by Elle Casey
That blonde girl might own his ass in that club, but in this moment at Rebel Wheels, I feel a genuine spark between us. The kind of spark that didn’t just originate from my lonely-ass heart. He was smiling when he answered, I know he was; I could hear it in his voice. Maybe he still is.
I leave the parking lot with a big shit-eating grin on my face. It lasts all the way to my apartment, up until the second I see the broken locks and bashed-in doorframe of my new home.
“Mother fucker,” I say under my breath, as I realize I’ve been robbed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MY HAND HOVERS IN FRONT of my apartment door, but I don’t push it in like I want to. What if someone’s still in there? What if they have a knife? Or a gun? I know this makes me an asshole, but I leave my door and walk around to the one I saw Julio go into the other day. I knock loudly, hoping someone inside will hear me over the loud music.
A woman comes to the door. She’s almost a foot shorter than me, but the wrinkles around her eyes tell me she’s an adult.
“Hello. Um, is Julio around?” I try to look past her but see only a small foyer with vinyl floor covering that looks almost as bad as my walls, yellowed and torn in a couple spots.
She answers me with a bunch of Spanish.
“Julio?” I try again. “Estoy Julio … here-o?” I really should have taken Spanish in school. French is so not spoken in LA anywhere.
The woman turns her head and yells into the house something I can’t understand, but a minute later Julio is standing next to her without his hat. He looks ten years old.
“Oh, hey, Teagan, what’s up?” He smiles and his blindingly white and gold teeth glow out from the gloomy apartment interior.
Before I can answer, his mother is spouting off something angry-sounding. Julio answers just as passionately, opening the door wider so he can go around her and come out. She’s still yelling a thousand miles an hour when he shuts the door gently behind him.
“Holy shit. Was she mad about something, or what?”
“Nah. She was telling me to finish my homework before I take off.”
I frown, not sure I believe him.
“So what’s up? Need more wall repair advice?” He pulls his hat out from his back pocket and slaps it onto his head, twisting it to the side so it’s off-kilter.
“Uh, no.” For some reason, now that I’ve seen him with his little mamacita, I feel terrible about wanting him to go with me into my possibly dangerous apartment with me. What was I thinking?
“Never mind. I gotta go.” It crosses my mind after the day I had with Rebel and this situation now, that it’s very possible I left my brain behind in the dorm. Maybe I should go back there and see if I can find it again. At this rate I’m going to get myself killed playing in traffic.
I turn to leave, but he follows me.
“Tell me,” he says. “I’m bored. I can help.”
“It’s nothing. I just got broken into and I was looking for moral support, but you should probably stay home.”
“Oh, shit … burglarized? What’d they take?”
“I don’t know,” I say, arriving at my door. “I haven’t looked inside yet.”
We stand facing each other at the entrance. “You want me to go in?” he asks.
“Hell, no. I want neither one of us to go in. What if he’s still in there?” My heart rate is picking up. There are no sounds coming from inside, but what kind of burglar stomps around in the middle of robbing someone?
“Nah, man. He’s long gone. This is the time everyone’s coming home from work if they have a job. He wouldn’t stick around to get caught.”
“How do you know that?” I narrow my eyes at him.
His eyebrows go up. “You think I robbed your place?”
I punch him in the shoulder. “No, I don’t think you robbed my place. But you sure know a lot about doing it.”
“No, I don’t. It’s common sense. Even tweakers know to be gone before people get home. Come on.” He pushes the door in before I can stop him.
Since my whole apartment is only one room, it’s not difficult to see what’s been done from out on the front walkway. “Son of a bitch!” I yell.
“Dude,” he says in a disbelieving tone, “they re-did your hole.”
“Can I just tell you how wrong that sounded?” I leave off messing with him to stare slack-jawed at the new hole in my wall, exactly where I spent about four hours fixing the last one. “What the fuck.” I shuffle into the room, unable to take my eyes off the patch that used to look totally ready to be painted. “Who would do such a thing?” I look back at Julio. “The building department?”
