Page 25 of Three, Two, One [321]

I pull back and turn away, my hand covering my chin as I think about this.

JD gets off her, climbs off the bed, and walks up next to me. “That’s it, right?” he asks. “Tell me I’m not just seeing things. That I’m not just making it up.”

I nod. That most certainly is it. “I need to see her back again.”

“Fuck you,” she says in a small voice from the bed. “Just fuck you.” I look over my shoulder to see what she’s doing, but she’s still lying face down. Crying into the pillow. “You have no right.”

JD looks at me one more time and then walks back over to her and sits down on the edge of the bed so he can stroke her hair. He’s such a player. He knows exactly what to do for a crying girl.

Me? I have no clue. I’m a one-night-stand kind of guy. I don’t stick around long enough to care.

But this girl, man. Even before the mark. This girl is different.

So I walk around to the other side of the bed. The side she’s facing. I climb in next to her and lie back. Her eyes search mine for intentions.

JD lies down on the other side of her, his fingertips still gliding through the long strands of blonde. “Just relax, Blue. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

“No,” she huffs. “You just want to make me suck your dicks on camera so you can sell me in a different way.”

JD’s eyebrows go up, but neither of us says anything. There’s a time and a place, and this is not it.

“Blue,” I say calmly. She’s still looking at me, but the sound of my voice makes her take in a breath of air. Like I startled her. “We’re not putting those images online.” I have to stop for a second. Because that’s a lie and I know it. But it’s not the same, so I continue. “We can’t use you, even if we wanted to.”

“And we don’t,” JD interjects. “We don’t want to.” He looks at me over the top of her body and I nod.

“You don’t have any ID. And regardless of how it looks, what we do is one hundred percent by the book. Everyone signs consent forms. Contracts. Everyone gets tested for STD’s. Everyone gets paid and everyone pays taxes on those payments. We’re not about to fuck up our business just so we can use one sad girl who doesn’t even have a name. So forget about the pictures. I need to know where you got that brand on your neck. And I need to know when.”

She looks me straight in the eye and says, “Fuck you.”

JD collapses back onto the pillow he’s sharing with her. “Why don’t we just pick it back up in the morning?”

“No,” I say quickly. “Fuck that.” I look straight at her. “You’re not the only one caught in their web, you know.” She narrows her eyes at me. “You know that’s true. You know there were other girls involved with you. And I’m pretty sure the reason we found you this morning was because you escaped.” Her eyes dart back and forth, like she’s trying to decide to trust me. “We knew a girl who had that same mark, Blue.”

“Another one of your whores?” she asks. But it comes out scared instead of defiant. I think the level of vulnerability in her voice surprises her, because she hiccups back a sob.

I shake my head. “A friend. She was a good friend.”

JD gets up out of the bed and walks into his closet.

Blue and I just wait it out. After a minute of JD rummaging around in there, he emerges fully dressed and walks out the door, slamming it closed behind him. The noise makes the girl jump and this time she can’t hold the sob in. It’s too much. She starts to cry.

I reach over and place my hand on her arm. I’d take her hand and give it a squeeze, but she’s got it tucked underneath her cheek. “The friend was JD’s girlfriend. And she got mixed up in something bad and then she disappeared. She had a mark like that, Blue. They had a fight the night she disappeared, and ever since he’s been beating himself up over losing track of her, and imagining all kinds of terrible things that might’ve happened to her. So if you can help—”

“I can’t,” she says, cutting me off. “I don’t know any girls. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything.” And then she gets up out of the bed and walks into the bathroom. There’s the distinct sound of the door being locked and then the shower comes on.

A moment later the front door slams and I know JD is gone.

I look at the girl in the mirror. She’s naked. I tilt my head a little to see the scars on her back. Not the long stripes from the cane, but the little tick marks from the knife.

Stars, they called them. That’s how I got that name, I guess. Or maybe it was something else. I can barely remember now.

I stare at the girl until the steam from the running shower fogs her over and makes her fade away.

The shower is calling me even though this is the cleanest I’ve been all month. Hot water with no time limit is a luxury I will never get enough of. So I step in and let it pour down my body. I open my mouth and let the water run in, swallow some, spit some out, and then close my mouth so I can inhale deeply.

It’s not enough.

I cover my face to hide my tears even though there’s no one here to punish me. I want to feel relief. I want to thank someone. I want to call my parents and listen to them tell me they love me and everything will be OK.