by Paige Dearth
Gracie began to come out of her deep coma-like state and looked over at her sister. “You’re fine,” Emma assured her.
The doctor came in, his face tight, his eyebrows raised, and his forehead lined with concern for the young girl he’d heard about in bay 12. “Hello, Gracie. I’m Doctor Knoll. I’ll be taking care of you. Can you tell me what happened?”
In a weak, almost inaudible voice, she said, “Three boys had sex with me.”
Hearing Gracie utter those six words made Emma’s stomach rise and drop, as if she was riding a roller coaster.
“Gracie, I know you’ve been through a great deal tonight. But I have to ask you some questions and then I’m going to take a look at you,” Dr. Knoll explained in a kind voice.
“Are you related to this person that brought you in here tonight?” He motioned toward Emma.
“She’s my sister.”
“Good. Now, is there any chance you could be pregnant?” he asked gently.
Gracie looked at Emma with alarm. “She doesn’t get her period yet,” her sister responded for her.
“All right, that’s fine. Now, Gracie, the boys stuck their penis in your vagina?”
Gracie nodded and turned her head away, embarrassed.
“Listen very closely, Gracie. It’s not your fault,” Dr. Knoll soothed. “Did they do anything else to you?”
Gracie shook her head.
Just then the nurse walked back into the bay. Addressing Emma she asked, “Do you have identification? We’ll need to do a pelvic exam and I’ll need you to sign a consent form.”
Emma handed her the fake ID. The nurse wrote down the information from the card and handed the form to her. “Sign and date at the bottom.”
Once Emma had signed the form the nurse opened a rape kit and methodically went through the procedure, capturing all of the evidence. She drew blood and sent the samples off to the lab, not knowing that the girls would never be around long enough to know the results. Once the nurse was finished, the doctor returned to bay 12 and looked at the scared young girl. “Gracie, I’m going to have to take a look at what they did to you. It may be a little uncomfortable, but it will only last a couple of minutes. I promise.”
Emma stepped up to the bed and grabbed Gracie’s hand. When the doctor was finished he looked at the two sisters. “You’re going to be fine. I can see that you’re bruised, but it doesn’t look like there is any internal damage that won’t heal on its own. We’re going to send in a social worker to talk to you about where you can get counseling. I’ll come back in to see you after she is finished.”
The nurse gave Gracie a pair of scrubs to put on since her clothes had been taken for evidence. Once she was dressed Emma said to her in a calm, firm voice, “Gracie, we are going to leave now that we know you’re all right. If anyone asks, we say that you need to go to the bathroom. Are you ready?”
The two girls proceeded along the short corridor of the emergency room. Doctors and nurses rushed by them with a gunshot victim lying on a gurney. No one noticed as the sisters walked out of the emergency room doors. They found Brianna and Syd sitting in the car exactly where they said they’d be waiting.
The two girls looked on from the front seat in anticipation. “She’ll be fine. The doctors said she’s gonna be okay.” Then Emma was silent as she considered what to do next. “We can’t take her back to Kensington, it’s too dangerous. We need to lay low for a couple of days where no one can bother us. Where the fuck can we go?”
Syd smiled. “I know the perfect place.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sydney led them to the Penn Tower across the street from the hospital. She explained that they could park the car in there and be a little safer. Emma decided they’d stay there for two or three days to give them time to figure out where they could go next. The parking garage was used mainly by medical staff and people visiting sick patients.
They parked on the roof where there were fewer cars because they were exposed to the elements. The next day they moved the car down two levels, just to be sure that no one became suspicious of them. Gracie woke seeming more herself. She told the girls what the boys had done to her and they reassured her that she would be fine. “Gracie, living on the streets is tough,” Syd explained with her eleven-year-old wisdom, “but you have to be tougher than the pricks that want to bring you down. There are all kinds of assholes out there. You have to be more careful. You can’t tell anyone where you’re staying. What do these guys look like?”
“Two of them are tall and one is short and fat. They all have dark hair,” she described vaguely.
“How old?” Emma pressed.
“I don’t know. Maybe fifteen,” Gracie offered.
Emma looked at Sydney for confirmation that she could make a connection, but the young girl just shook her head. “Okay,” Syd blurted, “Brianna and I are gonna go find something to eat. You two stay here. You don’t want to run into anyone from the emergency room.”
Once on the street, Brianna and Sydney sat in front of a restaurant directly across the street from the hospital. It was a sandwich joint frequented mainly by hospital workers. Syd stood as two women in scrubs walked toward the entrance. “Excuse me, we’re really hungry,” she started innocently. “Do you think you could give us a couple of dollars to buy something to eat?” she asked, shuffling her feet from side to side.
The two women looked on, their hearts opening wide for the dirty young girls begging for a meal. “Sure, sweetheart. You stay here and we’ll see you when we come out.”
Ten minutes later the two women stopped to talk to Brianna and Sydney on their way back into the hospital. “Here, we brought you two hoagies. And wait.” The other woman reached into a bag and came out with two bags of chips, two brownies, and two cold orange sodas.