“What? Why would you think that?”
“Maybe I did it wrong. Maybe they came in here and did an inspection or something.”
He moves past me into the room. “If you tell me you’re serious right now, I’m going to advise you to move out of this hood and never come back.”
“Why?” I ask in a small voice. I wasn’t kidding about the building department.
“Because. No one can be that naïve and stay alive here for longer than a few days.”
“Shut up.”
“Seriously.” He sweeps his arm across the room. “You think the building department gives a shit about this place or any of the people in it?”
My gaze follows his gesture. “You’ve got a point.”
“Hell yeah, I’ve got a point.” He points to the hole in the wall. “What you have here is a person who thinks you’ve got something valuable to hide.”
“Say what?” I look around at the contents of my now emptied boxes and suitcases. There are clothes, shoes, and a few books that I couldn’t bear to part with when I left school in heaps on the floor. I could probably get fifty bucks for all of it at a garage sale. Maybe. If I were lucky.
Julio points to the ragged-edged hole. “They probably thought you put some money or drugs in the wall and were covering it up. That’s why they punched through your patch job.”
I shake my head at the ingenuity of assholes. “What a dick.”
“You know who did it?”
“No. But whoever he is, he’s guaranteed to be a dick.” I walk to the far side of the room and start kicking my clothes into a pile.
“You need my help?” Julio asks.
“No. Might as well just leave the damn hole there if people are going to be coming in here punching it in again. I hope he bruised his stupid knuckles whoever he is.”
“What about your lock?” Julio asks, looking at the front door.
“Oh. Shit. Yeah, that’s a problem.” No way in hell am I sleeping here without locks on my door. I probably shouldn’t sleep here with locks on my door, now that I know they don’t stop people. “Why would anyone think I have drugs in here?”
Julio shrugs. “Most people who live here do. And everyone and his brother saw you doing the stuff to your wall, so it could have been anyone. They just waited for you to leave.”
I sigh heavily, fighting back tears. “I’m so disappointed in the human race right now. I feel violated.”
“Did they take anything?”
“I don’t think so. I have nothing to take except my suitcases.” I search the floor but don’t notice anything I care about missing, and the Burberry stuff is right there in the middle of the room. I realize in that moment that the only things I care about are my car and my ID, and I know I still have those things. I’m not sure whether to be proud or sad about the fact that I have so little of value in my life.
“What about designer purses? Leather stuff? Jewelry? Cash?” He looks at my piles on the floor.
“I’m not that kind of girl. I prefer backpacks, I have only this one ring that used to be my mom’s, and all my cash is in my backpack.” Damn the Golden Legacy for taking my last tiny pile of money. At least I have the cash Rebel gave me today, keeping me from being totally broke.
He shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you. No one’s going to give me any answers since they alrea
dy know I’m a rat.”
“Never mind. Who cares? It’s not like I have anything to steal.”
“You don’t need to have anything. Someone just needs to think you do.”
That pisses me off. It’s like no matter what I do, people are still going to come in here and mess with my life. I stomp over to the small pile of school books I didn’t unload at the used book store and find a notebook with a few empty sheets of paper.
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see.” I find the black marker that I used to label my boxes and write out a note in big block letters on one of the papers. Thirty seconds later it’s taped to my front door.
Julio walks over and stands in front of it, shaking his head. “This isn’t going to work.”
“Yeah, well, it’s better than nothing.”
He gives me a sad half-grin. “I gotta go study. You gonna be okay?”
I wave him off. “Yeah, go ahead and go. I’m going to spray some crap in my shower and then leave.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere I can sleep that has a lock on the door.”
“Okay. See ya.”
