The Exchange (Mischief Books) by Williams Carrie

Author:Williams, Carrie [Williams, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-08-22T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13: Rachel

It started to get me down, feeling the way I did about Konrad and knowing that I both wanted to have him but in all likelihood couldn’t even if I tried. I started to make excuses when he texted, asking me to join him and others in another night of wild partying. It made me sad – they were very different from any crowd that I’d ever been in with, and that was probably a good thing. At home I gravitated towards people like me. Perhaps that’s why I’d leapt at this opportunity to break away from my old life, at least for a time. Perhaps it had all gone stale.

I found myself thinking a lot about Kyle, and about why things had gone wrong between us. I had cared for him, but in the end there had been no passion. But then, had there ever been any real passion in my life? Passion required a letting go, and that was something I couldn’t do. Perhaps that’s why I was both attracted to Konrad and afraid of him. And perhaps that was why I was so fascinated by Lisette and the dance scene. These girls, too, knew self-abandon. They had to, to do what they did. The ones who didn’t never made the grade.

Lisette invited me backstage a few more times, and I was soon on friendly terms with some of the girls, who agreed to let me photograph them some more, both posing and going about their daily business. Generally, this was inside the club, as they got ready for their show, or as they creamed the thick stage make-up off their faces and changed back into their jeans and boots and sweaters, or into something funkier to go partying in. I wasn’t sure whether it was surprising or unsurprising that most of them were just going home, alone.

I became particularly consumed by the aloof girl who’d first caught my interest, the night of Lisette’s Seven Veils debut – the girl who looked like a younger Dita Von Teese. As I’d expected, she resisted my efforts to be friendly and refused to have her picture taken by me, either while getting changed or in full costume. I asked Lisette about her but she knew nothing at all – said her name was Béatrice and that she had kept herself to herself since starting at the club about six weeks before. Lisette said she didn’t expect her to stick around – she didn’t seem cut out for the job temperamentally, and so far she’d shown little talent. She really didn’t know why she was doing it.

Béatrice’s refusal to be photographed or to integrate with the little backstage community niggled me. It was that old fascination I had with outsiders, whether they had been cast out of society for some reason, or whether they chose to remain outside it. The latter, to my eyes, were the more fascinating.

It was while I was leafing through a book on one of

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