Virgin (The Henchmen MC 16)

The woman I would become, the woman sitting across from a really attractive man, telling him about her young naivety, was immeasurably embarrassed that I had ever believed such grandiose, unrealistic promises from my first boyfriend, someone only slightly older than I was.

"He didn't even really have a career of his own," I admitted, shaking my head at myself.

"What did he do then?"

"Sold mixtapes."

"He was a rapper?" Virgin asked, eyes dancing. "Grand ideas of being the next Eminem, huh?"

I snorted at that. "Eminem," I scoffed. "Please, he made Paul Wall seem like a lyrical genius."

"Paul Wall, huh?" Virgin asked, big smile on his face. "Baby girl, we gotta update your musical references."

"If what the guy across the hall from Thad plays is what today's music has to offer, I will happily stay stuck a decade in the past."

"Fair enough," Virgin agreed. "Go on. Didn't mean to interrupt you."

I was shocked at how popular his CDs sold when I had heard his songs, had needed to hold my true opinions to myself about them. But sold them he did. Enough that I started to help him here and there, gleefully accepting the small salary he threw my way for it. With that and my babysitting money, I was sure I would be able to afford my own car in no time. Move on like Colson and Thaddeus did.

"Babe..." Virgin said, tone full of understanding, knowing where this was going.

But I had to say it, get it out, tell someone who would believe me.

One week after my high school graduation, I was standing outside Tanner's apartment building with a stack of CDs, handing them out to the people who came up to me.

It never occurred to me that it was not normal for people to know to come to me to pick up random mixtapes.

I was down to my last five when the police approached.

And I offered to sell them a CD.

"Fuck," Virgin hissed.

That about covered it.

Because they weren't just CDs.

Sure, the CDs were there. Because Tanner was a narcissist. He wanted people to listen to his Godawful raps, believed someday he would be rich and famous. But nestled behind the CDs bought at Staples and burned off his home computer, there were little baggies.

I had been selling heroin for weeks without knowing it.

And while Tanner had been all of fifteen feet away from me when the cops slammed me against the hood of their car and wrapped handcuffs around my wrists, he never tried to take the blame, never even seemed to feel regret over the fact that I took the fall for his crime.

That was what I remembered most, his face as I stared at him, silently pleading for him to save me.

There was nothing there.

He was utterly blank.

Like it was nothing.

Like I was nothing.

If I thought I had felt lonely before, it was nothing compared to how I felt when I was placed in the back of a squad car, too shocked to cry, too scared to find words to say.

The drive to the station was the longest of my life. The short interrogation showed me that no one was going to believe that I was an innocent in the situation, that I didn't know there were drugs in the CD cases. And since Tanner's face wasn't on the CDs, his prints weren't on the CDs, his real name wasn't on the CDs, there was nothing pointing to him, nothing I could use to accuse him.

They put me back in the car, drove me to county.

I got through intake, got my mug shot taken, got my phone call after they threw me into a holding cell with other women.

And with no one else to call who could help, I called my aunt.

Don't ever call me again, she'd told me after the words were out of my mouth. You brought shame on this family again. I should have known you'd turn out just like your mother.

It was painfully obvious that this was it.

I was going to go away.

You had forty-eight hours to post bond.

No one was coming for me.

I sat on the cold, hard concrete bench, staring at the wall, waiting for the inevitable.

Then it happened.

The worst day of my life.

I was led to a back room.

The 'dress in' room it said on the front of it.

I was made to strip.

And I learned there was nothing more humiliating in life than getting naked in front of a stranger who was slipping on gloves, and having to endure a search, feel the most basic right you had - the one over your own body - taken away as you felt hands on you, as you were made to bend over to be inspected for drugs or weapons or whatever else people shoved up their body cavities.

And I didn't cry.

I wanted to, but I didn't.