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  “Yeah, I really don’t want a drive-through burger. This is fine. We aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere.” Aron put his arm around my shoulder and kissed the top of my head. “You look fine, honey, just relax.”

  Aron and I had finally weaved our way through the line, placed our order, and were standing to the side waiting for our food to come up to the window when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see a middle-aged gentleman in Dockers shorts and a green-collared shirt smiling at me.

  “Do I know you?” I asked.

  Aron spun around. “Can I help you?” he demanded.

  The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card and handed it to me. “My name is Marcus, and I know this is going to sound like a line, but I’m a modeling agent and you are someone I would be interested in representing.”

  Before I had a chance to respond Aron grabbed the business card out of my hand and looked at it. “Premier Modeling in St Louis? I’ve never heard of you before. What kind of outfit are you?” Aron kept questioning Marcus but I had stopped listening.

  This is a joke—a modeling agent? What the hell is he doing here and why he hell is he talking to me?

  “Sarah!” Aron’s voice snapped me back into reality. “Are you listening to this?”

  “Not…not really,” I answered. I looked at Marcus. “To be honest, I’m not sure why you are talking to me.”

  Aron put his arm around my shoulder again and squeezed me tightly. “I tell her all of the time how beautiful she is and she never believes me!”

  Marcus looked at me and smiled. “Well, you should listen to your boyfriend more often because you are absolutely gorgeous. You have my card; check out the website at the address listed on the bottom so you can get an idea of what the agency is all about and the type of clientele we have. If you like it, give me a call and we can set up a time for you to come down and shoot with us.” Marcus shook my hand and then shook Aron’s hand. “Seriously, check out the agency and I think you’ll feel OK about her giving it a shot.”

  “We’ll see,” Aron said, and Marcus walked out the door. Aron spun me around and held me in his arms. “Baby, I’m so proud of you!” he whispered into my ear.

  I pulled away from him. “Proud of me?” I said. “You were treating that guy like he was a porno producer or something.”

  “Of course I was! Do you think I’m just going to let some random guy come up to you and hand you a business card and claim he’s a modeling agent? But I think this guy may be legit. Let’s get our food to go and we can eat at home and check out his website.”

  I wasn’t even thinking about the legitimacy of Marcus and his modeling agency because all I could think about was how absurd this entire situation was. “I am not a model, Aron. I don’t know the first thing about modeling, and besides, look at me!” I threw my hands up in despair and Aron grabbed my arms and pulled them down.

  “Stop it!” he said. “I’ve told you for years how beautiful I know you are and this just validates it. Enjoy the moment and stop trying to find something wrong with it.”

  As usual, Aron’s common sense calmed me down and I nodded. “OK, we’ll check out the site, but it’s ultimately my decision.”

  Aron let go of my arms. “Is order twenty-two ready yet?” he hollered toward the workers behind the food counter. “Christ, how long does it take to make two burgers and two fries?”

  “Order twenty-two up!”

  Aron pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, paid for our food, and we got into the car. “I’m too excited to eat,” he said as he pulled out of the parking lot and got on the road toward home. “Why am I so excited and you aren’t? All those fucking names you were called and the way your mom treated you, wouldn’t you just love to shove something like this in her face?”

  “Of course I would, Aron,” I responded softy, “but I’d rather be able to call my mother and share this good news with her.” Tears began to well up in my eyes and I turned my head to look out my window. “Sometimes it just really sucks, you know?”

  Aron reached over and patted my leg. “I know, baby, and I know you want to be able to call your mom. But do you know what? I’m here and Ryan is here and if you want, you can call my mom and tell her. I just want you to be happy, that’s all I ever want.” He paused before saying, “You have a family now, a family that loves you as much as I do, and you need to quit living your life trying to impress that bitch of a mother you had.”

  “I’m sorry,” he continued. “I shouldn’t have acted like you should rub this in her face. I didn’t think.”

