Chapter 2

Thursday night she was all fired up. We went back to the house and this time there were no cars parked behind it. The sign was still on the back door, but this time it was locked. There was a doorbell, and Addie pushed it. It didn't take him long to answer it. This time he was in jeans and a sweat shirt.

"Come in, come in," he said, flashing that toothy grin of his.

We followed him straight to the door in the wall, and he opened it, walking in and leaving it open for us to follow.

What we entered was a studio. I realized it was basically about two thirds of the basement. It was brightly lit, and there were various bits of equipment all over the place. The floor was a nest of snakes, made by wires that went everywhere. Lights like they used in musicals at school hung from the ceiling. A mural had been painted on the far wall. Then I realized it wasn't a mural at all, but a backdrop, also like we had in the plays I did in high school. This one showed a rural scene, with trees and sheep in the background. There was a green carpet spread in front of it, a strip maybe twenty feet long and ten feet wide. It could be imagined as grass, but it looked like carpet. There was even a fake tree, positioned by a big, fake boulder.

Further down was a smaller set. This one looked more like what I expected. It had a tripod kind of thing that had what looked like an old fashioned movie screen on the top. But it wasn't a movie screen. It was a pull down colored sheet. The one that was down was a sort of medium gray. It was really long, and part of it was lying on the floor. I realized that from the position of the camera that was set up in front of it, you wouldn't be able to see the floor at all, just a mass of gray background. There was a stool sitting on top of the sheet that covered the floor.

A rack of clothes had been rolled next to the camera, which was also on a tripod. Zharkov went to it and pushed clothes around on it. He pulled a frilly blue dress off a hanger and held it out to Addie.

"This should fit you. You can change in there. Take your hair down, too."

He pointed to an alcove that was covered by a black sheet. It wasn't a dressing room, really, but it provided privacy. He turned to me when she took the dress from him.

"There is work for boys too. You want me to take some test shots of you too?"

"In what?" I asked.

He went back to the rack and pushed things around on it again. He pulled down a silk shirt. It was black, with a super wide and long collar. There were two pockets on the chest, with white stitching on them in a design that looked vaguely western to me. It wasn't a cowboy shirt, or at least not like any western shirt I'd ever seen anybody wearing, but it looked interesting. He handed it to me.

"Sixteen neck, thirty-two arms?" he asked.

"How'd you know that?" I asked, taking the shirt. It was lighter than it looked.

"I do this for a living," he said, flashing me another of those grins. "The jeans you have on are perfect to go with that. You can change out here, or wait until she gets back."

I looked at the sheet covering the "dressing room". Addie hadn't been very careful about closing it, where there was a slit down the middle. I saw her back as she held the dress over her head and let it slip downwards. She had on a beige bra and matching panties. I hadn't seen her like that in a long time, and I was amazed at the hourglass figure she'd developed. Then it was gone as she tugged the dress down and covered everything up.

"Do I need shoes?" she called out.

"Not for the test shots," said Zharkov, fiddling with the camera.

I pulled off my T shirt and slid my arms into the shirt he'd given me. I'd never felt anything so smooth and light before. It fit me like a glove. There were no buttons for the first two or three inches down from the collar. I saw a full length mirror standing against the wall the door was in and took a look. It didn't actually expose my chest, but it was clear there were no buttons there.

"It's a little big," said my sister, coming through the sheet.

"We can solve that," said Zharkov, going to a table.

I looked at Addie. The dress was a summer type dress, very light and flowing. I had to admit she looked really good in it, with her pony tail gone and her blond hair falling all down on her shoulders. Zharkov came back with something on his left wrist like a bracelet. It turned out to be a pin cushion.

"Once I get these pins in there, be careful how you move," he warned.

I watched as he put his hands all over her. Except it didn't look like he was groping her or anything. He pulled and folded and pinned until the dress fit her curves like the shirt fit my body - not quite skin tight. Suddenly, my sister had curves like a woman. It was amazing. The whole time he hummed, while his fingers smoothed the material here and pulled it there. His hands slid right down the sides of her breasts, but before I could object, he was pulling the material and putting in pins. It was weird. He touched her in places that I thought of as sexual places ... but it didn't look like sexual touching.

