“Great. Can I come in, or are you going to stay rude
and keep me out on this street all day?”
I see one bony shoulder shrug, and then she swings
the door wide and waves me in with a lazy hand. She
looks even younger in person. Delicate, her wrists thin,
her elbows big lumps of bone in her arms. She’s got no
meat on her thighs at all under the sweatpants hanging
off her narrow hips, and her pointy chin gives her a pix-
ieish quality.
She’s not pretty, though. She just looks like a frail
dullard. No light to her at all.
My hard little heart sinks. This girl isn’t anything like
me. She’s a limp washrag passively waiting for someone
to tell her what to do. That’s it. Gross. My psychotic
boredom has struck again. I chased after something that
has nothing to do with me, just to distract myself from
the slog of everyday life.
To be fair to my ego, though, my restlessness often
pays off with spectacular fun. I don’t want to be too hard
on myself. And I did find her, so I’m still a hero.
I turn in a slow circle under a brass chandelier. Every
light is ablaze in it, and the interior of the house is a bit more updated than Little Dog’s rural estate. I may as well
appease my curiosity now that I’m here, because this
house might be more interesting than this girl. “What
is this place?”
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Another bony shrug. “Little Dog said his aunt and
uncle are down in Arizona, so we should stay here.”
“Just a quick vacation for young lovers?”
“Whatever.”
“Everyone’s looking for you, you know. Did you run
away?”
“I guess. He said we should get out of town for a
while; that was all.”
“Why?”
“Cops or something. I’m not sure.”
Good Lord, this girl is dull as sandstone. I can hear her
brain scuffing over the rough spots in her intellect. All this time wasted on a kid destined for the scrap heap of life.
My mother was right about Kayla, and just imagine
how triumphant she’d be if she knew I was thinking that.
Of course, I’d eat shit before I’d ever admit it to her.
“So Little Dog dropped you off here; then he joined
you a week later. And now you’re just sitting here, wait-
ing for what?”
Yet another shrug.
“Where did he say he was going this morning?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Enid.”
Enid? Was he meeting Nate again for something?
More cash or clothes? A gun? “You got a Coke?”
Kayla moves slowly to the fridge, the ironic claim of
juicy across her backside barely moving with the mo-
tion. I follow her into the main living area and glance
around for any clues. There are no piles of powdery
drugs or cash. No weapons in sight, not that I’ll take
that for granted. All I see are fast-food wrappers in the
trash and a dirty ashtray on the kitchen counter. The
TV is flashing the bright colors of a commercial, but
the sound is down.
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She hands me a cold can of Coke.
“So this is it for you?” I finally ask. “You just want
to stay here with your loser pimp? Wait to see what he
tells you to do?”
That’s when I see a flash. Just the briefest twitch of the
muscles in Kayla’s face. “No.” Then a few tense seconds
later, she grinds out, “He doesn’t tell me what to do. He’s not my pimp.”
“Really? Because you are working, right? Picking up tricks at the truck stop? Sleeping with dirty old men? And
he’s ordering you around like you’re property. Go here, go there. He’s your pimp, baby girl. Or did you believe it when he said he was your boyfriend?”
“I don’t fuck Brodie,” she spits out, and the dullness
vanishes like dissipating mist in that sudden gust of anger.
So does my boredom.
I perk up and study her closely. Her sleepy eyes are
bright and sharp now, her bony shoulders tight. “Well,
that’s an unusual arrangement,” I say with a smirk aimed
dead into her pointy, angry face. “How does he know if
you’re a good enough piece of ass to turn out if you don’t
give him a taste of the goods?”
“He works for me,” she says, and the words are compact as rocks, no more working the vowels through her lazy
mouth. She glares at me through narrowed eyes, and she’s
thrust her head forward as if she’s about to barrel straight into a brawl, tiny size be damned.
“Well,” I drawl. “Aren’t you an uppity little slut?”
She snarls, her thin lip easing up over teeth to show
off canines just like a vicious little dog. “Grammy always
said you were nothing but a worthless cunt.”
A hard bark of laughter escapes my throat. “A cunt?
My, my, what happened to the helpless little girl who
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opened that door? Where’d she go? Off to church for
the evening?”
“Screw you.”
I step back to take her in, the fisted hands and tense
shoulders. She looks more wiry than frail now, tendons
standing out in her neck, eyes like dirty green ice against her white skin. She’s not helpless at all. It was an act.
The nape of my neck prickles and my pulse rate picks
up to a pleasant trot.
