The Prince Read online

  Chapter Six

  It gets easier to pretend as time goes by. My mind applies itself to finding an appropriate percentage to get wrong as easily as it did counting cards.

  Daddy kept down a job long enough that we could move into the west side from the trailer park. The apartment was smaller than the trailer, but this way I could visit my friends after school. As it turns out, people like you when you keep your mouth shut and get average grades.

  I was almost popular, but no one knew who I really was.

  Damon Scott’s name became a part of the city’s dark culture, mostly in whispers, always linked to money or women or both. No one really seemed surprised that he had gone into the family business, that he traded in sex and violence. Even I wasn’t surprised, knowing what had happened, but I did mourn him. He could have run away, if it hadn’t been for me.

  Then again, he’s a grown man now, wealthy in his own right.

  He could run away now, if he wanted to.

  There must be something he likes about that life, something dark and sharp he’s addicted to. We all have our own needles. We each rack up our own debts.

  Sometimes Daddy would slip. Bills would pile up, only for him to dig us out again. When we got close to getting evicted I would count cards, but only once. Then twice. He was as scared of Jonathan Scott as me, so he understood the risk.

  And I had my own addiction. Stolen moments in the Mathematics section of the high school library. Fractals drawn on my school notebooks, filled in with little hearts and smiley faces so that no one would suspect anything. No one ever did.

  Once Mr. Halstead asked me to stay after physics, where he told me that I wasn’t living up to my potential. He seemed so sincere, so kind, that I actually agreed to come to after school study sessions with him. But when he put his hand on my leg and breathed against my neck, I knew he didn’t really care about my mind.

  It wasn’t anything special about me that they liked.

  Only that I was a girl in the west side. We were only used for one thing.

  And then there was Brennan. He had a crooked smile and a motorcycle, so all my friends thought he was a great catch. I could see the appeal, from an academic standpoint. His muscles were sharpened from working in his father’s garage, his confidence an attractive quality. I hoped he never found out I went out with him for his books. Automotive Wiring and Electrical Systems. Advanced Automotive Fault Diagnoses. Not my ideal form for numbers to take, but I read them with the same secret fervor that my father bought lotto tickets, both of us desperate for a fix.

  “What are you reading, babe?”

  I slammed shut his book on hybrid vehicles and slipped it under my open book from Calculus class. Technically math, but it had less to teach me than See Spot Run. Brennan’s a nice guy.

  Nice enough I hope he never finds out I’m using him for his books.

  “Studying,” I tell him, rising up to kiss him.

  He’s sweaty from working. Their house is next door to the garage. “You hungry? I’ll shower and then we can go somewhere.”

  “I have a shift at eight.” I work at a sad little diner, making five bucks an hour serving barely heated food and stale coffee. It’s better than most jobs a fifteen-year-old girl can get in west Tanglewood.

  “Thought you had Fridays off.”

  “Jessica’s baby has a fever.”

  Brennan sighs. “We barely get to go out.”

  Guilt rises inside me, because I kind of prefer it that way. Hanging out after school and making out on his couch. Every time we go to a party it’s another chance to take things further.

  Brennan wants that. Maybe even deserves it, after being so patient. But I can’t give it to him. Can’t end up like Jessica with a baby. I don’t think Brennan would bail the way Jessica’s boyfriend did, but it’s too big of a risk.

  I put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t say no.” And I didn’t want to. “Besides, you know I need the money.”

  Something flashes across his eyes. Frustration. Futility? “What will you make? Twenty bucks? I could give you that if you spent the night.”

  My hand snatches back. “Excuse me, I’m not for sale.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean the job’s total shit and you know it.”

  “Well it’s the only one I have.” I whirl away so he can’t see the hopelessness on my face. There’s only so much humiliation a girl can take in one evening. I stare out his window at the rows of dark windows, the broken bricks. The west side is a tumbled-down maze, not even fit for living, keeping us trapped.

  There is no exit strategy. No way out.

  Brennan’s arms wrap around me, slick and dirty with grease but comforting all the same. “I’m a fucking idiot,” he murmurs into my hair. “I know you’re doing the best you can.”

  “I just want to…” Escape. Fly to the moon. “Graduate. Then we can make plans.”

  “Okay,” he says, because he understands my desire to finish school. He has his GED and he’s studying to get certified as an automotive technician. He’s a high achiever among our friends. And he’ll never know that my dreams are so far beyond this.

  That I long for the impossible.

  “I should get going. I have to change first.”

  He turns me in his arms, his strong hands warm with familiarity, painful with certainty. He presses a kiss to my mouth. I part my lips, and he takes the invitation, pressing his tongue inside, opening me. I let him, let him, let him. That’s all I know how to do anymore.

  I like his kisses the same way I like boxed mac and cheese and my worn mattress at home. They mean I’m safe and comfortable, if not quite happy.

  He pulls back like he always does. Maybe sensing I would finally snap if he pushed.

  It’s his own form of safe and comfortable.

  His eyes search me. What does he want to find?

  He traces my eyebrow, his finger agreeably callused. His expression is a little awed. “You’re the prettiest girl in the west side, you know that?”

  “And out of the west side?” I ask, not because I’m vain enough to think I am. Because I want to know when we resigned ourselves to this. When we noticed the iron bars around our lives and decided not to rail against them.

  His smile is sad and tired. “Out of the west side you wouldn’t be with me.”

  It’s an arrow straight to the heart, because he’s right. And he deserves better. Don’t we both? I throw my arms around him and squeeze. We need friends in captivity.