by Laney Wylde
I couldn’t contain them as they carried dark trails of makeup down my cheeks. That kid wasn’t supposed to cry. She wasn’t allowed to. Jeff didn’t like that. The tears had to stop.
They did by the time I pulled into the parking lot at school. My sleeves were covered in mascara, my cheeks puffy, my green irises surrounded by crimson capillaries. I didn’t need to get my key from Cash since my door was already cracked open. It was only 12:30. Everyone was still awake. If Jo or Nicole was in my room, I didn’t know. Getting my towel and shower caddy was all I could focus on.
The shower burned. Scalding droplets pelted me as I scrubbed every inch of reddening skin. I slipped my fingers into my vagina, cringing as I scrubbed it over and over until it was dry and raw. I even brushed my teeth in the hot water, the cool mint stinging my throat where the vomit had chafed it.
I was as clean as I could get in my blue flannel pajama pants and tank top when I saw Cash sitting against the wall outside his door. His headphones were on, and he seemed engrossed in whatever he was watching on his laptop. I snuck in front of him to my door. I jiggled the handle. Locked.
“Need this?” Cash asked, holding out my gold key in his palm.
“Yes, thank you.” I tried to force a smile, but only half of my mouth cooperated. I reached for it, but his fingers closed over it.
“You okay?” He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, ready to disbelieve whatever I said.
“Yeah,” I sighed, “just a long night.”
“Aren’t you home early? A couple of hours early?”
“I threw up at work.” Code for give me my key now.
“That’s no fun.” He furrowed his eyebrows as he inspected me. “Come here.” I leaned toward his outreaching hand to let him brush the damp hair from my forehead and press his palm against it. He turned his hand over and ran the backs of his cool fingers down my pink cheek. My eyes closed at his touch. “You feel pretty warm, but I don’t think it’s quite to a fever.”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s nothing.” I reached for the key again. Instead, Cash picked a book up from the floor beside him and put it in my hand. Seriously, this guy could not take a hint. “What’s this?”
“Jo said you wanted me to buy you something pretty.” He smiled.
“So you got me a book about a woman who carves words into her skin and tries to solve the murder of two little girls?”
“I did?” He took Sharp Objects from me and flipped it over to find the synopsis. “Jo said you liked Gillian Flynn.” Right, that did come up in a late-night slumber-party-esque conversation.
“Oh, I love her. She’s the Ernest Hemingway of the twenty-first century.”
“Who says that?”
“Uh, I do,” I said with unquestioning confidence.
He gave me a wary look.
“I mean, they’re different writers, for sure, but they’re both stylistic renegades. There’s Flynn, whose prose bites you so you’re bleeding out and begging for more. And Hemingway, who gave the literary world the finger by creating beautiful works with simple words and run-on sentences glued together with a hundred ands. They’re both honest in that sharp way that makes you feel what you’d rather not. You know what I mean?”
Cash smirked as he analyzed me. From his puzzled expression, I could tell he was coming up short.
“I don’t expect you to understand. You’re an engineer.”
“And what are you?”
Alone. Damned. Whore. Hunted. “Undeclared.”
He took another second to scrutinize me—me and the truth of my statement. Then he pushed the book back toward me and said, “Look inside.” I moved my finger under the cover and flipped it open. The inside was signed by Gillian Flynn herself.
“No!” I collapsed to sit on the floor next to him, careful not to put weight on any sore spots, and pushed his shoulder. “How did you… Where did you get this?”
“A little bookstore in Santa Monica.”
“I feel like I shouldn’t touch it.” I set it carefully in my lap. “I don’t want to depreciate the value. How much did this cost you?”
“Not that much.” He shrugged. “It’s not like it’s Jane Eyre. We’re not that close.” His lips curved.
“I can’t accept this. It’s way too—”
“Think of it as a ‘thank you’ for bunking with my baby sister for three days.”
“You didn’t need to do that. Jo’s actually pretty great.”
“I told you she was.”
