“Too bad you ain’t willing to strip. You’d make a killing with that tight little body.” My boss at the liquor store said that to me just about every day as I pulled on the black tank top and shorts to get ready to leave for my other shift. Her name was Aggie and she was old enough to be my grandma – maybe even my grandma’s grandma – but she kept pushing me to be a stripper, which I found hilarious because it was better than finding it irritating and adding to my increasing list of things to be depressed about.
By eight months in, I confirmed that Trish was using a lot of the money I gave her for drugs. So was Hunt, but from what I gathered, he sold more than he used. I knew it was bad when I was trying to use that to reason that Hunt was an okay guy. I questioned how far my standards had dropped when I appreciated the fact that Hunt at least cleaned up his mess of needles. I practically admired that he could remember to do that in whatever state he’d just shot himself up into. I wasn’t sure anyone did that but him. But I’d seen surprising things in him from the beginning. He always tried to balance out whatever grief Trish or Dean was giving me. He spoke only a bit more often than Dean did, but what little words he used were often a means of trying to make me laugh or feel better. Every time he did it successfully with some one-liner, I’d wish he had more for me. I’d ache to hear something else funny from his mouth. But he’d have reached his speaking quota for the day and I’d find myself straining comfort from the fact that I enjoyed what he had to say enough to actually want more of it. And that in itself was something to celebrate.
At least it was at Sunstone.
I took what I could get, especially as Trish starting spending whole days, sometimes two or three, completely strung out. I used that time to open up a personal bank account in secret. But I still came home with enough money for her that she didn’t make my life a complete living hell. Not that random things wouldn’t still set her unpredictably off. We were eating outside on the plastic table one night, just her, me and Hunt. I didn’t want dressing on my salad and she went completely berserk. She accused me of looking down on her, thinking she had bad taste or bad judgment and lived a bad lifestyle. She threw her salad in my face and stormed so hard through the door of the trailer that it fell further off its hinge. I stared at it and almost yelped when I saw her howling face appear suddenly through the screen door again. She jabbed her finger into her chest and then into the cheap mesh.
“I’m trash? You’re trash. You are trash, Lake DePalma! Trash!”
Her vocabulary wasn’t extensive yet I always let her remarks get to me. Hunt tossed me some napkins to wipe the dressing off my shirt. “You ain’t,” he said with a nod at the door. “She’s the one whose name is a letter from trash.” The joke went over my head for a good five seconds but then I looked up at him with pure surprise and he broke into a grin. “Shit, I knew you didn’t think I could spell.” I rolled my eyes but laughed. Thank God someone could still make me laugh.
I didn’t particularly like Hunt most of the time. He was friends with guys from the park that I thought were disgusting and he never so much as flinched when they said or did something revolting to me. He’d just look away and drink his beer. I hated the way he yelled, “Fuck!” out of nowhere with volume that electroshocked my heart. It was always over something little, like dropping a fork or being unable to find his lighter. Most of all, I hated that he swaggered around like a zombie when he was on his benders, and once, in a haze of delirious, drugged-up glory, whipped his floppy dick out and told me to put my mouth on it. He’d called me by another girl’s name though, so that was my excuse to give him. He thought I was someone else. He’d never do that to me.
It was pathetic but I needed to hold onto the sliver of me that enjoyed him. I was so miserable I lived for the moments I had with Hunt that were okay to good. I had nothing else to look forward to. In the beginning, I told myself it would be easy for me save up in my secret bank account and eventually run in the night. But we lived in the middle of nowhere and the placed I worked made barely any money, so neither did I. I had to give most of that money to Trish and Dean so she wouldn’t start talking crazy about him going to hurt my friends in New York, and when the car I used to get to work broke down, my savings were almost fully depleted and I was back to square one.
