Covering my stomach with my hand to try to massage the butterflies away, I took a deep breath and moved through the doors. It was gleaming inside too. This was how I’d pictured my new living space, but at least I was getting it in some capacity.
After checking the building directory, I moved to the wall of elevators and waited. With everyone else. Move. Wait. Move. Wait. I felt like a farm animal. As soon as one set of doors opened, people would spill out, shove in, and I’d be left lingering in the hall. This repeated at least six times until I realized I was never going to make it up to the twenty-fourth floor if I didn’t take the New Yorker approach and shove, shoulder, and slide myself where I needed to go.
The ride up was even more smashed with bodies than the ride on the subway had been. Some lady was pressed into my back; I was pressed into some guy’s back. I’d never been so aware of body odor—others and my own.
“Excuse me,” I announced when the doors pinged open on the twenty-fourth floor. “Coming through,” I added when no one was willingly “excusing me.” The shoulder-slide-shoulder got me out of the elevator before the doors closed on me.
I hadn’t expected the elevator to open right up into the agency. Buildings back home—you know, the five-and six-story ones—had elevators that opened into halls that led you to office doors. Not this building. Not this elevator.
To my left was a sprawling reception desk, modern, fashionable-looking—if furniture could be described as such. A couple of women who I assumed were receptionists were behind the desk, but from the look of them, they could have been models had they been born half a foot taller. Behind all of that stood an opaque glass wall where K&M Models had been etched onto the glass with matte black lettering.
Standing there in my one pair of designer jeans, my faux leather jacket, and my heels bought on the clearance rack at the mall back home, I’d never felt so small town as I did right then. What on Earth did a place like this see in some Nebraska girl like me? Some some-town tall girl who’d known her share of hardship?
It made my stomach drop, wondering if this was all some trick. Or they’d see me here under the scope of New York City and not see the same thing they’d seen in Omaha that day I’d been wandering the mall.
I couldn’t go back home. That wasn’t the life for me. I couldn’t spend the next sixty years going from part-time job to part-time job, struggling the way my mom had to support her family. I wasn’t content to settle down with my high school boyfriend and start popping babies out the way a lot of girls in my graduating class already were. My goal was to work the job I loved, in the city I was hoping to fall in love with, and make enough money to support myself with extra to send home to ease some of the financial stress on the family I already had. My mom was getting by just fine on her own, but I wanted more for them all. More than just getting by. I wanted more than that for myself as well.
That was what had me lifting my shoulders and putting on an air of confidence I was not at all feeling as I approached the front desk. When the girl greeted me with a smile, I said, “I’m Hayden Hayes. I have an eight o’clock appointment to see Mr. Lawson.”
She pulled up something on her computer and gave a brief nod. “I’ll let him know you’re here. You can take a seat over there if you like.”
She indicated a line of see-through plastic chairs lined against a silver wall. A few dozen magazine covers had been framed and hung, presumably featuring models represented by the agency. After thanking her, I moved toward the wall to inspect the pictures. Some big magazines were represented up there, featuring some just-as-notorious models. It was impossible to wrap my mind around the fact that the same agency representing some of the biggest names in the modeling world was the same one representing me. Hayden Agatha Hayes from Hastings, Nebraska. The gangly, awkward girl who’d been teased and dubbed a freak by the intellectually-stunted turds in middle school. I couldn’t wait until I made it. Until it was my face on that magazine cover. Until I made my first million. I’d make sure to have them make that check out to Miss Freak.
After staring at the covers for a while, I took a seat and flipped through magazines. I was done going through those and still hadn’t been called in for my meeting, which was now running a half hour late.
The girl at the counter set the phone back on the hook and swallowed. “Miss Hayes? Mr. Lawson has been held up in another meeting and asked if I’d get you everything you needed.” Coming around the desk, she was holding a portfolio. “Here’s the go-see schedule for the day. Make sure to arrive a few minutes early, but no more than five.” She held out a sheet of paper with a list of times, companies, and addresses.
“This is all today?” As I scanned the sheet, I counted seven different meetings. Scattered throughout the area.
She smiled at me like I was teasing her, then she held out the black folder. “This is the portfolio we put together after your photo shoot last month. There aren’t a lot of shots, but we’ll schedule another one soon to build up your portfolio.”
Taking the folder, I flipped through a couple of pages. When I’d signed with K&M last month, their scout had a photographer do a simple shoot back in Omaha. A couple beauty shots, one profile, and a few full-body ones. Jeans, T-shirt, heels, hardly any makeup or posing. I didn’t look like a model in my portfolio, or at least not how I pictured one, but I knew that was the point. The clients wanted to see a blank canvas, not one already drawn and marked all over.
“I just need to double-check your measurements to make sure there are no surprises there.” The girl whipped a fabric tape measure out of her pocket and cinched it around my waist first. When I lifted my arms, she moved to my bust, then finished with my hips. After checking the measurements included inside my portfolio, she nodded. “You’re all set.”
When she started back toward her desk, I clutched my schedule and portfolio close to my chest. “So that’s it? Off I go?”
She rolled the tape measure back up, appraising me like I was every bit as na?ve as I felt at the moment. “That’s it. If any of the clients you meet with today decide to book you, they’ll contact us, then we’ll contact you. I’ll have a fresh list of go-sees for you tomorrow as well. I can email them to you, or you can pick up the schedule here again in the morning.”
“I’ll pick them up,” I said, because I might have had an email address, but I didn’t have a way to access that email at the moment. “Thank you for everything.”