I stared at the book, the dark cover with the razor image. After tonight, I needed a little more of what I didn’t deserve. So I stalled to keep Cash in the hall a bit longer. Okay, a lot longer. “What are you watching?” I nodded toward the screen before recognizing it. “Moneyball?”
“Yeah, I’ve never seen it, but Jo said it was written by some great screenwriter and I needed to watch it.”
“Aaron Sorkin.” I shifted my back against the wall.
“That sounds right.”
“It’s one of my favorites. ‘How can you not be romantic about baseball?’”
“You like baseball?”
“No, that’s a quote from the movie. And sort of. It’s my dad’s sport, and I love my dad so I tolerate it.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” I relented. “I have a dad. Anyway, the movie is about math, too. Wait,” I said as I placed my hand on his forearm and gave him the most intense look I could muster. “Are you sure you can follow along?” He elbowed my ribs before unplugging his headphones and pressing play.
I felt myself flirting with sleep even before my shift had been due to end. Call it an exhausting night. Or maybe I actually was sick. At some point, my temple slumped into Cash’s shoulder, firm and comfortable. I perked up enough to mutter, “He gets on base,” every time Brad Pitt cued Jonah Hill to. Cash’s shoulder bounced beneath me whenever I did.
My eyes flicked open to Cash’s neck, the tip of my nose brushing against it, breathing in the subtle scent of his cologne. I felt his arms cradle my back and legs. The movie must have been over, but I couldn’t remember the last half of it. He unlocked my door, striding over to lay me down on my bed. That instinctive fear pricked every inch of my skin when he didn’t leave right away. He moved toward the foot of my bed, took off my sandals, and then dropped them to the floor. The hair on my arms raised. What was he going to do to me? I couldn’t fight anymore, not tonight. I felt him lift my back slightly to pull the covers down under me, then back up to my chin. His palm checked my forehead for fever one last time before brushing my hair away from my ear. “Good night, Sawyer,” he whispered.
The anxiety dissolved, and an ache replaced it. It was this dull pain chipping away within my chest when he touched me. “Good night, Cash,” I mumbled and rolled toward his retreating warmth. I didn’t care that it hurt. I wanted that ache back. Wanted him here beside me to keep me safe as I slept, to push away everything that happened that night, everything that had happened the last seven months. But he closed the door, shutting me into the darkness behind him.
My eyes stared wide at the grey shapes in the room. Sleep wouldn’t return. I was alone. And they knew how to find me.
15
DECEMBER 2017
It was never a good idea to participate in an optional six-hour math competition between stripping shifts, even if told it was impossible to score so much as a point because the questions were unworkable and the graders are over scrupulous to the point of sadism. Trust me, giving into the temptation to say fuck you to those who assured my failure by sitting for the exam wouldn’t be worth it.
Even if I did score in the top three-hundred in the nation.
I was already seated in the fluorescent-lit classroom with my foot-tall caramel macchiato that Saturday morning when Cash walked in. He paused to stare when he saw me, like it was weird I was there. He started down my aisle. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Me? Are you sure you’re not lost? This is a math com
petition.” I smirked.
“You’re taking the Putnam Exam?”
“Am I not allowed?”
“No, it’s just,” he paused to keep from saying something regrettable, “why weren’t you at the practice sessions?”
“Cash…” I whispered and leaned against my elbows on the desk. “I have a certain reputation to uphold.”
“One that doesn’t involve being smart?”
“Not at math.”
“Is that why you’re in disguise?” He suppressed a smile.
I glanced down at my frumpy Southern Oregon outfit: ripped jeans, high top Converse, a cream thermal shirt under my dad’s flannel. My hair was up in a bun with a thick headband to hide that scar on my scalp. My thick-rimmed glasses focused my eyes instead of my usual contacts. And my few freckles and flaws were on full display without any makeup to cover them. Fine, so I was trying to hide in plain sight. “Shut up,” I murmured with a laugh.
He crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. “What’s your major again?”
