In this chapter, we get to see Tookie go to her Mastication class. And, no. I am not going to make a joke about the word mastication being similar in appearance to the word for solo exploration. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Now back to the Les Yay . . . er, story.
Naturally, since we ended the last chapter on something mildly interesting, we must start this chapter with something boring.
So all Zarpessa did was hide the Sentura. Not exactly threatening. If Tookie is smart, she'll keep better track of her Sentura, so Zarpessa won't be able to pull off this kind of stunt again.
Tookie realizes that she's hungry because she hasn't eaten anything in a day. It's implied she hasn't noticed the hunger until now because of magic.
Tookie finds the Mastication building, which is made of bricks made of various loaves of bread, with butter and cream cheese as gout, and various kebabs used as building support. Tookie, naturally, immediately decides to lick the window.
That is incredibly unsanitary.
Dylan stops her, saying that she got zapped when she tried to eat a kebab. So they torture the models with food that they aren't allowed to eat. This may just be the most realistic part of the book when it comes to actual modeling.
Tookie says she's so hungry that she could eat chocolate. (Remember, she hates chocolate.)
Dylan just came from another class "Tick-Tock Color Clock" which teaches the Modelland time system. But Dylan and her entire class still don't understand it. Which means it's either very complicated, or the beauty and IQ of Bellas is inversely proportional.
Wait. Dylan was in the last class with Tookie. Did Tookie have a free period while Dylan went to another class?
Tookie tells Dylan what happened with Zarpessa's "Sentura switcheroo."
Tookie blushed. She'd never been anyone's Tookie. It felt good.
Dylan, you've known Tookie for a day. It's way too early to be that attached to her. (Even if it does sound like you have a huge crush on her.)
Tookie tells Dylan not to beat Zarpessa up, and Dylan asks why Zarpessa doesn't like her. Tookie lies and says she doesn't know. Just tell her that you're pining after Zarpessa's boyfriend, Tookie. That won't make you sound bad at all!
They enter the house made of food to the sound of frying bacon, and:
Meh. Too much meat for my taste. Probably not a good idea to describe something as "the most delicious" if your readers don't share your taste in food.
And we meet our first female Guru! I'm excited to know what she's going to be like. Will she be a retired Intoxibella? A jerk like Gunnero?
Another walking stereotype. Joy.
What a waste of perfectly good food.
She has armbands made of garlic, pants made out of a potato sack, a hybrid chef/cowboy hat, and hair made of food ("strands of spaghetti, whips of licorice, blades of wheatgrass").
That is just gross and wrong. This Guru freaks me out.
In the class are: Tookie, Dylan, Chaste, Zarpessa, the Likee sisters, and Kamalini. There are six other students in the class, but they are meaningless background characters who get no description or names. (Save for Bibiana from Terra BossaNova and a "brunette girl.")
Little creatures are in the room, zipping around. And this is enough to get the girls to start screaming. Personally, I'd take my shoe off and start squashing.
Tookie gets a good look at one.
Zarpessa says the room is infested with vermin, but the Guru says they're just "roo jerky." She then catches one with chopsticks.
Half the class shuddered, but Tookie salivated at the jerky. She was so starving she'd have eaten anything.
O.O
EW! I'd rather cut off and eat the Guru's food-hair then eating something that was still alive.
Please tell me Kanga comes back for revenge later in the story. Preferably with a katana.
Gee. I wonder what country Didgeridoo is supposed to be. Tyra did such a good job disguising it that it is nothing like a real nation.
Also, Lauro is a real name. A guy's name. An Italian guy's name.
Research, what's that?
Leroy Lauro Brown then eats another roo jerky and hops onto her desk. She then tells the class that this room is where Mastication happens, and that she's the only one allowed to do magic there. She then makes them take off their Senturas, which she labels and puts away.
She then has everyone stick out their tongues and then proceeds to read their tongues like a phony psychic* would read palms. She grabs their tongues while doing so. This whole class is a hypochondriac's worse nightmare.
