Hothouse Flower (Addicted #4)(43)

“We can measure her,” the stylist suggests.

“This is wrong,” the designer touches the sleeve. “This is not on you right.” She tries to adjust the gown, but it looks right to me. I don’t see how my head is supposed to go where she’s pointing. That’s not how I wore it in the fitting.

“No, no, no.” The designer pinches my slender waistline and then her hands fall to my ass. She stretches the fabric down and then squeezes my butt. “This is too tight. Her thighs, too fat.”

I try to grin and bear it, the designer’s hands going wherever she pleases, in places that I would prefer her not to touch.

I haven’t eaten real food in days. I don’t see how I could have gained anything other than hunger. The designer just dislikes me. I must have offended her somehow.

“I want another model,” she declares. “Get her ready, the hair, the makeup. Now.”

My eyes grow big. “Wait, please, let me fix this. Don’t pull me out of the show.” I’ve walked more than one runway this week, but being fired from even a single job will displease my mom.

“The dress looks hideous on you,” she says. The models in the line watch the designer berate me with more insults. “You’re overweight. I don’t even know why others are booking you.”

Christina’s mouth has permanently fallen open.

I take each word with a blank face, but my eyes begin to burn as I hold back more emotion. “So there’s nothing I can—”

And then the designer physically pries the dress from my body. It’s all I can do to not teeter off my heels. She strips me bare. No bra. Just a nude thong. In two quick moments, I stand naked in a room of now fully-clothed people. The cold nips my arms and legs, but the embarrassment is hot on my neck.

The designer focuses on a new model. Blonde. Tall. Wiry.

The exact same size as me.

The nice stylist combs the new model’s hair. I’m alone, and no one’s going to tell me what to do, where to go, or even give me a robe to cover myself with.

When I turn, I meet the intense gaze of the camera. Click, flash. Click, flash.

It’s in this moment—eighteen, being photographed bare and nude without consent—that I feel violated by my own career. I could be fifteen right now, okay with this, told that this is what’s supposed to happen. I could be fourteen. But what difference does it make now that I’m eighteen? I’m just more aware. I see the wrongness, and the blow strikes harder and hurts greater.

I spend the next ten minutes trying to find my clothes, passing people with my arms over my chest. Trying not to cry. But tears build, and the hurt of the whole situation weighs on my chest like a brick drifting to the bottom of the ocean.

I don’t want to be here anymore.

I just want to go home.





< 18 >

RYKE MEADOWS



I take off my helmet in the parking lot, switching off the ignition on my bike, and I notice Sully’s forest-green Jeep parked by the Information Center. I dial his number, quickly putting on my climbing shoes and tying my chalk bag around my waist.

The wind blows hard today, the trees rustling together in Bellefonte Quarry. It’s not so f*cking bad that I can’t climb. The sky is clear, and that’s more important.

An incoming storm can f*cking kill me.

The moment the line clicks I say, “You flirting with the receptionist again, Sul?” Last week, I had to drag him out of the Information Center before dark clouds rolled through. He was leaning over the desk with his mop of wavy red hair, throwing out the cheesiest f*cking pickup lines to Heidi, a blonde twenty-something girl at a community college nearby.

“Now look who’s slow,” he says. “Mission accepted and completed an hour ago, man. Late, late, late should be your first, middle and last name.”

“Did she reject you again?” I ask, heading towards the sheer side of the cliff.

“Not this time. I have a date on Saturday, so every naysayer can suck my balls.”

I smile as I pick up my pace into a run. I don’t want to be that f*cking late. He’s going to solo climb beside me, placing gear up the rock face as he ascends, and then he’ll have to repel back down to clear all of it. Free-soloing doesn’t have any of those luxuries. I have powder chalk and my f*cking shoes.

That’s it.

A gust of wind ripples the brown water that runs through the quarry. I’ve climbed most of the traditional routes you can in Bellefonte. But before I leave for California, Sully wants me to climb the first route I’ve ever free-soloed before. As some sort of last f*cking hoorah in case I die.

So I rode three hours out here. It’s not far away considering the places I’ll travel to for this sport. If I’m not hanging out with my brother or with Daisy, I’m climbing. Finding really good rock faces is hard in Pennsylvania. There aren’t many routes higher than 200 feet.

And one of the three I plan to climb in Yosemite is 2,900 feet. I’ve been flying out to California the past year to train with Sully, using trad gear—with him always as the lead.

I’ve trusted him with my life too many times to count.

We had to path out my course, and even though it’s all planned out—climbing all three rock faces with a harness and my childhood friend—it’s still f*cking terrifying to do it without both. No amount of confidence can extinguish that lingering fear. It’ll always be in the back of my head.