The Daughters (16 page)

Just then the door opened and Hudson walked into the room. “Hey, Mom, what’s going on?” she asked casually, coming to stand
by her chair. Lizzie could hear the panic underneath the sweetness.

“Oh, nothing, baby, I’m just having a talk with your producer,” Holla said gently, taking Hudson’s wrist in her hand. “I think
we need to start over with this. Go with what we talked about. Something sharper. Fuller. More radio. Less… easy listening.”

Hudson darted a here-we-go look at her friends. “Mom, we talked about this,” she said. “I’m not Britney.”

“Thank God,” Holla laughed, swinging Hudson’s arm. “I’m not saying that. I just want you to have the career you deserve. And
if you’re stuck behind a piano on tour, nobody’s gonna see you dance. And you’re such a
good
dancer—”

“Mom,” Hudson cut in, her voice darker. She darted a look at Chris. “I told you I didn’t want to do this unless I could make
the album
I
want to make,” she said in a low voice.

“Honey, what do you want to be?” Holla said, sitting back in her chair and letting go of her daughter. “A girl who sells a
hundred thousand records? Or a star who sells millions and wins Grammys? Who’s going to have little girls dressing like her
and singing her songs? You have that in you, honey. I know you do.”

Hudson chewed her bottom lip and looked anxiously at her friends.
I don’t care
, Lizzie wanted Hudson to say.
I don’t want to be like you.
But she knew Hudson couldn’t bring herself to say that in front of her mom.

“How soon do you think we could move to a new studio?” Holla asked Chris, as if the issue had been settled. “One with the
digital capability we might need?”

“I’m not sure. We’ll have to talk to the label about that.”

Holla’s hands were already moving over the board. “Can we play it back? I just want Hudson to hear what I’m talking about.”

Hudson stared at Chris imploringly. But he was no match for Holla Jones. With a sigh, Chris pressed a button and the music
started.

Lizzie knew that this was only going to get worse. She looked at Carina.
What can we do?
she asked with her eyes. Carina gave a sad shrug.

“You guys are probably bored,” Hudson said, sensing her friends’ discomfort. “You can take off if you want.”

Carina and Lizzie traded a look. They didn’t want to abandon their friend, but it was obvious Hudson wanted them to leave.
They knew that nothing was more mortifying to Hudson than a public power struggle with her mom, because she’d always lose.

“Thanks for having us,” Lizzie said to her as she leaned down and gave her friend a hug. “You were so great.”

Carina hugged her, too. “You kicked ass,” she whispered.

“Thanks, guys,” Hudson said with downcast eyes.

“Stand up to her,” Lizzie said under her breath.

Hudson only shook her head, her green eyes faraway. “Right,” she wisecracked.

They mumbled a goodbye to Holla, but she was too busy manipulating the faders on the mixing board to notice their exit.

Out in the hall, Carina and Lizzie walked to the elevator in silence.

“I hate watching her do that to her,” Carina finally said, punching out a piece of gum and putting it in her mouth. “It’s
so unfair.”

“Maybe she should have waited to do this,” Lizzie said.

“Waited for what? Her mom’s always gonna be like that,” Carina said.

“But maybe she could handle it better in a few years.”

“Well, the sooner she learns to do it, the better,” Carina said, pressing the button. “But what do I know? I’m my dad’s slave.”

The elevator door opened and they walked inside.

“You know what? This is the year we stand up to our parents,” Lizzie announced. “You need to let your dad know that he’s being
unfair, Hudson needs to do the album she wants to do—”

“And you need to not be so afraid, Lizzie,” Carina said pointedly. She punched the lobby button. “It’s
your
life. Do you want to spend the rest of it in your mom’s shadow or not?”

The doors rumbled shut. Lizzie didn’t answer, but she thought about Carina’s words all the way down to the lobby and out onto
the street. That’s what this was all about. As long as she could remember, this had been the implicit bargain of her life:
to live on the sidelines, in the shadows, out of the spotlight, and off the red carpet. To be known to everyone—and even to
herself—as Katia Summers’s daughter. Her weird-looking daughter. To be quiet, to be unseen, and to hope nobody noticed her.

But that couldn’t last forever. Didn’t she deserve her own life?

A few minutes later, out on the street, she stopped in front of a Kinko’s on Twenty-Third Street. “Hold on,” she said to Carina,
and ran inside.

