by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose
Dale stopped singing. “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute!” The music came to a clanking, jerking halt and I looked up. “I don’t like this key. My throat is killing me.”
“Lower or higher?” Terry asked.
“Lower.” Dale played a few bars in a lower key on his guitar. “Can you guys get that?” They picked it up in an instant.
“All right!” Dale grinned. “I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got to get a drink.”
Dale set his guitar down and hopped off the stage, heading toward where I was sitting. I smiled up at him. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Want to come with me?” he asked. “If this keeps up, I’m not going to have a voice left at all.”
“Sure.” I closed my sketch book and took his hand, following him toward the auditorium doors.
“What did you think?” he asked, heading toward the drinking fountain in the hallway.
“What do you think?”
“I hope we’ve got it wrapped up.” He shrugged. “Finals are April twenty-second. You’re coming, right?”
He’d only asked me a hundred times.
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“Good, because—” He bent down to get a drink and that cut off any more words. I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, I pushed the back of his head and he looked up at me, eyes wide, face dripping. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“You’re going to get it!” he growled, but he was grinning. I backed away as he advanced, still laughing. When I began to run, he grabbed me around the waist, whirling me around to face him. He pulled me close, rubbing his cold, wet cheek against mine until I squealed in protest. Laughing, he wiped his face with the tail-end of his t-shirt and then wiped mine too, giving me a very nice glimpse of his washboard abs.
I put my arms around his neck, sliding my thigh up between his, watching his eyes darken, my nails lightly raking over the back of his neck the way I knew he liked, the way that got him instantly hard.
“Stop distracting me,” he insisted, but he kissed me, tongue probing, making my limbs feel heavy and weak, like I couldn’t hold myself up, but that was okay, because I was in his arms, his hips pinning me to the wall, and I couldn’t help remember how he licked me and fucked me in the storage room at the club, how Carrie and Wendy had looked at us when we came out, all disheveled and flushed.
That’s when Dale told me they were lesbians.
“Are you sure about Carrie and Wendy?” I murmured, as Dale distracted himself now, nibbling on my collar bone.
He chuckled. “Sweetheart, your gaydar is so broken it’s not even funny.”
“It is not,” I protested, letting my head tilt a little to the side so he could rub that gorgeous stubble over my neck. “I knew Boy George was gay.”
Dale snorted laughter. “The Pope could tell Boy George is gay.”
“It’s just… I guess it makes sense. I’ve never seen either of them with a guy, and they’re always together. I just thought they were friends, like me and Aimee…”
He pulled back to look at me, amused.
“Gaydar. Broken.” He touched my nose with each word.
“But they talk about guys!” I protested.
He smiled. “Wouldn’t you, if you didn’t want anyone to know?”
“So who else?” I asked, frowning. “What am I missing?”
“George Michael is gay,” he said, watching with amusement as my eyes widened.
“He is not!”
Dale cracked up. “I’m afraid so.”
“Next thing you’ll be telling me Tyler Vincent is gay,” I muttered, playing with his belt, wishing I could undo it right here and now.
“That would solve a few problems.” He made a face, shaking his head. “But no. Not gay.”
“Dale! There you are!” Holly Larson hurried toward us. “I saw you at the semi-finals. You guys were great! Are you doing that song for the finals? It’s so awesome!”
“Don’t know yet,” he replied. He was never short or cold or mean to anyone who came up to compliment his music, although sometimes, like now, I really wished he would just tell them to take a hike. Especially her.
Holly stood in front of us, playing with the end of her ponytail, trying to look all seductive. She acted like I wasn’t even standing there.
“Hey, maybe I can say I knew you when.” Holly smiled. It was the smile that caught her Josh Berger, quarterback, in high school—and got her pregnant, I thought, a little ungraciously. He’d dropped her like Van Halen dropped David Lee Roth when he found out, and Holly had disappeared for the rest of the year. We all heard she gave her baby up for adoption.
“Maybe.” Dale looked like he was enjoying her attention a little too much.
“My birthday’s coming up at the end of March, and I know it’s a little early, but I was wondering if you wanted to help me host?”
My eyes widened and then narrowed at her. Unbelievable! Was she kidding?
“I think I have plans.” Dale turned, seeing the look on my face and immediately steering me toward the auditorium doors.
“Maybe you can call Josh Berger and ask him to host your party with you?” I called snidely over my shoulder.
Dale snorted as he pushed me through the doors, and I didn’t hear Holly reply, but I saw the hurt look in her eyes and the flash of her ponytail as she turned down the hallway.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Dale said when we were inside. “It was downright catty.”
“Good,” I hissed.
He smiled, amused. “Are you jealous?”
“No,” I denied it. “I’ve never liked her.”
Dale just smiled.
“Oh Pete, now what are we—”
“Carolyn, he’s a liar! He had no right to fire me. Besides... he can’t prove anything.”
I turned my music off and sat quietly on my bed, listening.
“What are we going to do?” My mother again. “We’ve got rent to pay. We can’t afford for you to lose your job!”
“Then you go out there and work, you stupid bitch! All you do is sit around on your ass all day while I go out and work for you and that brat of a daughter of yours! Go ahead, go find a job. You know you couldn’t bring home half the money I make!” he roared.
