THE LABEL TOOK us under its wing, providing housing, a driver to take us to our appointments in a big blue Suburban, and Peter Vincent. Peter seemed like a nice enough guy. When he arrived at Big Disc for our initial meeting, Meredith had let her gaze roam up and down his body, silently assessing. He looked as clean-cut as a mid-century milkman, with bright blue eyes and sandy-blond hair. Although his voice was grating—“Seriously,” Meredith had said, “he has zero control of his voice. How do people live like that? Talking, without understanding what speech is supposed to sound like?”—people sat up and listened to him. When I mentioned it to Joanna, I could hear her shrug through the phone. “He’s a guy. People automatically listen to white men for some stupid-ass reason. At least it benefits you.”
The complex that housed us was large and sprawling, and typically used for migratory parents and their children aiming to make it big in Hollywood. Pilot season was now over and the apartments were decimated; only the evergreen hopefuls stayed year-round in the temporary housing, and those lucky enough to have been chosen for projects but hadn’t found new homes yet. We could see them dotting the parking lot from the vantage point on our little balcony, coming and going on their own exhaustive schedules, tiny bodies with beautiful faces and their handlers. I sat outside on our sparse balcony, the darkening concrete warming the backs of my thighs, and pulled out my little silver phone.
Edie had mentioned that my forced rooming with Yumiko was a positive, that I’d get to know at least one of the girls instead of shutting myself in isolation every night, but the only way to get privacy on the phone was to talk out here with the glass door closed. It was still light enough that the sun burned low in the sky, a yolk breaking on the low flat roof of the building across the parking lot.
Though I’d tried Edie and Joanna, reaching their respective voice mails, Alex picked up for the first time in a week. My mood buoyed when his voice came through the receiver.
“Give me a sec,” he panted, as I heard some crunching and echoes in the background. “I’ve got some groceries and I’m not in my room yet, but I didn’t want to miss another call from you.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “What’d you buy?”
“Pringles, Mountain Dew, peanuts, the usual dorm-room snacks.”
I laughed. “It sounds sophisticated.”
“You know it.” The background sounds faded. I could hear a door snap closed. A muffled, “What’s up, man,” aimed outward at a roommate.
“Have you heard from Edie or Joanna lately?” I asked, hungry for news. I hated asking about them first, but I hadn’t heard from either in a while.
“Joanna is swamped. I barely talk to her, though we hang on IM sometimes when she is still up doing homework at two A.M. It’s never a full conversation though. Mostly her bitching about her classes.”
We didn’t have a computer at the apartment. I’d never owned one of my own and the other girls hadn’t brought any along with them. The apartment was bare-bones at best, and the label certainly wasn’t going to provide one for us.
“And Edie?”
“I talked to her yesterday. She told me that the last time y’all talked, you were getting ready to release the single?”
“Yeah, we shot some promo photos for it a few days ago.”
“Holy shit, Cass! How was that?”
“Honestly?” I hesitated. I knew that it was a big deal. It was the first time we had ever been treated to the professional-singer experience, with an artistic director, stylists, photographer, and makeup artists. Walking into the shoot, we had been tired but excited, but as the day wore on, it dragged. “Um, it was cool.”
“If it’d been cool, you wouldn’t have started with ‘honestly.’ That bad?”
I sighed and leaned against the wall, gaze soft toward the parking lot. Rubbing my temple, I said, “We had to get up super early. The shoot started at seven, but we had to be all glossied up.” I didn’t even know how Meredith had come alive; after we’d wrapped work the day before, she’d come home with us, changed, and gone out with a Nickelodeon star who lived next door and could get them into a club.
The SUV had picked us up at five—birds roosted quietly in the trees, and aside from the gentle hums of air conditioners, the silence had been ruined by Rose’s bashing on the door to our room to wake us up—and rolled us over to a studio space in downtown L.A. The next hour was spent with a hair and makeup team as we nodded off in chairs.
“Glossied,” Alex said. “How apropos.”
