“Want some orange juice, Allie? I was just about to have some.”
“Um. Sure. Thanks.”
Allie sat on a high stool at something like a breakfast bar. Her feet didn’t touch the floor, which made her feel small and young, which made her feel helpless. She looked around. The inside of the house appeared lived in and then some. Maybe lived in by an army. Clothes and purses lay strewn over furniture and on the orangey-colored shag carpet. The counters and sinks were mounded with used dishes nobody apparently had the time or inclination to wash. It made Allie’s skin crawl.
“I live on this stuff,” Desiree said.
She set a huge glass of orange juice on the bar in front of Allie. It looked like an iced tea glass. Probably held twenty ounces or more. Allie sipped at it. The acid made her stomach flinch.
“When you work with the public like I do,” Desiree continued, “it kinda saves your ass. I used to get sick all the time. Now not so much.” She paused in her own gulping. Stared deeply into Allie’s eyes. Or tried to, anyway. Allie looked away. “You just here to visit Jasmine? Or are you new?”
“New?”
“Are you, like . . . here here?”
“I don’t know,” Allie said. “There’s a lot I haven’t figured out yet.”
Desiree cut her gaze away and bustled off to the refrigerator. Apparently her appraisal of Allie was done. She seemed satisfied.
“Happens to all of us. Don’t feel bad. We all have those crossroads in life.” She pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge. Turned and considered Allie again for a squirming, uncomfortable length of time. “I gotta say, though, you really don’t strike me as the type.”
“The type?” Allie waited, but nothing happened. No answer. She sipped at the juice again, but her stomach rebelled more forcefully. “The type for what?”
“Got it,” Desiree said. “There is a lot you haven’t figured out.”
Allie waited, watched the girl scramble eggs, and thought Desiree would say more. She never did.
Allie felt relieved by that.
A few minutes later the front door opened and another girl came in. She was round and full figured, with a leather skirt and a tube top that showed off her midriff in an unflattering way. Her makeup seemed almost clownish to Allie.
This new girl moved into the kitchen without a word, her face sour. She never so much as looked at Allie. She stared into the pan of scrambled eggs. She and Desiree grunted a greeting to each other.
“Bad night?” Desiree asked.
“Aren’t they all?”
“Want food?”
“No. Hell no.” Her face twisted with revulsion. “I’m just going straight to bed.”
And she did.
Allie felt a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes sprang open.
Victor was sitting by her hip on the edge of the couch, leaning over her. Somehow Allie must have fallen asleep again, though the plan had been to avoid it.
He smiled down at her in a way that made her stomach feel as if it were rolling over in place. He still had not moved his hand off her shoulder.
“Allie, right?”
“Right.”
“Come on. We’re going for a ride. Just you and me.”
He stood. Held a hand out to her, as if to help her up. Allie lay still, staring at the hand. A cold map of fear spread through her midsection, identifying lands she had never known existed.
“Where, though?”
His smile changed. Morphed into something more like a smirk.
“Yeah. Jasmine told me you were the cautious type.”
“Jasmine.” Right. Jasmine. My lifeline. “Where is Jasmine?”
“She had some work. Come on. I won’t bite you.”
Allie sat up. “Just . . . where are we going, though?”
“I’m going to buy you a really good meal. Jasmine told me it’s hard for you to get something to eat. So we’re going to go somewhere you can get the best meal of your life. And I’m going to take you shopping. You know. For clothes.”
Allie sat blinking a moment, unsure what to think.
“That’s so nice of you,” she said.
She didn’t know how to ask if he was simply a nice guy or if there was more going on that she did not understand. She braved a look into his eyes but found no answers there. Just a good poker face.
“But . . .”
“For once in your life, kid, skip the buts.”
“I can’t. I’m just not a person who lets those things go. How will I ever pay you back?”
“When you’re working, you can pay me back. Easy.”
“Oh,” Allie said. “Right.”
It did sound easy. And it made sense. Allie had been waiting for something—anything—with those familiar qualities to come along. The strain of attempting to assess this situation had begun to wear her down, causing her to want desperately to think Victor was okay. So she jumped at a chance to believe it.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Victor had a habit—a nervous one, perhaps—of running his hand along his hair, as if to smooth it back, his palm pressing it into place. But it had never been out of place to begin with. It didn’t need smoothing.
He looked over at her several times as he drove, taking his eyes off the road for too long. He wore expensive-looking sunglasses that did not hide the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. But it did hide his eyes. So it was hard to tell in what way she was being assessed. Still, something about his attention was making her uneasy. Well, more uneasy. She’d been uneasy ever since she had walked down the stairs to witness the handcuffing of her parents. Her life seemed to get worse at every juncture. Every intersection involved sudden turns into more and more dangerous neighborhoods.
“This is none of my business,” she said, mostly out of desperation to fill the car with words, “so don’t answer if you don’t want. I just wondered. Who are those other girls?”
“Well,” he said. And paused. And smoothed his hair back. “They’re . . . girls. They’re the girls.”
