CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It takes far less time to remove the elaborate wig and robes than it took to put them on, but most of the evening is already gone when I join Cyrus outside the studio.
The last time I brought a boy along to one of my photo shoots—and only because he’d insisted that he was interested—he had gotten bored and wandered off halfway through. When I went to find him, he’d snuck into some other photo shoot for a lingerie ad, his eyes glued to the models who were older and prettier than I was, as if he’d completely forgotten that I existed. He looked at them the same way he would look at me when he wanted to kiss me, and I was suddenly nauseated that I’d ever let him kiss me at all.
A small part of me had expected Cyrus to grow bored of the photo shoot too, but he’s waiting right there by the door, patient as ever, my purse hanging around his shoulder.
Tenderness blazes through me, warming the empty space between my ribs.
“Thanks for holding my bag,” I tell him, reaching over to take it from him.
“It’s an honor to hold your bag,” he says. “And it’s so light I barely felt it.”
I laugh as we wander over to the quieter parts of the lake, where the lights are dim enough to see the pearlescent shimmer of the moon above us, and the trees are dense enough to drape their leaves around us like curtains. “Okay, you don’t have to pretend. I know that thing’s ridiculously heavy.”
“I was starting to wonder if your hobbies included carrying bricks in your purse.”
“Yeah, those are my only two passions in life,” I agree sarcastically. “Drawing clouds and carrying bricks around.”
But his expression turns thoughtful, as if I’ve just uttered something profound. “You know, you looked happy earlier, doing the photo shoot. It’s none of my business, of course, but I suppose I’m still trying to understand why you gave it up if it was something you loved so much.”
I stop walking. Glance up at him. I can tell that he means it—that he’s really trying, his eyes dark and earnest as they study me. And my lie from earlier scrabbles its way back up, itching inside my throat. “I don’t know if I loved it,” I say slowly. Because was it really love if it ate away at you? If it felt like trying to hold on to a fanged creature while it sucked the blood from your hand? All I know is that I had to let go before it killed me. “It just stopped being worth it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain, but modeling is different from, like, gardening or knitting,” I say, rubbing my arms. “It’s not this skill that you can separate from yourself. It’s you ; you’re the product. It’s your appearance that they’re selling. So when you get criticism, it’s always going to be personal, and it’s very often about things you can’t control: They’ll tell you that you’re not tall enough, or you’re not striking enough, or you stand out too much. I mean, I’ve had someone say straight to my face at an audition that I simply wasn’t attractive . Not even, like, a specific feature. Just everything about me.”
I can feel his eyes on me, and I falter. Am I really doing this? Am I really about to tell him the truth, spit out the hot stone of shame that’s been burning inside me this whole time? It’s my last defense against him. Once I say it, I realize, there’ll be no going back. I’ll have trusted him with everything, and it’ll be entirely up to him what he wishes to do with it. He might like me less after I tell him. He might not understand.
But there’s nobody else in the world I can imagine sharing this with. Nobody else I want to confess to, as terrifying as it feels, as high the risk is.
So I take a deep breath, like I’m about to dive headfirst into the ocean, and continue, knowing as I do that it’s really a lost cause now. I might as well be offering him my heart on my palms, holding out hope he’ll be tender with it.
“It’s really twisted, but it’s like, the more worthless they make you feel, the more determined you are to prove your worth to them. I tried to take on all their criticism and change myself. They told me to tone my legs, so I did those stupid diets and threw myself into my workouts. They told me I had to grow my platform, so I made all these social media posts and obsessed over my numbers and wore myself out trying to keep up with the trends. But I still didn’t have that mainstream appeal they were after, and it took me forever to figure out what they actually meant by mainstream .”
Because it was also what the boys who dated me really wanted, even if they didn’t directly admit it. They’d whisper things like, You’re the first Asian girl I’ve ever been with , or, You’re so gorgeous—I can’t believe you’re Chinese , as if I was meant to feel special or grateful to be some kind of exception, and once their interest in me fizzled out, they would turn their attention back to the gorgeous blonde girls in our class. I looked nothing like them, and I never would.
