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One
I used to feel invisible. I was an ordinary girl with a sister with a not-so-ordinary background, and because of that, I’ve always lived in her shadow. I didn’t want her to worry about me, and I didn’t want to cause any trouble. But even the good girl eventually goes bad.
At least this one did.
The first time I got drunk, I tasted the freedom I hadn’t realized I’d been missing. After a while, you become so numb that it becomes easier to pretend it doesn’t hurt to deny who you are, down deep under the lies. You get used to breaking off pieces of yourself and tucking them away where they won’t cause any pain to someone else, someone you love more than life. Someone who would sacrifice anything to keep you safe.
Claiming those real, true slices of yourself—even in secret—feels like a betrayal.
I didn’t want to hurt Mia, my older sister. My hero. She’s the strongest, bravest, sweetest person I know. And she’s suffocated me for years, trying to ensure that I never have to endure what she did.
Now she’d become part of a set. Her boyfriend, Fox, is almost as bad as she is when it comes to being protective of me. I love him like he’s my own brother, and I’m so happy he’s in Mia’s life, but my father is dead and buried. I threw the roses on his casket years ago, and I never signed up for another one.
My sister smothers me enough. She doesn’t need any help.
We’re so different, Mia and I. Night and day. I used to think she was the night and I was the day. Not anymore. She’s fought her dark with every ounce of who she is. I chase mine.
I also have a big fat chip on my shoulder about making my mark. Wherever and however I can.
Hey world, Carly Fucking Anderson is on this planet too, and she’s not here just to be the walk-on in someone else’s show.
I want my own. My own existence. Even my own tragedy, if it comes to that.
If Mia knew part of me wanted to be in the spotlight, no matter the cost, she’d never understand. She lived through a trauma. Survived it. She didn’t cling to the walls of her world like a paper doll, as thin and insubstantial as the wind.
People passed by me and through me and few of them ever realized I’d suffered too. I was the one who had to pick up the pieces after my sister’s kidnapping. I took care of my dad as best as I could, and I went through the motions. Even at eleven, I learned how to put on the mask. I was normal. I was okay. Nothing or no one would ever harm me because I was too strong.
Not anymore. Now I wasn’t hiding from trouble. I was seeking it, eyes wide open. Hoping like hell it could find me where no one else ever had.
That unnaturally warm October night at The Pyramid Club, it did.
The club was slamming on a Friday night in the city, as it always was. At eighteen, I lived the usual college girl’s life. I went to school all day at the International Culinary Institute, and I worked part-time three days a week at a salad shop.
And two nights of the week, I danced nearly nude in a cage at a club.
Okay, so maybe not quite so usual.
I’ll give you a clue which of my two jobs paid more—and it wasn’t the one where I chopped vegetables for my two-hundred-year-old boss.
I’d worked as a dancer for more than four months. A few times, I’d had to go onstage to fill in, but the cage above the dance floor was mostly mine. Initially, I’d had to fight for it. The cage was kinda primo dance space, and a girl with no dancing or stripping experience wasn’t who Trina wanted to put inside it right away. But I’d danced for her in her office, with my palms sweating and my mind screaming a million protests, and she’d agreed right away to a probationary period in the cage.
