Free Girls Under Pressure by Jacqueline Wilson Page B

wear, anyway, Nadine?”
    “What I’ve got on!” says Nadine.
    I stare at her. I thought she was wearing dreary old things to save her posh outfit getting mucked up. Nadine usually wears amazing clothes, black velvet, black lace, black leather. Now today of all days she’s got on just an ordinary pair of blue jeans and a skimpy little pink T-shirt.
    “Why aren’t you wearing anything black? You don’t look like you,” I say.
    “That’s the whole point. I want to look like a model,” says Nadine.
    “But shouldn’t you dress up a bit?” I ask.
    “Take no notice of Ellie, she hasn’t got a clue,” says Magda, sighing.
    “This is the sort of stuff models wear when they go on shoots,” says Nadine. “You dress down, see. Though these jeans are French and cost a fortune. My mum’s going to do her nut when she finds out I’ve drawn out some of my savings.”
    “Yeah, but think of the fortune you might be earning soon, Nadine,” says Magda. “And the minute you’ve made it, you’re to start introducing me to all the right people, OK? The rounded voluptuous look is very in too. They don’t just want stringbeans like you.”
    “Dream on,” I say sourly.
    What if Nadine
does
make it as a model? She looks so different now. I stare at her and it suddenly all seems real. She looks just like all the models in
Spicy
magazine. She’ll win this heat. She’ll go through to the final. She’ll get to be the
Spicy
cover girl. She’ll be photographed with a pretty little pout for all the magazines, she’ll prance up and down the catwalks, she’ll jet across the world on special fashion shoots . . . and I’ll stay put, still at school, Nadine’s sad fat friend.
    I feel as if this title is tattooed to my forehead as I go up to London with Nadine. I have to go with her because she
is
my friend. I’ve put almost as much thought into my appearance as Nadine has into hers. I’ve left my hair an untamed tangle, my face is belligerently bare, I’m wearing a huge checked shirt and black trousers and boots, and I’m carrying my sketchbook to try to show every single person at the
Spicy
place that
I
don’t want to be a model,
I
couldn’t care less about my appearance, I’m serious-minded, I’m
creative
. . . OK, OK, I’m talking crap, I know. And
they
know when we get to the special studio
Spicy
magazine has taken over for the day.
    It is crowded out with a galaxy of gorgeous girls, thin as pins.
    “Oh, God, look at them,” Nadine says. She shivers. “They all look like real fashion models already.”
    “Well, so do you,” I say.
    “Oh, Ellie,” says Nadine, and she squeezes my hand.
    She’s clammy-cold, clinging tight like we’re little kids in Primary One on our first day at school.
    “I wonder what we’re going to have to do?” she says. “If I have to stand up in front of all these girls I’m going to die. They all look so cool, as if they do this kind of thing every day.”
    They do, too. They’re all standing around in little groups, some chatting, some smiling, some staring, looking everyone up and down, looking at Nadine, looking at me, raising their perfectly plucked eyebrows as if to say: Dear God, what is that squat ugly fat girl doing here?
    I try to stare back. My face is burning.
    “I’m desperate for a wee, Ellie. Where’s the ladies’?” Nadine asks.
    It’s even worse inside the crowded ladies’ room. Girls crowd the mirror, applying glimmer eyeshadow and sparkle blusher and lip gloss so that their perfect oval faces are positively luminous in the fluorescent lighting. They tease their hair and hitch up their tiny jeans and smooth their weeny T-shirts with long manicured nails.
    “Help, look at
my
nails,” Nadine wails. She clenches her fists to hide her little bitten stubs. “Oh, God, this is a waste of time, Ellie. Why did I ever open my big mouth to everyone at school? I don’t stand a chance. I must be mad.”
    “Well, we don’t have to stay. We can just push off