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Ch.15-Sanity Lost Sanity Regained

Bella Aurora's Runway Show took place at this elaborate country club about twenty minutes from my motel, two days later. I never liked attending any of my sister's prissy sissy crap, but I would this time.

I meandered by way through the throngs of people just in the parking lot, dreading what awaited me inside. I could never get into the whole thing. Girls everywhere were whining and complaining and throwing temper tantrums about their dresses. I could see one girl who couldn't be any younger than me on the ground shrieking with tears running down her face because a few sequins on her dress popped off. It was sad and pathetic and natural Lilia repellent.

And yet I trudged on.

I found the auditorium with mild difficulty, plopping down in a seat in the back with a long huff. It was like battling my way through fabrics and perfumes, and a bunch of clones of my mother. That was enough to have me wanting to curl up in a corner and rock slowly back and forth.

About ten minutes later, and a woman stepped onto the stage with a microphone. She announced herself as the Bella Aurora, and I was stuck on the impossibility that somebody was actually named "Bella Aurora". And I used to think "Lilia" was bad.

After talking about the show and how it was a precursor to bigger and greater things in the modeling world, she stepped off and the lights were dimmed. Music filtered through the speakers-some upbeat, pop tempo that I immediately hated-and the girls began strutting down the runway. I'd say the age range was from around thirteen to eighteen, and there just seemed to be something wrong with the whole thing. Teenage girls so unnaturally skinny, caked with makeup and acting years older than they were. It might have just been my cynicism, but the whole concept never sat well with me.

Most of the outfits were outrageous and I guess what the fashion world would call "the next big thing". I didn't see it. I didn't and never would understand people's need to buy anything that wasn't jeans and a plain old t-shirt. But again, that was just me.

I clenched the seat in a slightly tighter grip when I saw my sister walk off. Her chin was high and her sun-kissed skin glowed in the shining lights. Her golden hair was tied up in some immaculate up-do, and the dress she wore was blessedly normal looking. It was blue and wrapped around her body like a wave, accenting the perfect physique she was gifted, the one our parents were constantly on her about to maintain. Me? Not so much. Jasmine, as far as I knew, never saw a chubby phase in her life. I suffered through mine for five years and finally came out on the other side a bit more decent. Less hideous and homely, more attractive and approachable. Or was my hopeful opinion.

My sister got to the end of the platform and spun around once, twice, before striding back from where she came. And just like that, she was gone. My first glimpse of her in weeks. I knew she was the older one, but sometimes it felt the other way around. Jasmine never really had to grow up. She never had hardships to face, because our parents were always there to get rid of them first. I was thrown out into the woods, left to perish, and had to find my own way to survive. She didn't yet know of the cruelties of the world, the harshness, and maybe she never would. I had heard some people were lucky like that. People who always had everything turn in their favor and never needed to so much as lift a finger for anything in their life. What I would give for a day of that.

The runway shows I attended usually lasted about an hour. There were only so many outfits to model, and so many models to utilize. I saw Jasmine appear ten times, looking like ten different people. I wondered if models ever went through identity crisis. Did they ever feel like a void zombie being dressed up like a doll and photographed? Did it ever unsettle them? Or were some people just programmed to love it, to live for it? Like engineering, or psychiatry, or teaching, or any other job, even. And then I wondered if it was really what Jasmine wanted.