I used to think of myself as one of the good guys. Sure, I slept around, but every woman I was with wanted to be there, too. They wanted it as much as I did, and when it was over, we usually parted as friends. I try to stay away from anyone who might want something else.
See? One of the good guys.
But for almost a year, I knew what happened to Missy King and I pretended I didn’t. I let fate stay its hand while I sat on her secret. While I protected my father. I let him get away with something abhorrent, and then, that night outside Hunter West's house, I paid for it. Jim Gunn, evil fucker that he is, was doling out justice in my case. I still want to kill him—preferably after feeding him his balls—but I know by the time this is over, I'll see just how much I deserve what I got.
I take a sharp curve around a clump of cacti and my body tenses at the off-balance sensation I get from steering. I’ve got a fucked up left hand, and I can't even ride a bike without losing my damn nerve. No way I'll be saving anybody.
And for the first time yet, I wonder if I'm really going to Mexico to die.
ALMOST SIX HOURS later, I cross the border at Mexicali, the capital of the state of Baja California, Mexico, with my passport and a story about riding through the country. In the bottom of my bag is a second passport—one for Meredith Carlson.
It's my hand, I tell myself. Because I'm disabled now, I need to feel like I can actually do something; that’s why I took off on this rescue mission. But doing something is telling the cops. Not riding into a drug cartel’s turf.
As I get into the bustle of Lazaro Cardenas Boulevard, with its half-dozen lanes of thick traffic baking under the hot sun, I take a very stupid risk, balancing with my left shoulder and hand and sticking my right into my pocket, where I grasp Meredith's picture and throw it out into the wind.
The second after, I’m wrenched with regret. Just another sign that I'm losing my shit here. A lump of emotion rises in my throat, but I swallow hard and navigate the traffic. I focus on finding my way to Islas Agrarias Boulevard, which will take me to a little side street—Av de Los Serdan—where I should find La Casa del Amor.
I'm in shoulder-knotting traffic for almost an hour, feeling the sweat drip through my hair and down my neck, wondering what will happen when I get to the strip club, when I finally spot the turnoff onto Islas Agrarias. I’m relying on visual memory of the map as I look for Calz Tierra something, the smaller street that will take me to the even smaller Av de Los Serdan.
The roads here are paved, but it’s been a while. Small, square business signs—nothing but colorful paper plastered over plywood squares—line Islas Agrarias, advertising party spots, a lawyer’s office, free colas. There’s no grass anywhere—just piles of sand that sprinkles across the road as a dry wind slaps me in the face.
I squint through the sweat in my eyes, pass an old brown Jeep, and get into the right lane, where I think I see Calz Tierra. Yeah, that’s my road. Calz Tierra…something. I can’t read the words. My eyes are too dry. I make a slow turn onto the street with my heart hammering in my chest, taking in the few food shops and businesses that look like little more than roadside stands. I pass a fruit vendor and someone selling something that looks like lottery tickets, and then I’m here.
Merri
IF THERE'S ONE thing I've learned from spending time at St. Catherine's Clinic, it's that I lived a mostly selfish life before. It didn’t start off easy, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t a selfish girl with dreams and desires all centered around myself.
My mother died in childbirth—her labor came on too fast, and I was born in the car—and after a month suckling bottles fed to me by my father, I wasn't gaining weight, so he passed me off to my Aunt Britta and Uncle Walter. They already had a one-year-old, my cousin Landon, but still, they made time and space for me. I saw my father on the weekends until I was four, when he was involved in a one-motorcycle wreck on a lonely Georgia highway. Just before I started kindergarten, my aunt and uncle adopted me and made me Meredith Kinsey.
Aunt Britta always made sure I looked nice and knew the things a girl should know. Cross your legs when you're wearing a skirt and don't talk to strange men. Don't go close to big vans with dark windows. That kind of thing. I did okay, I guess, until I hit puberty, and by then I'd started feeling...left out. Maybe it's because Aunt Britta was dark-haired, with brown eyes, and I'm so fair, or maybe it was because she used to introduce herself at teacher conferences as my aunt. I wanted be a normal kid with a mom and a dad. Not an orphan.