I take a few minutes to spray the mildew remover that Rebel gave me all over my shower and collect a bunch of clothes and things that I shove into my backpack before going out to my car. As I’m fumbling through the keys to find the one for the door, the one that Rebel gave me catches the last dying rays of the sun and blinks the light up at me. An idea begins to form in my head.
“No, that’s stupid,” I say, brushing off my thoughts and getting into the car. Reversing out of the parking space, I decide that a tiny hamburger made of questionable meat products will be my dinner. On my way to one of the fifty fast food places nearby, I check in with Quin.
“How was your first day?” she asks brightly, answering on the first ring.
“Good,” I lie. “Great. I’m happy.”
“Awesome! Want to go out and celebrate?”
“No, I’m going to stay in tonight. Maybe catch up on my sleep.”
“Do you have sheets and stuff on your bed? Did you paint yet?”
“Yep. Did all that. The place looks really good.” I’m lying to her for her own good. It’ll ruin her night to know what my place really looks like. No way in hell am I telling her about the break-in. She’ll insist I live on her couch and that would just never work. I’d end up hating her and her family, and she’s the only real friend I have. That’s more precious to me than a temporary place to sleep. Hell, I can sleep in my car if I have to. The Beast has never let me down. I brighten at the thought. A plan begins to form in my head.
“Awesome! I can’t wait to see it. How about tomorrow?” she suggests.
I consider trying to do a total makeover of my apartment before then and decide there’s no way in hell I can be that productive. “Mmmm, better wait until Saturday. I’m a working girl now. Gotta get my sleep.” Four days until the big reveal. I can do this.
“Wow. Responsible is boring.” She sighs. “Okay, I’ll come Saturday. But if you change your mind, just text me. I’m bored out of my skull right now. I actually cross-stitched a flower today.”
“That’s beyond lame.”
“I know. Tomorrow I’m going to knit you a scarf.”
“Please don’t.”
“An orange one.”
“Please don’t.”
“Talk at ya later!” She hangs up before I can tell her all the reasons why an orange scarf would be a bad idea for a girl living in LA.
I had planned to go to dinner, but my auto-pilot seems to have engaged itself without me realizing it. The Rebel Wheels sign comes into view and I have to jerk my hands to the left to keep my car from driving right into the parking lot.
“What the hell am I doing?” I say out loud into my car. My gaze falls on a fast food restaurant just down the street, so I go there, trying to figure out what my brain is thinking. I can’t stay at work. That would be wrong. Just because I have a key …
After realizing I don’t have the appetite for dinner, I convince myself that sleeping in the office is wrong but that using the bathroom and sleeping in my car nearby isn’t. At this point, I don’t have a problem with being homeless, but I do have a problem with being bathroomless.
Maybe I’ll change my mind later, but for now, the idea of being able to sit on a toilet seat is too much luxury to pass up, and I have this phobia that doesn’t allow me to use fast food restaurant bathrooms unless I eat there first. It’s possible I’m being completely brainless in justifying this to myself, but I don’t examine it closely enough to know for sure.
I cut off the motor to the engine before I’m fully in the lot, cruising in complete silence over to my sleeping spot. I park around the far corner of the building where I can’t be seen from the entrance, under the fronds of some scrubby palm trees. It’s there that I come up with my plan of action.
First, I’ll sneak into the office and use the bathroom to take a quick shower. It’s not the nicest bathroom in the world, but it’s better than the one in my apartment. At least I know the black smudges in there are really grease.
All the lights are off in and above the shop, so I’m assuming Rebel is gone. He’s probably working at that club or growing another few pounds of muscle at a gym somewhere. If I can get in and out really quick, he’ll never know I’ve been in there. Then I’ll sleep here in the car around the corner where all the dumpsters are, so he won’t see me. And before he wakes up tomorrow, I’ll roll my car into a spot outside the door and pretend like I just drove in.
