Pop Princess (11 page)

“We're here!” she said. The car was stopped in front of Bergdorf Goodman, only about the poshest department store in all of Manhattan, where Mom and I had gone window-shopping during the week we came for my auditions with Pop Life Records. Karl lurched out of the SUV and was met in the front of the store by two security types wearing smart suits.

Kayla turned around to wink at me. “Let's make this one fun!” She reached underneath her seat and pulled out a frizzy brown wig that had to be the ugliest hairstyle I'd ever seen. She placed the wig on her head and added a Burberry silk scarf over it, tying the scarf under her chin but pulling out several strands of electric mousy strands to frame her face. Then she reached into her handbag and pulled out a pair of wire-rim glasses. I couldn't help but laugh. She looked ridiculous, with her hot body and ridiculous head getup—like some trampy old librarian.

“Want one too?” Kayla asked me.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

Kayla reached underneath the seat again and pulled out a Cher-esque wig with thick long black hair and black bangs. She handed it to me along with a pair of large granny black cat-eye sunglasses from like 1955. I tried 'em on and knew my look was a success when even Liam laughed from his sulk beside me.

Karl came back to open the SUV door. He turned to Liam. “The driver will take you to the library. I'll be out tonight, so you're on your own. Don't get into trouble.”

Kayla turned to Liam and flashed her megawatt grin. She pointed at him. “Yeah, Liam, don't get into trouble.”

Karl helped Kayla, Mrs. C, and me out of the car. Then he sped off and the security guys whisked us inside the store, past rows of handbag and cosmetics counters I was dying to linger at, and into an elevator away from the crowds, who indeed did not recognize Kayla in her ridiculous disguise. We arrived in a private room where a tea service was set up and a personal shopper and several models were waiting to show us the latest line of clothes.

Nobody could ever say Kayla couldn't show a girl a good time.

The clock on the wall
in the private room at Bergdorf read 1:25. I thought, if I were trapped back in Devonport, I would be sitting through Algebra 2 literally watching the clock tick through forty-two minutes of torture, waiting for it to end, trying to ignore the fact that Jen Burke was passing notes to her chums that they always made sure my eyes grazed as it passed between their hands:
Some B-Kid bitch in this class couldn't sing and dance her way out of that blaring D-I saw slapped against her test paper!
Was this new life at 1:25 on a Tuesday afternoon school day better than the one I'd left behind? Hell YEAH.

In the short time I'd been in Manhattan, I'd been shopping with stylists for basic pop princess wardrobe—high-fashion jeans, short short skirts and tight tight blouses, cuter-than-a-teddy bear shoes—but nothing prepared me for the Kayla makeover. The shopping adventure with Kayla was like the Beverly Hills shopping scene in
Pretty Woman
where Richard Gere takes Julia Roberts to all the posh stores and makes the salesclerks totally suck up to her while showing her reams of gorgeous clothes, and she is laughing and smiling that horse grin and just having the best time ever—except for that icky part about being a prostitute. And except for the part about Kayla's Sasquatch bodyguard hovering outside the showroom.

Stunning saleswoman: May I get you some more tea, Miss Blake?

Miss Blake: Why yes, that would be lovely.

Stunning saleswoman: What a figure you have! This Chanel dress is
the
one for you.

Miss Blake: Why thank you. I've been working out, like, A LOT.

Stunning saleswoman: We have scones too. Would you like a scone?

Kayla: No! (reaching into her purse and handing a protein bar to a famished Miss Blake) She can't eat bread. How do you expect her to fit into that dress? (She points to Miss Blake's dream dress.)

What looked on a hanger like a simple raw silk tea rose cocktail frock was, when on my body, a princess-in-waiting,
Vogue
cover wanna-be, unpronounceable Euro-name designer, Wonder Blake ECSTATIC dress. Seeing myself in the mirror with the dress on, I had to suppress the urge to twirl around like Belle in
Beauty and the Beast
—I couldn't possibly appear that uncool in front of Kayla. I stepped up on tippy toes instead, a ballet pose. Kayla snapped her fingers and BOOM, boxes and boxes of shoes magically appeared. Kayla chose the killer match: a pair of four-inch black spiked-heel pumps, cut in a triangular shape at the toes, with ribbon at the back to wrap around the ankles and partially up the leg.

