True story.
“You, uh, need help?”
Following the sound of a man’s voice, I twist around and shield my eyes from the afternoon sun.
Madden.
Rising, I tug my shirt into place and exhale. “Seven minutes past and they put a boot on my car.”
“Probably just did it to be a dick.” He almost smiles. Almost. It’s more of a smirk.
“Really?”
“Probably thought you were some yuppie, suburban soccer mom with that Volvo.”
I wish I could tell him that I didn’t choose that car, that I didn’t even want it, but my parents insisted because they wanted the safest, most reliable car they could find for their “precious cargo.”
Digging into his pocket, he retrieves his phone and thumbs through his contacts. A moment later, he lifts it to his ear and paces a few steps away. The sound of traffic and revving motorcycles drowns out his words, but when he returns, he slides his phone away and rests his hands on his hips, studying me.
“He’s on his way,” Madden says.
“Who’s on their way?”
“Dusty. Works for the city. You’re lucky he owes me a huge fucking favor.” His gaze grazes over my shoulder before returning. “You can wait inside if you want.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking careful measures not to look at his hand this time. “I really appreciate this. This has never happened before. I don’t know what I’d have done if—”
Madden gives a nod before strutting off while I’m still mid-sentence, almost like a silent way of telling me to shut it.
No one’s ever done that to me—walked away while I was speaking to them.
I watch him stride down the block, stopping next to a black muscle car with two white racing stripes—I think my brother had a model of something like that many years ago—and when he climbs inside, I catch him glancing at me for a single fleeting second.
Fumbling with my keys, I get into my own car and crank the air. It was kind of him—at least I think he was being kind—to offer for me to hang out and wait in his shop, but I think I’m going to ride out the storm in my own little UFO, counting down the minutes until I’m en route to my home planet of Park Terrace.
I kill some time on my phone and pretend not to notice when Madden drives by, his engine rumbling with the kind of contradictory unruffled intensity that almost matches his personality perfectly.
Twenty-six minutes later, a white-and-yellow City of Olwine truck pulls up behind me and a little gold light on its roof begins to flash. A minute later, a man in a gray uniform steps out, grabbing an oversized wrench of some kind from the back and waddling toward me.
I roll my window down. “Thanks for coming. I tried calling the number on the ticket, but I couldn’t reach anyone.”
Dusty, as the name on his shirt reads, doesn’t look up from what he’s doing, crouched next to the front tire on my side.
“You’re lucky you’re friends with Ransom,” he says when he stands, his face red and his breaths shallow. The wrench hangs in one hand, the boot in the other.
Free at last.
“Ransom?” I ask before remembering that it’s Madden's last name.
“Madden,” he says. “I was on break. You’re lucky I answered for the bastard.”
An elaborate “piece” runs down his left arm, intricate and filled with bold greens and reds and purples, and barely hidden by the cuffed, long-sleeved button down the city forces him to wear even in June.
“Oh. Right. He was just helping me out. We’re not actually friends.”
Dusty snorts, his squinting eyes scanning the length of my car. “Yeah. Of course you’re not.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Right.” He begins to walk away.
Climbing out of the car, I yell for him to wait. “Do I need to pay the ticket?”
He hoists the wrench in the back of his truck, the metal hitting metal with a hard clunk, and then he waves his hand.
“So is that a ‘no’?” I ask, just to be sure.
Dusty gives me a thumb’s up before squeezing back into his truck.
I swear, it’s like I don’t even speak the language here.
The tattoo hidden beneath layers of bandages begins to throb just enough to grab my attention, and I return to my idling five-star-safety-rated princess carriage. Pressing the “home” button on my GPS, I head back to Park Terrace, back to Charles and Temple Karrington’s castle-like manse complete with iron gates, a staff of seven, and a million security cameras.
You can make a prison beautiful but at the end of the day, that doesn’t make it any less of a prison.
But I’m making plans to break out.
And this tattoo? It’s only the beginning.
2
Madden
"Who was that kid you were talking to?" I give my sister side eye before checking my rearview and pulling out of the Olwine Junior High pickup lane.
Devanie rolls her eyes as she situates her faded denim backpack between her dirty Converses before yanking at the seatbelt.
"You going to answer me or what?" I ask. I check my side mirrors. These little shits love to think they’re invincible around two-ton killing machines.
She releases a sigh from her overly-glossed lips and twirls her curly blonde hair around one finger. When I pull onto Whitehead Avenue, she spots a pack of middle school acne factories and sinks back into the seat.
I remember that feeling. Wanting to be invisible. Wanting to disappear into my own world the second the school bell rang.
"Who are those assholes?" I ask when I notice one of them staring in our direction.
"Nobody you'd know." She speaks. Finally. And then she reaches for the radio.
I swat her hand away and kill the volume completely. "Obviously, smart ass."
Dev almost breaks into a smile, but it’s gone before I get the chance to appreciate it. They’re far and few between these days.
