Naked (3 page)

I see a large metal chain connected to a tree about ten feet away that leads directly to the house.

I take a few steps and see nothing. Another few steps and something moves, a small grunt of a lazy animal, and inside the dark hole of the large doghouse I see a bit of black fur.

A few more steps, even slower now.

Then I hear a deep growl. The kind of growl you don’t want to mess with. Slow, confident. Scary.

I’m not scared of dogs, but I’m not stupid either. I’ve met my fair share of untrustworthy dogs in New York.

“Careful there.” I whip my head toward the male voice and see a boy over the fence, standing in the yard next door.

He looks at me, and his smile seems so genuine, so confident, that it can’t be real.He’s probably about my age, freckles and thick-rimmed glasses. A bit nerdy, but cute in a way I’ve missed. The kind of guy I’d never have talked to in my old life because I’d have thought he was too good for me.

But he already made the first move, so…

“No?” I say.

He shakes his head, that small smile playing at his lips. He looks at the doghouse. “He doesn’t have many friends, so he’s not usually good with strangers.”

A nose and a pair of eyes look out at me from the doghouse. Whatever’s in there isn’t growling anymore, it’s watching.

I take a few steps away and look back to the boy, who’s watching me, too.

Who is he? We never had a neighbor my age before. I’m not good at making friends, and I’m pretty sure this kid would hide under his bed if he knew just some of the things I’ve done over the last few years.

But somehow, the way he looks at me with those hazel eyes, bright and alive… It’s like I’m not the girl from the streets, not the girl who sold her body to strangers and fell in love with the man who sold her. Not the girl with no future. Even Luis never looked at me like this. To this boy, I’m just…normal. Just a mysterious girl next door he’s never met.

“You new?” he asks me.

I shake my head and open my mouth, but then I close it. How am I supposed to explain any of this? Nothing’s changed. I’m still dirty, tarnished Anna. I can’t throw that on some random guy.

He lifts up a Weedwacker I didn’t notice before. “I’m Jackson. I mow the lawn here sometimes.”

“Oh,” I say stupidly.

“What’s your—”

“Anna!”

I spin around to see my father standing on the porch.

“Get away from Czar. He’s dangerous.”

I see the dog’s ears perk up, possibly at the sound of his name. I shrug and walk away from the doghouse, but I don’t like to turn my back to him. I don’t like to turn my back to anyone. I listen intently and glance back, just a little, hopefully subtly enough. But the dog’s in the shadows again. Hiding. Waiting for a safer moment?

You and me both.

“That’s a guard dog,” my father says. “You leave him alone.”

I shrug and look back to Jackson. He waves to my father, who gives him a noncommittal nod in return. As soon as my father turns away and heads back inside, the boy pulls something out of his pocket and tosses it toward the doghouse, then winks at me before going back to trimming the grass of my neighbor’s yard.

A massive black dog with a wagging stump of a tail rushes from the doghouse and gobbles up what looks like a Milk-Bone.

I take one more deep breath and then head back inside, feeling surprisingly less tense now. Something else to think about besides the way my parents look at me when I come back inside, something other than the odd tension between us. And more importantly, what kind of hell the next few days will bring.

Then I’m back in the kitchen and wondering why I didn’t stay outside.

“We’re sorry, Anna,” my mom says.

I look up quickly, surprised to hear those words come from my mother’s mouth, and I wonder if Sarah has magical powers. Five minutes alone with them and she’s somehow given one of them a soul.

My father sits down, and his shoulders sag.

I look back at my mom. “Sorry for what?” I say. Knowing I’m pushing my luck to have already gotten this much, but I can’t help it.

My father looks at her, as though daring her to say more. My mom drops her head.

And suddenly I feel bad for pushing her.

Didn’t Sarah say this was hard for all of us?

“I’m sorry, too,” I say, and I decide that Sarah is definitely psychic.

Chapter Four

M
y heart pounds wildly as I stand in front of my bedroom door. I left my parents and Sarah in the kitchen so they could talk alone. They asked me to leave, as if I wanted to listen to them. As if escape wasn’t the first thing on my mind.

But now I’m not so sure this is the escape I want.

It’s amazing, all the horrors I faced on the streets of New York, other people’s worst nightmares, but the thought of facing a thirteen-year-old girl’s bedroom scares the freaking crap out of me.