I narrowed my eyes on him. “Undeclared.”
“Liar.” He smiled as he slid in the desk behind me. “Whose shirt is that? Does he know you love math?”
“First,” I slapped my pencil on the desk and turned around, “I do not love math.” A big fat lie. I was in awe of math, like cavemen were with fire or ancient Egyptians with the Nile. It was the only constant in my eighteen years. The only concrete thing in the universe: rules that couldn’t be bent, truth that couldn’t be manipulated. It was the only exact science, a stillness in the middle of any chaos, and everything in my life was chaos. So, yes, I fucking loved math.
“Then why are you spending six hours on a Saturday in a math contest?”
“Second, if you want to know if I’m sleeping with someone, just ask.”
“Are you?”
“No.” I tugged at the flannel. “And he died before I figured out I ‘love’ math.”
His smile fell. “Sawyer, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“—didn’t know. It’s fine.” I shifted to face my desk again. Cash’s silence was thick from behind me. I shouldn’t have made him feel so bad, but he just asked way too many questions. All. The. Time. I was getting sick of it.
* * *
I curled up in bed after the test, hoping to catch the sleep that had eluded me the past three weeks. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw Simone and that groomsmen. I saw that video Travis blackmailed us with. I saw Jeff. So I made a habit of staring at the wall, hoping sleep would close my eyes. The result—I fell off the pole last night. I wasn’t totally sure what happened. My arms started shaking and then my hands slipped. Muscular fatigue, I guessed. No bruising, just full-body flushed embarrassment and a loss of about one fifty in tips. Tonight was my last shift of the week and my highest-paying one. I had to sleep.
But I didn’t. Two hours of dreading my shift passed before I finally convinced myself not to call in sick. I needed the money after a month of refusing illegal VIP room favors, so I forced myself out of bed and into the shower to shave and slather with body oil. The hot water did little to help the exhaustion headache that spread over my entire face and down my shoulders. In front of the mirror, I blew out my hair, lined my bloodshot eyes black, and painted my pale lips red.
“Hey,” Cash said as I shut my door to leave. “How’d you feel about the test?”
“Killed it.” I forced a smile. “You?”
“No idea. Are you free tonight, or do you have work?”
I sighed out, “Work.”
He studied my face. “You feeling okay?”
After a long stare between us, I said, “I don’t know.”
* * *
I caught a second wind at the club, the pounding music, slimy gazes, and wandering hands keeping me on edge. Two hours into my shift, I was strutting past the bar when a leathery hand shoved a wad of cash into mine, pulling me back so I tripped in my heels. I spun around to see Allen Buchanan, an old regular I hadn’t seen in two months. It had been so long I was hoping he had died or slipped into a coma or something less dramatic but equally permanent, so I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. Because, here was the thing about regulars—they thought I should be so grateful for their constant contribution to my salary that they try to pull shit like paying five hundred for a full fuck because “that’s all the ATM would let me take out.” But they knew it was what they wanted when they walked in, and I had seen them stuff twenties in my coworker’s panties earlier in the night and pay cash at the bar. They had the money. And an expensive watch. And, of course, I couldn’t report that I was getting stiffed because prostitution was not only illegal but also a fireable offense. So, I chose my battles and my clients and my clients’ watches carefully.
And of all my regulars, Allen was the worst. He was an old perv, in his fifties if I had to guess. He actually bragged to me that I was younger than his youngest daughter when I was unzipping his slacks. I wondered what those poor girls endured at his hand. There was no way in hell I’d ever want to have sex with him. So I hadn’t. Sure, I stomached hand jobs every time, a blowjob once when I had a few drinks before work, but never sex.
I led him through the thick curtain into the dim VIP room and pushed him onto the couch, trying to ignore the sight of his white dress shirt struggling to stretch over his round gut. Straight from the office, I assumed. I was sure he or the assistant he was screwing informed his wife he was working late. I straddled his lap and whispered heavily in his ear, “It’s been ages, Allen,” as I undid the buttons under his collar. He smelled old, like heavy cologne and sun-scorched skin. I just had to get through twenty minutes. God knew I had endured worse for twenty minutes.
