Chapter Twelve - KATYA
There was murder in Oliver’s eyes that night. Every word that came after he removed my scarf was deliberate and calculated.
I never told him who did it or how it really happened. The last thing I wanted was attention from that family. No. They took enough from me. They took everything from me and I started over. Made a brand-new life. And no, it was not a perfect life back then. Hell, it’s still very far from perfect right now. I’m not a perfect person. But it’s my life. It’s what I have and it could be worse.
I glance at my laptop, still waiting for some kind of acknowledgment or reply about the last video I uploaded, when my phone buzzes on the desk next to me. I read the text.
Unknown Number: Come back to me.
I stare at the message until my phone screen goes dark and it disappears. The invitation lingering in my thoughts.
Unknown Number: You wanted me to find you. And I have. Don’t play games, Kat. Just meet me. One hour. You know where.
Again I stare at his message until the phone goes dark.
I know where.
After that first night we were inseparable. Not true, we were separated a lot. I didn’t want a boyfriend and he didn’t want a girlfriend. So we never used those terms. And even though we spent the first two nights together, after that it was back to business for me and back to the shell of a life he was leading for him.
I needed that client he chased away. I didn’t get him, but I got another one. This guy was weird. He made me nervous. But he didn’t want to meet me in person. And he didn’t want to fuck me. He just wanted to watch me on cam. That’s how the whole thing started. Voyeurism was my saving grace back then. A way to be part of that moneymaking world and not have to actually interact with the men.
I bought better camera equipment and every morning, after Lily left for school, I turned it on and went about my day. The Hook-Me-Up site offered lots of opportunities if you knew how to log in to the right part of the website.
I knew how. My parents left me a care package before they died. New identities for both Lily and me. Complete with school records, birth certificates, and social security numbers. Just enough cash to get out of town and pay tuition at a new school. Disposable phones. A pre-paid credit card. And directions on how to find help on Hook-Me-Up.
But it all came with a warning.
Do not be obvious. Two teenagers on their own can’t live an easy life and stay under the radar. You must work for it. You must know struggle. You must fight your way back to the top.
So that’s what I did. I fought for it. I opened a live-stream website, I got paying clients, and I worked on my photography. Self-portraits. Who’d have thought my life’s work would begin and end with me?
I never showed my face. Even in the live stream I covered my face with a veil or a scarf or a mask. I covered the thin silver-white scar on my neck with makeup. And later, the larger scars with the tattoos Oliver carved into my body with ink.
I have taken hundreds and hundreds of headless self-portraits. And not all of them are nude. Some are whimsical and artsy. I even had one in a gallery in Brooklyn. A picture of me sitting on a guard rail in front of an abandoned gas station somewhere in New Jersey. I was wearing a Fifties vintage dress and I had a lampshade on my head. I Photoshopped in some butterflies later, but all the rest was real.
And it sold! It was my first sale. It took a while for the next sale to come in because not many galleries were interested in what I was doing. I wasn’t sure it was a thing at first. I worried about that. But then I found another artist online doing something similar. She used fashion and accessories to replace her face and describe herself. And she had a website with a store.
It was the luck I needed to get over that struggle and win for once.
I used sex to make my photos stand out. Nudity. Eroticism. Mystery.
The live stream was the money-maker, for sure. No one was paying any attention to my photographs back when I first met Oliver. And once the cash started coming in I got an apartment for Lily and me.
She was just finishing up eighth grade in public school when I applied to the Parson School for Girls. I really didn’t expect her to get in since it was so late in the year. But the documents my parents left us included her SSAT results and glowing letters of recommendation from teachers at an East Coast boarding school.
So she did get in. I used the rest of the cash from my care package to pay the tuition and I worked hard so I could pay it again the following year.
I never finished high school and I never went to Harvard. But Oliver didn’t know that. I don’t think he looked too hard at my excuses. He liked me. I liked him. But our relationship was nothing but a diversion from the reality we lived with.
He had secrets, which was fine with me, because I had secrets of my own.
He went to church every Sunday, he explained that first weekend. And if I ever wanted to see him again all I had to do was show up for the eleven o’clock mass, wait in my pew for ten minutes after mass was over, then walk outside and get on the back of his bike.
He took me places almost every Sunday that summer. We went to the river, or the mountains, or down to Denver for lunch and a walk through a museum. Afterward we’d end up at his place fucking like we’d never see each other again.
After a few Sundays like that I’d show up on that bench across the street from his garage, dressed up like a makeshift schoolgirl. He’d pull up and I’d get on the bike. Then he’d drive us across the street and we’d… have fun. We had so much fun.
I allowed myself until August to enjoy a normal life and then, under the pretense of Harvard, I escorted my little sister to her dorm at Parson, told her I’d call every Sunday night, and I left town.
It had to be that way. I had to set things straight. I had to get my true freedom back if I ever wanted to stop this constant cycle of struggle.
And I had no choice. So I went. I left.
Oliver was part of someone’s plan, but it wasn’t my plan. He was never a plan to me. He was just… Oliver. The guy who wanted to save me, but decided to fuck me instead.
I’m glad he stopped trying to fix my life. Stopped offering money. It made it easier to keep him at a distance that summer.
I could not afford to drag an innocent person into my plans. I could not afford to fuck things up for Lily. She was the good that came out of all of my pain.
There is this thing artists have about pain and misery. One cannot create anything worthwhile unless it comes from hardship, or fear, or stress.
It’s stupid. I knew it was stupid. But I believed it as well. My struggle started with a sick man carving a threat across my throat. But that led to so many good things. A way out, a way forward, and the determination to make it all happen.
So I took that pain. I captured it on film and turned it beautiful. I showed it to the world so they’d all look at my work and think about the pain in their own lives and we’d commiserate until they opened their wallet because they needed my art to remind them of their own misery.
It’s stupid.
But I believed in it. Artists are delusional like that.
Unknown Number: Answer me.
I look at the phone until it goes dark and then pick it up and reply.
I can’t.
I won’t.
This is a mistake.
I erase it all and type… I’ll see you in fifty-seven minutes.