Chapter 4

It was cold and rainy the next day and we didn't feel like doing much of anything anyway. We'd spent most of the night previously having sex with Derek and Elsa. It had been pretty cool too, except our German friends had bought more wine after dinner. It was good and it had loosened us all up, but the next day I was feeling it.

"I'm never going to drink again," I promised nobody in particular. "Never."

"Hmmmm?" Mark sighed sleepily and I was on the other side of Chris who was between us and snoring like a little piglet.

"My head hurts," I complained.

"There's some aspirin in one of the bags," Mark offered, stretching a bit and turning on his side. He opened one brown eye and smiled at me over Chrissy's impossible tangle of blonde hair.

"I don't want to move," I said.

"Me neither," Mark agreed and after a minute or so he asked me, "Did you have fun last night?"

"Yeah," I said behind closed eyes and then smiled. "A lot of fun. You?"

"Yeah," Mark was smiling too, I could hear it in his voice.

"It's weird having sex with other people though, isn't it?" I asked him.

"A little, I guess," Mark agreed. "It was kinda strange seeing you and Derek doing it."

"Yeah," I nodded slowly. "I don't think I wanna do it with anyone else again."

"You don't?" Mark sounded a little surprised.

"No," I decided. "Once was enough. I just want you and Chris."

"Okay," Mark said.

"But if you guys want to, you know, be with someone else sometimes..." I opened my eyes again, looking at him. "I'm not going to be mad or anything."

"No. You're right, Steph," Mark said. "It was fun to try it, but it wasn't the same as with you and Chris."

"Yeah," I smiled, really glad that Mark agreed with me. "I can't wait until I turn eighteen."

"You can't?" Mark smiled at me. "Why?"

"Cause I'm gonna marry you guys," I said. "Well, one of you, but both of you really, right?"

"Yeah," Mark said.

"And you're gonna marry us too, me and Chrissy," I told him. "We'll find a place and have a family."

"We still have a lot of work to do before we can do that," Mark said gently and I nodded.

"I know," I sighed. "I just like thinking about it."

"Land's expensive," Mark said. "My folks think I should go to school and..."

"Yeah," I bit my lip and then giggled. "Chris doesn't know anything about farming, does he?"

"No," Mark laughed. "Not much."

"He's smart though." I looked at our sleeping boyfriend and my heart was aching. "He wants to learn."

"He'll be alright," Mark agreed. "We just have to be patient. I'll be done with college a year after you guys are done with high school anyway. Our folks will help us out."

"I know," I said. "I just feel like I've been waiting forever and there's always one more thing, you know?"

"Yeah." Mark was brushing Chrissy's hair out of the sleeping boy's face, slowly and gently. "We'll get there though, all three of us. I promise."

"Hmmm," I sighed, smiling and just watching as Mark touched Chris and I loved them both so much that it almost hurt.

"I'm gonna call home later," Mark decided after we'd been quiet for awhile. "See what's going on back there."

"I hope we can go home soon," I said. "I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble, but I miss it."

"You'll be okay," my boyfriend told me. "Your dad might kill me, but you'll be fine."

"Heh!" I stuck my tongue out. "My dad likes you a lot. He's just not going to understand why we were having sex already."

"He's gonna wonder about Chris too," Mark said. "Everyone is gonna know about us."

"You think so?" I frowned at that. "We got a lot of friends though, right?"

"I guess we'll find out," he sighed. "It's not going to change how I feel, I know that."

"Yeah," I smiled. "I know."

It was kind of a heavy thought though, like if everyone in the county knew about Mark and Chris being lovers. Some people wouldn't understand it at all probably. Some wouldn't care and most would just try and ignore it, I imagined. The idea that I was sleeping with both of them would be some real news too. Everyone always assumed that Mark was going to marry me someday. We were meant for each other; we knew it and so did everyone else, so adding Chris into the mix was going to raise some eyebrows. A girl in Iroquois County just didn't have two boyfriends at the same time, and Mark and Chris being in love? A romantic threesome? That was going to pop some tops, as my grandpa used to say.