How can I possibly be scared of my old bedroom?

Luis wouldn’t let this go if he saw me now. I can almost hear his laugh. It always started light and rumbly, as if it bubbled up from somewhere deep and warm in his chest. I wish I could laugh with him. I wish I could go back to when I believed that laugh belonged to a safe space for just the two of us. Was any of that warmth real? Or was I just too blind to see the truth?

The fear of my childhood bedroom is laughable, but somehow this is different. Different from all the other horrors of my past. Like I’m not just facing physical pain or whatever, I’m facing my past. I’m facing myself.

And that is so much scarier.

I take a deep breath and decide I’ve wasted enough time being a wimp. That girl I left behind, she can’t scare me anymore.

I twist the knob and try to ignore the pounding in my chest.

I take a step through the doorway and remind myself that this room means nothing. I’m not this girl, and it doesn’t matter what she would think of me now. It doesn’t matter what she hoped for when she ran away—naive dreams of stardom and freedom. I might have failed that girl, I might have failed myself even now, but there isn’t anything I can do about it.

My heart still aches, no matter what my mind tries to convince me. My eyes still fill with tears, my mind with memories, images. A little girl with unruly curls and dreams too big for her own good.

That girl danced on the bed to all the stupid pop stars she hoped she’d become, stole from her mother’s closet just to try on her high heels and earrings. Then hid under the bed when her father caught her. When the game turned serious.

That girl waited while her mother ran into the room to stop the girl’s father. “She’s just a child, Martin,” she whispered.

“Hush,” he said. Softly, but leaving no room to question him.

But then my memories won’t let me pretend. It wasn’t some other girl under the bed. It was me.

I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath, hoping he wouldn’t find me. That if I hid long enough, he’d forget.

But then a hand reached under the bed, grasped my upper arm, and ripped me out from my hiding place. My mother didn’t try to plead with him again, and neither did I. I knew it wouldn’t do any good.

His tight squeezes on my arms left yellow bruises, but those always faded after a few days. His belt was what did the most damage. Those swats left me stinging for days. But even those went away.

It was always the words that left me scarred.

“You run around here like a loose girl. Do you know what happens to loose girls?”

I didn’t listen.

His stories were ridiculous. They’d never happen to me, I’d never be like that. But I guess he was more right than I ever realized.

That wasn’t long before I started sneaking out the window to live my life in whatever way I could. When I started actually wearing high heels and earrings and short skirts, stolen from the mall and hidden from my parents—I got very good at hiding. All to attract whatever attention I could manage.

The purple walls of my room seem so close together now, pressing in on me and my memories. Rainbow-colored pillows cover the top of the pink bedspread and stuffed animals line the sides. My desk sits in the same exact place, and there’s a purple grape juice stain next to the left leg.

Nothing’s changed. Figured my parents would have made it into a workout room or something. I’m honestly not sure they’ve touched a thing.

The same pictures hang on the walls, my very last drawings before I ran away.

I suppose it makes sense that a sketch of the Empire State Building is pinned to the corkboard. I’d dreamed about going there for years before I decided to buy myself a train ticket. Before everything went to shit.

And the worst thing? I’m right back where I started.

I cross the room, grab the picture, and rip it from the board. I squeeze my hand closed and watch as the building—once the source of all my dreams—shrinks and wrinkles and disappears into my fist.

I toss it in the trash and walk out the door.

My parents are easier to face than this.

When I reenter the kitchen, my mother and father are talking quietly with Sarah.

“Welcome back,” Sarah says lightly, like she’s surprised I didn’t get caught up being back in my old room or something.

I shrug and sit at the table. “I don’t like it up there.”

She cocks her eyebrow. “Well, it’s good you came back when you did,” she says. “There’s something your parents want to talk to you about.”

I look up, surprised. I have no idea what they’d want to say to me. I mean, I’m sure I can guess some of the things they’d
like
to say…

“Hi, Anna,” my mother whispers.

My stomach squeezes, and my eyes water again. I really don’t enjoy feeling like a child, but right now I’m not sure I’ve got a choice.

“Hi, Mom,” I say.

This is so fucking weird.

