Текст книги "Naked"

Автор книги: Stacey Trombley

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NAKED

stacey trombley

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Stacey Trombley. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Entangled Teen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

Edited by Stephen Morgan & Elizabeth Vail

Cover design by Kelley York

Interior design by Jeremy Howland

Print ISBN 978-1-63375-007-4

Ebook ISBN 978-1-63375-008-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition July 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Chapter One

Sometimes being interviewed by the police is like a game.

It’s kind of fun, keeping them from the truth. At least until they get pissed and start hitting, bruising, breaking. Then it’s not so fun anymore. But until then, I have to keep my head up or I’ll never make it out alive.

I shift in the metal chair, uncomfortable, and lean away from the cold table.

Hiding the truth is easy when no one knows anything. What sucks is when the police know more than you do. If they catch you in one lie, the whole web collapses.

Good thing the woman in front of me isn’t a cop. She hasn’t said she’s not a cop, but she doesn’t have to. The way she smiles at me with the kind of innocence I used to have, it’s pretty obvious.

“What’s your name?” she asks. As if we’re just normal people having a casual conversation. As if she doesn’t know how dangerous that kind of information is for someone like me.

“Exquisite,” I say.

“That’s very pretty.” She says it so sincerely that for a moment, I think she believes me. Maybe she really is as naive as she looks.

In my world, naive might as well mean dead.

“My name is Sarah,” she says.

Why in the world would she think I care what her name is?

“Okay,” I say.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.” The word slips out before I even think about it. That’s my go-to answer, a lie I’ve told so often I almost believe it.

“Hmm, you don’t look nineteen.”

Funny that in all the times I’ve been in police stations, a hundred set of handcuffs cutting off my circulation, my age has never been questioned. I’m nineteen. They know I’m lying—my seventeenth birthday is still months away—but they don’t care.

No one cares.

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

A creak grabs my attention, and I look to the door. There’s a small window where the asshole cop watches us. My black eye throbs, even though it wasn’t him who gave it to me. Someone else gave me that black eye, with the same hand he used to hold against the side of my face as we fell asleep together.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got better luck with the woman in a suit than the man behind the window. The way he shakes his head every time he sees me, it looks like he wants to hurt me—he’d enjoy it.

“You don’t like the police, do you?”

My attention shifts back to the woman.

“Nope,” I say honestly, despite my minor surprise.

“Well, it might help you to know that I’m not a cop.” As if her being a cop was ever a possibility. “And I’m not here to get information and leave. I’m here to help you. If I can.” She smiles, like she’s trying to put me at ease. Yeah, good luck with that. “You’re sure you’re nineteen?”

“You calling me a liar?”

She smiles. “No. It’s just, if you are nineteen, there’s nothing I can do for you. You’ll go to jail, or go back to that life out there, on the streets. I don’t want that. And somehow, I don’t think you want that, either.”

“Why would you think that?” Now I stand. She thinks she knows me. She thinks that she gets it, thinks she gets me.

Her eyes soften, they grow…sadder somehow.

I don’t let myself show her any change in my expression. My walls keep the nightmares away. The second they fall, I’m screwed.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “But I can usually tell if I can help someone. And I think I can help you.”

I blink. My walls almost fall then, nearly crash down and crumble all over my feet, but I catch myself before it’s too late.

I make my face blank, impassive. Don’t let her see beneath my mask. It’s a trick I learned for when guys pay for me. An hour. All night. Never let them see how I really feel.

It’s more important than ever that I keep strong, keep this woman from getting to me, seeing too much.

“But if you were, say, sixteen,” she says, “I could help you. Give you a new life. No jail, just hope.”

I sit back down and look down at my hands. I don’t like how much she knows, suspects.

“What do you think you can do for me?”

She stands and walks slowly around the room. When she walks behind my chair, my heart pounds. I hate not being able to see her. I don’t care how kind she seems. I’m in a police station. I’m not safe.

“I really wish you’d tell me your real name.”

“Why?” I ask, just as she finishes her round and faces me once more.

“Because I don’t feel right calling you Exquisite, and I’d like to be able to have a real conversation with you.”

I roll my eyes. “I know better than to think you care. No one cares.”

She faces me again. Her eyes are a pretty brown, surprisingly firm for how soft she seems. “Do you really think that no one in the world cares? Or just no one in a police station? No one in the city? It’s not possible that someone out there would want to help you, somehow, someway?”

