I’ve never understood how girls could get crushes on actors, people they didn’t even know. And I’ve never understood how girls could drool over a photo of a hot stranger. But looking at this guy… I felt a little slobbery.
“This won’t work,” I said.
He could have anybody. Anybody. That was probably his problem. One of those insanely handsome specimens who knew he could have any girl he chose, unable to make up his mind, moving from one beauty to the next.
“Just try it,” Dark Hair said. “Think of it this way. You’ll be doing the females on campus a favor. The guy’s a predator. He needs to be called out on his behavior.”
She had a point.
“You could be like a super hero,” Fan Girl said. “He needs to be taught a lesson. He needs some of his own medicine.”
I gripped my coffee cup with both hands and stared into the dark liquid, then looked up at the girls. “I’ll do it.”
They smiled and quietly clapped their hands.
I pulled out my beret and put it on my head at a jaunty angle as I prepared to leave.
Fan Girl whipped out her phone and held it upright. “A before photo.” She took a picture of me, checked it, nodded, then put her phone away.
“I’ll need some money up front,” I told them. I wasn’t going to go into my living situation, and how I was broke and how I was starving. It was embarrassing. Even more embarrassing with all of them knowing just how far I’d fallen. There was nothing quite so humiliating as failing on a public stage.
“Oh, absolutely.” Dark Hair opened her bag, dug around, and pulled out several bills. I spotted some hundreds in there. She’d come prepared. She slid the cash across the table, and I folded the money and pocketed it. Then she pulled out a contract, and Fan Girl produced a notary stamp.
“My dad’s a lawyer,” she explained. “I’ve been a notary since I was eighteen.”
Wow, had they ever come prepared.
Chapter 3
~ Ellie ~
The next day, in order to go over things in private, I headed out to meet the girls in Dark Hair’s dorm located in Comstock Hall on the east bank of the University of Minnesota campus.
The weather called for a thrift-shop sweater, my baggy green coat, and my black beret. Some people might refer to my clothes as vintage, but I knew the truth. Goodwill.
I envied the kids walking to and from class. Even though I knew it wasn’t true, I imagined they had no problems. My whole goal right now was to be where they were, get back into school and film classes, but that took money. Money I didn’t have. Money that shouldn’t have been an issue. But when I was on the very campus I couldn’t afford, it was hard not to dwell on what had led to my current state of affairs and the knowledge that my years of child labor should have at least taken care of my education.
Enter sleazy mom who spent every dime I’d made, money that should have gone into a trust fund. I honestly don’t know how she blew it all. Millions of dollars. All I knew was she’d done it.
Dark Hair had a name, and that name was Charlotte. Fan Girl was Paige, which left Beba—a very cool name that I tucked away for safekeeping not knowing when I might need it.
“Here’s his class schedule,” Paige said, passing sheets of computer paper to me. “And here’s his address. And here’s his phone number. And here’s where he likes to hang out. And here’s a photo of his car, and a hardcopy photo of him.”
Everything I needed.
“We figured you could study it before we style you on Saturday,” Charlotte said.
“We’re working up some scripts right now,” Paige added.
“Scripts?”
“Yeah, like scenarios where you’ll bump into him. Things you should say, things you should carry, what you should wear.”
The plan for my physical transformation was sorted into blocks of time. Even traffic figured into the precise schedule. They must have been business majors.
I left the dorm with everything I needed to know about Julian Dye clutched to my chest.
Curiosity got the better of me. I decided to check out one of the hangouts on the list—a bar named The Drink located on campus, just off Washington Avenue. It wasn’t all that far from the dorm, so I rode my bike there, parked, and went inside.
The second I stepped in the door I spotted him sitting at the end of the bar.
It was like some kind of force field, and if my eyeballs could bo-ing out of my head like a cartoon, they would have. I sat down in a booth with an unhindered view of my target. Even from across the room, he was just so damn good-looking with his curly hair and his jeans and black leather jacket, sitting there drinking a beer, talking to a blond girl. His next victim.
At one point, he seemed to spot me staring. I looked down quickly, and when the server came I ordered a beer, surprised that I could afford it. Yeah, I had money-—-thanks to the guy at the end of the bar.
Suddenly I felt exposed, and I worried I might blow my cover if he actually noticed me now. I needed to get out of there. I drank my beer way too fast, left a tip, then grabbed my bag and hurried out the door, pausing to catch my breath once I was outside.
This would never work. No amount of magic would turn me into the kind of girl that guy would find attractive.
I pulled out the key to my bike and proceeded to fumble around, unable to get it to turn in the lock.
I muttered under my breath as I fought the mechanism, so engrossed I didn’t hear someone behind me until the person said, “Having trouble?”
The voice was kind of deep, but not too deep, and kind of smooth, but not too smooth. I was sure it belonged to Julian Dye. My back to him, I kept fumbling. “No, it always does this. Need to get a new lock. It’ll be fine.” Move along. Nothing to see here.
