the year before, and there were four others who modeled regularly. It sounded like a whorehouse to Faye, and she told Val so, but the twins were nearly eighteen now, and Valerie reminded her of it constantly. It was an argument which they couldn't win. A week later, they knew that she would be moving out. Vanessa had done exactly as she planned. She had applied to a handful of schools in the East, been accepted at all of them, and was going to Barnard in the fall. She was staying until the end of June, and then she was going to New York to work for two months before starting school. She had gotten a job as a receptionist in a publishing house and she was all excited about it. Meanwhile Greg was going to Europe with friends. Only Anne was staying home this year. They had tried to talk her into camp, but she insisted that she was too old, and she wanted to go camping with Lionel for a week or two, but he was working on a new film for Fox and didn't have time. And Ward and Faye were starting a biggie too. Ever since the Academy Award, the offers had been rolling in with even greater regularity than before. Faye had three projects lined up back to back for the next year, and no spare time at all. Ward reminded her that it was a good thing they'd made the trip to Europe when they had, and she agreed.
The twins' graduation party was the rowdiest of all, and Faye looked at Ward in exhaustion as the last guest left at 4 A.M. “Maybe we're getting too old for this.”
“Speak for yourself. Personally, I think seventeen-year-old girls are a lot more attractive than they used to be.”
“Watch out for that.” She wagged a finger at him, and lay down on their bed, before leaving for work at five. There was a big scene she wanted to set up, and Ward was going to spend the day with Lionel and Anne. Val had a hot date, Vanessa had her own plans. God only knew where Greg was, or with whom, but undoubtedly it involved sports, beer, or girls, and he seemed relatively well able to take care of himself, and Faye went to work happily just as Ward fell asleep. And the summer seemed to whiz by. Valerie moved into the apartment she loved so much. There were actually nine girls living there when she moved in. It was a huge house, and half the beds had no sheets on them at all. In the kitchen there were six bottles of vodka, two lemons, three bottles of soda, and no food at all in the fridge, and she hardly ever saw any of the other girls. They had their own lives, boyfriends, some of them had their own phones, and Val had never been happier in her life, she told Vanessa just before she left.
'This is just what I've always wanted to do.”
“How's acting school?” Vanessa asked, wondering how they could have shared the same womb, same life, same house. Two people couldn't have been more different than they.
Val shrugged. “I haven't had time to enroll yet. I've been busy going to go-sees.” But in August she struck oil. Vanessa was already long gone, staying at the Barbizon in New York, and looking at apartments with a friend from work. The job at Parker Publishing was actually pretty dull and all she did was answer phones, but she was looking forward to Barnard. Valerie called her late one night to tell her that she had a walk-on in a horror film. “Isn't that great?”
It was three o'clock in the morning and Vanessa yawned, but she didn't want to take the wind out of Val's sails. She was pleased she'd called. “What do you get to do?”
“I walk across the set, oozing blood from my eyes and nose and ears.”
Vanessa repressed a groan. “That's wonderful. When do you start?”
“Next week.”
“That's great. Have you told Mom?”
“I haven't had time. I'll call her this week sometime,” but they both suspected Faye wouldn't be quite so thrilled although they didn't voice it. She never seemed to understand anything Val did, or so Val felt, and she was never pleased for her, and probably wouldn't be about this. But she had started small too. Hell, she had done soap ads in New York for a year before they discovered her. And