Fairest of Them All Read online

  Easy for her to say.

  I can barely think about anything else besides the audition all weekend, or the next week at school.

  “What’s up with you, Aria?” Dad asks me when I accidentally pour orange juice into his coffee instead of milk on the morning of the audition. “You’ve been in another world for the last week or so.”

  “Oh, you know, got a lot going on at school,” I say. “Tests coming up and all that.”

  “Are you sure that’s all?” he persists.

  “Having tests is nothing new,” Mom adds. “You’re used to that.”

  “It’s nothing!” I snap. “I just made a mistake with the OJ, okay? Sheesh!”

  I see my parents exchange one of those Teenage girls and their hormones making them crazy glances, and that just makes me even angrier. I get it, my body is changing, but that doesn’t mean everything is about me and my hormones. It just might mean my parents are driving me crazy—which they are.

  So I scarf down my breakfast as fast as I can. “See you later,” I tell them. “I’ll be home late. I’ve got the Chess Club field trip after school.”

  “When’s our match?” Dad asks. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  And I’m dreading it.

  “Soon,” I shout from the hallway, on my way out the door. If I can’t put it off for any longer, that is. Which means I need to watch even more of those painfully boring instructional videos to brush up over the weekend. Ugh.

  “Are you nervous?” Dakota asks at lunch.

  “You’ve barely eaten a thing,” Sophie says. “You need energy for the audition.”

  I force myself to take a few bites of my sandwich and a drink of milk, but it just makes the butterflies in my stomach dance even more.

  “I can’t. I’m too nervous.”

  “Just relax and be yourself,” Nina advises. “They’ll love you. We already know Adele Bonrever likes your work.”

  “But how am I supposed to relax knowing there’ll be a camera in my face?” I ask. “And is being myself enough? It’s not like I’m especially TV-worthy. I’m just a regular kid.”

  “A regular kid whose mom is a celebrity princess who runs the most successful party-planning business in New York City,” Sophie points out. “And whose dad is on the red-carpet shows every other week at some chichi charity ball or another.”

  “It’s too bad you have to lie to your parents,” Dakota says. “Because I bet they could have given you good advice for the audition.”

  Come to think about it, he’s right. My parents would have been able to give me great advice about being camera-ready, if I’d told them what I was doing this afternoon. But there’s a reason I didn’t.

  “If I’d been honest with them, they’d have locked me away for my own protection,” I point out. “Getting advice would have been out of the question.”

  “Look, Ms. Amara helped you pick the best sketches to show them,” Matt says. “Don’t worry. You’ll slay.”

  “Thanks,” I say, hoping like anything that he’s right.

  Adele Bonrever’s office is in Hell’s Kitchen, or Clinton, as it’s known now that it’s gentrified and trendy. I’m buzzed into her office, which is on the second floor of a nice old brownstone.

  “Hi, I’m Eliot, Ms. Bonrever’s assistant,” says the young man who greets me at the door. “You must be . . .” He checks his clipboard. “Aria Thornbrier.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Great. Adele’s just finishing up with the previous audition. Have a seat here,” he says, pointing to a chair in the hallway. “I’ll be out to get you shortly.”

  I sit down to wait as he opens a door at the end of the corridor and disappears behind it.

  The hallway is lined with pictures of people Adele has cast in shows. I don’t have a professional head shot like the framed examples on the wall. All I have is a profile picture I printed from Instagram, my school-made skirt, my sketches, and my sparkling personality, which right now is more scared than sparkle-tastic.

  I’m getting dry mouth from nerves. Luckily, they have a water cooler. I take a little snow-cone-shaped paper cup from the dispenser and fill it with cold water. I’m in midswallow when the door at the end of the hall opens and Eliot comes out, calling my name, which startles me into choking. Water comes out of my nose, which is really attractive and particularly embarrassing because the person who was auditioning before me is a guy, and not just that—a really cute guy. Scratch that—drop-dead gorgeous. And I might actually drop dead because he’s not doing anything to help me while I stand here choking. Instead, he stands there looking at me curiously, the way an anthropologist might watch an ant carrying a very heavy load back to the colony.

