Amber Stigmatized

by Viktor Redreich

  They reached the fountain. It wasn’t much of anything special, a teal statue of some kind with a water spout on top. The water poured into two tiers of shallow bowls before splashing into the main pool, kept contained by a simple concrete wall. Leaves floated on top of the water, while pennies and quarters covered the bottom.

  “Want to make a wish?” Lawrence held up two quarters between his fingers, producing them like a bad magician trying to be impressive.

  Amber took one of the cold coins and held it in the palm of her hand.

  Lawrence flipped his into the water right away. It plopped quietly into the water and sank in a shimmer of tiny bubbles to the bottom. He put his hands into his pockets and sat down on the fountain wall, looking up at her. “Kristoff wasn’t with you forever? He seems like the kind of guy who would stick around. What happened?”

  Amber looked at her quarter, wishing she knew what to wish for. “Well, he wasn’t even with us for all that long. A year maybe. He had to move overseas for business. We couldn’t go with him.”

  “Shit,” Lawrence murmured sympathetically.

  Amber threw her quarter into the fountain water, not bothering with a wish after all. Her shoulders slumped. “I begged and begged Mom to let me stay in touch with him. I wanted his phone number, his email, something. But she told me little girls shouldn’t talk to grown men. So when Kristoff left, when we moved to being with the next boyfriend, that was it. No more Kristoff.”

  She didn’t recall much of the time that came after losing Kristoff, though common sense told her she was devastated. Eventually she must have moved on with her life.

  “But did I really?” she whispered.

  “Huh?”

  Was she being silly, bothering to think about all this? She wasn’t an expert in psychology or anything, and she had never been introspective -hardly knew what that meant, if she was honest. Maybe it was the alcohol in her system, giving her a sort of detachment from herself, allowing her to see the things she normally couldn’t.

  “Maybe I’ve always been looking for Kristoff again.” A lump formed in her throat. “So when the first nice man came along who had interest in me, I went for it. Daddy… He filled the Kristoff-sized hole in my heart, maybe. But that’s messed up. I’m messed up. He could have been anyone, a psycho, a stalker, and I went along with it because I’m so desperate for…”

  For support. For protection. For someone to cheer her on, lick her wounds, comfort her.

  For someone to take care of her, because she didn’t know how to do it herself.

  I wish I knew what to do, she thought belatedly. Did wishes have a statute of limitations?

  “Everything he told me could have been fake. Why else could we not send pictures to each other? Why couldn’t we exchange personal information? Why did it all have to be limited to texting?”

  Why?

  She felt like such a little girl, always asking that question, but no one had ever given her a satisfying answer. She had to ask, no matter how much it hurt. And it hurt a lot.

  Chapter 6

  Scream into the darkness

  Lawrence got up from the fountain and reached for her hand. “Are you ready to keep going?”

  “I guess so,” she muttered. She reached for his hand, the long sleeve of the jacket flopping down over her hand. Lawrence took her hand through the jacket and smiled at her. She tried to smile back and knew she wasn’t successful from the sadness that crossed his face.

  They walked back across the grass, away from the fountain to rejoin with the path once more. Lawrence let go of her hand at that point and veered to the edge of the path, kicking at piles of leaves with his long, powerful legs.

  A lump rose in Amber’s throat, watching him. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out, her voice strangled.

  Lawrence stopped and looked back at her, his eyebrows raised. “What are you sorry for?”

  She pressed her hands to her mouth, as if she could hold her sobs back that way. “You invited me out for a date and have been so nice to me, but all I’ve done is talk about other men. I’m so awful!” she wailed.

  Lawrence’s eyes flew wide open with alarm. “Hey, don’t.”

  She wished she could obey him, but she was just so sad. Sadness filled her and it kept brimming over and spilling out, like a cup filled too full. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve done everything wrong.”

  “I think you had a little too much wine at the restaurant,” Lawrence said.

  On that, she could agree.

  Warmth pressed in close to her and then she was surrounded by it. Strong arms wrapped around her, pulled her in against a solid chest. Amber whimpered and sobbed, pulled in another convulsive breath. She felt her breath hit some part of him and rebound.

  He smells like his jacket.

  Lawrence rested his head on top of hers and let out a huge sigh, his shoulders slumping. “I asked you out because I was worried about you. I told you that you could talk if you wanted to. And you’ve been talking. You’ve been doing exactly what I said you could. How did you do something wrong, then?”

  “But you like me. And I’ve been so selfish.”

  “Yeah? So?” He shrugged against her, a funny feeling. “We’re all allowed to be selfish sometimes when we need to. And you really needed to, so I let you. That’s what it means to like someone. Letting them do what they need.”

  Her breathing slowed, her sobs turning to little hitches and whimpers. “It can’t have been fun for you.”

  “Well, no. But it also wasn’t fun wondering where you were for a whole month.” Lawrence leaned back, keeping his arms around her shoulders. His eyes were very soft, very sweet with his bangs hanging in them. “I like you. I did want our date to be about us, but it became really clear to me that you needed to get this stuff off your chest. I realized our date wasn’t ever going to be about us. It was about you. And you know what? I’m still glad, because I got to spend time with you. You get it?”