“Right. So this hair stylist is pulling on my head with a comb like a sadist—” I’d been so tired and so hungry that I’d almost appreciated the pain, because it took attention away from the emptiness in my stomach. Our manager had driven Yumiko and me to a dietitian almost immediately after my contract ink had dried, and we’d been given strict instructions on what not to eat. It was practically the entire food pyramid. I initially pushed back, but Peter made it clear: image was everything, and to be in Gloss meant to be on a perpetual diet. “Or you can pack your bags and go home,” he’d said. I resentfully agreed to do my best.
“Sadist, huh?” Alex said. “You’re learning new vocabulary while you’re in L.A.”
“Look who’s talking. ‘Apropos.’”
“I got a 760 on my verbal SATs, you know.”
I knew. That’s why Alex was at Northwestern, after all.
“Anyway,” I went on, “the artistic director comes out and he introduces himself as Jean, in the French way, pronounced through the nose.” I spoke like Jean had, grandiose and pinch-assed. The man had been so pretentious, even while wearing a bright white T-shirt and ripped jeans. His words to us were “Ladies, this shoot is going to be hot. You are gorgeous. Bring the attitude. Make at least one person in this studio fall in love with you by the end of this shoot.”
A stylist rolled a cart of synthetic fabrics close to our stations and plucked at the name tags attached to each hanger. “Meredith,” she said, passing along an ice-blue metallic jumpsuit. “Yummy-ko.” A black ensemble. A dusty pink for Rose, a sequined number for me.
“It’s pronounced You-Me,” Meredith corrected, fingering the shimmering fabric. “Is this material even going to photograph well against the rest of all that?”
“I’m supposed to wear these?” Yumiko said, holding a pair of stilettos that were basically black-lacquered chopsticks. Her stylist pushed down on her arm and continued flat-ironing her hair.
“Sure it will,” the first stylist said, answering Meredith and ignoring Yumiko. She shoved a pair of black three-inch-platform clogs in my direction. I had to hold them in my lap while a makeup artist coated my face with powder.
When we arrived on the set, tugging our outfits indiscreetly, Meredith pinching at her underwire like a woman infected with a rash, Yumiko teetering on her heels, Jean introduced us to our photographer, Sven, who began barking orders immediately. Move here, arm there, smile this way, no, not like that, give it to me for real, yes Red, just like that, now shift, yes you, the Asian girl, more face, give me more in the eyes, yes! And all the while as time slid by slowly, as we were posed like mannequins, rearranged inch by inch, I could feel the horrible hollow underneath my rib cage, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten and there was an apple waiting for me somewhere in the depths of the SUV.
It had been at least an hour since we’d stepped onto the set, four since waking up, and eight since falling asleep. Our smiles slipped, our hair grew limp under hot studio lights, and Sven complained.
“You there! Cassidy,” Sven snapped, and a finger had to poke me in the back before I snapped to attention. “I need you to laugh like you’re actually glad to be here. Not like that,” he said, when I let out a high-pitched giggle that was nowhere near adorable or sexy. It sounded strained and anxious, a dog tied to a fence post. “Throaty. Tilt your head back a tiny bit, eyes to me, yes.” His gaze was all over, flattening my body into a two-dimensional shape, stretching and pulling me with the light as he rearranged our collective limbs. “We’ll have to bring in some of this waist and hip,” he said to his assistant. Peter called out, “Girls! This is for the cover art for your single. If it doesn’t look good, it won’t sell. Please, make an effort.” The fatigue from the past few weeks, the humiliation of the waist and hip that I was sure the photographer meant was mine, started to catch up with me.
“Come on, Cassidy,” Rose murmured, her finger snaking in between rows of sequins on my bodice. “Think about how lucky you are to be here and give a little chuckle for the photographer so we can leave.”
“No, no, no,” shouted Sven. “Cassy! I said sexy, not sad. No tears!” He stood still, for the first time since we started the shoot, lowering his camera. “Do you need a minute?”
“I know we could all use a break,” said Meredith.
“No, let’s just get this over with,” said Yumiko. “You can do it, can’t you, Cassidy?”
I dashed at the tears that were blurring the edges of my vision and nodded silently, humiliated and ashamed. Jean signaled a makeup artist from the wings to come in and powder us all, soaking up another layer of sweat in a finely milled cosmetic dust.