Ordinary Girl

by Pamela Gossiaux

  Then he goes. He shuts the door behind him.

  I glance at Reg and then make my way to the empty bed. I sit down, realizing I don’t have my things. I don’t have anything. I wonder what I’m going to sleep in.

  Reg is watching me through half-closed eyes. She takes another long drag of her joint. “In there.” She nods towards a closet.

  There’s no door on it. There are clothes piled on three shelves, and a rack full of dresses and slips next to those.

  I walk to the closet and find a pair of my underwear tossed on a shelf, with a few of the other clothes I brought with me to Cory’s. I wonder how they got here, but I don’t ask Reg. Instead, I change into clean underwear and pull on one of my t-shirts.

  I’m cold, so I walk back to the bed and crawl under the thin blanket. I’m shaking.

  Reg is still watching me. She has short-cropped black hair and is thin. Several piercings in her right eyebrow and ears catch the light. She’s wearing a light blue t-shirt. Her long, bare legs stretch out across the bed, and there’s a tattoo of a heart on her right leg.

  “How old are you?” she asks.

  “Seventeen.”

  Reg nods. “This your first day?”

  It’s my turn to nod. My first day of what? I feel tears starting. “Do you have a cell phone?” I ask.

  Reg laughs. “You won’t see one of those again.” She leans over and holds out her joint. There are long scars up her bare arms. “Want a drag?”

  I shake my head.

  “Suit yourself,” Reg says and leans back against her headboard. I don’t know if it’s the trauma or the pills I took, but I’m asleep in minutes.

  — — —

  I wake in a panic. There’s sunlight streaming in through a bedroom window that I didn’t notice was there last night. I sit upright, ignoring my full bladder. I have to get out of here.

  Reg is still sleeping. I quietly pull on my jeans and push back the curtains from the window. There are bars on it. I grab them and shake but they don’t move.

  Outside is an empty backyard with a wooden fence around it. Dead weeds stand like sentinels across the frozen lawn, and some new green grass peeks up through the ground in places. The snow is almost all melted.

  I’m running my hand along the window sill, looking for a lock, when my bedroom door opens.

  “Going somewhere?” It’s Tommy.

  Fear grips my stomach, and I quickly shake my head.

  “Breakfast,” he says and walks back towards the kitchen. I follow him out but turn to use the bathroom.

  After peeing, I wash my hands, and that’s when I see myself in the mirror. I’m shocked at how terrible I look. Streaks of mascara and tears cover my face. I have a black eye. There are some paper towels on the counter, and I take one and wet it. I wipe my eye gently, because it’s sore. I wash up the best I can, wiping the grime and foulness off of me from all of the men.

  When I think of the men, my stomach turns. I almost throw up.

  I start shaking.

  There’s a knock on the door, and I nearly jump out of my skin. “Hurry up. I have to pee.”

  It’s a girl’s voice.

  I open the door and there’s Chloe. Her beautiful Asian face looks so young this morning without any make-up on. I notice a tattoo on her bare arm, a T and some numbers printed across her bicep. I step out, and she brushes past me and closes the door.

  There’s a box of donuts on the living room table. Serena is munching one of them.

  “You need to know the rules,” Tommy says. He’s standing next to the coffee table and motions for me to sit down on the couch. “There are only three.” He holds up a finger. “One: no stealing money. I will give you everything you need. Two: you belong to me now, so never, ever try to get away. And three, do what I say. If you obey those three things, you’ll be okay. Any questions?”

  I shake my head.

  “Good. Now eat. You have a big day ahead of you.”

  My heart is beating so hard I think it might burst. My hands won’t stop shaking. I wrap my arms around myself in a kind of hug.

  Tommy shakes a pill out of a bottle and hands it to me. “Here. This will relax you.”

  I take it but don’t put it in my mouth.

  “I’d take that if I was you.” It’s Chloe. She’s out of the bathroom. She sits beside me on the couch, and I notice her eyes are bloodshot and hazy, like my mom’s get when she is taking the pills.

  Tommy leaves the room, and it’s just me, Chloe and Serena.

