Hothouse Flower (12 page)

< 17 >

DAISY CALLOWAY

Stylists and publicists with walky-talkies and
headsets dart around the backstage area with crazed eyeballs. Mine aren’t bugged.
I rub them, dry from the lack of sleep.

Models swarm the congested backstage, hurrying into their
clothes. I sit in another makeup chair while a stylist twists my long blonde
locks into an intricate shape of a humongous ribbon. The more hairspray she
uses and bobby pins she pokes, the more weight gathers on my head.

When she finishes, I wander over to the racks of clothes and
find my garment. It’s nothing more than black hefty fabric, draped to form an
indistinguishable bow. Yes, the dress is a giant bow.
I
am a bow, really, and my hair is also a bow with a ribbon.

I start undressing in order to put the garment on.

“Ladies in the
Havindal
collection, hurry up!”

Uh-oh.
Finding the
armholes has proved troublesome, even if I’ve tried the dress on before. Just
discovering where to put my head takes ten solid minutes.

I stand beside Christina, who’s not doing much better. She
tries to jump into a pair of gray slacks that accompanies a bow-styled blouse,
which is hanging on the rack beside her. As she hops into the right leg, the
fabric suddenly tears.

“Oh no,” she says with wide eyes, whipping her head from
side to side to see if anyone saw. “What do I do?” Her freckled cheeks redden.

The designer, an eccentric skinny lady, inspects each model
with a narrowed, judgmental gaze.

“Step out of them,” I tell Christina before she bursts into
tears. I flag down the stylist that just did my hair and show her the rip
before the designer notices.

“I have a sewing kit at my station. Stay here,” she tells
us.

Christina wears a bra and a nude thong. I’m no more dressed.
In fact, I don’t have on a bra because my bow-gown has a bit of side-boob. My
breast still hurts from Ian mauling my nipple, but I used some concealer to
hide the yellowish
hickies
. It’s not that noticeable,
and no one has said anything about it.

People try not to stare as we change, and most of the crew
backstage are women. But when I look up, just once, I catch a couple men
lingering by the doorway.
 

One has a camera.

My heart thuds. A
camera.
I freeze, my limbs crystalizing. They’re not allowed back here. Not with
cameras.

Not while we’re changing.

Maybe it’s okay though. No one kicks them out. It’s not like
we’re used to being naked. I mean…I haven’t done any nude shoots yet, even
though I’m allowed to be topless now that I’m eighteen. I just don’t want the
world to see my boobs, high fashion or not.

But what if they’re paparazzi, hoping to snap a quick pic of
me for a magazine?

That’s not okay. I glance at Christina, whose fifteen and
innocent and new. She’s me three years ago. Nausea roils inside my belly. My
skin pricks cold, and I instinctively step in front of Christina. If they’re
snapping photos because of me, I don’t want her to be caught in the background.
I block her from the men that have breached what I always thought was a
“sanctuary”—a line between the onlookers and the models. I guess there is no
line. Everyone sees all of me.

I don’t like feeling this gross.

Christina fumbles with her blouse, her eyes glassing as she
believes her runway has ended with the torn pants.

I’ve already wrangled my dress and put it on. “Here let me.”
I help her into the blouse that has many loops and detached fabric pieces. I
keep glancing over my shoulder at the guys, my ass in direct view of their
lenses.

The camera clicks.

There’s an actual flash.

They have a picture of me. Not naked, but there are a couple
other girls still dressing. It’s a picture they didn’t ask for, one they didn’t
get permission to take. Maybe a year ago, I wouldn’t have noticed this. Maybe I
would have just shrugged it off. Now I just want to scream at the
photographers, but the backstage commotion tugs my mind in several directions.

“Twenty minutes!” a woman with a clipboard yells. “Models,
line up. Line up!”

Just as Christina pulls her brown hair through the collar of
her blouse, the stylist arrives with the mended pants.

I feel the hot lens on my body again. Clicking.

