by Pam Godwin
Copyright © 2016 by Pam Godwin
All rights reserved.
Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review or article, without written permission from the author.
Visit my website at pamgodwin.com
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Playlist
Other Books by Pam Godwin
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Poverty.
It used to be easier.
Maybe because I don’t remember it much as a child. Because I was happy.
Now all that’s left is grief and yelling and unpaid bills.
At seventeen, I don’t know a lot about the world, but I find that being unwanted and unhappy is harder to endure than having nothing to eat.
The knot in my stomach tightens. Maybe if I puke before I leave the house, it will loosen my nerves and clear my head. Except I can’t afford to lose the calories.
A deep breath confirms the buttons on my nicest shirt are holding together, my considerable cleavage still conservatively hidden. The knee-length skirt fits better this morning than it did in the thrift store, and the ballet flats… Forget it. There’s nothing I can do about the cracked soles and rips in the toes. They’re the only shoes I own.
I step out of the bathroom and tiptoe through the kitchen, combing shaky fingers through my hair. The wet strands fall against my back and soak my shirt. Shit, is my bra showing through the damp fabric? I should’ve worn my hair up or dried it, but I’m out of time, which further hardens my stomach.
Jesus, I shouldn’t be this anxious. It’s only the first day of school. I’ve done this numerous times.
But it’s my senior year.
The year that will determine the rest of my life.
One mistake, a less-than-perfect GPA, a violation of dress code, the tiniest infraction will steer the spotlight away from my talent and shine it on the poor girl from Treme. Every step I take in the judgmental, marble halls of Le Moyne Academy is an endeavor to prove I’m more than just that girl.
Le Moyne is one of the most recognized, elite, and expensive performing arts high schools in the nation. It’s intimidating. Fucking terrifying. Doesn’t matter if I’m the best pianist in New Orleans. Since my freshman year, the academy has been looking for a reason to expel me, to fill my competitive spot with a student who brings talent and financial endowments.
The stench of stale smoke roots me in the reality of my life. I flick the kitchen wall switch, illuminating piles of crushed beer cans and empty pizza boxes. Crusty dishes fill the sink, cigarette butts litter the floor, and what the hell is that? I lean over the counter and squint at the burnt residue in the bowl of a spoon.
Motherfucker. My brother used our best utensils to cook coke? I toss it in the trash with a surge of anger.
Shane claims he can’t pay the bills, but the jobless bastard always has money to party. Not only that, the kitchen was spotless when I fell asleep, notwithstanding the mold blooming on the walls and the laminate flaking away from the countertops. This is our home, goddammit. The only thing we have left. He and Mom have no idea what I’ve endured to keep us current on the mortgage payments. For their sake, I hope they never find out.
Soft fur brushes my ankle, drawing my attention to the floor. Huge golden eyes stare up out of an orange tabby face, and my shoulders loosen instantly.
Schubert tilts his scruffy chin and rubs his whiskers against my leg, his tail twitching in the air. He always knows when I need affection. Sometimes I think he’s the only love left in this house.
“I have to go, sweet boy,” I whisper, stretching down to scratch his ears. “Be a good kitty, okay?”
I remove the last slice of banana bread from its hiding spot in the back of the pantry, relieved Shane hadn’t found it. I wrap it in a paper towel and attempt to make a quiet-as-possible escape to the front door.
Our crumbling house is one room wide and five rooms long. No hallways. With the rooms set up one in front of the other and all the doors lined up, I could stand on the back stoop, shoot a shotgun at the front door, and not hit any walls.
But I could hit Shane. Deliberately. Because he’s a fucking burden and a waste of life. He’s also nine-years older, a hundred-and-fifty-pounds bigger, and the only sibling I have.
The hundred-year-old wood planks groan beneath my feet, and I suck in a breath, waiting for Shane’s drunken roar.
Silence. Thank you, Jesus.
Holding the wrapped bread against my chest, I pass through Mom’s room first. I walked through thirty minutes ago, half-asleep and shuffling for the bathroom in the dark. But with the kitchen light shining through the doorway, the lump in her bed looks unmistakably human.
I stumble with surprise, trying to remember the last time I saw her. Two…three weeks ago?
A flutter stirs behind my breastbone. Maybe she came home to wish me luck on my first day?
Three quiet strides carry me to the bed. The rectangular rooms are cramped and narrow, but the ceilings soar twelve feet or taller. Daddy used to say the pitched roof and long front-to-back layout was a ventilation design to ensure all his love could flow through.
But Daddy’s gone, and all that’s left circulating through the house is the musty, sputtering coughs from the window units.
I bend over the mattress, straining to see Mom’s cropped hair in the shadows. Instead, I’m met with the bitter stink of beer and weed. Of course. Well, at least she’s alone. I have no interest in meeting the man-of-the-month she’s been shacking up with.
Should I wake her? Instinct tells me not to, but dammit, I ache to feel her arms around me.