And she didn't complain ... so how could I?

And then he was helping her up on the stool, and touching her again, this time all over her legs, as he put one of her feet on one rung of the stool, and the other on a different rung. He put her hands in her lap, and then stood back and looked her over. He didn't like that for some reason and moved her hands to one side, on only one thigh. He ended up with her right hand on her thigh and her left hand up just under her hair, like she was getting ready to flip it back, like girls do all the time. Our social studies teacher called it a "grooming behavior," and said it had to do with trying to make yourself look good to prospective mates. That got lots of giggles, let me tell you.

"Hold that pose," he said.

He moved to the camera and picked up something that looked about like a cigarette lighter with a thin cord coming out of it.

"Tilt your chin down," he said. Then, "Now turn your head to the right, just a little ... perfect! Hold it right there."

The whole room seemed to flash, and I realized it was a bunch of silvery looking umbrellas on stands that had lights in them.

"Think of your boyfriend," said Zharkov.

"I don't have one," said Addie.

"Impossible!" he brayed. "A woman as beautiful as you? Surely the boys fight over you constantly."

I thought the asshole was flirting with her, and her smile bloomed and the lights flashed and I realized that he wasn't flirting with her at all. Instead, he had manipulated a look on her face that she probably couldn't put there on purpose.

He told her to stand, and then made her walk around. He gave her all sorts of instructions about what to do and which way to turn and how fast to turn, all the while snapping pictures. Then he took the camera off the tripod and held it, making her go through all the moves again, while he walked around moving the camera up and down and taking close-ups. By the time he was finished, she was laughing and smiling and I had to admit she looked ... I don't know ... just good.

Then it was my turn, and I realized how difficult all this was. He changed the sweep of my hair and then used gel to keep it that way. It was hard to sit the way he wanted me to sit, and do the things he wanted me to do. It didn't feel natural at all. And when he had me turning around and jumping at him and stuff like that, I felt stupid. But Addie wasn't laughing at me. She did have a smile on her face, but it was more like she was just having a good time watching the guy put me through my paces.

Then, suddenly, he put the camera back on the tripod and popped out a card.

"You can get dressed in your own clothes while I pull these up and take a look at them," he said.

"What about the pins?" asked Addie.

"Your brother can help you," he said, apparently uninterested in removing what he had so lovingly put in. "Just stick the pins back in the pin cushion."

Addie headed for the dressing room.

"Hey," I called out to her.

"You can take them out in here," she said.

So I followed her in. She was jumping up and down, she was so excited.

"That was so much fun!" she whispered. She turned her back to me.

"Hold still," I said, looking for a pin to remove.

He'd used dozens of the things, and the tiny silver heads were hard to see against the pale blue of the dress. She got fidgety after a bit.

"Hold still!" I ordered her.

"Wait," she said. "Help me get it up over my head. Then you can take the pins out while it's not on me." She held her arms up.

"I can't take it off of you," I objected.

"Why not?"

"Because you're my sister?" I suggested.

"It's not like I'm naked under it," she scoffed. "You've seen me in my bikini. That's much worse than what I have on right now."

She was probably right about that. I had seen her in her bikini, and she was extremely hot looking in that. Not that I would ever admit that to her, of course.

So I started tugging the dress up, past her hips, and then past her breasts and up her arms. At one point I had a heck of a good view of some extremely fine cleavage. The bra turned out to be a lacy one. And the front of her panties had this interesting bulge in them that sort of drew the eyes. It was unsettling, because I had some very un-brotherly thoughts while this was happening.

Then it was off, and she turned and reached for her clothes, like it was no big deal. About then I found a pin - the hard way - and pulled it out. By the time I'd found three more she was dressed and took the garment from me.

"Your turn," she said. She looked at me critically. "You look good in that shirt. He has a good eye."

"Thanks," I said.

