by Ray Garton
She had full blond hair that fell over her shoulders, gathering on her gray wool coat in curls and waves. Her cheeks were gently rounded, her skin smooth, and her eyes a dark brown that stood out beneath the dark blond hair. Even the heavy wool coat that reached almost to the knees of her blue jeans could not completely hide the generous curves beneath it as she stood with both hands holding her only suitcase before her and with her purse slung over her left shoulder. Those curves were generous enough to make her look older than her real age and to inspire more than a few young men — and some not so young — to come on to her. Lacey hated those curves, hated them with as much passion as she'd seen in the eyes of some of the men who admired them, and she tried her best to hide them.
Before her, orange chairs of molded plastic, all attached back to back, formed row after row, stretching through the noisy, cavernous station. Some of the chairs had small coin-operated television sets attached to them so you could sit down, drop in a quarter or more, and watch something while you waited.
The chairs were grimy and stained, occupied here and there by people leaning forward in their seats looking tired and dejected, others with their heads back and mouths open as they slept, and still others who looked nervous and jittery, unable to hold still for very long. Some stared with blank expressions at the blaring television sets, the screens casting flickering, purplish glows on their faces.
She'd come south from Cottonwood and had a one-hour and twenty-minute wait before she could continue on to Los Angeles. But she could tell from the smells and the sounds and the people all around her — some pathetic, others menacing — that an hour and twenty minutes in this place would probably seem like a lot longer. Like forever, maybe.
But she had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, so she started into the station to look for a seat that was far from anyone and hoped she could just sit and wait and be invisible until it was time to go.
She passed by a long bank of video games and pinball machines as she looked for an isolated seat, and the bleeps and bells and buzzes that came from the games echoed harshly off the cold walls and grated on her, made her wince.
Lacey found a chair that was a comfortable distance from anyone else — one that, thankfully, was not equipped with one of the sticky-looking television sets — and dropped into it, exhausted. She put her suitcase on the floor beneath the chair and her purse in her lap, clutching her hands together on top of it. She'd gotten little sleep in the last three days and she was exhausted. Of course, she seldom slept well anyway, but lately she had been too busy and frantic planning her escape to sleep.
She knew she would have found the hard, cold, plastic chair uncomfortable at any other time, but not now; it felt almost plush now. She'd been sitting on the bus to San Francisco, of course, but had been too scared to sleep. Besides, the numbing grumble of the engine, the jostling of the ride, and the fact that she knew she'd get sick if she closed her eyes prevented even a little catnapping. Now she was so tired, she could almost ignore all the sounds and smells around her enough to fall asleep. But she wouldn't let herself. She was too scared. So many of these people looked so ... scary.
Lacey's hometown, Cottonwood, California, was very small, with a population of about twenty-five hundred. It was too small to have its own bus station, so she'd had to arrange a ride with her girlfriend Pam, in the middle of the night, to the Greyhound station in Red Bluff, about fifteen miles south of Cottonwood. She hoped Pam wouldn't get into trouble. Most of all, she hoped she'd see Pam again someday; Lacey was going to miss her.
She'd awakened her eight-year-old sister Daphne just before sneaking out of the house in the dark and secret hours of the morning. Daphne had never quite awakened entirely, just enough to murmur groggily, "Whassamatter?"
"Nothing, Daph. I just wanted to say good-bye."
In a half-sitting position, her eyes almost completely closed, Daphne asked, "G'bye? Where y'goin'?"
"I'm ... going away, hon. But I wanted to tell you something, and I want you to remember it, okay? I want you to think about it often, keep it in your head all the time!” she hissed.
"Whassat?" Her eyes were open now, but squinting, and she rubbed one with a knuckle.
"Be careful of Daddy. Be very careful of him. Be afraid of him."
"But Daddy loves me."