  “I need to get out of here. I don’t belong here,” I whisper. “There’s been some mistake. I’m not a prostitute. I was kidnapped.”

  Serena laughs. It’s a small, bird-like sound. “You think any of us want to be here?”

  I look over at her. She’s clearly high on something. These girls are drug users. I’m a high school senior headed for college. This is not where I belong!

  “Take the pill,” says Chloe gently. She pats my knee soothingly with her hand, her brown eyes pleading. “It’s better that way. Tommy knows what’s best for you. He will take care of you. You’ll see.”

  “How old are you?” I ask.

  “Fifteen. I’ve been here two years. This is your life now. So just accept that.”

  “No,” I say. “I’ll get out.”

  Serena shakes her head. I notice she never meets our eyes. “No, you won’t.”

  Chloe takes my shaking hand and pushes the pill up towards my mouth. Her hand is cold and clammy. “Then at least until you do, take the pill,” she says. “Tommy will come for you soon, and you’ll have to work.”

  Work?

  “He expects you to make $1200 a day,” Serena says, lighting a cigarette. “Don’t come home until you do.”

  I really look at Serena for the first time. She has shoulder-length red hair that lays in ringlets around her face. Round blue eyes. A pale face with some freckles across her nose. Today she’s heavily made-up. Dark eyeliner. Dark blue eyeshadow. Red lips that are leaving a stain on her cigarette.

  “I don’t do this,” I say.

  But Chloe hands me a bottle of water. I look at her. Fifteen years old. She’s so young. What was I doing when I was fifteen? Studying, of course. And that’s the year Brittney and I designed the homecoming float. The class voted for our idea over the others. The year she got her new puppy.

  Tommy comes in the room. “It’s nearly noon,” he says. “You girls ready?”

  Chloe looks at me and nods. A flash of new fear twists in my stomach. I stand, ready to run, but Tommy’s sharp gaze cuts towards me. I touch my sore eye and glance back at Chloe, who is still nodding encouragingly. I put the pill in my mouth and she hands me the bottle of water. I swallow.

  “You should eat something with that,” Tommy says, tossing me a donut. I don’t catch it fast enough, and it falls on the dirty carpet. Chloe picks it up and gives it to me.

  “He’s right,” she says. “Eat something.”

  I take a bite and force myself to chew and swallow. But they are wrong. They are all wrong. I’ll get out of here, because I don’t belong here. And because Brittany will get me out. We never let each other down. Ever.

  What I remember of the day is a nightmare. The pill lasted through half of it, and then it started wearing off. The pain and fear drove me to take another one.

  Mom’s “I don’t care” pills.

  Tommy brings us back to the house around 3 a.m. again. I smell of stale cologne and strangers. But all I’ve had to eat in two days is the burrito last night and a donut, so I eat a package of cheese and crackers, barely chewing through the haze of drugs.

  When I crawl into bed some ten minutes later, I am sore and tired. Parts of me hurt that I barely knew existed before yesterday. I curl on my side and pull the thin blanket up over me. I’m cold. I’d like to shower, to wash the stink from me, but I can’t find the energy.

  I think about Cory. He set me up. How stupid I was to believe he really liked me. How stupid I was
to drink that wine. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  I’m just a nerdy girl who could never get her nose out of a book. And I couldn’t even get a 4.0 report card, no matter how hard I worked. A 3.8 GPA was the best I could do. How did I ever believe Harvard would want to admit me?

  The word stupid keeps playing over in my head.

  I hear a rustle, and someone sits on the edge of my bed. I freeze, my heart beating quickly in little rabbit beats. I’m so scared I start to cry all over again.

  “It’s just me,” says Chloe’s soft voice.

  I peek out from under the covers. She’s still wearing a dress, which looks more like a slip it’s so thin and skimpy. She smells of cologne and cigarette smoke.

  “I came to check on you, since today was your first full day,” she says. She lays a hand gently on my back. “Did you take the pills?”

  I nod, brushing the tears away with the back of my hand.

