My phone rang and Olivia’s face lit up the display.
“Hey!” I said. Olivia usually texted.
“Hey!” I could tell she was excited right from the start. “Guess what happened to me today?”
“What?” I admit it: I was only half paying attention.
Prague, St. Moritz, London, Paris, St. Kitts.
“I was at the mall in Greenvale with Madison?”
“Yeah…”
“And we were just, like, walking around and stuff and then this guy came to me and said he was a scout for a modeling agency in the city and he thought I should come in for a test! Can you believe that?!”
I sat up straighter, all my attention now on Olivia.
“Wow… that’s crazy. I mean, it’s not because you’re not beautiful, but it’s kind of weird in a mall, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” she sounded offended. “He was there for an advertising campaign. He gave me a card and everything!”
“What’s the name of the agency?” I asked.
“Oh my god, Maeve, I should have known you’d be weird about it.”
“I’m just looking out for you. There are a lot of creeps in the world. You know June would say the same thing if she was still here.” It still hurt to talk about June, but it was getting easier, and I’d promise Olivia — and myself — that I wouldn’t avoid doing it anymore.
She sighed. “Hang on. I’ll take a picture of the card.”
I heard her fumbling with her phone, then heard the ding of the text come through.
“Happy, Mom?” Olivia joked.
“Very,” I said. “Just promise you won’t call until I check it out.”
“I promise.”
“Thanks for calling me,” I said. “Regardless of whether this guys is legit, it’s exciting, and if you’re interested in modeling you should ask mom to look into agents or something.”
After a year and half in the manosphere, there was nothing I wanted less than to be on display where a bunch of men could ogle my body.
But Olivia’s life was her own, and I was happy she hadn’t been tainted by Ethan Todd’s view of the world. She was fifteen, and she’d already had so much taken from her.
She deserved to be excited about something.
“Thanks,” she said. “Maybe I will.”
“I’ll look into this and get back to you,” I said.
“K, love you!”
“Love you too.”
I hung up the phone and pulled up the picture on my phone. The business card looked innocent enough: the words Premier Modeling International emblazoned in gold over an address in the city.
A man’s name — Dan Dethot — was typed in the same gold script over the words International Talent Scout.
I looked him up first, but nothing came up, so I turned my attention to the modeling agency itself. There was a generic listing online for an agency with the same address in Manhattan, but I was way past the point of taking anything at face value.