We could very well end up looking for a farm someplace else entirely. Iowa maybe or Kansas. I started falling asleep again and I was having all sorts of weird thoughts, seeing all of our possible futures and some of them were happy, but some of them weren't. God, I hated waiting for stuff. Good news or bad, I'd just as soon get it right away, you know? I'd call home too, I decided, just because I was suddenly missing my parents a lot. It hadn't been so bad running away from home as I'd thought it would be, just cause Mark and Chris were taking such good care of me, but that didn't mean it was easy either.

When I woke up my boyfriends were already out of bed and gone someplace. I was alone under the sheets, alone in the room, and I wondered where they'd gone. I sorta figured it out when I realized all my clothes were missing. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth and washed my face. We'd taken a shower before going to bed at like four in the morning or whatever time it had been. I'd been a total mess cause we'd been having like porn star sex or something. The guys fucked us, me and Elsa, just about any way we could imagine, but there was like a rule that when they came it had to be on our faces.

That had been so weird. I hated to imagine what Derek and Elsa's room looked like. Three boys and two girls having sex all night? That place had gotten trashed. I'd gotten trashed and I looked at myself in the mirror kind of laughing at myself, but wondering what I was doing too. I was sixteen. A beauty queen and the Homecoming Queen and the goodest little girl in the county. Everyone thought I was a virgin and innocent, and I stared into my eyes and tried to understand how all that had changed.

It was kinda sad, but I couldn't tell you why. Homesickness, I guess. I wanted it to be like it had been before. I didn't want to live in that crappy little room and get drunk and have sex just because I didn't have anything better to do. That's what it felt like right then, standing in the bathroom, and I didn't think I looked very pretty at all. Mark and Chris shouldn't have let me do that stuff. They should be watching me better, I thought. But that wasn't fair either and I was only mad at them for a second. I was really confused and only because I was lonely.

"Lucy, I'm home!" Mark was coming through the door, carrying some food for me, a sandwich and chips and a soda from a small deli that was nearby.

"Hey." I smiled at him, wanting to be in the good mood they deserved. I'd already taken three aspirins and that had helped. "Goody! Now I can get dressed."

"Yeah, you can!" Chris was coming in too, carrying a couple plastic bags with our clothes folded up in them. The boys had been doing laundry, which was nice of them.

I let them kiss me and then I was eating, still wrapped in my sheet, cause I was pretty hungry. "We really need a kitchen," I sighed. Eating food from vendors and delicatessens and little restaurants that specialized in Korean or Indian or Thai really wasn't that great for any of us. I missed my mom's cooking a lot.

"Derek and Elsa are packing," Chris said, sitting down on the bed next to me.

"They are?" I looked at Mark and he was nodding. "I thought they weren't leaving until tomorrow or something."

"Today, I guess," Chris replied, stealing one of my potato chips.

"Must be why they wanted to have the big party last night," Mark grinned. "I'm gonna miss those guys."

"Gonna miss Elsa, yeah," Chris laughed. "That girl's crazy!"

"So's Derek," I giggled. "Shoot. That kinda sucks."

"Yeah," Mark shrugged and we were quiet for a minute or two, thinking about how our only real friends in the city were leaving.

"We gotta decide what we're doing too," Chris reminded us. "Rent's due today."

"I know." Mark sat down in the chair and we'd only paid through the night before, technically we were supposed to be packing too, or else paying for another night.

"Did you call home already?" I asked Mark. "Hey. Grab my pills there, would ya?"

"Yeah," Mark said and he reached for the little table, like a nightstand really, where a lot of our junk was scattered about. He found my birth control pills and tossed them to me.

"So?" I asked. "What's going on? Can we go home?"

"Not yet," Mark sighed. "See, the sheriff put out that warrant for us and so a judge has to look at the evidence or something and decide if it's valid or not. I don't know; it's a lot of legal stuff."

"There's some guy from the state police doing an investigation," Chris added. "It just takes time, that's all."

"Did they tell him I was raped?" I asked, not liking that news very much at all.

"Yeah, they told him everything we said," Mark looked unhappy too. "But we ran away, so it kinda looks bad, you know? We didn't make it really easy for anybody."

"Except my dad," Chris frowned.

"So we shoulda stayed?" I looked down and I wasn't really hungry anymore.

"Maybe," Mark said. "I don't know."

"I shoulda just let him do it," I said. "I shoulda just let Georgie fuck me and not said anything. It's my fault."

