The Daughters (8 page)

“She’s a teenager!” Natasha screamed. Lizzie took off down the hall.

When she reached the lobby, Carina and Hudson had their noses buried in issues of
InStyle
.

“Let’s go, you guys,” Lizzie said hurriedly, as the receptionist watched her closely.

Hudson and Carina joined her at the elevator bank. “So what happened?” Hudson whispered.

“Natasha says she’s finally taken care of it,” she said.

The elevator doors opened with a whoosh.

“But have either of you guys ever heard of ugly modeling?” she asked. She didn’t know why, but saying “ugly modeling” filled
her with a sense of defiance, even purpose. So the whole world thought she was ugly. There was actually a certain relief in
it.

The doors closed. “You mean, people so weird-looking they’re hot?” Carina asked.

Hudson nudged Carina hard in the arm. “People who are different-looking. It’s the new thing.”

Lizzie felt for the slip in the pocket of her bag. “Some photographer called Natasha about me and said I had a unique look,”
she said. She pulled out the slip and smoothed it open. “I just can’t tell who it is,” she said, trying to read Amanda’s scribbling.

Carina grabbed the slip. Her dad was constantly leaving notes for her in his barely legible handwriting. “That says Andrea
Sidwell,” she said, reading. “One fifty Crosby Street.”

“Oh my God, Lizzie,” Hudson said dreamily, placing a hand on Lizzie’s wrist. “She wants you to be a
model
?”

“Well, a
weird
model, apparently.”

“You have to do it,” Hudson said, shaking her head. “This is fate. You have to.”

“No way,” Lizzie said, pressing the lobby button over and over.

“Why not?” Hudson asked.

“Because Natasha said it was a bad idea. And it probably is, with the whole YouTube thing happening. And, come on. An ugly
model? Is that something I want to be?”

“Look at all those people who model for American Apparel,” Carina reasoned. “They’re weird-looking. And hot.”

“That’s because they’re in their underwear,” Lizzie reminded them. “No, I’m not doing it.”

The elevator doors opened, and they walked through the lobby.

Outside, the streets were crowded with the start of rush hour. A red double-decker bus filled with smiling tourists lumbered
by. Despite Natasha’s tirade, Lizzie felt better. Calmer. She’d move on from this. And, she was even a little bit flattered.
A photographer wanted her to be a model. Even if it was ugly modeling, nobody had ever asked her to do that before.

“If you don’t want to do it,” Carina said, “then why’d you save that slip?”

Lizzie put the slip back in her bookbag without saying anything. Carina had a habit of making points that were impossible
to debate. And then she heard her iPhone chime. She pulled it out. It was a Facebook friend request and a message from Todd.

You ran out before I could remind you about tomorrow night. You’re still coming over right? 7 o’clock.

“Oh my God, you guys,” Lizzie said. “Todd just texted me. To remind me about tomorrow night.”

She showed her friends the message. “I knew it!” Carina cried. “He
wants
you.”

“Are you gonna friend him? You have to friend him!” Hudson squealed.

Lizzie pressed the Confirm button. She and Todd Piedmont were now officially friends. But maybe, just maybe, Lizzie thought,
they were on their way to being more.

“Here, Lizzie, try this one,” Hudson said the next afternoon, as she plucked a lace-trimmed lavender camisole from the pile
on the shelf.

“It looks a little low-cut,” Lizzie said doubtfully.

“That’s the whole
point
,” Carina cut in, as she swiped the cami from Hudson and added it to the top of the stack of tops in Lizzie’s arms. “And
please
tell me you’re gonna flirt with him tonight.”

“Yes, it helps if he knows you like him,” Hudson teased, her gigantic silver hoops dangling merrily on either side of her
heart-shaped face.

Lizzie felt her stomach turn over. In exactly seven hours, she would be walking into a possible date with Todd, or at least
a Planned Hang-out Alone in His House, and she was woefully unprepared. She’d corralled her friends for an emergency trip
to Big Drop in SoHo, except now they were making her even more nervous, and so was the store. A teenage girl slammed into
her as she rifled through the racks with her mom.

“What if this isn’t a date?” Lizzie said, fingering a stretch jersey top. “Then it’ll be a little ridiculous for me to be
flirting with him.”

“Right, this isn’t a date,” Carina muttered. “Because he
really
needs you to help him put out Doritos.” She pulled a long black dress with spaghetti straps off the hanger and held it up
to herself. “Do you guys like this?”

