Chrissy Teigen's Culinary School for Wayward Models (Cravings fic) COMPLETE

Chapter 03: The Great Wall of Snacks

In addition to spending thousands of hours in the kitchen, the 1st-years at Chrissy Teigen's Culinary School also had to take a few, like, actual classes.

Right? Kendall didn't believe it either. But her first class, according to the syllabus Jenna had given her, was something called Theory & Practice of Measurement.

Kendall had trouble finding the room—the building that comprised their "campus" was surprisingly twisty and turny for a simple cooking school, with many locked or unlabeled doors. She found the room eventually but she was last to arrive, sliding into a seat at the back of the class. The other students seemed to barely even register her presence. Or maybe pointedly chose NOT to acknowledge her presence? It was hard to tell. But it seemed logical to assume they all hated her. They hated her because she had shown up late in the semester and disrupted their routine. They hated her because unlike them she hadn't chosen to be there, and very obviously didn't want to be there. They hated her because she wasn't good at the recipes and had blown up during the lesson yesterday. They hated her because she was Kardashian. There were many reasons why they probably hated her and Kendall's brain was excellent at cataloging them.

The teacher was a very beautiful woman named Shalom. She had short, frizzy black hair and sparkly azure eyes and didn't seem very much older than anyone else in the room. With barely a "Good morning, everyone" she launched into a big lecture about cup size. Not for bras—which might have been interesting, maybe even a little sexy—but cups as in the unit of measurement that is common in United States cooking and almost nowhere else.

She took the class through the entire history of what the concept of a cup is. Kendall had never really thought about it but as the lecture progressed it did seem kind of arbitrary. Like why the amount we know as "one cup" is what it is, instead of something slightly bigger or smaller. And why is it so common in the US but hardly anywhere else. The cup is sometimes used as a unit of measurement in Japan and Canada, but those are each different amounts than a cup in the USA. What's that about? It turned out there was a whole socio-political history behind it, although it wasn't necessarily that interesting. Shalom walked them through the creation of the cup and then talked about how it fit in amongst other similar contemporary sizes. To Kendall it seemed...like a weird topic for a class? Like especially for cooking, when all you had to do was follow the recipe. Who cared about a cup or a liter or a pint or whatever. You just do what it says. Why force yourself to think about these things, if everything will be perfectly fine if you never even give it consideration.

Kendall's attention kind of wandered as the lecture dragged on and eventually she blinked back to the present when the other students all stood up from their desks and filed out of the room. Apparently the class was over.

Kendall quickly gathered up her notes (KILL ME, she'd absentmindedly written, along with some bra-shaped doodles that probably wouldn't prove terribly helpful around test time) and followed the other models out. They all moved in a pack, separate from her. She overheard them remarking that they had some time to kill before they met Jenna for their morning cooking session, so maybe they should visit the Great Wall of Snacks. A delighted murmur of assent traveled through the group and they set off. Kendall followed at a distance. Not really sure if she'd been invited, but also afraid to get left behind. Whatever this Great Wall of Snacks was and wherever it was, there was a very real chance she could wander around forever and never find it. She imagined her dry skeleton bones sprawled across the hallway, the models gently stepping over and around it without comment on the way to their next class.

As she walked behind the other models without trying too much to look like she was walking behind them, Kendall caught bits and pieces of their conversation. One of them mentioned something about bra cup sizes and Kendall wanted to shout I THOUGHT THE SAME THING TOO but then she didn't want to seem like she was eavesdropping so instead she hung back a little and pretended to be interested in a poster-size portrait of Chrissy's three-legged French Bulldog, Penny.