It’s none of my business.
Except that now I can’t get it out of my head.
Chapter Twenty-One
I’m quiet on the bus ride home. That’s nothing unusual for me, but by the time we get off the bus at Jackson’s stop, my thoughts are a mess. I know there’s nothing I can do to help Marissa. I have to let it go. I’ve got my own problems to worry about.
Like the fact that Jackson’s the son of a cop.
Yeah, I forgot about that.
A hundred horrible memories of the police flood my mind. I stop.
Shit.
“What’s wrong?”
“Will your dad be home?”
“Yeah. Why, you don’t trust me or something?”
My eyes refocus. His face is a little red. “No,” I say. “I mean, yes. Of course I trust you, I’m just… Parents don’t usually like me.”
His face is still a little red. “My dad’s not like most.”
No kidding, your dad is a cop. Cops hate everyone.
I try really hard not to drag my feet as we walk up the path to his house.
Jackson laughs, still as lighthearted as ever. “It’s going to be fine.”
Yeah, I’ve heard that before.
We walk through the door, and I find myself looking around like I’m in a spaceship or something. It’s warm and smells like vanilla. The floor is mahogany, the walls a pretty burgundy. It feels warm and inviting. I kinda wish my house were more like this.
He closes the door behind us. I rub my hands together and then cross my arms.
“I’m home,” Jackson calls out.
A large man peeks around a corner. “There you are!”
I take a stumbling step back.
I can’t breathe. Everything stops.
Just Anna. I’m just Anna. He won’t hate me. He doesn’t know I’m a hooker.
He’s wearing a black police uniform. Funny how cops all look the same.
Same uniform. Same badge. Same smile.
“Hi there, this must be your friend. Anna, right?” he says, holding out one of his huge hands.
My eyes shoot to the floor, and I can’t, no matter how hard I try, make them look the man in the eyes. He’s a cop, and the only person I know to be with cops isn’t Anna. It’s Exquisite.
I squeeze my eyes closed.
That’s not me. Not anymore. I’m Anna.
Just Anna.
My body doesn’t listen to my head and my heart beats faster, my head pounds.
Cops don’t shake hookers’ hands. They cuff them, they hit them, they scar them.
But he wants to shake my hand.
How can I trust him?
A terrifying thought occurs to me.
How closely do police departments communicate? Is it possible he knows about Exquisite? Is it possible he knows who I really am?
Is it possible he’ll tell Jackson?
I chance a glimpse at his face—to test his reaction to me—but he doesn’t seem to recognize me. He just seems confused that he’s still holding his hand out and I haven’t shaken it.
“Yes,” Jackson says for me. “This is Anna, I guess she’s shy.” Confusion is laced in his voice.
“Well,” the man says awkwardly. “It’s nice to meet you.”
He drops his hand and slowly walks away from us.
Jackson doesn’t move or say anything. What’s he thinking? Does he regret having me over? Being my friend?
“Come on,” he says, and I follow him up a set of stairs. We walk into a room, and he shuts the door behind us. “What the hell was that?” he asks.
I’ve never heard him talk like this. He’s so innocent that the almost-sort-of cuss sounds strange coming from his mouth.
“I…” But I’m not sure what to say. Should I apologize? “I’m not a fan of cops. They kind of freak me out.”
I’m still feeling flustered, so it takes a little effort for me to meet his gaze, but I want to watch his face. I want to know what he’s thinking, or at least be able to formulate a guess.
He’ll be angry now. That’s okay. I deserve it.
But his face is much softer than I expected.
He sits down on a bed. I’m guessing we’re in his room…and that would make this his bed.
My cheeks grow hot.
What’s wrong with me?
“Police are supposed to be the good guys,” he says, but it’s almost like he’s trying to convince himself as much as me.
Maybe he knows more about how cops can be than I realized.
“A uniform doesn’t make them good.”
He looks me straight in the eye. “But it doesn’t make them bad, either.”
I nod. He’s right. It’s just a job, it’s not who he is. But God, if my own father can be so harsh, I can’t imagine how bad Jackson’s father must be. A cop.
“So what happened?” he says. “What made you hate police…if you don’t mind me asking.”
I take a deep breath and sit down beside him. I breathe in and out slowly. I don’t want to get too worked up about this.
I can’t tell him everything. But words don’t mean much anyway. He’ll want proof.
I push back the hair around my temple, exposing a small scar. Jackson reaches out and touches it with gentle fingers. That’s the only time they left a permanent mark, but I’ve had plenty more injuries that eventually healed, leaving no evidence.
I don’t explain what happened, and he doesn’t ask. I’m not sure I’d have a good explanation for this one.
He stares at the ground, his eyebrows pulled tightly over his eyes. It’s like he’s deep in thought, like I’ve stolen a beloved belief. Kind of like I told him that Santa Claus didn’t exist.
“I’ll be honest. I don’t think I’ve ever met a good cop.”