  “It gets easier,” Chloe says. “Tommy gives you the rough guys first. It’s his way of breaking us in. Some of them like it a little rough, you know? Just let them have you. It’s easier that way. But you’ll get better clients soon. And repeats. I like the repeats because you know what to expect.”

  She rubs my back.

  “And living here you get food. I was starving out on the street when Tommy found me. And I was so cold in the winter. Here we have our own bed.”

  She’s talking like this is a place she wants to be. I raise myself up on my elbow so I can look at her. “But I don’t belong here,” I say. “I have a mom and a home. I was just about to graduate from high school and go to college.”

  “You were going to graduate?” Chloe says, her eyes wide. “Wow.” But then she shakes her head. “Your mom and your friends…can you imagine if they found out you were here? And did you have a boyfriend? I mean, what would he think?”

  “I didn’t have a boyfriend,” I say, then feel a stab of pain as I think of Cory.

  “College would never let you in now. No boy would ever want you after what you’ve done. You’re different now, Heather. There’s no going back. What we do…people don’t understand.” Chloe’s youthfulness disappears, and a serious knowing fills her eyes. “This is your life now.”

  I shake my head. “Never.” I say.

  Chloe gives me a little pat on the back. “Get some sleep,” she says.

  After she leaves, I lay back down. The drugs and exhaustion pull me into a dreamless sleep.

  — — —

  I awake the next morning to find Reg already up, smoking a joint on her bed. She’s wearing a black, low-cut dress and has heavily lined her eyes in black liner. Her shadow is smoky purple, and her lips are painted a bright pink. She has teased up her close-cropped black hair. Reg is tall and thin, full of angles. Her high cheekbones are colored with blush. She’s pretty and reminds me of the models I see in magazines.

  “You woke up late,” she says.

  I sit and rub my head. I feel agitated and a bit like I have the flu. I wonder if it’s from the pills I was taking.

  “What are those pills?” I ask. The smoke from whatever she’s smoking is thick in the air. I cough.

  Reg shrugs. “Probably Oxy. This stuff is better.” She offers me her joint again, which I refuse. “Or this.” She hands me a juice-sized glass of water.

  “What’s this?” I say, swirling the water around.

  “Coke.”

  At first, I think she means a soft drink, and I’m about to say, “No, it’s not. It’s clear,” when I realize how stupid I’m being.

  I hand it back to her.

  She drinks it. Then she hands me a small paper packet. It’s about the size of a quarter and taped shut. “Swirl it in some water and drink it.” She grins. “The first one is free.”

  I lay it on my bed and go use the bathroom. There are two men in the living room. One is the thug I saw yesterday. And another guy I haven’t seen before. Thug One and Thug Two. When I’m finished in the bathroom, I come back in the bedroom.

  My hands are shaking more now, and I feel like I’m going to vomit. I lay back down on the bed and curl into a fetal position. “I think I’m sick.”

  “You should get dressed,” Reg says. “Tommy will be mad if you’re not ready to go by noon.” She nods towards the dress rack.

  Images of yesterday come back to me.

  “I can’t.” I start to cry.

  Reg picks the packet up off my bed and pours some of the powder into a glass of water. She stirs it with her finger until it dissolves. “Here. Drink.”

  “Hey girls, almost ready?” I hear Tommy’s voice out in the hallway. Slivers of fear race through me.

  I sit up and drink it without thinking. Reg takes the glass back and goes over to the rack. She pulls out a green dress. It has sequins on it and looks like something a hooker would wear. “Put this on.”

  I lean back against the headboard. “I can’t. I’m sick.”

  “We don’t get sick days,” she says. “This isn’t school.”

  “How long have you been here?” I ask, pulling my knees against my chest to try to calm the shaking.

  Reg shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is I’m ready to work. And you aren’t.” She hands me the dress again.

  I’m starting to feel better. The nausea is receding, and I realize that my hands are no longer shaking. I hold them out in front of me to check. Nothing. Nice and steady.

  “Hmmmm,” I say.

  Reg quirks an eyebrow as if to say “I told you so.” Then hands me the dress, and I stand to put it on.

