The Nowhere Girls(64)

He says something. She cannot look at him. She did not hear it.

“Hello?” he says again. “That’ll be two sixty-five.”

Grace fumbles for her wallet, pulls out a five, hands it over. His fingers brush hers, and a surge of rage pulses through her. How can he be in the world so easy like this, selling girls candy, touching their hands?

Grace runs out as soon as he hands over her change. She tries to do what Erin does when she feels anxious. She counts backward as she walks away from the store, focuses on the feeling of her feet hitting the ground, the smell of gasoline in the air, the wet breeze of a coming rainstorm. Then without thinking, before she turns the corner toward her house, she turns around for one last look at Spencer Klimpt.

She is still close enough to see that he is typing something onto the smart phone in his hand, an amused smile on his face. Then he looks up, his face turned in her direction, and for just a moment their eyes meet. A shiver runs down Grace’s spine; she feels caught, trapped, like a deer in headlights who sees danger coming but is incapable of moving. He could walk out of the store right now and grab her. But he just laughs and looks back at his phone, releasing her. Grace speed walks the rest of the way home.

Grace is sweaty and out of breath when she gets home. She knows Mom and Dad are at a meeting at church all afternoon, so she opens the candy bar and sits down in front of the computer in Mom’s office. There’s a picture of Grace on the desk from early last year. In the picture, Grace still has braces and is even chubbier than she is now. Her outfit is atrocious—pink leggings, a yellow T-shirt with a kitten on it, a frizzy ponytail on the top of her head. She looks like a little girl, so na?ve, so ignorant. That girl looks happy. She hasn’t yet lost her friends and moved across the country. She hasn’t lost her mother to more important things. That girl doesn’t even know what rape is.

Grace takes a bite of her candy bar, but it doesn’t taste as good as she wants it to. She turns on Mom’s computer, types a web address in the browser window. The Real Men of Prescott blog opens.

A new entry was posted five minutes ago.





The Real Men of Prescott

Homely and kinda fat girl just walked into my work, was totally checking me out. Obvious she wanted me. If I wasn’t so hungover, I would have played that. She probably wouldn’t have been too bad with the lights out. Nice lips, lots of nice pieces to hold on to. A lot of the time, plain girls can be way better fucks than 9s and 10s because they know they have to work harder. Sometimes the hottest girls don’t even try. They think they just have to lie there.

This one would have been an easy score. Am now regretting not picking her up. Unless she’s one of those ugly girls with a feminist mommy who raised her to have more self-esteem than she deserves. But if she makes you work for it and then pulls some shit later saying she didn’t want it, she’s the kind of girl everyone will know is lying through her fat face.

—AlphaGuy541





US.


“You guys are crazy,” Rosina says. “This is a great place to have a meeting.”

“It’s not structurally stable,” Erin says. “And it’s a fire hazard. It is highly likely that it’s going to catch fire and we’re all going to be burned alive.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to tell people to bring candles,” Grace says.

“But we need light, right?” Rosina says. “And who knows when this place last had electricity?”

“Flashlights,” Erin says. “Battery-operated lanterns. We should have specified no open flames.”

The old Dixon Mansion has been sitting uninhabited on the edge of town for as long as anyone can remember. The three girls stand on the porch of the crumbling three-story building as it towers in front of them, the ornate columns framing the entrance tilting at an unnerving angle. Pale light flickers from inside, through cracked and scum-coated windows. The wind is hard tonight. A strong gust might tip the whole place over.

“You ready?” Rosina says to Grace.

“No,” Grace says.

“You’re going to be great,” Rosina says. “Right, Erin?”

“Do you want my honest answer?” Erin says. “Or do you want me to be supportive?”

“What do you think?” Rosina says.

“Grace, you’re going to do great,” Erin says flatly.

Grace sighs. “I can’t screw it up too much, right? Because the meetings usually pretty much lead themselves?”

“Or they end up like the first meeting at the library,” Erin says.

“Erin,” Rosina says softly.

Erin blinks. “I’m sorry, Grace,” she says, looking away. “I want to encourage you because you are my friend and I care about you.”

“That was really sweet,” Rosina says.

Erin shrugs. “Even if Grace totally bombs, it’s okay. Because we’ll still like her and so will everyone else.”

Grace looks at Erin with the beginning of tears in her eyes. “Erin, that is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yeah, well,” Erin says. “Don’t get used to it.”

“I kind of want to hug you right now,” Rosina says.

“Don’t you dare.”

“I love you guys,” Grace says with a quiver in her voice.