A few weeks after I’d told Owen I didn’t want to see him anymore, he’d driven us to a college forty-five minutes out of town, paying for gas with crumpled and filthy dollar bills he’d made by working construction. “Just let me take you to this concert,” he’d texted me. He’d gotten the tickets months before, and I still wanted to go. I wanted to prove to myself that I was in control, that I wasn’t vulnerable to his manipulations. “Okay. But we’re going as friends,” I clarified.
“As friends,” he agreed.
I made sure to wear new clothes that he’d never seen before, and white boots I’d picked up at a thrift store that made me feel older and self-assured. I acted distant and unbothered when he picked me up. This was the kind of thing adult women did: hang out with guys they’d once been intimate with but no longer were.
He stood behind me, not touching me, as we watched the concert. The lights lowered as the band began to sing a quiet ballad:
Love of mine, someday you will die …
If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
Sitting on the plane, I felt the memory of Owen standing behind me; tears rolled down my face. I cried, but not because I wouldn’t see him again. I cried because I couldn’t believe I was the type of person who’d gone to that concert with him, who’d unwillingly lost my virginity to him. I cried because, unlike the girl who’d accused him of rape, I hadn’t been able to say, I was violated. I cried because I felt guilty for abandoning Owen. I cried because I hadn’t left him earlier. I cried because I was sure that I was someone who did not deserve to be safe. I cried for the loss of a different life, one that was full of experiences and people of my choosing. I cried because I didn’t feel like the heroine of my own life. I cried because I was ashamed of being so incapable of control.
“Please, never come find me,” I whispered into my palms underneath the hum of the plane. “I don’t want to be in the dark with you.”
And then, firmly: “Owen, no.”
Toxic
I WAS SIXTEEN on February 16, 2007, when pictures of Britney Spears shaving her head hit the internet. At the time, I was smoking pot every day after school, having regular—and unprotected—sex with an older boyfriend who never once brought me to orgasm, and working as a model, driving myself up to LA from San Diego a couple of times a month and skipping class for photo shoots. That was the year I posed for a surfing magazine as their “Taste of the Month.” I was tanned and topless in the picture, wearing only a black bikini bottom, turned away from the camera, my bare back making the shape of an S. I coyly looked over my shoulder, my mouth open, a little surprise in my eyes. I was a junior in high school.
No one could’ve missed the image of Britney leaning toward the mirror, wild-eyed and smeared with mascara, delicately holding a clipper in her hand, intently shaving her head. She is smiling in the photo, elated, like she just heard a good joke and is enjoying it. Strands of long brown hair still cling to the crown of her head, a reminder that Britney had once been here.
That same year I helped Sadie, a girl I knew from school, sign with my modeling agency. She had more of a fashion model’s body than I ever did; she stood 5' 9" and weighed no more than 110 pounds, whereas I was considered short and curvy （a “swim girl,” my agents told me when they took my measurements）。 All her life, Sadie had heard that she had the right physique for fashion, even when she was just a kid, surfing and dreaming of being an athlete. She had Amazonian legs, built to run and kick, as if ready for battle. She parted her jet-black hair on the side, securing it with a simple barrette and scooping it into a precise ponytail that sat at the nape of her neck. In profile, she was mostly cheekbone, with a wide button nose and pillowy red lips. Her swan neck looked as if it could easily twist all the way around or dip toward the ground like a Slinky.
Even when she wore white lacy baby-doll dresses and delicate droplet earrings, Sadie seemed dangerous, like she was built of weapons she had yet to master.
* * *
SADIE LIVED TEN minutes away from our high school, in a gated community off the 101, and was mostly friends with boys, specifically one cool, older group. They called themselves the Scab Crew, drawing the letters SC all over their skateboards. She’d get stoned with them at lunch; from the windows of my third-period Spanish class, I’d watch her stride back to campus, late. She’d swing open the heavy door of our room, mutter, “Sorry,” half-heartedly, and plunk herself down in a plastic chair in the back. Our eyes would meet and she’d grin as she unwrapped the foil around a giant burrito, which she’d proceed to eat loudly, cementing her bad-girl reputation.