I am aghast to see that her eyes are as vibrantly green as mine … then I realize that she has borrowed Mr. Max’s performing trick: green contact lenses for that mesmerizing gaze. Trouble is, it works on cats and magicians but I am not sure it works for my MissTemple.
“Well, Louie, do I look like a reconstruction project?”
She looks like an escapee from the city pound, especially with that rhinestone dog collar around her neck.
“Am I ready to take on the world of reality TV?”
Hmmm, I already observed that she looked like an escapee from Cops.
“Am I post-‘Tween Queen in the making?”
‘Tween tweezings, I think to myself. Not to mention a ripe candidate for brain implants.
“Do I look sweet, swingin’ nineteen going on Goth thirty?”
Goth? As in I “goth” to get outa here?
I take my own advice and retreat to the outer room but resolve to keep a very close eye on her from this moment on.
Chapter 11
Good Golly,
Miss Goth Girl
The mall was mobbed with ‘tween girls from just-thirteen to a tarty fifteen. And a few good legally blonde bimbos from sixteen to nineteen. The decibel level in the vaulted central atrium suggested a jungle of screeching parrots.
Temple had never seen so much metallic and iridescent nail polish, so many spandex capris, thong flipflops, and belly buttons in one place since a Britney Spears concert. And she’d never seen a Britney Spears concert except in TV commercials.
Temple glimpsed a shadow of herself in a Gap display window. It took her a moment to pick herself out from the crowd. She couldn’t believe she was doing this: standing in line, hiding her hair, and showing her belly button.
This was the screwiest self-marketing job she’d ever done. She’d decided that the subject of a TV makeover show should require some major makeover, plus. And sheneeded to disguise herself enough to fool any possible acquaintances, so …
She craned her neck to see if her little buddy—or was that “budette” in this case?—was anywhere around. But Mariah was not here. No. The Molina kid had made the smart move. Applied early. Before the humiliating cattle call. Mariah was less than half Temple’s age, and she was already a finalist, a contender. Temple was a raw recruit.
Temple, aka Xoe Chloe—“pronounced just `Zoey Chloey,’ or `Chloey Zoey’ if you like that better,” she’d told the babe with the clipboard collecting their application forms—stared down the endless line forward, and then back along the endless line backward.
It felt creepily like instant aging in a horror movie to be bracketed by so many genuine tender young things. Skin creamy as a SouthBeach diet ricotta cheese dessert. Zits, yes, but young, plump, cherry-colored zits, almost beauty marks, not the occasional pale pink spot staking a pallid postdated claim on the shoulder blade of thirty years’ duration.
Well, she had the right shoes. A girl could do anything with the right shoes: go to the ball, leave Oz, shave a decade or so off her age. Temple stared at her Heavy Metal Hot Pink Funk–painted toenails in their red rhinestone slides. Excellent color clash. The toe rings added a nice trashy touch. Her feet alone demanded a serious redo.
Then there was the black, straight-haired Cher wig from the singer’s Cleopatra period. Las Vegas had wig shops galore filled with celebrity dos. Even Temple was amazed by how totally a redhead with short curly hair could vanish behind glossy dark eyebrow-length bangs and shoulder blade–brushing strands of thick black. A Maybelline black eyebrow pencil covered the last of Temple’s natural coloring. Any freckles disappeared under pale foundation and dead-white face powder accoutered with assorted magnetic studs and rings at eyebrow, nose, and lip, adding a modern touch to the Queen of the Nile. And she hadn’t forgotten the belly button ring, clip-on. She was a fraud from sole to poll.
Except for her long painted fingernails, each one a color of the rainbow. They were real under that lacquer.
When she’d given her remade self a once-over in the bedroom mirror, for a surreal moment she was struck by the fact that she almost resembled the black-haired, rice-powdered persona of the evil she-magician, Shangri-La, who had kidnapped Temple and Midnight Louie months before. Now Shangri-La was missing in action and Temple was, ta-dah, suddenly a black-haired teen bad girl. Think the twisted slayer Faith on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
But that was then, and this was now. Temple shuffled forward in the line. Her feet were killing her. Normally wimpy little inch-and-a-half heels wouldn’t bother her. But she was used to flying around, on the job. Standing, shuffling, on these aggregate-stone mall floors. Killer!
She clutched the sheet she’d filled out in tilted block letters with the i’s carefully topped by circles as fat as a cartoon dialogue balloon. Favorite hunk. Favorite punk band. Favorite junk food. Favorite class to skip. Favorite cosmetic. Favorite fast food.
She peered around the snaking line of bare shoulders and barely covered rears. Oh, at last! She glimpsed a long table at which people actually sat. They must be the interviewers, the American Idol–style judges who would say yea or neigh.
Nay! This was not a horse race. This was an empowering opportunity for today’s savvy young women. Was she quoting the TV show propaganda, or what?
Stand. Shuffle. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Stand.
Behind her, someone snapped her gum. A nauseous odor of banana-strawberry almost put Temple down forthe count. A woman of thirty ought never have to smell that again!
Suddenly … open air ahead of her. A table clothed in linen to the floor. Four adult humans sitting behind it. All looking at her.
Four maybe-human adults …
Because one of them was (gasp!) Savannah Ashleigh, fading film starlet and an acquaintance.
Another was (gasp!) a very ripe Elvis impersonator, big and bellied, complete with tinted aviator sunglasses, long, dark caterpillar-fuzzy sideburns, neck scarf, glitzy white jumpsuit and more knuckle-buster diamond rings than Liberace. Well, she supposed Elvis had been an expert on teenage girls, including his almost-child bride, Priscilla.
Another was (double gasp)—once you’re thinking in terms of cartoon bubbles you’re lost—her very own maternal aunt, Kit Carlson, aka the romance novelist Sulah Savage!!! What was she doing here, all the way from New York City?
And the last (thank whatever gods may be!) was a Strange Man who looked like Simon Cruel, i.e., Cowell, on American Idol.
Two of the four judges knew TempleBarr, for better or worse. Was this going to be a cakewalk or a shambles or what?
More like, or what.
Temple, ex-TV newswoman … ex-community theater thespian … former repertory theater PR woman … decided to regard this debacle as an opportunity to stretch her dramatic muscles, i.e., her I.Q. Insincerity Quotient.
“Zoo-ee,” Savannah Ashleigh was reading from her cheat sheet with her usual skill at the cold read, rhyming Zoh-ee with gooey.
“Zoh-ee,” Aunt Kit corrected. Smartly.
“A zoo, all right,” the Simon clone bellowed loud enough to reach the back of the line. His diction was Aussie, not British, but just as scalding as Simon’s. “Child. Give those capris back to the zebras, there’s a good sheila. ‘Twould be a mercy.”
“Mercy,” Elvis repeated, frowning down at his sheet. He probably needed reading glasses. (The real Elvis would be—my gosh!—seventyish by now.) Maybe this guy’s vision would lose focus going from the sheet to her.
“So why are you here, my dear?” a woman with a wireless mike popped out of nowhere to ask. She was almost as astounding as Xoe Chloe. A woman past early middle age was a rarity on TV and this one was fighting age all the way: phony black-dyed hair, all Shirley Temple ringlets where Temple’s was all long, razor-cut bob. Her papery complexion emphasized baby bright blue eyes and an attitude of relentless good cheer.