“Well, Kayla, maybe we have something to talk about
after all. What exactly does Brodie do for you, if you’re
actually his boss?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“Oh, it’s got something to do with fucking business.
Come on.”
She seems to get a little bored with her own outrage
and rolls her eyes before she pads barefoot back into the
pinewood-and-granite kitchen.
“This place is nice,” I say as she slides a pack of cigarettes from a drawer. She lights one with a bright pink lighter
and takes a deep drag before blowing it out in my direc-
tion. I watch her like she’s a movie about to reveal a secret.
“Good place to hide out,” I press. “So who exactly
are you running from?”
“What are you, a cop?”
“No, I’m not a cop. But I am smart and well-connected,
so if you need help, now is the time to ask.”
“I don’t need your help. I’m doing just fine.” To em-
phasize that, she saunters over to a wide recliner in the
living room and drops into it, hooking one skinny leg over
the padded arm. The window behind it looks out onto a
treed side yard, and it’s a good setting for her argument.
Everything certainly looks peaceful and affluent out there.
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“Okay. So why is Roy Morris after you?”
Her neck straightens from its slouchy curve and she
turns her hard little eyes to me. “How the hell do you
know that name?”
“I told you I was smart. And your life isn’t anything
like The Da Vinci Code, sweetie.”
“The what?”
“Yeah. Exactly.” I take a seat
on the sofa and face
her. The couch smells like clean laundry. It really is a
pretty nice place. “Look, Kayla, I’m not some social
worker here to save you. Life is a bitch and the world
is a terrible place, and the fact that we’re related doesn’t make your life more tragic than any other forgotten girl
getting abused and destroyed on every street in this sick
goddamn world. Got it?”
She rolls her eyes and takes another drag.
“You’re a sex worker, and that means no one gives a
damn about you whether you’re eighteen or sixteen or
fourteen. No one will help you. The cops will arrest you
and send you to juvie as a criminal even if you’re not ac-
tually old enough to consent. Or, hell, they’ll arrest you
and send you to jail as an adult. I’m the only person who’s even looking for you. You know that? Nobody cares. So
I’d suggest you wipe that smirk off your face and tell me
what you did.”
She ignores me, flicking her ash onto the hardwood
floor.
I feel like I’m stalking her now, and I like it. “Did
you blackmail them?”
Oh, she can’t hide these cards, because her pride won’t
let her. A slow, wide smile spreads across that narrow face until she’s almost cute. Her eyes scrunch up into pleased
little crescents. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
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“Sure, sure.” I smile at her. “Just tell me how you
did it.” I know her ego can’t resist the prompt. I know
because mine wouldn’t. “Come on. You worked those
men. We both know it. Just tell me how.”
She enjoys her proud satisfaction for another silent
moment, and then she gives in to the siren call of her
ego with another flick of her cigarette. “They all knew
how old I was, so don’t try saying I tricked them. Some
of them thought I was even younger. One sick bastard
kept insisting I was eleven until I played along and agreed.
Wanted to pretend it was my birthday party. ‘I can’t believe I’m finally turning eleven! Did you get me a present?’”
“Gross.”
“Yeah. Gross. It was their fault, not mine.”
“I agree with that. I just want to know how you
pulled it off.”
She sets both her feet on the floor now, and her eyes
sparkle like emerald chips in dirty rock, though she’s still trying to keep her face blank. I’m fascinated watching
her and wondering if this is what it’s like to watch me.
“It wasn’t exactly difficult,” she says. “They all thought I was nothing. Nobody worth noticing at all. Just a victim.”
“Because you let them think that.”
She shows all her teeth in a grin, and I see that the
bottom ones are crooked and spotted with cavities. No
dental care or orthodontia for poor folks. I’d had to spend several thousand getting my teeth fixed in my twenties.
And it was worth it. Good teeth are another point of ac-
cess many people in the world are never granted. I made
sure I punched that ticket.
“I gave them what they wanted,” she says. “A poor,
helpless underage girl they could use and throw away.
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What a thrill. And why bother looking under the surface
when the surface is exactly what you dreamed of?”
No, she’s not so dumb after all. My body tingles with
the thrill of it.
“The best part is it’s all so exciting to them that it’s
over in a few seconds. Easy money. But”—she pauses to
wink at me—“video lives forever, of course.”
Aha. Not the least favorite of my own tricks. “So you
recorded them?”
“Sure.” Another shrug as she relaxes back in the chair.
“I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t record ev-
erything. Like, you hear about people being bullied or
harassed, and, like, come on, record that shit! What the
hell? That’s your first step right there.”