Hudson frowned. “Do you really need that?”

“For the school dance in a couple weeks,” Carina said with a shrug as she slipped it off the hanger. “Whatever.”

“Here, Lizzie, try this one, too,” Hudson said, tossing her a sparkly top with crisscross straps.

“All right, I’ll be right back,” Lizzie said. She needed to go before Hudson picked out any more clothing she didn’t have
the courage to wear.

She yanked the curtain shut and looked in the mirror. Her eyes bugged out, her nose looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,
and her hair, thanks to the muggy weather, was starting to look like the Bride of Frankenstein. Maybe a sexy top couldn’t
hurt.

The lavender cami was the first one she tried. It gapped a little in the chest area, unsurprisingly, but as she twisted this
way and that in the mirror, it didn’t look bad. In fact, it was kind of pretty. The color set off her hair and warmed up her
pale skin. As usual, Hudson’s style sense had been right.

“What do you guys think?” she said, sticking her upper body through the curtain.

Hudson pulled Lizzie all the way out of the room and looked her up and down. “
Big
thumbs-up. C?”

Carina looked her over with the black dress still in her arms. “Yep. Totally hot.”

Lizzie turned to look in the store mirror. It
did
look good on her… but would Todd think so? She tried to see herself through his eyes. Was her skin too white? Maybe she should
have dug out the Jergens self-tanning lotion from the back of her bathroom cabinet. And her upper arms… why did they have
to be so thick and shapeless? She turned around. She’d almost forgotten about the weird cluster of moles on her back in the
shape of the Little Dipper. And then what would Todd think if she showed up in this? They’d been childhood buddies, for God’s
sake. She’d never worn anything fancier than a pair of jean cut-offs and a T-shirt in front of him.

“I don’t think it’s me,” she decided.

“What?” Hudson blinked her green cat eyes. “It’s perfect on you.”

“It’s kind of…”

“Sexy?” Carina said. “That’s a
good
thing.”

“I don’t think so, guys,” she said, and scurried back into the fitting room. She could feel her friends giving each other
looks on the other side of the curtain. But it was her body, wasn’t it? It was up to her if she didn’t want to go over to
Todd’s house looking like Ilona Peterson.

She tried on the rest of the tops, but none of them fit or worked. After they waited for Carina to buy her dress, they walked
out into the stream of tourists on Broadway.

“Okay, that was lame,” Carina finally said.

“You’re the one who just bought something without even trying it on,” Lizzie pointed out.

“But you looked so beautiful in that color,” Hudson said. “Why didn’t you like it?”

“It just wasn’t me,” Lizzie said, hoping that might kill the subject.

“But it was!” Carina argued, almost colliding with a man walking out of Dean & Deluca with an iced coffee.

“You don’t see yourself the way we do,” Hudson said diplomatically.

They turned east onto Spring Street and walked toward NoLIta. Lizzie loved SoHo—the cobblestone streets, the ancient warehouse
buildings, the mixture of tourists and artists and models. A man stepped out of Balthazar Bakery with a loaf of French bread
and pedaled away on a bicycle, as if this was Paris.

“Well, maybe I don’t see myself the same way, but my eyes are my eyes,” Lizzie said. “I don’t know how to change that.”

“I do,” Carina said, unwrapping a LUNA Bar she’d pulled out of her bag. “Call that photographer.”

“What photographer?”

“The one from yesterday, from your meeting with Natasha,” Hudson chimed in.

“No, wait,” Carina said, stopping dead in her Jack Rogers flip-flops. She pointed straight ahead of her. “We’re in her neighborhood.
She was on Crosby Street, right? One fifty Crosby Street.”

Carina had a photographic memory. Sometimes it was a little scary.

Carina walked closer to the corner. “That building says one-oh-five—”

“We’re gonna
go
there?” Lizzie asked with alarm.
“Now?”

Carina shrugged, her shoulders grazing the tips of her blond hair. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t even know if I want to do this,” Lizzie said. “I haven’t decided.”

Carina headed down the block. “Don’t think about stuff so hard,” she said.

Lizzie could feel herself getting sucked into the C Cyclone, as she and Hudson called it, but there was little she could do
about it.

“Here it is,” Carina said, coming to a stop in front of an ordinary glass door. “Andrea Sidwell,” she read off the list of
residents tacked next to the front door. “Fifth floor.” Calmly she rang the buzzer.

“Carina!” Hudson said. “Stop!”

