Confessions of a High School Supermodel

Chapter 4

4

Later that evening, Maddie stretched out on her bed, munching on some double stuff Oreos and sipping from a can of Diet Dr. Pepper.  She was dressed in a gray hoodie and her soft, cozy Jonas Brothers pajama bottoms which she loved (even though everyone knew the Jonas Brothers hadn’t really been cool in years.) 

She had the new issue of Seventeen Magazine resting at the foot of her bed, still warm from sitting in the sunny mailbox all afternoon.  She hadn’t looked at it yet, however, because her family’s brown and white ragdoll cat, Honeydew, was curled up sleeping on top of it.

And hey, she hadn’t watched the new episode of Dance Moms yet!  She had a lot of new TV shows to catch up on that she hadn’t been able to watch during the week because of school.

Maddie felt ten zillion times better being in her own environment surrounded by the familiar comforts of home.  She would try to have a pleasant evening to make up for what a miserable afternoon it had been.

Maddie logged onto her computer and opened up her twitter page. (Her twitter username was GladToBeMad, which was hopelessly optimistic of her, considering how rarely she was glad to be herself.)

Anyway, she wanted to check and make sure none of the girls from the mall had posted anything about what had happened that afternoon.  She was pleased she hadn’t let that phony woman in Victoria’s Secret take her picture.  How stupid do they think I am?

Sundance’s twitter read, “The heater on my pool is getting fixed, #PPF canceled today! L”

Livia’s twitter said, “#PPF fail!  At least we still have shopping!”

Maddie was relieved to see nothing about her or her family, just messages about Pool Party Friday.

But when she clicked open Facebook, she gasped.  The picture at the very top of her newsfeed had come from Livia Brooks.  It was a picture of Cassidy smacking her own butt, wearing the neon green bra top and thong with dollar bills stuck in it, and grinning from ear to ear.

“Look what we found at the mall! Girls Gone Wild, Toddler’s and Tiaras Edition!” the caption read.

Maddie froze as the image of Cassidy’s laughing face burned into her brain.  This. Was. So. Embarrassing.  The picture already had thirty-eight likes on it!  All the comments were things like, “That’s so funny!” and “That’s cute.”

Maddie scowled and turned off Facebook, then snapped the lid of her laptop shut.  She knew if she didn’t turn it off now, she’d get sucked in for the next several hours.

Going on Facebook usually just made her miserable anyway, seeing how much fun everyone except her was having.  The weekends were the worst.    During the school week, everyone was pretty much kept busy with the usual schoolwork, tests, projects, and assignments.

But on the weekends, Maddie was always irritated to see other kids with calendars packed full of fun things to do.  Everyone’s photo albums and statuses showed her classmates going to the beach, having sleepovers, playing arcade games, going miniature golfing, riding horses, and going on dates to the movies.

Even if no one was having a party that weekend, sometimes the popular girls in her class would put together an impromptu photoshoot or make a music video of themselves dancing and lip-synching to some Katy Perry or Rihanna song.  Then they’d upload it onto YouTube and see how many hits it would get.  Everyone always seemed to be out having way more fun than her.

She knew how much fun everyone had at Pool Party Fridays- she could see from the pictures.  They would usually drink there- they made no effort to conceal the beer cans, Smirnoff bottles, and occasional bags of marijuana from the pictures they posted. Maddie sometimes wondered how they were always able to get their hands on so much of that stuff.  Didn’t their parents care?  Maddie speculated that a few of the kids got their older brothers and sisters who were already in college to buy stuff like that for them.