"It's not your fault," Chris put his arm around me. "Don't say that, okay? Don't ever say that."

"I'm sorry." I had my eyes shut tight and I didn't want to cry, but it was coming.

"You don't have to be sorry either," Chris was kissing me, holding me with both arms now. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"We're going to have to go back in a couple days anyway," Mark said. "The state police guy needs to talk to us. Maybe that judge too. As soon as my dad makes sure we're not going straight to jail, we can go home."

"Yeah, couple more days," Chris told me. "We'll be okay, right?"

"Okay." I wiped my face on his shirt, wanting to be brave and strong like they were. "Yeah, a couple days. I can do it."

About then there was a knocking on the door and I forced myself to cheer up, to find a smile and stop this senseless worrying. It wasn't doing any of us any good, I knew that, and I was tougher than this. I didn't want Derek and Elsa to see me sad before they left. They'd been good to us, friends when we really needed some, and I wanted them to see me happy.

"Must be time to say goodbye," Chris said with an unhappy note in his voice and Mark was getting up to open the door. "You okay now, Steph?"

"Yeah." I took a deep breath and forced myself to smile. "I'm alright."

"Hey ... Uh..." Mark's voice changed from happy to confused and all I could see was his back. "Who are you?"

"Bryce," a deep voice said. "Can I come in? Thanks."

I didn't think Mark was going to let him in and I wasn't sure my boyfriend should. I'd never heard of anyone named Bryce before in my life and I glanced at Chris and he was confused too. The guy was coming in though, kind of pushing past Mark and that was strange just because Mark is a really big guy with some serious muscles, you know? This Bryce person was big too though, like Mark and older, in his thirties at least, but most surprising maybe was that he was black.

I have to be truthful and tell you that I didn't know any black people. There weren't any where we were from. Not for any real reason, it was just the way it was. I don't think I'm prejudiced or anything, none of us were, but it was kind of intimidating somehow seeing this big black man coming into our small room like that. I didn't know what it meant and I suddenly wished I was dressed in more than a sheet with a half-eaten turkey sandwich on my lap.

"Who are you?" Chris asked, repeating Mark's question and the guy didn't smile. He didn't say anything.

Bryce was wearing nice enough clothes, not a suit really, but slacks from what I could see, and a shirt with a tie. He had a trench coat looking thing, a raincoat I guessed, since it was raining outside and Bryce was a little wet. He reached into his coat, pulling something out of an inside breast pocket and at first I thought he was getting a gun. I don't know why, there was no reason, but that's what I thought. Maybe I am prejudiced; but anyway, my heart stopped for a second until I saw he had some papers or, no ... He had some pictures.

We just stared at the guy while he shuffled through like six photographs, looking at me first, really staring at my face, and then he did the same with Mark and Chris. It was so weird it was scary. I didn't like this and I didn't understand any of it.

"Are you a cop or something?" Chris finally asked him and Bryce nodded.

"Or something," he kinda smiled, but it wasn't exactly reassuring and he was putting the pictures away. He pointed a big black finger at me, "Stephanie, right?"

"What?" I squeaked.

"And Chris," he looked at my boyfriends, "and Mark. Excuse me for a second."

"What?" Mark was standing pretty close to the guy. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"How do you know our names?" Chris wanted to know and he wanted to get up, but I wasn't letting him go. I was clutching him tightly and trying to remember how to breathe.

"Hold that thought," Bryce said and he had a cellular phone. We just looked at each other, shrugging and being confused while the man called someone. "It's Bryce, yeah ... I found them ... All three, yes ... In the Village, place called the New Berlin ... I'm sure, yeah ... No, they're not going anywhere ... Room 304 ... We'll be here."

"What's going on? What do you want?" Mark demanded and he was getting ready to lose his patience.

"Who was on the phone?" Chris wanted to know.

"I'm a private investigator," Bryce looked at the chair. "Mind if I sit down?" he asked and then sat without waiting for an answer. "Someone hired me to find you and when that person gets here, we'll explain everything."

"Who hired you?" Mark asked, moving to sit on the bed with me and Chris.

"Someone," Bryce smiled and this time it was a little friendlier. "Don't worry, you're not in trouble."

"How did you find us?" Chris wondered.