At the counter, she pulled the permission slip out of her bag. Andrea’s fax number was at the top. She handed it to a clerk
behind the counter.

“Just fax that, please,” she said.

As she watched him feed the slip into the fax machine, she felt a niggling sensation of doubt. But she knew that Carina was
right. It was time for her to start being Lizzie. Even if doing that scared her to death.

Four days later, on a rainy Wednesday a few minutes before French, Lizzie looked up from reading
Tender Is the Night
and saw Todd standing over her, looking like he either had something important to say, or had completely forgotten her name.

“Hey,” he finally said, and cleared his throat. “What’s up?”

Now Todd was giving
her
the cold shoulder. He didn’t look at her in class. He passed by her in the halls—with Ava and her rolled-up kilt glued to
his hip. Lizzie knew that she had no reason to be hurt—they were just friends, after all—but his decision to ignore her ever
since their study session didn’t make any sense.

But, it seemed, he’d changed his mind. Again.

“Uh, just reading,” she said, putting down the book.

Todd nodded and looked down, as people streamed into class behind him.
God, he could be awkward
, Lizzie thought.

“So we should meet again for the English project,” he said haltingly.

She closed the book. “Sure.”

“And is it okay if I ask you a favor?” he asked.

“All right,” she said.

“Actually, it’s not for me,” he said, letting his weird English bookbag slide off his shoulder. “It’s for Ava.”

Lizzie felt something drop inside her, as if her heart had just been torpedoed.

“She wants to ask you something but she’s kind of embarrassed,” he said, staring at the ground, as he swept the floor with
his shoe.

Ava embarassed?
she thought, just as Ava blew into the room.

“Hey, Lizzie!” Ava cried, walking over. Her cheeks were rosy from being outside, and she’d left on her knit hat with devil
horns, which immediately got on Lizzie’s nerves. “I
sooooo
didn’t want to bother you, but you know I’m the chairperson for the Silver Snowflake Ball, and we’re doing a raffle for prizes,
and, well, I was wondering if we could get your mom to donate something.”

Her torpedoed heart made a crash landing in her gut. “Um, like what?” she asked.

“It could be anything,” Ava shrugged crazily. “Dinner with her, a dress, going with her to a photo shoot, hanging out with
her and Martin Meloy, what
ever
. Oh, and you’re totally gonna get an invitation, just so you know.” She smiled radiantly and glanced at Todd, who still seemed
fascinated by the floor.

“Uh, well, I’ll ask her,” she said, deliberately sidestepping Ava’s invitation.

“Great!” Ava exclaimed. She tossed her curls off her shoulder and squeezed Todd’s hand. “Todd said you wouldn’t mind. And
you know, he said your mom is really cool and everything.”

“Glad he helped you out with that,” she said thickly.

Just then Madame Dupuis stalked through the doors in a hideous chartreuse pantsuit.

“Okay, well, see you later!” Ava chirped.

She and Todd scrambled to the back of the room just as Madame Dupuis called class to order with her usual
“Shhht!”

Lizzie opened her book, feeling let down and confused. She was used to people asking her for things, but this just depressed
her. Didn’t Todd know how annoying it was to be used as a “connection” to her mom? Then again, he hadn’t made eye contact
with her once during that entire interaction. Hopefully he felt like an idiot.

After class she found Carina and Hudson waiting for her on the bench in the lobby.

“So I got hit up by Ava Elting for her dumb charity ball,” she said, pushing open the main door and walking out to the sidewalk.
The rain had turned to a soft drizzle. “Todd even did the intro for her. Yecch.”

“Ugh,” Hudson sniffed, opening her see-through plastic umbrella. “She hit me up, too. For concert tickets. Or dinner with
my mom. As if my mom would ever sit down with a stranger and have dinner. She barely has dinner with
me
.”

“What a weenie,” Carina confirmed, pushing a wide blue headband through her blond hair. “She’s got him totally by the you-know-whats.”

“He
has
to know she’s a tool,” Lizzie argued. “So how can he stand it?”

“I’m pretty sure I know the answer to that,” Carina said dryly.

They turned the corner onto Madison Avenue and walked into the deli. Carina and Lizzie got in line to order toasted bialys
with butter, while Hudson went to the magazine stand. White flour had been banned in the Jones’s home a long time ago, and
she’d lost her taste for it.