The stylist fixes my hair that I messed when I was putting
on the gown, the heavy fabric an extra ten pounds on my body.

“Those guys,” I say, her hands quickly fixing a loose strand
by my face, “they’re not allowed to be in here.”

“Who?” She glances around, but she doesn’t see what I do.
They’re
right there.
Not even twenty feet
away, snapping pictures of all of the models, not just me. My heart is racing.
They’re probably just going to write an
article about Fashion Week with some backstage pictures. It’s okay.

But it doesn’t feel that way. I am worth less than the clothes
I wear. I have always known this. A dress is treated with more humanity and
kindness than I ever am. One of my shoots, I was told to stand in a swimming
pool for four hours without a break.

It was thirty degrees outside.

The pool wasn’t heated.

And I was fourteen.

The gown, though, that was the first priority. “Don’t drop
the dress, Daisy. Whatever you do, it can’t touch the water.”

Then why the
hell
did
the photographer want to do a photo shoot in the pool, in the middle of winter?

It was one bad experience out of many. I was lucky that my
mom was around, supervising, but she disappeared to network, to schmooze most
of the time. Sometimes her presence really didn’t make much of a difference.

I am dazed, exhausted and hollow by the time the designer
reaches me. She scrutinizes the fabric on my body, the way the dress hangs and
hugs in unison.

“No,” she suddenly says.

“What?” My shoulders drop, my stomach gurgling—the sound
incredibly audible. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything!” the designer shouts at me. I flinch. “You
gained weight since last I saw you.”

“I didn’t,” I say. My pulse kicks up another notch.
I didn’t. I know I didn’t.

“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 fucking bad that I can’t climb. The sky is
clear, and that’s more important.

An incoming storm can fucking 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
fucking 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 fucking 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
fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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.

I reach the bottom of the flat rock face within another
minute, my breath even. I look around, and I don’t see Sully’s ratted blue
shirt he wears with his khaki shorts. His pasty white skin is almost always
burnt from the sun. “Where the fuck are you?” I ask him, pressing the phone
back to my ear.

“Vanished with magic. I’m a descendant of the
Weasley
clan. I got powers.”

He was never proud to be a redhead as a fucking kid until
Harry Potter.
I remember meeting him at
six-years-old at Rock Base Summer Camp and he was scrawny and quiet. That
fucking changed fast. “You’re fucking cute today,” I tell him.

“Because this is a special moment,” he reminds me. “Look
up.”

I crane my neck, my eyes grazing the flat limestone, and
then I spot Sully waving at the top of 120 feet of ascension. “You climbed
without me?” I frown. “I thought you wanted to do this together?”

“That was the plan until I got here.” His legs hang off the
cliff. “I was just going to scope out the face, but I saw weeds and dirt in the
cracks. I cleaned the route for you on my way up.” I can almost see him shrug.
“I didn’t want you to die in Pennsylvania on a hundred and twenty foot ascent.
If
Ryke
Meadows is
gonna
go
out, he’s
gotta
go out big.”

“Thanks, man,” I say with as much appreciation as my voice
will allow. If I climbed and found loose rocks in the cracks and handholds, it
would’ve been a bad time. I’m thankful for a friend like Adam Sully, especially
after all my college ones were shit when I became famous.

Sully never really cared. He doesn’t even mention it that
much. We met at summer camp, climbed together, and we’ve done it ever since.
Some months I don’t see him since he backpacks a lot, skipping college. For
cash, he’s a climbing instructor at a gym. When we meet up, it’s like no time
has passed. It’s like we’re at summer camp again, picking up right where we
left off.

He’s the kind of friend I’ll have for life. Not because we
share deep fucking secrets or our heartbreak—we don’t do either—but because we
have a passion for the same thing. And even though I know I may die alone while
I climb, I’ve been lucky enough to share each accomplishment and triumph with
someone else who understands what it means to reach the top.

“I’m timing you,” Sully tells me. “What’s your first record?”

