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They’ve got full command of the space. I’ve walked into the place from the relative calm of the mall, suddenly in some bizarre tropical clubhouse that is really not my scene. The girls looked me up and down. I could just feel them giving me a makeover. Immediately I could feel the exact place that a greasy lock of my very unstyled hair brushed against my cheek, the faint friction summoning a zit from the skin there. My skin suddenly felt like it had a weird film over it, like the skin of a dirty pond. My clothes felt soft against my body in that way that only really dirty clothes feel, like thedirtiness is wearing the fabric thin. This is how I like my clothes to feel, but on the inside of Jungle Unisex it stopped feeling comfortable and started feeling hampery. Needless to say, I do not have a pedicure. I may instead have athlete’s foot, and I’m always in my flops, my peely toes all hanging out. Ta-daa. But, with Kristy’s stolen video camera pressed to my face, it all felt unreal. It was like something I was watching on TV, which was perhaps a good omen for Kristy. An older lady with brown hair, the bangs sprayed up in a thin fan said,
Can I help you?
She cocked her head and her hair fixture sort of wobbled with the movement, but didn’t fall. She had makeup welling in the creases of her face, maybe a couple shades too dark, triple-pierced ears hung with gold hoops, and a few rows of gold around her neck. She must be loaded, I thought. I made out a charm in the shape of a blow-dryer hanging off one thin chain.
    Hello, I’m Kristy Driscoll
, Kristy chirped. Her hand shot out toward the woman, who backed away from it before realizing that Kristy was trying to shake her hand and not steal her jewelry. Kristy pumped the woman’s hand while gesturing to me with her free one. I moved in close, making sure I got both of them in the frame. Without that camera I’d have been staring at my flops, but now I was able to really inspect the woman’s face, I could look straight at her. It made me a little giddy and I even hit the slidey zoom lens close-up button till the top of her peacock hairdo got chopped out of the picture. Now she should be on a television show. Who even looks like that? Actually, tons of people around here look like that, but nobody on television does. Which is even more of a reason this fan-hairedwoman should have her own show.
This is my little sister, Patricia
, Kristy jabbered on.
She’s videotaping me because I’m auditioning for
The Real World,
do you know that show?
The woman paused and turned toward me. The frame became filled with her suspicious expression. She took a breath and held her hand up toward the camera the way that actual celebrities do when the paparazzi charge at them as they’re leaving the yoga studio. Kristy jumped in,
It’s a great show, and if I get picked I get to go and live on MTV in another town, and it would be really wonderful for Mogsfield and for the whole region to have a local person on a national TV show, talking about local issues.
Kristy nodded, as if the movement of her head could somehow hypnotize the woman into nodding her own head.
The producers just want to know what my life is like here in Mogsfield, so my sister is following me around with a camera, would that be all right?
Her head was still bobbing but now her face was scrunched too, in that way girls scrunch when they need something. I don’t use those tactics. Or maybe I have never needed anything that bad.
    The woman got her hand back from Kristy’s polite grip of death and was fiddling nervously with herself, first touching one of the thin gold necklaces resting on her tan sternum, tweaking a charm, then patting the stiff crest of hair on her crown.
I wasn’t ready to be on television
, she admitted a bit shyly.
    Oh, this won’t be on television
, Kristy assured her.
This is just for the producers to see. But who knows, if I get picked maybe I could get MTV to come here for haircuts!
    The