The girls gathered up their food, thanked the women, and rushed back to the car. When they finished eating, Syd sat back against the front seat. “Listen, I’m gonna head out later today. I’ll hop a train back to Kensington. My peeps are going to wonder where I’m at. Do you guys have money to get out of the garage?” she asked, willing to go beg for money before she left if they needed her to.
“Yeah, we have a little money left. We’ll be fine,” Emma told her. She liked the young girl. Sydney was the most resourceful person she’d ever met.
“When will we see you again?” Gracie asked, disappointed that Syd was leaving.
“Don’t know. If you’re ever back in Kensington just ask around and you’ll find me,” she told Gracie. Syd didn’t get attached to people. She knew from her early years that people come and go from your life all the time. However, she liked the three girls more than she did most of the transient players in her life.
That night, after Syd left, the girls parked the car up on the roof of the garage, where it was open and they could see the sky. While they were sitting there it began to rain hard. The water slammed the car with such force it felt as if they were sitting inside a drum. Somehow, though, the rain made them feel protected. As if it was keeping predators away.
Emma was consumed with worry as she obsessed about how to get them off the streets. With the groceries they’d bought and the gas they had paid for, they were down to $148. They couldn’t afford to stay in the garage longer than a couple of days.
She knew that the rest of their money would go in no time at all, and with winter looming, she was aware of the need to find a more permanent solution very soon. She was desperate enough to consider prostitution, but wanted to give herself a little more time to think of another option. She tucked the thought of selling sex into the far recesses of her mind, knowing it was there if they really needed the money.
Emma’s thoughts were interrupted by the announcer on the radio. “Join us at Double Visions Go-Go Bar in Horsham for amateur night, every third Thursday, for a chance to win two hundred and fifty dollars,” the announcer challenged. “You must be at least eighteen years old and have proof of ID to enter.”
> Emma sat up with a jerk. “Did you hear that?” she asked the others. “A chance to win money! Bri, I think we should go and try to win this thing.”
Brianna laughed, assuming her friend was joking. “Seriously, Em,” she chuckled, “how are we going to do that? I mean, we’ve never danced at a go-go before.”
“That’s why they call it amateur night, Bri. We have nothing to lose.”
Gracie didn’t really understand what it all meant. “What do you have to do?” she asked, confused. She was trying to mentally recover from the rape and the thought of Emma doing anything “sexual” scared the shit out of her.
Emma shrugged. “I don’t know exactly, but it sounds like all you have to do is dance.” Then she had an afterthought. “Do you think we’d have to get naked?” she asked Brianna.
“Don’t know. Maybe,” Brianna replied, unnerved at the idea of being naked in public. “I have an idea. The third Thursday is in two weeks. Why don’t we go there this week and check it out to see what it’s all about?”
Emma sat back again and smiled. “That would be perfect, Bri! We’ll go there on Friday night and see for ourselves.”
“If you have to do sex with anyone, you’re not gonna go, right?” Gracie asked, wanting to be sure they wouldn’t do anything stupid.
“Right,” Brianna assured.
Emma preferred the idea of dancing to prostitution and was thankful for the fake IDs she and Brianna had bought. She relaxed into the car seat wondering what it would be like to go to a strip club. The thought of it made her both excited and anxious. What if the men thought she was ugly? Could she dance without clothes on in front of a bunch of men? These thoughts churned through her mind as she drifted off to sleep to the sound of the rain drumming a steady lullaby.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They arrived at Double Visions around nine o’clock on Friday night. Emma was a little nervous about leaving Gracie in the car, which now sat in a well-lit area of the parking lot to discourage intruders from breaking in. They had, however, taken the precaution of making her lie down on the backseat and covering her with a sheet so that she wouldn’t be visible to the club’s patrons. Emma had also purchased a large knife, which Gracie now had in a strangle hold. There was quite a crowd at the bar and Emma had instructed her little sister that if anyone approached the car to run as fast as she could to the entrance, where no one would dare follow.
“I hate staying in the car alone,” Gracie said flatly.
“We know, but we have to make some money. We won’t be gone long, Gracie,” she reassured her, leaning in for a long hug.
At the entrance of Doubles, the girls’ IDs got them past the bouncer and they quickly settled into seats at the huge bar that occupied space in the center of the large room. Inside the bar were two stages, each with a pole in the middle. There were several bartenders, male and female.
A good-looking young bartender walked over to them. “What can I get you ladies to drink?” he inquired with a handsome smile, making them feel special.
“We’ll take two of the cheapest beers you have,” Emma told him.
The bartender gave them a small nod and came back with two drafts. The DJ played music while a girl performed on each stage. Emma and Brianna watched for a while. The girls were all topless, but not completely naked. Emma found that reassuring. Observing their moves carefully, she concluded there wasn’t much to it. The strippers wiggled around and made sexy moves. They made eye contact with the men sitting around the bar, the I-want-to-fuck-you kind of eye contact. When the performers finished their set, they walked all around the bar, stopping in front of each person for a tip. They squeezed their boobs together so that the customer could tuck a dollar bill into their cleavage.
