Chapter 5
Five
Jade
Warm sunlight streamed through the grime-covered living room window, making our crappy apartment look almost cheerful.
The wall paint had long-ago yellowed, and the ceiling in the bathroom was covered in mold, but, on the bright side, we had a view of the thin line of trees that separated our apartment block from the railroad tracks.
The leaves had turned, and if I squinted a little, I could almost imagine I was in the woods on a sunny fall day.
Alas, I was sitting on our worn couch with my foot propped on the edge of the coffee table while I did a terrible job of painting my toenails.
Still, for the first time in a long time, I felt a degree of levity.
It had been three days since I went to confront Wolf, and instead, I helped rob Rogue.
That five hundred bucks had helped me pay down some of my parents’ mortgage debt.
Just enough to stop them from repossessing the house.
For another month, at least. I also had a night off for the first time in weeks.
All I’d planned to do was sleep. Between school, work, and the money-making side hustles I did to try to keep a roof over my parents’ heads, I was permanently exhausted.
Cassie walked into the living area, dressed in an oversized Prada shirt, which I assumed was Rogue’s.
No one else around here could afford that crap.
Yeah, she was deep in the break-up ritual.
Next would come her break-up playlist. Then her nasty eight-dollar vodka.
She grabbed a box of cereal from the kitchen counter, then crossed the tiny living area and collapsed onto the couch next to me.
“Are you painting your toes…pink?” she asked around a mouthful, hand already digging into the box for another.
I put the brush back in the bottle of polish I’d stolen from the bathroom. Definitely hers. Monroe wouldn’t be seen dead wearing pink. “Ten out of ten for observation, Cassie.”
“Had to check that I wasn’t hallucinating.” She shoved more cereal in her mouth. “Are you having some kind of wannabe cheerleader crisis I should know about?”
“God no. I’m making my feet look…appealing?” That sounded weird. “Girlie.” The word had me wrinkling my nose, but I figured that was the aesthetic I needed to go for.
“Oh, are we doing a makeover?” She sounded far too excited about that prospect. Glaring at her, I took my phone, pulled up my Lonely Fans account, and handed it to her.
Three subscribers.
That was all I had.
Fifteen bucks a month.
When I’d seen a video about a girl making ten grand a month selling pictures of her feet, I hadn’t exactly expected the same success, but come on. Fifteen bucks?
“I figured since the money from Rogue’s drugs has bought me a little time, I could, you know, work on my content.”
Monroe and I had joked about foot pictures for years, but I was actually doing it. I was neck deep in desperation, dignity and all.
Cassie slowly chewed her cereal while she stared at the screen.
Her attention drifted to my poorly painted toes.
“You should have filmed yourself painting your toes. One of the girls in my sociology class is an influencer or something. Apparently, guys ask to buy her underwear. One offered her twenty bucks for a video of her getting a pedicure.” She lifted her brows. “Weird, right?”
I didn’t know if weird was the right word, but too good, or perhaps too easy, to be true. What did I have to lose, though? “I can take it off.”
“It looks like a five-year-old did it anyway.” Rude. She put her bowl on the table. “There’s remover in the bathroom. And you need a good background.”
I shoved off the couch, hobbling down the hall with my wet toes. When I came out of the bathroom, she had the white, fluffy blanket from her bed spread out across the floor. Her desk lamp beside it. “You film, I’ll paint.”
Good friends stole with you, but great friends helped you make videos of your feet for strangers to jerk off over.
I dumped the remover onto a cotton ball and returned my toes to their usual neglected state.
Cassie sat on the floor in front of me and picked up the bottle of cotton candy-pink polish. “We’re going to get you at least ten new subscribers.”
I pulled the camera up on my phone and filmed.
At five bucks a month, even ten subscribers weren’t going to solve all my problems, but I’d take it.
Besides, my moral scale had become somewhat of a sliding one since Dad had fallen ill. I used to reprimand Wolf for shoplifting. He would say that morals were a privilege. I’d argued that they were a choice, but how wrong I’d been, and, yeah, privileged.
At the thought of Wolf and his criminal wisdom, my mood soured.
You’re not my charity case anymore… Days later, it still stung.
