She shrugs, and my stomach drops.
“Until,” she whispers, “the countdown to eighteen.”
It takes me a second, but when it does, it hits me like a punch.
“Elsa,” I say again, a little harder.
“Do you know what it’s like,” she asks, quietly interrupting me, “to be seventeen and realize that grown men are counting down the seconds—literally seconds—until you’re legal?”
She scoops a little more cream, then wipes the excess on the back of her hand, trying for casual.
“A countdown to eighteen. Like the day you turn eighteen is some sort of starting gun. Like the only thing standing between them and what they want is not whetherIwant it or not, but the possibility of consequences.”
She sets the tub down and wraps the towel around her again.
“I know I’m not the only one it’s happened to. I know other women in the spotlight have had to put up with it before, but it was right around the time I found out that I wasn’t gettingallmy fan mail.”
“What do you mean?” I murmur, almost afraid to know.
She lets out a slow breath through her nose, like she’s bracing.
“My team,” she says. “PR. Management. Whoever was sorting it. They were… filtering.”
I feel something cold slide down my spine. “Filtering what?”
Her mouth tightens. She keeps her eyes on the mirror like she doesn’t want to see my face when she says it.
“The normal letters came through,” she says. “The sweet ones. The harmless ones. But the other ones—”
She swallows, and her fingers pause in their fidgeting on the towel for half a second before they start moving again.
“They held them back,” she continues, voice flat. “It’s common in the industry not to show models and celebrities all the letters. They hold certain ones back and keep them, just in case.”
My jaw clenches. “In case what?”
But I know. I know exactly what she’s going to say. The world I spend my time in is no stranger to men likethis.
“In case something happens to me. In case some crazy, obsessed fan kidnaps me or threatens me or stalks me, they have the letters to give the cops.”
She clears her throat. “We’re not really supposed to see those letters. Well, they don’t want us to see those letters.”
“But you did,” I say quietly.
Her laugh is small and ugly. “I was about to turn eighteen, and my parents could no longer legally take care of things like that without my permission. So, they had to let me know, in case they needed to get the cops involved.
“Once I found out, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I had to see them. I snooped in my manager’s office and found the boxes. Plural. Packed full of them.” She shakes her head once. “Each one meticulously labeled.
My stomach turns. “Jesus.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I was naïve. But the things some of those people said… They wrote like I wasn’t even a person,” she says, and her voice finally cracks—just a hairline fracture, but I hear it. “NotElsa. Not a girl who had homework and friends and parents who loved her. Just… a body they’d decided was theirs.”
My stomach knots so hard it feels like nausea.
“And the countdown,” she continues, “wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t ‘can’t wait for your birthday’ from some harmless fan.” Absently, she scoops a small dot of cream and rubs it into her hands, even though she’s already done it.
“It was grown men counting down until I was legal. Not that being underage was a problem for them. It’s just when they could finally say out loud what they wanted to do to me instead of sending anonymous letters.”
I feel my hands curl at my sides. I force them open. I want to stop her. I want to hold her and comfort her, but I made her start this, and she needs to finish it. I can’t stop her purge just because it might break something in me if I hear any more.
