Free Big Girl (2010) by Danielle Steel

and it was as wild as her previous job at the law firm had been sedate. And she had a great time. She befriended some of the models, who were the same age as she, and the people who did the bookings were fun to be with too. All of them thought she was crazy when she said she wanted to teach school, and she had to admit that working at a modeling agency was a lot more exciting.
    Two of the models invited her to live with them, and she gave up her dreary room at the hotel. And despite the parties they went to, the hours they kept, the clothes they wore, and the men they went out with, she was impressed by how hard they worked. The girls who were successful worked like dogs, and were diligent about the modeling jobs they did. They went crazy after hours, but the good ones were on time for every shoot, and worked tirelessly until the work was done, sometimes on twelve- or fourteen-hour shoots. It wasn't as much fun as it looked.
    And Victoria was always stunned by how thin they were. The two girls she lived with in Tribeca almost never ate. It made her feel guilty for all that she did, and she tried to follow their example, but she was starving by dinnertime. Her roommates either didn't eat at all or ate aggressively dietetic food, and very little of it. They seemed to exist on next to nothing, and had tried every kind of purge and colonic to keep their weight down. Victoria had a different constitution than they did. She couldn't survive on the tiny amounts they consumed. But she followed their more reasonable diet tips as best she could, avoiding carbs and eating much smaller portions, and she looked good when she went back to L.A. for a month before she went back to school. She had hated to leave New York, and had had a ball. The head of the agency had told her that if she ever wanted a job with them, they would hire her anytime. And Gracie loved hearing the stories she told when she got home. She was going into eighth grade that year, and Victoria her junior year. She was halfway through college and still had her sights set on a teaching job in New York. More than ever, it was where she knew she wanted to be. Her parents had lost hope of ever getting her to move back home. And Gracie knew it too.
    The two sisters spent a wonderful month together until Victoria went back to school. Gracie had gotten prettier than ever that year, and she had none of the awkwardness of most girls her age. She was lean and graceful, was taking ballet, and had flawless skin. And her parents still let her do a modeling job every now and then. Gracie readily admitted she hated school. She had a booming social life, a horde of friends, and half a dozen boys calling her all the time on the cell phone her parents had finally given her. It was a far cry from Victoria's monastic life at school, although things got slightly better for her during junior year.
    She dated two boys one after the other, although neither seriously, but she got to go out on most weekends, which was a vast improvement over the first two years. She finally lost her virginity to one of the boys she dated, although she didn't love him. And she never ran into Beau again. She wasn't even sure if he was still at school. She saw some of his friends once in a while, from the distance, but she never spoke to them. It had been an odd experience and still upset her when she thought about it. He had been like a beautiful dream. The boys she went out with after that were much more real. One was a hockey player, like the boy she had invented in freshman year. And he liked Victoria more than she liked him. He had grown up in Boston, and he was a little rough around the edges, and had a tendency to drink too much and get belligerent, so she stopped seeing him. And the one she went out with after him, and ultimately slept with, was pleasant but boring. He was studying biochemistry and nuclear physics, and she didn't have much to say to him. The only thing they liked about each other was having