Fractures in Ink

by Helena Hunting

“You don’t answer, and you give me the phone so I can talk to her.”

  “I can’t stay here forever.”

  “You can stay here as long as you need to, and we can figure something out for after that.”

  She propped her cheek on her fist. “You can’t keep sleeping on the couch.”

  “Sure I can. Look, I spent a lot of years not being a very good brother. Now I get to make it up to you.”

  She gave me a weak smile.

  “What’re you doing today?”

  “I don’t have to work, so I can do your laundry if you want.”

  “Why don’t you come to the shop? You can hang out and just take it easy for once.”

  “Are you sure that’d be okay? I won’t be in the way?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Okay. That’d be nice. I like Lisa.”

  She’d only been in the shop once before, but Lisa was easy to like. I’d had a few ideas about how I could manage this situation with Ivy, and a decent plan was forming. She’d always been into art, just like me. We’d spent a lot of hours drawing pictures when we were kids.

  Over the years I’d gotten the occasional hand-drawn card from her for my birthday, and the walls of her bedroom had been covered in art projects done in pastels and charcoal. She had clear vision and an eye for color and depth. I might not be able to afford to send her to college, but I could help get her a steady, reasonable paycheck so she could make decisions for her future.

  If Hayden agreed to it and she was game, she might even be able to rent the apartment across the street. That would give her some stability, and an opportunity to get away from the neighborhood we grew up in.

  One thing at a time, though. First I needed to see if Inked Armor was something Ivy was even interested in. Then I needed to see if they were interested in her. And before any of that, I needed to talk to Sarah.

  “I was thinking about leaving soon. I need to stop at a friend’s place first.”

  “I can ride my bike over in a while. That way I can take off if it gets too busy or whatever.”

  A knock on the door stopped me from arguing. Ivy’s eyes went wide. “Do you think it’s Dad?”

  I lifted a placating hand, even though I shared some of her anxiety. If John wasn’t alone, it could be a problem. “It could be my neighbor. Let me check.”

  I was quiet about going to the door and checking the peephole to see if I wanted to answer or not. Like last time, it wasn’t my neighbor, but it wasn’t John either, thankfully. Sarah stood in the hall, her face obscured because she was looking at the floor. I guess I didn’t need to leave early after all.

  I glanced over my shoulder before I took off the chain latch. “It’s not John; it’s my friend.”

  Ivy breathed a relieved sigh and relaxed.

  Sarah’s head came up in slow motion as I opened the door, and she blinked at the same speed. Her eyes were red rimmed, with the mascara and liner from last night half smeared in lines down her cheeks, like she’d been crying. A lot. Her gaze flitted from me to my sister sitting on the couch. Ivy had just taken the towel out of her hair and was finger-combing it.

  Sarah let out a noise of disbelief. Her teeth cut a line across her bottom lip as her eyes shifted back to me, hurt and distress the primary emotions behind them.

  I couldn’t understand what that was all about until I realized she’d never met Ivy, and she was looking at the back of her freshly showered head. It probably looked like I’d brought some girl home.

  “Ivy stayed here last night,” I said by way of greeting and explanation.

  “Ivy?” She adjusted the strap of her bag.

  “My sister.” Jesus. She was totally out of it.

  At her name, Ivy turned around and raised a hand in greeting. Her face froze mid-smile, making it look more like a grimace. Probably because of Sarah’s appearance.

  “Oh. I should go then.” Sarah turned to leave.

  I grabbed her arm. “Whoa. Wait! What’s going on?”

  She stumbled into me and grabbed my shirt. A broken sob escaped as she pressed her face against my chest and mumbled something.

  My sister gave me a questioning look. I mouthed the word girlfriend and shrugged, because I had no idea what the hell was going on, and Sarah’s lack of actual response, as well as her appearance, unnerved me. Also, the fact that she was hugging me after the shit I’d said to her yesterday was a concern.

