Halfway Perfect

by Julie Cross

  I hang up before she can call me an asshole. When I walk around the wall to the other side, Eve is still standing in the same spot.

  She smiles at me. “Do I even want to know what that was about?”

  “Just a distressed high school freshman trying to avoid the nerd label.” I don’t know why I’m telling her this. Normally I’d make up something, but she probably heard enough anyway. “God, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that shit anymore.”

  “What? High school?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “But you’re in college. Is it that different?” I honestly don’t know if it’s the same or not. Last April, when I turned eighteen, I’d already been going back and forth between Nebraska and New York since the middle of junior year and knew I wanted to model full time and drop out. My parents made me get my GED first, so I studied like crazy from January to April and aced it on the first try. It was probably more studying than I’d ever done in all of high school and middle school combined. I never even looked at colleges like a lot of my friends had been doing junior and senior year.

  “College is completely different,” Eve says. “Especially if you compare Columbia to my high school, where we’re lucky to have a handful of students actually leave the state of Indiana for college.”

  “So basically everyone at Columbia suffered through the nerd math in high school.”

  “Everyone,” she says with a nod.

  “You know, the hiding-out plan might have worked better at Yale or Princeton or… Where else is Ivy League?”

  “Harvard, Stanford,” she says with a laugh. “And you’re totally right, but I saw the campus when I first came to New York, and I knew that’s where I wanted to go. It’s so worth it.”

  We get interrupted by Janessa calling her over. When Eve walks off, I glance up for the first time in several minutes and notice a bunch of eyes suddenly diverting their attention from me to something else.

  What the hell is going on with these people today?

  The weirdness is enough to cause me to pull out my phone and send a text to Wes.

  ME: Everyone seems to be under the impression that Elana and I are an item?

  WES: Just ignore it. Don’t deny it either.

  ME: Okay??

  WES: Let’s have a meeting tomorrow morning to discuss your schedule. 9 a.m.

  ME: Sure

  Something is up. I decide to walk closer to set and see how long until my next turn.

  I hear Janessa say to Eve, “If you’re really trying for the Mason scholarship—”

  “I am,” Eve interrupts as if declaring her honorable duty to serve her country at war.

  “All right,” Janessa says. “Then you’ll need an assistantship with someone, and my name might be impressive on that letter of recommendation.”

  “Oh my God,” Eve mumbles. “Seriously? That would be—”

  “It’s not a paying job, but it will be worth the slave labor if you win a scholarship for next year. And you get to spend the summer studying in Paris,” Janessa says with her I-don’t-really-care-either-way attitude, such a contrast to Eve’s elation.

  “When can I start?”

  Janessa laughs and shouts out some direction before answering Eve. “How about next Monday morning? I’m still working out some details with the clients I’ve booked next week, so I’ll have someone email you the schedule. It’s either a shoot for Calvin Klein or a week of editing lookbook photos.”

  Eve’s face temporarily fills with alarm, but she wipes it clean before Janessa even looks up. Maybe she can’t start next week? Or it’s the mention of Calvin Klein. And what’s the deal with this scholarship, anyway?

  Now I’m even more curious. Not so much about Eve Castle but more so about Eve Nowakowski. Though I do see why she went the fake name route. Nowakowski’s quite a mouthful.

  I get sent back to wardrobe a few minutes later, and then Elana and I spend a good forty-five minutes embracing and looking in love for all those teenyboppers reading Seventeen. After those shots are finished, I end up beside Eve again while she sits on the floor taking notes.

  For a long time, I watch her pen move in a circular motion as she fills the bottom of a page with tiny slanted cursive. Instead of flipping to the next blank page, she closes her notebook and looks over at me. “So was that your sister on the phone earlier? Or another fourteen-year-old girlfriend?”

  My forehead scrunches up, trying to process the questions inside questions. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  Shit. Wes told me not to deny it. Too late now. Although I kind of killed that lie when I made the One Direction concert comment.

  “I know. I’m just messing with you. I don’t have any siblings, so the whole brother/sister thing is pretty fascinating to me.” She’s now begun the process of taking her camera apart.

  “I also have two older brothers.”

  “How much older?” Eve asks.

  “Bradley is twenty, and Jared’s twenty-two,” I say.

  “What do they do?”

  No one’s ever this curious about my family. “What do you mean? Like are they models too?”

  She rolls her eyes. “I mean are they in school? Married? Working? In prison?”

  I laugh. “Brad’s in school. I have no idea what he’s studying, and there’s a good chance he doesn’t either. I’ve always got the impression he was just extending his time not being a real grown-up by doing the college thing. And Jared had a football scholarship but lost it after he hurt his knee last spring. He’s working for my dad’s construction company now. And I can’t imagine them being married. Or even dating seriously. Prison is a possibility.” I stare at her for a second, weighing my options. “Now that you have enough material to write my biography for the Lifetime Movie channel—”

  “Not quite there yet.” She flashes me a perfect smile. “Do you get along with them?”

  I pick up one of her spare lenses and hold it to my eye. “Yeah, we get along okay. My brothers aren’t really into the same things as me. But Katie and I have always been close. She usually calls me first if she needs something. Like today.”

