Chapter Text
Derek Zoolander stood alone beneath the canopy of a rural gas station at one in the morning, pleading with a vending machine. His silver convertible waited at the pump with the nozzle latched into its tank and the top down despite the rain. From the tree line, someone was watching him struggle. A woman had followed his Bronco for seventeen miles, drawn by the pulse beneath his throat and the scent of expensive hair product.
He fed the dollar into the machine again. The machine rejected it. He flattened the bill against his thigh and held it up to the light. “There is nothing wrong with you,” he assured George Washington.
The woman had chosen him because he looked easy to eat. The vending machine supported her conclusion. She crossed the parking lot faster than human sight could follow. One moment she stood among the trees; the next, her hand closed around Derek’s shoulder. Derek turned as far to the left as his body permitted, which was barely a degree.
“Are you waiting for the machine?”
“I am here to discuss eternal beauty.”
Derek’s suspicion softened. “Print, or runway?”
“Skincare,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Name’s Heidi.”
Heidi claimed she represented a European skin-care company, which was how Derek knew she could be trusted. She slammed him against the vending machine hard enough to shake loose a packet of peanut butter crackers. Derek bent at the waist, reaching into the tray. “Oh, look. I got something.”
Heidi bared her fangs. “Your career ends tonight.”
“My career ended last year, actually, but I changed my mind.” Derek tucked the crackers into his murse. “I’m a male model. It happens.”
Heidi’s fangs pierced his throat.
Derek went rigid beneath her mouth, then placed one careful hand between them. “I’m not really into that?”
The vampire staggered backward, holding a hand over her mouth. “What are you?”
“A male model,” he said. “I just told you that.”
She spat onto the pavement. A bronze slick spread through the rainwater, sparkling beneath the canopy lights. “Your blood tastes like chemicals.”
Derek’s face tightened. “They’re antioxidants. I read about them in Time Magazine. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
“You have enough bronzer in your veins to kill a horse.”
“That’s impossible. Horses are huge.”
Heidi lunged again. Derek dipped his chin and puckered his lips. Blue Steel struck her clean beneath the gas station lights. She stopped midattack as the force of it brought her to her knees.
Derek maintained the pout. “I knew it was strong, but I didn’t know it could hurt Europeans.”
He put it away and climbed into the Bronco, pulling out slowly in reverse because, he reasoned, the gas pump was still attached. The nozzle tore from the tank and a torrent of gasoline drenched Heidi before Derek found first gear. The pump exploded behind him. Fire rolled across the canopy and hurled it into the tree line while Derek drove away beneath a cascade of sparks. He checked the rearview mirror, saw only flames, and nodded. European skincare was extremely dramatic.
He crossed into Forks without noticing the sign. On a dark residential street, a deer bounded across. Derek hit the brakes and braced one hand against the dashboard. The Bronco vaulted a drainage ditch, rolled across a wet lawn, and landed upside down behind a police cruiser.
Derek remained belted into the driver’s seat, studying the handprint he had pressed into the dashboard.
“Cheap.”
He climbed from the car, opened his umbrella, and made it as far as the nearest porch before deciding he needed to lie down for a moment.
Charlie Swan opened his front door and found a male model dying on the porch. At least, Charlie assumed he was dying. The model lay rigid beneath the porch light, his face bloodless, his eyes closed, and one hand arranged elegantly across his stomach. A black umbrella rested beside him. Rain had gathered in its inverted canopy because somebody had opened it upside down.
Behind Charlie’s cruiser, the overturned Bronco’s wheels turned lazily while rain poured into its open cabin. The stereo continued playing what Derek knew only as “Jitterbug” through waterlogged speakers.
Bella appeared behind him. “Dad?”
The man opened his eyes. “No, I’m Derek.”
Charlie reached for his gun. “Get back inside.”
Derek rose so quickly that one instant he lay on the porch and the next he stood directly beneath the light, adjusting his collar. His skin flashed like a disco ball.
Charlie forgot his gun. “Are you covered in glitter?”
Derek examined his glitter-covered hand. “No.”
