by Bright, Sera
“Dad, this isn’t your card.” I ran a finger over the raised letters. “It’s for a Jonathan Walker.”
He glanced up at me with a pissy expression. “Give me that back. And don’t ask any questions or mention that name to anyone, do you understand me?”
He grabbed the wallet and card out of my hands, and shoved the card in between the couch cushions, revealing the large black cat tattoo on his upper back. Did he steal someone’s card? The nausea transformed into dull cramping. If he was a thief and he got caught, they’d send me away. I probably should be sent away.
“Katie, do you understand what I just said?” my dad demanded in a hard tone I’d never heard from him before. “Answer me, damn it.”
The electric bill crinkled in my hand. CPS couldn’t help Ash and he had it much worse than I did. They wouldn’t do anything to help me, either.
“I understand,” I said quietly.
My dad extracted another card from his wallet, and handed the thin piece of plastic to me. I took it from him with numb fingers and kept silent.
In the kitchen, the phone lay in the charger on the counter, next to his dirty dishes from breakfast. Congealing bits of scrambled eggs and swirls of butter covered the chipped white enamel stove top. I sighed. Whatever. I’d clean the mess up after I took care of the bill.
My dad turned his game back on. The sounds of gunfire spilled into the room.
“You’re a good kid,” my dad yelled over the noise. “You know that?”
I spread the paper out on the Formica table, circling the past due amount and the contact number. Being good just meant he got what he wanted, which was to do as little as possible with no questions asked. I took several deep breaths before picking up the cordless phone and dialing. I needed to sound older than thirteen, or they would ask if my mother was home.
Chapter Five
Friday
The sun was sinking from the sky when I drove downtown. I left my truck in a space off the back alley where Jerry insisted his employees park. I quickly walked the short distance to the café’s kitchen door. The alley always creeped me out.
Helen greeted me in the kitchen with a smack of her spatula on my arm. “That’s for not showing my food the proper respect.”
“Sorry,” I murmured.
“Are you all right? You seem off.” She lowered a wire basket of Tater Tots into the simmering golden oil of the fryer.
I shrugged, and took an apron off a hook. “More off or less off than usual?”
“You’re fine if you can still be a smart-ass.” Her quick-fire moves around the tiny space slowed and she stood in front of the grill. “You okay being up on the register?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” I stopped tying the apron behind my back. “Wait. What kind of night is it tonight?”
She grumbled to herself under her breath, and scraped at an imaginary piece of food on the surface of the flat-top grill with her spatula. Her silence answered my question. I wouldn’t have agreed if I’d known, and it was too late to back out now. Dread crept up into my throat as I went to the counter.
Jerry was having one of his parties. He preferred to have the prettier, younger girls working on these types of nights to feed his fantasies of grandeur. It was an artsy little café in the Middle of Nowhere, Ohio, for fuck’s sake.
The noise in the small dining room waxed and waned as people made their way upstairs. Some of my former high school classmates came through the dining room. I hid behind my hair and avoided eye contact. All hopes of my return going unnoticed died a painful death, though. People constantly waved to me in greeting while passing through the beaded curtain. It was inevitable that someone was going to tell Ash.
I had wanted him to get away from this place, not get sucked back in. I had wanted him to be happy, not worrying about me. It wasn’t worth it.
The night passed with agonizing slowness. It didn’t help that whenever a dark-haired man walked in front of the café window, I watched like my life depended on it. Halfway through the shift, I was ringing up a customer when a black-and-white police SUV stopped in front of the café.
I stood, staring blankly at the window, as the customer left. His parents may have moved but it didn’t mean his father had changed jobs. I leaned over the counter, trying to get a better view. Helen came up behind me and asked me something. While I heard the sound of her voice, none of her words registered.
“I’m sorry, what?” I looked away from the window.
