Chapter 5
Tegan
I step into the night air, but my feet become lead weights.
I want to keep walking, because fuck that guy.
Liars fucking suck. But then my thoughts go to the restaurant, where I lied about being pregnant, and the weight of my hypocrisy pushes me into the earth and stops me from disappearing into the parking lot.
A job? This is probably a sympathy gig. Or my fat ass will be brought into sexual slavery or something if I go with him. I haven’t been offered a job since I’ve started trying to find one, though, and maybe this is worth the risk.
Maybe this is my out.
“You’d offer me a job?” I say, turning on my heels to face him just as the mall doors close behind us. I heard him following me, the jerk. He couldn’t let me make my escape in peace. Now he’s reeling me in with promises I shouldn’t believe.
“Yes.” He clears his throat. “Well, I can try.”
I raise my eyebrows, encouraging him to explain.
He nibbles his bottom lip. “I’d have to ask my boss.”
“This is a waste of time, then. Bosses don’t like me. That’s why I’m still unemployed.”
“I think he’d like how you look.”
“Poor?” I snap back.
I look down his body and notice what I didn’t notice before.
The rip in his jeans was clearly done by a knife.
His shoes look older than me . . . until I study them a bit closer.
The dirt is superficial—slapped onto the top and not that deep.
And we can’t forget the attractive (to me, at least) piercings that make him look like a troubled kid.
He’s trying to look downtrodden. He’s trying to look like me.
“Were you ever even poor, dude?” I ask, tears crawling toward the crease in my lids. “Or are you just trying to look the part?”
His lips tighten, and he looks serious for the first time since I met him, which wasn’t very long ago.
He fingers the intentional tear in his jeans and shakes his head.
“I’m playing off my old life. What I am now doesn’t mean I wasn’t poor then.
It doesn’t negate what I’ve been through.
The money in my pocket doesn’t suddenly give me privileges I’ve never had. ”
“That’s what your boss does, though? Scoops up the hungry and needy like some kind of savior?”
Ace laughs. “Stacks didn’t save us. We saved ourselves.”
The thought of saving myself piques my interest and starts to soothe the burning anger inside me. Isn’t that what this is? What all of this is. The overeating, the stealing, the avoidance. Isn’t it all an attempt to save myself?
Doors begin to open and close, and the clowns begin filling the van again. Ace stares at an older guy, who I assume is their boss.
“Stacks!” Ace yells toward him.
The man pivots and changes course, heading right for us instead of the van. His dark eyes are already on me before any more words are spoken.
Ace motions to me when he draws closer. “I have someone here who’d like to join the crew.”
The man—Stacks—looks me up and down with a curl of his lip. “She’s a little young, eh?”
“She’s sevent—”
“I’m eighteen,” I say, though I don’t blame him for his misquote. I look younger. It’s the baby face.
“Ace, can I talk to you over here?” he asks, pulling Ace toward the building again.
I can’t hear most of what they say, but I hear “fat” brought up at least twice. Maybe my weight doesn’t give the illusion of peasantry like he wants it to. I hate to tell him, but I am very fucking poor.
I’m not staying around to hear I’m too fat to be marketable in their big scam, so I turn around and start heading home.
“Tegan, hey!” Ace yells, and his jogging steps come up from behind me.
“What?”
“You got the job!”
I finally turn to face him. “How?”
“He’s a little concerned that you’re too . . . uh . . .”
“Fat?”
He laughs. “No, he thinks you need to clean up a bit, that’s all.”
“So take a shower and I’m hired? It’s that easy?”
“Almost.” He scratches the back of his neck and looks back at Stacks, who’s climbing into the van. “He said you have two weeks to prove your worth before you’re officially in, but you’ll be fine.”
Nothing has ever come easy in my life, so he’ll have to excuse me for being a bit wary of this sudden opportunity. And as sketchy as it sounds, that’s exactly what it is. An opportunity. Can I really afford to pass this up?
“I don’t know,” I say as I look at the van. “I don’t really want to cram myself into a space where I’m not wanted.”
“Don’t be silly.” Ace shrugs his shoulders and blasts me with that smile again. “I’m Stacks’ best seller, and I told him that I want you.”
Maybe it’s my crazy hormones, but when he says, “I want you,” my mind goes to the ways a man can want a woman.
My cheeks flush with a warm heat, and I try to push the feeling away before he notices.
Someone like him wouldn’t want someone like me.
Especially when the women inside that van look much better than I do.
They aren’t fat. They aren’t dirty.
“You coming?” he asks.
“Now?”
“Yes, now. We’re leaving town tonight.”
The thought of cramming myself into a small space with strangers when I haven’t showered in who even remembers how long makes my stomach tighten. I’ll vomit my dinner onto the asphalt if I keep thinking about it. Everyone would hate me from the start. The stinky girl. The smelly fat girl.
And what about my things? My fuzzy blue blanket I’ve had since my sixth birthday. The toothbrush I stole last year because I don’t want my teeth to fall out. And my clothes. What the hell would I wear? I can’t squeeze my left thigh into the waistband of those girls’ pants, let alone the legs.
Panic chokes me until I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating on my own spit.
Ace steps closer and wraps an arm around me in a comforting gesture. Apparently, I looked like I needed to be comforted.
“What’s all this about?” he asks. “Do you have a reason to want to stay here in this shithole town?”
No, not really, but the thought of change—a really drastic change—weighs down on me until I can’t move. I can’t even speak.
“Look, I know it’s sudden and you don’t really know us, but you’ll fit right in. I’m never wrong about these things.”
Stacks honks the horn, and Ace raises a finger, though I can’t see if it’s the pointer or the bird. My brain shuffles through pros and cons as time slips through my fingers.
“What about my stuff?” I finally ask.
Ace flashes me a smile that raises those piercings. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
He’s very convincing. I need to remember that he lies for a living.
I look at the van, then back at Ace. His eyebrows rise in question, and I have my answer.
With a nod, I start toward the van and fight back the urge to puke on my shoes.
I’ve started something in motion that I won’t be able to stop.
Now I just have to hope this van takes me to a better life and not a worse one.