PART 1 AN IDEA IS BORN
Jennifer picked up the fashion magazine, starting from the back to the
front. She knew who would be on this month's cover, and she didn't want
to be reminded.
The newsstand was beginning to get crowded as the fresh copies were cut
and lined up. The coffee chat groups were gradually sliding down from
their barstool perches, getting bored with their own faux intellectual
ramblings.
As the coffee-in-hand beatniks crossed to the magazine rack, Jennifer
straightened up and thrust her chest out ever so slightly, not
wanting her physical adjustment to be noticed, but wanting her aging
model physique to be noticed. Sometimes she sat in the center of public
places just to be noticed by groups of people.
But lately, all her posturing and all her skimpy outfits produced fewer
and fewer looks. The boys with raging hormones and bulging pimples were
still certain to stare. But the men that she wanted, the women that she
desired, they had stopped noticing Jennifer in the same way.
It was as if she had the phrase, Jennifer, Ex-High Fashion Model, tied
around her neck. The people that Jennifer was used to booking with had
fired her with little aplomb, in fact, her now former agent had
unceremoniously dumped her over the phone, from across the fucking country,
Jennifer recalled.
Why? Why? Why? had been her only response once the initial shock wore
off. They want to go with a new look, was the agent's stock answer. But
Jennifer made some calls and found out the real reason. New look,
indeed. They wanted someone younger: Bridgette. That bitch! I got her
started in this business and now she is taking my bookings?
To make matters worse, to make them so painfully ironic, Bridgette was
Jennifer's younger sister, and honestly, Bridgette looked very much like
a younger version. Bridgette was 16 and turning the fashion world on
its ear, while her older sister was 26 and the fashion world was turning
a deaf ear toward her.
It only took a matter of months for Bridgette to make the cover of the
world's leading fashion magazines. And today hitting the newsstand,
Bridgette was the fresh face on the covers of ELLE and VOGUE.
The swarm of patrons rushed past Jennifer and mobbed the copies of ELLE,
and once it was noticed that this sensational beauty was also on VOGUE,
those copies soon disappeared.
Jennifer stood in sober amazement. She had feared that her sister was
hot, but she had no idea that her snotty little sister was having this
passionate effect on men and women. Quietly, her face turned crimson
with envy. Jennifer had never quite made it to ELLE, and the one time
she was scheduled to appear on VOGUE, the photographer that wanted to
shoot her was arrested the night before on drug possession charges; the
shoot was never reappointed.
Jennifer had taken the offer from Sports Illustrated a couple of years
back, and they jetted her to some out-of-the-way Pacific Island for a
long, sticky photo session. She put on the skimpiest suits, flashed a
ton of flesh, but in the end, the editors only selected two of her worst
(she thought) pictures. Needless to say, her career got no
high-publicity stints on The Tonight Show or The Late Show.
And here her stupid little sis was only a couple of years into this
business and she was quickly on her way to being a high stakes fashion
model. In fact, over the rustle of pages, Jennifer heard a few of the
loiterers call Bridgette, "that new supermodel."
The more she thought about it, the more it made her sick. Jennifer was
getting nauseated in the middle of the thickening crowd. She starting
running from the newsstand, capturing the kind of stares she never
dreamed of getting (who is that crazy women?). Jennifer began throwing
up in spurts, redecorating the fine carpet at the upscale Barnes &
Nobles until she finally found the ladies room.
It was somewhere between hearing the phrase, "new supermodel," and
throwing her throat down the toilet that Jennifer first formulated her
plan. She vowed to have her revenge on Bridgette, and by the time she
was finished with her little sister, only FANGORIA would want Bridgette
on their magazine cover.