By reading tongues, Lauro can tell what people's favorite foods are.
Dylan's is "Bou-Big-Tique deep-dish pizza pie." Tookie's is whipped cream straight out of the can (which is described by Lauro as odd). The Likees have no individual personalities, so all of them have the same favorite food.
Lauro gave them an odd look. "That's no way to live, dearies. You realize your bodies need fuel, correct? You realize you'll still be beautiful if you chew and swallow?"
Just so we're clear: they're talking about sugar-free breath mints.
Zarpessa has two favorite foods. The first is believable (if incredibly stupid sounding), while the second is obvious BS.
Like I said, BS. Zarpessa lived most of her life in the lap of luxury. Even though she's stuck living out of garbage cans, there is no way that ROTTING FOOD has become her favorite food. I could accept her having a (less disgusting) food as the most tolerable, but I'm pretty sure that no one likes eating rotting garbage. People only eat it because the alternative is starvation.
Lauro describes Zarpessa's "favorite" rotting food as "dero" food. Tookie says that "dero" means "homeless" in "the Didgeridoo dialect."
Believe it or not, "dero" is actual Australian slang
. It's short for "derelict." I don't know if the word itself is considered offensive, but given that the definitions I saw included "tramp" and "hobo", I doubt it's a term of endearment.
Lauro explains about being a tongue-reader, and then takes off her chef/cowboy hat. Yellow smoke fills the room, smelling like whatever food the girls like.
Then fifteen harnesses drop from the ceiling, dangling above vats of foods. Each girl's vat has their favorite food inside.
Tookie puts on her harness and sees that her vat has about a hundred cans of different types of whipped cream. Due to the harness, she can just barely not reach the whipped cream.
Lauro then goes around sampling each of the favorite foods while the girls dangle right out of reach of them.
I'd tell her to quit being stereotypical, but it would probably cause her to cease existing.
The "dangling almost within reach" continues for a little while before the girls are finally allowed to eat. Tookie acts like an absolute pig.
She drops a can by accident onto her flower brooch, and it swallows the can. She then reaches in and pulls it out again. Tookie realize that the brooch shrinks food for later storage. Convenient that she used that particular flower to hide her button from Theophilus, isn't it?
The other girls pig out as well, with only Kamalini showing any hint of table manners. (Aside from the Likee sisters who each grab one mint.) In spite of their disgusting gorging, the girls are still unsatisfied. Then the harnesses release the girls into the middle of their food.
Only Zarpessa continues eating food at this point, licking the bottom of the vat. And of course her food is all gross food ("vile vittles") you'd find in a garbage can instead of the food she liked before being homeless. I'm not sure whether the story is trying to say this is a good or a bad thing. Either way, it's not very sensitive on the issues of homelessness and starvation.
Then the vats morph into elevators, and Lauro tells them it's time for dessert. The elevators go sideways to another building where various liquid foods are coming down from shower heads. Among the liquid desserts are caramel, boysenberry, marshmallow and chocolate.
Lauro encourages them to go for it, and the girls go to pig out some more.
I am honestly puzzled as to the purpose of this scene, and why it's dragged on so long. The girls go gorge at the shower heads, except for the Likee sisters who keep sucking their breath mints. Chaste knocks a girl to the ground to get to a dark chocolate shower. Zarpessa rips out a shower head when it becomes clogged with bits of pecan.
Kamalini continues to show restraint. Weird. You'd think someone that's fighting addiction would have more problems with self-control.
They then get a lesson on "Jammers, Chowers, and Poachers."
Chaste gets a stamp of "Gut Chower" which means:
"That's the first time anyone has ever told me it's good to stop even when something feels really good."
ಠ_ಠ
Moving on . . .
Kamalini also gets labeled a Gut Chower.
The Likees are labeled as "Gut Poachers."
"When you want help, I hope you give me a bell."
