Earning Her Keep (Price of Love)

CHAPTER 1

Primrose

I stare out into the icy drizzle through the cracked glass in the back door, a death grip on the black garbage bag in my hand, willing my feet to move.

If I stay, I’m trapped. Because today I turn eighteen. And today my foster mother plans to hand me off to Tony, who runs all the girls.

But if I go?

If I turn the doorknob and step out into the storm? Then what?

I have no idea. But It’s a risk I know I have to take.

I tug at the zipper on the closest thing I have to a winter coat, then stuff my mittens and my tattered old rainbow beanie into my equally tattered messenger bag. I take one last breath through my dry lips, slowly unfasten the two deadbolts, and step outside.

Tiny spears of icy slush prickle my cheeks. The Chicago cold is arctic, but I barely feel it. My heart is pounding, my thoughts are swirling. Everything feels dream-like, surreal. And yet my senses are heightened and crystal-clear.

The thick scent of another Virginia Slims Menthol lit from the one before drifts into the outside air as I listen for any sound of my foster mother behind me. The jingle of her rows of cheap bangles. The click-click-click of her horrible kitten heels. But I hear nothing except the yammer of reality shows coming from her brand new 60” flatscreen in the front living room.

So far, so good.

I take six steps toward the trash bins on the icy, broken concrete. It’s as far as I’ve been allowed to go by myself ever before. Even this feels impossible. Overwhelming. The sound of traffic down the alley is almost too much; the spray of tires through puddles, the sharp smell of exhaust. It is the sound of the world out there, where things are possible. Where I could be free. Where I could find a life, and myself, and maybe even love.

And if not that, then the rest of my dream. A house. A farm. Chickens. A goat. Something simple. A place where I am safe and happy. Maybe a low bar to a normal person, but to me, it would be riches beyond compare.

Stop it. I make myself focus on the here and now. This time, it’s real. This time, it isn’t just a dream.

I take three more steps and pass the trash bins, then four more toward the street.

The trash bag contains all I have in the world. There’s a Polaroid of my biological mom, as well as her copy of Sense and Sensibility. A wad of wrinkled bills I’ve saved – stolen is more accurate, because I do not get paid for the work I’ve done for almost my entire life. I counted them again this morning in the bathroom behind the locked door. Two hundred and seventeen dollars. There’s also a teddy bear that was given to me when I first entered the foster system. It was my first and only gift, courtesy not of my foster mother, but from the State of Illinois, eighteen years ago.

I take another step. One more. Each one feeling like I’ve traveled miles. I listen for the squeak of the door behind me or Judith’s raspy, scalding voice.

Get back here, you sneaky little bitch.

I know it so well that even imagined, it makes me shiver. Nails on a chalkboard times ten.

I glance back over my shoulder. The door is closed. Judith isn’t there. Just rain and distance.

This is it. The time is now.

So I take a deep breath.

And run.

* * *

When I burst through the door of the coffee shop next to the Greyhound station, my winter jacket is soaked through. But I am here. The old map I tore out of the ancient white pages that I found in the basement was accurate, thank goodness.

I see an empty booth near the back, but I don’t go sit down. Not yet. A sign on a pole just inside the door menaces me, teases me. It’s one of those black felty things, with the lines and the letters that you can stick in yourself. But they aren’t evenly spaced; they’re all bunched together in places and crooked in others. The letters swim around in front of my eyes, like lazy fish in a pond. I squint at the sign, trying to make sense of it. I focus on the first word, ignoring the rest.

P L E A S E.

No help at all. Could be Please be seated or Please wait to be seated. Everything after Please is indecipherable right now. In my confusion and embarrassment, I hear Judith’s voice in my head. God, you are stupid. You can’t even read.

Which is untrue. Deeply untrue. I can read, a bit, if the font is right and the setting is calm, and if I can use a lot of inference. “I’m dyslexic, not illiterate,” I used to say softly to Judith, only knowing the truth of that statement from a once older sister who explained my disorder because she had it as well.