took the bowl from him and ate one spoonful. It was awful. I put the spoon down.

“It’s delicious,” I said.

“Well, eat up, then,” Benny said. “Finish this bowl and I’ll give you a second.”

Which made me wonder, would “yum” have been a less enthusiastic but still polite response?

He sat there staring at me, so I ate the whole bowl. When he jumped up to get a second, I said, “No, please, I’m stuffed.”

Jess called us back into the shot, and I started walking toward the set.

Twelve hours later, I woke up to find myself in my hotel room. The room was dark, and I could barely make out Ben the goldfish in the bowl next to my bed.

I wandered out of the room and Zo jumped to her feet. “You’re up, thank God. What happened to you, Bee?”

That was a very good question. What had happened to me?

“I don’t know. I was at the shoot . . .”

“And you were spooked by the horse? The photographer thought maybe you had a panic attack and blacked out. Of course, she also implied that you might have been on drugs, but I told her you were clean. Speaking of which, Leslie’s called about a dozen times, so give her a call, okay?”

I was thinking about what Aunt Zo had said about drugs, then I realized that the last thing I remembered was Benny giving me that bowl of potato salad and being so insistent that I eat it, even though it was ten in the morning.

“Zo, is there some sort of drug that you could put in potato salad?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You can put almost anything into anything. Why?”

I told her about Benny and his “mother’s potato salad.” She agreed that it didn’t sound right. We called the hotel concierge, and they arranged for us to go to the hospital.

An hour later, we had the toxicology report. I’d been given a horse tranquilizer. The doctor looked at me and said, “You are very lucky that you are not ze skinny girl. Your body could metabolize ze drugs in a healthy way. Ze skinny girl might have had a heart attack and died.”

Of course, what I heard him saying was that I was big enough for a horse tranquilizer. Aunt Zo and I argued about this the whole cab ride back to the hotel.

“He said I was a horse,” I said.

“He said you’re lucky to be alive,” she said.

“Because I’m a horse.”

“Because you’re lucky,” Zo said. “Look, Bee, I won’t do this with you. This “Am I fat?” thing. You are gorgeous. You have always been gorgeous. And now you are getting paid a ton of money and have become quite famous for being gorgeous. You are my favorite niece. The fact that you are my only one is immaterial. Please don’t let this modeling thing turn you into a self-hating “Do I look fat in this?” person. It’s petty and it’s boring.”

Those were harsh words coming from Aunt Zo. She hated petty people and she hated boring people more. She’d never, ever used either word in reference to me.

“By the way,” Aunt Zo said. “My concert was tonight.”

“Oh no,” I said.

“Oh yes,” she said.

“I’m so sorry you cancelled it because of me.”

“There’ll be other concerts.”

I reached across the cab and hugged her. Amazingly, she hugged me back. Memo to self: Shape up and earn Zo’s respect again.

Back at the hotel, I called Leslie in New York. She was furious at me for passing out at the shoot until I explained that I’d been drugged.

“Well, you’re about to get your first taste of the British tabloid system,” she said. “Tomorrow’s Daily Mail is running an article that implies you stole the tranqs from the trailer in order to get high.”

“Oh no,” I said.

“Oh yes,” she said.