  “So…what do we use for birth control?” I hear my voice, and it sounds so matter-of-fact. Like I do this every day.

  “Birth control?” Reg laughs. “Oh, honey, you have a lot to learn.”

  “No. Seriously,” I say.

  Part of my brain realizes I’m high. The other part suddenly doesn’t care.

  Reg walks over to her dresser and pulls out a box of condoms. She hands me two.

  “Most of the guys won’t want to use them,” she says. “But here. Knock yourself out.”

  I take them and stick them down into my bra. And just in time. Tommy comes to get us then.

  — — —

  During Freshman year, we had to take Health class, which was a thinly disguised title for Sex Ed. Poor Ms. Peterson got stuck with teaching it to a bunch of giggling fourteen-year olds. But in all fairness, we did study other “health topics” as well.

  Healthy eating was one section we covered. The irony of this class was that Ms. Peterson brought in snacks every Friday. The first week it was brownies. On Halloween she bought some pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies with orange sugar coating. The Friday after that she brought in her children’s Halloween candy. And candy canes for Christmas. You get the idea. All while learning about eating our veggies.

  Then we studied exercise. After that was, of course, a section on anti-bullying and mental health issues. And drugs.

  Then, just as spring and the mating season arrived, we talked about sex.

  Ms. Peterson did her best to keep us attentive. She handed out Jolly Rancher candies to us at the end of each class if we paid attention and didn’t giggle too much.

  I’m not sure what they thought they’d accomplish. There was a whole section on why we shouldn’t have sex. They talked about all the gross diseases we could catch, and statistically what percentage of us already had them. Fun. And pregnancy. Let’s not forget about that risk.

  Then, after telling us why we shouldn’t have sex, they passed out condoms, and poor Ms. Peterson had to demonstrate how to put one on a banana.

  Brit and I giggled through the whole class because we were silly freshman girls, and that’s what we did at that age.

  The one thing they don’t teach you is how to fight off a guy if you don’t want to have sex. Shouldn’t self-defense be part of the class?

  I think it should.

  Tommy takes Chloe with us today. We’re both in the back seat, and h
is creepy friend Franco, Thug One, is sitting in the front. Franco is huge, twice the width of Tommy, and he doesn’t seem very smart. He doesn’t say much, grunts his answers, and wears sleeveless t-shirts to show his bulging, tattoo-covered biceps.

  At the hotel, Tommy grabs my wrist and escorts me to the hotel room. Even though I’m high, I dig my heels into the pavement and refuse to move.

  “I won’t do this,” I say.

  Tommy pulls harder on my wrist until he’s literally dragging me from the car to the hotel room door. He opens it and throws me inside. I land on the floor, skinning both of my knees and reopening yesterday’s scab.

  “Yes, you will,” he says.

  He shuts the door, and I try to think. The drugs, lack of food, and lack of sleep have all made my brain hazy. But I come up with a plan. I’ll talk the next guy into letting me use his cell phone. Then I’ll call for help.

  I’m under the blanket, wearing my skimpy dress but still trying to cover myself, when the first man walks in. He stands above the bed, looking down at me. He takes his wallet out and is tossing some cash on the nightstand. In the car, Chloe told me it should be $100 each time. Am I supposed to count it to be sure it’s all there? No one has told me.

  “Can I borrow your phone?” I say. My words are slurred. I remember that I’m high.

  “Who you going to call?” he asks.

  Suddenly, “help” sounds like a stupid answer. I stutter, trying to come up with something convincing so he’ll turn over the phone. And then what? Will I dial 911?

  “I’ll order us some beer,” I lie.

  “You paying?” he says.

  I nod. But he laughs.

  “I didn’t come here for beer,” he says. He smells like he’s already had one, anyway. He takes his phone out of his pocket and sets it carefully out of reach. Then he sits on the bed and reaches towards me. I cringe and feel tears running down my cheeks. He doesn’t seem to care.

  Maybe he’ll fall asleep afterwards, I think. Then I can grab his phone.