OCTAVIAN COUNTRY DAY
LOBBY
2:32 PM
SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

Massie waited with Alicia and Dylan. The redhead's driver was coming to pick them up, but so far he hadn't shown. In her peripheral vision, she noticed Claire walking toward them. She was so sick of that girl following her around like a puppy it wasn't even funny. "What...do...you...want?" she growled, shooting an apoligetic look to her friends. She was definitely about to blow, but a showdown in a crowded room filled with wealthy girls from rich families wasn't her thing. She took a deep breath. She'd make it her thing.

"Where's Issac?" Claire asked simply.

"He's not coming." Massie hadn't thought about how Claire was supposed to get home, but it wasn't her problem. Kendra might have told her to be nicer to her new neighbor, but Massie wasn't her mother, for hell's sake. "Call your mom."

"I don't have a cell phone," Claire stammered.

"Really?" This was alien to Massie. She didn't know anyone without their own phone. "Oh, I know." An evil smile crept across her face. "Why don't you hitch a ride with your new friend? What's her name? Layme?" This earned a laugh from Alicia and a high-five from Dylan.

"Layne," said Claire quietly. "Maybe I will." She ran to where her friend was standing.

Massie looked away. "Sometimes I hate her."

"She tries," commented Dylan, surprising Massie with her caring tone. "Westchester's new to her."

"Yeah, she's not used to playin' with the big girls," quipped Alicia.

"Hey! There's Lloyd!" Dylan said gleefully.

"To Single Ladies by Beyonce," ordered Massie. The other two arranged themselves behind her to make a triangle, and they strutted out of OCD. Done for the day.

MARVIL MANOR
THIRD-FLOOR HALLWAY
3:01 PM
SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

"Okay," said Aimee. "The first thing we will work on is walk. No one ever gets this right."

Alicia held in a squeak of indignation. The stylist would find out soon enough.

"Massie, you first." She turned her head perfectly so that her hair fell over her shoulder, and held her own as she cringe-walked down the hall in the heels from hell. "Not bad, not bad," Aimee nodded. Alicia and Dylan air-clapped. "You have to get used to heels, though." She scribbled a note in the black space on Massie's form. "Next!"

Dylan stepped up. Rising magnificently to the occasion, she rocked it down the hall, posed, and came back. "Um-hmm." Now Aimee smiled.

Alicia grinned. This had to be easy if Dylan could carry herself with that kind of easy grace. Especially since Alicia was in flats. She filled her lungs with air and stepped onto the red carpet Aimee had unrolled as a fake runway. After one step, she realized this was not as easy as it looked. 'Confidence,' she thought determinedly. She straightened up, but she didn't know what to do with her arms, and she kind of felt like an awkward gorilla. She made it there and back, but she knew she hadn't done well when Aimee's face fell. She barely heard the head woman mutter to her assistant, "One-and-a-half out of three. Not bad."

"Let's try again." She pulled out a mini-camera and positioned it on a tripod. "Watch yourselves this time."

Dylan went first, repeated her amazing walk, and pressed Play. The others crowded around to see how she looked on video. "Hey, I'm good at this." Dylan grinned.

Massie went next. She had adjusted to the shoes, and was able to perform decently, if not pretty damn well. She watched her recording, and Alicia could practically see her friend mentally comparing herself to the girl whose house they were practicing in.

"Alright," Alicia announced. Everyone turned to look at her. She placed her reverse-French-manicured hand on her hip and tried to sway down the hall. She knew what her mother, the retired model from Spain, always said: "Si lo tienes, que ostentan." or "If you've got it, flaunt it." Alicia tried. She tried to flaunt her curves, flaunt her boobs, flaunt her beautiful Spanish skin. Then she watched her video. It sucked.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

MARVIL MANOR
STAIRCASE
3:59 PM
SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

Dylan walked with Massie while Alicia moped along behind them. "Did you see her?" she mumbled.

