Three

Winnie

Tess never came home this morning after work. Chances are, she’s passed out in another trailer, but I wouldn’t know where to start the search. She’s slept with most of the guys who live here, and she owes a couple of people a lot of money. Maybe the time came for her to pay her dues, and someone wanted to cash in on the promises she’d made them. Judging from how screwed up she’s been lately, it’d take a long time for her to work off the debt.

Without her here, it’s quiet—so quiet, I can’t drown out the sound of the water gushing from the fire hydrant down the street. Every kid in the park is out there, splashing and squealing. All it does is remind me of time I spent with Dad—how he would take me to the moonlight swims at the community pool on humid summer nights.

But I shouldn’t complain; half of those kids have it worse than I do. I don’t have a mother, but at least I had a dad who cared if I was clothed and fed, whether I made it to school on time, or how much homework I had. Maybe he wasn’t around as much as he should have been, but he was always there when it mattered, when I needed him, and he made our time together count.

Tess knows she robbed me of that, and her guilt turned her into a raging alcoholic and an even worse addict than she already had been. In a matter of hours after Dad’s death, her drug use shifted from fun to survival.

She started living high to high, blackout to blackout. It’s the only way she knows how to cope because, like me, when she’s awake, the demons come back, screaming louder than the time before. Life’s a constant reminder of what we’ve lost.

I have good days and bad days. Days when I’m tired of feeling and living, sandwiched between a decent couple of hours where the world doesn’t seem all that bad. But it is, and as soon as I’m reminded the pain isn’t going anywhere, I do the only thing that makes me feel better. I cut.

There was so much blood. More than I’d imagined there’d be, but I hadn’t really thought about it when I grabbed the razor from the package. All I had known was that I had to be quick.

Trey was in the living room, talking with Tess. She was worked up about the eviction notice taped to the front door, screaming and crying about how Dad had left her with nothing.

I had seen the drugs come and go. I knew about the drinking since I was a little girl.

My parents had had me young, and you could say Dad and I had grown up together. We’d trusted each other, and I believed he had it under control. That, no matter how much he drank or how many pills he swallowed, he’d wake up in the morning and still be my dad. But he couldn’t have known that what was in that syringe would kill him. The syringe Tess had bought and given to him.

I’d thought losing Dad would be as bad as it could get, but I was wrong. Nothing was ever going to get better for me. On top of losing someone I loved, Tess and I were homeless, facing the streets with what little we could carry on our backs.

I’d cut too deep that day. Fear. Betrayal. Loss. They’d all come after me at once until I couldn’t breathe. And there was only one way to stop the shouting and force oxygen back into my lungs.

What I needed was love—someone to show me that my existence wasn’t a burden and that I was worthy. What I didn’t need was another blade between my fingers. But blades were easier to find than affection, and I’d ended up on the bathroom floor again with my only friend. I just prayed I could stop before I was too broken to be fixed.

I’d made the cuts fast, and once I got the bleeding on my thigh to slow down, I doused my skin with alcohol and screamed into a balled up towel. After a couple of seconds, I couldn’t tell which hurt more—my body or my heart.

And, as I peeled my tired body off the tiled floor, I ducked and hid in the back of my bedroom closet. I wasn’t sure how much time we had before we had to be out of the apartment, but I was sure that I didn’t want to go.

Trey searched the place, yelling my name over and over until he found me, hidden in the corner. “Jesus, Winn. You’re shaking. Come out from there,” he said. His voice was laced with compassion and concern, like Dad’s would have been had he been the one to find me.

But, if Dad were alive, I wouldn’t still be cutting.

I wanted Trey to hug me and never let go, but I stayed in a ball and blinked away the tears, afraid of what he’d say or do once he saw the bandages. The cuts were still so fresh, they were bleeding.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Why are you sorry?” he asked as he knelt in front of me.

Every time I closed my eyes, all I would see was my father’s lifeless body and that damn needle dangling from his arm.

“What was in it?” I asked him.

I never found out, and for some reason, it mattered to me. I wasn’t sure why; it wouldn’t change anything. But I needed to know before we left this apartment for good.

“In what, Winn?” He was the only one who called me that, and his voice was so soft, so kind, even though he had knuckles covered with tattoos and scars on his face from fighting. No amount of battles could have prepared him for my next question.

“The syringe.”

“It doesn’t matter, sweetheart,” he said.

I wished that were true, but it wasn’t.

When he held out his hand, I took it. I trusted Trey more than Tess, and I knew that, no matter what, he’d look out for me when she couldn’t be bothered.

As I stood up, he glanced at the blood-soaked bandages sticking out from underneath my skirt. I thought he knew what I’d done, but he didn’t yell at me.

Trey had demons of his own. Ones he never talked about, yet we all knew they existed. Scars and ink often came with a price, and Trey’s told more stories than a library full of books.

He was good at masking the pain though, so much better than I was. That was why he looked away and never said another word about the blood. I almost wished he had because, now, I harbored a secret that wasn’t entirely my own. If it were anyone other than Trey who knew, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. But Trey was safe. He’d always been safe.

That night, I slept at his house. We had the same routine for an entire week, and when I woke up the last morning in his apartment, Trey told me he had to take me home.

Home. What a joke.

Without Dad, I was on my own, and both Trey and I knew it. He handed me a wad of cash and told me to hide it from Tess, and then he left. Rumor had it, he had to skip town. It could be for any number of reasons. Trey was involved in so many illegal dealings, it was a wonder he was still alive.

But he cared, and he was all I had.

I left the comfort of the city and joined Tess in Carillon, never imagining those eight miles could make such a difference in my peace of mind, but they did. I became scared of my own shadow, and the silence was constantly strangling me. There was nobody to talk to, not a single person who could understand what I was going through.

With her habit sucking her dry, the trailer park was all Tess could afford. She didn’t even need a car or bus fare anymore. We were within walking distance to The Whip.

Life sucked. And I spent every single day praying Trey would come back and take me with him to wherever he’d run off to. Every time I heard a familiar-sounding engine pass, I would run to the window, hoping it was him. It wasn’t. Trey became a memory, yet he was my only reminder that somebody cared, that I was worth more than the money he’d shoved in my hand.

It’s hard to believe it’s been a little over a year since I saw Trey. I was barely sixteen years old the last time I heard his raspy voice. He always sounded like he’d smoked too many cigarettes and then drunk a ton of whiskey. He wasn’t a big drinker though; it was just the way his voice was—soothing, comforting, constant.

God, why did he have to leave?