Chapter One
THE THING ABOUT not knowing where you came from, you can make up whatever story you want. And when you’re that desperate for acceptance, you make it a good one. The handsome father would carry me around on his shoulders. The beautiful mother ached at the thought of leaving me alone with the nanny for even a few hours. A dark night, slippery roads. Crash.
I was desperate, not stupid. I knew the more likely story involved a druggie teenage mom and a dad in prison or something like that. Still, I held on to that dream—until the world cracked underneath me for the second time.
Purple and blue lights flashed across the faces of my friends.
Friends. Well, they were people I spent time with. I knew most of their names. Some of them sold drugs; some of them bought drugs. Sometimes they traded places.
What am I doing here?
I didn’t have an answer, and something about the air bothered me. More agitated than usual, though I couldn’t pinpoint any one thing that was different. There had been a few fights by the bar, but those were standard operating procedure—and truthfully, part of the entertainment at the Meat Market. It was called that because it used to be a meatpacking warehouse.
And because everyone there was looking to hook up.
“Let’s dance,” my friend Kristy said, draining the last of her fluorescent green drink.
“Maybe later,” I said.
It felt like there were eyes on me from behind every beaded curtain, even though I knew there were only people getting high or having sex. No one watched me here. No one noticed that I was fifteen-years-old, not really allowed. No one cared enough to notice me, just like at home.
That thought was almost enough to make me stay, where at least I could find a boy to buy me a drink, to take me onto the dance floor, to kiss me behind one of those curtains. That wasn’t the same as love, but it was the closest thing I’d ever felt, a tin-can structure in place of a real beating heart.
But that strange sensation raised the hair on the back of my neck.
“I’m not feeling this,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Kristy raised her pencil-thin eyebrows. “We barely got here. I’m not leaving.”
“Will you be okay if I leave?” I asked, because we’d split a cab here tonight.
It had felt amazing when she had befriended me in ninth grade. I’d gone from nobody to one of the cool girls, pretty and unapproachable in the hallways of Lakeview High. Only, it was getting harder and harder to pretend that was me.
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mom.”
“Later,” I said, though I wasn’t sure there’d be a later.
I headed toward the bathroom to make a stop before finding a cab. Was my brother Tyler still awake? Maybe we could hang out and do something, like one of the video games he liked to play.
It was a sad thing when shoot-up video games seemed like the wholesome-entertainment option.
That was what I longed for, though—boy band posters and friendship bracelets. Maybe even family game night. The kind of togetherness I’d never really found. Definitely not with Kristy.
I used the restroom and studied myself in the mirror. Heavy black makeup lined my eyes, highlighting the way they slanted up a little—how different I was from my family.
My top was glittery and showed the olive skin of my stomach. Different.
And suddenly I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to wash the makeup off and change into a comfortable T-shirt. I didn’t magically want to spend time with my parents—who clearly didn’t want to spend time with me. They didn’t even bother pretending I should stay home when I went out, even though my brother was overprotected at every turn.
I didn’t magically belong with them either, but I knew I didn’t belong here.
I left the bathroom—and almost ran into a man who was waiting outside.
“Sorry,” I mumbled and tried to go around him.
Another man blocked my path.
My throat went dry, and I looked up to see a few guys surrounding me. Beyond their shoulders I could see another guy standing lookout at the end of the hallway. The rush in my ears was my blood, a heavy pound of panic that in my sheltered life I’d never felt before.
“It’s okay,” the first guy said in response to my apology. He grinned. “I was just looking for you.”
The worst part was that he was familiar to me. “I’ve seen you before.”
He had come to the house once, I remembered. Dad had been furious and had walked him out to the sidewalk, told him never to come back. But he had also handed over an envelope while my mother watched out the kitchen window, her lips almost white with tension. We never talked about his gambling problem. There were only loud arguments with the door closed when my brother and I were supposed to be asleep.
The second guy didn’t smile. “Your dad owes a lot of people money.”
My breath caught. No.
And then they closed in on me. I fought them, and only caught blood underneath my glitter-painted nails. I screamed, but no one could hear me over the heavy beat on the dance floor.
I want to go home. I want to go home.
They dragged me out the back door, where a car was waiting. And I knew I wouldn’t be going home for a long time.
*
THEY TOOK ME to an empty tenement still in the meatpacking district and tied me to a pipe in the bathroom. There were a few men guarding me. I could see them through the crack in the door, sitting around a folding table on chairs that could barely hold their weight.
They actually used the bathroom that I was in—and some of them missed.
They missed on purpose, because they liked to mess with me. There were threats too. Some hands that wandered. One man spit in my face. I shivered on that broken tile floor, praying my father would pay them back.
On the fourth day new men arrived—in suits instead of stained wifebeaters.
One hauled me up from the floor and unlocked my handcuffs. With a rough shove he pushed me into the bathtub and turned the shower spray on. Freezing water stung my skin and soaked through my clothes. “Clean yourself up,” he told me. “You smell like piss.”
I washed myself with harsh-smelling soap, reaching under my wet clothes to preserve my modesty. I needn’t have bothered. When I was finished, the man ripped the clothes off me.
They had something else for me to wear: a short black dress that exposed more than it hid.
Dread sank in my stomach. So my father hadn’t paid the debt. Of course not. Where would he have gotten the money, if he hadn’t had it before? And why would he spend it on you, when you aren’t even his real child? They weren’t cleaning me up to return me to my family. And I doubted they were dressing me up to kill me.
They had something else in mind.
A way for me to pay off my family’s debts, an older man explained. It looked like he was in charge, like he was the man my father owed. “One of my girls, I get a hundred dollars a hole. The way I see it, you’re worth half as much. I’m supplying all the business and you don’t know shit. Fifty bucks is a gift.”
That’s when I got angry. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt divided by fifty dollars was…a lot. A lot of sex. A lot of abuse. And it wasn’t really my family, when you got down to it. It wasn’t my debt to pay.
Unfortunately the man didn’t agree.
Mouthing off only earned me a backhand and a swollen lip.
This is where you come from, Mrs. Fitzpatrick had said. This is who you are.
That was how I ended up in a penthouse suite when I should have been going to the high school football game. That penthouse was where I learned secrets and made a few of my own. That penthouse was where I became a woman, though not in the way that they intended.