“Oh my God,” they heard Hudson mutter. “Lizzie. Come over here.”

“What?” Lizzie stepped out of the line and walked over to the magazine rack. “What is it?”

Hudson stood in the middle of the aisle, with the latest issue of
New York Style
open in her hands. “You’re in here,” she said to Lizzie, as if she didn’t quite believe it herself.

“What?” Lizzie stepped closer.

Her mouth open in shock, Hudson turned the magazine to show her. The first thing Lizzie saw was the headline: THE NEW FACE
OF BEAUTY.

Underneath it was her picture. Her. Lizzie. Wearing the black fedora and the gold hoop earrings and the crazy pink scarf,
leaning against the brick wall in Chinatown. The picture took up almost the entire page.

Her eye fell to the caption:

Seems like arresting looks run in the family. Lizzie Summers, the 14-year-old daughter of supermodel Katia Summers, is the
latest discovery of photographer Andrea Sidwell. She calls her “the new face of beauty.” We couldn’t agree more.

“Oh my God,” Lizzie said.

“You look amazing!” Hudson screamed. “Carina? Come over here!”

Carina walked over. “I’m just about to order.”

“Did you see this?” Hudson shrieked, holding up the magazine.

When Carina saw the picture, her mouth dropped open. “Holy
shnit
! That’s
you
! You look incredible! Look at you!”

“You’re the New Face of Beauty!” Hudson yelled, jumping up and down. “Did you know they were gonna do this?” she asked.

Lizzie could only shake her head. “Uh. No.”

“You’re the new face of beauty! Oh my god!” Hudson’s excited green eyes searched Lizzie’s face. “Wait. What’s wrong?”

“You’re screaming, that’s what’s wrong,” said Carina.

“I sent in the forged release,” Lizzie replied, still in shock. “I never told my mom. Anything. She’s gonna flip out.”

Just then she felt the ominous buzz of her iPhone in her bag. Someone had just texted her. She pulled it out. It was from
home.

COME HOME NOW.

“Lizzie?” Hudson asked warily. “You look scared.”

“I think I should be.” Lizzie showed them both the message.

“Yikes,” Carina said.

“Do you want us to come?” Hudson asked, her brow knitted with concern.

Lizzie shook her head. She felt like she was standing at the edge of a high-dive board, and trying to get the courage to jump.
“No, that’s okay. I should do this alone.” She started to go to the door.

“But it’s lunch period,” Carina said.

“I’ll come back,” she said.

“Don’t worry, you’re gonna be fine,” Hudson said as she followed Lizzie onto the street. “They’re gonna love it. You’ll see.”

“I don’t think so,” she said as she raised her hand to hail a cab.

“Just remember,” Hudson said, twisting Lizzie around by the waist. “This is a huge, huge deal.” She stood on her tippytoes
and threw her arms around Lizzie’s neck. “And you deserve it.”

Lizzie squeezed her back, and for the first time felt like jumping up and down, too. She was the new face of beauty? This
was unreal.

After hailing a cab, she got inside and gave the driver her address. Then she leaned against the backseat and watched the
brown and gold leaves whiz past the windows as they crossed the park. Quickly, she tried to formulate an excuse. But she couldn’t
come up with one. She’d lied to Andrea, forged her mom’s signature, and gotten her pictures in a national magazine without
her parents’ permission. She’d probably be grounded for the rest of eternity.

But she was also the new face of beauty.
Her—the new face of beauty!
she thought, gripping the metal bar on the cab door as she smiled to herself. How had
that
happened?

When she got out of the cab she quickly bypassed the paparazzi and ran through the beginning rain into the lobby. In the entry
hall to her family’s apartment she dropped her bag.

“Hello?” she called out, and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen.

Bernard, Katia, and Natasha sat in grim silence around the kitchen table, as if someone had just died. Katia was pursing her
lips so tightly that her cheeks looked hollow, and her hair had been hastily pulled back into a severe, schoolteacherish bun.
Natasha flicked the fringe of her bangs out of her eyes and gave Lizzie a scowl. Her dad glared at her from under his bushy
eyebrows as he touched the magazine that lay in the center of the table.

“Explain
this
,” he said, pushing the copy of
New York Style
toward her. “I’m assuming you can?”