"It wasn't very hard," Bryce said and he was so relaxed, I wondered how he could just sit there like that. I was scared out of my mind. "I checked with the Claremont Riding Academy and found out who owned the horses you guys were riding. A woman named Regina Miles? Anyway, I talked to her and she mentioned that you guys were staying someplace here in the Village. After that it was just a lot of leather."

"Leather?" Mark frowned.

"Shoe leather," Bryce chuckled. "The New Berlin was towards the bottom of my list, I'm afraid."

"Are you here to take us back?" I asked him.

"Take you back?" Bryce shrugged. "I don't know anything about that. How old are you?"

"Sixteen," I said, swallowing hard.

"All of you?" Bryce asked and Mark told him he was seventeen. "Runaways, huh? Well, sixteen's a good age to do it. They can't make you go back."

"They can't?" I stared at him.

"Why not?" Chris wondered.

"In the state of New York a sixteen year old can declare himself ... herself," he smiled at me, "emancipated. Provided you have income and a place to live. One of those old laws they never got around to changing and by the time they did, well, everybody runs away to the Big Apple, you know? It's easier making them legal than trying to chase them down."

"Oh." I blinked at that and I had no idea if he was telling us the truth or not.

"How do you know?" Mark asked him.

"It's my job, remember?" Bryce smiled at him. "I find people. I used to be a cop, but I got tired of the donuts."

"Where did you get the pictures?" Mark asked, cause he'd actually seen them.

"From the person who hired me," Bryce said. "Made it a lot easier too, although even without them you guys stick out like sore thumbs."

"We do?" Chris wondered and Bryce was smiling.

"Can I see the pictures?" I asked nervously and Bryce shrugged, taking them out of his pocket again and handing them to Chris so we could look together.

"This is in the park," Chris said and there we were, riding the horses. "By the fountain. Look, you're standing up."

"Yeah." I almost smiled because there I was, standing on Saffron's back, and it was like I was staring right into the camera. Like I was posing for it. The camera guy must have had a serious lens too, because there were closeups of my face and everything. All of our faces.

"This is weird," Mark decided.

"Who took these?" I looked up at the man.

"You'll find out," Bryce said with a wink. "I have to keep client confidentiality and all that, you know. Comes with the job."

"But he's coming here?" Mark asked and Bryce shrugged.

"Someone is," the man said. "It won't be long."

"I'm gonna go get dressed," I decided. "Um, that's alright, isn't it?"

"Yeah, of course," Bryce agreed and he was standing up. "I can wait outside. Just don't go down the fire escape or anything, okay? It doesn't look too safe out there."

"What? Oh!" I shook my head and the guy was holding out his hand, wanting the pictures back.

I dressed quickly, but I didn't have to. It took about another half hour before Bryce was knocking on the door again. We'd spent it whispering mostly, wondering what was going on and trying to figure out if we should try and get away from this guy, or wait and see what was going to happen. We were kind of scared that maybe Bryce had been lying and the police were coming to arrest us, but he hadn't really looked or sounded like he was lying. In the end we decided to wait. The fire escape outside our little window did look pretty rickety.

"I'm Francine McClaren," a woman said as soon as she walked into our room. "You can call me Frannie, okay?"

She was an older and attractive woman, maybe fifty or a little more, I thought. Dressed nicely too, with a dark skirt and blouse and big pearls around her neck. She had a cape-like raincoat made out of silk or something, except it was waterproof and she took it off right away. Frannie didn't look around the room at all, which was strange just because most people would. She only looked at us, all three of us, like there was nothing else in the world for those few seconds when her cool, grey eyes fixed on mine.

"What do you want?" Chris asked her, trying not to sound as intimidated as he was. Like we all were. This woman was in charge, you know? She just sorta radiated confidence and she smiled at Chris like she was his own mother catching him with his hand in a cookie jar.

"I want you," she said. "Do you watch television?"

"What? Uh, yeah," Chris shrugged with a confused look and I gave him a little smile because that was a strange question.

"Have you ever seen that show, America's Next Top Model?" she asked. "The one where they get the girls and take the pictures and send one of them home crying every week?"

"Uh..." Chris blinked and looked at me.

"I saw it before," I said. "A little."

