Three, Two, One (321)
Page 17

Janine and I stopped being friends in tenth grade because she said I was holding her back. You see, Janine found drugs. Drugs turned her into someone else. Into someone with no inhibitions. Into a slut¸ if I’m being honest.
Janine went from scared fifteen-year-old, to sexually active sixteen-year-old, to knocked-up seventeen-year-old.
She had an abortion. I can’t judge her, but her parents did. They sent her away after that and she spent the last half of junior year and all of senior year locked up in some boarding school for bad kids.
This is where things really went wrong.
My parents got divorced and my dad got a new job. It was a government job, a very high-profile government job, and one of the perks was that I got to attend a very exclusive boarding school in the DC area. So my dad and I moved to the States.
But Janine and I kept in touch and wrote letters. She was not allowed to have a phone, so no texting or anything so this century. Occasionally she came home to see her parents and I’d be home visiting my mother over holidays, and then we were allowed to hang out on the front porch of her house and chat. Which sucked because all the holidays she came home for were in the winter, so it was too cold to be chatting on her porch. And she never came home in the summer at all. She was sent to church camp. Some Bible-thumping megachurch camp where the kids sing songs of praise and redemption.
I’m OK with that. I was raised in a moderately religious family. But Janine… I don’t know. She was just never the same. She said she was doing well. And she was off the drugs, so that was a good thing. But she never convinced me.
After graduation I went to New York and attended Columbia, and she went… I have no idea. I lost her. She disappeared. Her parents were frantic for months—posting pictures of her on telephone poles, talking to people around the neighborhood in case they heard something. Normal stuff that parents would do if their eighteen-year-old daughter went missing. And then there was a rumor that Janine was spotted working as a waitress at a topless bar in Denver, Colorado.
Her parents never mentioned her again after that.
But she was my friend and I never forgot her. So when I came home after graduating from Columbia and she called my mom’s house while I was staying there, I was thrilled.
I was thrilled she was alive. I was thrilled she wanted me to meet her. I was thrilled she remembered how close we were all growing up.
So yeah. I went. I flew to Denver.
And that’s why all this shit is Janine fucking Delgado’s fault. Because I had lunch with her.
She filled in the missing years with information I wish I could forget. She told me things that made me swallow down the vomit. She pointed to her swollen belly and begged me for help.
And I said yes. Because after graduating the top of my class from an Ivy League school, filling out one hundred and fifty applications, going on twenty-seven interviews, and even doing a two-month summer internship with a very prominent company—I had even fewer prospects than her. No one even looked at me twice.
I said yes. I’d help.
So even though I’m playing the victim card, all of this is Janine Delgado’s fault.
Because she pulled the best-friends-for-life card and said I was gonna be an aunt. And I said yes.
I’d save her.
But I didn’t save her, I only succeeded in losing myself. Because seven months later Janine was dead, the baby was missing, and I was being held prisoner in a locked room down in a basement.
“I know you’re awake.”
I’m not afraid of JD, even though I should be. He and his friend filmed me giving them sexual favors. But I said yes, even though I was still fucked up when I met them. I said yes.
And now, seven hours later, in bed, refusing to come to terms with my life… I still trust him more than the people who were holding me prisoner in a basement.
“You hungry?”
He’s got his arms wrapped around me with my ass pulled up close to his hard-on. One arm fits perfectly under my neck like a pillow, and the other hand is lightly dragging up and down the center of my belly.
I imagine what it would feel like if his fingers slipped a little lower and then I feel disgusted with myself for thinking perverted thoughts. If I was back in the basement I’d be punished for that. Because no matter what they did to me there, they changed me. They made me enjoy it. And once they discovered I enjoyed it, they took that enjoyment away. I was forbidden to touch myself, but my appetite for pleasure was insatiable and my fingers always wandered, just like they are doing now.
I pull back, expecting the slap, but it never comes.
Just his soft, rumbling voice. “Hey.” He whispers it this time. Like he can feel the internal struggle going on inside me. “I know you’re hungry. Want me to make you dinner?”
“Dinner?” I ask. Holy fuck, yes. I contain my excitement as I nod, and then turn my whole body to face him. “Yes, please,” I whisper back. His hand drapes across my ass with the move and then he squeezes one cheek.
His fingers are almost between my legs and I let out a little gasp from the touch.
His eyes search mine. They dart back and forth between them as they try to figure me out. “Tell me your name.” It’s not a request, but it comes out soft. Like all his other words today.
“I can’t,” I say back, matching his somber tone. “I really, really can’t.”
“Do you want to call someone?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No, I can’t do that either.”