“You fucking know all of my times.” He always told them to
kids at camps, gloating about my speed climbs each year. And then when we were
instructors, he’d fucking tell the pros. And then when we were considered pros,
he’d tell anyone who’d listen.

“Remind me,” he says.

I dip my hand in the chalk and then begin scanning my path
upwards, a grid that I see laid out with each crack and divot and precipice in
the fucking rock. “The first time I climbed this, it took one brutal fucking
hour,” I tell him.

“And what’s your latest time?”

I smack my hands together, the chalk pluming. “Six minutes,
thirty-eight seconds.”

I know he’s smiling. I don’t even have to see him. “I’ll see
you at the top.”

My lips rise.

And I climb.

* * *

I didn’t set my stopwatch since Sully’s timing me,
but the ascent feels different from the last time I did it, which was over a
year ago. I feel lighter, freer. Stronger.

I’m near the top, clinging to the rock, my hand slipping
between the smallest crack in the mountain, a fissure just deep enough for my
fingertips to rest. I support my body with this single grip until I reach for
the next handhold, a space where two rocks meet.

I move fast and precisely, not stopping to catch my breath
or to consider an alternate path. This is where I’m fucking going, and I just
go.

My muscles stretch, every inch of my body used with each new
position. At one point, I have all of my body supported by two fingers. I find
good footing to adjust my weight.

I look down once or twice and grin. I don’t have a problem
with heights. I also know if I fall, I’ll die, but people don’t realize how
confident I am. If I didn’t think I could do it, I wouldn’t.

“Oh my God, he doesn’t have a rope!” I hear a woman yell the
closer I am towards the top. She wears a helmet and stands beside her
instructor, coming off a route with bolts.

“I know,” Sully says, still sitting on the cliff. “That’s my
friend.” His smile reaches his scraggily hair that covers his ears.

“He’s crazy,” another man says.

“He’s a professional,” the instructor tells them. “We also
don’t advise anyone to free-solo.”

And then I reach the last ten feet, the easy part. My
muscles barely ache. I have a lot more left in me, and it bolsters my fucking
confidence to go after my other goals in Yosemite.

I hike my body onto the ledge beside Sully. The people
behind me just stare, and I try not to make eye contact in case they’re into
celebrity news, reality television, all that shit. They congregate together,
looking like they’ll keep their distance.

I turn to Sully, who wears a squirrely looking smile.

“What?” I ask.

He unzips his backpack and pulls out a store bought cake,
all the white icing smashed into the plastic lid from the climb. “It said
Climb that bitch.
” He pops the lid and
sticks his finger in the icing. “I guess we’ll have to settle for
limb that itch.
” He grins. “That’s even
better.”

It’s hard to joke around when you’re overcome with foreign
emotion. I squeeze his shoulder.

He pats my back and then nods to the cake. “This half is
mine by the way. You can take the itchy piece.” He uses a plastic fork to cut
the cake in two.

We eat quietly at first, staring out at the expansive view
of the quarry. I can hear a guy scream in terror and excitement as he jumps off
one of the jagged cliffs, splashing into the water below.

After the long moment of silence, he says, “You didn’t ask
for your time.”

I know it’s shorter. I could feel it the moment I had thirty
feet left. “Six minutes flat?” I ask him.

He shakes his head with a smile. “Five forty.”

“Damn.”
That’s really
fucking good.
I look back out at the tree tops. My progress, my
journey—from being a curious six-year-old, to a punk teenager, to a determined
adult—it just flashed quickly before my eyes. I think that’s what Sully had
intended to happen all along.

“So you’re probably wondering
why did Sully bring me to the top of this cliff and serve me cake?
”

“Not really,” I tell him.

He smiles. “Besides your foul-mouth and that intimidating
scowl thing you do, you’re probably the nicest person I’ve ever met. And I’ve
been around for twenty-five years.” He laughs. “In climber life span, that’s a
long ass time. I’ve already neared my halfway-point.”