I told myself I could always just take a bus away after work and leave forever. But I also told myself that I could just jailbreak Trish and Hunt from Sunstone, cover my bases and then return to Callum in New York. To me, that felt like more of a complete solution. I told myself that at that point, Dean would focus his anger on his wife and son who’d left him, not on the stepdaughter he hardly knew, whose money he only felt entitled to because some of it was going to his wife. I was convinced he’d leave me alone after his family left him. And if he tried anything again, we’d call the cops on him and he’d get arrested without me having to feel bad about Trish or Hunt getting dragged into the mess.
I told myself a lot of things. Including that I deserved to stay there. For God’s sake, I was starting to fit in. By the time I surpassed the half year mark at Sunstone, I had a tradition of making watermelon margaritas with Shanna Temple on Fridays, and was babysitting the two youngest Schroeder kids every Sunday and Tuesday. Shanna lived right next to us and was a big, boisterous divorcee with boobs the size of my head and the length of my forearm. She proudly showed them off in braless camis that I judged hard when I first moved in, but I grew to love Shanna so much that I eventually didn’t care what clothes anyone wore. I stopped being fazed by most of the questionable outfits people at Sunstone walked around in. It was hot out and they were their own community there, really, so they made their own rules.
I was sipping the Kool-Aid. Not full on drinking it but just giving myself enough of a taste so that my every day wasn’t completely joyless. It was a give and take I never reconciled. I needed to stay alive enough to stave off complete depression because if I didn’t, I’d never fight my way back to Callum. But if I let myself smile and laugh too often, that meant I was enjoying myself at Sunstone and the Lake that Callum knew and loved would never be nice to people who were essentially holding her hostage. That would mean I was a fool. Or that I belonged.
I didn’t get myself after awhile. I questioned who I was, where I really belonged and the daily tug of war in my head was so exhausting that it made me wonder if I’d just lost it completely. Maybe it wasn’t even safe for me to go back to New York because maybe I wasn’t even sane or making sense anymore. I’d be unrecognizable and the only reason I hadn’t known it was happening was because I lived every day among people like Trish and Hunt, who s
pent most of their time bumbling, drugged up and strung out. Even Shanna was kind of crazy with the hoarding thing. I just didn’t pay attention to her downfalls because she was the only person who was guaranteed relaxation for me every time we hung out. She usually came over and we’d stream shows and movies on Trish’s computer and look at each other like, “Wouldn’t it be nice?” every time a hot guy walked on screen. A part of me itched to show her pictures of Callum but I never let myself do it.
On Callum’s twenty-second birthday, Shanna’s pitbull had puppies so I sat outside with her all day, watching them and distracting myself from wondering what Callum was doing. We had an old classmate in high school named Cass Vaughn that was always obsessed with him and was always the first to wish him happy birthday every year. I figured she probably popped by his apartment with some sort of gift and then forced herself into whatever his plans were for the day, till she was in the running to sleep with him at some point. The thought made my lip twitch. Crossing my arms, I ran my fingers over my side and the rib tattoo I’d had finished in my first few months at Sunstone. Callum had dared me to finish that lonely “C” on my birthday and though I had been away from him, I’d still been happy to honor the promise. I’d made sure to find a good shop to do the ink, too, because it was Callum’s name and I didn’t want it to wind up looking off, like Hunt’s big, weird squid.
“Why a squid?” I finally asked Hunt that evening, because he was finally all there. He must’ve found me so annoying after awhile because I talked to him nonstop on days that he was totally sober. Most of the times, it was because I had been holding in conversation for too long and there were frequent streaks when Shanna was totally unreachable because she was going through some episode, so I had no one and nothing. Except Hunt.
“Giant squid,” he corrected. “It’s the biggest mystery in the ocean. Like me.”
“Do explain.”
Hunt finished his beer. He was quiet for another minute, like he was charging up to speak another whole sentence or two. “Scientists can’t study the giant squid because it lives it fucked up waters that no one’s gonna try to dip in. You don’t know nothing about them till they’re dead and washed up on the beach. And that’s the same with me. You won’t ever know what’s going on in here.” He jabbed his finger to his head. “Only God will. You’ll just see me when I’m dead and wonder what kind of life I lived and how I got there.”