  Amber sniffed and rubbed her eyes. “I think so.”

  “Good. Now let’s get back to the truck before it gets dark and really cold.” He straightened up with a smile. “I like you, but I’m not going to give you my shirt.”

  She giggled.

  “Or maybe I would, for a kiss,” he added, as an afterthought. He almost seemed to be talking to himself, so Amber didn’t answer. She’d never kissed anyone before except for maybe a fellow kindergartner who she had declared was going to be her husband -her memories were a bit vague on that- and she didn’t think she’d be very good at it. She’d disappointed him enough for one day.

  They walked back to the truck, not holding hands at first, until Amber tripped over a branch hidden in a pile of fallen leaves. Lawrence acted with his catlike reflexes and snatched her hand, saving her from a pretty big fall. He didn’t let go of her hand after that, and she didn’t try to make him.

  Once they were in the truck, Lawrence backed out and started driving.

  Amber peeked out the window and then at him. “College is that way.”

  “I’m not ready to go back to college,” Lawrence said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, why your guy wouldn’t ever tell you or show you anything about himself.”

  “Okay?” Her chest tightened.

  “What kind of guy was he? I mean, you two had to talk a lot. That’s all you can do over text. He must have told you about parts of his life.”

  “He did,” she confirmed, although she didn’t really see what it had to do with anything.

  “What kind of stuff did he tell you about?” Lawrence drove them down the length of the park and beyond, heading for a secluded side road that would take them outside the city limits.

  “Oh, all sorts of stuff. He was always going on business trips to different countries. He flew a lot. First-class. He liked to tell me about things he saw in all the different places. And he sent me pictures, too. Not of him. But of mountains and the ocean and the planes he was going to take. Daddy never… never
liked to stay at home. He always wanted to be doing something.”

  Lawrence nodded while listening. He didn’t speak for a minute or so after, just driving them over the bumpy little road. Amber didn’t speak, didn’t want to disturb his thoughts.

  At last, he spoke. “I think you would have figured out really quickly if he was someone playing a trick on you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Like, if he was an incel, he might pretend to be nice at first, but then he would get tired of it and would only focus on getting what he wanted.” Lawrence looked at her while coming to a stop sign. “But that wasn’t the case?”

  “Never!”

  “He never said anything weird that was out of character? Like he’d been lying the whole time and forgot to keep up the lie?”

  I have no idea where he’s going with this.

  Amber shook her head, partly out of confusion.

  Lawrence got driving again, turning down yet another side road, this one taking them back in the direction of the city. “So I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate. Which means, we’ll go along with the idea that he was a real person. That’s what you feel in your heart, I can tell. So why would a real person not want you to know who they are?”

  “I don’t know, I told you!” she cried.

  Lawrence jumped. “Hey, easy. I’m getting to it.”

  She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, waiting.

  “So he sounds like a really high-profile individual. Someone important in some way to some sort of business. He might have needed to protect his identity. Not just from you, but from anyone who might find out what he was doing. It’s common for wealthy people to take those extra steps to cover their tracks.”

  But that means he didn’t trust me.

  “With just one image, a person can find out everything about a person that there is to know.” Lawrence flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s crazy how much information there is online about you. You could take a picture of him and look him up, find out every little detail there is. Maybe not so bad, unless you turn out to be crazy. But let’s look at things from his perspective. If you send him a picture of you and it fell into the wrong hands, he’s done for.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He could be hacked. Someone could steal his phone and see that he has this nice picture of a cute young girl. They use it to threaten him. Even worse, they sell the information to a reporter or journalist. Using your image, they dig up everything there is to know about you and run a news piece about how a respected senior executive has a teenage lover-slash-girlfriend. His whole reputation comes under fire. Even if his company has a good PR, his relationship with you will haunt everything he does. Everyone will know. He could lose his job because the company he's with doesn’t want the teen-loving businessman to be associated with them.”

  Amber sat there, absolutely stunned. She hadn’t ever thought about things like that before. No one could trace her using her voice, or pictures of her graded papers, or even of her body, but she had sent Daddy images of her face, too. He must have panicked.

  He loved her, but he could only love her like he did because of who he was. Sending him pictures had jeopardized everything.

  “It’s only a theory,” Lawrence said.

  “I think you’re right,” she whispered. She trembled all over. “I could have ruined him!”

  “But you didn’t know. And you still don’t know,” he pointed out, pulling into the college parking lot. “It’s just nice to have possibilities instead of sitting in the dark, isn’t it?”

  It really was.

  Overcome by gratitude for Lawrence, Amber turned to him and threw her arms around him. She pressed her head to his and closed her eyes, tears slipping from underneath her eyelashes. “Thank you, Lawrence. You’re an amazing friend.”