"Really?" She smiled at me and I almost blushed. "Well, this is a little bit like that, except we're going to skip all the crying and get right to the end."

"I don't understand," I confessed, looking at Mark who just shrugged back at me, and then at Chris and he didn't know what she was talking about either.

"I want you to model for me," Frannie said. "All three of you, together. A friend of mine, a photographer friend named Jason, saw you in the park and took some photos..."

"We saw them," Mark said.

" ... and he showed them to me," Frannie continued. "I showed them to some other people I know and we all agreed."

"Agreed on what?" Chris asked.

"That you're beautiful," Frannie told him. "That the three of you together are magic. By yourselves, you're only pretty good, but taken all at once?" She smiled. "Taking a picture is like asking the magic mirror, 'Who is the fairest one of all?' and the camera never lies. You are..." she looked at Chris, " ... and you ... and you..." Frannie looked at me and then Mark, speaking slowly and deliberately.

"We're not models," I laughed nervously.

"I know," Frannie said. "But you could be. Guess Jeans has been looking for something new, they want exactly what you can give them. Two boys and a girl. With the chemistry you have, with your looks and personality ... I can find a lot of work for you three."

"Guess Jeans?" I stared at her.

"Personality?" Chris wondered. "You don't even know us."

"This is like some joke, right?" Mark asked her. "You can't just see someone, take a picture, and then decide they're going to be a model or something."

"Where do you think they come from?" Frannie laughed lightly. "Television? I get a thousand boys and girls a week coming through my agency, with big portfolios and agents and mothers and fathers holding their hands. Do you know how many I send home?"

"No," Mark shrugged.

"A thousand a week," Frannie nodded. "The best models, the ones that really make it? They don't know what they are. They're not looking for it; they're discovered. It's a cliché, but only for a very good reason."

"What's that?" Chris wondered.

"Because it's true," Frannie said, like it was obvious. "I can't promise you anything. But I'm excited and I have a lot of experience, a lot of instinct. I've been doing this a long time. I like you kids. The camera likes you, and as soon as we can get you into a real studio, get some real prints, we'll know for certain what we have."

"So, this is ... What?" Mark asked her. "You're offering us a job?"

"An opportunity," Frannie said. "It might work, it might not. I'm going to send you to a studio. That friend of mine, Jason, is expecting you. He's going to take some photos of you, separately and together, mixed and matched, and after we see how they look, I'll know if I'm right."

"What if you're wrong?" Chris asked.

"Then I'm wrong. You're still where you are now and I'm back in my office looking for another discovery," Frannie said. "Life goes on."

"Do we get a choice in all this?" I asked, feeling like we didn't for some reason.

"It's all up to you," Frannie told me. "Here's my card. I put Jason's address on the back. He's not far from here, actually, and he'll be there all afternoon waiting for you. So talk it over, think about it, and then go see him. It's not going to cost you a dime."

She pulled a business card out of her purse, handing it to Mark who looked at the front and then turned it over. He handed it to me and I read her name, Francine McClaren, and her title, Assistant Managing Director, Ford Modeling Agency. I blinked at that.

"You work for the Ford Modeling Agency?" I asked kind of needlessly, but that was just about the only modeling agency I'd ever heard of.

"Who did you think I worked for, dear?" Frannie smiled. "I don't usually make house calls like this," the woman said as she stood up. "You should take it as a very serious compliment."

"Oh." I bit my lip and nodded. I didn't know what an Assistant Managing Director did, but I assumed Frannie didn't spend a lot of time trying to convince people to model for her.

"What about our parents, um..." Mark glanced at Chris and me, " ... Don't you need to talk to them or something?"

"Do I need to?" the woman asked in reply, lifting her cape from the back of the chair and none of us had an answer for that. I guessed here wasn't any legal reason she would have to, but it all seemed very strange to me.

Mark and Chris had stood up when the woman did; being good boys like they were, and manners mean a lot back home, probably for a person like Frannie too. She put a hand on Mark's arm, giving his bicep a squeeze.

"Give me a call tomorrow afternoon," Frannie told him. "I'll be expecting it."

"Yes ma'am," Mark nodded and then she was leaving.