  Fortunately, Eliot rushes to pat me on the back, and when I finally manage to breathe again, he offers me a tissue from the box on his desk.

  “Sorry,” I wheeze. “Water . . . went down the wrong way.”

  “Are you okay to go in now?” Eliot asks. “Ms. Bonrever is ready for you.”

  I manage a breath without coughing. “Sure. Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Picking up my backpack, I head for the doorway of the audition room. Something makes me glance back before I go in, and when I do, the gorgeous guy is staring at me with his light-blue eyes. He grins suddenly, revealing a mouthful of perfect white teeth, and winks at me, like he’s my best friend wishing me luck.

  His smile gives me a bit of a flutter. But it seems strange after the way he just watched me choke without doing anything to help. Still, there’s no disputing his one-hundred-degree hotness, so I smile back before turning my focus back to the door and the audition ahead. I want to be on this show—and even more than that, I need to win first prize.

  Ms. Bonrever is sitting in a comfortable chair with a teapot and mug and a large jug of water next to her. I wish I could ask for a drink of water, but I’m afraid I'll choke, literally as well as figuratively, on the audition. I’ll just have to hope my lips don’t stick together.

  “Good afternoon, Aria,” Adele says. “This is Sasha.” She points to another young assistant, who is standing behind a digital camera on a tripod. “She’ll be taking video as I ask questions. Did you bring some sketches?”

  “Uh, yes.” I put down my backpack and pull out my sketchbook. With Ms. Amara’s help, I paper-clipped the pages that I want to show so that the book opens to those sketches. I hand Ms. Bonrever the book, and she gestures for me to sit in the chair opposite.

  Sasha takes a light reading, and then after she nods to Ms. Bonrever, Adele says, “Let’s get started, shall we? I’m going to ask you questions, and I want you to answer me as naturally as you can. Sound good?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  She starts flipping through my sketchbook.

  “I love this design,” she says, turning the book around so I can see the sketch of a protest T-shirt. “What inspired this?”

  “The theme in social studies this year is the Industrial Society and we’ve been learning about the big waves of immigration that helped it happen,” I explain. “But also the nativist protests against immigrants.”

  I can’t help wondering if I sound like a nerd and I’m ruining my chances of getting on the show, but Ms. Bonrever is nodding her head, so I continue. “Anyway, I thought, wow, that’s kind of like what’s on the news now, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Ms. Bonrever agrees.

  “And the thing is, we were all immigrants once—or at least anyone who wasn’t a Native American, which is most people. So that’s the inspiration, basically.”

  As I’m speaking, she’s looking through the book, and she asks me about another design as soon as I’m done. Then she asks me some more-personal questions.

  “Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

  “No, I’m an only child.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Not really. I have a dog,” I reply.

  She laughs, and so does Sasha. That makes me relax a little, so I ris
k some more humor.

  “And I never have to worry about Mozart stealing my clothes.”

  Sasha laughs out loud. She must have a clothes-swiping sister. Ms. Bonrever’s lips are twitching.

  “Well, I think we’ve got enough,” she says. “Thank you for your time.”

  That’s it? Does this mean I haven’t been selected? But I thought it went well.

  “Um . . . what happens next?” I ask, hoping she doesn’t say that I’m a total loser who should never darken her doorstep again.

  “I’ve got a few more auditions to wrap up today, and then I’ll be making recommendations to the producers of the show tomorrow. They may want another callback, or they might decide to go ahead because of the tight shooting schedule.”

  She smiles and hands me back my sketchbook.

  “We’ll be in touch.”

  I walk out the door trying to decipher her smile and the way she said it. Was it a brush-off or a “you rocked my socks with your awesomeness—we are so DEFINITELY going to be in touch”?

  There’s a girl sitting in one of the waiting chairs, trying not to look nervous.

