The Shot

About The ShotHow much would you sacrifice for another shot at the perfect life?Producer Mara Bolt is the queen of reality TV. Ambitious to the point of ruthlessness, Mara will do anything for ratings. When she meets Kristy Shaw, Mara is certain she’s found the star of her newest series, The Shot.Kristy is languishing in her small hometown and a dead-end job, pining for her first love, Max Irving. The Shot offers her a Total Body Transformation – extreme plastic surgery to render her unrecognisable – as a way to recapture Max’s affections under a new identity. But there’s a catch: if she doesn’t secure his heart in thirty days, she must have her surgeries reversed, and go back to her previous life.As cameras start rolling, Mara and Kristy both feel there is something happening behind the scenes – something that threatens to reveal old wounds and create new secrets. If they are going to keep the show on track, they must repress the truths and desires that lie just beneath the surface.The Shot is a rollercoaster read about our obsession with beauty, the trappings of success, and the desperate, outrageous lengths we will go to for love and ambition. It asks the question: where is the line between entertainment and exploitation? CONTENTSCoverAbout The ShotDedicationEpigraphPrologue Make-believePart One PreproductionAll that WantingGet RealScalpedGimlets and PieSugar BabySharksPart Two ProductionWe Are Not BooksLittle ChoicesNo Mud, No LotusMortification of the SensesWabi SabiThe SlayerImogen SpeakingControl RoomFurloughRawMy Body My Choice!BlackoutPart Three PostproductionRunHuntMudThe Devil in the DetailsThe Imogen LieThe Fourth WallChangelingMistress of CeremoniesTotal Body TransformationRoll CreditsEpilogue I Contain MultitudesAcknowledgementsAbout Naima BrownCopyright page Dedicated to my mom, for passing on her love of reading and buying me heaps of books. And to my dad, for being a wordsmith himself. And to Genevieve, Lila, Katy and Ed – the stars in my sky. ‘Now, there’s an idea. There’s a part of me, the producer side, that knows it would be epic television, good or bad. It could be like the Hindenburg – the greatest disaster ever – but even then that would be great TV.’~ American host of The Bachelor when asked if he’d consider casting his ex-wife of twenty years as the ‘Bachelorette’ PROLOGUEMAKE-BELIEVEWhen I was four years old, I put on the fluffy brown cat Halloween costume I’d worn the previous year, and I pretended to be a kitten for a week straight. And I’m not talking for a little bit here and there, between playing with dolls and coloring, I’m talking an entire week, nonstop. When my parents talk about it, they still seem scarred. It was, my mom says, cute for about five minutes. It lasted thousands of minutes.I only answered to the name Fluffball.I insisted on eating all my meals on the floor, kneeling on all fours, lapping.I answered every question with a sinister meow.I would curl up on my parents’ laps and paw at them.I refused to take the costume off.I refused to bathe.I cajoled them into dangling toys for me to bat with my hands and feet. When they refused, I bit and snarled and scratched. Fluffball could be mean.I had first decided to be Fluffball on a Saturday morning, and my parents hoped that by the time Monday rolled around and I was dropped at day care, I’d drop the act. But no. Fluffball had other plans. My mom had just turned the key in the ignition, and was about to PART ONEPREPRODUCTION ALL THAT WANTINGWanting things is a sick feeling; all Kristy Shaw does these days is want things.From the moment she clocks in at Irvings to the moment she walks out of its cool air-conditioning and drone of easy-listening muzak back into the humid mosquito-buzzing night she is in a constant State of Want. The Queen of Wantsville. Wanty McWanterton. She wants the perfumes in their bottles and vials like potions out of Disney movies – eye of newt, virgin’s tears, unicorn blood. She wants the cosmetics arranged like glittering candies and cupcakes in glass cases. She wants the frou-frou high tea with the polished silver service and the posh little sandwiches – one slim slice of cucumber, hydroponic watercress, crustless – at the Irvings café where everyone speaks in conspiratorial whispers about lives Kristy can’t fathom, shopping bags at their feet like sleeping dogs. She wants to cling to the bling twinkling under lock and key. She wants the expensive jeans, as shredded and distressed as she feels. She wants the creamy sheer blouses that pour over you like melted butter and the skull-printed scarves and the heels with the coveted red soles. Most of all she wants to have it all so