My heart pounds. Thick, quiet awkwardness fills the air.

I turn to my mom and dad, who are both staring at the ground.

“Nora, why don’t you start?” Sarah prompts. It’s odd to hear my mother called by her first name. It’s not something I’m used to hearing from even my father, who, if he ever speaks directly to her, calls her sweetie or sugar, or something equally cheesy. But I remind myself that I haven’t been around in three years. Maybe that’s changed, too.

“We want you to go back to school,” Mom finally says.

“What?” I say, sincerely shocked by this. I’ve barely been back one day. I haven’t been to school since I left here. What’s the point in starting back now?

“We…” She pauses and plays with her hands some more. I wonder if she’ll have blisters by the end of this conversation. “We think it’s best that you go back…or try to go back…to your normal life.” Now she turns to me. “We need you to try.”

How could I possibly just go back? I’m not even the same person. But she said they
need
me to try, and my stomach aches a little. Why is it that after so long away from them, doing everything in my power and more to disappoint them, that I still want to please them?

“How?” I ask, so lightly I’m surprised they hear.

“You’ll start in ninth grade. You were close enough to the end of eighth to finish. And you’ll have a tutor, someone to help you catch up.”

I shake my head. “No. I mean, how…how can I just go back?”

My mother meets my eyes for the first time. She’s on the verge of crying. How can I love this woman despite everything?

“Can’t I just get my GED, and then go to college or something?”

“No,” my father says. “We can’t let you go off to college, not for a very long time.”

I want to argue with him that it would take me a long time to get my GED, I’m not smart enough for that to be easy, but I decide to keep my mouth shut.

It’s only now that I realize part of me hoped things would be different. That if I ever came back, my father wouldn’t be so cruel. And my mother might finally stand up for me.

I close my eyes and picture New York. I picture my old apartment, the streets, the subways. I hear the loud roar of the train as it passes overhead.

I open my eyes and look around. A weary mother and father who hate what I’ve become in a stuffy, too-formal room. I can’t believe I’m back here, but what better choice do I have?

Luis doesn’t want me, and even if I ran away again, I have nowhere to go.

A part of me just wants to see the city again. Why can’t I be a normal teenager in New York? At least then I can pretend to be someone else. That was what got me through my time on the streets. It would help in this, too.

I just want to belong, I want to be wanted. But I belong nowhere, and no one wants me, no one but the johns, the nasty men who paid to have sex with me.

“We need you to be normal, Anna,” my mom says. “We need it. We can’t handle more…mistakes.”

Mistakes.

“Is that what you think of me?” I say. “That I’m a mistake?”

My father says, “That’s up to you—”

“No,” my mother says, and I’m shocked when she continues, as though my father wasn’t already speaking. “You’re not a mistake. But we want you to get better. To have a chance at real happiness.”

My father glares at her, and I know she’ll hear about this later. She lowers her head, once again the good wife, but it’s too late. I saw a glimmer of something in her that I haven’t seen since I was a child.

“Okay,” I say.

Her face lights up with surprise. “So you’ll do it? Go to school, do your homework, join clubs—all of it?”

Wow, that’s asking a little much. “I don’t know about the clubs part.”

“What about chorus?” my father says.

“Yes! You had a lovely singing voice,” my mother adds.

I wince. Singing now would just remind me of more of my failures.

“Maybe give her some time to get used to it all before joining clubs or a choir,” Sarah says. “The social aspect is what will make it hardest for her, I think. So give her time to adjust. ”

“Fine,” he says. “It’s too late for her to join the Young Women’s Chorus anyway, but they’ll take new members around March or so. She has until then to ‘get used to it.’”

That’s my father. Why learn compassion now when he never needed it before?

We sit there in silence. After a minute, my mom speaks up.

“Anna, please,” she says. “Please try.”

I nod. For my mother, the mother I still hate in so many ways, I will try. Maybe I love my parents more than I’m willing to admit.

Besides, who the hell cares about what a bunch of teenagers think, right? I know I can do it; my skin is bulletproof.

Sticks and stones, fists and rope, can hurt me, but words won’t get past first base. I hold back a laugh at my stupidity.

High school. I thought that was a torture I was going to be lucky enough to avoid altogether.

Yeah, this is going to be tons of fun.