Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Davis follows me, standing just out of reach of my slapping rope. “My point is, I get you, Eason. I understand you and your… anger. And I think you should take a look at her.” Then he holds up his phone, not really giving me a choice.
Woman? That’s a stretch. She looks like a teenager. I stop skipping and take the phone from Davis to get a better look. She’s pouty, and pale, and blonde, and thin, almost a cliché ballerina type. Long neck and legs. Shadows on her cheekbones and clavicles. Her ribcage showing. But she’s not wispy and soft the way ballerinas are. She’s… hard. Everything about her looks hard.
Which is a contradiction because she has nice, round breasts and even though there’s almost nothing to her—I’d bet my life she’s not any taller than five-five and doesn’t weigh more than a buck—she’s got hips too. Not an hourglass figure, she’s much too thin for that, but curvy in a way only teenage girls can be.
The bikini isn’t anything special. Pretty much the same thing you see all day on South Beach. It’s black with gold fringe on the bra and completely useless for surfing, or diving, or anything, actually. Which, again, is how South Beach rolls.
She’s got her jaw clenched, which is pretty hard to do as one pouts. Her eyes are ice blue and flashing anger. Like even if she wasn’t getting paid to stand there and had nothing better to do at the time, she’d still be pissed off that she had to do anything at all.
Some might see that as entitlement. But to me, knowing who she is and how she came up, it comes off as… indifference. Maybe even resentment.
Like her little bag of fucks to give is empty as well.
But the most incredible thing about this picture is a purple bruise. I squint, looking closer at her. “Is that a black eye?”
Davis laughs. “Yeah.”
I look up at him. “Why the hell would they photograph a girl with a black eye?”
He shrugs at me. “I don’t know. It’s…” Then he frowns.
“It’s what?”
“It was a thing. A while back, though.”
“What do you mean a ‘thing?’ What kind of thing?”
He stares at me for a moment, going silent.
“What?” I’m getting annoyed. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
“I’m trying to decide if I should tell you this or not.”
I’m reading between the lines and the anger is building up inside of me, like lava bubbling just below the surface, ready to explode. “Go on, Davis. Say it.”
“Milk carton kids. You ever hear that expression before?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“In the Eighties there was an awareness campaign in the United States. When kids would go missing, they’d put their pictures on milk cartons to spread the word.”
“Sounds horrifying.”
“It terrorized an entire generation of children sitting at the breakfast table eating their frosted flakes.” Davis pauses to laugh at this. Sometimes I hate his fuckin’ guts. “So it stopped. Early Nineties, maybe? But then, right about the time the milk carton kids were going out of style, another term popped up. Milk carton models. They looked like drug-addicted street children. Mostly because they were.”
“What do you mean?”
“Talent scouts would pull runaway teenagers off the street, dress them up in designer jeans, and put their faces in the glossy magazines. They were always gaunt and tired-looking, black circles around their eyes. They called the look ‘heroin chic.’ But then people started condemning it. Started asking questions about the kids. Where did they come from? Where were their parents? And about the money too. So, almost overnight, the milk carton models suddenly and conveniently disappeared.”
I look down at the picture again. Despite the black eye—or maybe because of it—the picture is stunning. And even though there are three other people standing on either side of her—a boy and two more girls—it’s her who makes you look twice. Not her tits, not her suit, not even those coltish, racehorse legs.
It’s that bruise around her eye, that unmistakable imperfection. And the expression on her face. So fuckin’ defiant. Like she lost everything. Everything.
It’s obvious that the photographer wanted people to think she’d been battered. But she hadn’t. I know this without even knowing her. She’s not a victim at all.
She’s a fighter.
Maart’s fighter.
And she didn’t get that black eye from a drug deal gone wrong or a boyfriend with a wild fist.
She was in a fight.
I can’t see the bruise very well, but it was a recent fight. Probably a street fight, because if she had been in the ring, there would be a lot more evidence. A lot more bruising, especially on her legs, which are bare, of course. She’s in a swimsuit.
Everything about this picture says, I come from Maart.
“She’s pretty, right? I’ll send you the pics.”