Page 34 of Masks and Mishaps

But I can be calculating too.

I save the video to my camera roll and tap the heart icon, adding it to my favorites. Then I switch over to my contacts and dial a number.

“Hey, are you busy?” I ask when the call connects. I pause. “Good. I need your help.”

Fifteen

ESSIE

Idon’tmissbeingblond.

The first time I dyed my hair, I was eighteen, two weeks into my first semester at Georgetown, and a month into camming. In between enrolling for classes and shoving myself into packed dorm rooms for pregames that affirmed my decision not to drink, I ran scripts on camming pages and porn sites and figured out what would increase my revenue: big tits, a juicy butt, and blond hair.

My tits were (are) great, maybe even big for my frame, but there wasn’t much I could do to make them bigger. The butt? Same story. Blond I could do though.

“You don’t look like Mom anymore,” my father had said during one of his sporadic calls. I was nineteen at the time, and he caught me between classes. “Mom was always so dignified.”

And he was right; my mother had been dignified—even more so when chemo took her long, dark hair. But Mom wouldn’t have cared about my hair—or camming.

My mother lives cozily in my brain most days, usually in the memory of her wry smile and gentle voice reassuring me I’m completely fine, andal mal paso, darle prisa. She came to the US from Mexico with my abuelos when she was nineteen—too late to figure out college, but early enough to know she wanted to work. She was happily waiting tables (although dreaming of days when she’d havemore) when she met Dad, a college student who came into the café whenever she had a shift.

Dad was middle class, which seemed fabulously wealthy to Mom, and he wanted more too—a book deal or something. Still, Mom said he was thrilled when I showed up as two unplanned pink lines on a pregnancy test, and he promised he’d take care of her and their daughter—once he got an agent.

Over the years, Dad’s office job was consistently mediocre, and Mom stayed home with the four of us—Christian, Tommy, Luis, and me. Our days were colorful, filled with new boxes of crayons and colored pencils that left rainbow shavings in my pencil sharpener. Later, Abuela revealed how mom did evening nannying jobs after we went to sleep to pay for them.

Dad spent most nights writing at the kitchen table, and six months after mom died, he swapped the kitchen for Lisbon, Portugal. While he was in Lisbon (and later Paris and Barcelona), Dad left broken promises and four children behind. Abuela was beside herself, unfit for the role of caretaker, and so at fourteen, I learned to support a family.

Indignity was scattering my mother’s old clothes across the country via eBay. Indignity was offering to bring my schoolmates’ trays to the trashcan so I could slip uneaten food into my backpack for the boys. Indignitywasn’tdying my hair and parting my legs for a guy named Curtis who paid me two hundred dollars for my first private session.

I went brunette again when I found out Dad was marrying Alyssa. As much as I love her, I needed to keep Mom close. I’d already taken her last name when I turned eighteen, but I wanted something deeper; I wanted to feel her on my skin again.

Now, I pull my brown hair into a bun while I do my nightly skin routine in the dorm’s communal bathroom before an evening of coding and waiting for a response from Dalton.

When I round the corner after leaving the bathroom, I stop in my tracks.

Speak of the devil, Dalton is leaning against the wall by my door with his eyes on his phone. His posture drips with the arcane elegance only a guy with too much money possesses, and he’s in the same navy suit he wore to work earlier. His jacket is draped over his shoulder, and he’s wearing suspenders, which I failed to notice earlier. Those suspenders lookso goodon him. They’re refined and moneyed and natural, not hackneyed and overkill like they would be on anyone else—and a stark juxtaposition to the thigh-length Georgetown shirt I’m wearing as pajamas.

His eyes flick up, examining me as I cover the length of the hallway. His scrutiny feels different, borderline wolfish, barely short of a glare.

I stare back, suppressing my own smile in an attempt to meet his energy.

“Do you know how easy it was for me to get your room number?” is the first thing he says. “Not happy about it.”

“How did you even find my building?”

“You mentioned Kennedy Hall once. I walked right on campus, someone held the door open for me, and when I asked some random kid in the lobby if he knew your room number, he told me.” Dalton shifts closer. “Why the fuck do random boys know your room number, Essie?”

I roll my eyes. “Relax,” I reply, opening the door.

He stops me with a firm hand. “You don’t lock your door?”

“Nobody does.”

Dalton rotates me to face him, and I nearly drop my shower caddy in the process. “I don’t care what anyone else does,” he murmurs, speaking slowly. “They could be wearing sparkly pink thongs and doing hot yoga, and I still wouldn’t give them an iota of my attention. I’m here for you. From now on, you’re going to lock your door.”

My breath catches. I’ve never seen Dalton so stern. Commanding.

…I don’t hate this. I don’t hate this at all.

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