“I regret it now,” I say bitterly, “but I did whatever I could to blend in. I copied their makeup style that wasn’t suited for me at all, and I never volunteered my Chinese name if I could help it. Even if I was never going to be mainstream, I—I just wanted to be closer to it. I felt like I had to, or else nobody would want me. Then all of a sudden, people were saying that it was trendy to be Asian. It was cool . I booked more jobs within a couple months than I had in a full year. And then they asked me to do a photo shoot for this magazine—I don’t know if you’ve heard of Amalia —”
“The one with the hot-pink logo?” he asks. “I think I’ve seen it before.”
“That’s the one. It has a pretty good reputation, so obviously I said yes. I was genuinely excited going in; I thought that it was my moment. That I would become, like, a real, proper model after I did it, and everything would be worth it, because that’s how it goes in the movies, right?”
I don’t realize I’m tugging at my hair until I feel the pain prickling my scalp. I force my fingers back down to my side, my gut churning as the memories bubble up like acid. This is the part I’ve blocked out. The part I haven’t even let myself think about for too long.
“You don’t have to explain anymore,” Cyrus says softly.
“No, it’s okay.” And it really is. For once, I just want to be honest about all the ways it hurts. I could never have done that, before. When you sign up for this industry, you give up more than just your image and your name; you give up your ability to cry out to the people who are hurting you.
You’re told to put your head down. Stick it out. Grit your teeth until they break. Shut up and be grateful. Remember that you’re living out every girl’s dream, and nobody wants to hear about the nights you lie awake hurting, so hungry you could gnaw on your own hand. Because there’s a literal line of people waiting to replace you the moment you tire, and they’re all prettier than you, or prettier in a different way, and they won’t complain.
“From the second I walked into that photo shoot, everything felt off,” I say, finding my voice again. “The whole theme was meant to tie back to ancient China, but I was the only person there who was even Chinese. And then the backdrop just looked … It looked like someone with the vaguest idea of where Asia was on a map had thrown it together overnight, and the clothes they asked me to put on were supposed to be traditional robes, but they didn’t even remotely resemble what I was wearing earlier tonight, and the skirt was so much shorter than I was comfortable with, and I just felt so—exposed. In every way.”
“Leah, I’m sorry,” Cyrus tells me, his features tight, like he’s in pain thinking about it. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. You shouldn’t have had to.”
When he pulls me to his chest, I feel something inside me fissure.
Everything I’ve been forcing back, every memory I’ve buried, all the hate I’ve harbored, the blame I bore. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Here, at last—someone to understand and smooth my hair with his palm and hold me tight, tight enough that the memories retreat to the edges and I let myself sink into him. I never even told my parents exactly why I left. I didn’t tell anyone, because I thought, foolishly, that I could digest the shard of glass in my stomach given enough time.
“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” I whisper against his shirt. “The day after the photo shoot, I woke up and I thought: I can’t go on like this. And that was it. I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength to.” I swallow. “Does that make me weak?”
After all, there was a certain narrative prevalent in the documentaries I watched: the rise and fall and inevitable rise again of the hero. The shocking pain of the fall itself was only relevant because it paved the way for their return to the spotlight, their grand victory. Everyone loves an underdog, so long as they ultimately win in the end. Otherwise, the story isn’t complete.
But for every singer or actor or model who’s achieved the kind of breathtaking ascent people dream of, how many have simply disappeared like me? Quit halfway through? Changed courses?
“No,” Cyrus says, his fingers threading through my hair. “No, you’re not weak at all. If something costs more than it’s worth, you let it go. If anybody dares make you feel bad for it, then screw them.”
I make a sound that’s part sob, part laugh, and it feels like a page turning. Like stepping out into the summer rain, letting the water run down my face and wash everything away.