Except…that means getting out of the safety of the car and showing my face to a fucking drug dealer.
It’s okay.
I won’t be in Ashwood Crossing that much longer.
Lenny turns until he’s fully facing the car. He’s wearing a slack-jawed scowl that sends a shudder through my body, breaking me out of my paralysis.
I know that look…and what comes next if I don’t do what he says.
My hands shake as I open the door, and my legs nearly give in before taking my weight. I huddle into my hoodie, tugging it further up my face, digging in my pocket for the money that’ll make this nightmare end.
I sidestep a puddle of what looks like rain but smells more like sewerage, and make the idiotic mistake of getting within arm’s reach of my uncle.
“Stubborn bitch.” Lenny slings an arm around my shoulders, pulling me against his side. He reeks of sour sweat and cigarettes. “But pretty, yeah?”
The dealer’s eyes rake over me, sizing me up. He’s younger than I first thought—mid-twenties, maybe. I ignore Lenny as much as physically possible, holding out the crumpled bills I pulled from my pocket.
“I got ten,” I say, having to clear my throat before my voice comes out properly.
Both of them look at me for a beat before bursting out laughing.
I don’t know what scares me more—them laughing, or the way neither of them even looks at the money.
The dealer’s laughter cuts off. “Where’s my three hundred?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at Lenny.
Fuck, he owesthree hundreddollars? What’s that, like a month’s supply?
Maybe they’re both so fucking high they didn’t understand what I was offering. At least, that’s all my panicking lizard brain can come up with right now.
“Two-ninety,” I say, wagging the bills in case they hadn’t seen them the first time.
“Aw, look at her, man. Being so fucking adorable.” Lenny’s grip tightens on my shoulder, bruising me when I try to twist out of his grip and away from the pain. “Her pristine, virgin cunt’s worth at least a hundred. And you can fuck her as many times as you want, as long as I’m getting fucked up.”
…What? Fuckingwhat?
My ears start buzzing so loudly, I don’t hear the dealer’s reply.
No.
No, no, no.
This isn’t happening.
Thiscan’tbe happening.
“…won’t tell anyone.” His fingers are on the back of my neck now, digging deep. “Will you, princess?”
I can’t breathe.
I can’t think.
I can’t do anything except stand there, frozen, while my uncle tries to trade me to a drug dealer like a piece of fucking meat. I dropped the ten bucks I was holding. My brain tracks the bill in my peripheral vision, watching it flutter deeper into the shadows until the wind plasters it against the side of the tent where a strip of plastic was duct-taped over a rip to keep it dry.
The dealer takes a step toward me. He gives me another scan, this one slower, more considering—like he’s sizing up my organs for the black market.
“Alright,” he tells Lenny. “You’ll get your fix. But you still owe me two hundred.”
One second I’m frozen, paralyzed by fear and shock and the bone-deep certainty that this is it, this is how I die, violated and discarded under a bridge like trash.