He looks up and smiles sadly. “You just did.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
To his credit, his arms don’t have any bruises, and he didn’t seem afraid of his father. It’s weird. Is Jackson really so perfect that his dad never has to correct him?
Or is he just so good at hiding it that his dad never finds out? My mind flashes back to us at his hidden tree house, his hand caressing my cheek.
And then I remember I’m on his bed. In his room. And my face gets red all over again. I look down to hide it, but it’s too late.
He smiles, and the tension in his face fades. “Maybe that’s what we do our project on.”
“Cops?”
“Perception. We draw one man. Half of him is an evil-looking guy, a shadow over him or something. And the other half is kind with a smile.”
“Actually, that’s a good idea.”
Jackson stands suddenly and grabs a big piece of sketching paper.
“Horizontal or vertical?” he asks.
I ignore the opening for a dirty joke and just say, “Vertical.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Friday night my mom takes me to the mall. Not once since that night has she mentioned what she said to my dad, the reason we’re here shopping together at all. But it’s hanging over us, and it feels even heavier knowing what he said to her later that night.
The mall is different than I remember. In the food court, the carousel I used to want to ride is gone. Even most of the shops have changed.
No one looks at me strangely here, which is quite refreshing, and I think helps my mother to relax. She can be a normal mom with a normal daughter.
We take our time going through the shops. I’m not sure how much my mom is willing to spend on me today, so I don’t pick out much.
“What about these?” My mother holds a pair of dark-wash jeans.
“I don’t really need jeans,” I say.
“You always need jeans.”
I take them and keep looking through a rack of sweaters. No point in arguing if she’s going to buy me more clothes than I planned on.
I find a sparkly cream sweater and hold it up to her.
“Your tastes hav
en’t changed,” she says with a pinch of her lips.
I shrug.
She follows me to the fitting room, and I show her the clothes I have picked out. Despite how normal she’s trying to pretend we are, things still feel really tense. Like she can’t even trust my choice in clothes or something.
I come out wearing a black lace top.
“You sure that’s not too…” she says, but she doesn’t finish her sentence. I think I can guess where she’s going with it, though. It’s not like I’m trying to get knee-high stripper boots or fishnets.
I roll my eyes and take a few steps farther into the store and point out two other girls in similar tops. Neither of them looks slutty in the slightest. “It’s cute, Mom.”
I can see her weighing her options here. “What about if you get it in another color?” she asks.
A compromise. I supposed I can handle that. “Okay, can you go grab me the tan one?”
She smiles and hops up to grab the top. She comes back with a black jacket and a T-shirt. Both of which are actually really cute. And best of all, they feel like my style. Okay, one point in Mom’s favor. At least she’s trying.
Next is the dress shop. Super.
I have absolutely no idea what to look for here. I’ve never been to a dance, and it’s not like I have friends I can take cues from. Jen and Alex aren’t really the dance types.
My mom grabs a hideous high-collared dress that looks like something her mother wore in high school. Not cute. I can’t help but laugh.
“What?” she asks.
“How about no.”
Her mouth opens in surprise. But then she seems to get that I’m just giving her a hard time, so she smiles, shakes her head, and puts the dress back. “Fine, what then?”
I pick out a cute blue cocktail dress that’s probably a little too short for my uptight mother, but it would look good on her. Fantastic, even.
“Really?” she says.
I smile and shrug. “I don’t know any more than you do,” I admit.
She looks around for a second and then comes back with a lady who works at the shop. The lady pulls five dresses for me to try on.
At least we’re getting somewhere now.
One dress is floor length and red with a low neckline. Surprisingly, my mother likes this one. Unsurprisingly, she suggests the purple one instead of the red.
Another dress is puffy and hideous. We both laugh when I come out in it. I spin around like I’m a stupid fairy-tale princess.
“Stop, stop! Take it off.” She points behind me. “How about that black one with the pink lines?”
I close the fitting room door behind me to try it out.
I come out really hoping she likes this one. It’s more casual than the rest of them, but I kind of like that. I’d rather look like I just picked something out of my closet than look like I’m trying too hard.
“Ooooh,” my mother says.
“Do you like it?” I look at myself in the mirror. The dress is on the shorter side but still reaches my knee, with a black skirt that’s just a little flowy, and it has a cool pink zigzag pattern at the top.
“Do you like it?”
I smile. “Yes. I do. Now tell me if you do.”
The smile she gives me is the biggest I’ve seen on her in years. “I’d say we have a winner.”
We stop at the new food court for dinner, and it’s the first time things actually seem good with her. Not pretend-normal. Not trying too hard. It’s just me with my mom.
Maybe she finally feels like I really am her teenage daughter. Maybe she’s okay with whatever that means.
I figured we’d be done after dinner. I have my dress and some other clothes. But my mom seems energized now. She isn’t finished.
We go into a department store and end up getting me jeans, two pairs of shoes, five more tops, and a necklace. I’m feeling a little spoiled.
