When I think toomuch about Kevin, I dream of him.
All it takes is to say his name or even think of his name, and he appears when I sleep. Just one thought is enough to be too much.
I know it’s a dream because I’ve walked the same walk a hundred times, up the concrete stairs in the middle of the concrete jungle, but not before one final talk with Mother.
I look out the tinted window of the limousine and see an endless wall of skyscrapers and towers. Millions of people in this city and they all look the same, carry themselves the same, and walk the same walk to the same boring jobs. People aren’t happy here and if they think they are, they’re just lying to themselves. The same way Mother lies to herself. The same way she lies to me.
“You do whatever it takes to make him happy,” Mother says to me, as cold asever.
Her permed, color-treated hair is a relic of the nineties. It’s the same hairstyle she’s been sporting since my earliest memories and is about fifteen years out of fashion. Her eyes are covered with oversized dark shades and she’s dressed for a funeral in a black pencil skirt and black brimmed hat.
The funeral? The final nail in the coffin of my innocence.
“What if I don’t want this life?” I ask.
But she’s a stubborn woman. She places a hand on my thigh. “You’re not old enough to know the kind of life you want. The life in front of us—” She inhales softly and corrects herself. “The life in front of you is one everybody else could only ever dream of.”
“Getting railed by an old man doesn’t seem like hitting the jackpot to me.”
She removes her shades and holds them in one hand as she shoots me an icy glare. Her face contorts, going through the phases of mimicking concern and landing on faux empathy. “This isn’t forever, Noah. Someday, he’ll grow tired of you. He’ll stop watching you out of the corner of his eyes. The day will come when you can be gone for days and he won’t bat an eye. Have your fun then.” She places the sunglasses back over her eyes. “But for now, it’s time to get to work.”
I relent to my fate, pop the door open, and climb out of the limousine. I’d heard summers in the city were miserable, but I’m unprepared for the stench thatassaults me as a breeze tunnels down the never-ending street.
Up ahead, my destiny awaits.
Kevin waits at the entrance. A face is finally put to name. He’s fifty-two but looks a good ten years younger. He’s well built, filling out the white button-up shirt tucked neatly into gray slacks. Pretending to want somebody, to love somebody, is a much easier pill to swallow when they don’t look like the slobs back at the trailer park. Can’t get much worse than a beer-bellied man with broken welfare glasses trading food stamps for five minutes with me.
Those men never owned me, though. At most, I was rented by the hour.
This man before me, a prominent figure in New York Society, isn’t renting me. The contract is all but signed, sealed, and forever. A year from now, on my eighteenth birthday, he’ll officially take me as his and he’ll own me.
I eye the bustling sidewalks on either side of me and ponder the idea of running away and starting a new life. It’s an impossible dream. The only skill I have is using the body I’ve been blessed with. The only other real option is taking to the streets, but if I’m going to be a whore, I might as well be getting something out of it.
I hear the whirring of the window behind me and peer over my shoulder. Mother has taken my seat in the back of the limousine.
“Make him wear a condom until you have a ring on your finger,” she says with the same tone a caring mother tells her precious child to have a good first day of school.
Kevin offers a hand to me as I reach the final concrete step on the stoop. Every time I have this dream, I take his hand because the past can’t be changed. I’m stuck living the things done to me on a loop. It’s why I never sleep well.
My fingers graze over his, the friction of the inevitable drawing us together like magnets.
But I stop, my own words haunting me. What if this isn’t the life I want?
The visage of who he was shapeshifts into who he eventually becomes—a hollow shell of a human both in mind and body as the cancer eats away at his youth. And then he’s back to his younger self in a flash.
I twist on my feet to find the limousine is long gone, taking Mother with it. Without her looking over my shoulder, I’m free to make my own decisions. I don’t even look back at Kevin as I refuse his hand, his twisted sense of love, and every shitty thing he ever did to me.
And I walk away. Every step I take is like marching toward absolution. Freeing myself from the ghosts of Mother and Kevin. Giving myself the grace I should have given myself so long ago. Forgiving myself for the things I let other people do to me. Walking away from my ghosts does nothing to changethe past, but it fills me with a sense of permission to live again.
I search through the bustling sidewalks of the city. Search for Seven’s face in a crowd of people, but I’m surrounded by hundreds who all look the same. My search intensifies as I find myself running, pushing my way through the crowds. The faster I find him, the faster I can tell him the words I haven’t been able to say.
Thunder crashes, ripping through the sky as the sun takes shelter behind a glistening tower of glass. The darkness above steals my attention, and I find myself looking upward as a night sky falls over the cityscape.
And then a stabbing pain in my upper arm.
Blood seeps through a slash in my arm, staining the white cotton of my shirt.
I spin in a quick circle, searching for my attacker, and come face to face with Kevin.
