by Vivian Wood
My breath catches. “But why?”
“Because he owes a debt. You didn’t replace him, but someone has to.”
And then I can’t stop the tears. They’re hot and thick on my cheeks. I hate crying in front of him, but he doesn’t look like he feels sorry for me. He has this serious expression, like he’s waiting. Waiting for me to take the deal.
How can I say yes when that means sending Damon back to his father?
How can I say no when it means never seeing mine?
There’s two hundred dollars on the kitchen table, but it won’t last forever. Not long enough for me to be a young mother or a girl on the street corner. I’d starve before that. Or I would end up with Mr. Scott.
I shake my head, because I don’t want it to be true. “You can help me find him.”
“And then what? We all go on the run, one big happy family?”
His tone says that’s ridiculous. He’s mocking me, but it is what I want. “Maybe. Why is that wrong? We could be happy like that.”
Those black eyes soften. “It’s not possible, Penny. There’s nowhere we could run, not enough money or power in the world to hide us.”
“What will you do?” I whisper.
In that question is my acceptance, my apology. It would always have come to this.
He knew that before I did.
“The same thing I did before,” he says with a hard smile. “Survive.”
Chapter Five
The next day I spend most of recess in the jungle gym, in that dark, quiet place beneath the slide and behind the rusted metal wall with numbers cut out. I peer through the number eight at the door, waiting for someone to appear. No one ever does.
Mrs. Keller stares at the door, her small face hopeful. Then worried.
By the time she calls the class back inside she looks disappointed.
I don’t want her to feel bad so I tug on her hand as I pass by. She bends low, and I whisper in her ear. “I don’t want a new school anyway. I like you being my teacher.”
She blinks like she has something in her eye.
The rest of the day I sit quiet, wondering how I’m going to play dumb. We’re learning fractions right now. How do you pretend not to know something? I wish I just didn’t know.
I wish I were normal.
When it comes time for the quiz, I take a deep breath. This is how it has to be. It’s the promise I made. So even though I know that Joey only eats 1/8th of the pizza, I write down 1/16.
There are two questions I get wrong, which means my grade will be a B. Very average.
My whole life will be average.
When I get off the bus, from across the road, I see something dark and large slumped in front of my door. Is it Damon? Is he hurt? I run as fast as I can, kicking dirt into the air, clouding my sight.
Even before I get there I know it’s not him. The figure is too large.
“Daddy,” I shout over the pounding of my feet.
He doesn’t move. When I get close I see why. His face is swollen and bruised, dried blood caked over the right side. The sound of his breathing fills the humid air, thick with blood and snot.
“Daddy,” I say again, but this time it comes out as a sob. I can’t press my nails into my palm this time. Nothing will keep me from crying now.
A low sound fills the air, almost separate from the still body in front of me. Only when I put my hand to his chest and feel the faint rise and fall, the slight rumble, am I sure the sound is coming from him.
“Penny,” he says, the word slurred and broken.
“I’m here,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady. One of us has to be strong.
“No, Penny. What did he—” Daddy breaks off in a fit of coughing, the sound horrible and echoing. “I’m so sorry. What did he do to you?”
He thinks Mr. Scott did something to me. That it’s the reason he’s free.
“Let’s go inside,” I say, pulling his hand.
With a groan of pain and effort, he staggers up. Only to collapse again. I catch him with both hands, my shoulders, even my neck. A shock of weight. My bones hurt, my muscles shake. I need to get him inside. We move together in a terrible dance, falling into potholes and stumbling on the stairs. The screen door slams into my hand. His head knocks against the doorframe.
When we reach the couch it’s all I can do to tip him over. He falls onto the sagging cushions with a swear word. I run to the kitchen. Underneath the sink there’s a first aid kit in my old lunchbox, the one with My Little Pony on the front. I pull out cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. He probably needs a hospital. What if something is broken? But this is all we have.
I pause to look at the kitchen table. The two hundred dollars isn’t there anymore, tucked away under my bed instead. But I can still remember the way Damon looked sitting there, eating the soup I bought with his money. Is he okay? Is he beaten like Daddy is right now?
My eyes press shut, sending up a prayer that someone is there to take care of him.
Then I kneel at the couch.
Daddy looks more alert than he did before, his eyes less glassy and more focused. “I told him about you. About counting cards. He said he was going to—” His voice breaks.
I could tell him that Mr. Scott didn’t touch me, but that won’t help.
He could have. He would have, if it weren’t for Damon.
“Rest now,” I say in a quiet voice.
I learned my quiet voice from Mama. It’s the one I used when she had been up too late, when men had been over, when she had a headache. When I brought her a glass of water and Tylenol.
She would call Daddy bad names for leaving her in this shithole trailer park. And then one day she put a needle in her arm and went to sleep. I had to spend three months in a group home, keeping my head down and hiding the bruises from the other kids.
Then they found Daddy. I know he isn’t perfect but he’s the only person I have left. Tears trail down my cheeks, but I don’t know if I’m crying for myself or for Damon, who traded himself for me.
