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Viv made it easy for her to forget about Echo and everything that had happened in Santa Monica. Aside from her dad, Viv was the nicest person Rae had ever met, and not only because she allowed her to live in her home. She was kind in ways Rae had never experienced before, like when Viv offered to teach her how to drive.
As they had traveled by bus to Albuquerque, Viv mentioned that the public transportation in her city was okay but not great and how it’d be a good idea for Rae to save up for a used car. She told Rae she had a connection at a dealership and could get her a good deal, and she was shocked when Rae told her she didn’t have a license and only had a little driving experience. After her dad had died, Rae had stopped obsessing over getting a car, and then Clint had swept her away to California in his old Mustang.
Now, the idea of driving meant more than fulfilling one of the many normal teenage milestones she had missed while she was with Clint. It meant better opportunities for work and maybe even getting her GED. It meant freedom.
She’d only been with Viv for three weeks, and Rae felt stronger than she had in four years. Maybe it was the good food Viv cooked for her every day, food she was teaching Rae how to make for herself. Or maybe it was taking the prenatal vitamins, something she hadn’t been able to do when she was with Clint. She couldn’t have let him know she was pregnant. For one, he would have assumed the baby was someone else’s, even though he refused to use condoms with her. He used to demand the others wear one when they came to her room. But Clint didn’t seem to know or care how the men would often remove them.
In her gut, Rae knew the baby was Clint’s. It had been two months since one of the others had removed a condom with her when she realized she hadn’t bled in at least four weeks.
She turned her head, watching Viv chopping carrots for the Japanese curry they were making together. Rae knew she’d start showing soon, but she was still scared to tell her new friend about the baby. Already, Rae had to use a hair band looped around her jeans button as a makeshift expander for her growing abdomen.
“Would you hand me the potatoes, hon?” Viv said, her eyes never wavering from the cutting board. Rae couldn’t help noticing how adept Viv was at dicing the vegetables into perfectly even pieces.
“Did you use to work as a chef?”
Viv laughed. “Me? Heck no! But I did my fair share of shitty kitchen jobs before starting my business.”
Three weeks of living in the same cozy condo together, and Rae still had no idea what Viv did at her home business while Rae worked a few day shifts during the week at a nearby Subway. She imagined Viv’s work had something to do with makeup since she owned every beauty product known to mankind. But then she’d have to sell a lot of makeupto pay for her place, which looked like the after photo of an HGTV home-makeover show. When Rae had come out and asked her what she did for a living, Viv only shot her a coy smile and said, “Just a boring job that pays the bills.”
They worked side by side as they listened to Viv’s music, Björk’s ethereal voice surrounding them as they cut, stirred, and simmered the vegetables until the entire condo smelled like the warm curry spices. While they ate at the round dining table, Rae noticed Viv glancing at her watch, the same dainty silver one she always wore. Viv once told her it was over a hundred years old.
“So, how’s work been?” Viv said.
Rae swallowed her bite of curry, enjoying the subtle heat tingling her tongue. “It’s not too bad. I picked up another shift for tomorrow.”
“Won’t be too long before we can check out my friend’s dealership. Figure once you have about $5,000 saved up, we can find you a decent enough car that’ll get you back to Oklahoma.”
“With how little Subway pays, that’ll be forever.”
Viv reached across the table to pat Rae’s hand. “I’ll ask my friend to keep an eye out for solid cars under four thousand, but it might be a long shot.” She shook her head. “Sometimes, I can’t believe my first car was $700. It was a shit car, but it got me around. Everything’s so expensive now.”
Viv looked at her watch again.
Before Rae could ask her if she was late for something, Viv pushed away from the table. “Sorry, hon, but I’ve got an online business meeting I need to get ready for. Would you mind doing the dishes when you’re done?”
“Sure.”
A remote business meeting? On a Tuesday evening? For the first time since knowing Viv, faint alarm bells went off in Rae. She’d learned the hard way to always listen for them, but she wasn’t sure why she was sensing them now. It’s just that Viv had been so honest about everythingelse, and Rae didn’t understand why she was being vague about her work.
Her first thought went straight to Clint, how she had known he dealt drugs when she’d met him in Oklahoma, but he’d assured her it was only weed, sometimes a little Adderall. But then it was so much more. And there was California, him planting all the ideas of her making it big as a singer in Los Angeles, maybe getting a recurring role on one of those Disney shows. She knew as soon as she entered the run-down apartment in Santa Monica that something wasn’t right. It was the way Clint’s friend, their roommate, ignored her completely while others who came over scanned her all over like she was a car they were looking to buy. Then Clint moved them to a house close to the pier, and Rae thought things would get better. That was when the girls started showing up. Young ones like her and some in their early twenties, in one day for a few weeks and then gone. She never knew where they went, except for the ones she didn’t want to think about. And then the bad men came, and she knew Clint was no longer in charge.
Whatever Viv’s business was, Rae knew it wasn’t anything close to what Clint had been into. That was impossible.
Rae was in the middle of doing dishes when she heard knocking at the front door. She didn’t want to bother Viv during her meeting, but she was also nervous about who could be at the door. She checked Viv’s office, but she wasn’t in there. She saw Viv’s bedroom door was closed. Odd. The knocking started up again, making her heart somersault. Logically, she knew the bad men couldn’t find her at Viv’s house, but then the internet made everyone easy to find now. They might’ve found some way to track her to Albuquerque.
No. She was being stupid.
She went to the front door and looked out the peephole. It took her several seconds to figure out what she was seeing. A man wearing what looked like a dog collar stood outside the door. He had some kind of ball strapped into his mouth, and he was holding a bouquet of red roses.
What the hell?
The man knocked again, more insistent. Rae didn’t have a choice; she would have to interrupt Viv’s business meeting.
She softly knocked on Viv’s bedroom door, but she didn’t answer.
“Viv? There’s someone at the door.”
Nothing.
