My head begins to ache. “Come here, girl.” I step forward and pull her to my chest. “Just say the word and I’ll hand you someone’s beating heart.”
“It wouldn’t matter. I was so stupid.” She hiccups. “I–I came here thinking I could b-belong. That I could find someplace where I fit in. It’s sure as hell not with the club. Mouth’s made that more than clear. B-but the school really thinks I’m some seedy, skank by night. God. I don’t know why I exist anymore.”
The pain-laced words are a slap in the face. We all write my father’s attitude off as some silly personality
quirk, thinking his and a few other’s opinions are lost in the abundance of acceptance we offer up, but this girl is proof that’s not true. She’s literally considering herself not worth living right now, because she has no place to belong. I’d never been blind to my father’s wrongness, but I see now silence can be equally damning. My gut knots. I need to undo this. We lost a brother recently to suicide. No one took him seriously and we lost him. Her words are raising red flags. “Hey,” I lean back and cup her face in my hands, “you do belong, with us, with me.”
“No. I can’t. Because if I did …” She trails off shaking her head.
“If you did, what?” I ask.
“Then I wouldn’t feel like this.”
“Babe, it’s called the growing years for a reason. No one feels like they know who they are or where they belong in high school. You got it rougher than most, I’ll give you that. People are always harsher on the women of the club, and you got my dad to contend with. I apologize for that. He’s wrong and no one believes his bullshit. You must know that.”
She purses her lips.
“Listen, I’m going to take care of the school shit tonight, okay?”
She sniffs and nods.
“Go get yourself cleaned up, and we’ll go out there and show those motherfuckers they made a grave mistake.”
She slinks off to the bathroom all long limbs, pausing in the doorway. “You aren’t going to tell my father, are you?”
“Do I need to?”
She shakes her head.
“For now, we’ll keep it between us.”
Her face lights up and she smiles.
The change is astonishing. Her beauty sucker punches me. Underneath those jeans and T-shirts, she’s been growing up nicely. It’s like an angel showed herself in the presence of a demon. I’m drawn to the light she exudes. My days of turning a blind eye to one of the biggest flaws of the club is over. From now on, I’ll be the one watching out for her and letting her know to at least one person, she’s important.
She comes out, fresh faced and pulled together. Her hair is tamed into a braid running down her back, and she’s done something to partially dry her dress.
“You want to tell me how this went down?” I ask, leaning against the wall.
“A girl from my school, Stacey, who I thought of as a friend, told me there’d be a party here tonight and invited me out. We’re in the same classes, and we’ve always been friendly, so I figured why not, you know? She picked me up from my house and things were fine until everyone got a little liquor in them.”
“Usually when the truth comes out,” I say.
“Yeah, well it came out in a major way. They started asking me all kinds of questions about the club, and the clubhouse. Assuming I’m some sort of super hooker because my father wears a cut, and I was raised inside the club. I tried to tell them it wasn’t like that, be polite, but they didn’t like that.” Her voice wavers.
“Who’s they?”
She bites her bottom lip.
“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. One way or another, I’ll find out what I want to know.”
“Ralph.”
“Thought so. Little shit has a history with women. Dude’s going to grow up to be a fucking rapist.”
Her face blanches.
“He spill his drink on you?” I ask.