Mark and Chris and me just looked at each other for awhile. I knew they were beautiful and maybe I was too, but models? I couldn't imagine it. Like seeing my picture in a magazine or something? I'd never dreamed of that. It was ridiculous and things like this didn't happen to people like us. We were just kids from a little town nobody had ever heard of. Mark wanted to be a farmer and I wanted to be a farmer's wife. Chris was our boyfriend. They were going to marry me and give me babies. I couldn't be a model.

"I can't be a model!" I giggled.

"Yeah you could," Mark said seriously and I stared at him in surprise. "You and Chrissy? Yeah, you guys could do it."

"What?" Chris laughed.

"I don't know what she wants me for though," Mark continued.

"You could be a model," Chris decided. "Like one of those Calvin Klein underwear guys."

"Heh!" Mark grinned at that. "Nobody's taking my picture in my underwear!"

"You think she was serious?" I wondered. We all knew that this Frannie person had been real serious, that wasn't what I was really asking. Could we seriously believe that she was right? Part of me didn't think so, but I'd believed everything she'd said too. That was the scary thing.

We were quiet some more and I didn't know what Mark and Chris were thinking, but I was thinking about forgetting the whole deal. Being in beauty pageants was fun, I liked it a lot, but I'd never planned on being Miss America either, you know? I was always realistic about stuff and I knew what I wanted. I couldn't sit here and think about being some supermodel and start wanting it and then finding out it wasn't going to happen. That was a real fear in believing what the woman had said and letting myself think it could actually happen. I knew better than that and I was just getting ready to try and explain it when Mark looked at us.

"How much do you think models make?" he asked.

"I dunno," Chris shrugged. "A lot probably."

"I think they give the girl on that TV show like a million dollars or something," I said. "But they can't pay that much all the time, can they?"

"A million?" Chris laughed and fell back on the pillows. "This is so weird."

"They probably pay like a five thousand or something," Mark said. "You think? For like doing an advertising thing?"

"I don't know, dude," Chris said.

"That's a lot of money anyway," I said. "If we got like five thousand each..."

"We could make a down payment on some land," Mark said. "We'd still owe a lot though probably."

"You think they'd give us that much?" Chris asked.

"We'd have to get a lawyer," Mark said.

"An agent or something," I nodded. "But then they take some of it, I think."

"Well, yeah," Mark agreed, "but agents get you more money anyway, right?"

"I guess," I sighed and I had no idea how that stuff worked. None of us did.

"Are we gonna do it?" Chris asked, looking at me and then at Mark. "Go see this photographer guy?"

"What if our pictures suck?" I frowned. "What if they don't like us?"

"Then we're right back here," Mark said. "Like the woman said. It can't hurt, right?"

"I dunno," I sighed. "It might."

"What?" Chris reached for me, stroking my thigh. "Like they're gonna say you're ugly, Steph? Get real."

"What?" I made a face at him. "I just don't want to count on anything, you know? We're already buying a farm and we haven't even gotten off the bed."

"Nah, we know, Steph," Mark said. "It's just talk."

"Yeah, but we don't even know what we're doing," I said. "I mean, we don't know anything. Maybe I should talk to my dad first."

"Your dad knows about being a model?" Chrissy laughed at me.

"No!" I gave his forehead a little slap. "Be nice! God! I just don't want to ... I don't know. I don't want to be stupid, is all."

"Nobody wants to be stupid," Mark agreed. "How about we just go get our pictures taken and..." he shrugged, " ... see what happens?"

"Yeah, if nothing else it'll get us outside for awhile, right?" Chris smiled up at me. "Come on, Steph. You can't tell me you don't want to find out."

"I don't," I pouted a little. "Okay, maybe I do. Shoot."

"Cool," Mark said. "We'll pay for a couple more nights here anyway, just in case, right?"

"Yeah," I shrugged. "Just in case."

Half an hour later I blinked at Bryce because he was sitting in the little lobby downstairs reading a paperback book. We all stared at him and he just smiled and stood up, picking up his trench coat from an empty chair next to him.

"What are you doing here?" Mark asked suspiciously.

"Babysitting," Bryce replied. "Where are we going?"

"So ... What? You're supposed to make sure we don't run away or something?" I asked him.

"No. I'm supposed to make sure nobody gives you a hard time between now and..." he shrugged, " ... whenever Ms. McClaren tells me to stop."