It’s the perfect plan, guaranteed to work. I feel happy for the first time in hours.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
USING THE KEY REBEL GAVE me, I slowly and as quietly as possible, unlock the main door. The squeak of the hinges sounds like it’s being amplified over a stereo system, and I make mental note to oil them tomorrow. I hope I won’t be living in Rebel’s parking lot then too, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a quieter door, just in case.
Once inside the bathroom with the door fully closed, I turn on the light. The dim bulb is barely enough to brighten up the tiny space. Stripping off my clothes as fast as I can, I bundle them up and shove them into my backpack after pulling out my towel. I stand just outside the small shower, waiting for the hot water to come through. It’s then that I realize I’ve forgotten my shampoo and soap.
“Dammit!” I hiss at myself in the mirror. I scan the area and come up with a dirty bar of industrial strength hand-soap sitting on the edge of the sink. I grimace, imagining that thing touching my body.
“Ew and double ew.” Picking it up, I cringe at all the goop I see in its cracks and crevices. But it’s better than nothing, so I take it with me as I step into the spray of lukewarm water.
The accordion door that closes up the tiny shower stall is way too loud as it shuts. I don’t push it all the way into place because I’m afraid I’ll wake the dead with the horrible screeching sound it makes. I could get trapped and then I’d have to break the thing down to free myself. That wouldn’t be loud at all.
The water beads up on my greasy skin. Turning the hot water handle all the way barely makes a difference in the temperature. I hate that I’m going to have to use that soap. Upon closer inspection, I find that it has something scratchy embedded in it. Afraid to actually put the bar on my body, I do my best to get my hands full of suds that I then use on my skin.
My arms and stomach feel like they’re sunburned when I’m done. It’s like scrubbing with sandpaper, but at least it works to break up the oil on my skin. I can’t bring myself to use it on anything else but my legs. The more tender parts of my body will have to wait for a day I have real lady-soap with me, and my hair is just going to have to be dirty another twelve hours or so.
I turn the cold water almost all the way off in the hopes that the warmer water will at least wash away some of the grease. I’m almost to the point of giving up when I hear a noise coming
from outside in the office.
Scrambling to turn the water off, I hold my breath in fear. I’ve almost convinced myself that I imagined the noise when another bang makes me almost jump out of my skin. Someone’s knocking at the door.
“Just a minute!” I say, trying to sound all light-hearted and unconcerned, like I didn’t break into someone’s business and use their shower without permission. And their soap. On my body. Oh my god, what was I thinking?!
“Teagan?” says the voice.
Aaaaand my shame is complete. It’s Rebel. Of course it’s Rebel. Why wouldn’t it be?
I step out of the shower and pull the towel from the floor next to my backpack.
It’s soaked.
Unbeknownst to me, the shower is not water-tight. All of the water from my bathing has somehow drained into my backpack. I pull out jeans that need to be wrung out before I can even think of putting them on.
“That shower leaks,” says the voice on the other side of the door.
“I just realized that.” I’m instantly sick to my stomach. Judge and jury are on the other side of that door and I’m so guilty right now. Guilty of breaking and entering, the very thing that made me come here for a shower in the first place.
The idea that I’d make Rebel feel as violated as I feel over my own break-in makes me want to cry and slap myself at the same time. On top of all that, I have nothing to wear, nothing even to dry off with, and he’s probably already called the cops.
“Are you coming out?” he asks.
“Well … um … I want to, but I’m having a little bit of a problem.”
He doesn’t answer.
We could stand here all night while I wonder what he’s thinking, but my nerves won’t be able to deal with that. I already feel like I’m going to have a stroke. My mouth starts moving of its own accord.
“See, I had a little problem at my apartment, so I came over here in the area for dinner and I saw the shop and I thought maybe I could just use the bathroom, and then I realized I smelled bad, so I thought maybe I could just take a quick shower since it was so convenient, and then the shower got on my clothes, so I’m kind of naked in here without anything to wear.” Oh fuck, I just told my boss I’m naked in his office. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. I am such a loser.