I unbuttoned the shirt and took it off. My T shirt was out in the room, so I pushed through the curtain.

"What do I do with the shirt?" I called out.

"Just hang it back up," he said. "The dress too. You didn't wear them long enough to sweat in them."

Addie came out, still examining the dress and pulling pins out of it. She had the pin cushion on her arm like he had.

I waited until she was satisfied and had hung up the dress. Then we both wandered over to the computer in the corner of the room, where he was reviewing the shots he'd taken on a huge monitor.

When we walked up behind him, he had one of the first shots he'd taken of Addie up. It was the one right after he'd told her guys must be killing themselves to be with her. The camera had caught her at first blush from the compliment, with her smile only barely formed. As we watched he did something with the mouse and her skin tone changed, making her tan look darker than it was. She was beautiful! He did something else and her eyes changed, making them look like she was hungry for whoever she was looking at. Even I wanted her to look at me like that. I'd been around her my whole life, and had never seen that look on her face. Not looking at me, anyway.

"Wow," I said.

"You have a very beautiful sister, young man," said Zharkov, without a trace of shame. Then again, why would he be ashamed of saying she was beautiful. He was in the beautiful business, after all.

"I have to admit you are correct," I said.

"Thank you!" she said, laughing happily. "I finally got a compliment from my brother!"

"It won't be the last," said Zharkov.

I thought that was a funny thing for him to say, but then the picture changed, and we all examined that one.

It took another half hour to go through all the pictures he'd taken. He didn't play with them all. Some were obviously no good. A few were blurry, but most of them were bad for other reasons. There were a lot where the look on our faces was all wrong. I couldn't tell you why they were wrong, but it was obvious. At least after seeing a few where everything was right.

And there were some where everything was right. I was amazed at how good the camera made us both look. He used his computer to enhance this and that in a few of the shots, always improving things. Finally he flipped a switch and the monitor went dark. He swiveled around and sat, looking up at us.

"Both of you will do quite nicely. If you want to work, you're hired."

Of course there was more to it than that. We had to fill out forms for withholding and all that kind of stuff. We even filled out non-disclosure forms.

And, I admit that, as we went home that night, we were both a little giddy that we were actual models.

Now maybe you, being an adult, have seen warning signs in what I've described thus far. But to me, other than my initial dislike of Vlad - that's his first name - I didn't get any more vibes that made me worry. Especially after a month and a half of going to his studio and having photographs taken. We went twice a week and everything seemed completely normal. He had us dress up in various kinds of clothing and took pictures, hundreds of them. There were different backgrounds and all that, and everything seemed just as normal as pie. He even gave us some of the shots to take home to show Dad.

Even when he started posing us in swimwear, I didn't think too much of it. He put Addie in some suits that our parents would have killed her for wearing, but then everybody's parents are old fashioned. You know the deal. And if he had her in a thong bikini, he didn't pose her bent over from the back, or anything like that. He might have her turn so that one ass cheek was partially visible, but that seemed normal too. And he put me in Speedos and posed me holding a fake styrofoam surfboard and stuff like that.

I guess what I'm saying is that it all seemed pretty normal. Addie and I always went into the changing booth to change outfits, and he just took lots of pictures of us.

At first I thought it was kind of strange that we never worked with any of the other kids. They worked on different nights than us. Vlad had us working on Thursdays and Mondays. But after I realized how much time it took to take all those hundreds of pictures, I figured having four or more models in the studio would be difficult to make work, logistically speaking.

I do know that Addie was disgusted when she told Cindy that she'd signed the non-disclosure agreement, and all Cindy wanted to talk about was how to move and hold your head and how to get the right look on your face and stuff like that. There weren't any juicy details after all.

Well ... there were ... but Cindy didn't tell Addie about them. It was too soon for that. And, as it turned out, we found out about that stuff on our own.

But the point is that for us, at that point in things, we felt like everything was going fine. We were friends with Vlad. He joked around and laughed with us. He continued to put his hands all over Addie, and me to a lesser degree, but it always seemed like it just went with the posing.