"I know, Daph, I know how nice he is to you and how he pampers you and treats you like a queen, and that's nice. But he did the same thing to me when I was your age. And then, one day, he started ... touching me. He'd come into my room at night and, and he'd touch me ... in private places ... make me do things. He's still doin' it to me. But I'm older now. And I'm getting even older. So he's gonna start doin' that to you someday. Real soon, in fact. I just know that's what he's doin', he's gettin' you ready. And what I want you to remember is this: Don't let him do it. Don't make the same mistake I did. Tell somebody. Let somebody know he's doin' it as soon as he starts."
"Like Mom?"
"No, no, she won't listen. I tried that and it didn't work. Tell a teacher or a neighbor or a ... even a policeman. Just don't let him do it." She placed a hand gently to the side of her little sister's face and breathed, "I don't want him to do to you what he did to me."
"Okay, sis," Daphne said, then flopped back down on her pillow. "C'n I go back t'sleep now? I'm tired."
"Sure." Lacey kissed her sister's cheek.
Daphne closed her eyes and mumbled, "See ya in th'morning."
No, Lacey thought as she stood up from Daphne's bed, no you won't.
It had been on her mind for a long time, this idea of running away, of just disappearing sometime when no one expected it. She'd been wanting, for a long time, to leave that house filled with pictures of Jesus — some of him on the cross, others of him smiling down at groups of children with a glowing golden halo over his head — but it had taken her a while to save up enough money to buy a ticket to Los Angeles. Most of it had been pilfered, now and then, from her mother's purse.
She wasn't sure why she'd chosen Los Angeles. It was at the other end of the state, for one thing, a long way from her father. But other than that ... well, she didn't especially want to be an actress or a singer or anything like that. She just knew that it was a big city, and if it was so big, then surely there would be plenty of opportunities for her to start a life — some kind of life — better man she'd been having with her parents.
With her mother, who floated around the house silently wearing a numb, frozen smile.
With her father, who was not silent at all and who smiled with great enthusiasm and lust in Lacey's bedroom.
Lacey stared straight ahead at a poster on the wall that invited her to be all she could be by joining the army. She stared at that poster without really seeing it, because her mind was back in Cottonwood, back in years to that first night her father had entered her room in the late hours ...
He'd always been so kind to her, giving her gifts, taking her places, telling her stories as she sat on his lap. Hardly a weekend passed that he didn't buy her one or two Missile Pops, the long, cylindrical, rainbow-colored popsicles that were her favorites. He hugged her constantly, kissed her, held her on his lap, and ran his big fingers through her blond hair.
But as she got a bit older, things had begun to change slowly. When he held her, his hands moved to parts of her body they'd never touched before. When he kissed her, sometimes his tongue darted out to move over her lips. And sometimes, when she sat on his lap, she felt something hard pressing against her behind as he put his hand on her lap and wriggled his fingers between her thighs.
And then the night had come when she'd been awakened by the sound of her bedroom door opening. Squinting into the darkness, she saw the familiar figure of her father moving toward her. He sat on the edge of the bed and put a hand on her knee.
As he spoke, his hand moved up her body slowly, stopping occasionally to caress her through the blanket, to squeeze here and press there. Sleepy as she was, it made her feel ... f
unny.
"Hey, Princess," her father whispered. She couldn't see him very well, but she could tell from the sound of his voice that he was smiling. "Prob'ly woke you up, huh?"
"Mm-hmm." She sat up, rubbing her eyes. "Somethin' wrong?"
"Oh, no, no, nothing's wrong. I just wanted to come see my little princess. Sometimes ... I miss you. I thought, since there's no school tomorrow and you don't have to get up early, we could play a little game."
"What kinda game?"
"Well, a, uh ... a pretending game. Um, you know those popsicles you like so much? The ones I'm always buying you? What're they called, uh, Missile Pops? The long ones?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Well, I don't have one for you right now, but ... whatta you say we pretend I do have one?"
"Yeah?"
"Would you like to play a pretend game like that?"
"Mmmm," she murmured, shrugging. She was so tired.
"Well, see, I have something like a Missile Pop. And I'd like you to suck on it and pretend it's a Missile Pop. Sound okay?"
"Guess so."