"I thought she'd be better at this," Massie muttered back, hoping Alicia was out of earshot.

"Me too." They continued in silence for a minute, and then, right before they'd arrived at her room, Dylan whisper-squealed, "I've got it!"

"Got what?" Massie brushed hair out of her face and stared at Dylan.

"Couldn't we look around and find another model?" she asked in the manner of someone who is afraid of their own ideas. "It's my mom's fashion show, after all. We can just say she looked at the videos and didn't like Alicia's, so she wanted us to choose someone else." Dylan grinned eagerly at Massie, not only because she was sure this would impress her, but because she was proud of her great idea. In a family filled with two know-it-all older sisters, and an uber, uber-famous mother, she wasn't listened to very often.

"It's worth a shot," acknowledged Massie, nodding. "Alright, split up before she gets suspicious."

Slowly, they edged away from each other, Dylan entering her room first and Massie lagging behind with Alicia.

She turned the doorknob and pulled the sea-green door open. She stopped short in her tracks. "Eh-ma-gawd." The room was filled with makeup. Dylan dearly loved her cosmetics, but she never spent this much time on them. There was a tray on her desk chair, and on her immaculate desk were piles and stacks of eyeshadow, rows of eyeliner and mascara, and hanging up above it were posters of each of the girls, their faces computer-edited to be free of makeup.

She plopped onto her bottom bunk, the only place that wasn't covered in makeup, and scanned her room in wonder. On her nightstand were containers of every single shade of blush that existed. On top of her completely cleared-out bookcase lay concealer, on her top shelf sat foundation, and her bottom shelf was filled to the brim with hair-styling products. Her thin forest-green rug had been pushed to the side of the room. On it were hundreds of lip glosses and tubes of lipsticks. The gold-edged full-length mirror gleamed upon them all as it winked back their reflections.

"Line up!" called Aimee, standing with a group of other people at the head of the room.

"Ugh, gym," Alicia said under her breath.

Massie and Dylan forced a giggle, turning to face the stylists.

"Makeup off!" Aimee wiggled her fingers in a secret signal behind her back, and the room came alive with people, swarming the large space like locusts. Two sat down on Dylan's bed with her, another couple went into her walk-in closet with Massie, and Alicia was on the stairs that led up to her loft.

"Everything off, understood?" said the Chinese woman who was peering at Dylan's face. She nodded. In case she had bad breath, she didn't want the stranger smelling it. She rubbed a foul-smelling lotion onto Dylan's face, massaging it over her. Dylan fought to keep herself from scraping it off. Carefully, the woman picked up a damp white washcloth and ran it over Dylan's cheeks. The cool water came as a relief. When she removed the rag, the stinging moisturizer came off with it. After making sure every last residue of her makeup was removed, the stylist sat, satisfied, on a bench with a line of other people.

Soon, the other two were done also. "I look ugly!" a voice came from inside the closet. Even though someone had thoughtfully closed the French doors, Massie still felt uncomfortable. It was hard to approach two other very beautiful people with a non-made-up face.

"You're always beautiful!" called Dylan, not sure how loud she had to scream to get Massie to hear her from behind the doors. No one ever closed them.

"You don't have to worry," snapped Alicia impatiently.

"Why?"

"Cuz you get more beautiful every day!" she yelled.

Dylan nodded enthusiastically, even though Massie couldn't see her. "And since you've lived for eleven years, I'm sure you'll look ah-mazing."

"Alright." Massie edged out of the closet.

"You don't look any different," said Dylan. She had been expecting her friend to look like a total troll, but she looked exactly the same as the day they'd met. Gorgeous. Amazing.

Perfect.

MARVIL MANOR
DYLAN'S ROOM
4:18 PM
SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

She knew she'd looked pretty the whole time, but Massie had just wanted to hear her friends say it. What girl doesn't enjoy fishing for compliments?