I think Lauro may just be the best Guru we've seen so far. At least she's sensitive to eating disorders and wants to correct them. Not sure how her "pig yourself out" lesson helped, though.
Zarpessa gets labeled as "Gut."
Oh, screw you. Zarpessa's been busy half-starving on the streets. She is the only one who had a valid excuse for acting like an absolute pig.
Tookie gets labeled a "Gut Jammer."
She then tells Tookie that stuffing her face won't fill out Tookie's frame. Which is bull crap. I don't care how fast your metabolism is. If you're constantly stuffing your face, you'll put on the pounds.
Lauro then says that Tookie doesn't look "half bad" which is enough of a compliment to put Tookie on Cloud 9.
In spite of the highly unrealistic beauty standards, apparently Modelland discourages unhealthy eating habits. (I find this hard to swallow.) So from now on, Lauro will be dictating their meals from now on.
"Those lolli-headed leading ladies restrict as well. Worse than models, in my roo opinion."
Did an actress kill Tyra Banks family when she was a kid or something? Did she want to become an actress but wasn't good enough? I don't get why everyone in Modelland looks down on actresses. I'm hoping we get an actual explanation for this.
Lauro then gives them the "gift" of renewed appetite. ("You're now so hungry, you could eat the ass out of a low-flying duck!")
Then we find out what the "E" in Modelland stands for. "Eatz." It's the name of the cafeteria they'll be eating at. Zarpessa sarcastically notes that Tookie is brilliant for figuring this out, and suggests that the "L" stands for "L'idiot."
We then get a lame argument between Dylan and Zarpessa.
Dylan calls Zarpessa lame-o. Zarpessa calls her a lardass. Dylan calls Chaste a "Loose Lucy." Zarpessa calls Dylan a loudmouth. Dylan calls Zarpessa a "leech lizard."
Tookie then tells them to stop. Dylan is happy she got in the last "L" insult, even though the insult was incredibly stupid. Zarpessa and Chaste glare at them.
At the Eatz, we see that the method of ordering food is talking to a pair of giant lips. Tookie's class is then told to get something to eat without getting cleaned up first, even they're still covered in food from their eating binge.
Dylan starts acting upset. We don't know why, although it's probably related to the vague revelation that Dylan connects foods with emotion. (Either that, or she just now realized how stupid her insults were from earlier.)
Tookie notes that the upperclassBellas are glaring at them. Before anything can come of this, the girls all "coo" and go to the windows.
"I'm going to hyper-hyper-hyperventilate!" moaned a girl wearing large sunglasses.
"I called firsties!" exclaimed Chaste. "And lasties! And tops and bottoms!"
The cause of this commotion is three Bestosterone boys walking by the window. They're carrying steel girders. This implies either superstrength or really tiny girders.
The girls all squee at the boys, identifying them as Webb, Alexander and Bravo. (Bravo's the guy who helped Tookie earlier.)
I find it funny that Chaste is characterized by the story and other characters as being the "school slut." The only difference between the way Chaste and the other girls act around the Bestosterone boys is that Chaste is just more blunt about it.
Bravo tosses the girder in the air and catches it. Tookie dismisses him as a show-off while the other girls act like hormonal idiots. The third time Bravo tosses the steel girder in the air, it slips and cuts his forearm.
A whipped-cream-caked, punch-bowl-headed girl with one green eye and one brown eye, to be exact.
Bravo looked at Tookie! And he spoke with her once! Just like Theophilus! It looks like Tookie may have a new love interest. Let's hope she doesn't dig through his trash, too.
Also, I find it laughable that no one in Modelland could have predicted Bravo looking at Tookie. In this book, everyone's attention is on Tookie, even if the attention is often negative. (The only exception so far is the "lying down in the hallway" scene at her school.) One more person paying attention to her is not a big deal.
But it's apparently a big enough cliffhanger to end the chapter on.
Useless fact of the day: People actually do eat kangaroo jerky.
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