Make Me Over_ Getting Real - Leslie Kelly [5]
Not durn likely. She was gettin’ outta here first thing tomorrow and headin’ home to whack some sense into him, then to figure out a way to pay off his debt. Because the money she could earn if she stuck it all the way out to the end of this here reality-show thing still wouldn’t be enough to pay off Joe-Bob Baker, the toughest bookie in Knoxville.
What Luther didn’t know was that the big prize on Hey, Make Me Over was a shopping spree for clothes and stuff. And to get all gussied up and go to some nose-in-the-air Christmas Eve party in New York City. As if she really wanted to go to a party—on Christmas no less—with the highfalutin folks who, right now, wouldn’t spit on her if she was afire.
No, she needed to get outta here. Fast. Then she’d find a way to get the money to keep her ornery brother alive all right. At least long enough for her to whale on him like a rented mule. An ass-whuppin’ was gonna come along with her help, that was for sure. The thought cheered her right up.
“Good evening, ladies, if you’re finished with cocktail hour, perhaps you’d care to follow me to the dining room.”
She looked up at the squeaky little butler, who was dressed like a penguin and looked stiff enough to have been dipped in shellac. His nose was always quiverin’, like he’d caught a whiff of something rank. Put her right on edge.
Jiminy crickets, she didn’t belong here. Not with a pushy butler, and cameras everywhere and expensive furniture that looked like it’d break if you took a real sit-down on it. Nossir, she was as out of place as a skunk at a garden party.
Except, she had to admit, with all the other women in the room. With them, she almost felt right at home.
“Whadda I gotta do to get myself kicked offa this thing fast?” she said under her breath.
One of the other contestants, a redhead named Sukie, replied, “Pick your nose at dinner.”
Sukie and Tori had struck up a quick friendship when they’d arrived earlier today at this mansion in Vermont. Probably because the two of them had been so tickled by the way the butler came back every time one of ’em gave a pull on that cloth rope in the corner. Sukie and Tori had pulled the rope about twenty times today, until she thought Mr. Shellac was gonna take a pair of scissors to the thing.
Or to her and Sukie.
“I gotta be the first one gone, but I grew up watchin’ my granddaddy dig for nose gold at the dinner table, and I don’t think I could do it,” Tori said. “There’s gotta be another way.”
“You’ll think of something,” said Sukie with a loud smack of her shiny pink bubblegum.
Sukie worked as a hairdresser in Cleveland and was so far Tori’s favorite to win the grand prize. Anybody who could walk in those fancy, glittery four-inch-tall heels had the makins’ of a real lady.
Blowing a big, juicy bubble and cracking it between her teeth, Sukie added, “And if you don’t, you can always scratch yourself or start a food fight tomorrow. Tonight doesn’t count, anyway.”
Tori was glad’ve that much. Tonight was just a social gathering, a get-to-know-you party before taping got started tomorrow. So there wouldn’t be no pressure to compete with anybody else, or time to worry where the cameras were hidden. But Tori believed in getting a head start. It was never too soon to make a bad impression.
Trouble was, she greatly feared even nose pickin’ wasn’t gonna make her stand out in this crowd, which included a trucker, a bartender—she’d been working the bar and, from the sound of it, making some wicked good hurricanes—some sales clerks, a stripper or two, a maid, and one girl named Ginny who had a huge set of knockers, which she’d gladly flashed at anyone they’d passed during the bus trip up from Albany.
“You don’t really wanna leave already, do you?” asked Sukie as they turned to follow the other women—and the penguin—into the dining room.
“I sure do,” Tori said. “I had to come ’cause I promised my daddy. That don’t mean I gotta stay. If I get throwed off, he can’t never say I didn’t try.”
And then I’ll have time to figure out how to help Luther.
Then she