She drove down to the elastic band of my underwear and yanked them off, then spun me around and began unfastening my bra.
“Just do what we tell you to, so we don’t end up having to do it for you.”
Before I could protest, she lifted the swatch of fabric up to my boobs and tied what looked like fishing wire around my neck to keep it in place. I started having flashbacks of being five years old and unable to tell my mom how much I hated the outfits she put me in.
My days as a pageant contestant were short lived but left battle scars, nonetheless. At least those outfits kept me covered and didn’t rely on a string to keep them together.
The Cherry grabbed a pair of socks and started to shove them underneath my boobs. “What are you doing?” I went to enough HR meetings to know sexual harassment when it happened to me. The other girls, however, seemed comfortable, not scared. I had had the same lump in my throat since I arrived, but they laughed near their vanities, sprinkling glitter on each other when they walked past.
“Lifting them.” I had a feeling HR meant nothing within Pink Cherrie walls.
I leveled her with a glare. “My boobs are big enough.”
She rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m just following orders. If you have a problem, complain to Kitty.” A certificate of completion from the YMCA self-defense class and there I was, getting my boobs jacked up with a pair of socks at the hands of a woman I had only just met.
I stopped questioning the ways of the seventh circle of hell I’d fallen into by the time my breasts were pushed nearly up to my chin. When she came at me with neon paint, I didn’t try to fight it. Instead, I let her fingerpaint on my face like a cheap dollar store canvas. When she finished, she yelled at someone else to come retrieve her creation.
After they traded me, and I came to terms with my feelings about being treated like a toddler, they shoved me into a chair beside one of the only open vanities. My scalp screamed for a break while they tugged on my hair and complained about the knots.
While they brushed some of my hair, other parts were being yanked off. Five minutes of relentless pain passed before they spun me around to reveal the final product.
They had burned my hair into uniform curls that billowed down my back and shoulders. The paint turned out less Picasso and more whimsical with soft spirals of iridescent green. It managed to bring out the blue in my eyes and made my pale skin look much brighter.
I stared for a solid ten seconds before Kitty came back to check on my progress.
“So, what do you think?” she asked while moving a few stray hairs around. I didn’t know how to feel about the girl looking back at me in the mirror.
“Doesn’t feel like me.” But I hadn’t been me in a long time, proven by my ability to let myself be dressed up and painted on, willing to take a job that I didn’t fully understand. All because people were relying on me.
Kat nodded. “We all felt that way at first.”
I doubted I would ever get used to the pain it took to get me prepared for whatever show they planned for the crowd outside. I had limited experiences with stages and audiences, mostly because of my first and last pageant win when I slipped and gave myself a concussion that landed me in the hospital.
She crossed her arms expectantly. “You ready?”
I turned to look at her in a gold trim bikini. “You haven’t told me what I’m doing yet,” I stammered. My nerves ate away at me, leaving nothing left of the confident façade I’d walked into the building with.
She grinned. “You’re modeling.”
Panic hit me in waves. “I can’t model.” I shot up from the chair. “I don’t have the coordination or the bone structure. My mom told me I resemble an ostrich.”
She laughed and ran her fingers through her hair. “We don’t have much of a choice at the moment. So, if you could just get your butt onto the stage and walk in a straight line with a smidge of sass, you’d be doing me a huge favor.” I stared at thepowerhouse of compulsion in front of me. “And you’ll get the job.” She winked.
An eviction notice flashed through my mind, and the idea of walking in on my mother and Walter in the shower pushed me down the hall to where the other girls were lined up.
If I had to become someone I didn’t recognize to survive, so be it.
FOUR
With each passing second,a new Cherry walked past the curtain and disappeared before my eyes. My mother’s voice plagued me with short, meaningless sayings like “The purpose of life is a life of purpose”. But nothing could calm the timpani drum threatening to burst out of my chest as each girl in front of me vanished into the veil of the unknown.
“Jade Marie,” Kat announced the Cherry who forced me into the invisible bra.
At some point, she’d changed into a navy bralette. Her boobs hung out in all the most flattering places, and judging by the sounds the audience made, they agreed.
I compared myself to the other girls waiting in line and noticed my boobs were much more on display thanks to Jade. Cheeks flaming, I tucked them further into whatever spare centimeter of fabric I could gather. My parents were a lot of things, but they weren’t strippers, and they wouldn’t understand my sudden fall from a salaried 9-5 tothis.
Finally, the anticipation came to an end, and my feet were positioned right in front of the curtain. I sucked in a deep breath in a final attempt to calm my nerves.