“They all live with you?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re Jasmine’s boyfriend, right?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Never mind,” she said quickly. “Never mind. It’s none of my business. I don’t need to know.”
They drove in silence for a time. A mile, maybe, with traffic lights at every corner, none of which Victor managed to catch on the green.
Sitting at a red light, he turned to stare at her again for an uncomfortable length of time. Allie stared out the window, her face angled away.
“You have a nice look,” he said. He waited to see if she would reply. She didn’t. This was not a body of water into which she intended to wade. “I’m not saying you’re the most gorgeous girl who ever lived or anything like that. But you have a nice face. And you’ve got a way about you. Innocent. A lot of guys really like that innocent look. It’s kind of . . . almost a virgin thing. Are you a virgin?”
Inside a head that had begun spinning, Allie began to grasp at options. She could run away in reverse—ditch this place and run back to the group home. Oh, right. No she couldn’t. She might end up with two hundred stitches. She could run away from Victor and find a police station. Throw herself on their mercy.
Not a great set of options.
Maybe she could simply be more direct with him. Tell him what she did and did not want in the way of attention. It felt worth trying.
“Can we talk about something else?”
The light turned green, and Victor stepped on the gas, causing the car to surge forward too suddenly.
“Of course. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
Allie breathed deeply for what felt like the first time in ages. In as long as she could remember.
As they stepped out of their fifth clothing store at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, all four of their arms laden with bags of purchases, Victor stopped and regarded her
again. A sea of humanity flowed around them like a river, turning them into an island of two.
It was helpful to Allie to be in this place. Upscale malls she understood. It was a relief to have part of her old world handed back.
“What else do you need to be happy?” Victor asked.
Allie’s chest filled with a warm sensation. Had she been misjudging him? Did he really want her to be happy?
“I think this is enough for clothes.”
“That wasn’t the question. I didn’t ask if you had enough clothes. I asked what more you needed to be happy.”
“Oh. Well . . .”
At first her mind only felt blank. She knew she missed money. Just the normal feeling of having money in your pocket to do what you needed to do. There was a safety about it. You could take a cab. Make a phone call.
A phone call.
It hit Allie, just that suddenly, what she missed most among her many abandoned belongings.
“It would be nice to have a phone.”
She said it hesitantly, then almost wished she could grab the words back again. A phone was expensive. Then again, so were all these clothes.
“Of course. Of course you need a phone. On to the Apple Store.”
It was just that easy. Ask, and it appears.
Almost like having parents.
Who are not in jail.
They sat outside, dining alfresco at a small bistro on Ventura Boulevard. The air was hot and thick. A printed red-and-white umbrella threw much-needed shade across their table.
Allie looked down at her amazing lunch. Or was it dinner? She didn’t know what time it was.
She had ordered a mushroom and quinoa veggie burger on a whole-grain bun with sliced avocado, sprouts, and aioli mayonnaise—sweet potato fries on the side. It tasted like heaven, like being saved. Victor had made good on his promise to buy Allie the best meal of her life.
Their two unused chairs sat heaped high with bags of clothing, and Allie now and then glanced down at the iPhone sitting beside her plate. Not for any special reason. It had none of her information on it yet, and no one had called or texted her. She looked at it because it was hers.
“We should have left all these clothes in the trunk,” she said.
“Nonsense. They should be piled all around you. It makes you feel . . . rich. You deserve a sense of plenty.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked suddenly.
The euphoric mood of the meal broke like a fever. Suddenly Allie’s stomach couldn’t decide if it wanted the amazing food or not. She took another bite of her mushroom burger but it seemed to have lost its flavor.
She glanced up at Victor, whose face had gone blank.
“I can be nice,” he said, sounding strangely hurt, like a child.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean you couldn’t. Of course you can be nice. I think I’m just worried because . . . you spent so much today. I guess I’m worried about how I’m going to pay you back for all this.”
“It’s not a problem. I told you. You start to work, I call it even.”
Allie felt her forehead wrinkle. Something wasn’t adding up.
“I thought . . .” But she never finished the sentence.
“You thought what?”
“I thought I would get a job and actually pay you back the money. You’re saying we’d be even just because I was working? So it’s like I’d be working for you?”
Allie dropped her burger. Literally dropped it. It hit the plate, but the top of its bun rolled off the table and landed on the concrete patio, causing a flap of wings as pigeons rushed to claim it.
“Oh crap,” she said.
She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
It all came together in her brain, just in that moment. The multiple young girls all living with the same much older man. The girls having been out working at night, in skimpy clothes, just coming back in the morning. The makeup. Jasmine getting “popped” and having to spend time in “juvie.”
Suddenly it was all so clear.
Allie felt like the perfect fool for not seeing it all along.
“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t.”
“What won’t you?” Victor asked, his voice cool.
“I won’t do anything that’s . . . you know. Illegal. And not . . . something I would do. I’m fifteen. I haven’t even gone all the way with a boyfriend yet, not even somebody I loved. I can’t be part of anything like this. I’ll just go.”