  I took a few steps back into my apartment with her still clinging to me and shut the door. “Sarah, baby, wanna talk to me?”

  She let go and swiped under her eyes with shaking hands. “Dee OD’d last night.”

  The shock was like a backhand with brass knuckles. “You mean, like, she’s dead?”

  Sarah shook her head. “N-no. She’s in the hospital. I found her.”

  “Jesus. Where? What happened?”

  I didn’t know who to focus on. My sister was busy quietly gathering her things. She nabbed the directions to Inked Armor from the fridge and motioned to the door, making the I’ll-call-you-later gesture before she left. I didn’t like that she was going without me, but she’d be safe once she got there, and she was way out of her usual ’hood.

  My apartment had become Crisis Central Station.

  “In her apartment. I found her in her apartment,” Sarah said, bringing my attention back to her.

  “Why were you at her apartment?”

  “I should’ve told you, but I didn’t, and now I don’t know... I’ve ruined everything, and Dee... I was so scared. Her lips were blue, and she was covered in these awful words.”

  Nothing she said made a lot of sense, and I was cooking up worst-case scenarios, but this time I willed myself to hear her out and really listen—not like yesterday. Sarah rarely lost her composure, and right now she was unraveling.

  “Come here.” I led her to the couch and put my hands on her shoulders, guiding her to sit.

  She dropped down, and a shuddering breath left her as she rubbed between her eyes. Tears tracked down her cheeks as quickly as she wiped them away. “I wasn’t going to take those pills, Chris. I mean, I thought about it, but I wouldn’t have taken them.”

  She was all over the place with her thoughts. “I’m not worried about the pills, Sarah. I’m sorry about the things I said yesterday. But right now tell me what happened with Dee. Start at the beginning.”

  She nodded and steeled herself with another deep breath. Keeping her head down, she whispered, “I made a mistake.”

  The words hit me like bullets. Her tone told me they came with a side of pain that was more emotional than physical.

  She lifted our connected hands and rubbed my knuckles across her cheek. They came away damp. “I made a really big mistake.”

  She unfurled my fingers and clambered into my lap. I felt the warm press of her lips against my neck, along with a wild tremor that ran through her body.

  I could feel her words against my skin, but they were too muffled to hear. At least they were until her mouth started traveling across my neck. Then their clarity made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

  “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have a choice.”

  A heaviness settled in my gut as ideas formed about what she was likely sorry for. But again, I tried to stop myself. Instead of pigeonholing Sarah into the same box as Candy, I allowed myself, for a brief moment, to appreciate the way she felt all curled up in my lap. She had come to me, finally, and in spite of all the ways I’d tried to screw things up between us. She was warm and safe; a version of home I’d never thought I’d experience, even if she was breaking down.

  I stroked her back with a soft palm. “What kind of mistake did you make?”

  When she made no attempt to respond, I held her shoulders and tried to get her to look at me. She resisted at first, but eventually she gave in and leaned back. She used her palms to swipe away more tears.

  “Sarah, you gotta talk to m
e. That’s why you’re here, right? I know we’re not good at this, and in the past I’ve shut you down, but I want to know. Whatever’s happened, I want you to tell me.”

  She released an uneven breath, her expression pained. “You won’t forgive me.”

  The heavy feeling became a lead weight. “You don’t know that.”

  She looked so sad and resigned. “I didn’t have a choice. Xander didn’t give me one.”

  I took her hands in mine, because her touching me created a whole lot of conflict I wasn’t sure I could handle if this conversation was going where I thought it might. It was bad enough that she was still in my lap when I asked the next question.

  “Did you end up in the same kind of situation as Dee?”

  This time she finally looked up as she shook her head.

  My relief was short-lived as I thought about the pill bottle I’d found. “Did you screw somebody for money?”

  “No.” It came out a whisper, followed by more tears.

  I lifted her off my lap and set her on the couch. I needed perspective and some breathing room. “Did you fuck someone for drugs?”

