CHAPTER 21
It just… came out. And once it started, I couldn’t stop.
I replayed the words hitting her, every brutal syllable.
And for a moment, I thought, good. Let her feel it.
Let her carry some of the weight I’ve been dragging behind me since I was too young to understand what pain was supposed to look like.
But as soon as I turned my back on her, the crash came. That post-confession nausea hit me full force cold and swift, like falling through thin ice.
I knew that silence behind me. I knew what was probably twisting through her head, the same thing that used to flicker through mine whenever someone pulled back the curtain and saw the mess inside.
“Screech!” Her voice cracked like something torn in two. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. If I looked back, I wouldn’t know what would end up falling from my lips next. So, I walked. Head down, rain in my ears and regret on my heels. Then she touched me, her hand wrapping firmly around my wrist.
“Screech, stop.” I yanked my arm away so fast I stumbled.
“No, Misfit, just fuck off!” I kept walking, and she didn’t chase me this time.
I wanted her to leave. I wanted her to let me rot.
Her footsteps came quick behind me, planting herself right in my path like a damn brick wall, hands to my chest, stopping me with force I didn’t expect.
Her palms were small and cold. My heart jumping beneath them.
“Misfit, just stop.” My voice lowered to her with exasperation.
“No.” Her voice was calm, “No, you don’t just get to dump all that on me and walk away.
What the fuck!” I stared at her. Her dark obsidian eyes held more than just her usual annoyance.
A silence sat between us as her hand rested against my chest, my own restraint wavering as her eyes darted across the road towards a convenience store, then back to me.
I just wanted to fuck off into the night, allow myself to be swallowed by anything rather than this feeling sitting heavy in my chest.
“Just wait here, okay? Just… wait.” Turning from me, she darted across the road like a spark in the rain. Her form disappeared into the store as I just stood there.
A perfect opportunity to leave, I had more reason sitting behind me this time to vanish.
But I didn’t. I stood there, rain soaking into my clothes, trickling against my skin like a constant tease pulling me back from my thoughts.
When she came back, bottle in hand, that same old chaos in her eyes, I didn’t expect her to grab me like that, or to yell ‘run!’ like we were in some stupid movie.
But I ran—boots in puddles. Rain battering against me.
Her fingers locked tight around my wrist like she was dragging me back to life.
We ran until the shopkeeper’s shouts became echoes behind us. That fucker was fast!
Down alleys, over bins, past the stench and darkness. Misfit stopped at a set of metal steps leading up into the rain. “Up!” she yelled, pushing me toward them.
That metal stairwell was hell. My legs burned, my ribs screamed, and every breath felt like knives.
By the time we hit the rooftop, I was drenched to the bone, drunk on whiskey and pain.
We collapsed beside each other against a low concrete barrier, wind roaring in our ears, the whole city shifting below us.
She looked over to me, breathing heavy, mixed with strained coughing from the climb.
I could barely breathe, a manic grin touching my lips despite it.
The bottle dropped between us, the subtle clink of the glass against the gravel of the rooftop.
My chest still heaved, lungs fighting to recover from that hell-climb, the adrenaline crash already starting to creep in.
I glanced at the vodka where she’d nudged it toward me, an expensive bottle too.
Misfit didn’t do anything by half. I looked up at her briefly, just enough to catch the expression in her eyes.
My hand closed around the bottle neck, pulling it towards me, forcefully unscrewing the cap, and bringing it to my lips.
She lit a cigarette beside me, cupping the fragile flame in her hands.
Passing another towards me, awkward and quiet.
I took it, fingers brushing hers for a second longer than necessary.
The smoke was harsh against my throat, still raw from running, but it grounded me.
Gave me something to do with my hands while my mind spun itself in circles.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d said, what I’d confessed.
It should’ve made me feel lighter, like bleeding out a wound you’ve hidden for too long.
But it didn’t. It just made me feel exposed.
Like I’d opened myself up for dissection.