He stood and Lacey heard the rustling of clothes.
"Open your mouth," he said with that smile in his voice.
Lacey was barely nine years old then. It had continued until now, until she'd left ... until she'd run away.
As she stared at the army poster, she thought of poor little Daphne. She was next in line. She'd been watching her father do to Daphne what he'd done to her for so long: the pampering the gifts, the constant affection, the royal treatment, and ... the popsicles.
Lacey had never been able to eat another Missile Pop. In fact, if she walked into a convenience store and saw them in the ice cream case, she backed away with a shudder.
She shuddered now as she stared at the poster and thought of that first night, and the countless nights that had followed. She shook her head hard, trying to throw from it the horrible thoughts that had been filling her mind. She sent up a silent prayer for the well-being of her little sister, then tried to relax and think of nothing.
She was able to clear her mind of bad thoughts and find a comfortable position in the chair. She was not, however, able to keep her eyes from fluttering closed or her head from bobbing forward. Her breathing took on a slow rhythm and her hands became limp in her lap, fingers twitching now and then as, slowly, she began to fall asleep ...
Lacey awoke with a start and a gasp, the sounds of echoing voices and footsteps and the bleepings of video games all rushing into her ears at once. Lacey shot forward in the chair, her hands clutching her knees.
She sat there for a while, her breaths coming in rapid gasps, shoulders rising and falling, until she finally began to calm down and realize that something was ... missing.
Lacey looked down and stared at her lap. There was something wrong with it. Her head was still filled with sleep and she had no idea how much time had passed — in fact, for all she knew, she'd missed her bus — but she did know that there was something wrong with her lap.
Then it hit her.
Her purse wasn't in it. Just a moment ago, it had been sitting right there on her ... or had it been a moment ago?
She leaned even farther forward and looked down at the floor around her, hoping the purse had slipped off her lap.
Her suitcase was gone.
Everything ... everything she had ... was gone.
Lacey shot to her feet, eyes wide as she looked all around her.
A pale, gaunt young man with stringy dark hair wearing filthy clothes hunched over a pinball machine, slapping the flapper buttons on the sides. The game laughed at him cruelly and he stood straight, pounded it with a fist, then turned and looked directly at Lacey. His lips separated into an abomination of a smile, revealing dark teeth.
Lacey turned away from him quickly, but not without glancing down at his feet to see if he had her suitcase or purse. He did not.
She spun around, looking, looking. Her eyes darted to every suitcase and purse in sight. None of them were hers ... none of them even resembled her bags.
The few clothes she'd brought ... the little silver music box Daphne had given her for her birthday last year ... all the money she'd saved ... it was all gone.
She looked up at the clock and saw that she had been dozing for less than fifteen minutes. Lacey's eyes teared up and she was crying before she was even aware of it. She put a hand over her mouth and looked around desperately for the rest room. She was being punished, that was it.
Her father had always told her that if she ever told anyone of the things they did together — "Things you like," he'd always added with a laugh, "things you enjoy just as much as I do, and you know it" — she would be punished, that if she ever tried to leave him, ever tried to run away, she'd be punished. Not by him, no; her punishment would be far worse than that, the kind of punishment visited on those who offended god, the kind of punishment that would change her life forever, ruin it ... crush it ... and she would never be the same again.
That's what was happening now, she was sure of it. She'd tried to run away and now she was trapped, lost. Now she was being punished.
She spotted the sign that read rest rooms. It seemed so far away, a football field away, but she started toward it, bumping into chairs and knees, stepping on feet and stumbling over bags, mumbling "excuse me"s as she wiped the tears from her eyes so she could see and fought back the sobs that were struggling to grip her in their clutches and shake her violently.
The sign got closer as she zigzagged between the rows of chairs, the ashtrays, the garbage cans, moving faster and faster, until she slammed into someone hard, tumbling backward, dancing to keep her balance, to keep from falling, until hands clutched her arms and held her up and a soft, kind voice spoke to her.
