Good Girl, Bad Girl(74)

Raising my head, I bump something hard and cry out. My fingers brush against greasy metal. I’m lying beneath the chassis of a car, where I half remember crawling. Gasping shallowly, I pull myself along the ground until I’m clear of the vehicle and can see the sky. Bracing my hands on the gravel and broken concrete, I attempt to stand, but the pain finds parts of me that I didn’t know existed. I stop. Lie still. Breathe.

I remember leaving the game with Katelyn and walking across the road. I picture her opening the car door . . . my head bouncing off the roof. Reaching into my coat pockets, I search for my winnings. Every pocket. Nothing.

Shit! Fuck!

I crawl back beneath the abandoned car, hoping I might have dropped the money, but I know the answer already.

A bile-like wretchedness fills my chest, rising up my throat, making me want to gag, but I cannot find enough saliva to spit it out. The feeling is familiar, this sense of desolation and helplessness. During all the weeks in the house with Terry’s body and afterwards, I had always expected to die. I made plans to kill myself, taking a knife from the kitchen and choosing a spot on my chest that corresponded with the organ I could feel beating inside. Twice I held the knife in my hands when I heard them getting close to finding me. Even as I doubted my strength, I told myself I could do it. I promised. But when the time came, I couldn’t bring myself to push the knife into my chest. Coward! Weakling!

I get slowly to my feet and stumble across the vacant lot until I reach a wire fence that has collapsed under the weight of a vine. Leaning against the mesh, I take ragged breaths and wonder if my ribs are broken. Could I be bleeding inside? The bump on my forehead feels like an egg beneath my skin.

I have no money, no phone, nowhere to go. I think about Cyrus. He’ll have searched my room by now. He’ll have knocked on my door and waited for permission to enter, worried that I might be half-dressed or that I wouldn’t hear his knock because I was blow-drying my hair or plugged into music. He’ll have searched my things, looking for clues. How long will he wait before he calls the police?

Straightening again, I walk gingerly along the road towards a railway bridge. Streetlights are burning palely, floating in air the color of dirty water. A truck rumbles past. A taxi slows. I feel like a figure from an earlier time—a street urchin or waif, destined for the poorhouse, or a prostitute forced to walk the streets. I often picture myself like this—in other guises, living other possible lives. Sometimes I’m famous like Meghan Markle or Taylor Swift, but more often I’m famously tragic like Amy Winehouse or Marilyn Monroe.

Halfway across the bridge, I place my palms upon the stained brick wall and watch a freight train pass beneath me, louder then softer, shaking the world. I have fucked up big-time. I have no money or means of escape. Nowhere to go. How much will it cost to get to London? Maybe I could steal the money or beg for loose change.

The bus station is in York Street near the Victoria Centre, which is an indoor shopping mall, full of department stores, boutiques, cafés, and food halls, none of which are open at this hour of the morning. The station concourse is brightly lit and dotted with the sleeping bodies of backpackers resting on rucksacks, and the homeless, whose possessions are stuffed into plastic bags or piled in trolleys. A bus for London leaves at four thirty and another at five. I could be in London by nine o’clock . . . if I had ten pounds.

I go to the ladies’ and examine myself in the mirror. Apart from the bump on my head, my face avoided the worst of the beating. I can hide the bruise with my fringe.

A woman enters. Our eyes meet in the mirror. She’s middle-aged, wearing jeans and canvas shoes and a bulky sweater. Her lank hair has been dyed so often that her natural color is a distant memory. She enters a cubicle and locks the door.

“Excuse me,” I say “Can you lend us a tenner? My mum is real sick and I need to get to London.”

The woman doesn’t answer.

“I lost my purse. I think someone stole it.”

“I can’t help you,” the woman says.

“It’s only ten quid.”

“How do I know you’re not a junkie?”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know that.”

“Junkies don’t normally dress like me.”

“You could be a hooker.”

“If I was a hooker I wouldn’t need to borrow money.”

“Oh, so you’re borrowing now.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“Yeah, sure.”

She flushes the toilet. The cubicle door opens. This time she’s holding a can of something in her fist, pointing it at my face. “Come anywhere near me and you’ll get this,” she says, waving the aerosol.

“That’s deodorant,” I say.

“No, it’s pepper spray.”

“I can read the brand name. It says Dove.”

Clutching a tote bag to her chest, the woman skirts the sinks, keeping her eyes on me. The zip of her jeans is still undone.

“Are you going to wash your hands?” I yell, but the woman has gone.

Back on the concourse, I approach the ticket office, where a middle-aged man is putting new paper in a printer.

“Won’t be a second, love,” he says, snapping the lid shut and pressing a button to make the paper feed through a slot.

Short and thickset, he’s wearing a uniform that is so tight across his stomach that the fabric gapes between the buttons, showing his white singlet.