She grabbed a brush from Dylan's shelf, ran it through her hair, then fluffed it out so it fell down her back perfectly. She took a step out from the closet as the other two walked cautiously to the center of the room. Slowly, they took each other in. Drum roll, please... Everyone looked exactly the same. Big what.

"So first we project an image of the makeup we'd like to try onto your poster," explained Aimee, gesturing to three Macs balancing on the top bunk of Dylan's bed. A stylist climbed up and immediatly began to add shades of color to their air-brushed faces. "We do one girl at a time."

"Me!" Massie broke in, sounding at the same time like an excited kindergartener and a bored eighth-grader. Alicia and Dylan sat on Dylan's bed, chatting.

Massie stepped into the makeshift spotlight that had been fastened somewhat precariously to the ceiling of Dylan's room. She made sure she kept away from being directly underneath it, just in case the light fell.

"We are going to focus on your eyes," proclaimed Aimee, brandishing foundation in one hand and concealer in the other. "But first we have to go through the basic steps." She dabbed on lotions and brushed on powders, turning the 11-year-old this way and that to see what looked good. It took twenty minutes just to get the "basics" right. Then she picked up a palette filled with any possible eyeshadow color in the world. Lime green and cocoa brown and royal blue and hot pink and charcoal black and gittery white, and many, many others. After testing out little samples on Massie's lids, she said to the woman at the computers, "尝试的浅绿色，衬托出她的眼睛." Massie didn't know what that meant, but a few seconds later a light olive green flashed onto her poster lids. It accentuated the flecks of color in her eyes.

"I like it!" she exclaimed happily.

Aimee ignored her. Now she was examining different types of mascara and squinting at Massie. "Your eyelashes are long but thin, yes?"

"Yes."

"So we will try this." She showed the stylist on Dylan's bed a long green tube emblazoned with silver letters. Quickly, poster-Massie's eyelashes doubled in volume.

"Yes, yes!" Massie whisper-breathed.

"Now for blush..." She led Massie over to Dylan's nightstand, holding up powder after powder to the girl's cheeks. "Smile, don't smile, tight smile, just your eyes... This one. 你认为将是很好的一个浅玫瑰红?" she added.

"当然." She tapped a few keys and a rosy tint appeared, leaving the girl's face glowing.

"现在的嘴唇。薄，但不难看。喜欢你的睫毛," she said to herself. After sifting through a pile of lip gloss, she said, "尝试一些半红." A reddish tint appeared. It looked okay, but, "也许桃花会更好看，就这一个."

Now a more opaque look plumped Massie's lips, making the real her smile. "Perfect," said Aimee. "Next!"

Alicia stepped up. She knew she hadn't done well on the runway, but this was where she shone. She was about to open her mouth to tell Aimee exactly what looked good on her, but she stopped. Massie hadn't said a word, yet her poster looked great. She closed her mouth and her eyes as Aimee began testing shades.

The stylist on the bed moved over to the next computer and pressed a key. It booted up, sending a beam of light towards Alicia's poster. "You need to bring out your lips," murmured Aimee. She led Alicia over to the rug and sat her down, trying out colors. "粉色和桃色的," she ordered the computer woman.

A light sheen appeared on her poster image. Alicia nodded, liking the look.

"Now eyes."

The stylist zoomed in on Alicia's gleaming ones. "Purple," said Aimee. "It goes with your dress." She held it up to the woman, who quickly entered it on the Mac. "And eyeliner."

After Alicia's poster was completely finished, she looked transformed.

Dylan was done up with eyeliner, heavy blush, and red lips: fierce and daring, like a star.

Massie looked at her friends, then up at their images on paper. Somehow, she couldn't imagine their computer-looks on any of them.

FDR PARK
SOCCER FIELD
5:46 PM
SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

Kristen passed the ball back to Belle, who slammed it toward their defense. The practice had gone well, and out of it had appeared a fresh, new Kristen. No longer was she going to try to impress anyone. She would do whatever felt right to her, and damn everyone else. She was going to start only paying attention to those who mattered.