Carina dismissed them with a wave of her hand. “We’ll tell her it’s you. She’ll be psyched.”

“But I don’t know what to say!” Lizzie argued.

Hudson took Lizzie by the hand. “I’ll try and help,” she said calmly.

Through the intercom there came a crackle of static and then the sound of a long, steady buzz. Carina grabbed the door handle
and pulled it right open. “We’re in,” she said, her eyes bright with adventure. Carina lived for stuff like this.

“Oh God, help me,” Lizzie whispered.

On the fifth floor they walked out of the elevator into a long, curving hallway. A door at the end was marked
A. SIDWELL. STUDIO
. “This is such a bad idea it’s not even funny,” Lizzie said.

“It’ll be fine,” Carina whispered. She pressed the doorbell.

A few seconds later the door opened, and a woman with friendly blue eyes, ripped biceps, and a messy blond ponytail stood
on the threshold. In baggy workout pants, bare feet, and a black T-shirt that said
SILVERSUN PICKUPS
, she looked like a college student, though Lizzie figured that she was in her early thirties.

“Well, hello,” she said happily, looking down at them without a shred of surprise. “So I guess you’re
not
the delivery guy from Dean & Deluca.”

“Are you Andrea Sidwell?” Carina asked in her most direct and adult voice.

“I
am
,” she said in a mock-serious tone.

Carina nudged Lizzie forward. “
This
is Lizzie Summers,” she announced.

Andrea stared at Lizzie for a brief, amused moment, as if she was pretty sure this was a joke, and then she blinked. “Hey,
Lizzie.” She stuck out her hand and grasped Lizzie’s. “I’m Andrea Sidwell,” she said with a radiant smile. “What an awesome
surprise. Come on in, you guys.”

Andrea turned to walk down a narrow entry hall, and the three of them followed. “Sorry about the mess, guys,” Andrea said
over her shoulder. “I wasn’t expecting guests. But I know you can deal.”

The hallway opened into a spacious, high-ceilinged loft flooded with sunlight from large casement windows that faced the street.
An M.I.A. song played on the sound system, just loud enough for the beats to pack a wallop, while a few fat votive candles
lit in the corner gave off a fresh piney scent. A makeshift set had been set up in the center of the room, complete with light
stands, tripods, a fan, and a giant roll of white paper that served as a backdrop. Framed black-and-white portraits hung on
the brick walls.

“Can I get you guys something to drink?” Andrea padded over to the small kitchenette. “Vitamin Water? Green tea? Cold bottled
chai-whatever?”

“Vitamin Water would be great,” Hudson replied for the group, as Lizzie walked over to check out the portraits.

They were mostly of people’s faces in various levels of close-up, just like the ones she’d seen once in a Richard Avedon exhibit
at the Whitney. Except these weren’t of old movie stars like Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant. They were of ordinary people.
Some were teenagers. Some were middle-aged. Some were elderly, with wrinkles and age spots. And all of them had obvious flaws:
big teeth, big noses, untweezed eyebrows, jutting chins, deep wrinkles that made their faces look like creased roadmaps. But
you couldn’t take your eyes off them. In the shadows made by the camera, they were mesmerizing. They were, weirdly, beautiful.

“So I’m shocked they gave you my message,” Andrea said to Lizzie, handing each of them a bottle of orange Vitamin Water. “The
girl I spoke to didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. So were you totally weirded out?”

Lizzie twisted off her cap and glanced at her friends. “A little,” she admitted. “What is it you do exactly?”

“I mostly shoot for magazines and ad campaigns, and I use ‘regular’ models, too,” she said, hooking her fingers into quotes.
“But this kind of work,” she said, walking toward the wall of photos, “
this
is much more my thing. Real people. Like her.” She pointed to a photo of an elderly woman with long gray hair that flowed
past her shoulders. “I saw her on the 6 train. She’s seventy-eight, a great-grandmother, and when I told her that I thought
she could be a model, she thought I was on drugs. But she turned out to be a natural. I shot her for a shampoo ad. She’s been
working ever since.”

Andrea walked over to a photo of a stocky bald man with startled, childlike eyes. “I met him in line at Gray’s Papaya on Seventy-Second
and Broadway. Look at those eyes. Amazing, huh? I shot him for a Toyota ad. They
loved
him,” Andrea said, shaking her head. “All of these people had something worth looking at. Something beautiful. And most of
the time, I wasn’t the only person who thought so.”