Beneath the Glitter: A Novel (Sophia and Ava London) by Elle Fowler, Blair Fowler Page B

brittle, nervous smile. “But darling, you said you wanted to move your shoot to the afternoon.”
    “Whittle Whitney changed her mind,” Whitney told him in a baby voice. “Don’t tell whittle Whitney you don wan her.” She snapped back to her regular voice. “Because I can leave and not come back.”
    The art director chewed the Tums he’d just poured into his mouth and grimaced. “No darling, of course we do, it’s just that we have the London sisters ready to shoot next. I know, why don’t you—”
    Whitney pivoted on her heel and stared at Ava and Sophia. “This is what I have to fight against? The dummying down of fashion discourse? It’s appalling that anyone like those two”—extending an arm with a tattoo of both a teddy bear and a bald eagle, she pointed at them—“should be considered Tastemakers. What kind of taste do they have? I’ll tell you: average.”
    Whitney turned back to address her crowd at large. “As you all know, I’ve done something with my life.” She pounded herself on her chest twice with her little fist. “I’ve been nominated for awards. I’ve made people weep. If you want a role model, pick someone who has lived. Who has loved. Who knows that makeup isn’t what you put on your face to look pretty, it’s what you do when you dare enough to piss someone off. That’s why I’m an ‘it’ girl.” She zeroed in on the art director. “I’m going to my trailer. I’ll be ready in forty-five minutes. I hope you are.” Switching to her baby voice she pursed her lips and said, “Whittle Whitney hates to wait.”
    She was nearly at the entrance to the tent when she realized the only person following her was her assistant. She turned around. “Well?”
    One of the journalists said, “We’re just going to stay and get the London sisters’ reactions.”
    Whitney shrugged. “They are the precious minutes of your life, not mine. Waste them how you want,” she said, and left.
    The reporters turned toward the London sisters for a response. Ava and Sophia’s shock that Whitney was the one getting the monkeys, followed by their shock that she even knew who they were, had partially distracted them from what was going on. But they quickly became aware that the entire atmosphere on the set had shifted, becoming almost eerily silent yet with a hot pumping undercurrent of expectation, like an audience at a prizefight waiting for the first round to begin.
    Sophia felt Ava stiffen next to her, heard her breathing quicken, and saw the fixed, almost glassy look in her eye as panic gripped her.
    “It will be okay,” Sophia whispered, gripping her sister’s hand. “Don’t worry.”
    Ava nodded, once, but she still had the haunted look in her eyes and Sophia knew why.
    When Sophia’s sorority sisters had found out about her videos they’d been not just supportive but thrilled for her. They’d spread the word and blogged and tweeted their favorite moments. But when people at Ava’s school found out, they had been merciless. It had started with a few stupid comments, people walking behind her and mimicking her videos, or asking questions like “Ava, what if my eye shadow doesn’t match my shoes?” But it had escalated from there to constant taunts and threats and then to violence. For the first time in her life, Ava’s resilience seemed to falter, and she refused to leave her room, sitting in a corner in the dark.
    All she’d wanted to do was disappear, be invisible. To make the jeers and the insults stop by not standing out at all.
    Fortunately she was able to transfer to a new school where her new classmates were a lot more accepting. But the bad memories couldn’t be erased, and they all came flooding back to her now, the same desire to hide, the same sense of her complete unworthiness. Who was she to be a Tastemaker, to be a Webstar? They were right, she was a fraud, she didn’t deserve this, she was nothing, no one—
    Sophia linked her fingers through Ava’s and