“Mom?” I whisper.
The lump shifts, and a deep groan rumbles from the blankets. A man’s groan, one I know with horrifying intimacy.
A chill grips my spine as I scramble backward. Why is my brother’s best friend in Mom’s bed?
Lorenzo’s thick arm swings up, and his hand catches the back of my neck, pulling me toward him.
I drop the bread in my attempt to push away, but he’s stronger, meaner, and never responds to No.
“No,” I say anyway, fear amplifying my voice, my pulse roari
ng past my ears. “Stop it!”
He wrestles me to the bed, shoving me face-down beneath his sweaty body. Hot beer breath smothers me. Then his weight, his hands…oh God, his erection. He jabs my ass with it, rucking up my skirt, his heavy panting scraping my ears.
“Get off me!” I thrash wildly, my fingers clawing at the blankets, taking me nowhere. “I don’t want this. Please, don’t—”
His palm slaps over my mouth, shutting me up as his strength confines my movements.
My body grows cold, numb, collapsing like a dead thing, separating from my headspace. I let myself slip away, my concentration on the safety in what I know, what I love, as I wrap my entire being with dark atmosphere, light strokes of piano keys, atonal rhythm. Scriabin’s Sonata No.9. I see my fingers walking through the piano piece, hear the haunting melody, and feel each quivering note pulling me further into the black mass. Away from the bedroom. Away from my body. Away from Lorenzo.
A hand snakes under my chest, squeezing my breast, pulling on my shirt, but I’m lost in the dissonant notes, recreating them with care, distracting my thoughts. He can’t hurt me. Not here with my music. Never again.
He shifts, shoving his hand between my butt cheeks, inside my panties, probing roughly at the hole in back that he always makes bleed.
The sonata shatters in my mind, and I try to reassemble the chords. But his fingers are relentless, forcing me to endure his touch, his palm muffling my scream. I gasp for air and frantically kick my legs near the bedside table. My foot collides with the lamp and sends it crashing to the floor.
Lorenzo freezes, his hand tightening on my mouth.
Loud banging vibrates the wall by my head, a fist pounding in Shane’s room. My blood runs cold.
“Ivory!” Shane’s voice booms through the wall. “Fucking woke me up, you worthless fucking cunt!”
Lorenzo leaps off me and backs into the beam of light from the kitchen doorway. Tribal tattoos blacken his chest, and baggy sweatpants hang from his narrow hips. An unassuming person might consider his beefed-up physique and strong Latino features attractive. But appearances are just the skin of the soul, and his soul is rotten.
I roll off the bed, shove down my skirt, and grab the wrapped bread from the floor. To reach the front door, I have to pass through Shane’s room then the parlor. Maybe he hasn’t crawled out of bed yet.
With a trembling pulse, I dart into the pitch-black cavern of Shane’s room and— Oomph! I slam into his bare chest.
Expecting his reaction, I swerve out of the path of his first swing, only to expose my cheek to the hard slap of his other hand. The impact sends me back into Mom’s room, and he stays with me, his eyes drooping in a haze of alcohol and drugs.
To think, he used to look like Daddy. But that was before… Every day, Shane’s blond hairline recedes farther, his cheeks sink deeper into his pasty face, and his belly hangs lower over those ridiculous workout shorts.
He hasn’t worked out since he went AWOL from the Marines four years ago. The year our lives went to shit.
“Why. The. Fuck…” Shane says, shoving his face in mine, “are you waking up the goddamn house at five in the fucking morning?”
Technically, it’s almost six o’clock, and I have a quick stop to make before the forty-five-minute commute.
“I have school, dickhead.” I straighten my spine, standing taller, despite the awful fear souring my stomach. “What you should be asking is why Lorenzo is sleeping in Mom’s bed, why he puts his hands on me, and why I was screaming for him to stop.”
I follow Shane’s focus to his friend. Faded ink scrawls up the sides of Lorenzo’s face, indiscernible beneath the dark shadow of his sideburns. But the fresh tattoo on his throat burns as bold and black as his eyes. Destroy, it says. The way he’s glaring at me, it’s a promise.
“She came onto me again.” Lorenzo’s gaze stays on mine, his expression an open canvas of malice. “You know how she is.”
“Bullshit!” I turn back to Shane, my voice pleading. “He won’t leave me alone. Every time you turn your back, he’s pulling off my clothes and—”
Shane grabs my neck and throws me face-first into the door jamb. I try to dodge it, jerking against the force of his rage, but my mouth connects with the sharp corner.
Pain bursts through my lip. When I taste blood, I jut my chin out to keep the mess off my clothes.
He releases me, his eyes dull and heavy-lidded, but his hate stabs through me sharper than ever. “If you flash your tits at my friends again, I’ll cut them the fuck off. You hear me?”