Kayla stood up next to me at the mirror, pressing her hand into my upper arm. “Go on, flex,” she said. I flexed for her and she felt around my new muscles. “Not bad, not bad.” She flexed her own bicep: completely Halle Berry-worthy, sculpted to a lean work of art. “But you still have a way to go.”

The saleswoman finished fitting the dress on me. “I wish I had a prom to go to!” I said to Kayla when I saw the reflection of myself in the mirror. The saleswoman was behind me, adjusting the hems while a tailor stuck pins into the dress.

“Prom?”
Kayla said. “Wake up and smell the G.E.D. That dress is for like a movie premiere or a record release party. Paparazzi and shit.”

“You think I can go to one of those parties?”

“Wonder! Snap to attention! This is your new life. You chose it. YES.
Live it, love it, wear it!”
Kayla sang that last sentence, jumping up to treat the room to a hip-hop dance grind accompaniment. “Ooh,” she added, “I think I have a new song.”

The dress didn't have a price on it. I asked the saleswoman, “How much does this dress cost, anyway?”

Kayla said, “This trip's on big sister Kayla. Think of it as a present from me and Lucky.”

I knew better than to protest with Kayla. She always said what she meant; this was case closed. I smiled at her in the mirror. “Thank you so much.”

Not like I could argue: Almost all of the advance payment from the record company had gone right into a trust fund for me, and the rest had gone toward a new living room ceiling and other home improvements for the house in Devonport. I was glad the money was being used to help my family, but at the same time, I wouldn't have minded having a little income available to me. I didn't even have a credit card. All Mom's and my expenses so far had been taken care of by Tig.

The saleswoman tried to be discreet, but she was ogling my boobs, adjusting them to fit into the dress properly. I'm like
Excuse me!
but I was too intimidated to protest. The saleswoman said to her assistant, “Call the lingerie department. Have them send up a line of (completely not understandable French name line of lingerie that sounded like a major spit) for Miss Blake.” She looked at me in the mirror. “You're wearing the wrong bra size. Your . . . assets can be accentuated much better with the proper garments.”

I turned beet red, but Kayla laughed. “Get used to it! I wish I had what you've got. Demure Lucky, you are NOT. I can already see the message boards on the Internet from every horndog high school boy in America. They're not even going to care about your voice—just look at you!”

“Ew!” I exclaimed. I instinctively crossed my arms over my chest. “That is so gross! Anyway, I don't see what the big deal is. These things always get in the way, they're embarrassing, and my dance teacher says I have to work twice as hard just so their force of gravity doesn't keep me off half a beat. Guys writing about my chest on the Internet? I don't think so! That's disgusting—no way!”

Kayla turned to the saleswoman, the saleswoman's assistant, and the tailor. “Would you mind excusing us for a minute?”

They left without a word, and Kayla turned to me, eyes blazing Serious Moment. She said, “I think there's something you're not getting in this picture. Your first single is about to come out, and the people behind you are prepared to take it big time. This is not a school musical, this is millions of people seeing you, recognizing you, criticizing you. This is
it.
Public person—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Are you ready?”

In Kayla's voice I heard echoes of Lucky—without Lucky's sweetness, but with her natural concern. I muttered to Kayla what was my deepest fear. “What if I'm not good enough? This all happened so fast . . .”

Kayla said, “You ARE good enough. I didn't spend two years listening to you singing backup for Lucky—and drowning her out—on
Beantown Kidz
not to know that. And Tig would not have you here if you weren't. He played the raw tracks you've laid down so far for me. You sound great—and when Tig's record producer finishes with those tracks, I guarantee you're not going to recognize your own voice.”

“But other people work so hard to get what I was just handed. What if I can't pull it off?”

Suddenly Kayla was no longer a concerned Lucky substitute. Now she was mad. “So you were chosen by Tig and Pop Life to be one of their factory pop prospects. So WHAT! Do you
know
how competitive it is out there? Do you
realize
that for every time you doubt your own ability there is another pop princess wanna-be cutting a demo, trying to knock you out of contention? So listen up now, because now might be your last chance. If you are in this, you'd better be in it all the way. I am NOT going to be putting my ass on the line for you, supporting your record and telling every veejay and journo out there about you if you're not ready to play in the big time.” Kayla stopped, looked me dead cold in the eyes. “So tell me, Wonder Blake, are you in this or not?”

