I kept my gaze low as I walked up the stairs, not only to keep myself from tripping but because I didn’t have the energy to look up. I stopped just before the final step, noticing something black peeking out from my doorway. The walls were built weirdly—they came out more than they should, so there was space for an animal to hide just out of my sight.
Expecting a cat or stray dog, I kept walking. Then it came into view. My breath hitched in my throat, causing an embarrassingly loud gasp to fall from my lips. A rush of fire blasted from the pits of my gut, warming me so immediately that I was afraid I’d burn alive.
Crew was there. He was sitting in front of my door, curled in on himself, and holding a black box. His eyes were closed, his head hanging forward. A flash from earlier took over my brain, reminding me of the people on the street. My heart began to hammer so fast I could feel it in my head.
I took a step forward, praying to God that Crew would move. The moment my foot connected with the concrete, Crew’s eyes shot open. He looked up at me, blood caked around his nose, a cut on his lip, and what looked to be bruises forming around his neck. The porch lights around us only did so much.
“Crew?” I thought I whispered, but I realized I was wrong as it echoed in the hallway. I sounded… broken.
So did he. “Hey, Prince Charming. Can I come inside? I have a lot to show you.”
Facingthe past had never been my strong suit. It made me spiral, causing me to act on pure panic and misguided instinct, akin to a caged animal. So when Tobias explained that we knew each other, and more importantly, how we knew each other, I acted on instinct. I ran.
I ran with nothing but my jacket and whatever was in my pockets. Once I remembered who Tobias was, the memories wouldn’t stop. They rushed over me, forcing me to drink them down and taste the poison before it slowly killed me from the inside out. Demonic claws squeezed my neck, getting tighter and tighter until I was panting into the cold, frigid air. It hurt to breathe in. Icicles trapped themselves at the base of my throat, choking me over and over until I was heaving on the side of the snow-covered sidewalk.
Christmas decorations and music mocked me as I threw up the meager bites of lunch I’d eaten with Tobias. I retched until my stomach was empty, nothing else coming up despite my muscles lurching anyway.
Large, curious, scared eyes came to me in relentless flashes. Tobias’s small hands were shaky and pale as they tugged on my arm. He’d tried to get me to leave, to help me understand something incomprehensible in my fifteen-year-old mind. He wasn’t much younger than me, but I guessed he had a better life than I did if he knew what was happening.
I wondered if he was taught that these things were bad. Tobias knew he wasn’t at fault—so fucking wise for such a young kid. Unfortunately, it was too late. I thought nothing of it. It was my job, my calling.
Jesus, I was a fucked-up kid. Bringing another kid, only to explain to him that something awful and life-altering was about to happen and tell him that it wasfine.
I thought it was. I thought I liked it. I thought I deserved it.
I forgot about Tobias. He was only there for two lessons. If I forgot about involving him, I could pretend it didn’t happen. Pretend I didn’t lure him into something so awful that it made me ruin my skin, my life, and my body for years and years.
We never brought another kid in after Tobias, anyway. He was the last one. I was the chosen kid, always doing what was expected of me. Always fucking obeying his orders, no matter what they were, because I was dirty. I deserved it. I had to be punished. That was the only fucking way to keep going.
The snow started to pick up pretty bad after a while. My feet were freezing, and my shoes weren’t thick enough to trudge along this much snow. I didn’t know it was supposed to be this bad.
I didn’t want to go home. Willow would take one look at my face, and she’d justknow. She’d ask me a million questions I couldn’t answer.
I didn’t want to see Price because it would mostly be the same, except he wouldn’t pepper me with questions. He’d be there for me, all gentle and kind as he held me in his arms and whispered sweet words into my ear.
Neither of those was what I deserved. The kind patience from both of them would be too much. I wanted to slice my skin open. Bleed until nothing mattered anymore. Force my regrets to spill over in the presence of no one except myself and God.
I looked down at my feet, realizing just how high the snow had gotten. The sun was starting to set. My phone kept buzzing in my pocket, though I made no move to look at it.
Maybe that made me an asshole. I couldn’t stand the idea of facing the two most important people in my life, all while knowing what I’d done. The guilt of ruining Tobias’s life, alongside my own, was too much. It weighed heavier than the ice coating my jacket, settling down my spine. It hurt more than my hands, which were stiff in my pockets from the cold.
I wasn’t even sure where I was anymore. I passed Moe’s Ass Shack, as Price liked to call it. I knew I’d gone past the hotel on Cross Street, too. I wasn’t paying much attention after that, letting my feet take me anywhere they wanted to go.
It was getting harder to walk as the snow piled up. I couldn’t feel my face anymore. At some point, I ended up roaming the few streets I wasmost familiar with, which were hot spots for sex workers. No matter what, clients could count on a few of us being there, waiting to be used for money. I knew that because, at some point, I was one of them.
Could I even consider myself one of them anymore? Was I ever one of them in the first place? I wasn’t sure if I’d earned the right to consider myself anything but a nuisance to the others who worked the sidewalks.
The contradicting memories of the two times I’d met Jesse twisted in my mind. How angry he’d been at first. I’d caused destruction, not only to myself, but to everyone around me. He’d said I had a choice, which I did if we wanted to get technical about it.
But then I thought back to Tiger Claw Camp, and I remembered exactly why I didn’t. At the ripe age of thirteen, I’d learned the importance of “getting what you deserve.” He called them lessons. Lessons on life, or how to show gratitude to the only man who’d ever paid attention to me like he had. Sometimes the lessons were about the obvious deviance that festered beneath my skin and how it could be absolved if I let him. His reasoning changed often, confusing me over and over until I just did what he wanted and stopped thinking too hard about it.
“Were you kind to your mother?”
“Why did you yell at that kid today? You know that’s not nice.”
“Did you just talk back to me?”
Everything I’d ever done wrong was cataloged in his mind and added to the tally of my mistakes.
