The Pearl Inside of Anything

6:59 p.m.

Things are pretty grim backstage —everyone is keeping their distance from everyone else. I shift from foot to foot in the borrowed Ferragamos—with the heels stuffed with cotton balls and they are more or less okay. My feet are the least of my worries.

A couple of models are full-on pouting, and a few are looking annoyed while their stylists keep poking nervously at flyaways only they can see. The rest are like me, pretending to push back our cuticles while we sneak worried looks at each other. Christmas Tree's stylist is holding her head back with one hand while she puts drops in her eyes with the other. Tommy is taking deep breaths beside me and scuffing the floor with his cowboy boots. I count twenty girls, most are in jeans and t-shirts, a few are wearing shorts. From our shoulders down, we all look kind of ordinary.

But above the chin line it is something else. I feel like I'm in a moving display at the MOMA. Some of the stuff I can figure out. But mostly, we're just shapes. Cinnamon Buns/Princess Leia is right beside me, chewing gum and looking bored. Mine is the only do swirled with pink, but there's some serious colour on a few models. One girl has flame orange hair shooting up in stiff waves. Like the Heat Meister in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

Eiffel Tower is tall, skinny and wearing a full-length black leotard and a pair of ballet flats. The only contrast is her pale white skin and very red lipstick. She looks cool, French and bored.

"One!"

A woman of about 40 in a track suit and tennis shoes steps forward and through the parted curtain. Her brown hair is shaped like a salad bowl. It's as smooth and shiny as polished wood; I bet she uses really good conditioner. The judges just look at her droopily. I have a bad feeling she won't be back tomorrow. She comes back to us with a nervous little smile on her face and steps back behind the curtain before tipping her head back and breaking out in a beaming grin. "Wheeeeeee!" she squeals and grabs her stylist in a hug. "I always wanted to be a model! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" The stylist's smoking wrinkles smooth away when she smiles at her model. It's nice, until the salad bowl bonks her hairdresser on the head. They both wince and nervously pat it back in place.

I really need to scratch.

One after another, numbers are called and models take their turns on the runway. I am getting jitterier by the second. I remember being in the Grade 5 Spelling Bee, (I won after nine rounds on crustaceology.). My head got itchy then too.

"Seven!"

A woman with her hair teased into a gigantic silvery-blue bouffant works her way through our little crowd to the edge of the curtains. Her hair fans out at her neck and cascades down her back like a waterfall. Love it. Out on the stage, a black model, her hair in what has to be a hundred braids pivots for the judges. Her braids are dark purple near the roots and lighten to pale mauve at the ends touching her shoulders. Sea Anemone. She's got it down. Left hand on her hip, front, quarter-turn, hold, quarter turn, hold...

Heat Meister is out next. She stomps when she walks so we all hear her kahlumphing away down to the end of the runway. But the judges look fascinated by her gravity-defiant flame hair. She scowls at them, punches her hips with her fists when she turns, hard, and grudgingly turns to show the back, then clomps towards us, smiling toughly.

"Ten!"

There's some shuffling beside to make way for Eiffel Tower when all of a sudden Tommy comes out of his trance.

"We're eleven!" he whispers excitedly. "You ready?"

Oh, I would say so.

Tommy walks around me for one last check.