My head was still reeling from the look on her face when my pained truths were falling from my face.
She hadn’t run, hadn’t pitied me, hadn’t comforted me either. She just stayed.
She turned toward me, face unreadable in the low light, and I braced myself instinctively. She always said something when she looked at me like that, usually something sharp and unforgiving. But this time, her voice didn’t match her expression.
“Do you wanna know why I don’t like to be touched?
” I didn’t say anything. My whole body tensed.
Like if I moved too quickly, she’d snap shut again.
My eyes drifted to the dim cherry of the cigarette between my fingers as she continued, “Eight hundred and thirty-three days. Give or take. Four hundred plus times. Probably more, I lost count. Or chose to stop counting. Either way…” Her voice was monotone.
Hollow. Like she was reading it off a piece of paper she’d written a long time ago and only just found again.
No inflection or bitterness. Just numbers and cold hard facts.
My voice lowered to her, “What does that mean?”
I hated that someone like her, fierce and mouthy, had numbers like that inside her. Hated that I’d thrown a grenade without knowing there was already a war going on inside. I flicked the ash from my cigarette, watched it scatter in the wind.
“That’s how many days it went on for. And how many times my body… wasn’t mine. I was almost fourteen when it started. Fourteen,” She paused with her own disbelief. Her body began curling in on itself, a clear indication that what she was about to say had sat deep beneath the surface.
“How?” I questioned, the layers were unfolding before me, and I wasn’t about to let that slip through my fingers, not after everything I had blurted out to her, tragically laying my soul bare in front of her.
“Trafficking ring.” Her tone still held flat, her eyes locked forward as if she had put herself in autopilot to tell me. I shifted on the spot at her answer; anger started to form deep within me as I clicked on to where this was potentially going.
She continued, “His name was Billy. Good looking, of course. He ran a circus. Now, looking back, it’s a fucking stroke of genius, really.
What better way to draw in young girls than to bring a free circus to desolate areas and stick that fucker out front to wave them in?
I bet he could smell the desperation radiating off me from a fucking mile away.
There was no one around who gave a fuck about me, not from that feral care home.
I was relentlessly bullied at school for things I couldn’t help, and all I wanted was to escape.
He found me at a good point, you could say.
” A humourless chuckle slipped from her as she shook her head. Her own vulnerability flooding back.
“He was around for a week, and oh, did that fucker suck me in. I went back every single day, straight from school. He promised me a new life, a chance to escape. Naturally, I bit his fucking hand off, and… I went with him. Gone were my original escape plans, my attempts at the academic route. I saw a sooner opportunity and seized it. The first seven months or so were where his real work started. Making me compliant and using ‘love’ to achieve it.”
She shook her head once more with a faint scoff as I handed her back the bottle.
Figured she needed it more than I did right now.
She took a deep drink, screwing up her face from the burn flowing down her throat, an unwelcome feeling which I guess we had both come to enjoy.
“I was thrown into learning some performance stuff. We had to pull our weight, of course. We tried various things, me and a couple of other girls, and then I found knife throwing. Billy was all impressed and encouraging, and I got good. Really fucking good, very quickly. It was like the knives were an extension of my own arm, like it was made for me. On top of that, we had to learn to be flexible. Later, I found out that wasn’t just for performance purposes.
” Her hand tightened around the neck of the bottle as she took another sip.
“The other girls didn’t seem to last long.
They just kind of vanished. I asked him, and he said they’d changed their mind, that they’d been taken home.
Liar. They’d been sold off like animals.
Billy, for some reason, kept me close. His little ‘Misfit’.
His favourite. Probably because I was so starved of affection, I was the easiest to fool.
I hung on his every word, and over time, I actually believed I loved him.
And that he loved me.” She lowered her head, sniggering to herself.
That action pained me more than I realised.
Yes, we were two very fucked up individuals, but that didn’t mean we weren’t capable of some fucking emotion.