13. Julie
thirteen
Julie
We were in the dark for a long time. They put us in a concrete box, four steps by six, nothing but a shelf of cinder blocks for a bench.
Emma got the corner. I sat with my back to the wall and tried to keep my eyes open.
Overhead, a slit window let in a strip of sun that tracked along the floor, wide as a blade, and then nothing.
The only clock we had was the rounds the bikers made outside our door.
Karma was coming back to bite me in the ass. I could have put this club down, and I didn’t do it because I was afraid for my life, for Mom and Emma. But still, here we were, except Mom was in another room.
My nose was broken. Every shift of my face sent the bones grinding, a new angle every hour.
When I looked down, blood fell slow and even onto my shirt.
Rope had cut channels into both my wrists, and the skin along my forearms was raw, a little slick where it oozed.
Emma was worse. Her lip was split and puffed, one eye punched shut, purple spreading fast. She curled up, arms around her legs, chin buried.
Sometimes she shivered, but it was too hot for that.
We’d been here long enough for hunger to switch off.
I licked at the inside of my mouth and tasted dust and copper.
We didn’t talk. Not at first. Nothing to say that wasn’t a whimper.
I could hear the guards outside, two of them, one breathing wet, one clearing his throat every few minutes.
They didn’t talk to each other. Once, one of them laughed — not at us, at something on his phone or in his head. That scared me more than the threats.
I waited until Emma’s breathing settled, then slid along the wall to close the gap between us. The scrape of my jeans on the floor made her flinch. I didn’t touch her. Just sat there, shoulder to shoulder, and matched her posture, as if that made us harder to separate.
Emma broke first. Her voice was ruined, a whisper that cracked in the middle of every word. “Do you think it’s really this hot outside,” she asked, “or is that just in here?”
I took a breath and felt my nose squish against itself, the cartilage off its tracks. “Probably both,” I said. “This room’s a kiln. But I think it’s always like this out here.”
She nodded, the bare movement of her head making her wince.
Her hair was greasy, stuck to her cheek.
She didn’t bother brushing it away. “I used to get ice cream every Saturday. In San Bernardino. Even in October.” She turned her good eye up to the window, tried to catch the color of the sky.
“Mom hated when I went out alone, but she wouldn’t say why.
Said the air wasn’t safe. Like it was radioactive. ”
“Was it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I mean, it’s a shithole, but not that bad.
Sometimes I’d walk to that coffee place, the one by the train station.
The barista was in her twenties and wore a nose ring.
She’d write something on my cup, not my name.
A quote or a pun, something she’d think I’d like.
She said people are always giving away secrets when they order coffee. You know?”
I nodded. My lips were cracked. “You can learn everything about a person from their order.”
She tried to laugh, but it hurt. “Yeah. Or from how they hold the cup. She said some people act like it’s a bomb and some like it’s a trophy. And you can tell the difference by the way their thumb wraps around the lid.”
“Which were you?”
Emma considered this, then said, “Bomb.” She looked at her hands, fingers tight on her knees. “Never wanted to keep anything. Just wanted it not to explode in my face.”
The guards passed, heavier this time. I heard one of them stop and press an eye to the window in the door.
He lingered, then shuffled on. Their shadows slid along the floor, distorted by the glass and the dying light.
I wondered how many other people they had stashed in rooms like this, how many names I would recognize if I tried the handles down the row.
Emma sniffed and wiped her nose with the heel of her hand. Blood crusted under her nostrils, dried black. “Julie?” She didn’t look up.
“Yeah.”
“Did you ever think something was off? Like, not about them. About us. About the way we were. Even before.” She jerked her head in the direction of outside, meaning the whole fucking world.
I let that sit. I’d spent years policing my own reactions, waiting for someone else to slip, but the truth was I was always the one out of step.
“I thought it all the time,” I said. “You know what Mom used to tell me? That we’re all born with a defect, and it’s your job to sand it down before anyone sees it.
She said that’s what school was for. To make you better at hiding it. ”
Emma nodded, satisfied, like she’d been waiting for confirmation. “I think mine got bigger every year. I used to lie awake and make lists of all the things that would happen if anyone found out.”
“Found out what?”
She looked at me, her one good eye going sharp for a second. “That I didn’t want any of it. The whole family, the house, the future. I wanted out, but I never knew what that meant.”
I reached for her hand and left it open between us, palm up. She hesitated, then let her fingers fold around mine. Her grip was cold, but it got firmer with every second. We didn’t let go.
There was a long stretch where nothing happened.
The room seemed to shrink, the air getting heavier with every breath.
My head pounded. I remembered the way Bram looked at me that last night, eyes dead flat, his hands gentle on my face even though he wanted to shake me.
I thought about the blood in the parking lot, about the way he kept saying it was fine even when it soaked through his shirt.
