Page 19 of Three, Two, One [321]

I’m way worse than Ray.

Because Ray would never take a girl against her will. That’s why I need the proof of ID, the contracts, and all that other bullshit. Ray is legit.

And I can tell myself this is business all I want. That Lanie has to do this for me, per our agreement. But it’s bullshit. I’m making her blow me. I’m making her degrade herself. And I’m going to drive over to Ray’s, edit it, and upload it to his servers as soon as I’m done here.

I’m far, far worse than Ray.

Because I’m not legit. I’m nothing but a scammer. A cheater. A walking piece of shit. And everything that has come out of my mouth the past four years has been a lie.

It was Janine Delgado who started me down this path. I blame her for all of it. I know, even as I lie in this stranger’s bed, that I’m being irrational. Both for letting him bring me here and for blaming Janine Delgado for my problems. But I have a good argument for both.

Janine Delgado was a mama’s girl from day one. Being neighbors and exactly the same age—we shared a birthday—we started out as friends from the beginning. But Janine and I could not be farther apart in personality. She was afraid of everything and I was afraid of nothing. By the time we got to middle school, kids used to taunt her about it. They called her Janine the Drama Queen because everything with her was a production. She was awkward in every social situation, so when it came time to go to parties in high school, Janine was told by her parents to try harder, and harder she did. She went overboard in every way imaginable. There is a difference between being fearless, like me, and stupid, like her. Although I do admit my decisions over the past year and a half put me squarely into the stupid department.

Janine and I stopped being friends in tenth grade because she said I was holding her back. You see, Janine found drugs. Drugs turned her into someone else. Into someone with no inhibitions. Into a slut¸ if I’m being honest.

Janine went from scared fifteen-year-old, to sexually active sixteen-year-old, to knocked-up seventeen-year-old.

She had an abortion. I can’t judge her, but her parents did. They sent her away after that and she spent the last half of junior year and all of senior year locked up in some boarding school for bad kids.

This is where things really went wrong.

My parents got divorced and my dad got a new job. It was a government job, a very high-profile government job, and one of the perks was that I got to attend a very exclusive boarding school in the DC area. So my dad and I moved to the States.

But Janine and I kept in touch and wrote letters. She was not allowed to have a phone, so no texting or anything so this century. Occasionally she came home to see her parents and I’d be home visiting my mother over holidays, and then we were allowed to hang out on the front porch of her house and chat. Which sucked because all the holidays she came home for were in the winter, so it was too cold to be chatting on her porch. And she never came home in the summer at all. She was sent to church camp. Some Bible-thumping megachurch camp where the kids sing songs of praise and redemption.

I’m OK with that. I was raised in a moderately religious family. But Janine… I don’t know. She was just never the same. She said she was doing well. And she was off the drugs, so that was a good thing. But she never convinced me.

After graduation I went to New York and attended Columbia, and she went… I have no idea. I lost her. She disappeared. Her parents were frantic for months—posting pictures of her on telephone poles, talking to people around the neighborhood in case they heard something. Normal stuff that parents would do if their eighteen-year-old daughter went missing. And then there was a rumor that Janine was spotted working as a waitress at a topless bar in Denver, Colorado.

Her parents never mentioned her again after that.

But she was my friend and I never forgot her. So when I came home after graduating from Columbia and she called my mom’s house while I was staying there, I was thrilled.

I was thrilled she was alive. I was thrilled she wanted me to meet her. I was thrilled she remembered how close we were all growing up.

So yeah. I went. I flew to Denver.

And that’s why all this shit is Janine fucking Delgado’s fault. Because I had lunch with her.

She filled in the missing years with information I wish I could forget. She told me things that made me swallow down the vomit. She pointed to her swollen belly and begged me for help.

And I said yes. Because after graduating the top of my class from an Ivy League school, filling out one hundred and fifty applications, going on twenty-seven interviews, and even doing a two-month summer internship with a very prominent company—I had even fewer prospects than her. No one even looked at me twice.

I said yes. I’d help.

So even though I’m playing the victim card, all of this is Janine Delgado’s fault.

Because she pulled the best-friends-for-life card and said I was gonna be an aunt. And I said yes.

I’d save her.

But I didn’t save her, I only succeeded in losing myself. Because seven months later Janine was dead, the baby was missing, and I was being held prisoner in a locked room down in a basement.

“I know you’re awake.”

I’m not afraid of JD, even though I should be. He and his friend filmed me giving them sexual favors. But I said yes, even though I was still fucked up when I met them. I said yes.

And now, seven hours later, in bed, refusing to come to terms with my life… I still trust him more than the people who were holding me prisoner in a basement.