  “It’s not so bad,” I tell her.

  “Who says I think it’s going to be bad?” she says, like I just dissed her.

  “Oh. Um. No one . . . Well, break a leg,” I say.

  “Are you crazy? Why are you telling me to—”

  “It means ‘good luck’ in theaterspeak,” Eliot explains hastily, because the girl’s now standing up and looking like she’s ready to break my leg.

  It’s time to exit stage whatever-direction-is-the-fastest-way-to-the-door and hope that I get chosen.

  Chapter Five

  “THAT’S NEW YORK IN A nutshell,” Sophie says, laughing, when I tell my friends the break-a-leg story the next day before school. We’re chilling on the sidewalk outside before we have to go in.

  “Emphasis on the nut part,” Matt jokes.

  “I’d have run away screaming,” Nina says with a shiver. “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel at home here. Everyone seems so . . . angry.”

  “Like the people at home in the woods aren’t angry?” Dakota argues. “Our step-grandmother convinced Grandpa to send Dad and Aunt Gretel into the woods to die, and he agreed, which doesn’t exactly make him Father of the Year. So Dad and Aunt Gretel ended up in the house of some wacko cannibal lady who was going to bake Dad into a pie and do the same to Aunt Gretel when she’d finished.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter where you live,” I say. “There’s always going to be someone who is angry about something.”

  “You’re probably right,” Nina says with a sigh. “It just seems like there are so many more angry people here.”

  “That’s because there are more people here, period,” Matt says. “It’s a city.”

  “Really?” Sophie says as a taxi driver leans on the horn, almost deafening us, because a car cut him off. “I hadn’t noticed!”

  Dakota laughs. “So when do you find out if you were selected?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Soon, I hope. The suspense is killing me. And you know what makes it even worse?”

  “Being afraid that girl’s going to break your leg?” Nina asks.

  “No, the fact that Dad keeps challenging me to play chess and I don’t think I can put him off much longer.”

  Unanimous laughter isn’t the supportive response I was hoping for—but it’s what I get. Is it any surprise that I start the school day in a bad mood?

  We have to turn our phones off during the school day, but when I turn mine on before Couture Club, there’s a voice mail from a number I don’t recognize.

  “Hi, Aria, this is Adele Bonrever—my clients loved your tape, and I’m delighted to tell you that you’ve been cast in Teen Couture. Taping starts a week from Saturday. Give my assistant Eliot a call, and he’ll send you all the paperwork. And congratulations!”

  I let out a scream. “OHMIGOSH!” I exclaim, playing the message again on speaker so everyone can hear. “They chose me! I’m going to be on Teen Couture!”

  “Oh, Aria! How exciting!” Ms. Amara says, her face lighting up brighter than the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

  Nina gives me a big hug. “Amazing! You’re going to be a superstar!”

  “Will you remember us little people when you’re a famous celebrity?” Matt says.

  “I’ll think about it,” I tease, channeling my inner diva. “It depends on how hard you grovel.”

  “Feel free to forget me,” Dakota says. “I don’t do groveling.”

  “Who are you again?” I ask. “Do I know you?”

  Dakota grins. “See, she hasn’t even been on TV and it’s already happening.”

  “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “Sophie will make sure I don’t get a big head.”

  “I’m sure the whole school will be supportive,” Ms. Amara says, “and help you stay levelheaded.”

  I realize with horror that she’s planning to put my good news in the announcements, which means that that news will get back to my parents—and I promised Ms. Amara that I’d tell them if I was selected.

  There’s no way I can do that, because they won’t let me do it. Besides, then they’ll know that I’ve been lying to them about going to Chess Club. I’ll be in double trouble.

  I end up messing up the hem on my skirt because I’m so busy worrying about what to do, and have to unpick it and resew it.

  “I better not mess up like this on Teen Couture,” I say to Nina as I attack the stitches on the bad seam. “It would be so embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassment would be the least of your problems. You should be more worried about being voted off the show.”