She shoved red plastic baskets of steaming Tater Tots and chicken fingers at me. “These need to go upstairs,” she repeated impatiently. “Jerry called and he wants someone to bring up his dinner.”
I wiped my sweating hands on my apron and took the baskets from her. “Have the police been bothering Jerry?”
“No. But they should.” Her face pinched, and she muttered, “God knows, he pays them enough to leave him alone.”
I raised my eyebrows. So we could add bribery to his list of ongoing misdeeds.
She pointed a finger at me. “You didn’t hear any of that from me.”
“My lips are sealed.” Like I’d tell anyone anything.
I went around the counter to the staircase. The police SUV’s headlights disappeared as it drove off. Going upstairs, I entered a dimly lit room crowded with people. Christmas lights were strung across the walls and ceiling in a haphazard pattern. A couple of people hung out on the fire-escape balcony, and the smells of tobacco and marijuana wove their way back, along with the early summer wind.
Across the room, Jerry came out the back hallway, holding an unlit cigarette. I held the plastic baskets over my head, trying to get his attention. He didn’t notice. Instead a familiar-looking blonde girl captured his eye. She laughed as he whispered something in her ear. I heard the trill of it over the crowd, and she whipped her hair over her shoulder. I saw her face then—she was the police chief’s daughter. The police chief’s underage daughter. Ew, Jerry. Was he trying to get dumped in the lake?
I dodged between couches and bodies, trying to make my way over to him. Several people said hello, but I plastered on a close-lipped smile and pretended I couldn’t hear them over the noise. Summers here were like one long, excruciating high school reunion—there’s not much to do but travel from place to place and party, and pass around info on who’s back in town and what everyone is up to. Around me, tables were littered with bottles and take-out containers. The party was moving to Jerry’s place tonight, and I bet he couldn’t have been happier.
A voice squealed behind me, “I knew I’d find you here.”
I stumbled as Devon launched herself off a black leather couch toward me. I awkwardly maintained my hold on the food as she hugged me. The smell of pot clung to her clothes and strawberry blonde hair.
“My mom said she saw you this morning.” She released me and plopped down on a side table, knocking a half-empty beer bottle onto the floor. “No one knew when you were coming back, or if you were ever coming back.”
I had tutored Devon privately at her house in math, and she had decided to return the favor by befriending me. It was more like an uneasy truce than a true friendship. We didn’t quite know what to make of each other at times. I did give her high marks for her unrelenting enthusiasm.
“I’m here, now.” I lifted myself up on my toes, scanning across the room. Damn it. Jerry and the girl were gone. If he wanted food so bad, he could come downstairs next time. I set the baskets on the nearest table. Devon grabbed a handful of Tater Tots and popped one in her mouth.
“Wow, you dyed your hair. It looks…” She cocked her head to the side. “Awful.”
I personally liked the bright red. Green had been bad, though. “It’s great to see you, too.”
“I still can’t believe you turned down University of Michigan to go on a road trip,” she said.
“I didn’t turn them down, I deferred for the year. I’m going in the fall.” I wiped a strand of hair stuck to my damp forehead. There were too
many people around. “And it wasn’t exactly a road trip. I worked on different service projects.”
“And you got a tattoo!” She snatched my hand and turned my wrist over. “You’re such a badass. My mom would kill me, even if I got one where they couldn’t see it.”
I had more tattoos where she couldn’t see, covered by my polo top. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her it’s easy to do whatever you want when no one cares what you do in the first place. I could text my father I murdered someone, and he would reply with I’m sure he deserved it, honey, two weeks after I was sentenced. The real trick, though, was knowing what you wanted in the first place.
“Have you seen Ash yet?” Her red-rimmed tawny eyes searched mine. “He freaked out on me a couple weeks ago, especially when he found out I hadn’t heard from you since last fall.”
“No, but I’m sure he’ll be around,” I said, forcing myself to sound casual in spite of a growing sense of foreboding. “Freaking out” wasn’t how I would describe Ash’s normal behavior.
