Beast in the Mirror

Beast in the Mirror

Laura Bradley Rede

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2015 by Laura Bradley Rede

All Rights Reserved.

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Beast in the Mirror is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed herein are fictitious and are not based on any real persons living or dead.

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Chapter One

Please don't tell me I'm beautiful.

That's all I keep thinking, the entire ride from the airport to Dunnager. I don't want James to tell me I look great, or I look so much better, and I really don't want him to say I look healthy. If there's anything a year in anorexia rehab has taught me, it's that you look healthy is code for you look fat.

Okay, not fat, exactly. Fatter. Which is the point, right? Almost anything would be fatter than I was a year ago. I won't go into numbers. That rule has been drilled into me in group therapy: no weights, no BMIs, no sizes, no calories, nothing that can be expressed in a number, because it might trigger someone else, make them feel like they want to compete.

But trust me, the numbers were low.

And now, by model standards, they're high. I gained the weight back gradually, sensibly, working my program like a good girl, but inside I feel like one of those emergency rafts that explode outward when you pull a ripcord, my whole body like an airbag that inflated when my life crashed.

I do not feel beautiful.

Beautiful place, isn't it? The driver smiles at me in the rearview mirror.

Lovely. Outside, the Irish countryside rolls past. Afternoon sunlight dapples the emerald grass of sheep meadows hemmed with ragged stone walls. I can see why James chose to spend his summer here.

But you aren't going all the way into town?

No. I'd actually love to go straight to James' rental cottage. I'm tired from my flight, but James wants to start right away. He said he'd meet me by the Blackston estate. He said you'd drop me there.

In the rearview mirror, I see the driver’s bushy eyebrows rise almost into his newsboy cap. Well, that's it, up ahead. The driver points the stem of his pipe a bit farther up the road, where a massive estate house crouches behind a high stone wall. I can just make out the broken upper windows, the swayed red roof. A single tower rises above the wall, like a periscope over dark water. You aren't going in, though, are you?

I shake my head. It doesn't look safe.

Oh, it's dangerous, alright. The driver pulls over to the side of the road and swivels in his seat to face me. I wonder if he's working the Irish thing for the sake of the tourists, with his worn tweed jacket and his unlit pipe. There's dark magic at Blackston. The farmers say, if a lamb wanders too close to the wall, it always comes up sick and dies soon after. Once a lamb got in there through a gap in the wall... He draws the stem of his pipe across his neck. Never came out, and no one would go in after. Just walled up the gap behind it.

I smile politely. My mother is Irish, and I've spent enough time here to know to take stories with a grain of salt. I suspect this guy is playing it up for a tip. Well, I say, I'll consider myself warned.

Good. He nods, still frowning. Just wanted to make sure you weren't one of them explorer kids who poke around in old places.

No, I'm just here for a photo shoot.

As soon as I say it, I regret it.

The driver's eyebrows arch again with interest. Are you a model, then? I thought you might be, tall and slim as you are.

Slim? Is that what I am? I want to laugh. You ain't seen nothin', buddy.

My niece wants to be a model. He looks at me expectantly. Got any advice?

What should I say? The chocolate-flavored laxatives make great dessert? A bag of organic lettuce has only forty calories if you eat it with just salt?

Run now, while you still can?

But that would be hypocritical, wouldn't it? This photo shoot is all about me getting back in.

Tell her to follow the industry, I say.

Oh, she does that! She reads all the blogs, every magazine! His smile widens. Say now, what's your name? Would she know it? I'll tell her I met you!

For a second, I consider telling him. If she already follows fashion, she would know it all right; Bella Ashton, the girl who passed out during the Marc Jacobs fall show. There's a chance she might have seen my Diesel campaign, or my feature in the Teen Vogue Ones to Watch issue, but more likely she's seen the YouTube video of my fall. God knows I've seen it. I watched it over and over in rehab, replaying the bit where my head bounces against the runway. It has over four million views.

Yes, she'd know my name.

Or maybe she wouldn't. Fashion moves like dog years, every season a generation. The designers are perennial flowers, there year after year, but the models are only annuals, there and gone.

I open the car door, grabbing the handle of my red suitcase. She probably wouldn't have heard of me.

The driver gives me a sympathetic look. Not quite there yet, eh? Well, you'll make it, I'm sure. He lowers his voice conspiratorially. If you don't mind my saying so, miss, I believe you are the prettiest girl ever to grace this cab.

Well...thank you. I hurry out of the car, hauling the suitcase behind me, and fumble in my pocket for the cash to pay him.

Here's my card. Only driver-for-hire in town. He grins as he takes my bills. I hope this photo shoot's your big break, miss. I hope everything changes today.

He gives me a friendly wave as he turns the car around and drives off in a cloud of dust.

Then I'm all alone.

***

James is late, which is no shock. Even when we were kids he would change his outfit a dozen times before he left the house. The tendency only got worse when he became a model, and now that he's a photographer he always says he runs on artist time. There's nothing to do but wait.

I wander down the road to the Blackston house, prop my suitcase against the high stone wall and sit on it. I love this suitcase. It's a cherry-red, hard-sided vintage one I bought at a flea market during my first Paris fashion week. At the time, I only grabbed it because I needed another bag to bring home all the samples and freebies, but since then, the bag has grown on me. I lived out of it for weeks at rehab, unable to admit I was staying. Now, it's one of the only stable things in my wardrobe. In a moment of stupid willpower, I threw away all my size-zero clothes, afraid that having them around would make me want to go back to being dangerously thin. Since then, I try to focus on shoes and suitcases and scarves. Things that are hard to outgrow.

Maybe James will put the suitcase in a shot. I can picture a spread about a girl running away from home, maybe off to join the circus. Maybe hitchhiking or something. I'll have to suggest it to him when he comes.

Whenever that may be.

I'm not used to being alone. In the clinic, there was always someone with me— roommates, counselors, doctors—and for the last few weeks I've been home with my parents. I try to savor the feeling of being by myself.

Except I'm not sure I am by myself. I feel like I'm being watched.

I look around.

No one.

That's your problem, Bella. You always feel like you're on display. Four years in front of the camera have made me permanently aware of what I look like from the outside, even when there's no one there to see it.

But I still can't shake the feeling. I stand up and turn towards the house. Then I spot it: a crow perched on top of the