I think about this for a moment. “Some people want to help, but that doesn’t mean they can.”

“Well, then we’ve established that I want to help. So can’t I at least know your name?”

At least she’s trying something other than broken ribs and swollen eyes. But if she’s really as innocent as she seems, then she’s not in a position to help. Anyone who knows the truth will hurt me. Anyone who doesn’t know the truth is better off believing the lie.

“I told you my name,” I say.

Her shoulders deflate like she’s disappointed, and she tucks a loose strand of brown hair behind her ear. She takes in a deep breath and pulls out a file from her briefcase. “Will you at least tell me why you’re here?”

“Doesn’t that file already tell you why?”

She looks down. “There’s not much here. It says you go by the name Exquisite.”

“I told you that.”

“The police seem to think you’re a prostitute.”

Of course they do. Other than the smeared lipstick and six-inch heels—clue number one—they’ve seen me in here before. “People make lots of assumptions,” I say.

“So it’s not true?”

I don’t respond.

“Who gave you that black eye?”

“A man who also thought I was a hooker,” I say. Sometimes I impress myself with my ability to spin the truth to my advantage. Sure, the cop thought I was a hooker, because I am. Or was. Or something.

This is one truth she’ll never get out of me.

Her eyebrows rise. “So, a man sexually harassed you, you refused him, and he hit you?”

I shrug. Sounds like a pretty good story to me.

“If that’s the case, why haven’t you made a phone call? A few statements and you’re free to go.”

I blink. She’s got me there. I search for a lie here, something to tell her, some excuse about why I haven’t called anyone, why I still can’t. Instead, I give the kind of answer I truly hate: an honest one. “I don’t have anyone to call.”

The only person I can call, the person who would usually bail me out, is the person who put me here. Sort of. I mean, I kind of put myself here. It must not say it in the file, but I pulled a gun on the cop when he stopped.

Sometimes emotions are too strong to control. He’s just lucky I didn’t pull the trigger.

But Luis is the reason I was on the street with a black eye. Luis is the reason I had nowhere else to go. And now I don’t think I can ever go back.

Once broken, some things never heal. With him, I felt as close to whole as I could get in that little apartment. He found me. Saved me. Loved me.

But now we’re broken, too.

Sarah watches me for an uncomfortable moment like she’s contemplating something, then puts the file down. “Can I show you something?”

My eyebrows pull down in what I’m sure is an unattractive way. “What kind of something?”

She stands and smiles to reassure me. “Follow me.”

Still very confused, but curious, I follow her. The creepy cop is gone now, and we walk down the hall freely. No handcuffs, no guards. I’ve never been this free in a police station. We get to the main entrance, where there are glass cases of posters. A few wanted posters to the right, but the entire left side is covered with about fifty missing person posters.

“Thousands of kids run away each year. Did you know that? With nowhere to go, they often end up in prostitution.” She says it like a teacher or something, talking about a subject we’ll have a test on later, not like it’s something I’ve lived through.

Does she know I’ve experienced this firsthand? Or is this a game, too? A test to see if I’ll slip up and reveal something?

She says, “Those kids don’t realize that their parents still look for them. Some parents never give up.”

I look over all the posters, all the missing children. What kind of lives have they found on the streets? Did they end up like me? Selling themselves for the hope of a new life? How many of these kids are already dead?

Then I see a set of familiar dead eyes staring back at me from one of the posters. The name reads Anna Rodriguez. I look at all of the posters with the same casual indifference, but the image from that one is seared into my brain.

The girl is young, innocent. Her skin is a pretty olive color, dark enough that most people wouldn’t guess she’s only half Puerto Rican. She wears a ponytail with wisps of unruly curls falling into her face and a simple string of pearls around her neck.

I’m surprised this is the picture they chose—it’s not perfect enough. Those curls would drive my blond trophy-wife mother crazy.

I almost laugh thinking about what she’d say of my ratty hair now. Or how about the running makeup, split lip, and rose tattoo on my ankle?

“Recognize any of those girls?” Sarah says.

I shrug. “Nope.”

She seems to believe me, which is good, because I mean it. I never knew that girl, and neither did her parents.

I don’t dare look her in the eye again. Without another word, she takes me back to my cell and I’ll admit, I’m a bit relieved.