“Then why are you sparkling?”
“The sun, duh.”
“It’s past midnight.”
Derek looked past Charlie toward the black sky with a pained expression. “Then I guess it might be the moon.”
Bella stepped onto the porch despite her father’s outstretched arm. She recognized the face from drugstore advertisements, department-store posters, and a VH1 special she had watched during a fever.
“Aren’t you three-time VH1 Male Model of the Year Derek Zoolander?”
Derek gave her Blue Steel. The porch light flickered twice.
“Maybe.”
Charlie glanced between them. “You know this person?”
“He’s a model.”
“Oh, right.” Charlie sighed. “Like Edward?”
An ugly Volvo turned onto the street and braked sharply beside the house. Edward Cullen emerged before the engine had fully stopped. He walked the yard at normal-human speed, crushing one of Charlie’s stepping stones beneath his shoe.
Derek shook his head. “No. A male model.”
“Stay away from him,” Edward told Bella as he approached the porch.
Derek took a closer look at Edward and gasped. “The Volvo people.”
Edward stopped at the foot of the porch. “What did you call me?”
“I’ve seen your ads.”
“I don’t have ads. Do you mean the Volturi?”
“No.” He pointed at the ugly car.
Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose. “Will either of you explain why two adult men are visiting my teenage daughter after midnight?”
Derek glanced past Charlie into the house. “Is there a party?”
There was not.
“I’m seventeen,” Edward reminded him.
Derek tilted his head. “You look thirty.” He reached into his murse for his multi-tool compact. “With just a little bit of SPF and a very good moisturizer—“
Edward’s jaw flexed. “You have no idea what I am.”
Derek studied his pale face. “British?”
“Something much worse.”
“Oh.” Derek’s expression tightened into Blue Steel. “So, Australian, then.”
Edward’s gaze dropped to the blood beneath Derek’s collar. He crossed the short distance in a blur and caught Derek’s chin before Charlie could raise his gun again.
“Who bit you?”
Derek touched his neck. “A European skincare representative.”
Charlie’s radio crackled from inside the house, reporting an explosion at the gas station off Highway 101. Everyone looked at Derek.
“It was like that when I left,” he said.
Edward searched Derek’s thoughts and found a blue-lit corridor lined with mirrors. Somewhere beyond, far past any place capable of thought, a voice repeated the word moisture until it lost all meaning. Edward stepped back.
“What is it?” Bella asked.
“I can’t hear him.”
Bella frowned. “You can’t hear me either.”
“This is different.” Edward looked at Derek. “Your mind is closed. His is…”
They waited. Derek checked his teeth in his compact.
Charlie holstered his gun. “Empty?”
Edward did not answer.
“Hey! My mind is right here,” Derek said, tapping his temple with the compact.
Edward studied him. “Are you thinking right now?”
“Obviously.”
“About what?”
“Something… private?”
Charlie looked at his suit, the upside-down umbrella, and the burning glow beyond the trees. “Uh-huh.”
Derek’s Nokia began ringing. He lifted one finger. “I have to take this.”
A woman spoke for several seconds.
“I can’t,” Derek said. “I’m currently in Forks.”
Another pause.
“Washington,” Derek said.
Another pause.
“State.”
He snapped the phone shut. “Taylor is sending the jet.”
Charlie looked at Derek. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
Edward caught Derek’s arm. “You can’t fly anywhere. You’re turning.”
Derek looked down at his bloodied shoes. “No, Edward. I’m not an ambi-turner.”
A stretch Hummer arrived ten minutes later to take Derek to the airfield. Its driver wore a headset and carried a sign reading ZOOLANDER, although Derek was the only passenger waiting outside Charlie Swan’s house at two in the morning.
Derek Zoolander died later that day at a casting call for men who looked good dead. It was very poetic. The invitation had been slipped beneath the door of his room, where he slept in a narrow blue bunk beneath an oil painting of himself sleeping in that same bunk. The card was black, the lettering was red, and the instructions asked him to arrive at 10:47 PM wearing something suitable for eternity.
He chose white leather.