“He told me he would think about it and get back to me, but that if it worked out, he had a lot of contacts in the art world, in fashion, too. I guess I fell for it all.” Her eyes flit away as shame drops down.

“If you did it’s because he manipulated you,” I tell her, wishing I could carry some of this for her. Her impossible burden. “He drew you in, catching you with your guard down. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should have told my mom or Gray. Someone.”

“You just wanted something for yourself. That makes so much sense given how stressful things were at home.”

“I guess so.” She doesn’t sound convinced.

“The things that are really important to us, Cameron, a lot of the time we don’t tell anyone because we can’t. What you did was natural. And you’re only fifteen, you know.”

In her silence, I hold her eyes with mine. Try to speak to her without words. You fought for yourself. That’s why you’re still here.

—

Over the coming hours and days, we learn more. How by early September, Cameron began going to Caleb’s garage studio to sit for him once or twice a week, after school. He didn’t ask her to pose nude for him, or do anything that would have set off alarm bells. At every turn, he had behaved almost passively, which ironically increased his power with her. In other words, all his snares had worked.

Maybe things had escalated quickly between them because other things had already transpired, things that no one could have predicted. Cameron had gone to the free clinic and been confronted with all of that buried trauma. She’d also picked up the phone one Saturday to find Troy’s assistant on the other end, calling to drop a bomb on her family. It’s hard to say what might have happened without those factors, but soon she was sneaking out to meet Caleb, either because she had grown to trust him more and more, believing that she could have this dream of being a model if she worked hard enough for it, or because her desperation had built up to the point that she wasn’t thinking clearly at all. Either way, Cameron obviously didn’t have any idea of what she was really inside of, until it was too late. Until the night she went out to meet him and didn’t come back.

“Why that night?” I ask.

“He said he had an art friend from LA who I should meet. He was only going to be in town for a few hours.”

“So you waited for your mom to go to bed, and deactivated the alarm. Had you done that before?”