She grabbed her cell phone from the side table and scrolled down the screen with her thumb. “I wouldn’t doubt it. He’s like your shadow.”
My vision wavered and there were now two Devons in front of me, both of them staring down at their phones as their thumbs moved in sync. I blinked several times, and she came back into focus. I was exhausted if I was seeing double.
“I’ve got to go back downstairs, but call me tomorrow, okay?”
“You’re not going to come with us?” she pouted. “I think we’re going to Trevor’s new house after this.”
Oh, hell no. Even if I wasn’t dead tired, I wouldn’t ever go to Trevor “Most Likely to be Acquitted of Date Rape” McCallum’s house. “I can’t tonight, but we’ll get together before I leave. Promise.”
“I’ll let it slide. You probably have better things to do anyway.” She gave me a sly smile as she looked up from her phone. “But just this once.”
My stomach churned at her words. It sounded like she knew something I didn’t. I pushed my way past the crowd surrounding us and went down another set of stairs, emerging out into the alley.
The backs of the shops and buildings of the downtown area formed the narrow alley, with Dumpsters placed randomly along the walls. I rested against the brick wall of the café and shut my eyes, letting the night air cool my skin. The balcony stood empty, and the closed upstairs windows silenced almost all the noise from the party.
“I’m surprised you came back down,” Helen said from the kitchen door. She bent over and ground out her cigarette on the asphalt.
I pushed away from the wall. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stay so long.”
“Would you quit apologizing so much? That’s all you ever do, like you’re apologizing for existing.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m just surprised you came back down, that’s all. It sounds like your whole graduating class is up there.”
“Which is why I wanted to get out of there,” I mumbled, mostly to myself. “I thought the point of getting out of high school and going off to college was to move forward. Not pretending we’re all the same people, still doing all the same damn things.”
She laughed as she went inside. “Not everyone is as brave as you are, Katie.”
I wasn’t brave. I traced over the invisible scars with my thumb as I followed her inside to the kitchen. She washed her hands in the sink and dried them on the dish towel hanging off her shoulder.
“You can knock off early. The Friday night rush is slowing down.” She glanced at my face. “Go home and get some sleep. You look like you need it.”
I opened my mouth to argue with her. I wouldn’t have agreed to come in and work if I wasn’t prepared to stay and actually work. But I shut it when I realized she was right. I didn’t even have the mental energy to protest.
Frowning, I offered a compromise. “Let me at least take out the trash before I go.”
“Deal.”
One of the new servers, a girl my age named Jess, came into the kitchen, and told Helen a customer wanted to talk to the manager about the noise upstairs. Helen huffed and followed her out to the front, leaving me alone in the kitchen. After hanging up my apron and filling out a timecard, I bagged up all the trash from the different cans in the kitchen, and took them outside to the alley. The Dumpster was next to the stairway door, which led upstairs. I was throwing the bags in one at a time when someone opened the door. It hit me on the back, trapping me between the wall and the Dumpster.
I yelped. “Hey!”
“Shit, I didn’t know anyone was out here,” a male voice said.
The door swung back part way, though not enough to let me out of my little makeshift prison. Trevor McCallum peered around it. I stifled a string of curses. Former captain of the football team, son of the long-standing town mayor, and an all-around asshole who never learned to keep his hands to himself.
His arctic blue eyes bulged as he recognized me, and then he delivered his patented panty-dropping grin. Despite all rumors to the contrary, my panties had remained firmly unswayed by his smile’s charm. He closed the door and blocked my path with a wide stance, creeping closer. I stayed close to the wall and tried to slink past him. He quickly stepped to the side as he watched me edge away, cutting off any avenue of escape.
“Katie! My favorite little freak,” he said, slurring his words just enough for me to notice. “You’ve gotten freakier. I like it.”
“Trevor!” I mimicked. “Don’t make me hurt you. I’ll like doing it.”
