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She leans forward, sensing her chance to grab my full attention, and tucks short blond hair back behind her ear. My heart gives a little twinge. Sitting there in her pink sweater and faded blue jeans, she looks more like Mother than I do, which should be impossible, considering they aren’t even related.
“Your job,” she says. “Why don’t you just quit?”
My face in the mirror is colorless, even under all the carefully applied make-up. I look like I’m going to be sick. “You know I can’t quit.”
Because I’m stuck.
I don’t say the words, though. Instead, I swipe my brush through my hair again, carefully avoiding the dangling earrings. I’m frazzled—I should have put them on last.
“Yet you hate it.”
“Idon’thate it.” The words come out automatically.
“Really? Because every single time you go to one of these stupid galas, you get this look on your face like someone’s volunteering you to be a virgin sacrifice.”
I quirk an eyebrow, lips twitching. “Virgin?”
Janie doesn’t take the bait. “Pen, come on. You know what I mean. You’ve got this stiff upper lip thing going on like you’ve been sold.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?”
I shrug. “It’s fine.”
She gives me a withering look and crosses her legs on the bed. “Fine?”
I look away, my eyes drawn to the dangling length of chain hanging from my ear. “Yes, it’s fine. Why are you being weird?”
“Because you hate this,” she says and waves her hand in the air as if to say ‘this’ includes everything around us—everything in my bedroom. “You hate the photoshoots, you hate the catwalk, you hateRenfield—”
“Renfield is good at his job.”
Janie rolls her eyes. “Renfield is a sleazy mobster from an eighties movie.”
“He’s notthat bad.”
“That badimplies heisbad, Pen.”
“Ren does his best.” I finish brushing my hair and start putting it up. It’ll take a hundred bobby pins to get it all to stay in place. “It’s a tricky industry.”
“That is the most pimpy thing you could have said,” says Janie. “You know Renfield doesn’t care about you.”
“He’s my agent. He doesn’thaveto care about me.”
“He should!” she says, her gaze fierce. “Look, Pen, I don’t care how tricky the industry is, people should be treating you like a person.”
No one will treat me like a person, owing to what I am, what they see. And Janie knows that, which is why she swallows down whatever she was about to say next.
“You’re just this… this beautifulobjectRenfield uses to do his job and… I hate it.”
“Iamhis job.”And I am that object, but that’s just how it is and how it’s been for a very long time.
“Don’t you realize how gross that sounds? You’re more than an object, Pen.”
“You know that and I know that,” I answer on a sad smile. “And that has to be good enough. You know how it goes, Janie.”
I cinch closed. Like a drawstring bag, something inside me coils shut. I turn back to the mirror. “I need to get ready.”
