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THE CROSS
by Kelly L.
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Text, cover design and cross image
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
kellyloganfiction@gmail.com
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This is a work of fiction, in which names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or if real, used fictitiously. It contains adult content and language, and isn’t intended for younger readers.
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Part One
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Chapter 1
“Jimmy he gives me the creeps,” I quickly answered when my brother asked me just what was so bad about him anyway after Cruz dropped us off at the Peapack Diner on a warm sunny afternoon in late August. “He’s different from us,” I said as we started on our way home. “And talks funny too.”
Hold on Kell. You shouldn’t be prejudiced just because he’s Hispanic. And to tell the truth he wasn’t as sleazy as I imagined he would be when Jimmy first told me his name. What was really creepy was Cruz paying Jimmy so much money, just for taking his picture. A lot of money, at least to a fourteen-year old like me and my sixteen, going on seventeen-year old brother. A hundred dollars, Jimmy eagerly reminded me as he showed me the ten and twenty dollar bills he pulled from his pocket. A hundred dollars! And he didn’t have to do anything for it—just stand there posing in different clothes while Cruz snapped his picture. They had taken me along to see what it was like, and afterwards I had to agree with my brother. It wasn’t like work—and the whole photo shoot took less than two hours.
Jimmy got mixed up with Cruz after he answered an ad in the paper telling you about all the money you could make modeling in TV commercials. He spotted it while he was looking for the used car ads. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! it promised you. Make thousands of dollars! No experience necessary! All ages wanted!
Okay, so a lucky few could earn a lot of money modeling, but I remembered what Mom and Dad always said when people tried to tell you you could get something for nothing, like if something sounded too good to be true—it probably was. But Jimmy wouldn’t listen when I tried telling him that. He had been saving every penny he made working at the DanDee to get that car he had his heart set on, a flaming red Honda del Sol, and when Cruz told him he could make hundreds of dollars a day just by posing he jumped at the chance. Cruz would even pick him up and take him to his studio if he didn’t have a way to get there!
So why do you have to meet him at the diner? I had asked my greedy brother before we set out for the photo shoot. Why doesn’t he come to our house? Because he doesn’t want Mom to see him? Yeah, she’d think he’s a creep too, Jimmy snapped, but he’s not. You just have to get to know him, that’s all. He’s even been teaching me Spanish. Some words anyway—and let me practice driving in his van!
He took us in it to a motel near the city, over an hour’s drive from the diner, traffic is so bad in that totally crowded part of New Jersey. This sure is a funny place for a photography studio, I remembered thinking the minute we pulled into the parking lot.
Inside, the room was cramped and dark. The curtain over the window was pulled closed, and Cruz didn’t open it when we went in but just snapped on the light. A tripod and an umbrella-shaped thing that cast its light on a sheet taped to the wall you stood in front of when you posed were already set up, and lights like you might see on a movie set were scattered about, pointing every which way.
To make room for taking the photos the bed had been moved closer to the window. Next to the wall at the bottom of the bed stood a TV and the thing it was in and a small refrigerator with a microwave on top. A small sofa had been pushed up against the wall at the other end of the bed, along with a little table with a VCR and tapes on it, and an easy chair and wooden stool you sat on when you posed sitting down were the only other pieces of furniture.
After he got everything ready Cruz gave me albums of his photos to look at while Jimmy posed, and I flipped through them sitting on the sofa.
The first one had photos of models the advertising agencies could pick from in it, four of each model on a page, with the model’s name, birth date, height and weight printed under them. Jimmy’s would be in it too after Cruz picked the best ones from the dozens and dozens he had taken of him.
The second album was filled with clippings of the newspaper and magazine ads Cruz’s models had appeared in. So what was so great about this stuff? Like where were all the TV commercials you could make thousands of dollars from? On the tapes sitting over there on the VCR?
The last album was so big and heavy I could hardly hold it in my lap, a “folio,” Cruz called it, of his serious work, filled with photos of weird-looking people and the city’s famous landmarks, the Empire State Building, Broadway all lit up and glittering and stuff like that. They were pretty good. Especially the ones of the clown and a man in a top hat and fancy suit taking people on a tour in a horse-drawn carriage.