Silence. A long, dangerous one. Allie did not dare look up into Victor’s face. Instead she watched the pigeons fighting over her bun. Pecking at it. Pecking at each other. Forcing each other to drop it.
Finally she braved a glance up at his face. It seemed to be carved from cool marble.
“After I spent almost two thousand dollars on you. You’ll just go.”
“I’m sorry. We can take it all back. We have the receipts.”
“That would take all afternoon,” he said. “I was just getting ready to call it a day.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I’ll take the stuff back. And then I’ll walk to your house or take the bus and bring you back the money. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it right. Anything except . . . you know. That.”
Another long and potentially dangerous silence.
“Well,” Victor said. His voice sounded tight. “I’ll have to have a talk with Jasmine for putting me in this position. She’s supposed to be judging anybody she brings home better than that.” Then he sighed, and the tightness seemed to leave him. To drain out, audibly, with the air of his breath. “Okay. Whatever. I guess these things happen. Let’s just go home. You can stay tonight and then in the morning we’ll figure out what to do.”
They rose and left the bistro together, Allie leaving the best meal of her life abandoned on her plate. She looked back at it, regretfully. At least, in theoretical regret. She no longer had the appetite for it, but she hated to let it go. She watched the pigeons set upon it, eager to tear it apart.
Chapter Sixteen
The Question “What’s Worse than Juvie?” Answered
Allie sat in Victor’s living room in the dark, alone. On the couch, with her knees tightly drawn up to her chest. It was late, probably very late. Of course she was not sleeping. It felt like a blessing to be alone, given the company she had at her disposal. Then again, it felt like a sea of isolation. Allie had, for all practical purposes, no one. It was hard to believe she couldn’t just call her mother to come get her. All her life that comfort had been there for her. It felt beyond frightening to reach for that familiar presence and feel nothing. A void.
She thought of her few friends at her old school in Pacific Palisades. Maybe whether or not they truly liked her was not the issue at a time like this. Still, they weren’t like adult friends who had their own place and would let you crash on their couch. Allie was a runaway now, and needed to avoid parents. Anybody’s parents.
But maybe one of them could just wire some money or something . . .
Allie quietly searched the house for a phone. But as best she could tell in the dark, there was no landline. And if Victor had a phone, it was in the bedroom with Victor. And she had no money for a pay phone.
She heard a soft sound, and spun to look.
Jasmine was walking out of one of the downstairs bedrooms. Allie hadn’t known Jasmine was in the house. She’d thought only Victor was home, brooding in some distant room. Disappointed with Allie, or angry with her. Or both.
Jasmine turned on a soft light beside the couch and sat close to Allie’s hip.
“I’m not your biggest fan right now,” Allie said, avoiding Jasmine’s eyes.
“Look. Allie. We could go on all night about whatever issues you have with me. But that’s not your big problem at this point. There was a lot I wanted to tell you about Victor before you spent any time alone with him. You don’t say no to him. You just don’t.”
“I already did.”
With those words, Allie raised her eyes to Jasmine’s face. Jasmine’s right eye was swollen half shut, a jagged purple bruise forming. Allie’s shock must have registered on her face.
“It’s nothing,” Jasmine said, lowering her face and letting her hair fall over the problem. “I just ran into something.”
Victor’s fist? Allie thought. She wisely did not say it out loud.
“I told him no and he seemed to take it okay,” she said instead.
“Seemed to. Look, Allie, you’re really, really super naïve. I sort of knew that but I guess I didn’t see how much. You need to get out of here. Like, now.”
“Now?” It came out as a screech, and Jasmine shushed her, glancing over her shoulder toward the bedroom. Alarm buzzed in Allie’s stomach, a sickeningly familiar feeling. Her constant companion. “I can’t go now. It’s night. I can’t go out there all alone at night! Where will I go? How am I supposed to take care of myself out there?”
“I think if I were you, I’d take my chances.”
“I could go back to New Beginnings, I guess. I couldn’t live there, though. Brick would kill me. But I could go back into the system and get them to put me someplace else. Anyplace else. Couldn’t I?”
“Yeah. You should. That’s what I would do. I mean, they’ll put you in juvie, but—”
“They’ll what? Why? Why would they put me in juvie?”
“Because you ran away. That’s what they do with runaways from the system. Trust me. I know.”
Allie took a moment to breathe. To stabilize the room as it appeared inside her tilting head.
“I’ll only stay till morning and then I’ll figure something out. I can’t leave now.” Silence. “What could happen to me if I don’t leave now?”
More silence.
“Victor only helps girls who play the game,” Jasmine said. “The ones who stay with him on purpose. That’s just how he operates. But some guys’re not like that.”
Allie gripped her own knees more tightly and waited for Jasmine to go on. She never did. Allie was left with no real understanding of Jasmine’s words. No way to apply them to her own situation.
Those other guys were not here, right? So why had they even come up in conversation? It sounded like Jasmine was saying Victor was better than most, but that hardly answered the question of why she had to clear out tonight.
Allie and Bea : A Novel Page 10