“Just hang in there a little longer,” she says.

I don’t have the energy to ask her if she’s done with me, if she plans on questioning me again.

All I know is I cannot let her know the truth.

The fact that my parents still have missing person posters up, are still looking for me… I’m not sure what to think of it. If they knew where I really was, what I was really doing…

The things my mother would say would be bad enough. But my father? He’d disown me. I’m sure of it.

I pace in my cell. Back and forth, back and forth.

Life would be easier, I suppose, if I were that girl. Normal. Worrying about homework, choir practice, and who would take me to homecoming.

That girl wouldn’t have a bruise forming on her upper arm from being held down, stolen from the one person she loved. That girl wouldn’t be sitting in a cold cell, wondering how the cops will hurt her next.

Anna Rodriguez.

The name rings in my head, a ghost from a past I’ve tried so hard to outrun.

But what I ran to…was it really better?

Guess not anymore.

Good little Anna. Pretty little Anna.

That’s what my parents thought I was. They dressed me up with their expensive clothes, did my hair up in pigtails and curls, put pearls around my neck. Then they expected me to smile and pretend that was what I always wanted—to be just like them. Perfect.

But I’m not. I wasn’t then, and I’m certainly not now.

No, perfect isn’t even close to what I really am. How about dirty? Ruined? Tarnished? Yes, that’s the word my mother would use. Tarnished, like her heart necklace. Once shining with a bright gold sheen, now rubbed and used, its real value exposed. What it always was to begin with.

Cheap.

Chapter Two

The streets of New York are a whole lot more than taxis and tourists and Broadway lights. I learned that the hard way at thirteen years old.

How did pretty little Anna go from Westchester suburb brat to New York hooker? Now that’s a story, one I’m not sure I completely understand myself. There were reasons, there always are, but I don’t expect anyone to get it, especially the innocent social worker lady who keeps trying to help me.

I wake up what must be hours later when Sarah comes back to get me. I fell asleep against the cold bars, and my skin sticks when I pull away.

Sarah has dark circles under her eyes now, like she never slept.

My old life is still floating through my head, and now Sarah just makes the memories even more vivid.

Would the thirteen-year-old me be happy about where I am now? What I’ve done? Who I’ve become?

No.

But would I go back and change my decisions?

I don’t know, but that doesn’t really matter now. I can’t go back. I just have to learn to live with myself.

There’s nothing even Sarah can do to help me with that. Right now what I need is a new future.

“Hi, Anna.”

I nod at her but say nothing. I’m not much in the mood for talking now.

“Are you ready for a visit? There’s someone here to see you.”

I blink. “Who?”

“Not who you’d expect.”

I didn’t call anyone. There’s no one to call. No one to come get me, no one who cares.

Is it possible Luis sent someone for me? That he came for me himself? And if he did…do I want to see him? Because even if he cares enough to come for me, I can’t go back. Not now. Not after what happened.

I nod to Sarah anyway. If I don’t take the visit, I’ll always wonder who wanted to see me and why.

Sarah smiles, a sad smile now, and leaves the room.

The door doesn’t open up again for about twenty minutes. A guard comes in and escorts me out. He barely looks at me. No nasty comments or wiggling eyebrows, no “accidental” push into the concrete wall. It’s almost like I’m not a hooker.

We walk down a long, echoey hallway, and then into a new room. There are tables and steel walls. A few guards stand around, but otherwise no one is here. It’s empty.

The guard leads me to a table, and I sit.

I face the way I came in, the entrance that leads back to my prison—literally. Behind me is another entrance, where footsteps tap closer.

I don’t turn my head, but my heart pounds. Finally, the person walks around and stands in front of me.

My stomach drops. No, it doesn’t just drop, it disappears. As much as I didn’t want to see Luis, I expected to see him.

But it’s not Luis.

My blood runs cold, looking at a face I never expected to see again. A face I never wanted to see again.

My father.

Everything stops, like time is frozen or something. He stares at me; I stare at him.

His facial hair has never been so long, but otherwise he looks exactly the same. Like a Hispanic politician. He’s not really a politician; he’s the CEO of some big company that I never understood, and he has a lot of influence in a lot of places. Anyone with money does. And he has money, though I never knew where it went. Probably toward that shiny Corvette of his.

He looks older, bags under his eyes.