On the last few pages there were photos of nudes—of nude guys too. I blushed when I saw them and couldn’t help wondering if Jimmy had seen them.
“Did you see them?” I asked my brother on the way home. “The photos of naked guys in Cruz’s folio?”
“Yeah I did,” Jimmy answered, “but they weren’t dirty, so what’s the big deal?”
“Jimmy they showed everything. Not just their butts—in front too. Did he ever ask you to pose in the nude?”
“No, but he said he’d pay me a lot more if I did.”
“You’d never do anything like that, would you?”
“I’d think about it. Like why not?”
“Couldn’t he get in trouble for taking pictures of you naked? The guys in his folio are like older. What does he do with pictures like that?”
“How should I know?” Jimmy answered. “Who cares as long as he pays you?”
Jimmy you know who. Mom and Dad—that’s who!
When we got home he took me up to his room and got out the passbook he kept in the sock drawer of his bureau to show me how much he’d have saved after he put in what Cruz paid him, almost a thousand, and if I posed too and loaned him the money Cruz paid me he’d have even more before school started.
“So how much did he give you to get the bikini?” he asked me.
That was one of the things Cruz wanted me to pose in if I decided to model for him, and when I told him I didn’t have one he said to pick one out at the mall and he would pay for it. I had refused to take any money from him at the motel, but when Jimmy and I were getting out of the van at the diner Cruz leaned over and tucked something in my pocket while I struggled with the door. I totally forgot, it happened so fast. Para mi pequeña calientapollas, he said in Spanish, and oh how I hated that, like when someone knew how but didn’t speak English so you wouldn’t know what they were saying!
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the money Cruz had stuffed in there—a hundred dollar bill. I had never seen one before and unfolded it to look at it.
“Another hundred, Kell!” Jimmy exclaimed. “And he said you could keep it if you decided not to pose for him, but you will, won’t you? Pose for him? And loan me the money he gives you? I promise I’ll pay you back, Kelly. I promise I will after I get it.”
“It,” of course was Jimmy’s Honda del Sol. Guys and cars! Who could understand them? Or why my brother just had to have that particular one?
It would make him soo happy if I helped him get it, I thought as I stared down at the hundred dollar bill. If I didn’t, Dad would for sure, but to show his independence Jimmy wanted to see how much he could save on his own.
So should I tell him I’ll pose for Cruz and make his day? Jimmy had always been there for me. I remembered how he stood up to that bully Jason when he kept bothering me at school. Buzz off, jerk! She’s my sister! Jimmy warned him when he wouldn’t leave me alone. And what happens if I don’t? Jason snarled back. I’ll punch you out, that’s what! Jimmy quickly retorted, and would have too if Mr. Carlino, our principal at Morris High hadn’t come along!
Mom was always saying how if it weren’t for the difference in our ages people would think Jimmy and I were twins. We had the same brown eyes and hair that was totally blond when we were little but now had turned sandy, and Mom’s pretty white teeth that sparkled like pearls. Kelly and Jimmy Logan, her little Irish brats, she called us lovingly, and maybe my being so close to my brother explained the tomboy phase of my life, the phase I was going through now, I thought as I remembered all the hours Jimmy spent with me after school, helping me practice my jump shot till I was good enough to make JV at Morris—and how he so patiently helped me with my stupid math homework too.
“So will you Kell?” he pleaded with me again. “Please Kell? I’ll pay you back. I promise!”
I tucked the hundred dollar bill back in my pocket and looked up at my brother. “All right I’ll do it,” I told him. “But just this once, Jimmy. And I’m not going by myself. You’ll have to come with me.”
“I will,” Jimmy assured me. “You won’t have to worry.”
“And I’ll have to ask Mom first.”
“No Kelly, don’t!” Jimmy snapped. “You know what she would say. You won’t have to worry about anything as long as I’m there. I promise you that!”
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