  Before I could respond, Aron pulled into our apartment parking lot and turned off the engine. “Come on!” he said. “Let’s check this guy out.”

  Aron’s excitement was contagious, and I ran up the stairs after him, through the front door, over to the computer. Within minutes Aron and I were sitting in front of the computer screen munching on our burgers clicking through the different links and pictures on the Premier Modeling website.

  “They do a lot of sports modeling,” I pointed out. “Maybe that’s all he wanted me for.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Sarah. Look at you, your face, your hair, your eyes, your sexy tooth line; you could be in the same magazines as these girls are!” He gestured to the computer screen with his hamburger.

  “Aron, all these things you say are beautiful about me are the things Mom used to pick on me the most for,” I said angrily. “My eyes, Mom loved calling me Bug Eyes; my mouth, Mom loved calling me Nigger Lips, and you know as well as I do the other names she used to call me!” I started to cry, and Aron put his hamburger down on the computer desk and held me in his arms.

  “Oh honey, when are you going to stop letting her control your life? She said those things about you and tried to damage those parts of your body because she was jealous of you.” He let go of me and lifted my chin to look into my eyes. “Did you hear what I just said?” he asked. “I said your own mother was jealous of you and I think that’s why she hurt you and said and did those terrible things to you.”

  My eyes widened in amazement as I took in what Aron had just said to me. No! I thought, She hurt me because I wasn’t supposed to be born, because I ruined her life… “Oh my God,” I said out loud as I pushed Aron’s hand away from my chin. “You’re right, but I think it’s deeper than that, Aron.” A light bulb had gone off in my head. “I don’t think she was just jealous of the way I looked; I think she was jealous of me in general and jealous of the fact that I was just starting out in life and had my entire future ahead of me.”

  Maybe Mom wasn’t just jealous of me, but jealous of all of her single friends who got to go out and have fun when she was stuck at home with a newborn baby, and I was the unfortunate one left to bear the brunt of her frustrations and anger.

  “I’ve always thought that, Sarah, but I couldn’t even bring myself to say the words to you. I mean, what kind of mother is jealous of her own daughter?” Aron shook his head in dismay. “That’s why I really think you need to call this guy and at least check it out, if only to give yourself the validation you’re always looking for.”

  Aron stood up, walked over to the kitchen counter, and picked up the phone receiver. He held it out to me and asked, “Well, are you going to dial the number or am I?”

  I stood up. “I’ll do it.”

  As absurd and silly as it sounded, I was going to call this modeling agent and pursue this opportunity. I wanted to prove to Mom that no matter how hard she had tried to hurt me, damage me, and destroy me emotionally, I had still turned out to be a beautiful, strong woman. I pulled Marcus’s card out of my pocket and dialed the number.

  “Put it on speaker,” Aron said. He leaned over onto the counter and impatiently drummed his fingers as we listened to the phone ring.

  “This is Marcus,” we heard, and I looked at Aron nervously. He gave me a reassuring smile and gestured for me to talk with a sweeping motion of his hand. “Hi Marcus, I’m Sarah, th
e girl you met today?”

  Did I even tell him my name? I thought frantically.

  “Ah! The girl from the burger place. So did you and your boyfriend get a chance to look at my website?”

  I was relieved that he remembered who I was, and I calmed down. “Yes, and Aron and I both thought it looked really interesting so I called you back. I’m not sure what you want me for, so I guess that’s why I’m calling.”

  “I’ve been in this business a long time, and I think you have a beautiful look. I’d like to see how you translate to photos, so if you have time this week, I’d like to get you down to St. Louis for a test shoot.”

  “What’s a test shoot?” Aron asked.

  “We’ll just put her in a few different outfits and in a few different sets and see how she performs.”

  “And this costs?” Aron pressed.

  “Nothing,” Marcus replied. “The places that charge for pictures are scams.”