  “Honors math isn’t so bad, you know,” Eve says. “Does she do anything else at school? I feel like with high school you have to dive into a club or group or something right away so you don’t get lost. Although, I’m kind of a hypocrite, because I hated it so much I bribed a friend’s older brother to drive me to an open call in Chicago for an agency and couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Indiana.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, that is so hypocritical of you. Katie’s too short for modeling, thank God. She runs cross-country. She’s on varsity as a freshman, which is pretty good, but it’s cross-country, not football.”

  “Running is good,” Eve says like she’s really putting in the effort to contemplate my sister’s daily drama. “I started running last spring. I used to hate it. Hated working out in any form, but now I love it. Clears my head. One of the girls in my dorm started a group to train for a half marathon in April and so far we’ve done three different runs around Central Park and the city. It’s awesome.”

  I’ve started to forget that I’m working and there are tons of people around, but no one has asked either of us to get up and do something. “I like running too, just haven’t done it with people, or off the treadmill,” I admit. “I don’t like the stop-and-go that comes with running in the city, and I haven’t had time to figure out the Central Park routes.”

  She turns her body to face me, legs folded sideways to keep her skirt down. “You have to come on one of our runs, seriously. Lanie, the girl from my dorm, she’s a genius with these routes. It’ll change your entire outlook on working out. We’re doing a 5K in a month and I need another person for my team.”

  Okay. This day is taking an interesting turn. “Is it a st
udent thing?”

  She shakes her head. “Totally doesn’t matter. The more the merrier. We’re bound to thin out as midterms approach. Seriously, you’ll love it. I can’t believe you live in New York City and you run on a treadmill.”

  “It’s pure insanity. I’m a disgrace.” I roll my eyes and then finally give in. “All right, is there a website for this group or something? Maybe I will give it a shot.”

  She opens her notebook and starts scribbling on the corner of a blank page. “There’s a Facebook page, but I don’t know it off the top of my head. Just send me an email and I can send you the link.”

  The paper is torn from the notebook and placed in my hand. I glance down and see she’s written her email and phone number. I grin at her and make a big show of typing “Eve Nowakowski” into my phone, spelling it aloud. “I just might take you up on that offer. I’ve been doing the same workouts for a long time now. I go to this indoor climbing facility and I’ve wanted to give outdoor climbing a try, so I should do the same with running.”

  “I promise you’ll love it.” She starts tucking items into her bag, taking the spare lens from my hand, and I feel this sudden urge to lengthen the conversation before it’s time to go.

  “You know, you were Wes Danes’s last female client,” I say, trying to steer toward my questions from earlier. I can’t help wanting to solve a good mystery.

  Her face darkens, and her eyes focus on the windows across the room. “Yeah, that’s probably a good thing.”

  A million different scenarios and theories sift through my head until I decide to shut them off for now. That was Eve Castle, not Eve Nowakowski. “Well, I guess I have you to thank for landing me someone who could make me enough money to pay the bills and keep me far away from college and real jobs.”

  She forces a smile. “You’re welcome.” She’s standing up before I can stop her or apologize for obviously bringing up a painful subject. “I’ve got to catch Janessa and finish my interview, but seriously, I really do need another runner for my team. You don’t have to be fast or anything.”

  I hold up the paper she gave me. “Your persuasive skills are well developed. I’ll try it once if it works with my schedule.”

  She seems pleased with herself when she walks off to find Janessa again. I pull up her number, knowing her phone is tucked away in the bag on the floor beside me, and send her a quick text.

  ME: There. Now you have my number too, so if you don’t hear from me, you can tell me again how I’m a bad New Yorker for running on treadmills

  I get another text from Wes while my phone is still in my hand.

  WES: Meeting postponed. Need you to go to Buenos Aires tonight.

  ME: Tonight? Seriously?

  WES: Why? Are you busy? Don’t answer that. You’re not busy.

  ME: I’m not busy.

  WES: I’ll send you the flight info in a few minutes. I’ll need you back in forty-eight hours for a Macy’s thing.

  ME: Macy’s! You rock. Seriously.

  WES: Just wait. There’s more. We’ll talk Friday morning.

  If I wasn’t pumped up before, I sure as hell am now. This is good. Really good. The only pinch of disappointment I feel at the moment is that I might not be able to take Eve up on her offer to join the Hot College Girls’ Running Club.

  Maybe next week.

  I don’t know what Wes did to book me these fairly big last-minute jobs, but I’m not about to ask. Or do anything to ruin this winning streak I seem to be on at the moment.

  Chapter 5: Eve

  October 2, 6:30 p.m.

  I’m still standing in the middle of my dorm room, staring at the letter in my hand, when my roommate Stephanie comes in. I haven’t seen her since this morning before the Seventeen shoot.

  “You look like you’re in shock. Are you in shock?” She moves closer, lifting a hand to wave it in front of my face.

  I peel my eyes from the paper in my hands and glance down at Steph. She’s barely over five feet so I have to look down at her blond head. “I’m a finalist. For the Mason scholarship.”

