Читать книгу Almost 5'4" - Isobella Jade - Страница 5

March 2006, Harlem, New York City

My clothes smelled awful. I hadn’t done any laundry for about six weeks. Actually, more like six months. I sat on my suitcase, using all my weight to shut it, nearly breaking the zipper in the process.

My life was inside that bag.

I had no idea where I would be sleeping later. I had a photo shoot in a few hours and if the photographer turned out to be cool he might let me stay at his place. Failing that I could call a friend and sleep on their floor.

Here I was leaving yet another apartment. I thought back over all the places I had lived in during the few short years since leaving home. Astoria, Brooklyn Heights, the college dorms on 88th and Riverside, Syracuse, those seven months in Miami. And now I was leaving Harlem behind as well.

I had precisely $23 in my pocket.

I checked my suitcase zipper one more time to make sure it was secure. It was. Something had to be.

If you took the contents of that case – three pairs of shoes, my notorious red dress, a few pairs of jeans, some scrappy tops, my journal and the many scraps of paper with names and dates scribbled on them – you pretty much had Isobella Jade.

Not forgetting the most important item of all: my modeling portfolio.

Now that I had finished packing I realized the smell hadn’t gone away. I sniffed at myself and it wasn’t pleasant. I had been wearing the same underwear for three days. I felt gross and disgusting, but there was no time for laundry and I really couldn’t afford the $4.50 anyway.

As I sat there I wondered why I was doing all this. Why I was flitting from place to place with barely enough money to eat. Did I really want to be a model this much? Was it really worth all the doubt, the rejection, the poverty, the sacrifice, the broken relationships?

Hell yeah.

Modeling was my dream and nothing was going to stop me. I would do anything to get what I wanted. I would endure all the hardships my chosen profession could throw at me.

I would even lie to my own mother.