My hand flies to my chest, and my heart sinks as my palm slips through the gaping V of my shirt. At least two buttons gone. Shit! The academy will write me up, or worse, kick me out. I desperately scan the bed and floor, searching for little plastic dots in the sea of scattered clothes. I’ll never find them, and if I don’t leave now, there will be more blood and missing buttons.
I turn and run through Shane’s room, his furious shouts propelling me faster. In the parlor, I grab my satchel from the couch where I sleep, and I’m out the door in the next breath, exhaling my relief into gray sky. The sun won’t be up for another hour, and all is quiet on the vacant street.
As I take a step off the front lawn, I try to shed the past ten minutes from my mind by compartmentalizing it into baggage. The old-style kind, bound in brown leather with those little tan buckles. Then I picture the baggage sitting on the porch. It stays here, because I can only carry so much.
A short jog takes me toward the 91 line. If I hurry, I still have time to check on Stogie before the next bus.
Veering around the potholes that dimple the stately tree-lined streets, I pass rows of cottages and shotgun houses, each vibrantly painted in every color and adorned with the trademarks of the deep south. Wrought iron railings, gas lamps, guillotine windows, and gables etched with ornate scrollwork, it’s all there if one can look past the sagging porches, graffiti, and rotting garbage. Empty, overgrown lots pockmark the streetscape, as if we need reminders of the last hurricane. But the resonance of Treme thrives in the fertile soil, in the cultural history, and in the weathered smiles of the people who call the back of town their home.
People like Stogie.
I reach the heavily-barred door of his music store and find the handle unlocked. Despite the dearth of customers, he opens the store the moment he wakes. This is his livelihood, after all.
The bell overhead jingles as I enter, and my attention compulsively darts to the old Steinway in the corner. I’ve spent every summer since I can remember pounding the keys on that piano until my back ached and my fingers lost feeling. Eventually, those visits turned into employment. I handle his customers, bookkeeping, inventory, whatever he needs. But only in the summers when I don’t have the means to earn my other income.
“Ivory?” Stogie’s raspy baritone warbles through the small store.
I set the banana bread on the glass counter and holler toward the back. “Just dropping off breakfast.”
The shuffling sound of his loafers signals his approach, and his hunched frame emerges from his living quarters in the back room. Ninety-years-old and the man can still move fast, crossing the store like his frail body isn’t wracked with arthritis.
The cloudy glaze in his dark eyes denotes his poor eyesight, but as he nears, his gaze instantly finds the missing buttons on my shirt and the swollen cut on my lip. The wrinkles beneath the rim of his baseball cap deepen. He’s seen Shane’s handiwork before, and I’m so grateful he doesn’t ask or offer pity. I might be the only white girl in this neighborhood, and I’m definitely the only kid with a private school education, but the differences end there. My baggage is as common in Treme as tossed beads on Bourbon Street.
As he takes me in from head to toe, he scratches his whiskers, the little white hairs stark against his coal-black complexion. Visible tremors skate across his arms, and he squares his shoulders, no doubt an attempt to disguise his pain. I’ve been watching his health decline
for months, and I’m helpless to stop it. I don’t know how to support him or ease his suffering, and it’s slowly killing me inside.
I’ve seen his finances. He can’t afford medication or doctor’s visits or even basic things, like food. He certainly can’t afford an employee, which made my last summer on his payroll bittersweet. When I graduate from Le Moyne in the spring, I’ll leave Treme, and Stogie will no longer feel obligated to take care of me.
But who will take care of him?
He tugs a hankie from his shirt pocket, his hand trembling as he lifts it to my lip.
“You look mighty smart this morning.” His shrewd eyes bore into mine. “And nervous.”
I close my eyes while he blots the blood away. He already knows my strongest ally at the academy resigned from her position as the head music instructor. My relationship with Mrs. McCracken was three years in the making. She was the only person at Le Moyne who had my back. Losing her endorsement for a scholarship is like starting over.
“I only have one year.” I open my eyes, locking onto Stogie’s. “One year to impress a new instructor.”
“And all you need is a moment. Just make sure you’re there for it.”
I’ll catch the 91 line a few blocks away. The bus ride lasts twenty-five minutes. Then a ten-minute walk to the campus. I check my watch. I’ll be there, missing buttons, lip busted, but my fingers still work. I’ll make every moment count.
I run my tongue over the cut and cringe at the fatness around the broken skin. “Is it noticeable?”
“Yes.” He slides me a narrowed glance. “But not nearly as noticeable as your smile.”
Unbidden, my lips curl up, which I’m sure was his intention. “You’re such a charmer.”
“Only when she’s worth it.” He opens the clutter drawer at his hip and digs a quivering hand through the guitar picks, reeds, nails... What is he looking for?
Oh! I snatch the safety pin beside his probing finger and search for another. “Do you have any more?”
“Just the one.”
After a few strategic adjustments, I manage to pin the front of my shirt together and give him a grateful smile.
With a soft pat on my head, he makes a shooing motion. “Go on. Get up outta here.”