  “Well, Sarah, I think you should at least check it out, especially since it won’t cost a thing,” Aron said. “What do you think?”

  I didn’t need to think. This all sounded too good to be true, and knowing that Aron would be by my side put my worries at ease. “Well, I work full time so I’ll need a day to put in for a vacation day. Would Wednesday work out for you?”

  “Wednesday is perfect,” Marcus said. “It will probably take a few hours because I have other girls coming in that day also, so I’ll need you up here at the address listed on my business card by about, oh, nine a.m.? Will that work for you?”

  “I can’t go Wednesday,” Aron said, and I looked at him in horror.

  “Aron, I am not going up by myself!”

  “Of course you aren’t,” Aron said, “but I have two platinum jobs that are due by Wednesday afternoon and I have to get them done.” He stood up and said, “Don’t worry, someone in my family will go with you.”

  Before I could respond, Marcus said, “Great, you have my number if you get lost, and we’ll just plan on seeing you on Wednesday morning at nine.” He hung up and Aron turned off the speaker button and put the phone receiver back into its cradle.

  “Who in your family is going to go with me?” I asked Aron as I threw my hands up in the air angrily. “You got me to call this guy and now you aren’t even going to go with me?”

  “Hold on, Sarah,” Aron said as he put his hand up in the air to quiet me. “I was just thinking Dad could do it.”

  Aron’s dad, Sam, was the most unique individual I had ever met in my entire life. To describe him is difficult but the best way I can do it is to say that he has some of the political views of Archie Bunker, the big heart of Jackie Gleason, and the boisterous attitude of the skipper from Gilligan’s Island. He is a brutally honest man, but everyone who knows him realizes that behind his brutal honesty is true love and compassion. He believes that everyone has the potential for greatness if they work hard and follow an honest path in life.

  Sam and Aron’s mother divorced when Aron was very young, and the first day I met Aron, I had heard the resentment in his voice as he talked of his father “leaving the family.” But if Aron held any grudge toward his father about this, it was not apparent to me during visits to Sam and his wife Carol’s house. When we were all together on the back porch talking, laughing, and burning meat on the grill, the four of us were all one happy family. Sam seemed to take to me immediately and was eager to push his fatherly advice and worldviews onto me. He constantly engaged me in political and philosophical debates during our visits, and it was because of these debates that I started to pay more attention to the world around me and the local issues that directly affected our lives. He inspired me to run for student representative of my college class and he was the first person I called when I won the election. Sam, like Aron, made me want to be a better person, and my motto in life became, “Well, what would Sam do?” I never told Sam about my abuse because I didn’t want him to think poorly of me or be ashamed of me if he found out what a weak and abused person I had been for the majority of my life.

  My love for Sam moved Aron deeply, and as time went on, his relationship with his father became deeper and more meaningful. “Sarah, I never had this kind of relationship with my dad before you.” Aron said after one of our visits. “I’ve think I’ve had the wrong impression of him for all of these years. I love the old man!” Tears formed in his eyes.

  “Aron,” I said, “you don’t know what happened in the past but what you do know is the type of man he is now. And personally, I think he’s a wonderful person and I’m blessed to have him in my life.” At the time, it made me wonder if Mom was different now and if she had finally become a good person.

  I did not know how Sam would react if I asked him to accompany me to a modeling photo shoot. I tried to run through all of the possible things he would say to me: “Sarah you are in college and have a full-time job, how can you balance this?” or the most dreaded question, “Sarah, what is your reason for doing this?” Sam would want to know if this was something I had always wanted to do or if I had an ulterior motive for doing it. He would make me question myself and get to the core as to why I was even interested in modeling, and that would open up a can of worms I was not prepared for.

  “I don’t know, Aron,” I said. “I don’t want to spend four hours with your dad getting lectured.”

