Read Online The Home for Wayward Supermodels by Pamela Redmond Satran - Free Book Online Page B

over a short white skirt with big iridescent sequins shimmering on it. On her feet were bright yellow high-heeled slides of the type worn by Barbie. Her copious honey-colored hair was piled high on her head, and her mascara was smudged—although on her it looked so good I could imagine thousands of fourteen-year-olds copying the look the next day.
    “Let’s go out,” she repeated. “We make party.”
    Blearily I consulted the clock on the narrow table wedged between our two narrow beds.
    “It’s after midnight!” I said with alarm. “I thought you were coming home.”
    “Am coming home,” she said. “But now going out again. Come on.” She tugged on my arm, lifting me from the bed. “Come on, lazy girl.”
    “But Raquel said…”
    Tatiana laughed. “Raquel is old lady. We are hot babes. Come.”
    “I don’t have anything to wear,” I said. At least not anything like a tighter-than-skin denim shirt and the sequined headband Tatiana was wearing as a skirt.
    “Yes you have,” Tatiana said gravely. “Today, I test-drive all your clothes.”
    I thought everything looked distinctly messier than it had when I put it away. She opened the top drawer of my dresser and without hesitation pulled out one of Desi’s creations, the short dress made from vintage material she’d been working on the night I stayed at her house.
    “This,” she said, “is butchin’.”
    I figured she meant bitchin’, but I didn’t really think it would be any better if she said it right.
    “My friend Desi designed that.”
    “Desi is genius,” Tatiana pronounced. “Wear this, I style you.”
    Instead of a jewelry box, Tatiana had a tool kit as big as the ones guys hauled in the back of their pickups. It was so heavy she actually couldn’t lift it, but had to slide it out from the floor of her closet, where it had been buried under a heap of dirty clothes and jumbled shoes. Her idea of “butchin’” accessories were gold hoops so big they rested on my shoulders and sandals so high I couldn’t stand in them, never mind walk.
    “The earrings are cool,” I told her. “But I’m sorry, Tatiana. I can’t handle these shoes.”
    “Call me Tati,” she said. “And you will handle shoes. You are supermodel now.”
    My first day out, and I’d already been promoted from model to supermodel.
    Downstairs, I was stunned to find an enormous stretch limo, as shiny as my black patent leather confirmation shoes, idling at the curb in wait for us.
    “Did Raquel send this?” I asked, my eyes widening.
    “Raquel, ha! This is boyfriend’s car. Or maybe—” she said, darkening, “ex-boyfriend’s.”
    From the looks of it, a party had already been in progress in the back of the limo. Just like our apartment, it too was filled with smoke, and it too had discarded champagne bottles on the floor. Once we were inside, Tati didn’t have to say a word and the car glided purposefully into the traffic.
    “Where are we going?” I asked her.
    “Hot club,” she said, popping the cork on a fresh bottle of champagne and pouring me a crystal glass full. “We’re hunting.”
    “What are we hunting for?”
    “For boyfriend ”—that word seemed to automatically cause her brows to knit and her mouth to turn down—“of course.”
    I was nervous that Raquel would call to check up on us in the middle of the night, or that maybe the agency had security cameras installed in our apartment, but then I told myself no, that was impossible. As long as we got up on time, as long as we showed up for our go-sees and our bookings, we wouldn’t get in trouble. Heck, Tati didn’t even seem to do that and Raquel hadn’t put her on a plane back to Ukraine.
    The car glided to a stop in front of a dark building, marked only with a large gold number 13, where there was a crowd of people congregated on the sidewalk. Without waiting for the driver to open the door, Tati pulled me out of the car, champagne glass still in hand, and toward the building’s