A large black truck appears from under the building and I catch a bit of music leaking out from the cab. I bet that's Ronin's truck and I bet that text was from a girl. He'll be back with dinner my ass. I sigh and go back inside and start the shower. This tub is cool for baths, but as far as the shower goes, it sucks. There's like one of those kits they use to turn claw-foot tubs into showers, which means I have to stand there and use a hand-held sprayer every time I want to rinse.

"Oh, Rook," I say out loud as the bubbles stream down my body. "Last week you were showering in a homeless shelter twice a week if you were lucky. And now you're all high-and-mighty about using a hand-held sprayer?"

Yeah, getting used to things fast.

This is not good. I've been here two days and I'm being sucked up into this strange life of models and photographers and weird guys named after rogue Japanese killers who think they can order food for you and strip you naked after they break into your apartment.

I finish up in the shower and wrap the towel around me, anxious to get back to the bedroom. My hand slips under the mattress to the money Elise gave me yesterday. I haven't spent any of it and I won't, either. I'm saving this money, every bit they give me here, I'm saving it all up. Because if there's one thing in life I can count on, it's that eventually, no matter how freaking nice that rug is under your feet, someone always pulls it out from under you eventually.

I pull my jeans and t-shirt on and slip back out the front door to make my way into the studio kitchen. There's not much in there, just a fruit basket, some beer in the fridge, and a few frozen dinners in the freezer that have names on little sticky notes attached to them.

Apparently stealing someone's frozen skinny meal is verboten in this place.

I have no idea what goes on in a photography studio, or how models act, or what they eat, or how they stay so skinny or what happens if they get fat.

But I can take a good guess.

I'm thin because I was born this way. I'm tall because I was born this way. I'm not all that smart, I mean I'm of average intelligence I suppose, but I can't do much with math. And I don't pretend that I can understand politics or current events or scientific studies that tell me to stop blow-drying my hair or talking on a cell phone. Pretty much everything I know I learned from a movie. I'm crazy about movies and if I was pushed to describe my dream life, it wouldn't be modeling. My dream has always been to go to film school and make cool movies. Deep movies that have so many layers to them, people have to watch them a dozen times to get all the little inside jokes and nuances.

As a girl growing up in America you'd think I had it all. I mean, they fill you up with that we're-all-equal bullshit your whole life. You can grow up to be anything, my foster parents used to tell me. Right before they sent me back into the system, most of the time. But what they never mention is that dreams require money to fulfill.

They should just tell you this at the get-go if you ask me. Just state the facts and forget the equality crap. Because the facts are the facts. If someone had sat me down in the first grade and drilled it into my head that life is difficult, more difficult than I could ever imagine, and that success is neither guaranteed nor probable, and if they'd have followed that up with a step-by-step approach on how to get past all the pitfalls I might encounter along the way… well, I might not have tasted the poisoned honey my ex was selling when he found me, lost and desperate after running away from the tenth or twelfth foster home, and greedily accepted it as tasty.

Downright delicious, even.

They do us no favors, talking us up about women astronauts and lawyers and whatever. Because the cold hard reality is that none of those things apply to you when you're poor.

Unless you've got someone looking out for you—and most girls have this in their parents, but not everyone has parents and even fewer have good parents—you're screwed unless you figure it out yourself. And in my case, I did figure it out, but I took the long road to get here, that's for sure.

I have very few assets. But the ones I have I plan on using to my full advantage. I'm thin, I'm tall, I have long legs, blue eyes, and black hair. My tits are bigger than most models I've seen, but they're not  p**n -star material. I have straight teeth, a bright white smile and well-defined cheekbones.

I might not have much, but I have this. I have looks. I have The Look, if these people aren't blowing smoke up my ass. I have what they want. So I'm not interested in Ronin's games or Elise's attempts at big sisterhood, or the cushy life they're giving me here.

Beauty is fleeting. I know someone important said that, but I have no idea who it was. I just know it's true. So I'm gonna grab this second chance with everything I've got and I'm gonna ride this wave until it spits me back out on the beach of bullshit.

Because I know better now.

I've seen what being poor and stupid and scared does to you. I looked at it in the mirror and I'm never going back there. And maybe Ronin is a nice guy, maybe he's nothing like my ex, but I can't take the chance. I have my own dreams and Antoine Chaput's photography studio is just one more stop along the way to get to the place in life where I want to be.

I grab my phone and two twenties from under my mattress. I have no intention of spending them, but it's stupid to leave home without a phone and money, so I'm not about to do that. And I leave the safety and seclusion of the studio and go back out in to the real world to get my own dinner.