“Made,” my mother corrected softly.
I stared at my closed bedroom door, wide-eyed.
No, Mom—you’re going to get yourself hurt.
Sure enough, a second later, I heard a sharp sound and my mother cried out.
“Bitch!” he snarled. “I’m taking him to court. I’m fighting this. He can’t prove I took anything from that warehouse and he knows it. I’ll take him for all he’s got, if there’s any justice in this world!”
I rolled my eyes, amazed. He stole the juice. The evidence was stacked up waist-high in the closet, yet here he was, self-righteous and hypocritical, demanding “justice!” There was no logic to it—unless you were him. It seemed to make perfect sense to the stepbeast.
“Pete, he’s my brother,” my mother said softly.
“I don’t care if he’s President of the United Fucking States!” he exploded. “He ain’t got no proof! He ain’t got grounds to fire me! Fucking excuses, that’s all he’s got! There were never any complaints from customers! It’s all bullshit!”
I closed my eyes, so full of bitterness I could taste it, acrid and painful on my tongue, burning my throat. Justice? If there was any justice in the world, I knew I wouldn’t be sitting there listening to him.
I stood up, grabbing my winter coat from off the back of my desk chair, shrugging it on. It was time to make like Casper. Sometimes I wished I could disappear permanently. I slipped my boots on. They were the only boots I owned, suede, not waterproof, and they now had a hole in the bottom. My stepfather said he didn’t have enough money for new ones. I’d noticed he hadn’t cut back on his cigarettes, but I had to go around with a hole in my boot in the middle of winter.
“He’ll be crawling back
to me, you watch!” The stepbeast yelled. “He’s going to beg me to come back! And you know what I’m gonna say? Fuck you, buddy! Fuck you!”
I stood, trembling, in the doorway, watching them. I could only see the top of my stepfather’s head above the chair back. My mother was on the couch, legs curled under her, face streaked with mascara. A cigarette trembled between her fingertips.
“I swear, I’ll sue him. I’ll take him for everything he’s got!”
I came to stand beside his chair, stomach churning, hands clenched into tight fists, as much to keep them from trembling as anything else. My mother looked at me with wide, dark eyes, and I suddenly saw myself in those eyes and it tightened my chest. She looked old, haggard, and I felt so much pity for her. And hate for him. He made her this way, I thought. She could have been... alive.
But I was done trying to wake her up, to make her see. To save her.
The only person I could save was myself.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded, glancing up at me. “You better not be going out to see any boys, you little whore!”
“I’ll be back later.” I walked toward the door, determined, ignoring his question and his snide remark.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
His words stopped my progress toward the door. I turned back as he lit a cigarette, watching me. He shook the match out and the motion recalled the memory of him hitting me—hitting her—and I flinched. I knew if I escaped, she’d be the only one here for him to take it out on. I knew it—and I was going to leave anyway.
A sick rage heated my chest, spreading thickly.
“I’m an adult. I’ll do what I want. You don’t own me.”
I was suddenly, amazingly calm. It was as if everything in my body had gone still.
“What?” His my-ears-must-be-deceiving-me tone was almost comical. So was the expression on his face.
“I’m going. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“Wrong!” He stood, towering over me and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother shrink back against the sofa. “I’m your father! I make the money! I say what goes around here!”
“You’re not my father.” I was trembling, a cold sweat running between my breasts toward my navel under the t-shirt I was wearing. But the words didn’t stop. It wasn’t that I couldn’t stop the words—it was the words themselves. They wouldn’t stop. “And you don’t make the money around here anymore, do you? The world doesn’t revolve around you, asshole! I’m done letting you tell me what to do. Do you hear me? You can beat me, you can fuck me—do whatever you want—but the next time you touch me, you’re going to have to kill me, because I’m done!”
I thought I might faint before I could turn the doorknob and escape, but I didn’t. The shock must have stopped even him for the next thirty seconds or so, because I was crouched upstairs on the third floor, fetal and rocking just outside Dale’s door, when I heard my stepfather explode out of our apartment, tearing open the door to our building, screaming my name.
I took the opportunity to knock on Dale’s door, but I didn’t have the strength to stand. My legs wouldn’t hold me.
Dale answered, wearing just a pair of boxers, hair tousled, eyes half-closed. He liked to sleep late on Saturdays.
“Sara?” He went from sleepy and yawning to alert in an instant, reaching down and picking me up like I weighed nothing, taking me inside and kicking the door shut behind him. The apartment was quiet.
“Is John still sleeping?” I whispered as Dale carried me down the hall to his bedroom.
“Not here,” he said shortly, kneeing open his bedroom door and kicking it closed, putting me down on the bed. I was still wearing my coat and boots and he took those off, wrapping me up in his arms and his comforter before asking me, “What happened?”
I opened my mouth to tell him, to explain what I’d just done, unable to really comprehend the magnitude of it myself. The words had ebbed away.
“Are you okay? Sara? Look at me. Are you okay?” He searched my face, his simple concern, so genuine, starting my sobs, and he pulled me close with startled concern, trying desperately to comfort me. I clutched him, my flushed cheek resting against his bare shoulder.
