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“You’re a New Modesty dropout, right?” Mary said it as if it didn’t represent any sort of shameful defeat, but I still felt my face go red.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, making a sour face.
“That’s hot,” the photographer said simply. “We’re trying to tell that story.”
“What?” I asked. “What’s hot? How does a… a… photoshoot like… like this…”
Mary shook her head. “I can tell you’re a very smart girl, Leah, and of course you’re incredibly pretty, or you wouldn’t be here, but—and I’m saying this in all honesty to help you—you’re obviously even more clueless than most NM dropouts.”
My jaw dropped and I felt a wounded expression break out on my face. Tears started to prick the corners of my eyes.
To my relief, Mary’s face became kind, rather than frustrated, as I had feared it would.
“I know,” she said with a sad smile, “it’s hard, but the thing is, the real reason—the most important one, anyway—why you’re here isn’t how beautiful you are, it’s what else Selecta has figured out about you, and let me tell you they’re never wrong.”
I shook my head, more thoroughly confused than before.
“Wrong about what?”
“What you really need,” Mary told me, looking intently into my eyes.
I felt my breath speed up, through my parted lips. I couldn’t say anything at all.
Mary continued, raising her camera to her eye and snapping a picture as she spoke.
“That blush is going to get you a lot of expensive dates, sweetie,” she said. “That’s what this story is about.”
Again I shook my head, more vigorously this time.
“But I don’tunderstand,” I said, hearing my words come out in a plaintive voice that sent a new wave of embarrassment rushing up my neck and into my face. “I mean… what… what is it—what do they think I need?”
“I could try to tell you,” Mary replied, as she took photo after photo of my confusion, “but you wouldn’t get it, and you’ll be happier in the end if you figure it out yourself—with the help of the kind of rich man these pics are likely to attract.”
I just kept shaking my head. Greatly to my distress, I realized that Mary had succeeded in weaving a sort of spell around me, with her talk of a wealthy sponsor. Even more dismayingly, I felt how that spell couldn’t have taken hold if there weren’t something buried in my heart, or maybe even my very flesh, that longed to answer it.
“Take off the shirt, sweetie,” the photographer said. “Let’s see how pretty you’ll be for the men who like to teach New Modesty dropouts what they’ve been missing.”
I felt my nose wrinkle one last time with the modesty my upbringing had instilled. Then, my hands still shaking, I lifted the t-shirt over my head. Mary’s camera kept clicking, the flash going off over and over as I pulled the shirt clear over my head and the loose ponytail I had slept in.
“That’s it,” Mary said soothingly. “I’m sure you know how many men have a thing for redheads. Those tiny pink nipples are just perfect, too. Drop the shirt and turn around for me?”
I obeyed her instructions, grateful not to have to look at her or her camera, though of course the shutter kept clicking and the flash kept going off.
“Yes,” she said, not stopping for a moment, clearly in the flow of her work, “I could tell you, but nobody likes spoilers, right? Go ahead and bend over for me, now. Hands on your knees, and arch your back. No, sweetie. I know you understand. Push your bottom out toward me.”
I bit my lip, but I couldn’t keep the tiny sob from rising out of my chest. I found myself suddenly relying on Mary’s spell, on the idea of it: if this professional photographer had wrapped me into some mortifying realm where I had to do what she said, no matter how embarrassing… if I wouldn’t be able to live in this gorgeous apartment, or have the chance at getting a rich sponsor… if I would never discover what strange, dark need Selecta had identified in me… surely I had to do as Mary said, didn’t I?
I did it. With my hands on my knees I arched my back and pushed my backside out. I had never done anything like it, and yet the mortifying movement and the lewd posture the older woman had made me adopt felt oddly, terribly familiar. I managed to keep my next sob down, but I felt it nonetheless: the dark, confusing realization that Ididhave something inside me that the ‘intimate’ photoshoot, and Mary’s embarrassing commands, had called out.
“Go ahead and turn your face over your left shoulder, now, Leah,” she told me. “Look at me. Your sponsor just told you to take your panties down. First look at me, then start to pull them down, just to your knees. You know you’re in trouble. You can hear it in his voice. You’re not getting out of it this time.”
“Oh, no,” I whispered. Frozen in place, I swallowed hard.
Just turn your head,I told my body.You don’t have a choice.
I turned my head, pushing out of my conscious mind the photographer’s terrifying words. I looked at Mary, and she took my picture that way, blushing distress all over my face.
“Thumbs in the waistband,” she said coaxingly. “Pull them down just a little at first. You don’t want to show him, do you? But you know you have to, or the punishment will just be worse, won’t it?”