I grab his water bottle and take a swig. I wipe my mouth on
my shirt sleeve. “I’m only nice to you because you carry my gear when we climb
together, and you’re the lead. If I anger you, you can turn around and cut my
fucking rope.”

He snorts. “Right. I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Why?” I ask, seriously this time. “You’re always the one
protecting me from a fucking fall.”

“Yeah, and I’m pretty positive I’m the only person who has
that job when it comes to you, climbing, not climbing, doesn’t matter. I know
you’ve been going through some
heavy
shit
with your brother, and you still make time for other people and this sport.” He
means I make time to meet up with him.

I nod. “Yeah,” I say, not knowing how else to respond.

“I remember you telling me that you had a brother when we
were in Lancaster.” He shakes his head. “That seems like such a long time ago.”

My gaze darkens, recalling that day. I was too angry to
climb, and it was one of the few times I opened up to him about my family. I
didn’t civilly talk about it. I yelled. And the only person who ever heard the
pain in my voice was a summer camp friend. “I called him a fucking bastard.”

Sully gives me a look. “We were fifteen. You were pissed.”
He shrugs like it’s no big deal. “It’s what you do later that matters. Making
mistakes and correcting them, that’s life.”

“We make a mistake on a mountain,
Sul
,
and we die.”

“Here I am, being all metaphorical, and you have to go and
be all literal.” He shakes his head at me with mock disapproval. He lifts the
cake, acting like he may smash it my face. And just like that, we let the heavy
shit go. Our friendship is the easiest one I’ve ever had.

“You do that, Sully, and I’ll push you off this fucking
mountain.” We’re sitting on the edge, and if we start hitting each other, we
could go over quickly.

“I was just going to tell you to take this back to Daisy.” He
dips his finger back in the icing and licks it off. “I’ve never seen a girl melt
over cake like she did.”

I took her to the gym to teach her how to rock climb, and
Sully was there, instructing two ten-year-olds. I could never do his job
full-time. I have a harsh way of speaking when people aren’t giving a hundred
fucking percent, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise. He went with us to a
café after his shift, and she ate three pieces of cake, all chocolate.

“She’s not in Philly,” I tell him. He doesn’t keep up with
the gossip, so he wouldn’t know that she’s left for Fashion Week. “And she
hasn’t eaten sweets in practically a month. She’d probably fucking drool if you
put cake in her face.”

“
Aww
,” he says. “Poor girl. Where
is she?”

“Modeling in Paris.”

He whistles. “She’s always all over the place, isn’t she?”
He gives me another look, this time with a growing smile.

“What?” I snap.

He shrugs. “You two have a little thing. Not as cute as what
Heidi and I have, but you know, you’ll get there.”

“We don’t have a thing,” I tell him.

He ignores me. “Don’t forget to invite me to the wedding,
okay? I don’t have to be a groomsman or anything, but I do expect to be in the
wedding pictures. I’m not against photo-bombing either.”

“Fuck off,” I say.

He touches his heart. “I love you too.”

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out and check the
caller ID.

DAISY CALLOWAY.

Sully looks over my shoulder. “Think she heard us talking
about her?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Your voice is louder than mine,” he refutes, knowing where
I was going with that.

“I have to take this.”

“Don’t take her too hard. She’s young and impressionable.”

I flip him off, standing to answer the call while he laughs.

I press the green button and walk further onto the peak of
the rock. It’s flat, and up here, people gather to repel back down, the chatter
echoing from one side to the other. I check my watch.

8 a.m. here. 2 a.m. there.

The line clicks and then dies. I frown. I look at my phone.
She fucking hung up on me? Maybe it was a misdial. I call her back.

Her answering machine cuts on this time. “Hi, it’s Daisy.
Not Duck and not Duke. Definitely not Buchanan. I’m a Calloway. If you haven’t
misdialed then leave your name after the beep, and I’ll call you when I return
from the moon. Don’t wait around. It may take a while.”
BEEP.