Chapter 1 #2
My friends are the greatest, and I know they’d never shame me for my current life situation. Actually, they’d probably fall over each other asking me to move in with one of them.
But pride is a motherfucker. And I hate accepting handouts.
An hour later, as I head toward the back alley behind The Mercury lugging my ratty old dance bag, I shake off the last of “homeless Brooklyn” and take a breath, slipping my mask into place.
I am now officially “ballet Brooklyn”.
Here, I feel safe. I’m snarky and fun and impulsive, I can let my guard down, and let the love and warmth of my amazing friends lift me up. And here, I’m a damn good dancer.
At least, I’d better be. Because in a few months, I might not be “here” at all—in New York, that is.
I might be dancing for the Ballet Imperiya Korona ; the Imperial Crown Ballet, in Moscow—one of the most prestigious ballet companies in the world.
I scowl at myself for a second.
No, not “I might” be dancing in Moscow. Manifest, girl .
I will be.
I will?—
“Lemme guess, your phone doesn’t work anymore?”
All I see is black dotted with red. All I feel is the raw thud of pain exploding outward from where the back of James’s hand has smacked my left temple.
My vision blurs, my breath sticking in my throat as I spin off-balance, stumbling and only just catching myself against the wall of a building. I’ve barely begun to turn to face him before James grabs me by the front of my hoodie, hauling me up and snarling down into my face.
“I called you five fucking times the other day.”
There’s no right answer here. If I say “I know”, I’m admitting that I ignored the calls, which will make him even angrier. If I say that I didn’t know, then I’m an idiot. This will also piss him off.
I understand, all too well, the way abusers like James twist reality to make everything your fault. They scream at you because you did or said something wrong. They hit you—even though they “don’t want to”—because you made them .
I’ve read the books. I’ve listened to the rah-rah-sisterhood podcasts. I know all that.
It doesn’t stop me from cowering in fear under my ex-boyfriend’s leering, cruel gaze, feeling like I need to apologize for something.
“I…I’m sorry,” I mumble feebly. “I—James, I’ve just been really busy?—”
“That’s not our deal, Brooklyn.”
Our deal .
Something inside me withers and cringes.
James and I dated, broke up, then dated again, then broke up again—it goes on like that for the last year and change.
It’s a broken record, and I know every note by heart now.
I, obviously, have issues—with trust and intimacy, with my self-worth, with abandonment. Daddy issues, mommy issues, you name it, I’ve got them all.
And James knows it.
The script is nauseatingly familiar. He enters or re-enters my life when I’m spiraling particularly badly.
He says all the right things to assuage every “issue” I have and make me lower my defenses—partly because I’m pathetic, and partly because I am just so fucking desperate for something real.
For someone who will hold me tight and fix it all.
Chase away the monsters. Banish the nightmares.
That isn’t James. But when the world’s had you under its boot-heel this long, even a flickering mirage of what you need feels like enough.
And so I decide to let him back into my life. He plays it cool for a while, acts like he gives a shit about me, and for one flickering moment, I wonder if he’s turned a corner, and that this time , he’ll really be what I so desperately need him to be.
…And that’s when the nice act drops.
When he lets his temper out. When everything becomes my fault. When I can never say the right thing.
Next come the punches and the kicks. The backhands, the slaps, the shoves.
…The blood and tears when he no longer listens to the word no, and just takes what he wants anyway.
Finally I tell him it’s over, that I hate him and never want to see him again, and manage to get away.
And at some point after that , my soul breaks a little more, and my defenses drop, and the whole sad, pathetic, abusive dance starts again.
“I wanted you to come over the other night,” he growls.
I swallow. “James, look, we talked about that. I don’t think we should?—”
My breath catches and pain radiates through my arm as he grabs my elbow tightly and squeezes.
“I fucking told you ,” he growls. “Look, I understand you don’t want to date me anymore. I know I get carried away sometimes.”
The only reason I don’t laugh is because I’m terrified.
“I agreed to no more dating. But I never agreed to stop completely .” He leers into my face, his teeth flashing. “You know how it is, B. I start thinking about you…”
I turn to stone as his fingers trail up my arm.
“Start thinking about us …”
Nausea coils in my stomach as he slides a finger over the side of my breast through my hoodie, slipping his hand to my waist and squeezing.
Please go away. Please leave me alone .
“So when I tell you to come over, baby--”
“Brooklyn!”
