“No, it’s not easy. It’s hard work. Building yourself back up from nothing is always hard work. But it’s worthwhile. And you have support.” Arlene smiles at the other people in the circle.
Amy stands up and walks over to put a hand on Chelsea’s back. Joy stands, and the other women stand, and they all put a hand on her somewhere. Chelsea wonders, for a moment, if this is what it feels like to have a big family, to be connected to other people who come from the same place, whose hearts know the same jagged landscape. It feels good—but it also feels awkward. She’s not used to everything being about her.
“Are we doing trust falls next?” Chelsea asks jokingly.
“More like trust body slams,” Arlene offers to get a laugh. “Now back to our game. Let’s try something a little less complex. If y’all will sit back down?” They all do, including Chelsea, who has a feeling she won’t be called on again today, like a kid who already turned in their big project and is now off the hook. Amy shoots her a friendly smile and a nod, but Chelsea isn’t sure if it’s just supportive or if the quiet woman has a similar history.
Next the bodybuilder, Maryellen, has to act insane. And then Leah has to act devastated. Amy has to act disgusted. Paz has to act elated. No one gets rage again. Chelsea gets skipped. Things happen, and she’s there, but she’s also inside her head. It feels like walking around a house after you’ve moved, after all your belongings are out and you’re just cleaning up the remaining mess. There’s a brightness, a cleanness, a welcome emptiness. Whatever Arlene did—therapy, whatever—it helped. It worked. She feels more relaxed, more free, less tense. It’s a miracle, it really is.
For a moment, she forgets that David is still out there.
And then she remembers.
With her phone gone, there’s no way to get in touch with anyone—not Ella, not her mom, and not David. She has no idea if he’s out of quarantine, although last night she read on her phone—well, Amy’s phone—that Florida wasn’t doing much to clear out their holding centers, probably because they’re acting as private prisons and there’s a lot of money in keeping them running. Then again, Huntley said Brian was working on it, which means David is probably out, because Brian tends to get what he wants.
It’s a comfort, at least, that her mother’s home is currently the safest place possible for her girls—even David wouldn’t be able to get into the Fort Knox of Patricia’s neighborhood. And there’s really no safer place for Chelsea herself than here. She doesn’t have her van or phone, there’s no way to track her, and she’d love to see David try to hurt her while she’s under the care of Mr. Harlan Payne. He’d split David in half like a log.
The rest of the day passes, and Sienna takes Chelsea and the other folks who came here with nothing to the nearest Target. Armed guards prowl the aisles as people shop, and Chelsea is given two hundred dollars against her first paycheck to get what she needs to function. Considering the heat and what’s expected of her, she goes for the sale racks and buys three-dollar tank tops, T-shirts with stupid sayings that no one wants, ugly leggings, shorts, cheap white socks. She finds undies and hideous bras on clearance. And she’s grateful to find sneakers in her size for seven dollars. Once she adds toiletries and moisturizer with SPF, she’s pretty much maxed out. She looks longingly at phone cards, but it would take at the very least eighty dollars to make George’s phone work. It’s kind of scary, how two hundred dollars doesn’t go particularly far when you’re starting with nothing. Considering she’s been borrowing Sienna’s old sneakers and washing her undies in the tour bus sink every night and hanging them to dry from the ceiling of her bunk, she can’t complain.
That night, it’s raining, hard, and they eat in the interview room, barbecue that’s better than it should be with big, industrial aluminum vats of green beans and mashed potatoes. As they eat, Arlene tells them that Sienna and Indigo make up the menus, Harlan okays them, and then Indigo cooks all day long or helms the grills at night, for which she’s paid like an adult. Chelsea almost wishes that were her job, but then she realizes that she’d actually rather train and get stronger than get herself locked into another kitchen, taking care of people.
It’s…God, it’s a new kind of joy, not taking care of anyone. She went straight from living with her mother to taking care of David to taking care of David and the girls, in that order. There hasn’t been a single time in her life when she wasn’t technically a child or caring for someone else. It’s nice, not having to cook or do dishes, and her old kitchen table in its sunbeam seems like something that belonged to another person in another world. To think: Just a few months ago, her biggest worry was a letter from the bank. Now she has no money whatsoever, only what Harlan chooses to pay her. The next time he does, her first purchase will be a sim card and plan for George’s phone, as she misses having control over her connection to the world—and there’s so much she needs to know.
She doesn’t miss checking the flatlined Dream Vitality sales numbers, and she doesn’t miss the beauty pageant of Facebook, but she does miss being able to look up that movie she forgot or whether the price of the Violence vaccine has gone down at all. The vaccine was created by some grad student and snapped up by a private company, and that means supply and demand are in full effect. The government is working on their own vaccines but say it will take several more months of testing. The CDC has firmly stated that the privately owned vaccine hasn’t met their requirements, but that hasn’t stopped anyone who can afford it from getting it, and data suggests those who have it are suffering no ill effects—and no cases of the Violence. It’s a therapeutic vaccine, meaning it cures those already infected and prevents further infection, and like most of America, Chelsea isn’t holding her breath on a free government shot. After the president fumbled the initial Covid response and vaccine so badly, no one trusts him this time around. If the pandemic had started before he was reelected, there’s no way he’d still be in charge.