I told him about Pete getting fired, about his theft and lies, my voice hitching and low. I told him I’d stood up to him and left. But what I didn’t tell him weighed so much it was like an anvil on my chest, a pain no one could take away, not even Dale.
Still he rocked me and he held me and he loved me.
And it was almost enough.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Sara, will you run back and grab a gallon of milk?” My mother stood next to her cart in the middle of Farmer Jack, looking down at her list.
“Sure.” I went back to get it. She was usually so worried and distracted, she always managed to forget something. When I returned, she was checking things off her list. I put the milk in the cart.
“Has your father said anything to you?” She moved up the aisle, pushing the cart.
“He’s not my father,” I snapped. “And no. Not a fucking word.”
“Nice language.” She frowned. “He may not be your biological father, Sara, but he’s the man who raised you.”
I didn’t say anything, helping her put cans of tomato soup into the cart. I tried to remember a time when the stepbeast had been human. Had he ever loved me? I didn’t really believe it. I didn’t even believe he loved my mother. I was pretty sure he wasn’t capable of that emotion. He seemed driven by animal instincts alone—hunger, sleep, self-preservation, mating. He truly was a beast.
“He’s a good man, Sara.” She moved the cart up the next aisle. “Underneath... you don’t know him like I do.”
I blinked at her. “I don’t think you know him like I do.”
“What does that mean?” She glanced over her shoulder at me, frowning.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“He’s really very generous. He pays your insurance on your car every month. He didn’t even want you to have that car, but he’s willing to pay your insurance. He gives you spending money.”
I snorted, rolling my eyes, but didn’t reply.
“And he’s very loyal. He stays with us. He takes care of us.”
That was too much.
“Oh right,” I snorted. “So loyal, he’d steal from your own brother?”
“He didn’t steal.” She ticked things off her list as she moved up the aisle. “Besides, my brother can’t prove anything …”
“Are you kidding me?” I nearly screamed. An old woman stocking up on pasta glared at us. “My God, Mother, what are you, some sort of robot? He feeds in the information and you spit it right back out? What happened to your ability to think for yourself?”
“What do you mean?” She blinked, looking at me doubtfully.
“Never mind, Mom.” I sighed, shaking my head. “Just… never mind.”
At least the stepbeast had left me completely alone since I went off on him.
The checkouts were packed with people. It was a Saturday afternoon and everybody was out shopping. We had to wait half an hour before we got up to the cashier. I began loading things up onto the conveyer belt. When I was through, I moved the cart to the end so the bagger could load it with groceries.
“That comes to ninety dollars and thirty-sex cents,” the cashier, a short blonde girl who snapped her gum and whose name tag read ‘Tammi,’ said impatiently. I thought I remembered her from high school. She’d been a year behind us, which would make her a senior this year.
“Oh.” My mother sounded surprised and I looked over, seeing for the first time what she held in her hands. It was a book of food stamps. I’d seen them often enough when we were on welfare, but it had been so long, it didn’t register at first. My heart plummeted when I recognized the booklet and my mouth felt dry.
“I only have eighty dollars here,” my mother said quietly. “Sara, hand me those packages of broccoli and corn.
I have enough vegetables in the freezer to last me.”
I got them just before the bagger did and I offered him a weak smile of apology. His name was Danny and he’d been in my World Lit class my junior year. Tammi took them off the order.
“That’ll be eighty-eight twenty-nine.” Tammi snapped her gum, looking impatiently at my mother. The people behind us were watching with disgusted interest.
“Sara, hand me the peanut butter and the coffee,” my mother said. This time Danny handed them to me personally. My throat felt tight. Tammi took those off the order. Her gum snapping was beginning to grind on my nerves.
“That’s seventy-nine forty-nine,” she said impatiently. “Come on, lady, we don’t have all day. I have other paying customers waiting.”
“Here.” My mother, turning a paler shade of white, gave her the eighty-dollars in food stamps. I grabbed the cart and started out of the store. My cheeks felt as if they were on fire.
“There.” My mother caught up to me in the parking lot. “That was taken care of easily enough.”
I didn’t say anything and kept on walking.
John opened the door and I almost fell on top of him. I’d been pounding on it for what felt like forever.
“Is Dale here?” I panted.
“He’s in his room. Are you okay?”
“I’m great!” I cried over my shoulder. “I’m fantastic!”
He shut the door, calling after me, “You staying for dinner? Fresh catfish!”
“Sounds great!” I called back, bursting through Dale’s door.
“Hey!” He smiled when he saw me standing there.
“Dale!” I cried, throwing my arms wide, beaming. “Guess what?”
“What?” He was sitting bare-chested on his bed, staring at me, guitar poised in mid-air, and normally I would have immediately jumped him just on principle, but I was too excited—I could barely breathe.
“I’m going to Maine!” I shook the envelope at him, in case he’d missed it. “I placed! I placed!”
He set his guitar aside just in time, because I tackled him, kissing him hard, practically knocking us both off the bed.
“Congratulations.” He kissed the tip of my nose, smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes—there was no dimple in it. “So now what?”
