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As they watch her go, Bernadette reaches under the table and touches him, softly at first, then more boldly. It’s amazing, she thinks, how you can just do this to people. Like stealing. Luckily, the youngest girls don’t know it.

Jann looks at her and swallows. She decides that he is younger than…

The photographer is ready. The silver umbrellas are raised to gather the light. He holds a light meter to the girl’s chest. Hair and Makeup share a cigarette. There are two other models on this trip, and they watch from a distance. The sea mumbles against the dunes. The girl looks especially bare, …

Rory’s heart beat quickly. “So maybe it doesn’t work,” he said. “The modeling. Maybe that just won’t happen.”

He searched her face for some sign of surprise, but there was none. She watched him calmly, and for the first time Rory felt that Stacey was older than he, that her mind contained things…

Stacey opened the refrigerator. Rory always kept a supply of Cokes for her in there; Diet, of course, but also some regulars in case she had earned one that day and not yet rewarded herself. To his surprise, she pulled out a can of regular now.

“What the hell,” she said. “I mean, really, what di…

“So,” Anouschka said, “what places you have been?”

Stacey didn’t answer at first. She looked double-jointed in her chair, heaped like a marionette.

“I’ve been to New York,” she said.

There was a beat of silence. “New York,” Anouschka said.

Vesuvi started to laugh. He had a loud, explosi…