I didn’t understand it so when he asked me a question for once – if I had any tattoos – I was happy to answer.
“I ain’t gonna be a girl and ask for the story,” Hunt said when I lifted my shirt just enough to show him the rib with Callum’s name on it. “Christ. I definitely won’t ask,” Hunt sat back in his chair to distance himself from me when he saw that I’d started crying. Callum was twenty-two and it was the time of night that he’d probably be celebrating hard, drinking and kissing as many girls as he could till he’d fully forgotten about me.
I sat out there with Hunt for another hour or so but when I knew my tears weren’t going to stop coming, going and coming back again, I went inside and crawled under my sheets on the grainy couch. I fell asleep with a cold puddle of tears on my pillowcase, right under my cheek. I couldn’t tell how many hours had passed by the time I stirred from my dream about Callum, to the sound of the door swinging open because Hunt was finally coming in. But he didn’t go straight to his room like I always heard him do. He shuffled over to me and before I knew it, the weight of his body was on top of mine. I gasped and opened my eyes and moved to push him off but he was just lying there on top of me. I thought he was asleep till he said, “You’re so pretty. I’m sorry for the things I do. It just feels like you’re not a real person sometimes.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I just froze there. I’d never heard words like that out of his mouth before. Shanna never believed me that Hunt hadn’t tried anything on me yet. He’d tried on all the “halfway decent” girls in the park. But I insisted repeatedly, no. Save for whipping out his dick while he was high off his ass, he never had. “Hunt, what are you doing?” I asked when he lifted the blanket off my body. I knew I’d officially lost my mind when my throat tightened over the way he looked at me, and the tears came back. His eyes were a darker green in the night and he didn’t look at me in a sleazy way like everyone else there did. He just looked at me with surprise and admiration and it made me think of Callum and the night he took my virginity. Hunt was nothing like Callum but of course I was thinking of him. I dreamt about him even when it wasn’t his birthday.
I stared into space that night, letting Hunt push my shirt up past my breasts. He didn’t touch them for a good minute, just stared. “Goddamn, Lake.” I wished he wouldn’t talk. It made it impossible to pretend he was Callum.
My stare was totally vacant as he rubbed on my body, kissed my cheeks and my neck. I felt him rock-hard on my leg but with a sudden flinch and a grunt, he was done and off to his room, and I was lying there, gazing at the ceiling, remembering how many times I’d forced Callum to do this same sleepless dance. The only difference was he probably hadn’t felt dirty or hated himself and I was glad for that. I was glad that he never did or would feel this kind of self-hatred because it was the most confounding misery. And I didn’t even know at the time that it was just the beginning.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Callum
Lake never returned to the hotel last night.
I called her but there was never an answer. I asked around the hotel, the front desk. No leads. But I shut off my insides the second I felt the panic. I didn’t need that shit. I was hollow for the next ten hours I looked for her. Oz held onto the suspicion that she’d gone drinking to blow off steam. He’d keep a lookout for her. He was taking Ana on a pub crawl to do damage control and get her in good enough spirits to keep our article positive.
By sunrise, he stumbled in from wherever they’d been at all night, carrying a pair of heels and a giggling blonde on his back. But his smile fell fast when he saw me in the lobby. I don’t know how I looked. Not great, probably. I told him that I hadn’t found Lake and he immediately put the girl down. He covered his drunk eyes with his hands, dragged them hard down his face and then sobered right up. It was like a fucking magic trick. “Alright, so what’s the next step?” he asked as the blonde moaned that she couldn’t walk anymore in her heels. He tossed her the keys to his room without looking. It was at this point that Ana came in behind them with the camera crew. She looked fairly drunk but walked perfectly straight. “Where have you already looked for her?” Oz asked.
“Everywhere. I mean it. Everywhere. I had everyone here on the lookout for me, bunch of bar and shop owners doing the same. But I don’t know when she left and we were doing the shoot for four, five hours. She could be anywhere at this point.” My voice was calm despite the fury raising hell on my insides. It ran around like a madman and clawed everything raw.