“You saw him, Penny?”
I look down. “He’s tall. And his voice—it’s strange. Like water.”
Daddy’s face falls. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”
Maybe it’s mean to let him think the worst, but I need him to change. The debts and the gambling, those are his needles. And I don’t want him to go to sleep, not like Mama did.
I don’t want to sleep either.
And I stay awake long after Daddy snores, the pain medicine keeping him comfortable. The shadows of trees press against my window. Somewhere out there is a lake. Somewhere out there is a boy who knows how to hold his breath longer than anyone should. How did he learn that?
What is he learning now?
I’m so sorry, Daddy said. But I’m the one who’s sorry.
Because Damon Scott traded himself for me. He’s the only reason I’m safe.
And I’m the reason he’s not.
Chapter Six
It gets easier to pretend as time goes by. My mind applies itself to finding an appropriate percentage to get wrong as easily as it did counting cards.
Daddy kept down a job long enough that we could move into the west side from the trailer park. The apartment was smaller than the trailer, but this way I could visit my friends after school. As it turns out, people like you when you keep your mouth shut and get average grades.
I was almost popular, but no one knew who I really was.
Damon Scott’s name became a part of the city’s dark culture, mostly in whispers, always linked to money or women or both. No one really seemed surprised that he had gone into the family business, that he traded in sex and violence. Even I wasn’t surprised, knowing what had happened, but I did mourn him. He could have run away, if it hadn’t been for me.
Then again, he’s a grown man now, wealthy in his own right.
He could run away now, if he wanted to.
There must be something he likes about that life, something dark a
nd sharp he’s addicted to. We all have our own needles. We each rack up our own debts.
Sometimes Daddy would slip. Bills would pile up, only for him to dig us out again. When we got close to getting evicted I would count cards, but only once. Then twice. He was as scared of Jonathan Scott as me, so he understood the risk.
And I had my own addiction. Stolen moments in the Mathematics section of the high school library. Fractals drawn on my school notebooks, filled in with little hearts and smiley faces so that no one would suspect anything. No one ever did.
Once Mr. Halstead asked me to stay after physics, where he told me that I wasn’t living up to my potential. He seemed so sincere, so kind, that I actually agreed to come to after school study sessions with him. But when he put his hand on my leg and breathed against my neck, I knew he didn’t really care about my mind.
It wasn’t anything special about me that they liked.
Only that I was a girl in the west side. We were only used for one thing.
And then there was Brennan. He had a crooked smile and a motorcycle, so all my friends thought he was a great catch. I could see the appeal, from an academic standpoint. His muscles were sharpened from working in his father’s garage, his confidence an attractive quality. I hoped he never found out I went out with him for his books. Automotive Wiring and Electrical Systems. Advanced Automotive Fault Diagnoses. Not my ideal form for numbers to take, but I read them with the same secret fervor that my father bought lotto tickets, both of us desperate for a fix.
“What are you reading, babe?”
I slammed shut his book on hybrid vehicles and slipped it under my open book from Calculus class. Technically math, but it had less to teach me than See Spot Run. Brennan’s a nice guy.
Nice enough I hope he never finds out I’m using him for his books.
“Studying,” I tell him, rising up to kiss him.
He’s sweaty from working. Their house is next door to the garage. “You hungry? I’ll shower and then we can go somewhere.”
“I have a shift at eight.” I work at a sad little diner, making five bucks an hour serving barely heated food and stale coffee. It’s better than most jobs a fifteen-year-old girl can get in west Tanglewood.
“Thought you had Fridays off.”
“Jessica’s baby has a fever.”
Brennan sighs. “We barely get to go out.”
Guilt rises inside me, because I kind of prefer it that way. Hanging out after school and making out on his couch. Every time we go to a party it’s another chance to take things further.
Brennan wants that. Maybe even deserves it, after being so patient. But I can’t give it to him. Can’t end up like Jessica with a baby. I don’t think Brennan would bail the way Jessica’s boyfriend did, but it’s too big of a risk.
I put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t say no.” And I didn’t want to. “Besides, you know I need the money.”
Something flashes across his eyes. Frustration. Futility? “What will you make? Twenty bucks? I could give you that if you spent the night.”
My hand snatches back. “Excuse me, I’m not for sale.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I mean the job’s total shit and you know it.”
“Well it’s the only one I have.” I whirl away so he can’t see the hopelessness on my face. There’s only so much humiliation a girl can take in one evening. I stare out his window at the rows of dark windows, the broken bricks. The west side is a tumbled-down maze, not even fit for living, keeping us trapped.
There is no exit strategy. No way out.
Brennan’s arms wrap around me, slick and dirty with grease but comforting all the same. “I’m a fucking idiot,” he murmurs into my hair. “I know you’re doing the best you can.”
“I just want to…” Escape. Fly to the moon. “Graduate. Then we can make plans.”
“Okay,” he says, because he understands my desire to finish school. He has his GED and he’s studying to get certified as an automotive technician. He’s a high achiever among our friends. And he’ll never know that my dreams are so far beyond this.
