An Innocent Fashion by R.J. Hernández Read Free Book Online Page A

us if it was buzzing in a circle around our heads. I saw Sabrina’s bracelet and her ring, the alabaster gleam of her white-blonde hair, her arms arranged gracefully over her lap—her skin polished and smooth, like pale, lacquered wood. Then I saw myself as she must have seen me, as some kind of clown in my outdated suit from the Salvation Army—too colorful, uncouth—with my scuffed-up shoes, and my lop of curly brown hair. An outsider who didn’t know the language. She sat coolly back in the chair, as comfortable as if she was in her own home, while I . . . I was leaning forward like a bent antenna, my dignity betrayed by my total desperation.
    â€œWhat did you say your parents do?”
    This wasn’t her fault—I knew I had brought it on myself, all of it—but did she have to be so cruel? She somehow must have known. Over one shoulder, perhaps, she saw my mother, rotund and reeking of Clorox; over the other, my father, covered in curly black hair, his brown, sweaty stomach hanging over his belt. “I don’t know what that has to do with this,” I croaked.
    â€œIt has everything to do with this. Let’s put it this way . . .” She began to balance her words like wooden blocks. “Have you ever tried to fit a piece of yarn through the eye of a needle?” She shrugged, and the tower teetered, then came crashing down. “It just . . . doesn’t work.”
    Her casual suggestion that, of all things, I should consider myself a piece of yarn —a common, homespun twist of unsophisticated fibers, too coarse, too unrefined to ever fit in at Régine —swung through me like a wrecking ball. It was an evaluation she had made in less than ten minutes.
    Her chewing gum made a sickly sound as she relegated it slowly to a crevice between her back molars and crushed down. “I’m sorry—I can see this isn’t going to happen,” she said. She pushed my résumé quietly toward me on the coffee table and stood up. Her pleated skirt rippled all around her, like a pond whose surface had been momentarily disturbed, and was now returning to untouched stillness. “We’ll be in touch.”
    â€œI—what?” No. It couldn’t end like this, not after how far I’d already come. My dream was slipping away like life from a dying body, intravenous tubes dripping and a monitor above the bed blinking, TRAGEDY! TRAGEDY!
    I fumbled to my feet behind her, knowing that if I didn’t stop Sabrina Walker, I was never going to hear from her again.My entire future hung in the balance of the next moment. We stood two feet away from each other. She smelled like a particular kind of smoker, the kind who tried unsuccessfully to temper the evidence of cigarettes with perfume and ended up smelling like a flower that had tumbled into an ashtray.
    â€œCan I meet with Edmund himself?” I blurted.
    She let out an incredulous guffaw. “Don’t be absurd! After Ava Burgess, Edmund Benneton is the most sought-after person at Régine , which makes him the second-most sought-after person in the fashion industry.” Then, in a tone that was, for the first time, not veiled with some calculated affectation: “Do you think he cares about an intern?!” She added offhandedly, with undisguised satisfaction, “I’m sorry, but try Teen Régine . I have work to do.”
    My blood rushed to my head. “Look,” I demanded. “I have a great eye for beauty.” I took a step closer, with an avowal as futile as all famous last words—“ I belong here. ”
    She exhaled toward the marble floor, like she was embarrassed on my behalf. “Ethan St. James, let’s keep this dignified, please . Do you think I have time to bother with you and your ‘great eye’? I’m sure your skills will be appreciated somewhere else.”
    Striding to the glass doors, she turned around to reveal a row of tiny