  All I got was more vigorous head shaking and even more tears. I doubted my tactless questions were much help.

  “Then what could be so bad that you think I won’t forgive you for it?”

  My getting angry wouldn’t make this better, considering how fast the tears had started to fall, and I forced myself to take a deep, steadying breath. This wasn’t like the conversation with my mother earlier. The only person Sarah put in danger was herself. And she seemed to do it repeatedly, even if it might be unintentional. So I needed to keep my cool. She wasn’t here blaming someone else; she was likely owning something that wasn’t her fault, just like I’d been doing all my life.

  Maybe that was why I didn’t want to let her go. Maybe that was the real reason we worked together, despite all our flaws.

  Sarah wiped her face with the hem of her shirt and crossed her legs, settling her hands in her lap. “I didn’t cheat on you.”

  “So that means what? You got on the stage? How did you end up at Dee’s?”

  “I’m not dancing, but that would be better than what Xander wants. I ended up at Dee’s because Grant wanted me to check in on her.”

  “She wasn’t at the club?”

  “She hasn’t been at the club since the party, and she hasn’t been answering my messages. I know why now. I was worried about her, and I was right to be, because whatever happened to her at that party was bad. She was covered in bruises—and writing. Someone tried to choke her.”

  “What the fuck? Did Grant try to choke her?”

  “No, no. Grant’s trying to help her—they’re together, that’s how it looks, anyway—but I don’t know if she’s going to be okay. It’s all bad things, Chris. She was breathing but still unconscious when I left the hospital. She was hooked up to all these machines. It was so scary. Grant stayed with her. The police were there; they were guarding her room.”

  Her voice picked up speed as her fear took over. “I came right here after. I don’t know what to do. I have pictures. I documented everything. I don’t want to end up like Dee, and Xander, he wants me to do this party tonight because I owe him a favor—”

  My head was spinning. There was so much information to sift through, and with her panic, she didn’t seem to be able to unload things in a linear fashion. “Whoa, whoa. Back up, baby. What do you mean he wants you to do a party? Like the kind Dee did?”

  She nodded, her hand pressed to her mouth to keep in the quiet sob.

  “That’s the favor you owe him?”

  “That’s what he wants.”

  “Why would you owe him that kind of favor?”

  “I didn’t think it was going to be that kind. I don’t know what I thought it was going to be, but I didn’t expect—” She hiccupped through another sob.

  I rubbed my temples. “Okay. I need you to take a few deep breaths, and then I think maybe you start all the way at the beginning.”

  I stroked her cheek, mostly to try to calm her down. She turned into the touch, pressing my palm against her face. After a couple more minutes, she seemed to get herself under control.

  “You remember when I first started working at The Sanctuary?”

  I hadn’t meant start at the beginning of time, but if that was where she needed to go, so be it. “Dee lined up an interview for you, and you were pretty much handed the job on the spot.”

  “She told me I’d make a lot more money there than I would at the bar.”

  “And she was right,” I said.

  “She was. And Xander was good at talking the talk. He made it sound like it would be... better than The Dollhouse.” Sarah sighed. “And for the first couple of weeks it was, but then things started to change, and I had second thoughts.”

  “So why didn’t you quit?”

  “I’m getting to that.” Sarah nodded, as if she’d expected the question. “I wanted to. I even talked to Tenley about Elbo. She was going to find out whether they were hiring or not. But then it ended up not mattering, because I couldn’t quit.”

  She wiped away another tear and took a couple of deep breaths before she continued. “I never told Xander where I went to school. I just told him I was working on business courses at a local college. But he did some digging, because that’s what he does.” Her smile was cold. “He found out I was on a scholarship at Northwestern. Tuition to my program is over a hundred thousand dollars, Chris. My scholarship covers half, and I have grants to cover another chunk, but the rest is student loans that I’ll have to start paying back once I graduate. Plus I’ll have my undergrad loans as well.”