  If I could have chosen any way to conclude such a crappy day, it would have been this.

  “Seriously?” Steph squeals and then pries the letter from my fingers, reading it quickly. “Oh my God! Do you know how many people enter this competition every year? Like thousands. Holy shit. You have to do an interview with the committee. And get letters of recommendation. Professor Larson likes you, right? He’ll help you out.”

  Breathe. Breathe again. Good job, Eve.

  My heart starts to speed up and then slow down again, returning to normal. “Right. Larson. I’ll ask him first. We won’t even get our interview scheduled until the end of next month. I have time to find more people.”

  I walk to my desk to tuck my letter carefully back in its envelope so it doesn’t fly away. That’s when I notice the red business card sitting on the desk. Wes Danes. Agent. One Model Management Agency. I spin around to face my roommate and hold up the card. “Where did this come from?”

  Steph’s face breaks into a smile, such a contrast to my utter panic. “Oh, you mean the much older, extremely well-dressed hottie that stopped by asking for Eve and looking like he might die if he didn’t see you right this second?”

  Now I need to sit down. “Wes,” I mutter under my breath. “How did he find me?”

  Steph’s eyes are wide with alarm now. “He didn’t come to the room. The front desk called me down. He only knew the building. What are you not telling me?”

  I take a deep breath, staring at my roommate, trying to decide if I can confide in her and if I even have a choice. “That was Wes. My agent…or he used to be my agent anyway. Until this morning, I hadn’t seen him for nearly two years.”

  “Agent?”

  “Modeling agent,” I say.

  “Modeling agent,” she repeats like it’s a foreign language. It probably is, considering the Eve she’s known for an entire month.

  “I moved to New York when I was fourteen to work. But I used a different name—Eve Castle.”

  Steph’s mouth falls open, but it takes her several seconds to say something. “Wow, okay, I can see you modeling for sure, but I totally didn’t see that coming. So, you’re not still modeling, are you? I’ve only seen you go to class and study, unless you sneak out in the middle of the night for glamorous photo shoots.”

  I attempt a smile, but my hands are shaking. I’ve only ever told one person about me and Wes and it completely backfired. “No, I quit a few months before I turned seventeen. I actually walked away from a huge campaign with Gucci. My agency made up stories about me, and the tabloids came up with their own reasons. Rumors and more rumors—”

  “You didn’t want to do it anymore?” Steph prompts. “Because of…?”

  I blew air out of my cheeks. “Wes.”

  “Wes,” she repeats. “What did Wes do? Take all your money?”

  “No, that would be my parents,” I say bitterly.

  By the time I realized they had been spending all my money, I had already quit and only had a couple of checks still coming in from jobs I’d done six months before returning home. Getting those envelopes in the mail had been like staring at the last candy bar left while stranded on a desert island. And even worse was writing that big fat check to the Columbia bursar’s office. I broke out in a cold sweat and nearly had a panic attack.

  Steph shifts on her bed, pulling her knees to her chest. “So if Wes didn’t take your money, what happened?”

  I wring my hands together. I have to tell her something. He might come back here.

  “Promise this is just between you and me?” I’m already chewing on a fingernail, my eyes focused on the floor. There’s so much shame and a degrading weight that comes with admitting the truth. “When I was fifteen, we started dating—”

  “Fifteen?”
she says. “How old was he?”

  I release the air in my lungs and close my eyes so I don’t have to see her reaction. “Twenty-four.”

  “Wow.” She’s quiet for way too long and I have to open my eyes and make sure she’s still in the room. “So he’s how old now?”

  “Twenty-seven…I think.”

  “Okay, right.” She nods, faking calm. I’m taking in her expression, taking in the fact that she doesn’t look disgusted.

  “Honestly, it was okay for a while. I loved him. And he took care of me, which I never wanted to admit that I needed at that age. It’s just…he’s so intense and he’s got a temper that would put drunken trailer-trash men from my town to shame. It took me a long time to decide to leave.”

  “And you didn’t tell anyone?” Steph asks. “The tabloids surely would have loved that story.”

  My palms are sweaty, and I have to rub them on my teal comforter before answering. “I told Wes’s boss. I thought he’d do something. I thought maybe he’d get me a new agent and make sure I didn’t have to see Wes anymore.”

  I close my eyes for a second, remembering that day in Josh Valentine’s office. I had gone the nice route. I’d wrapped a scarf around my neck to conceal the stitches I’d gotten after Wes got pissed off at me and threw a chair at a glass china cabinet, causing glass to fly everywhere. “He brought Wes into the office and asked him, right there in front of me, if he was involved with me romantically. And Wes looked right at him and lied. And I knew if I didn’t leave right then, the confrontation later would be hell. I was scared, so I left, and part of me figured he’d come after me and it would be better with us, but he didn’t. And then my career was in the toilet. It was so stupid. I should have gone to the shoot and gotten my huge check from Gucci. Then I could enjoy being a scholarship finalist instead of thinking about how I’ll pay for tuition next year if I don’t win.”

  Steph covers her mouth with one hand. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. If I had known, I would have lied and told him he had the wrong building.”