BadApple: Now ur a magician? Explains the creepiness.
MrD: You wouldn’t think I was creepy if you met me.
BadApple: I bet $ ur wrong
MrD: Okay. Let’s meet.
BadApple: lol
MrD: How much are we betting?
BadApple: not happening
MrD: 10k
I stare at the computer screen, my mind unable to comprehend the number he put in. I mean, even if the dude’s a total perv… Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money to get in my pants. If I thought he’d actually pay that, I’d be on my way in a second.
Does that make me a whore? Sure, maybe. But I really don’t care what anyone thinks. It’s my body. Why shouldn’t I get to set the price? I’m trailer trash with nothing going for her, as my mother likes to remind me. I’ve done worse than sell sex.
Hell, if we’re talking prices, all I got for my virginity was a cigarette and a pair of bloody underwear.
The most I’ve ever gotten out of sex is some cool tats. Mav was a friend, he needed a canvas to practice on, and I was bored. Between the two of us, apparently we couldn’t resist the skin and the pain, and next thing you know, we were in bed together. That arrangement lasted about as long as it took him to finish inking my thigh and hip. We really had no interest in each other after that, but at least I had something to show for it. Where else would a girl like me get the money for tats?
MrD: Not interested?
I shake my head, coming back to the present. This guy obviously wants more than to get laid. Even a gross uggo like Mr. Behr can find someone to fuck if he tries hard enough. Which means this guy is after something else. If I meet him, he’s either going to sell me to get his money back or harvest my organs. And that’s if he actually has the money, which I one hundred percent guarantee he doesn’t.
BadApple: nope
MrD: I know a girl like you could use it.
I shiver again, but I’m not going to let him get to me. Of course I could use the money. I’m not the only poor girl in town. Pretty much everyone at FHS who has tats got them from Maverick.
BadApple: What does a girl like me need $ for? I got it all
MrD: College. Travel. A car. A better school. A better house.
My fingers still on the keyboard, that uneasy feeling crawling up my back again.
BadApple: IDT 10k covers a house, not even this one
MrD: It covers the rent on one.
My heart is pounding now. I have to remind myself he doesn’t know where I live, that we rent. He assumes I live in a shitty house because I go to Faulkner High. That’s it.
BadApple: How do u know I need any of that?
MrD: I’ve been watching you, Harper.
My whole body freezes.
Harper.
He knows my name. He knows who I am. And if he knows that, he probably knows where I live. I force myself not to glance around, not to peer out through gaps in the dusty slats of the blinds.
No, I tell myself. He doesn’t know who I am. He got it off the school computer I’d logged into. He doesn’t know where I live, he doesn’t have ten thousand dollars, and he’s not watching me. And if he tries to snatch me off the street… Well, he can fucking try. He’ll see how well that goes. I may have zero prospects in life, nothing in life to call my own but the body I was born with, but that taught me a thing or two. I know how to use my body for more than sex.
BadApple: U like watching?