I hadn’t let myself say it out loud, not even to myself, but I wanted him in here with me, wanted it so bad it made my teeth ache.
Emma cleared her throat. “He’s coming, you know. Bram. Or the other one, with the red hair.”
I almost smiled. “Rusty. Yeah. If they have to burn this place to the slab.”
“Would you want that?” she asked.
I had to think. I didn’t know how to want anything but control, and right now, all I wanted was out. I thought about the first time Bram came to my office, the way he filled the doorway without moving, how he dropped a manila folder on my desk like he was delivering a verdict.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
She squeezed my hand. “That’s better than not wanting anything.”
It got dark. The sun disappeared, and the slit window went black.
Someone clicked on a bare bulb overhead, and the shock of it made both of us squint and duck.
The guards started talking outside the door, low voices, a joke in Spanish.
I recognized one of the words — puta. I wondered which of us they meant.
We waited. The voices drifted off, replaced by the drone of a TV somewhere down the hall. They’d fed us water, poured straight from a plastic bottle into our mouths, which meant they didn’t want us dead yet. That was almost comforting.
I tried to sit up straighter, but my ribs didn’t want to cooperate. When I leaned back, my head thumped the wall hard enough to make stars. I let my eyes close.
“Julie?” Emma again. Her voice was different this time, nervous but steady.
“Yeah.”
She picked at her cuticles, peeled away a flap of skin and watched the bead of blood rise. “When you get out. When we’re out. Are you going back?”
“Back where?”
“To the club. To Bram. To —” she stopped, either out of breath or out of nerve.
I opened my eyes. The light was ugly, showing every line and bruise on her face. “I don’t know if I have a choice,” I said. “I don’t know if he does, either.”
Emma nodded, letting it drop. Then, with no warning, she said, “Are you in love with him?”
The words hit like a baton. I felt my face go hot, and I hated it, hated the way my body always told the truth before I could catch up. I kept my eyes on the far wall. “I don’t know,” I lied. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I exhaled through my mouth, the only way to keep the blood out of my airway. “Yes,” I said, and the admission shocked me. It was so easy, all of a sudden, to say it. “Yeah. I am.”
Emma didn’t tease, didn’t smile. She leaned her head against my shoulder. “That’s good,” she said. “He needs someone to love him. He’s so fucked up, but — I don’t think he knows how to be anything else.”
I blinked hard, then laughed. It hurt, but I didn’t care. “You’re a real therapist now,” I told her.
She snorted, which made her split lip ooze again. “If I was, I’d be charging you for this.”
We sat like that until the air shifted and the next round of boots stopped in front of our door. A key rattled in the lock, and for a second, I braced for the worst. But the handle didn’t turn. They were just making sure we were still here.
“Julie?” Emma whispered, softer now.
I looked down at her. Her eye was open and alert, even swollen shut.
“I have to tell you something. And I don’t want you to freak out.” She looked away. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long and just never found the right opportunity.”
I braced myself, muscles tightening. I needed one more thing to worry about.
“Mom.” Emma inhaled, shallowly. “She’s been with Rusty. For, like, years. He’d come around, and Mom would say it was club business, but they’d talk for hours. Sometimes at the house, sometimes in that car outside the grocery store. I don’t know if Bram knows.”
“Rusty. Bram’s VP?”
Emma nodded.
I felt my world tilt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Emma looked guilty. “I wasn’t supposed to. She made me promise. Said it would get us killed if The Colonel found out.” Her hand trembled in mine, but she didn’t let go. “Gerald’s not my real dad. Rusty is. I figured you should know. In case it matters.”
“I thought…”
Emma shook her head. “The prison never allowed them to be together, alone. She thought you would love me more if you thought we were full sisters.”
“Fuck.”
“I know what your father did to you, Julie. Mom says he would have killed you both if she told anyone.”
I scoffed at that. “Sometimes I wish that he had killed me.” It was my turn to look away. “Dead people don’t wear scars.”
“I’m sorry. I really am.”
“When Rusty finds out what’s happened to you,” I say, “he’ll fuck this whole place up. Bram won’t be able to stop him.” Everyone wanted to kill my father, including me.
“I heard two of the Desert Scorpions talking while you were sleeping,” she said. “They’re supposed to take me to your father when he gets here.”
“What?”
She nodded. “That’s what they said.”
I stared at her, at the shape of her face, searching for something I should have seen. She looked like Mom, but the set of her jaw was pure Rusty — the same stubborn line, the same refusal to yield.
“I won’t let him hurt you, Emma.” I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in tight. “Almost safe,” I whispered, the words coming out in a hiss through my busted nose. “We just have to hold on a little longer.”
She nodded against my chest. “I can do that.”
We let the room get quiet again. We listened to the guards, to the echo of the world outside. It didn’t matter if rescue came now or in a week. I’d already started the clock.