Glitter on the Web by Ginger Voight Page A

kind of what it’s like to be born a woman in this culture. Born a girl? Immediately your worth depends on the kind of boxes you can check off. Pretty? Thin? White? Wealthy? Young? A virgin?” I added, making invisible checks with my finger after each word. “There’s a reason why I’m here in this apartment at twenty-four and Rhonda is a superstar at nineteen, Eli.”
    For once he had nothing to say, so I kept going.
    “You keep talking about all these opportunities. Girls like me don’t get as many, and that’s just the truth. That’s why Jordi was such a game-changer. People like her change the message. People like Graham Baxter. Like Giovanni or Jace.” I thought about FFF. “I want to be a part of that. So that the next time a girl’s a little chubby when she’s eight or ten or twelve, she doesn’t feel like she has to starve herself because it would be better to be dead than fat.”
    I stopped talking suddenly, as if I had said too much. I had totally said too much. But he was quiet as he listened. Finally he said, “Then why hate me? I’m changing the message, too.”
    “But you don’t mean it,” I told him. “You give us all crumbs and expect us to be grateful for it, just because you’re too thick to see what might be standing right in front of you. Do you realize that I’ve worked as Frank’s assistant for seven whole months, and you paid more attention to the mail girl than you did to me? At least until I could do something for you she couldn’t. Then all of a sudden you shine your light upon me and I’m supposed to do a fucking jig in appreciation? You’re a phony, Eli.”
    It had taken me seven months to tell him all of this, and finally I had. Oddly, it didn’t make me feel much better, any more than my bloated bank account.
    I turned away with a sigh. “Because of you, now I’m one too.”
    Eli leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “So how do you propose to fix any of this?”
    “I don’t know,” I sighed. And that was the bitch of it. I really didn’t.
    He ambled to his feet. “Well, I guess you have a year to think about it,” he said as he looked down at me. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, or so they say.”
    I stood as well. “Maybe.”
    I walked him to the door. He didn’t even bother to kiss me before he left, which, ironically, was the most non-dick thing he had done.
    “Eleven?” he asked, just as I opened the door, to confirm our “date” for the next day.
    I nodded. “Eleven.”
    He gave me a small smile before he disappeared down the darkened stairwell. I closed the door behind him, as Hogan’s Heroes gave way to Gilligan’s Island just on the other side of the wall. It was ironic, given I felt like I was suddenly stranded on a deserted island myself
    Only eleven months and twenty-seven days to go.
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
     
    That night I tossed and turned, unable to get to sleep. The more I thought about my conversation with Eli, the worse I felt. I had bared myself to him twice that day, once by stripping down to my underwear, the other by telling him my innermost thoughts and feelings.
    Oddly, the latter bothered me so much more than the former.
    I hadn’t shown this much of myself to anyone with a penis in a long, long time. Fuck Eli Blake for making me do this now. I knew with all certainty that an opportunist like him wouldn’t be able to resist using this new advantage against me.
    I defaulted to anger, simply because it was easier to hate Eli. That was the sharpest arrow in my quiver. He saw this whole thing as a game, but I sure didn’t. It was a war—and I planned to launch the first offensive strike that sunny Saturday morning.
    He was chipper when he knocked at my door, ten minutes till eleven. He leaned casually against the frame. He wore old faded jeans and a concert T-shirt, with only a smidge of product in his hair to give it that devil-may-care finish that invited fingers to dance right through the golden fullness.
    I sniffed in