His skin has always been dark like mine. Put us next to each other and it’s clear I’m his daughter.

“Anna,” he finally says, hard and gravelly. He frowns, looks away, and after a moment, turns around.

I don’t even know how to describe this feeling. Like horror and heartbreak at once.

The last time he saw me, I was that little girl with unruly curls and pearls. Now I can’t even imagine what he sees. A street-scum teen with matted hair, ripped clothes, and yellowing bruises around her eye.

I’m not even sure how he recognized me.

But he did. It’s no wonder he doesn’t turn back around.

I squeeze my hands together and watch as my fingers twist, trying to quash the desire for him to look at me again. To see those brown eyes so much like my own. Because I can’t want that.

I always knew how he would feel to know where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing. He’d hate me more than he ever did before. He’d wish I were never born.

Was it his choice to put up those missing person posters? Does he regret looking for me? Is that why he’s ignoring me now?

My father leaves without another glance back. When the door opens, I see my mother in the hallway, waiting for him, waiting to find out if the girl in this room is the daughter she lost.

The daughter she never fought for.

Of course she didn’t come in herself. Ever the dutiful trophy wife. Even when things were at their worst, she never stood up for me.

A long time ago, she and I were close. She sang me songs to sleep. I told her everything. Good. Bad. But the worse things got between my father and me, the more she pulled away.

She doesn’t look toward me as the door closes, like she’s afraid of what will happen if it’s really me. What she’ll have to acknowledge.

I’m a ruined child now. Not even worth looking at.

I always knew that, so why do their reactions bother me? Why do I want them to want me so badly?

Maybe because I need someone to.

Anyone.

Luis used to call me his diamond in the rough, after he’d saved me from the street. He’d cup my face in his hands like I was something precious. But eventually precious started to mean valuable, something to be traded, sold, used.

And then thrown away once the value was gone. I wasn’t even valuable anymore.

I stare at the table in front of me and listen to their muted voices coming from the hallway. Guess I wanted out, and I guess this is one way to do it. I won’t have to return to the streets that ruined me. The man who loved and betrayed me.

But if it means going back to the parents I’m sure will hate me forever…

Back to the impossibly perfect movie life in the suburbs…

How can I, Anna Rodriguez, hooker, go back to any of that? I didn’t belong before, and now?

No, I’m better off staying in jail.

Sarah comes back into the room. I sit silently at the metal table.

“Do you know what will happen now?” she asks me in a near whisper.

I close my eyes and think. Of all the things that could happen, this wasn’t something that I ever thought possible.

I open my eyes and nod. “They’ll take me back to prison.”

Sarah looks confused. “Your parents are going to take you home.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

Is it strange that I’ve come to like her? I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t. But she’s the only one in the world who believes in me right now. I don’t want her to give up on me, not yet.

Sarah sighs, so light I’m sure she didn’t expect me to hear it. I look up. She blinks, her face controlled, calculating. Only her eyes betray the sympathy, the sadness. I’m not sure how I feel about her pity, but I guess I have more important things to worry about right now.

She’s going to send me home. Like I can even still call it that.

How can I go back? How can I walk down the halls I played in as a child? Sit at the table where my parents taught me to write my name?

I suppose I do have good memories there, but that almost makes it worse. It makes me look like even more of a screwup.

“I know there was probably a reason you left in the first place, Anna.” She talks slowly, measuring each word. “Is there any reason for you to believe you might, in any way, be in danger if you go back home?”

I pause, considering the question. “I guess if someone followed me from New York.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she says. She waits until I meet her eyes. “Your parents.”

I shake my head quickly, finally understanding. No. My mom never hurt me. And my father? The only scars he left were emotional. But every disappointing look will dig deeper and deeper. If he decides to tell me this is all the proof he needs to believe I’m not worth anything, why I’ll never be worth anything…

“I can help you, Anna. You just have to tell me.”

Let’s just say I’ve seen a lot worse than what my parents can deal out.

“I’m in no danger with them. They used to love me. They just didn’t understand me.”

She nods slowly.

I ask, “Will I ever see you?”

Her mouth opens a little. I guess she’s surprised; I never let on that I might actually like her.

“We can talk anytime. I work out of New York, but Westchester isn’t far, so I can come see you any time you need it. And if anything happens, you call me, okay?”

I nod, knowing that’s not enough to get me through this…but at least it’s something.