Wow. This is like hearing my own thoughts played
back to me. A surge of pride rises inside me.
I’ve done plenty of my own recording, though often-
times it’s just for my personal enjoyment. But, boy, those
tapes do come in handy when you need them. Especially
sex tapes.
Guilt doesn’t live on the same plane with erections, and
neither does caution or common sense. You’d be amazed
what people don’t notice in the heat of the moment.
“So,” I push, “the soccer coach?”
Another wide smile. “Yeah.”
“Youth minister?”
“Sure.”
“Were there others?”
“Not many. Half a dozen.”
“So you recorded them and then what happened?”
“I’d email them a clip from the video and tell them
that someone would be in touch. Then Brodie would
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collect the cash, usually a thousand bucks, and we all
lived happily ever after.”
“And then you’d split the money?”
“Yeah, right! I’d throw Brodie a hundred. I was doing
the hard work, after all. He was just there as insurance.
If I showed up to collect the money on my own, they’d
think they could kill me and toss my body in a ditch to
fix the problem, right? There was nothing they could do
to Brodie to make me go away. I’m not an idiot.”
“No, I guess you’re not.” There’s no guilt on her face.
No self-consciousness. My nerves are alive with excite-
ment like tiny waves of shivers. “So with all those plans
in place, what happened with Morris?”
She blows a raspberry and I wonder if she learned that
little tic from living with my mom.
“Jesus. I didn’t know he was related to the damn
governor or whatever. I just thought he was another
businessman with deep pockets and a perverted mind.
That sick fuck had a little schoolgirl costume for me to
wear and everything. He owned his own company, and
the video was clear as hell, so I told Brodie to ask for five thousand instead of one.”
“Oh, you got greedy, huh?”
“I figured he’d pay a premium.”
“And did he?”
“No. When Brodie showed up to collect, that big bald
guy got out of the car and pulled a gun on him. Ordered
him to go get me and my phone and bring them back
to the meeting place or Brodie would get a bullet in the
head. He texted me as soon as he left and I took the hell
off. Packed a bag and Brodie picked me up down the
street and brought me here. I’ve been here ever since.”
“Smart.”
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“Yeah, I thought so.”
“But Brodie just went home?”
“Yeah. He told me I could chill here and he left;
figured they didn’t know shit about him, not even his
name. But they tracked him down. He gave them my
grandparents’ address, but they already had that, I guess,
because that bald guy beat the crap out of him. Told him
it was his last warning.”
“Were you worried for your grandparents?” I ask out
of curiosity, because if she’s like me, she doesn’t worry
about anyone.
“Oh sure,” she spits. “As worried as they’ve always
been for me. Dad in prison. Mom on drugs. But those
assholes couldn’t even be bothered to invite me over for
Christmas unless Daddy just happened to be out of jail
in the month of December. Fuck them.”
She ain’t wrong. I don’t bother telling her my mom
sold her out and gave the bald guy Brodie’s whereabouts.
That was how they found his place. That fact won’t reveal
anything she doesn’t already know about the world. “So
do you have a plan? You don’t think Morris is just going
to forget about you two, do you?”
Her face tightens up into a bitter little scowl. No, she
hasn’t figured it out. She’s stuck. “Maybe I’ll stay here and work for a while. Start googling my clients before I take
them on so I don’t run into any more surprise bullshit.”
A lifetime of that smokestack cloud really socked her
in. If she’s truly like me, she can be so much more than a
two-bit hustler, but she hasn’t yet seen beyond the stifling bubble of her environment. Maybe she got some dumb
genes from her mama, or maybe she was exposed to too
many drugs in utero and she can’t fight her way past the
poisoned air she’s been breathing deep her whole life.
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The question is: Why do I care? Is this just a fun
flash of time travel back to my youth? Maybe. Probably.
But I suddenly feel invested, and I’m not sure I’ve ever
felt that before, and I love the way my skin burns with
interest.
Left to her own devices, she’ll be her father all over
again, in and out of jail and useless. But she doesn’t have to be. She’s better than her father. Just like I was.
“What are your grades like?” I ask.
“Grades?” she sneers. “Who the hell cares?”
“I’m asking if you’re dumb.”
“Fuck off, you snotty bitch. I know you’ve always
thought you were better than everybody else. Everyone
says that.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times.”
“You’ve got that right. My dad really hates your guts.”
“The feeling is mutual. And look who hasn’t spent half
her life in prison. Spoiler: it’s this snotty bitch out here showing off her freedom. Leaving his trifling ass behind
in that visiting room a few days ago really warmed my
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