That I long for the impossible.
“I should get going. I have to change first.”
He turns me in his arms, his strong hands warm with familiarity, painful with certainty. He presses a kiss to my mouth. I part my lips, and he takes the invitation, pressing his tongue inside, opening me. I let him, let him, let him. That’s all I know how to do anymore.
I like his kisses the same way I like boxed mac and cheese and my worn mattress at home. They mean I’m safe and comfortable, if not quite happy.
He pulls back like he always does. Maybe sensing I would finally snap if he pushed.
It’s his own form of safe and comfortable.
His eyes search me. What does he want to find?
He traces my eyebrow, his finger agreeably callused. His expression is a little awed. “You’re the prettiest girl in the west side, you know that?”
“And out of the west side?” I ask, not because I’m vain enough to think I am. Because I want to know when we resigned ourselves to this. When we noticed the iron bars around our lives and decided not to rail against them.
His smile is sad and tired. “Out of the west side you wouldn’t be with me.”
It’s an arrow straight to the heart, because he’s right. And he deserves better. Don’t we both? I throw my arms around him and squeeze. We need friends in captivity.
Brennan takes me home on his motorcycle, the roar of the engine bouncing off pavement and brick. I mold myself to his body, my eyes squeezed tight in his helmet. There’s a perverse thrill as we race through the darkened streets. Both of us know this is as fast and as far as we’ll ever go. One slip on slick gravel is all it would take. And the worst part is the faint sense that we’re waiting for it. Wanting it. Pushing the boundaries in the hopes that we leave on our own terms, young and free.
We arrive at my apartment building, sudden stillness almost violent after the rush.
The crumbling concrete of the curb shifts under my feet.
My ears ring as I take off the helmet, placing it on Brennan’s head and tapping it into place. “I dub thee Sir Brennan. Go forth into battle.”
He grins from beneath the visor. “If I’m a knight, what does that make you?”
“The princess, of course.”
Kissing never works well with a helmet on. Someone’s forehead ends up smacked. Instead I kiss my palm and press it to his mouth, the way lords and ladies did with handkerchiefs.
A chaste kiss.
Then he’s off in a cloud of exhaust, his noble steed lovingly restored and shining.
The diner is only a couple blocks away. I have plenty of time to change before my shift. Then it will be a monotony of grease and coffee, miles to go on the same black-and-white tiles with my tired feet.
I turn toward my building, mentally bracing myself for the night to come.
“Hello, princess.”
The words come out of the dark alley to the side, and I jump back. Brennan insists on taking me home every night, when I could take the bus, partly because of safety. The voice is low and grave and completely new to me. If it’s a stranger the best thing I can do is ignore him. Hope he goes away.
That’s what they tell you to do about bullies, isn’t it?
I put my head down, wrapping my arms around myself.
With my eyes downcast I can’t see him, but I feel him. He steps out of the shadows, his presence like a cold burst of air in the hot night. “That’s not what I call you, though. To me you’ll always be a baby genius.”
Shock holds me paralyzed on the sidewalk. A dangerous prospect considering it’s late in the evening in the west side. Made even more dangerous because I know exactly who this is.
I know exactly what he’s become.
There’s a storm inside me. A whirlwind of surprise and fear, threatening to drown me. Why are you back? That’s what I want to ask. From somewhere d
eep inside, another whisper. Why did you take so long?
“It’s so much more interesting than a princess, don’t you think? A pretty face has its appeal, but a sharp mind is a goddamn aphrodisiac.”
When I turn to face him, he moves behind me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He makes a tsk sound, keeping pace as I try to confront him. “That’s not true, Penny. But I understand. You’re so used to playing dumb, aren’t you? It’s more than a habit now. It’s a veil, keeping you hidden.”
“I can’t believe you’re talking to me right now.”
“You don’t have to hide with me.”
“I’m not trying to hide,” I say, and with him at least it’s the truth. “I’m trying to look at you.”
He stops moving, and I finally face him.
I must have turned one too many times, because the air leaves my chest. Nothing could have prepared me for the sight of his dark eyes—black like night. Like inky depths I could never hope to enter. Never hope to escape. He looks so much like his father it steals my breath.
Some logical part of me knows they have differences. Jonathan Scott already had silver threading his dark hair when I met him years ago. He was taller, leaner, more severe in every way. It’s my heart that’s somehow breaking, seeing in him the whisper of evil.
With his perfectly disarranged hair and the evening shadow on his jaw, he bears little resemblance to the wild boy I knew once. His lips have filled out. His chest has filled out too, fitting into that dress shirt and tailored vest perfectly. Only the eyes prove it’s him, at once knowing and curious. Pitch black, like the night sky above the city, no stars at all to light the way.
I think I loved him once.
About as much as I despise this handsome man. He’s everything my mother would have chased after. Everything I’ve learned not to trust.
“You’re right,” he says softly. “We should go up.”
“You’re not going anywhere with me.” I glare at him, giving him my meanest look. It doesn’t seem to worry him any. A smile flickers on his lips, making him look dashing.