“Let me try.” And then he was crouching beside me, so close his knee actually made contact with mine, right where my black tights had a run in them. His hand crept into my field of vision, and his palm was open, as if he expected me to drop the key in it.
I did.
It took him about a second to open the lock. He didn’t stop there. He actually unwound the covered chain, rolled it up, and held it out to me. I grabbed it and got to my feet, head down, face hidden by a wall of hair.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
“I saw you staring at me in there.”
My heart was thundering. I didn’t know why I did it, but I pulled up an English accent I’d used way back in some movie role. A fantasy about kids and dragons. “I don’t think so.” My hair continued to obscure my face while I peeked through the dark strands. “Nope. Never seen you before.” I almost said guv’nor. I babbled some more stuff, peppering in words like shite and bloody.
I jumped on the bike and was pedaling away when he shouted after me. “Wait! Your hat!”
Damn. I’d left my beret on the table. Now I understood why he’d come after me.
Without looking, I tossed my reply over my shoulder: “Keep it!” Then I went like hell on my blue, fat-wheeled bike while the “Wicked Witch of the West” theme song played in my head.
Chapter 4
~ Julian ~
I stood outside the bar and watched the crazy girl with the hair in her face and torn tights and scuffed boots pedal away. She disappeared around the corner, and I looked down at the hat in my hand.
Behind me the bar door slammed, and I felt a body brush against my arm. “I wondered where you went,” the voice that belonged to the body said.
And then I remembered the girl beside me. We had a class together, and today she’d asked if I wanted to go for a drink, so here we were. Thirty minutes ago, I’d found her vaguely interesting, but now… not so much.
“Wanna go somewhere else?” she asked. “My roommates won’t be back until late.”
Thirty minutes ago I would have gone. And I would have ended up in the same mess I always end up in. Sex, followed by the awkward escape. And since we had a c
lass together…
This had happened before. Too many times. So many times I’d started to wonder if I had a problem. Like a sex addiction or something. And then I’d brush it off, and the sex would happen, some pretty bad, some mind-blowing, and there I’d be again.
I tried to tell myself that I never made the first move so it was okay, but I was starting to learn that girls played by a different set of rules.
And sex with me caused weird things to happen. Like this girl. With her blond hair and sweet face, gripping my arm, trying to pull me in the direction of her dorm and the sex she wanted to have. Me, taking some awkward steps.
If I went, and if she didn’t become my instant girlfriend, I might wake up to find my car tires slashed. Or I might go to class and see that the place where she normally sat was empty. And then… then I might hear that she tried to hurt herself.
I thought about the last girl. April was her name. She took an overdose of pills—at least that was the rumor going around.
But Christ.
Just sex.
It was just sex.
“Come on.” She was pulling at me.
I looked at the black beret in my hand, and I thought about the girl it belonged to. I thought about her weird accent and her weird behavior. I was pretty sure she’d been staring at me in the bar. But those big glasses—they could have made it look like she was staring when she wasn’t.
“I’ve gotta get home,” I told the blonde. Dawn was her name. “I’ve got a paper to write for tomorrow.”
She was disappointed. She pouted a little. “Okay.” She dropped her hand from my arm. “See you in class.”
“Yeah, see you.”
She went one direction, and I went another.
That girl… That girl on the bike… She wasn’t at all like the kind of girl I found attractive. Nothing tidy about her, from her messy hair to baggy coat to big glasses to scuffed leather boots. I hadn’t even gotten a good look at her face, so what the hell? I didn’t know her name, I didn’t know if she was a student at the U. But she was English. I knew that. And I had her hat. Maybe I could find her.
After leaving campus, I drove home, touched the doorknob to my duplex apartment, and there it was. The dread.
Doors.
I hated them.
I never knew what was going to be on the other side. I just never knew. Every time I opened one, I got this sick feeling in my gut. This deep dread that went along with childhood night terrors. This indescribable thing beyond words, beyond explanation.
Except mine had an explanation. I didn’t need my shrink to tell me that.
But inside, everything was fine. My sister Valerie was where I often found her after finishing her grad school classes for the day—standing in the kitchen, dipping a tea bag into a steaming mug.
As normal a scene as a guy could want.
I dropped my backpack on a kitchen chair, opened a cupboard, and pulled out a bag of chips.
“Should you be eating those?” Valerie asked. Chips weren’t part of the training diet that was at this minute stuck to the refrigerator door with four fruit magnets.
“A few won’t hurt.”
“How was today?”
Valerie was older by three years, and she’d taken on the role of the parents we no longer had. I felt both bad and annoyed by that.
I grabbed a glass, turned on the faucet, and filled the glass with water. “Fine.”
“I worry about you, that’s all.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I worry that you’ve taken too many classes. I think you should drop at least one. And with the cross-country team. It’s just too much, Julian. You have to ease into college gradually.”
“I have to be on the team, but I’d want to do it even without the scholarship.” I had to run. Running was the only thing that helped.
“I’m just saying, go at your own pace. There’s no hurry.”