"You should be lucky someone gives a shit about you." I say, turning onto Givens Road. Two more blocks. “And I say that with you know … nothing but …”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I know damn well that it's overkill, me insisting I take her to and from school every day, but someone needs to be there for her.
Someone needs to make sure she doesn't get yanked off the street by some pot-bellied man in a rusted minivan with out-of-state plates.
Someone needs to make sure she's actually going home after school and not climbing into the back of some sixteen-year-old pencil dick's Mazda and handed a joint and a bottle of stolen beer from their dad’s garage fridge.
Someone's got to make up for all the worrying, caring, and shit-giving our mother can't be bothered to do.
"So lucky." She mumbles under her breath as she picks at a thread on the hem of her cutoff shorts. They're way too tight on her, way too short. She's long-legged, like our mom, and I see the way the boys already stare, all gap-mouthed and bug-eyed, hiding their pathetic little boners with their Trapper Keepers.
"Hey, I need you to actually be on time tomorrow," I remind her. "I've got a client flying in from Seattle, so I need to prep the shop as soon as I drop you off."
"Idiot."
"What?" I pull into the driveway of the paint-chipped bungalow with the leaning porch that I once called home.
"Today's the last day of school."
"Shit. You're right," I say, killing the engine.
She climbs out of the passenger side, swinging her holey backpack over her right shoulder as she trots up the front steps. Before I have a chance to so much as lock my car, she's already inside, raiding the kitchen.
"Did Mom finally get bread?" I ask once I make it in.
I drop my keys in a metallic clunk on the kitchen counter and head for the fridge. I don't help myself to anything here like I used to. There's barely enough for my sister as it is. I’m just making sure she’s not going to go to bed hungry tonight.
"Nope," De
vanie says, reaching into a cupboard. "But I did."
I clench my jaw, but keep my back to her so she doesn't see.
Examining the minimal contents of the almond-colored Kenmore, I inventory an expired carton of eggs and a near-empty half-gallon of orange juice. Ketchup, mustard, and a partial stick of butter haphazardly wrapped in its waxy paper are all that remain otherwise. If I didn't have an appointment at four, I'd grab some groceries for her my own damn self.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
Or the second.
Or the hundredth.
And it won’t be the last either.
When I turn around, I find Dev fixing a peanut butter sandwich on cheap bread that tears with each spread of the butter knife. Scraping the knife against the insides of the plastic jar, she excavates every last bit.
"Wipe the crumbs when you're done," I say.
She looks at me with one eyebrow bent, and I know what she's thinking. This place is a shithole. A literal shithole. It smells like cat piss despite the fact that we’ve never had one. The carpet is a hundred years old. The ceiling is stained yellow, thick with nicotine from our mother's pack-a-day Virginia Slims habit, and laundry is only ever done on an as-needed basis and always left in baskets to wrinkle, never folded or put away.
But that's not the point.
I want to do everything in my power to make sure she doesn't end up as the second incarnation of our mother because this life ... this latchkey, slob-village life, is all my sister knows to be normal, and it’s anything but normal.
Most people don’t live like this.
She's not even thirteen years old and already her life is a flea-infested sundae. The rotten cherry on top? A father who's lived the entirety of her life in prison.
I've never asked for much in my life, and I don't believe in wishes or any of that hope-wasting bullshit, but I'll spend my dying breath making damn sure my sister never ends up on an episode of Jerry or Maury.
"Don't you have somewhere to be?" she asks, mouth gummed with cheap bread and store brand peanut butter. "Like ... I don't know … work or something?"
"Why are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?"
She chews, the sandwich balling in her left cheek, and then she swallows hard before glaring. "You're so annoying."
Good. Means I'm doing something right, which is impressive given the fact that there was never a precedent to go off of.
"Not having any boys over later, are you?" I ask. Not like she’d tell me the truth if she were, but I have to let her know that I’m one step ahead of her at all times. I was thirteen once. And girls like Devanie were low-hanging fruit: zero parental supervision, pretty but doesn’t really know it yet, attention-starved, and desperate to belong.
"Oh my God, Madd." Dev slams the last piece of her sandwich on the counter. "You really think I'd bring someone here? And if I did, do you really think it would be a boy ... that I want to impress?!"
I mean … valid point.
"What's his name?" I ask, referring to the one who put that giant grin on her face in the moments before I rolled up outside her school and rained on her seventh-grade parade.
She's quiet, sucking a dab of peanut butter off the side of her pinky.
"His name," I remind her.
My sister exhales, her wide, ocean-blue eyes lifting onto mine. “Kyler.”
"Kyler what?"
"Kyler Riggs."
"Sounds like a douche." I fold my arms against my chest and lean against the counter, giving her a good, firm stare, one that hopefully reminds her that I've got my eye on her at all times – even if that's not possible. "Stay away from him."
"Oh my gawwwd," she groans before twisting away and wiping the crumbs off the counter ... proof that she does hear what I say and she does listen. "Stop it, Madden. I'm not a baby."
"Exactly. You're a teenager, which means you’re not safe from the world and the world is not safe from you. Someone’s got to keep you in check.”