  “That’s silly, Sarah, he won’t lecture you. He will love this. He’ll get to go to Chicago and watch you model clothes and get your picture taken. Yeah, I’m sure he’ll have a real problem with this!” Aron was already dialing his father’s number. “Trust me,” he said, “it will be fine, and if I can’t go he is the next best thing to make sure you’re safe.”

  Aron’s concern made me smile, and I listened to him talk excitedly to Sam about our chance meeting with Marcus in the burger joint.

  “Well?” I asked tentatively once Aron hung up. “Does he want to go, does he think that I’m stupid for doing this?”

  “No!” Aron said. “He thought it was great and can’t wait to go with you. Trust me; he just wants to make sure you’re safe.”

  I shrugged my shoulders . “Well, I just don’t want to get into some deep conversation as to why I’m doing this.”

  “Then don’t,” Aron replied. “Just talk about the news, listen to talk radio, and have a great time.”

  So early Wednesday morning I picked Sam up in my little red Chevy Cavalier and we began the long drive to St. Louis. To my surprise, our conversation on the way up there was delightful and Sam didn’t once ask me to explain my reasons for taking a day off of work to do something so out of the ordinary like this, which was what I had fully expected him to do. We arrived at the agency right at nine and Marcus greeted us in the lobby.

  “Is this your dad?” Marcus asked me. I started to open my mouth to answer but Sam interrupted me.

  “I’m her father-in-law. Tell me a bit more about this outfit here.”

  Father-in-law? Aron and I aren’t even married and he already considers me part of the family. My heart swelled and I was more than happy to let him pepper Marcus with question after question about the agency because I realized that he was looking out for me in the way that a father should look after his daughter.

  Once Sam was satisfied with all of Marcus’s answers, the three of us walked back into the photo studio where the scene was organized chaos. Pop music was blaring loudly from speakers in each corner of the large room, models were walking around half dressed with curlers in their hair, and a photographer was setting up his equipment in one corner of the room. I looked at Sam worriedly, waiting for him to find something wrong, but he just brushed past me and sat down on a couch right behind the photographer. “This is my seat. Got any water?”

  Marcus smiled at me and said, “Come on, let’s get you into your first outfit and get your hair and makeup done.”

  I felt like a princess for the next hour: a wardrobe lady put me in a gorgeous skirt and fancy tank top, the hair sty
list combed and curled my hair so it fell softly on my shoulders, and the makeup woman made my lips sheer and my eyes brighter than ever.

  “OK, done!” the woman doing my makeup said and swiveled my chair around so I could stand up and look at myself in the mirror.

  I had never felt so beautiful in my entire life. I looked at myself from the top of my head to the tips of my toes and felt a surge of pride rush through my veins as I realized that a bloody and bruised child no longer back at me in the mirror. Now there was a beautiful, strong woman standing before me, and she was the luckiest woman in the entire world. I walked out to where Sam was sitting and spun around in front of him. “What do you think?” I asked him.

  Sam looked up at me and smiled. “Honey, you look absolutely gorgeous. Now go over there and show us what you got!”

  I walked nervously over to the large gray wall where the photo shoot was about to take place and stood in front of the photographer with my hands hanging at my sides.

  “Have you ever modeled before, sweetie?” the photographer asked me.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I answered, beginning to feel very childish and silly.

  “Well, let’s just start simple. Give me a look over your shoulder.” The photographer picked up the camera and I turned around and glanced at Sam over my shoulder. “Beautiful,” the photographer said as he snapped the first frame. That picture is the cover of this book.

  After my initial butterflies went away and I became more and more comfortable in front of the camera, I started to have a blast. I spent the entire day changing outfits, trying new hairstyles, and jumping and posing in front of the photographer. I realized that I loved being the center of attention and I loved it when all of the eyes in the room were on me for a change. I thought of Mom many times during that shoot; I thought of how jealous she would be if she saw me and how much it would eat at her to hear all of these random strangers telling her daughter how beautiful she was. I felt like I was finally getting the kind of attention from the outside world that I had wanted my entire life.