I Stand Before You (Judge Me Not #2)(66)

Missy giggles, and then groans in what sounds like pleasure. She’s obviously fine.

I don’t answer. I just turn away and run out of the heavy door marked exit. I trip a little, right myself, and spill out into a smelly alley. I’m in the back of the Anchor Inn, and everything reeks of urine and God-knows-what else. I hold my nose until I’m around the corner and at my parked car.

I hurriedly jump in and turn the key in the ignition. Before I pull away I think about all that has happened. I’m surprised and disturbed by what I’ve learned about Missy tonight. Again, it worries me that she and Chase behave so uncomfortably around one another. Every time I bring one’s name up to the other there’s always this weird tension. Despite Missy’s denial earlier, I resolve, once I get up enough nerve, to flat-out ask Chase if they’re hiding something.

But right now all I want to do is go home. Nothing has gone right today, and I am more than ready to just go to sleep and start fresh tomorrow.

Unfortunately, a short while later, when I pull into the apartment lot and park, I sense things are about to get a whole lot worse. Fireplug and his friends from the other morning are blocking the entrance to the building. They’re standing around in a loose circle smoking something out of a pipe.

When I get out of the car, a chemical-like odor—like burning plastic, maybe—wafts in my direction. The junkies are not smoking weed, that’s for sure. Meth or crack, then, I think. Shit, the tweaked addicts are the worst.

I try to hurry past their huddled bodies, clutching my big hobo bag to my body like a protective shield, but Fireplug stops me by stepping into my path. “Whatcha got in the bag?” he asks, his eyes dark and his words slurred.

Unlike the other day, he’s not leering. He just appears desperate and strung out. I try to shoulder past.

“Where’re you going in such a hurry?” Fireplug grabs for my bag and his two friends chuckle. “Don’t you know you gotta pay a toll first? It’s a new rule, just started tonight.”

One of the other junkies, skinny and gaunt, adds, “Yeah, we be the trolls under the bridge from your bedtime stories, little girl.”

“More like my nightmares,” I mumble under my breath.

It’s a mistake to engage them, but my comment slips out before I can stop myself.

Fireplug immediately gets in my face, his breath fetid as it washes over me. “You think you’re better than us? Is that why you’re giving us attitude, bitch?”

I just want to get into the building, so I mumble, “No.”

His grip on my bag tightens, but I hold on to it with everything I’ve got. I’m tired of being frightened. “Get out of my way,” I grind out.

I try again to slip past the junkies, but Fireplug won’t let go of my bag. I yank harder. He stumbles a little, and that’s when he reacts. He raises his arm and hits me in the face. He uses an open palm, but it’s still a hard slap. I gasp as my cheek stings and my eyes water. I’m reminded of the time my own mother hit me. Tears well up, like some sort of automatic reaction. Fireplug laughs sinisterly and plucks my bag out of my now-lax hands. I offer no resistance, but he pushes me so hard that I fall on my ass. He calls me a filthy word and spits in my direction. His saliva misses me, but barely.

I’ve made so many mistakes today. I should have pressed Chase to talk to me, I should have declined the offer to go out. And I should have left the bar without searching for Missy. Then, I wouldn’t have heard a guy I used to date—and his cousin—getting it on with my sort-of friend in some gross stairwell. But most of all, I wouldn’t be here now, sitting on my ass, at the mercy of three men who are drugged out of their minds.

The enormity of it all prevents me from moving. I sit and watch as Fireplug goes through my purse. He laughs as he throws my life all over the ground. His pals watch and cackle; they do nothing to stop him. And neither do I—I am powerless, like I’ve been so, so many times before.

“What the f*ck is this shit?” Fireplug laughs as Peetie, Sarah’s stuffed bunny, flies past my head. I close my eyes and something that feels like my makeup bag hits me in the shoulder.

When I dare to open my eyes, the sunglasses Chase fixed the day we met are falling to the ground. Fireplug lifts his foot to step on them. I glance up and his dilated eyes dare me to try to stop him. I look away and hear sickly crunching as Fireplug stomps on the sunglasses with his heavy, black boot. They are beyond repair now, even Chase’s talented hands can’t fix this shit.

Finally, my empty bag hits my lap.

But Fireplug hasn’t thrown everything out; he holds my wallet and my keys in his grasp. He takes money out of my wallet and drops everything else. Holding up two twenties, he growls, “This all you got?”

I nod lifelessly and he kicks my thigh, hard. I cry out. “Well, that’s not going to be enough, I’m afraid,” he tells me.

I don’t know what he has planned, but the other two junkies quickly take off. My thigh aches and my cheek feels tender, but I decide I am not going down without a fight. Not tonight. Maybe there’s rage in me like there is in Chase, because I suddenly wish I had my badass boy’s strength to beat the shit out of this *.

Fireplug leans down like he’s going to try to scare me some more, and I snap. From somewhere deep inside me I find the courage to lift my sandaled foot and kick this loser right in his chin. He doesn’t cry out, but he’s stunned enough that he steps back. I have time to right myself. Unfortunately, I am not fast enough.