I’d tried to convince myself that his words were no more than a whisper from a ghost. But that was the thing about lying to myself.
Deep down, I knew the truth. And it hurt. A lot.
Cassie had just finished my toes when my phone rang in my hand, pausing the video.
My stomach sank when I saw my mom’s name flash across the screen.
Partly because it felt like she somehow knew what I was doing, but mainly, it was rarely good news when she called these days.
Every time she called, she sounded upset—understandably—and I got horrible anxiety.
I felt ashamed of myself for not wanting to talk to her, for wishing she wouldn’t burden me with more bad news.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Cassie said, then took her cereal back to her room. And there it was, the break-up playlist.
Wailing lyrics hummed through the apartment as I answered the call.
“Hey, Mom. Is Dad okay?” It was always the first thing I asked. Like I wanted to get it out of the way and either justify my tightening chest or ease it.
“He’s the same, honey.” Because they couldn’t afford the tests to diagnose him properly.
“Okay. Good.” It wasn’t good, it just wasn’t bad. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. You won’t believe what happened today. An anonymous donor paid off some of our mortgage debt.” Her voice broke. “So, we won’t lose the house.”
I smiled at the relief in her voice. “That’s so great, Mom.” For one more month at least…
“I just know it was the church. You know Marleen, the lady who does the free aerobics club there? She did a fundraiser in Barrington last week.” The rich town nestled next to Dayton. “A whole five hours on a spin bike.”
“A spin bike?”
“People sponsored her. You know, for the church charity?”
“Yeah, I know, I just….” Not like a spin bike was worth giving someone money for. Although maybe five hours of it was.
“I never thought she’d raise that much, though. Isn’t that kind of her, honey?” I wanted to tell her that Marleen and her spin bike hadn’t done crap. But not like I could say, Oh, by the way, Mom, I stole and sold drugs to get it. Because God—and my mother—knew, I wasn’t getting that money legally.
“So kind.” I was even fake smiling.
“She was the one who told me about that soup diet. You know the one I told you about?”
I let out a long sigh. “Yep, I remember.” How could I possibly forget that one hundred percent serious suggestion that I consume only cabbage soup and apple cider vinegar for a week?
“Have you tried it yet? I lost five pounds.” My mom had never been bigger than a size four, but heaven forbid the woman not fit in her high school cheerleading uniform at the age of forty-five.
“Yeah because you starved yourself.”
“You’d probably get rid of those ten pounds you want to lose.” The ten pounds she wanted me to lose… That familiar feeling of shame crept over me, of not being good enough. “I keep telling you, you could be so beautiful if you just tried a little.”
I’d heard my entire life how I could have been Miss Dayton, just like her, if only I’d lose weight and have fewer “curves.” If only I’d make some effort.
I knew it didn’t come from a bad place, more like fear that I wouldn’t fit into the world without a perfect body and beauty. There went my moment of levity.
Normally, I’d be able to fight off the feeling of worthlessness with a good pep talk. I love and accept myself. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work today, either. Not when one ex had cheated on me, and the other had called me a charity case.
A knock on the door had me breathing a sigh of relief. It was the perfect excuse to end the call before I said something unkind to her. She had enough on her plate, and I knew that, in her mind, those ten pounds would bring me unparalleled joy.
“Someone’s at the door, Mom. I have to go.”
“Oh, okay. I love you, honey.”
“Love you, too.” I hung up, set my phone on the coffee table, and went to answer the door.
The bang came over the door again, harder this time.
It was probably Miss Peggy from downstairs.
She always locked herself out and asked us to pick the lock for her.
Honestly, all it took was a student ID card, which was concerning considering she didn’t have a chain on the door.
Then again, no burglar could contend with her six feral cats. They were worse than any pit bull.
Cassie’s music grew louder, “Single Ladies” blaring from her room . I guessed she wasn’t playing burglar today then. If that asshole ginger cat scratched me again…
When I glanced through the peephole, it was black. “Again?” The damn neighborhood kids kept spray painting everyone’s peepholes. I’d only cleaned ours off last week.
On a sigh, I released the deadbolt, but like any good Dayton girl, kept the chain on as I cracked the door.