His gaze went to my legs and lazily moved up my body to land on my breasts. “I always knew you were hot, with that mouth of yours.”
His eyes didn’t move from my chest. They weren’t anywhere near my face, and definitely not on my mouth. I think he forgot the basics of anatomy again. Trevor wasn’t known for his intelligence. I reached into my khaki shorts pocket and gripped my keys.
“I mean it,” I warned. “Touch me and I will cut your dick off this time.”
My heart pounded in my ears as I put my fingers through the self-defense keychain. A metal cutout in the shape of a cat’s head, the pointed ears were razor sharp and hurt like hell. Concentrate on getting away from him first, have the panic attack later.
There was no way to easily get by him and I couldn’t let him touch me. He outweighed me by more than fifty pounds of muscle and moved fast from years of football practice. If I tried and failed, experience had already taught me he wouldn’t let me go without a fight.
From a few feet away, I detected the soured sweetness of beer on his breath. I scanned the alley with a quick glance. No one else was around that I could see, and if I shouted for help, it was unlikely anyone inside could hear us over the noise from the party upstairs.
A tightening in my throat made it difficult to draw in a breath for a second. I didn’t know if he would stop from going farther this time. The side of the keychain pierced the pad of my fingertip, bringing me back to the present and reminding me that I wasn’t helpless. My whole body tensed in preparation. I had one chance to surprise him by hitting him hard and getting away. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s victim again.
“I just want to say hello. What’s so wrong with that?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he lunged for me with arms outstretched.
Ready for him, I dropped down low, evading his hands, and jammed the keychain into his exposed ribcage. He bent over with a pained bellow, holding his side. I used his off-balance stance to my advantage and knocked him over. He slammed into the Dumpster face-first and then crumpled to the dirty asphalt on his hands and knees. I took off at a sprint.
I slowed down to a jog halfway down the end of the alley, and looked over my shoulder to make absolutely sure he wasn’t chasing me. He sat slumped over on the ground, right where I left him. Good. I fucking hoped it hurt, too.
“What was that for?” he yelled, scarlet red blood dripping from his nose.
What did he think it was for? Another little misunderstanding?
I turned and almost ran into Ash. Literally. He was standing right in the middle of the empty alleyway, only a few feet away. The air in my lungs evaporated as I tripped over my feet to avoid crashing into him. My keys flew out of my hand and jangled loudly as they landed.
He caught me before I hit the ground and held me close to his lean chest. Instinctively, I wrapped myself around him. The rapid beat of his heart drummed in my ear. He took in a deep, uneven breath. He must have seen me running away from Trevor, and come running himself.
I allowed myself one single moment to melt into him. To sink into the feel of his embrace. And then reality reminded me he wasn’t mine to hold. Not anymore. I slid my hands down his back and then pushed away from him. I didn’t trust myself to let go if I didn’t do it immediately. He stiffened at my movement. I twisted out of his arms, feeling like I was tearing myself in half, and crouched down to pick up my keys. He knelt next to me.
“You’re really here,” he said, and I finally met his eyes.
My heart plunged when I saw the desperation in his gaze. He leaned forward on one knee, sweeping his hands over my shoulders, over my arms, like he was trying to make sure I was real, that I wouldn’t vanish like a puff of smoke in front of his eyes.
Trevor groaned from down the alley. Ash’s eyes moved away from me and his face hardened as he stood up. “Did he hurt you?”
All I could do was stare at him.
“Katie,” he said, balling his hands into fists. “Did he touch you again?”
I stood up straight. “I’m fine.”
Chapter Six
When I was sixteen years old, boys started fighting over me. It wasn’t nearly as romantic as it sounds…
“So what’s your latest masterpiece?” I asked Ash.
He carried a rolled-up canvas while we walked together through the crowded hallway toward the double exit doors. Small groups of kids hugged the walls while everyone else flowed out the exit.
