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My fingers tap on my knee as worry races through my body. She's ok. She's with me. My eyes trace over her face, finally adding up the details. "You wear braids now. And the same clothes on rotation."
Her cheeks redden, with a natural flush this time. She let me check her burns briefly before she fell asleep and put some ointment on her cheek, but that was all. Thank fuck they weren't as bad as I first thought.
"It's hard to get to the gym sometimes. The shelter locks its doors, so I have to rush to get there. And there's no time to get there every morning, or I would be late for work."
"I will get you your things from your apartment. I promise." I can’t not make the promise, even though I know the chances that her landlord kept anything are low. I’ll scour every store in the city to find her stuff, or things that look just like them.
She smiles, but her lips barely curve. "I didn't have that much anyway. It was second-hand furniture and some old clothes. I can go to a thrift store and stock up with my next check."
I let the thrift store comment pass, even though I want to explain to her that she'll have access to every penny I have in a matter of hours. There's time for that, and I have learned it's often better to say sorry than ask permission.
Even if I'm not really that sorry.
"Has all your money been going to your brother?" She told me in the car, but I was still in a haze of adrenaline and fear.
"Half," she mumbles, staring at her fingers as she braids and rebraids a small length of hair.
"Why? Why have you been paying him? What hold does he have over you? I need to understand it if I am going to protect you from it. What happened and how does the hospital come into play?"
The hand holding her braid shakes. She lets go of her hair and wraps both hands around her knees. "I don't like talking about it."
I slide closer on the couch, turning sideways and mimicking her posture. "I have things I do not like talking about. But sometimes, I have to. I won't share anything you tell me, unless I absolutely have to." She nods, and closes her eyes. I see the weariness and pain in her face, and I'm pissed all over again. She shouldn't ever feel either of those things. Anything other than happy is unacceptable.
She wets her lips, and exhales a weighted breath. "Mark is a few years older than I am. When he graduated, he got a partial scholarship to a technical school several states away. It was a big deal, coming from the family we come from. He's smart, and he had a plan to get out."
"Was he...nice to you?" I work hard to keep my voice level. The man I saw throw a hot cup of coffee at her is not nice. But I don't want to believe he was always like that. I want her to have had some softness in her life.
She shakes her head just the tiniest bit. "He wasn't, really. But he mostly left me alone. His mom took off, and Dad hooked up with my mom soon after. Home wasn't a happy place to be, and when he did talk to me, it was always about how he was going to get out of there and leave everything behind."
"So what changed?"
Her breathing speeds up and she stares unseeing at the middle of my chest. It's a little disconcerting. I'm used to people looking at me when they talk to me. This is weird. Is this how everyone feels when I do it to them?
"He came back for Christmas break. I was in my last year of high school, and there was a big party happening at a warehouse in our neighborhood. It was mostly high school kids. He was going, and I begged him to take me with him." She laughs, but it's not a happy sound. "I had this idea that if I went with my brother, maybe people would talk to me."
"School wasn't good for you?" It wasn’t good for me. It got better my last year, but I understand how hard it is to fit in.
"No. I struggled, and I ended up in a few remedial classes. Mostly, making friends was hard. I had one or two casual friends. They were like me. Quiet. Outsiders. But I wanted real friends. The kind of friends that would be there for you, no matter what. I thought going to the party might be my last chance to make some before graduation."
I very carefully wiggle my big toes, one then the other, over and over, tapping out a silent rhythm. I don't like where this is going. At all.
Janey clears her throat and sits up, pulling herself in tighter, like she's trying to keep herself warm. It's seventy-four degrees in here, so she can't be cold. But just in case, I lean toward her and take my favorite red blanket off the arm of the couch behind her and drape it over her shoulders. As I pull back, she grabs my hands, threading our fingers together and resting them on her knees.
"Then they pulled me into a back room."
I have got to stop freezing when she touches me. My brain goes offline, and I miss important things. "I...when you touch me, my ears turn off sometimes. I am sorry. Can you please back up?"
Some of the tension in her body loosens. "A group of kids from my grade were talking to me and my brother. At some point, he drifted away, and so did the girls. I don't really remember how it happened. All I know is they pulled me into a back room. I yelled, but no one heard me over the music. It...got really scary. They pulled my shirt off. They were grabbing me."
All my toes are flexing, one at a time. Concentrating on that movement saves me from losing my shit. I don't like where this story is going. At all. But I need to hear it. I want to know everything, even the things that make me want to stage a high school reunion, invite only those men, then set the building on fire with them inside.
She squeezes my hands, bringing my focus back to her. "Before they could...you know, Mark was there. They were fighting. Mark's always been tough, and he got into a lot of fights, so he did okay. But then someone hit him with a chunk of metal." She shudders, and I tuck myself closer to her, rolling forward until my chin is nearly touching our hands. "It was bad. There was so much blood. I remember using my shirt to try and stop it. After that..."
Turning our hands until her wrists are exposed, I press a soft kiss at her wrist, then the other. I don't want to scare her or push her, but the thud of her pulse at my lips is reassuring. She's ok. "Finish it."
"We both ended up at the hospital. Mark got out after a couple of weeks, but he had some deficits that weren't there before. He couldn't go back to school. He tried, but it didn't work out. And I...I ended up in the psychiatric unit. It took me months to get better. It was..." her eyes are far away, "not a good place."
I rest my forehead against her hands. She spreads her palms and cradles my head. I breathe, enjoying her touch, sorting through everything that's happened over the last eighteen hours and everything she just told me. "I am sorry and angry that you were hurt. I would like their names, please."