  He grinned and petted her hair. “You’re welcome. Maybe next time, I can tell you my sad backstory. I’ll have to think of one first, though.”

  She giggled and withdrew. “Make it dramatic.”

  “It’ll be Disney-worthy.”

  She laughed. “Really, thank you for tonight.”

  “No problem, Amber.” Lawrence smiled at her. He put his hand on her thigh and then abruptly jerked it back. He curled his fingers into a fist and set it on his own leg. “Well, anyway. I’d walk you back to your dorm but I think I’ve risked being caught enough for one day.”

  She giggled again. “I’ll be fine going back on my own.”

  “We’ll have to go hiking again soon.”

  She nodded. “We will.”

  After that, there wasn’t anything more to say. Amber climbed out of the truck and walked up to the sidewalk. She turned back to wave at Lawrence. He wasn’t looking at her. He had his head leaning back on the headrest, his eyes closed. His lips were curved in a huge smile.

  She turned back around and went to her dorm room.

  She understood Daddy better now.

  She could do better.

  Amber took her phone and slid under the covers on her bed. Curled up in the warm dark with the light of the phone shining on her face, she pulled up their old messages, all of which had been read and ignored.

  She trembled, her heart pounding hard in her chest. She tapped the keyboard, a single letter at a time. It took almost two whole minutes because of how hard she was shaking.

  Daddy, she wrote, your little girl needs you.

  There was so much more she wanted to say -so much she needed to say- but this would have to be enough for now.

  Amber turned her phone screen off and curled up around it, holding it close to her heart. She fell asleep like that and it was the best sleep she’d had in weeks.

  A buzzing against her heart awoke her several hours later. She jolted, realizing it was a notification. She fumbled her phone up to her face and turned it on.

  Daddy had sent a message, a single message after all the silence, but it was the best response she could have asked for.

  Let’s meet.

  Chapter 7

  Little girl in a big world

  Amber couldn’t stop staring around herself as she left the bus stop and walked the couple blocks to the building where she was to meet Daddy.

  He lived in the next city over from where she went to college and she had never been there before. Now she thought she might never leave. Everything was so beautiful, so perfect. She hadn’t really realized until she was walking down the sidewalks of this much cleaner city how grungy and dirty the college town was. Here, all the sidewalks were swept of dirt and fallen leaves and all the windows on each building shone, reflecting the dying rays of sunlight. There weren’t any homeless people, either. Not that she had anything against homeless people. She always made sure to have a granola bar in her back pocket when she went out so she could give it to someone in need - it was a small gesture but she wanted to help. However, there was such a blatant lack of any beggars on the streets that she couldn’t help but notice. And no sign of their presence, either. No graffiti or shopping carts filled with personal belongings placed just out of sight in alleyways, and no rolled-up sleeping bags tucked under benches.

  The gutters were free of litter, glistening with cleanliness.

  All of the street lights worked and as she walked, she couldn’t see any signs of ongoing construction.

  And all the cars that passed her by on the calm streets were pristine, freshly-washed, without so much as a dent or scratch. She didn’t know much about cars but it seemed to her like these ones were very new and expensive. Their engines roared with power, true power, low and deep growls that were real and not the result of hack jobs her peers did on their own vehicles to make them seem better than they were. Even Lawrence had done something like that to his truck once.

  Amber giggled a little to herself while she walked. All he had really done was make his truck sound like it had the flu. The repair job to reverse what he’d done would cost several hundred dollars.

&n
bsp; In essence, this city looked a whole lot like where someone like Daddy would live.

  She turned the corner, around a fashionable restaurant. All the buildings to her left fell away, melting into a sprawling park. Had she thought the park Lawrence took her to was beautiful? It had been, but it couldn’t compare at all to this one. Pine and maple mingled, dark green against crimson and gold flames. Someone, or many someones, had raked up most of the fallen leaves and removed them, leaving the wide cobblestone paths bare. Multiple trails wove in and out of the trees, past tall, tiered fountains. Flowerbeds bloomed with blossoms in such rich shades of yellow and cerulean and violet and sapphire that they hardly seemed real. Looping through the whole park, creating islands of flowers, was a glistening stream across which arched brick bridges spanned.

  And across from the park was the luxury residential building where Daddy lived.

  Amber swallowed hard, pulled from her sightseeing by the reminder of the real reason she was here. He was there, on the 21st floor. She stopped and looked up and up and up, craning her neck, trying to count the floors. Could he see her, she wondered. Was he standing at one of those windows, the glass cast in jewel tones by the sunset, watching her approach?

  She trembled, goosebumps rippling the flesh on her arms, making the fine hairs stand up. She rubbed her arms, hugged herself. She shouldn’t be so nervous. This was what she’d always wanted. She should be excited.

  Amber made herself smile. It was hard, but easier once she got started.

  A car drove by, a gleaming gold bug of a vehicle. The driver had their windows down. He peered out through the gap at Amber, his little black eyes skimming over her. He frowned and jerked his head back inside, rolled up his window, and drove away faster than before.