  “That’s if I even get to be on the show,” I say. “How do I get Ms. Amara not to announce that I’ve been chosen? If she does, I’m dead. And that’s without pricking my finger on anything.”

  “Can’t you talk to her?” Nina asks.

  “I already did, before I auditioned. I promised to tell Mom and Dad if I got on the show.”

  “Oh. That’s not good,” Nina says.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I say with a sigh. “Like how to solve the problem.”

  “Problem? What problem?” Matt says. “You’re going to be famous.”

  I explain my dilemma. He thinks for a moment and then snaps his fingers in front of my nose.

  “Abracadabra! Problem gone!” he says. “Just call me your fairy godbrother.”

  “How, exactly, is my problem gone?” I ask.

  “You tell Ms. Amara that you just got the paperwork and it says you aren’t allowed to disclose your participation in said broadcast until given permission by the producers and publicists or something like that,” Matt says. “Make it sound all legalese.”

  “Fairy godbrother, you are a genius!” I tell him, feeling more cheerful already.

  “Can I be your agent?” he asks. “I’ll only take twenty-five percent.”

  “Don’t push it. You’re not that much of a genius,” I say. “But I’ll buy you a hot chocolate.”

  “It was worth a try,” Matt says. “And I’ll definitely take the hot chocolate.”

  I approach Ms. Amara when it’s time to go home and everyone is leaving.

  “Um . . . would you mind holding off on the announcement?” I ask.

  She looks me straight in the eye, and I’m tempted to look away, but then she’ll know I’m working on Lie Number 5 or 6 or whatever it is.

  Look honest, I tell myself. I try hard not to blink.

  “This wouldn’t be about keeping your participation a secret from your parents, would it?” she asks with a skeptically raised eyebrow.

  “No, of course not. I’ve already texted my parents,” I lie, willing my eyes to stay wide and innocent. “It’s just that the producers sent me an e-mail with all the paperwork, and it says that I’m not supposed to disclose or publicize my participation in the show. Something about publicity and letting the PR company �
�build the buzz’ or whatever.”

  “I see,” Ms. Amara says, although she sounds only about 70 percent convinced. But it’s enough. “Well, I guess we’ll have to keep it a Couture Club secret, then, won’t we?”

  “For now, at least,” I say. “It’ll be public soon enough.”

  Hopefully not too soon, I think. The longer I can keep my parents from finding out, the better.

  Saturday morning my luck finally runs out. Dad wants to play chess and I have no legit reason to put him off anymore. I think about feigning a headache, but then Mom will just end up making some vile-tasting herbal decoction that she read about on CharmingLifestyles.com and swears works better than acetaminophen, rather than giving me something “man-made in a sterile factory.”

  “Mom, we live in New York City. It smells like pee in the subway half the time. I mean, that isn’t technically man-made?” I asked her once when I was gagging trying to down the decoction and wishing I had a normal mom who just gave me two acetaminophen tablets and a glass of water.

  She looked over at Dad and sighed. “I worry about bringing Aria up in the city, Bernhard,” Mom said. “She doesn’t have the same connection with nature that we had, Once Upon a Time.”

  “What do you mean?” I argued, despite my headache. “I’m in Central Park every other day practically!”

  “See what I mean, Bern?” Mom said. “Maybe we should consider moving to the suburbs.”

  The horror. The horror.

  Luckily, Dad reminded her that there was no way they could effectively run Enchanted Soirées from the burbs and still spend quality time with dearest darling moi. #LifeSaved.

  But that doesn’t help me today. I’m stuck in front of a chess board, being challenged by Dad, who is probably going to realize that I haven’t been spending all these hours after school at Chess Club.

  I move my pawn e2 to e4. Dad sucks air through his front teeth.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Are you sure?”

  I’m not at all sure. I’m not even the teensiest bit sure. But admitting that might raise suspicion.

  “Sure, I’m sure!”