Alright, Emma thought, not so bad. When the first girl came up to them for a dollar, Emma shrugged. “Sorry, we don’t have any money to spare. But you were really good,” she offered.
The dancer gave them a knowing look and said, “Well, if you’re looking for a place to make money without having to fuck anyone, you should come back for amateur night.” Then she extended her hand.
“My name is Rana,” she said. “I’ve been working here for about two months. That guy over there,” she pointed to the far end of the bar, “that’s Jay, the bar manager. He’s a really cool guy and he treats us girls good.”
“The thing is,” Emma said hesitantly, “we’ve never done this before. I mean, we’ve danced at parties and nightclubs, but we’ve never danced for money.”
“So what?” Rana said. “That doesn’t matter. Take a look around. These guys could care less.” Before moving on to collect her dollars from around the bar, she said, “Next Thursday night, you should try it.”
The bartender approached them again. “You ladies know Rana? The guys here love her.”
“No,” Emma told him, “we just met her. We’re thinking about coming back for amateur night next week.”
The bartender smiled. “Good, can I get you another beer?”
“We wish,” Brianna answered, “but it’s not in our budget.”
Minutes later, the bartender came back with two beers. “These are on me. Enjoy the show.”
Emma and Brianna sat back and took in the atmosphere. They discussed coming back to the bar on Thursday night. Though a bit nervous about the idea, they both agreed they should try it. The second time Rana came out on stage, they watched her closely. This girl didn’t just wiggle around. She could really dance. Emma and Brianna found themselves mesmerized by her performance.
When Rana came around the bar again, she asked, “Well? What’d ya decide?”
“I think we’re going to give it a try. You can really dance,” Emma added admiringly. “You’re fun to watch.”
Rana smiled. “Listen, let me find out if you can come downstairs to our dressing room. We can talk about it a little and I can fill you in on what to expect.”
The girls eagerly agreed. After Rana finished doing her round of the bar, they saw her talking to Jay. She turned to them from across the room and waved them over. “This is Jay,” she told the girls when they approached. “He manages the place. He said you could come downstairs with me.”
Jay put out his hand to Emma, then to Brianna. “I understand you two might do amateur night,” he said pleasantly. “That’s great. Rana will show you the dressing room and fill you in on things. Hope to see you next Thursday.”
His reassuring smile made Emma and Brianna feel safe somehow. They followed Rana cautiously and observed all the dancers bustling around the room practically naked and getting ready for their set.
Emma felt comfortable and could see herself easily fitting into this life. Looking around the dressing room, Emma sensed that the other dancers were similar to her. They went about doing what needed to be done, but something deep inside each of them had been stolen.
For the first time in her life, Emma felt as if she was where she belonged.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the dressing room, Emma and Brianna took in every detail of their surroundings. There were about a dozen girls in the room; some were naked, others half-dressed. Rana pulled over two chairs and they all sat.
“First of all,” she said, “Rana is my stage name. My real name is Alessa. That lady over there is Shiver. She helps Jay with all of us. She keeps things in order and helps the girls with whatever they need. She dances here too. They named her Shiver because the men say when she dances it makes them shiver from head to toe. Wait until you see her on stage, she’s incredible!”
Emma liked Alessa instantly. She was about the same age as Emma and Brianna. Alessa had an innocence about her that was addictively appealing. Yet her eyes were old, as if she had been through a lot in life. Emma recognized that look; it was the same one she suspected other people saw in her.
“So, Alessa, how did you start dancing?” she asked. “I mean, what made you do it?”
“The same reason you’re here, I guess,” Alessa state
d matter-of-factly. “I needed the money. I have a manager. His name is Harlin. He’s my girlfriend’s brother. I had some really bad shit happen to me a few months back. Now I pay for his protection.”
“Is he your pimp?” Emma asked.
Alessa smiled. “No. He’s not my pimp. I mean, technically, he probably is, but I’m not a hooker. I dance here and give him half of everything I earn. He drives me to and from work. I live in North Philly.”
Emma knew from Alessa’s tone of voice that there was more to the story than she was willing to share. She respected that and moved on to amateur night. “So what would we need to wear?” she asked. “Do we have to go topless?”
Alessa explained they needed a costume, but since it was amateur night, they could make their own. “You know, really short shorts and a bra,” she elaborated. “You’ll need some heels, though. The last amateur night, a couple of the girls didn’t want to go topless and kept their bras on. Jay is fine with that, but don’t expect to win then. The girls who do amateur night are seriously out to win. It’s a quick two hundred and fifty bucks, ya know?”
A little embarrassed, Emma asked, “Do you think you could give us some pointers? I mean, you know, so that we might have a chance of winning?”
Happy to offer advice, Alessa quickly gave them the three most important tips. “One, make bedroom eye contact with the men around the bar,” she began. “Two, the guys like it when you bend over and show them your ass; you know, touch your toes and sway your hips for a while. And three, you may not be comfortable with what you’re doing, but pretend like crazy that you are or they’ll know it. They need to think you’re into them. Always remember: it’s a stage and you’re a performer.”