  “I don’t understand what that has to do with quitting.”

  “There’s a propriety clause associated with my scholarship, which makes sense, of course. The donors want to invest their money wisely. The school has a reputation to uphold. I should’ve known better.”

  The pieces were starting to fall into place. “What does Xander have to do with your scholarship?”

  “He read the fine print where I didn’t, or he made phone calls, or whatever. I assumed the propriety clause just covered things like acting like an idiot, stealing, cheating, fraternizing with supervisors, the usual stuff. One of the girls at my internship was fired early on for blowing a staff member in the copy room. She was on scholarship, too. She’s been expelled from the program and has to pay restitution to the college. She’s not getting a degree.”

  “Shit. That’s a lot of money to owe.” I could see how a propriety clause would come in handy to weed out students interested in partying their way through college, or using blow jobs to get what and where they wanted.

  “It is. Especially when she’s not even going to finish the program now. Anyway, when I mentioned to Xander the possibility of me quitting, he suggested I reconsider my options. I thought he was just being a jerk until he mentioned that any image from the cameras could be turned into a photograph, and wouldn’t it be too bad if one ended up on my dean’s desk.”

  “But you’re not giving lap dances or getting naked.” That’s what she’d led me to believe all this time, and I prayed she’d been telling the truth.

  “No, but anything can be misconstrued. You’ve seen what I wear to work. Xander could find the worst possible image and make it look like something it wasn’t. I’d lose my internship and my scholarship and my degree.”

  “So he’s been blackmailing you?” At least at The Dollhouse management had been fairly transparent in their manipulations.

  Sarah rubbed her lips with her fingertips. “I don’t think his threats are ever idle. You can see how I couldn’t risk leaving after that.”

  “How long ago did he threaten you with this?”

  “A couple of months.”

  “Christ, Sarah, why didn’t you say anything before now?”

  “What would you have done? I’m not in the clear until I graduate. They can’t revoke my scholarship afte
r I get my diploma. All I can do is wait it out.”

  “But you could’ve told me. Why keep it a secret?”

  “I was afraid of what you’d think of me for one. And you already had so much to deal with. You’d just put that new furnace in at your mom’s, the trial was going on, and I knew that was hard on you even though you didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to burden you with my crap, too, especially when there wasn’t anything you could do. More than that, I didn’t want to lose this.” She motioned between us.

  “Why’d you think telling me you’re being blackmailed by an asshole who deals in illegal sex trade would make me leave?”

  “Because I know how much you hate my job and how you’ve wanted me out of there from day one. I worried you would blame me for the situation, because I sure blame myself. You were right about everything—about how I’m not immune, how it starts to become normal even though it isn’t. But I can’t backtrack out of the mistake.”

  “Sarah—”

  She held up her hand. “Wait. There’s more.”

  Of course there was. We hadn’t even gotten to the part about Dee.

  “Remember how my car broke down and I ended up serving left stage a while back?”

  I nodded, bracing for whatever the hell was going to be next.

  “Rent was due, and so was my loan payment. I couldn’t cover all of that and get my car fixed. I was already so stressed. My internship was about to start, so when Xander threatened to send me home for being late, I was beside myself. I didn’t know how I was going to manage. I lost it.”

  “Lost it how?”

  “I just couldn’t keep it together. I started crying in Xander’s office. And right then I knew I’d screwed myself. Showing weakness in front of Xander is a huge mistake, but it was just too much. And then it was like... he flipped a switch. It was so... off-putting.” She shuddered. “He went from being pissed off to being totally understanding. He was so nice about it, saying it must be hard to be under so much pressure all the time. I was frazzled by everything and freaked out that when he made his offer, I couldn’t come up with any other options.”

  “What was the offer?”

  “He told me I needed to serve left stage. That I’d only have to do it this one time, and in return he’d loan me the money to get my car fixed. Plus I’d owe him a favor. He called it interest on the loan.”