Allen pushed his hand into his pants pocket and took out a handful of bills. I saw the purple, shimmering stripe on each hundred. Underneath them was a condom. His thick fingers moved under my straps as he pressed the bills into my bra with one hand and the condom in between my fingers with the other. I took a deep breath, pulled the money out of my bra, and returned it and the condom. “I don’t do that anymore. You want me to get Sapphire?”
“Come on, baby.” His hands slid over my hips until he groped my ass. “Delilah never said no, did she?”
Delilah.
I was right. They all knew where to find me.
But still, what was with these pedophiles? I wasn’t a little girl anymore. Hadn’t I grown too curvy and athletic for their taste? Why were they all trying to fuck me?
Allen’s fingers moved under the lace of my panties. It was when I reminded him that he was wrong. Delilah said “no” all the time. That was why they all liked Simone better than her.
Allen’s hands on my butt was the last coherent memory I had. Whatever happened next was like watching a horror movie on a vintage projector, except several of the slides were missing. Everything came at me in flashes, like I was outside of my body one second, then in it the next, then not even in the VIP room for the third. So flashes—vibrant, searing, incohesive flashes—across a screen were all I got. My back against the sticky couch. A deep pain in my wrists. A sharp pinch in my thighs. The thing I remember most was beating the shit out of Jeff, which, even in the moment, I knew didn’t make sense. Why would Jeff be there? Had he found me? If he had, I wouldn’t be safe until he was dead. So I kept slamming the head between my hands against the wall until the drywall crumbled to expose the stud beneath.
Then a thick arm around my waist knocked the wind out of me. Ivan tore me backward, my fingers still digging into Allen’s skull as he dragged me away. I crumpled on the ground where I heaved and coughed. There I saw the last slide in the projector: Allen unconscious, his head bleeding, his nose gushing, too, and Ivan pressing two fingers to his neck.
Shit.
Had I just murdered someone? Shit. Shit. Shit! I tore through those slides in my mind, hoping to find a way to erase the last two minutes. I should have just said, Yes, Delilah would love to fuck you. He was just one clien
t. I’d survive. I had so many times before. Why did I suddenly have to have principles?
“Is he alive?” I breathed, my lungs barely filling.
Ivan answered after what felt like an hour. “Yeah, you lucky bitch.” He pulled his cell from his pocket, I assumed to call an ambulance. My cue to leave.
I didn’t realize until then that my panties were around my ankles. I pulled them up with my shaking hands. My hands that were splattered with blood. My forearms were, too. And my chest. I hugged the edge of the club as I made my way to the locker room, trying to hide the evidence of attempted homicide covering my body. I unsnapped my bra and slipped down my underwear, splashing water and soap over my bare skin as I scrubbed away the drying blood. Scarlet swirls pooled in the white sink, and pink puddles collected on the counter.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I hissed as I tried to wipe the counter down with paper towels. Now I had bloodstained towels. I slammed open a stall door and flushed them. All right, the sink looked okay. It was going to be okay. I was going to be okay.
All right, next—the lingerie. His blood was on there, too. I’d have to toss it in a dumpster somewhere. Not here.
I slapped on a different bra, a tank top that hardly covered it, and jeans. Shoving the remaining evidence in my purse, I forced myself to tread an inconspicuous pace to my car. There were blue and red lights at the front of the club. I was in the back parking lot. I could escape. I had time.
I made it into my car and turned over the ignition. As I slammed the car into reverse, a yellow glare blinded me through my window. “Put your hands on the steering wheel,” the officer demanded. I clutched the wheel at the midnight position and pressed my forehead into my knuckles. So close.
I shivered outside my car as the young, sun-spotted cop questioned me. “Did you assault Congressman Buchanan?” Oh, I’d forgotten Allen was our congressman. Eh, it wasn’t like he showed up to work much.