Throwaway Girls

by Andrea Contos

  I can’t control the curse that jumps from my lips.

  If it’s a poison that gets absorbed through the skin, I could be dead before Jake knows to find me.

  My footsteps echo through the hollow floor, and I jam on the faucet and scrub my hands clean before covering them with two more bags.

  They fog and crinkle as I press a rag into the matted carpet. There’s no cleaning it. The best I can hope for is that the stain won’t be completely obvious.

  Crisp air gusts into the room and the blinds rattle, and Jake’s hand appears through the open window, long fingers beckoning frantically.

  I clutch everything to my chest — the not-Ziplocs, the rag, and the sip of alcohol and poison still trapped in the glass. Then I grab a thick stack of the missing person flyers Chrystal made for her niece.

  I shoulder the blinds aside and shove everything but the glass into his hands. That, I hold right side up, showing him how to handle it so we don’t lose what little evidence I’ve managed to save.

  His mouth drops open and his hands twitch like he wants to drop it all at his feet. He mumbles, “We’re going to jail.”

  I jump free, soggy grass squishing beneath my shoes, and take the evidence back from Jake. “Wipe the window.”

  He tugs his sleeve over the heel of his hand and wipes down the window frame, then glances down at me. “Run on three.”

  The screech of the window isn’t as loud coming down, but it still sets the light in the trailer behind us flaring to life again.

  Jake’s arm presses into mine, hot and tense, as we plaster ourselves against the side of the trailer. My muscles twitch with the need to run, but we’ve got nothing but wide-open space yawning in front of us.

  A door crashes open and I’m shaking so hard my teeth chatter.

  A beam of light sweeps over the rocky ground and circles up to join the stars before settling back, and then it clicks off and there’s only the shush of wind through the trees.

  I slide sideways, Jake following my every step, and a deep voice from around the corner calls out Chrystal’s name.

  Not a voice I recognize. Not a voice that reminds me of shotguns pressed into Jake’s temple.

  Jake flinches anyway and grabs my arm.

  There’s a quiet ratchet and strike of metal, and Jake whispers, “Revolver,” like that’s supposed to mean something to me.

  Like it’ll only take off my arm instead of blowing a hole through my torso?

  I pull the bag tight over the lip of the glass and crouch low, streaking across the front of Chrystal’s trailer and into the woods beyond.

  For once, I’m grateful for the wet leaves tickling my bare ankles, because at least they muffle our footsteps.

  I throw myself against a tree trunk, and the bark gouges skin that’s already cut and broken from a tattoo artist’s needle.

  The flashlight beam cuts the darkness again, but it’s slow and lazy this time, and the man lumbers up Chrystal’s front steps.

  I refuse to watch, even though I should. If he finds Chrystal and calls the cops, they could trace every connection back to me.

  I nudge Jake forward, through the woods that remind us both of things we’d rather not remember. Because even the memories that haunt my dreams are better than what’s waiting for me here.

  Chapter Twelve

  One of us is going to have to speak.

  We left the trailer park and headed nowhere, the car silent. Then Jake killed the lights when he parked along the road, his truck lilting where the ground slopes toward a drainage ditch.

  Heat blasts from the vents and his phone is a beacon in the dark, flaring bright every time he checks it — for what, I’m not sure.

  If there’s a reason we’re sitting here, he’s not sharing.

  My thighs stick to the leather seat as I fidget and flip open my bag. I changed out the flavor of my e-cig so Jake wouldn’t have to smoke any more cupcakes.

  But then, I made my promise to Aubrey.

  The vape lies against my palm, like Madison’s lipstick did yesterday, back when Chrystal was still alive.

  The first hit drops into my throat and floats through me, kicking up my heart rate only to calm it. It’s the only way I find the courage to form words. “I need to tell Marcel about Chrystal.”

  He holds out his hand until I drop the vape into it. He takes a long drag and says, “Mint?”

  When I don’t respond because what we need to discuss is what we just saw — what we just did — he says, “It’s good.”

  “Jake.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I said I need —”

  “I heard.” He says it like an answer. Like he’s giving a verdict.

  “You can drop me off if —”

  “I didn’t kill Madison.” His jaw locks, shoulders bunched beneath his jacket. “I need you to know that.”

  “I do know.” I say the words, and they sound so sure. He followed me yesterday.

  “I didn’t kidnap her either, and I don’t know who did.”

  I don’t think Jake kidnapped Madison. I don’t. But protesting your innocence when no one’s accused you feels like the defense of the guilty.

  “I was a dick for blowing her off and maybe —” He tries twice before he can finish his sentence. “Maybe it got her killed. But I don’t have anything to hide.”

  I get it now, what he’s trying to say. I understand it too. The guilt over the things you should’ve done. The things you should’ve said. And how all those failures make you just as responsible as the real culprit.

  And it makes me think he understood, even better than I realized, exactly why I cried myself to sleep in his arms that night on the St. Francis rooftop. Why it was always his voice I heard from the stands at all my games — and Madison’s right behind.

  It’s that Jake I need right now — the one who was there when I needed him, without expectations.

