Catwalk (Sample Excerpt)

Part 1: Prologue

*This is a sample of Catwalk. The book will be published July 6th, 2021. PM me if you are interested in joining my Advance Reader Copy Team. Learn more at the end of this sample.

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https://www.amazon.com/Catwalk-Nicole-Gabor-ebook/dp/B0968JT6C9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2GBKPIEGKH9E4&dchild=1&keywords=catwalk+nicole+gabor&qid=1622599909&sprefix=Catwalk+nicole+ga%2Caps%2C330&sr=8-1

My parents stared at me from across the kitchen table, stunned. They looked as though I'd just told them that our 12-year-old lab, Holly, had died.

I watched the wrinkles on my mother's forehead get deeper, darker, and it seemed like she was aging right before my eyes. Was her hair turning grey? I had heard once that former First Lady Barbara Bush's hair turned grey overnight from the shock and grief of losing her baby daughter.

But I was not dead, or even dying. I was alive, and in the flesh. And I had just told my parents that I, Catherine Watson, their only daughter-the one with the 4.0 grade point average who my stay-at-home mother hoped would become the successful working girl, and my father secretly wished would follow in his footsteps as a lawyer-was not going to college after all.

I was, in fact, moving to New York City. To become a fashion model.

As I spoke, my letter of decline to the University of Pennsylvania's College of Arts and Sciences was signed, sealed and on its way to the admissions office.

My mother cried and said that I was breaking her heart. My father yelled and said that I was ruining my life. Part of me feared they were right. To be honest, I couldn't believe I'd actually gotten the nerve to send that letter. I'd always listened to my parents, did the "right" thing. Never cut class. Been teacher's pet. Made curfew. But I was sick of following the rules.

With my high school graduation just behind me, the prospect of more schooling-only to be followed by an office job that would imprison me within four gray walls-was something to which I couldn't yet succumb, if ever.

I was ready for adventure, for excitement, for a life less ... ordinary. And I had a hunch that plenty of people stuck to the safe roads, so maybe, just maybe, I could make it on a path where everyone else wasn't taking up so much space.

Of course, it did seem an odd choice. I'd always been so ashamed of the attributes that could, quite possibly, make me a model. At 6ft. tall, weighing 117lbs soaking wet, I had a way of sticking out in the hallways, towering over most of the female (and many of the male) teachers. I tried everything I could to blend in, to bulk up, to deny my stature: I drank milkshakes. Dressed in layers. Only wore flats. Avoided stretching in gym glass. Never stood next to the short boys in line.

But then, one day, something happened.

My mother took me into Victoria's Secret in Philadelphia to pick out my first fancy grown-up bra for my birthday. I was eying the "extreme lift" padded pushups (which I was sure would jumpstart my love life), when a woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I wanted to be a fashion model. Just like that.

"She just turned 14," my mother said, looking a bit caught off guard and slightly irritated. "I think she's a little young, don't you?"

"She's perfect," said the older woman, who was in her fifties and dressed far more fashionably than my thirty-nine-year-old mother.

She couldn't possibly be talking about me, I thought. Is this some sort of practical joke? A sick, twisted joke? I looked around expecting to see some popular girls from school, but the place was virtually empty. I turned back around, feeling my face flush.

"You...you think I could model?" I stammered.

"I think you're wasting your talent if you don't," she said. "Here's my card. Call me when your mother changes her mind."

But she never did. And neither did my father. Despite all my begging and pleading. My parents said that high school was more important, that getting into college was more important. That anything was more important than "aspiring toward such a frivolous pursuit." So I did what any girl in my situation would do. I stomped up the stairs, slammed the door, and screamed and cried into my pillow. But for the first time in my life, I felt like something special. Someone special. And my parents were not going to take that away from me.

A few weeks before my high school graduation, I rooted through my old jewelry box and pulled out the tattered business card the agent in Philadelphia had given me. Much to my surprise, she remembered me and said she'd start me off in Philadelphia to learn the ropes on a smaller scale before pushing me toward the ultimate goal: New York, New York. I began to do a little bit of modeling, here and there, and with babysitting money I started to build my portfolio. Of course, I kept it all from my parents, assuming that once I had pictures and a little bit of income, they'd take me seriously.

But you know what they (or at least my know-it-all dad says) about when you assume: You make an ass out of u and me.

The news didn't go over so well. It took three days of the silent treatment (courtesy of me) to get my parents to finally agree to support me in my New York dream (after all, college was out for the semester at that point, so what else could they really do?). The agreement hinged upon one stipulation: I had a year-365 days-to achieve a certain level of success in modeling (success was defined as steady work). If I didn't become the Kate Moss of my generation, I was to continue on with college the following fall. My romantic notions of reaching fashion stardom immediately fogged my inhibitions and, before I knew it, I had agreed to my parents' proposition and managed to get an apartment and a roommate in Brooklyn, just a stone's throw away from Manhattan.

It happened quickly, before I was able to process it fully. My Philadelphia agent called me one day to say that Jon-Michelle LaRoché, a girl who I had met in passing-and, really, one of the most sought-after models in the Philly market-was looking for a roommate in New York. Was I interested in rooming with her? My heart raced at the thought, believing that the whole coincidence was an act of fate.

Yes, I said. And that was it.

I was set to move on August 15th, two days before I would have begun my freshman year of college. I'd made a left at the fork in the road, just before hitting the interstate, and there was no turning back now.

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