"You act like I'm not capable of making good decisions when I've never been in trouble," she says, voice reaching whiny-girl intensity. "I get almost all A's. I've never had detention. I've never smoked a cigarette or snuck out at night like some of the other kids at my school. Maybe you should give me more credit?"
“I know you’re a good girl, Dev.” But I know from experience a kid can go from goody-two-shoes to juvie hall regular in under a semester if the conditions are right.
“Then maybe you should act like it.” Her back is still to me and her voice is soft and low.
"What time does Mom get home tonight?" I ask one last question before I go.
She careens around, shooting me a dead-eyed look, one that implies we both know the answer to that: Mom comes home whenever she damn well pleases.
I wonder if she ever misses Dev, ever thinks about her when she's going into work at three, getting off at eleven, and hitting the bars until close. She sleeps through breakfast ... sleeps through most of the day actually ... then does it all over again.
The weekends are for her boyfriend-of-the-whatever. Day. Week. Month. She hasn’t quite made it to a year with any of them. They tend to crash and burn once they get past the first ninety days and the men realize my mother is a batshit crazy narcissist whose emotional maturity is permanently stunted at the age of seventeen—when she became a mother for the first time and was forced to grow up overnight.
"I talked to Mom last week," I say. "About not going out so much."
"Why?" Devanie’s nose scrunches.
I don’t think she cares so much that Mom’s always gone. In fact, I think she prefers it that way. It’s not like they’d spend much time together when Mom is home, but still. Someday Dev’s going to be an adult and she’s going to look back on her childhood and wonder why her mom was never there, and then she’s going to be angry. And then she’s going to turn to drugs or food or sex or gambling or God knows what to fill that gaping hole in her chest that won’t go away no matter how much she tells herself she’s over it.
"Because I give a shit. And because you need more supervision."
"No, I mean why do you waste your time even talking to her about that?" she asks.
Valid question.
"All right. I'm out." I ruffle her pale curls before swiping my keys off the counter and heading for the front door.
The screen door slams behind me, and I turn to pull it all the way shut. Glancing through the tear in the storm door's screen, I watch my sister stand in the middle of the kitchen where I left her, arms folded across her chest as she stares at the ground. She’s still as a statue, and I wonder if she's waiting for me to leave or if she's just lost in thought.
I'm sure all the other kids her age are texting each other on their phones - something Devanie has never been able to experience - making plans for summer or meeting up at the pool. I need to cave and get her a phone ... mostly for safety reasons ... but no good has ever come from a teenager having a cell phone, especially an unsupervised teenager having a cell phone.
Dev still hasn't moved, and I realize now that I recognize that look on her face.
She's lonely.
And of course she is.
She's alone. Constantly. And while I'm more than familiar with the feeling, at least I'm alone by choice. Devanie isn't.
I force myself to turn away, to go, to leave her behind the way I've done hundreds of times before. One of these days, I just might take her with me. But it won’t be that simple. Or that easy. Mom won't allow it. Dev is her meal ticket. Her tax refund. Her extra little bit of food stamps that she trades for who the hell knows what.
Cranking the radio, I head back to the south side and pull into my reserved parking spot in front of Madd Inkk.
The white Volvo with the boot is already gone by the time I get back. Good to know Dustin was able to make that happen. I'd never seen a girl so antsy to get out of here, like she was late for a flight to the Maldives or wherever rich assholes go.
Not that
she was an asshole.
Quite the contrary.
She was polite. All "pleases" and "thank yous." Proper grammar and all of that. I’m willing to bet she's fluent in French and takes tennis lessons, and judging by her dainty, nimble fingers, I’m sure she plays piano – classically trained by European dignitaries or something. The kind of shit her parents can brag about to their friends over dinner at "the club."
I've seen a lot of shit in my day, and in all the years I've run Madd Inkk, I've met all kinds.
But today? Some preppy little thing with a sugar-spun voice and honey gold eyes telling me to put anything I want on her body as long as it's hidden?
Definitely a first.
Definitely something I couldn’t forget if I tried.
I head inside, smirking to myself and shaking my head as I shove my keys in my pocket and consider the irony in the fact that she cared so little about the ink I was permanently embedding into the side of her ribcage and cared so much about the fact that I don’t have any tattoos myself.
Three times she asked.
And in three different ways, like she thought she could trick me into giving her an answer. She finally stopped prying when Pierce told her I was “commitment phobic.”
Little will she ever know, commitment phobic doesn't even touch it.
3
Brighton
"Ah, there she is! Happy Birth-"
I lift my finger to my lips, pleading with my eyes for Eloise, my family’s loyal and beloved housemaid, to be quiet.
Her hazel eyes crinkle at the corners, followed by a wash of confusion over her porcelain complexion, and finally, the smallest of winks.
The number of times I've snuck in through the service entrance, I can count on one hand.
My parents made dinner reservations at my favorite restaurant tonight, and I should've been ready by now. If I could make it to my room unseen, I could throw on a quick dress, pull my hair up, and they'll be none the wiser.
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