  He stabs the start button and the engine fires to life. The tires spin in the wet grass until we lurch forward, plunging into the stretch of quiet that swallows us whole.

  We park in The Wayside’s back lot, and when I use my key in the heavy steel door, a wave of unease worms beneath my skin.

  All my movements feel shaky as I drift down the hallway.

  People pass but I look without seeing.

  Jake’s presence looms behind me, his shadow draping over my skin.

  When I raise my arm to knock on the worn wood of Marcel’s door, I can’t stop the tremble in my hand.

  His deep voice bellows a “Come in,” but I can’t.

  Last time he threw me out.

  Willa’s gone and her next letter is overdue. Madison is missing. Chrystal is dead and she took whatever she knew about Madison with her. Marcel is all that’s left.

  Every part of this version of me is disappearing, bit by bit, and the pieces that’ll be left aren’t any of the ones I want.

  The door swings open and Marcel looks to me, then Jake, and wordlessly motions us inside.

  I lean against his desk, the wood familiar and solid beneath my palms. I stare at my couch and let it tell me he hasn’t forgotten me yet. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Caroline.” His voice fills the small room, but I’m not listening.

  He called me Caroline.

  He never calls me by my real name, and somehow, it feels like all my fears come alive in those three syllables.

  I speak, because if I do, he can’t. “Chrystal’s dead.”

  The room goes still, the door clicks shut, locking the voices outside in a different world.

  “How?”

  “I think someone drugged her.”

  He says nothing, but I know the look he’s giving me. He won’t settle for half an explanation.

  “I went to ask her about her niece going
missing, and I got drugged too.”

  Jake says, “I came to get her. I took care of her.” He looks ready to say something else, but Marcel’s glare cuts him off.

  Jake’s cheeks turn the kind of red that shows there’s no precedent for adults feeling anything less than adoration for him, and I continue before I have to think about my monumentally bad decision to let him come in here with me. Again.

  “We went back to see if she was okay, to ask her what she knew about Madison, and we found her. None of this makes sense, Marcel. Why would someone kill her? Why did someone kidnap her niece? She knew something about Madison. How? She couldn’t have, unless this is all tied together. This can’t be coincidence, can it?”

  Mr. McCormack’s hypothetical disappointment over my delivery hangs above me. No one will believe your argument if you don’t believe it yourself, Ms. Lawson. Are you defending your opinion or asking for your opponent’s approval?

  “It’s not a coincidence. I’m the only thing —”

  “You need to leave.”

  I flinch, dizzy as all the blood drains from me. “I’m asking you for help. I came to you because —”

  “I know why you came here, baby girl.” He’s in front of me, hands cradling my jaw, so big they block everything but his soft brown eyes. “I know why, but now you have to go. And you have to not come back, you understand? You need to leave this alone. Pretend you don’t know what you know.”

  Maybe I’m just not a very good judge of character. “Pretend I don’t know?”

  His response barrels through the room, shrinking it. “You don’t know a bit of what you’ve got yourself into. You want your face on those posters too?”

  Jake launches forward. “I won’t let that happen to her.”

  Marcel turns so slowly I brace for what he’s about to say. “You won’t let it?”

  Jake says, “No, sir,” and it’s the wrong answer.

  “She found a dead woman earlier, didn’t she? How you doin’ on protecting her so far, son?”

  My voice comes out strained. “Please, Marcel. Please don’t —”

  His hand unfurls and he nods toward mine.

  Because I’m holding my keys.

  And my key ring holds one of his.

  I’m too empty to move, the last vestiges of the person I was inside this room twirling away like the smoke from an extinguished flame.

  His hand closes over mine, and the key falls from my fingers.

  He says, “Go back to your real life. You don’t belong here, Caroline.”

  The Ways To Live

  Hunger is a kind of homecoming.

  An old friend. A worn-in pair of jeans.

  Starvation isn’t supposed to feel good.

  But beyond the pangs that claw at your insides, beyond that place where your vision goes light, there’s quiet. An empty, hollowed-out hush that grasps hands with the flush of victory. The thrill of survival. The knowledge that you’ve waged war against your own body and silenced its screams.

  Sometimes there would be a Larry who’d make it his personal mission to fill the cupboards and the spaces between my ribs. I hated them the most.

  I didn’t understand it at the time. None of them did, either.

  They’d come with crinkling bags lining their arms, smiling as they littered the peeling linoleum with an avalanche of food. Some would give their offerings silently, sliding boxes of crackers and cereal into empty cupboards, filling the fridge and freezer with milk, butter, sometimes ice cream. All while their gaze followed me from the corners of their eyes, like I was an animal, spooked and rabid.

  In truth, I was.

  But I reserved a special level of hate for the other Larrys, the ones who would make me acknowledge every box as they presented it to me.

  They’d start small. Eggs. Bread. Noodles. Milk. Things they thought no kid would appreciate. Then they’d graduate to the cookies. The ones all them kids seem to like so much. Ice cream. Chips.

  They didn’t know what I knew. That bread transformed into an entirely different food when pressed into a ball to be nibbled on. That a noodle could take an hour to dissolve on your tongue if left untouched.

