“Okaaay,” she says, puffing nervously on her cigarette. “I didn’t mean it literally. I was trying to say this in a nice way, but maybe there’s no nice way to say it. I’m sorry. I know you really don’t want to know that. But it’s true. I’m the only one who knows, and you can’t tell him I told you or he will actually, literally, murder me.”
I shake my head, wanting to stand up and walk away, to unhear what she’s telling me. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Jesus H,” she snaps. “I thought you were smart. I’m saying he’s the escort, Harper. Royal turns tricks.”
We sit there in silence for a full minute because my brain refuses to comprehend what she just said to me.
“That’s not possible,” I say, my voice sounding naïve to my own ears. I keep seeing that drawer in his desk, the one I pulled out when I was over there. The one full of cash and betting slips… And hotel receipts. What is he doing with all that money?
I shake my head again, filling my lungs with the bitter rush of nicotine to distract myself. “It doesn’t make sense. Why? Is he poor like you?”
“Thanks,” Gloria says, rolling her eyes.
“I don’t understand. You’re his friend. You didn’t ask?”
“Have you tried asking Royal a question?”
I close my eyes for a second, as if I can erase the knowledge as easily as I can block out the late afternoon sun. “We should tell his dad.”
She grabs my arm, her nails biting into my skin. “You can’t tell anyone. You swore.”
“But he needs help,” I say. “Or… An intervention? And it’s his dad. Yeah, he’s a total creep, but most men are. And he cares about his kids. He’d want to know. Maybe he can help him.”
“You can’t tell anyone,” she says again. “They’ll know I told you. And especially, you can’t say anything to Royal or his dad. You promised. You know what they do to people who cross them. You can’t do that to me. Please, Harp.”
She sounds so desperate my heart aches for her. “Why can’t we tell his dad?”
She sighs, looking wearied, and slumps back against the wall. “Who do you think pays for the hotel room?”
I stare at her. “His dad knows?”
“I told you everything I know, Harper.”
My thoughts are firing too fast. All I want to do is move, jog to the Slaughter Pen and smash someone’s face in until I forget what she said. Is that why he fights? To forget this? Or is this just another self-destructive thing he does, the same as the fights or the way he plays football like he’s trying to break his neck.
“We have to do something,” I say, my knee bouncing a hundred miles an hour.
She shakes her head, her expression miserable. “I’m Royal’s friend. I love him. Not the way you do, the way I used to. Maybe even deeper, though. I’d help him if I knew how or thought he wanted my help. But when I’ve asked, or hinted, he just shuts down.”
“So, you don’t do anything.”
She swallows hard, her eyes shiny with tears. “I don’t know what to do, Harper. He hates himself, and I’m scared to do anything that might make it worse. All I know how to do is be here for him. So, when he walks out after his date tonight, I’ll sit out here with him, and we’ll share a smoke, and I’ll just accept him, all of him, because that’s the only way I know how to love him.”
She’s crying now, wiping her tears so fiercely I’m surprised she doesn’t take out an eye with her pointy, iridescent nails.
I don’t know what to say, what to do, either. I can’t say anything to him, and not just because he’d know Gloria told me. I wouldn’t do that to her, but I also wouldn’t do that to him. He doesn’t want anyone to know, and not because it’s some big illegal operation that could bring down the Dolce empire. Although, it is illegal, and it might be able to bring down his family, if his dad knows and doesn’t stop him… Or makes him do it.
I try to imagine anyone making Royal do anything. He has no respect for anyone, for teachers or the law, and certainly not for his dad. When I saw them together, he talked to him like everyone else, like he was a piece of shit. He told me he wished he’d never met his dad. This would explain why.
“Please don’t say anything,” Gloria says. “Imagine how you’d feel if he’d just found out you did this on the side.”
It’s not hard to imagine. I heard stories about girls at the trailer park, about friends of my mom’s. Hell, for all I know, she’s taken money a time or two. She’s for sure traded a night of drugs for a night in her room, if not so formally as all this. But we’re poor. I expect my mother to get wasted and hook up with whatever rando handed her a bottle of whiskey or pills. Desperate people do desperate things, and even if she’s only desperate for a break from reality, to feel good again for a night, I get it.
This is how rich people do it. Somehow, it’s almost worse. Or maybe it’s just shocking because he has no reason. I don’t get why a boy like Royal does this, a boy who has everything—more money than I could dream of, a drawer full of cash just sitting there like it’s junk mail, a car that’s the envy of the school, a face that could make the most beautiful girl on earth weak, and a body that could bring her to her knees. The only thing he doesn’t have is his sister, and this for damn sure isn’t bringing her back.
Still. I can imagine how that makes it worse, more shameful for him. He has everything, and yet, he sells his body to strangers. Why? Is it some kind of penance for something he blames himself for, maybe fighting the Darlings and losing his sister over it? Some fucked up sexual thing that has to do with his kidnapping? Is he acting out some kidnapping fantasy with these women?
Whatever the case, I can imagine how ashamed I’d feel, even though everyone expects me to be a whore. No one would be surprised. And yet, if I had to look Royal in the eye and tell him I couldn’t date because on weekends, I got paid to have sex with older men, I’d fucking die.
“You better go,” Gloria says, sniffing up her runny nose with one big, long, unladylike snort. “The last thing he needs right now is to see you and know that you know.”
I nod, standing and dusting off the seat of my jeans. It kills me that I have to leave her to comfort him, to see him at his most vulnerable, even if they don’t acknowledge why. It should be me sitting here with him in silence, sharing a cigarette.
But if I stayed, it would make it worse. He’d be so ashamed that I knew. And more than that, he’d know that I can never see him the same. In turn, he’d never see me the same, never look at me without knowing that I know this shameful secret about him. Is that why he stopped fucking Gloria? Because how could he still want someone and fuck them with that shame hanging over his head?
God, it’s all so fucked up. Like Gloria said, when there’s nothing else to do, you just give someone what they need without making them ask, without judging, without making it worse or adding to their shame. So I thank her, and tell her she’s a good friend, and I walk away. Sometimes, that’s the kindest thing you can do. Sometimes, respecting someone’s right to their secrets, their human dignity, is more important than seeking revenge for when they didn’t respect yours.