I whirl away from James and yank myself out of his grip so quickly that I surprise even myself.
Behind me, down the street toward the entrance to the alley behind the Mercury where we all hang out before rehearsal, I see Val walking toward me.
“That better be the fucking gay one,” James seethes.
Now feels like the wrong time to remind him that Val is in fact bi .
There’s also the small detail that James and I are not a couple, and who I spend time with, men or women, is none of his fucking business.
But that would be an even worse thing to say right now.
“I…I have to go,” I blurt. “Rehearsal starts soon?—”
“Fine,” he growls. His eyes narrow onto mine. “But next time I fucking call you, you pick up , yeah?”
I gulp, not able to meet his gaze.
“Brooklyn!” he snaps. “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I heard you.”
“Good,” he mutters. “You know how I fucking hate waiting when my dick gets hard for you, baby.”
I turn to ice as he grabs my elbow again.
“Don’t make me wait again, B,” he hisses. “Or I’ll come find you.” He grins lecherously. “Shit, maybe that would make you come even harder.”
I’ve never once come with James.
Also not something to mention right now.
By the time Val gets to where I’m still frozen on the sidewalk, James has disappeared around the corner.
“Who the fuck was that?” my friend frowns.
I somehow manage to force a smile to my face.
“Oh, you know,” I snort, rolling my eyes for effect. “Just some guy.”
Val grins widely. “ Ayyy , that’s my girl,” he chuckles, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and slipping one between his perfectly sculpted lips. “Look at Ms. Thang over here, just walking down the street catching number.”
I roll my eyes again. “C’mon,” I sigh, slipping the mask back into place. Covering the fear. Covering the dirty, raw, unclean Brooklyn that I can’t let anyone see, least of all my friends. “We’re going to be late.”
The rehearsal day goes by in a blur. I have some time to kill before I need to get to my other job, so I end up hanging in the back alley with Val, Naomi, Milena, and Evie for a while. Then I shower, actually washing my hair this time, and get dressed before hightailing it to the subway.
An hour later, I’m getting off the G train at Greenpoint Ave. I hustle my way through the trendier streets of Greenpoint until the hipster beer bars and coffeeshops give way to warehouses and broken streetlights.
I round the last corner and pause for a second across the street from The Mirage, taking in the flickering neon sign over the building announcing “GIRLS GIRLS GI-LS”with a missing R, the parking lot full of sleek street racing cars, and lots of motorcycles.
Like I said, ballet pays shit . And being poor is, ironically, expensive. So are Derrick’s legal bills. And while working at a cocktail bar, café, or anywhere else where I’d keep my fucking clothes on sounds nice, they also don’t pay enough.
Stripping does.
There are closer places to take my clothes off for money than Greenpoint, obviously.
But when I was thinking about taking the plunge and dancing on a fucking pole a little over a year ago, Val brought me out with some of his friends for someone’s birthday, and we all ended up at Centerfolds in Midtown.
That’s the night I realized I had to choose a place further out, where nobody who might know me might accidentally blunder in.
Like The Mirage.
The place is a sticky, grimy shithole, the clientele are usually rough, and Lou, the owner-manager, is…
A predator.
A shiver ripples down my back as I inhale deeply and start to cross the street.
But the money is great, and some of the girls I’ve met here, like Maya, are amazing.
The sound of a door banging open and men laughing loudly yanks my attention away from the club and to one of the warehouses. Two guys stumble out from what sounds like a party inside, swigging beers as they unzip and pee against the side of the building.
“Fastest grand I ever made,” one of them laughs. “That was a quick fucking fight, bro.”
Ahhh, okay. Not a party. A fight club. I don’t know who hosts these things, but they’ve had them at the warehouse across the street from The Mirage a couple of times before.
I turn away to walk toward the employee entrance at the back of the club.
“Hey! Cherry!”
It’s not a name I hear outside the club. “Cherry”, as in “Cherry Pie”, is my name in there . Out here, I’m still Brooklyn.
So the unexpectedness of hearing that name yanks my head around before I can stop myself.
Instantly, my stomach drops.
I recognize the four finance bros from last night—they were in with a buddy for his bachelor party. The groom-to-be got a little too drunk, and was sloppy trying to hide the fact that he was doing bumps of coke when he thought we weren’t looking, but he behaved .
He got two lap dances from Maya and one from Em, and that was it.
His friends, however—these fuckers—took it too far.