With a tug, I fall back into a memory. Me and Luis in a tiny New York boutique with an unpronounceable name. Tucked away from the sounds of shouting and traffic. He held out a necklace—a pendant of a golden swallow with tiny diamond eyes. I turned my back on him so he could put it on. His heavy hands circled my neck.
“Gotta make sure my girl looks good.”
It’s like every line is blurred with Luis. When we were together, I was his. When did that change from being his to cherish to being his to trade away as he pleased?
I drag myself back into the present. This is different.
My mom is doing this for me.
She doesn’t have to. I can live in the shitty clothes I already have. She’s just being nice. She’s being my mother.
And it feels really good.
Jackson and I spend the entire weekend working on our art project together, which is pretty incredible. He’s the only person to put me completely at ease, and when we’re working on art, my only real mental escape…it’s perfect.
Our project is pretty amazing, if I do say so myself.
Together we draw a man, nothing special or different about him at all, except a hat that says “police” on it. He wears a goofy blue-collared shirt. Then we draw a line down the center with pencil and each use our half of the canvas to make him into what we see.
I draw storm clouds at the top, rain pouring down, and a gray background. I put shadows under his eye and across his cheek on my side. He holds out a nightstick, something I’m more than familiar with, in his tense fist.
There’s something still missing about him, though. He doesn’t look real. The surroundings make it pretty clear what I think he is, but he doesn’t quite show the heart of my fear.
I close my eyes and think about the first cop who hit me. Officer Rodrick. How do I remember his name? The same way I won’t ever forget my first john. Maybe the better question is: how do I forget?
I erase the cartoonish man’s face and picture Officer Rodrick. He had hooded eyes with bushy eyebrows. Thin lips that made a weird squiggly line when he smirked at me. The kind of smile that makes your gut twist because you know he’s enjoying the pain he’s doling out.
I draw this man, concentrating so hard my head starts to pound.
This wasn’t the man who gave me the scar, but I know Jackson assumes it is. Truthfully, there were a dozen men I could have pictured here, and that’s only the cops.
Jackson draws a man with blue eyes and a smile, holding out his hand like he wants to help you up or something. He puts a badge on the cop’s chest that says “hero.” He takes my lead and colors the background blue, like the sky, but leaves it completely cloudless, and then colors in a slight yellow-white haze around the man’s body, like he has light behind him. Like he’s glowing.
When we erase the penciled-in line down the middle, you can’t see the exact place where each of our own visions start, and it almost blends together.
We actually finish the project a week early and decide to turn it in on Monday at the risk of looking like total geeks. Actually, that was my idea. I’m too eager to show Mr. Harkins to wait.
Mr. Harkins takes about thirty seconds to look over the canvas, then smiles. “This is fantastic.”
“Really?” I ask, even though I already know. Or at least, I already know what I think, and really, anyone else liking it is just icing.
Really thick, delicious icing.
His approval feels better than I imagined.
We explain the concept to him even though he seemed to get it without any explanations. Then he asks to talk to Jackson alone for a few minutes. I walk back to my seat, glowing with pride and happiness that I helped create something like that. Something beautiful.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jackson is smiling too when he comes back to sit with me.
“Good news,” he whispers. I raise my eyebrows, wondering what he means. “I’m in charge of helping decorate for homecoming, and Mr. Harkins wants me to invite you to join the decorating committee.”
I blink. “Really? He wants me to help?”
“That sounds awesome!”
“Then come on.”
I grab my books and follow him out of the class and down the hall. We go through the double doors that were once my escape from the rumors and prying eyes, down the stairs, and all the way behind the stage.
“So who’s in this committee?”
“Me and you.”
I stop. “What?”
He laughs. “Homecoming is in the gym, so there’s only so much you can do to make it look good with our budget and, well, people kind of give up on it. The prom committee is like the entire senior class.”
“I thought homecoming week was like huge here.”
“It is, but the dance isn’t a real priority. The pep rally, which I’m not really into, will have more people helping.”
“So…me and you are going to decorate the room for the homecoming dance all by ourselves?”
“Pretty much.”
“Oookay.”
“So first, we need to come up with a theme,” he says.
“Are you serious? I…wouldn’t even know where to start.”
He pulls something out from behind a big plywood set. It’s a folder labeled Homecoming. “Earlier this year we asked students to put in ideas for the theme, and we got a few answers. So we at least have a starting point. I took out the ridiculous ones, and here are some I think we could probably do. Las Vegas. Secret Garden. Under the Sea. City of Light. Wild Wild West.”
“What’s ‘City Of Light’?”
“Paris is known as the city of light, so it would be Paris themed.”
I take a few moments to think. We’re under a small budget; that’s the biggest problem. We can’t make a gym look that great without a huge makeover, which we can’t do.
“I like City Of Light,” I say. Paris is okay, whatever. It’s the light part that I’m into.
“Okay, what are you thinking?”
“White Christmas lights. We can get them cheap, even borrow them. I bet my family has enough to cover the gym. My dad freaks out about decorating for Christmas.”
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