"Oh, honey, you okay? I'm so sorry!”An arm went around her shoulders and supported her.
"Oh, that's — it was — I'm just — " She stopped talking and looked into the smiling face of a woman in her late thirties, maybe early forties, with short curly brown-gray hair and chubby cheeks beneath eyes that were so pleasant and comforting.
"What's the matter with you, hon? You don't look so well."
"I was just ... on my way ... to the rest room." She swiped the back of her hand over one eye, then the other.
The woman frowned. She was short, a little shorter than Lacey, and wore a blue quilted nylon jacket over a very plain blouse and above a pair of brown stretch pants that were just a little too tight on her more than ample thighs. "Honey, somethin's wrong. Are you okay? Are you, um, in trouble or somethin'?"
The dam broke. The sobs came with a vengeance and Lacey's shoulders began to shake hard as her face twisted into a tear-streaked mask of pain and fear.
"Okay, okay," the woman said, "c'mon, let's go, into the bathroom, you and me." She began to lead Lacey toward the rest rooms. "Shouldn't go in there by yourself anyway, a pretty girl your age in a place like this. Never know who's gonna creep in there and do god knows what, know what I mean?" She patted Lacey's back as they moved quickly beneath the rest rooms sign and headed down a staircase and into one of the biggest and dirtiest public rest rooms Lacey had ever seen.
"Now, you just sit down right here," the woman said, seating Lacey in one of the rickety-looking chairs in the lounge. "I'll get you some tissues and a cold paper towel and be right back."
While she was gone, Lacey calmed down a bit. One of the things she'd told herself firmly before starting out on this strange and frightening journey into places unknown was that she would be extra careful of strangers. She'd watched the news, she'd heard stories ... and the things she'd seen on A Current Affair and Hard Copy, all those terrifying stories of things that happened to girls, especially runaways ... well, dear lord there were some sick and dangerous people out there — rather, out here. But this woman seemed so ... so normal. In fact, she seemed positively motherly, with kindness and concern in her eyes, in the way she trotted her plump form to the sink to help Lacey.
&n
bsp; But what was she doing here? In this place?
The woman returned hurriedly, sat down beside her, and put her arm around Lacey's shoulders again, dabbing her cheeks with wadded toilet tissue.
"Here," she said, handing Lacey a cold, wet paper towel. "I've found that sometimes when I'm upset about somethin', it feels real good to put some cold water on my face and forehead, know what I mean?"
Lacey nodded absently.
"By the way, my name's Carolee. What's yours?"
"Lacey."
"Lacey? Oh, that's a pretty name. Such a pretty name. How old are you, Lacey?"
Lacey hesitated. "Suh-sixteen."
Carolee's eyes narrowed and she cocked her head in playful disbelief. "C'mon, now. I'm a walking lie detector, sweetie, you can't fool me."
After a moment of sniffling, "No, no, really. That's how old I am. Really."
Carolee backed away from Lacey, propped her hand on one chubby knee, and smacked her lips with exasperation. "What in the hell are you doing here?"
Lacey did not answer. She patted her face with the moist towel; it felt good, so good.
"Did you run away from home, sweetheart?" Carolee asked in a sad whisper.
Slowly Lacey bowed her head, then nodded shamefully, eyes closed.
"Well, don't look so guilty," Carolee said. "Maybe you had good reason, how do I know? I mean, lotsa times, kids have damned good reasons for running away from home. That's why my husband and I never had kids. The planet sucks for kids. My husband's Ron. He's why I'm here. I'm waitin' for his bus, y'know. So. Did you have a good reason for running away from home?"
Lacey blinked several times, her lashes glistening with tears. "My dad. He, um ... he was ... doing things to me. Since I was nine. Things ... he shouldn't've been doing to me."
Carolee sighed, leaned forward, and gave her a hug, whispering, "Oh, baby. Baby." Then she backed away and held Lacey's hand tightly. "Yeah, I understand," she whispered. "I know what you're talkin' about, honey, and that, in my book, is damned good reason to run your butt away from home."