I finished the water and put the glass aside. Maybe there was a hurry. Maybe I needed to pack a lot of living into the next few years or months or weeks. Because you never knew when your number would be up.
I grabbed Valerie by both arms and looked into her face, speaking with a conviction I didn’t feel. This was how we did this stuff. This was how we coped. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Her eyes got shiny, and I could tell she was struggling for control. “You don’t know that,” she whispered. “We don’t know that.”
And there it was. My own nightmare staring back at me.
She gave me a slow blink, squared her shoulders, and pulled in a tremulous breath, struggling for composure. This was our life. Break down, then glue ourselves back together. “It’s just hard.”
“We’re okay.” I gave her what I hoped was a confident smile. “You’re okay.”
“Just don’t push yourself too hard,” she said. “That’s all I’m saying. Don’t push.”
“I won’t. I’m not.”
She returned my smile, and I let her go. The storm was over.
We fell into the evening routine. I chopped vegetables while she grilled chicken for tacos.
“I met a girl today,” I said as the chopping knife made a rhythmic sound against the wooden cutting board.
“Tell me something new. Really, Julian, this is another thing that’s been bugging me.”
Christ. I shouldn’t have brought it up.
“All these girls. It’s just weird. I mean, I know… Well, I guess I don’t know how it is with a guy, but I think you might be trying to make up for lost time.”
“Forget it. Forget I said anything.”
She removed the pan of chicken from the burner. “Okay, what about the girl you met today?” Hand on hip, one bare foot on top of the other. “Was she any different from the ten other girls you’ve met since we moved here?”
Maybe I deserved the slightly sarcastic tone in her voice. “Yeah, she was different. A lot different.”
“That’s at least a start. You keep going out with girls who are… I’m sure they’re nice, but they all seem kind of the same. Different would be good.”
Together, we set the table, then sat down facing each other. I would have preferred to just toss some food on a plate, then head to the living room and plop down in front of the TV, but Valerie wanted our lives to be as normal as possible. Normal was setting the table. Normal was eating dinner together, one tiny happy family.
“So, what’s her name?” Valerie asked. “What’s she like?”
I passed the bowl of shredded cheese. “I don’t know her name.”
“What do you know?”
“Nothing. I know nothing.”
“Ah, mystery. Who doesn’t like a good mystery? Well, is she a student?”
“I don’t know that either. All I know is she has an English accent.”
“I could do a search of university students from England. You could go through the photos. Mystery solved.”
“That’d be a little too much like stalking.” I didn’t want to tell her I didn’t even know what the girl looked like, that I’d only seen her from across a dark room.
“I guess you’re right. Just trying to help.” She took a bite of taco. With a fork. She always used a fork.
This was the place where I normally pointed out the lack of logic behind her taco-eating method, but I didn’t tease her about the fork tonight. Instead, I thought of the beret in my backpack, curious about the owner. I couldn’t tell Valerie I’d just had this weird unexplainable sense of… something when I’d looked across the bar to see the girl in glasses staring at me. This pull. This spark. This sense of being alive.
I hadn’t felt alive in a really long time.
Maybe that’s what all the girls represented to me. A remembrance of life. Or was it an imitation of life? An imitation of what it felt like to be alive, skin-to-skin, breath-to-breath?
Chapter 5
~ Ellie ~
&n
bsp; Since the majority of the girls Julian Dye had wronged were blond, my hair was bleached until it was almost white, then brought up a few notches to what I considered Marilyn Monroe level. So not me, but that was okay. The toughest roles were the ones nearest to who I was. Take me far away and let me put on the skin of someone who wasn’t like me at all—that was a part I could play.
Following the bleach job, it was a shopping trip to the Mall of America where I was fitted for a bra at Victoria’s Secret. I had to strip to the waist while a shriveled woman with long, red fingernails poked at my breasts, measured me, disappeared, then reappeared with a handful of bras.
“You’ve been wearing the wrong size,” she announced in a voice that registered bored repetition. She’d obviously said this a lot. “You’re a C cup, not a B.”
Surprise.
And then, humiliation of humiliations, she showed me how to put the damn thing on. Like bend forward at my waist and let my boobs fall into the cups, then straighten.
I checked myself out. I had cleavage between some nicely rounded breasts. And it was weird… I think all the stuff I’d gone through over the past few years—the court drama with my mother followed by her cancer and death, along with bleakness compounded by poverty—it had done a number on my self-awareness and the sense of any kind of sexuality. I was twenty-three, but I often felt like a bag lady.
After my graduation from B cup to C cup, we headed off to Macy’s where I was fitted with dresses and jackets, jeans and tops. Even though most of the clothes were bland, the girls made sure the tops exposed that precious crack. Along with clothing was a pair of black high heels I’d never be able to run away or ride a bike in.
“I’m more of a boot person,” I mumbled as Charlotte repacked the heels in a fancy box.
Paige made a face. “Those combat boots of yours aren’t sexy.”
We finished off with jogging shoes. Not my speed either, but at least I could walk in them.
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