I said the right words. “I'm in.”

Kayla locked her hand on my shoulder. “Mean it when you say it!” Her eyes were fierce, like drill sergeant Trina when Trina had been putting me through the paces the previous autumn. No wonder Kayla and Trina had always had such a rocky friendship, and no wonder Lucky had always been their intermediary. Kayla and Trina were both ruled by ambition; Trina had just opted to direct hers toward college.

I thought of all the time and energy Tig had invested in me. I thought of all the time and energy Wonder Blake had invested in herself. She had walked away from high school; she hadn't seen her dad or her brother or her dog since New Year's. Was she going to screw up those sacrifices with her own self-doubt, at the very moment that she was on the verge of something big? The Wonder Blake back in Devonport had dreamed of escape. This Wonder Blake, about to be throttled by a diminutive dragon of a nineteen-year-old singing superstar,
had
escaped—and she had a future, if she was ready to grab it. This wasn't about escape from Devonport anymore—this was about Wonder Blake making dreams come true: glamour, independence, singing her little heart out with the voice she'd never expected would be heard beyond a shower stall.

I said, “I mean it, sir, yes sir!” And this time when I delivered the line, I meant it. No more Wonder Blake, accidental pop princess.

“That's better,” Kayla said. She opened the door to our private room and told Karl to bring the saleswoman back in. The saleswoman came trotting back, along with racks of sophisticated black couture dresses and piles of boxes with thigh-high boots and stiletto-heeled shoes. Kayla burst into song again. “
My turn!”

Minutes later Kayla preened in front of me with a form-fitting black skirt that fell below her knees in the back and was slit open almost all the way up her thighs in front.

“Wowzamama!” I said.

“Wowzawhatever's right!” Kayla said. “This is what I'll wear tonight.”

“What's tonight?”

“My place! You and me, some friends.”

“But I can't go out tonight. I have to be at the recording studio tomorrow morning, and besides, Mom will never let me. . . .”

“Taken care of. I got Gram to call your mom and invite her to dinner tonight, to catch up, just the two of them. She told your mom you're spending the night at my house. I only get so many nights off work—we gotta make the most of it. And big sister Kayla gots to introduce you to some folks!”

“Does Tig know?” I asked.

Kayla pointed her words at me like she was gesturing in a music video.
“Tig?
Who cares about Tig?
I
am throwing a party for
you. Tonight.
My assistant has already made the calls.” Kayla grabbed my cell phone from my chair. She switched it to off.

Kayla had stocked my coming-out
party with prime-time players.

But first guests had to make it past Judy, Karl's substitute for the evening, an off-duty NYPD cop originally from the Dominican Republic, raised in the Bronx, her hair back in a tight knot and her black eyes burning in a poker face she didn't seem to know was pretty. Cop Judy was one hundred fifty pounds of attitude and a Bronx accent so thick guests could barely understand her when she frisked them on arrival, looking for weapons or cameras.

Only after having made it past Checkpoint Judy could Kayla's guests stream into the living area on the third floor of the brownstone Kayla owned in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn? Uh, yeah.

Kayla had forgone the usual loft-in-Tribeca provision in the pop princess manifesto and opted instead to apply her small fortune to an old brownstone just a hip-hop away in the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights, four full floors of refurbished wood mantels and staircases, spectacular furnishings, wide-screen TVs, and bookcase after bookcase, filled to overflowing—Kayla loved to read almost as much as she loved to sing. The large brownstone had other advantages besides its proximity to Manhattan—it was big enough for a first-floor apartment for her grandmother, who had grown up in Brooklyn and whose wish it had always been to retire there; the second and third floors were all Kayla's; and there was a set of spare rooms on the top floor where Karl (who was out for the evening—hence Cop Judy) lived. That kind of spacious living arrangement would have cost several mil more had Kayla chosen to be based in Manhattan.