Stalking Lisa D’Amato

When your fifth grade stalkee becomes America’s Next Top Model

I was in fifth grade when I watched Lisa D’Amato do cartwheels and back-handsprings through the hallways at recess.  I started at Wildwood Elementary not knowing a soul. We had moved again, this time into a bigger house, walking distance from the best park, the one with the fort where you could pretend it was medieval times and you were a princess in a tower. At school, I sat against the wall by myself. Everyone had their own friends already. I tried to act like I wasn’t following Lisa and Sasha around, but I trailed them until they asked if I wanted to hang out with them. It had been her and Sasha together all the time for weeks. Then Lisa dropped her, and it was just us two. I felt a little sorry for Sasha that she lost her friend, but not more glad than I felt that I had Lisa.

She ran the mile in under six minutes and during the pull-up test it was like she was never going to stop. She just kept pulling her skinny body up to that bar. I could not eek out a single one. Lisa’s tetherball serve involved a double pirouette before the push-off, putting the full force of her frame behind the ball before she sent it flying. We played everyday until I got good enough to be competition. She taught me to be savage—to push the ball higher and faster, slap it over and over and over your competitor’s head. Never mind if you burn your hand on the rope. It’s about the win.

We sat on the stage in the cafeteria with our perms fluffed out and bangs in swoops on picture day after having our photos taken and told each other how pretty the other was.

“You’re prettier.”

“No, you’re prettier.” I was in love.

One day she came to school wearing two different colored T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up so the bottom shirt was a contrast of color. There was another girl, slim and blonde with glasses, and maybe she was prettier than me. I don’t know, but she was slimmer and also wearing two shirts with the sleeves rolled up. She and Lisa made a shape that wedged me out until I was alone again.

That’s when I started to use up all my fake sick days. I would tell Grandma Corky my stomach hurt, and she would ask if I had a bowel movement. I would ask “what is that?” I would say my vagina hurt (my pants were always too tight). I would say my head hurt. I would try to stay in bed. I wanted to be a house-cat because I couldn’t stand those times in school when we were let out of class, and my friend had left me for another friend, and I was alone at the tether-ball pole with no one telling me “you’re prettier.” When we moved in the middle of the school year, it was a relief. I could leave my heartbreak.

When I found out we would be at the same school together again in 8th grade, I called her and told her. It had been two years. I needed a friendly face at the junior high. On the first day, I searched the faces for hers and finally there she was, plump smile, caramel skin, and impeccably dressed in big overalls and a white tank top, not flipping down the halls like in grade school but greeting all her friends—boys and girls with a hug, so sophisticated. She said hello to me that day and never again.

I remember what I wore. In Thousand Oaks, it was important what you wore, and I knew we were poor compared to everyone else. I had on the only shirt at Pic ‘n Save that slightly resembled something you might have seen at Contempo Casuals. It was a green and purple flower print. I walked below one of the balconies where two boys looked down, “You can tell who is a seventh grader just by looking at people.” They pointed at me and laughed. “Seventh grader.” I mumbled under my breath that I was in eighth grade.

Lisa started showing up in magazines when we were in high school after I moved to Ventura. Was it Sassy or a Delia’s catalogue? I would see her, so pretty and popular, and tell people she used to be my friend. By the time her season of America’s Next Top Model came on TV, I had a daughter of my own. Now I watched Lisa with her, but this time she was on national TV. I sat with my arm around little Karli as Tyra revealed the photos of the models who got to stay in the competition. Lisa became a polarizing model, they gave her a villain edit, portrayed her as an alcoholic. People loved her or hated her. I still loved her even though she rejected me, maybe even more because she rejected me. When she came back for her redemption in the All Stars season, Karli and I cheered her on again. We watched Lisa treat prettiness as a competitive sport. She crushed it. Was crowned top all-star model.

I read the last words of I Capture the Castle, and feel a deep satisfaction. I go on the Internet and cut myself with photos of people I love. I google, why am I obsessed with the person who rejected me, and I get this answer:

“This sort of rejection stimulates parts of the brain associated with motivation, reward, addiction and cravings..”

Cruel joke of what it means to be human. The story of loving someone who will never love you back is the story of addiction. There aren’t enough stories of eighty year olds having crushes. There aren’t enough stories of forty-year-olds falling in obsessive and weird love—the kind

Jillian Turecki

tells you to knock off, that it’s immature, that it belongs to teenagers from the 20th century. You get so much joy out of this love, and then in the next minute it sends you into despair.

Send me the message that I’m not worthy, you don’t have time, or you have better options, and I’ll follow you for the rest of my life. It’s true. I’m still checking in on Lisa to see what she’s up to. She and her family moved from their castle (literally it was a little castle) in Los Angeles to Portugal where she still posts stories about how Tyra and the ANTM empire exploited and abused the models. She’s going through a divorce. She says in her Instagram stories that divorce is cheaper in Portugal. So sophisticated.

I read the last words of I Capture the Castle and get this giddy feeling that they were the perfect last words for the story because they felt so true. I find that the film adaptation is available on streaming and queue it up. It’s fine, tries to stay true to the novel, but as with most film adaptations, captures the mood, but misses the juice. At the end they change the last lines to, “I love. I have loved. I will love.” It’s okay, whatever they want to make Cassandra seem more grounded and mentally well, but it misses the mark for me. When I have unrequited love, the kind that makes me want to tear out my heart, the kind that feels like an illness, an addiction, a bowel movement, it’s

I love you. I love you. I love you.