The Cage by Megan Shepherd Read Free Book Online

asleep if you start worrying about that,” Cora said at last. “Think about something better. Home. Tell me about London. The life of a model sounds so glamorous.”
    Glamorous? Nok rolled over onto her pillow.
    Not exactly.
    The story she’d told the others had been a detour from the truth. Her childhood had been banana leaves and khee mao noodles and dirt roads the color of rust. Her adolescence had been a rare trip to Bangkok with her three sisters, peppermint ice cream from blue glass bowls, a model 7scout who’d seen her from the street outside and scribbled an address on a napkin he slid to her mother.
    Like winning the lottery, her family had said.
    Then there’d been a plane ride, twenty other bony girls bound for Europe, giggling and striking silly model poses. The plane landed in London. She couldn’t speak a word of English. They’d taken her to a neighborhood filled with sirens and trash, up seven flights of cramped stairs to a flat packed with five girls to a room, sleeping on floor mattresses, cheap clothes and cheaper makeup strewn everywhere. Home, the model scout had said.
    She hadn’t needed to speak English to understand that it was not like winning the lottery.
    Nok blinked back to the present. “Home? Right—London. Oh, I’ve a gorgeous flat there. In Notting Hill, by the river. Penthouse suite with a balcony, a massive bathroom with a chandelier.”
    “I’ve been to London. . . .” Cora paused. “I didn’t think Notting Hill was near the river.”
    Nok’s heart thudded. She knew that—she’d just spoken in such a rush. “Chelsea, I mean. I moved last year. My flat in Notting Hill was a postage stamp. I couldn’t stand it.” She craned her head, trying to see on Cora’s face if she’d sensed the lie, but there was only darkness.
    “Right.” Cora’s voice was softer. “A chandelier. Wow.”
    Thank you, Nok mouthed to the heavens. If Cora did suspect anything, she was going to keep it to herself.
    The bed rumpled, as Cora must have flipped over. “We have a nice house too. My dad invested in tech companies at the right time. Now he’s in politics. He doesn’t know this, but I painted glow-in-the-dark stars on my bedroom ceiling when I was twelve. You can only see them when the lights are off.” She paused. “It seems silly now.”
    Nok’s own secret sweated from her pores as her mind raced for a safer topic. “What do you think about the guys?”
    “Leon’s kind of an ass,” Cora whispered.
    Nok laughed before she could stop herself, and clamped a hand over her mouth. “I never go for those muscle types. Or the good-looking ones, like Lucky. Too full of themselves.”
    “You think Lucky’s cute?”
    “You don’t ?”
    Cora didn’t answer. Nok rolled over on her pillow, staring at the ceiling. That awful silence. One of the boys started snoring. It mingled with the hum from the black panel, and Nok’s throat started to close up. Her hand shot to her neck. Blackness swamped her from both sides: the night outside, the black window. She could feel eyes behind that dark glass studying her. She didn’t care about being watched—she’d spent her life watched by photographers from behind dark camera lenses.
    When she closed her eyes, she could still see their flashing bulbs. Delphine, her steely-haired talent manager who seemed never to age, standing by the doorway eating black licorice, while a photographer who couldn’t be more than seventeen hid behind a curtain snapping his bulb like squeezing a trigger. Bam. Bam. Bam.
    “Look beyond the camera,” Delphine had said. “Look into the heart of the photographer—not this greasy-faced boy, but every man. Because it will be always be a man, even if a woman is taking the pictures, because it’s a man’s world. They always want something. Vulnerability. Weakness. Need. When you give it to them, you control them completely.” Sugary black saliva dribbled from the corner of Delphine’s mouth as she bit into