I snort. Of course I do. That’s where we became friends. The fat camp with an idiotic name where we both spent two Christmas breaks.
“Doesn’t it bother you at all that your parents dumped you like a sack of old clothes in Duck Lake, Wyoming?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “And that’s my point. I know your mom—”
“My mom treats me like I’m a pair of designer jeans that are too baggy,” I say.
“I know. I know.” He’s getting impatient and talking faster so that I can’t interrupt. “That’s the whole point. You keep letting your mom tell you how you’re gonna feel about yourself. Fat camp wasn’t all that bad. If it weren’t for Fairy Falls, we probably wouldn’t be friends. We can thank our parents for that.”
“Thanks for the analysis, Dr. Phil, but I’m not letting my mom tell me how to feel. I just don’t want to be like her. That’s all,” I say.
“Eating a banana or cracking a smile now and again won’t make you vapid and self-centered,” he says. “But you keep punching yourself in the face and hoping your mom will get a black eye.”
“It just seems so unfair,” I say.
“Cookie, some snotty girl on a plane isn’t a reason to come down on yourself.” His goofy, boyish grin transmits even through the phone. “I like you the way you are.”
I smile in spite of myself, even though I secretly think he’d like me more if I looked more like my mom.
As the shuttle pulls up to the curb, I hang up and shimmy my way into the back of the van. It’s not easy getting back there, but I know it’s the best way to avoid dirty looks from other passengers.
I think of Tommy as I watch the yellow streetlights pass. I try to remember the exact moment that I knew I wanted to be more than friends and the exact moment when it occurred to me how impossible that is.
It’s my first time in New York.
Even the buildings are tall and thin.
“You going to the Continental Hotel?” the driver calls from the front.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Sorry. That place is a dump.” He chuckles as a man slides into the front seat.
I close my eyes and imagine that I’ll open them to a whole new world.
We drive.
Gareth Miller continues to stare. I consider throwing something in the aisle so he’ll have to turn in that direction.
“You know an awful lot about airline safety for someone so young,” he says.
Yuck. What a cheesy way to ask someone’s age. “I can use Wikipedia, and I’m nineteen.” This is a mistake.
I don’t know why I give him that detail.
He smiles again. “Ah, I remember nineteen. Where’d your boyfriend take you for your birthday?”
I’ve never had a boyfriend, and I don’t want to tell the King of Fashion I spent the evening crying into a diet soda while Tommy was probably somewhere making out with my nemesis.
“What did you do on your nineteenth birthday?” I hedge.
He laughs, revealing a smile that would shame a toothpaste ad. “Ever been to Flathead County, Montana?”
I shake my head.
“Well, you can have dinner at the Sizzler. Or a kegger down at the lake. My pop settled on the latter.”
“Weren’t you already at Parsons by then?” I ask.
He pauses, regards me a bit differently. “We have met before. I knew it. Do a fella a favor and give me a hint where it was.” He turns a bit red. “We haven’t ever...”
At the front of the plane, the flight attendant is buckling herself into her seat. A few seconds later, the 757 races down the runway.
I glare at Gareth Miller. “You have that much trouble keeping track of the women you sleep with?” I let him squirm in his seat, facing the real possibility that he’ll have to spend four hours next to a stranger with whom he’d shared forgettable sex. He’s making a big show of watching the plane lift off the runway.
“We’ve never met,” I say. “But I get the ParDonna.com newsletter.”
He leans away from the window, breathing more comfortably. “Well, yeah, I had already moved to New York by then. But my dad always insists I come home for my birthday. It’s during the summer, so the timing isn’t too bad. The weather is nice.”
“It’s freezing in Montana in the winter.” I tuck my fingers into the ends of my sweater.
“You’ve been there? In the winter?”
I sigh. He’s still got that pensive expression on his face. Like he won’t quit until he figures out who I am. And it’s possible, given enough time, he might be able to guess. I decide to get out in front of it and tell him.
“Yeah. I went with my mother. She did a photoshoot there a few years ago. Leslie Vonn Tate. That’s probably why I seem familiar. People say we look alike.”
He’s impressed. His eyes widen. “Leslie Vonn Tate. Sure, I remember. The Atelier Fur thing. Bruce Richardson shot it in Whitefish, right?”
The Atelier Fur thing.
A totally avoidable clusterfuck. If only Grandma’s hairdresser had used one more roller.
FAT: Two years before NutriNation
Mom’s in the living room of Grandma’s tiny yellow house, striking a slumped pose on the 1980s brown plaid sofa. In her off-white Valentino shift dress, she’s more the picture of a model on an ironic Nylon magazine photoshoot than a mom hanging with her daughter. She’s got Lois Veering on speakerphone.
“The day of the supermodel is dead. Truly dead,” Lois Veering moans. She’s the editor of Par Donna. Nobody likes Veering. I’d bet fifty bucks that she won’t last, that it’s just a matter of time before her assistant edges her out.
She’s calling Mom. Because anybody who’s anybody hates fur. “And they’re strutting around naked in the trades. On my shoots demanding vegan pizzas and goji berry smoothies,” she says. “I need you, Leslie. I really need you.”
In spite of the best efforts of sexy celebrities and inked-up athletes, fur companies keep raking in cash—around $15 billion a year. Their sales are up worldwide. The Eastern European nouveaux riches and the wives of Chinese millionaires, they want their mink.
“The biggest threat to fur is global warming,” Veering sneers.
And the biggest threat to fashion magazines is sluggish ad sales. Atelier Fur has big bucks. They want a cover. A supermodel. They want photographer Bruce Richardson.
Mom’s there to pick me up from the tiny yellow house for a spa weekend in La Jolla. It’s my bad luck that Grandma gets home early from her hair appointment.
“We can just do it another time, Mom,” I say. “It’s no big deal.”
Grandma comes in. Takes one look at Mom, phone in hand.
“Cookie, go wait in your room,” Grandma says.
“It’s fine, Grandma. Everything is fine,”