Fashion Statements Are Just Advertised Addictions

Chapter One

It's called El Montgomery, Texas. Where the hell they got that name, I have no clue. Could the Mexicans and the sheriff not decide who deserved to name the town so they split the difference?

Not only is it hot and dry in this hell hole, but it's the most vacant place I've seen in my life. There's one trailer park, a gas station, a bar, and apparentally, a mental institution, though I am yet to see this interesting addition. Who would put a mental institution here? Is it supposed to attract tourists?

"When the fuck are we going to get there?" I asked Marie, one of the agency directors that was in the car with me.

"A few minutes, I think."

I gave a deep, dramatic sigh, hoping it would tell the idiot driving to perhaps go a little faster. It wasn't like I asked to be here. Actually, I dreaded coming to this place. It was Eva Morrison's idea of "giving back" so I was forced to come along. Stupid bitches like her shouldn't be allowed to run agencies.

Finally, we pulled up to what I'll assume was the mental institution. It was giant with bars across windows, some of them padlocked. It was almost like something in a movie, and I didn't want to be here much longer.

An elderly man with salt and pepper hair in a business suit walked outside and smiled widely at us, "You must be our donators."

Marie smiled back at him, "That we are."

"If you'd please follow me..."

"Wait, aren't we supposed to just write a check and leave?" I asked. I really was not looking forward to going inside of this place.

"Well I figured you would like to see what your donations will go towards."

I made a noise out of the back of my throat and followed him into the building. We walked down corridor after corridor, past nurses with anything ranging from syringes to 600mg of Impraline. But the corridor we were starting down now was different from the others. The lights were a little dimmer, and everything looked a bit dirtier. What was sterilized everywhere else looked as though it was crawling with diseases. And then he opened the door. A thin, raven-haired boy was sitting on a cot.

Then he looked up at me with giant green eyes and something inside of me broke. The way he looked at me made me want to seize the checkbook from Marie's hands and give him all the money in the my savings, which, as a teen model, was a lot.

"This is Kayden. As you can see, he's the only one that occupies this hallway."

I wanted to punch this guy in the face. He talked about him as if he weren't even there.

"His room and hallway are not exactly up to par. So we're trying to fix this up for him. He has an issue with cutting himself, so it's extremely dangerous for germs to be crawling around. If he somehow manages to find something to cut himself with, we could have a problem with infection."

Kayden looked a little shameful of himself and for a moment, my usual self-centeredness was pushed out of my mind. I wanted to shoot up, but it wasn't as dire as usual, and it didn't matter. All that mattered was that this gorgeous boy in front of me got what he needed.

"How much do you think it will take to fix this up?" I asked.

"Perhaps eighteen-thousand dollars to get it perfect. But he could get by with less."

"Give me my checkbook."

Marie wouldn't give me the checkbook until I yanked it from her hands and wrote out a check for twenty thousand, "I hear any of that wasn't dedicated to this boy here, I'll be furious."

The man nodded and looked from me to him, almost suspicious of something. I ignored it and looked back over to Kayden. I smiled at him, and I wanted to talk to him but it was almost as though something were holding me back, his eyes a jade barrier between my world and his.

My cell phone rang and I looked at the ID. I answered it, realizing it was my boyfriend, and also my drug dealer. But for some reason, the usual smile I wore every time I called me was absent. In a split second, things changed.