  Ice cream couldn’t be hidden anywhere in your room.

  But all of that food, any of it — even the crinkle of plastic bag — would bring those gut-twisting hunger pains back, climbing from my stomach until I had to squeeze my arms over my middle just to stay standing.

  But the hunger wouldn’t last and neither would they, and once they were gone, the fridge would be just as blank as it was before they appeared in our kitchen, presenting their gifts like they weren’t a call to battle against my own body and mind.

  It wasn’t their fault they didn’t understand, that they got angry and yelled, called me an ungrateful little shit. I didn’t even blame the Larry that packed everything back up when I refused to move from my station on the floor.

  There was one Larry, though, who wasn’t a Larry at all. He was a Gerald. The only Gerald.

  I’d wake to crackers secreted beneath my blankets, warm cheeses tucked into far corners of my drawers and nestled against my stolen ketchup packets. Then one morning, the creamy, soft scent of scrambling eggs slithered beneath my doorway, and the sweetness of syrup sprang water to my mouth.

  It took me forty-five minutes to open my door. Another fifteen to travel the length of the hallway, linoleum cold against my bare feet.

  He never mentioned the food. Just left it there on the table, plumes of steam swirling above the plate. It only occurred to me later, much later, how many batches of eggs and pancakes he must’ve cooked that morning.

  He stayed longer than any of the Larrys, stuffing the trailer with memories of a different kind of quiet. The kind that comes with long nights of contented and sated sleep, the calmness of continuity.

  He stayed longer than he should have: Through one of Mom’s downturns as she took advantage of the freedom from the burden of my care. Through the yelling that barreled past the barrier of my thin pillow. Through the broken plates that gouged walls and then the floors where they came to rest.

  Even after Mom had taken in another Larry, I came home to a letter from school and a district account filled with enough money for breakfast and lunch for the year. I buried the letter and its tear-smeared ink alongside the expired ketchup packets in my drawer.

  We moved that summer. There was never another Gerald. But there was a stronger me. A more resistant one. There were times I slipped back into the comfort of hunger, but not like before. Never like before.

  I remember every minute I spent in my room that morning when he first cooked me breakfast, the rage of needs that conflicted with emotion. More than anything, there was fear, a soul-deep terror that when he left, I’d never find my way back to loving that empty place again, even when it was all I had.

  That’s what loving Livie feels like — like when I finally stopped being too scared to open the door and walk those cold, lonely steps toward happiness.

  Once she entered my life there was no returning to the weaker version of me, even if she left.

  She’d show up at the restaurant and request my section when it was slow, or sit at the carry-out counter stools when it wasn’t so she wouldn’t tie up one of my tables and cost me tips.

  I never told her how she cost me tips anyway, when I’d catch myself watching her. She’d sit in her booth, an anchor in a rainbow sea of textbooks and highlighters, and she’d go to another place. The smallest crease would form between her eyebrows, her teeth puncturing the soft cushion of her bottom lip, her hair deep black now that the auburn had faded.

  She transformed me into a study in awe and envy. I’d spent so many years surviving, I’d forgotten to dream.

  Livie hadn’t forgotten. She planned to be the first person in her family to go to college. She planned to live.


  After three weeks of visits, three weeks when the crux of my night rested on the thirty-minute window when she’d either bound through the door or leave me with the pangs of hunger, we ended one night on her front porch with the moon draped low in the starry sky.

  She brushed away a mosquito that flitted near her calf. “So what schools are you considering?”

  I paused, plastic cup halfway to my lips, the tartness and heat of vodka and cranberries flavoring the air, and blinked away the tears that rushed to my eyes. “I’m just trying to make it through high school.”

  “Hmm.” Livie stretched out her legs and leaned back on her elbows, chin tipped toward the open sky where she saw each of the stars like a new possibility. “Not good enough.”

  A violent heat rushed over my skin. “Excuse me?”

  Her eyes met mine, not the least bit sorry. “You’re smart. And don’t say you’re not, because I’ve seen your tests when we do homework and I read that paper you wrote about modern slavery — don’t get mad, you left it out where I could see it. Anyway, it was good. And you didn’t leave me alone in that parking lot. Do you know how many people did?”

  I shook my head because speech was still beyond my reach. My soul was tangled in her expectations of me. Save for a few teachers who I assumed were paid to say nice things, no one had ever given me a standard to rise over.

  No one had ever let me believe in the version of me I hoped to be. Livie didn’t believe I could be that person — she believed I already was.

  My sobs broke through, settling only when Livie’s arms and legs wrapped around me, her cheek pressed to the top of my head.

  Her fingers stroked my bare arms, long, calming brushes followed by the faintest skims of her fingertips. “You don’t want to go to college?”

  I fumbled through a response that ended with the root of all my evils — money.

  I felt her nod against my hair. “What you need is a plan.”

  And then she was gone, the front door slamming shut behind her, until she bounded back through it, laptop held high.

  We spent the night with grants and government loans, financial aid forms and student housing. We researched schools on her shitty laptop that kept dropping the stolen Wi-Fi connection.