“What?” She scowls. “No fair.”
“Boohoo, life isn’t fair.”
She snarls at me, and as I put a spoon of cereal in my mouth, she throws some cereal at my face. I narrow my eyes at her. “You didn’t …”
“Oh, yeah, I just did.”
So I pick up a spoon full of milk and cereal, lifting it up like a catapult. Her eyes widen, but it’s too late. The shot’s already fired.
She shrieks and then growls. “Lex!”
I laugh. “That’s what you get for taking the piss.”
We keep throwing shit back and forth until half our food is gone, but I don’t care. We had fun, and that’s worth much more to me than breakfast could ever be. Although, I barely managed to save the check in time before it got wet.
When we finish cleaning up, we lie down on the bottom bunk bed together and stare at the top in silence. After a while, she breaks the ice.
“If you’re going to keep selling your body so we have food, then I’m going to keep stealing so we have a roof over our head.”
I lean up on my elbows. “No, Alisha, you can’t.”
“I can’t let you do all the work.”
“This is different.”
“How?” She frowns at me. “It’s both illegal. And dangerous.”
I take a deep breath. “Because … you could get caught.”
“Oh, and you can’t?”
“I have … protection.”
“Condoms only protect your pussy, not your fucking life.”
“I mean Deangelo,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Right, your pimp.”
“He’s a good guy, Alisha.” I sigh.
“You say that, but he still uses you for profit, Lex. You can’t just ignore that.”
“I’m not, but he’s in the same situation as we are.”
“But you’re doing all the work. It’s not fair.” She taps the wood with her fingers.
“He gets the clients, I do them. We’ve divided the work, so he does his share too.”
“You just keep making excuses.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do? I can’t just do something else. It doesn’t work that way.”
The tapping stops. “Then I’m going to continue stealing.”
“No.” I grab her chin so she’ll look at me. “Alisha. Please … don’t do it.”
Her eyes get glossy, and that’s when I notice where her eyes are looking. At my neck. “But I can’t let you go through that … not again.”
Immediately, I grab my neck, realizing there’s probably a mark. His hand. Etched into my skin just like his voice when he asked for my name. The figure behind the curtain … Just the thought of him makes me shiver.
“Don’t think you can hide it from me. It’s already too late for that,” Alisha says. “The guy you were with last night … he hurt you, didn’t he?”
I slam my lips together and turn the other way.
“Tell me, Lex,” she says. “Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because I want you to be safe.”
“It wasn’t your pimp, was it?”
“No,” I say looking over my shoulder. “It wasn’t him.”
“Then it was your client … he touched you.”
I grab my vest and wrap it tighter around me. “Men touch me every day. I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Not like this.” She grabs my arm, but I get up.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?” She sits up on the bed. “I’m not afraid of your pain, Lex. You want to hide what you do, always faking your smiles and telling me everything’s okay, but I can see the cracks, Lex. You keep it all inside you, but you gotta let it out, Lex. I can take it.”
She stands behind me and wraps her arms around me, resting her head on my back. “I love my sis. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Tears well up in my eyes, but I push them away. Instead, I cover her hand with mine. “I won’t get hurt. I’m not going back to that man. Ever.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Even if he offers you twenty more checks like the one I saw?”
“Even if he offered me all the money in the world, I still wouldn’t take it.”
I can feel her smile. “Good. Because I need you, okay? And that mark looks damn fucking scary. Too scary. I don’t want to lose you. Not to anyone, you hear me?”
I nod. “You won’t lose me, I promise.”
She squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back. We stay there, standing in the middle of our shoddy apartment, not giving a damn about the world. The world is nothing, not without her. We need each other more than we need anything … and if I had to, I would even sacrifice my life if it meant saving hers. That’s how much I love her. And I bet she’d do the exact same thing for me.