Allie felt relieved by that.
A few minutes later the front door opened and another girl came in. She was round and full figured, with a leather skirt and a tube top that showed off her midriff in an unflattering way. Her makeup seemed almost clownish to Allie.
This new girl moved into the kitchen without a word, her face sour. She never so much as looked at Allie. She stared into the pan of scrambled eggs. She and Desiree grunted a greeting to each other.
“Bad night?” Desiree asked.
“Aren’t they all?”
“Want food?”
“No. Hell no.” Her face twisted with revulsion. “I’m just going straight to bed.”
And she did.
Allie felt a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes sprang open.
Victor was sitting by her hip on the edge of the couch, leaning over her. Somehow Allie must have fallen asleep again, though the plan had been to avoid it.
He smiled down at her in a way that made her stomach feel as if it were rolling over in place. He still had not moved his hand off her shoulder.
“Allie, right?”
“Right.”
“Come on. We’re going for a ride. Just you and me.”
He stood. Held a hand out to her, as if to help her up. Allie lay still, staring at the hand. A cold map of fear spread through her midsection, identifying lands she had never known existed.
“Where, though?”
His smile changed. Morphed into something more like a smirk.
“Yeah. Jasmine told me you were the cautious type.”
“Jasmine.” Right. Jasmine. My lifeline. “Where is Jasmine?”
“She had some work. Come on. I won’t bite you.”
Allie sat up. “Just . . . where are we going, though?”
“I’m going to buy you a really good meal. Jasmine told me it’s hard for you to get something to eat. So we’re going to go somewhere you can get the best meal of your life. And I’m going to take you shopping. You know. For clothes.”
Allie sat blinking a moment, unsure what to think.
“That’s so nice of you,” she said.
She didn’t know how to ask if he was simply a nice guy or if there was more going on that she did not understand. She braved a look into his eyes but found no answers there. Just a good poker face.
“But . . .”
“For once in your life, kid, skip the buts.”
“I can’t. I’m just not a person who lets those things go. How will I ever pay you back?”
“When you’re working, you can pay me back. Easy.”
“Oh,” Allie said. “Right.”
It did sound easy. And it made sense. Allie had been waiting for something—anything—with those familiar qualities to come along. The strain of attempting to assess this situation had begun to wear her down, causing her to want desperately to think Victor was okay. So she jumped at a chance to believe it.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Victor had a habit—a nervous one, perhaps—of running his hand along his hair, as if to smooth it back, his palm pressing it into place. But it had never been out of place to begin with. It didn’t need smoothing.
He looked over at her several times as he drove, taking his eyes off the road for too long. He wore expensive-looking sunglasses that did not hide the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. But it did hide his eyes. So it was hard to tell in what way she was being assessed. Still, something about his attention was making her uneasy. Well, more uneasy. She’d been uneasy ever since she had walked down the stairs to witness the handcuffing of her parents. Her life seemed to get worse at every juncture. Every intersection involved sudden turns into more and more dangerous neighborhoods.
“This is none of my business,” she said, mostly out of desperation to fill the car with words, “so don’t answer if you don’t want. I just wondered. Who are those other girls?”
“Well,” he said. And paused. And smoothed his hair back. “They’re . . . girls. They’re the girls.”
“They all live with you?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re Jasmine’s boyfriend, right?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Never mind,” she said quickly. “Never mind. It’s none of my business. I don’t need to know.”
They drove in silence for a time. A mile, maybe, with traffic lights at every corner, none of which Victor managed to catch on the green.
Sitting at a red light, he turned to stare at her again for an uncomfortable length of time. Allie stared out the window, her face angled away.
“You have a nice look,” he said. He waited to see if she would reply. She didn’t. This was not a body of water into which she intended to wade. “I’m not saying you’re the most gorgeous girl who ever lived or anything like that. But you have a nice face. And you’ve got a way about you. Innocent. A lot of guys really like that innocent look. It’s kind of . . . almost a virgin thing. Are you a virgin?”
Inside a head that had begun spinning, Allie began to grasp at options. She could run away in reverse—ditch this place and run back to the group home. Oh, right. No she couldn’t. She might end up with two hundred stitches. She could run away from Victor and find a police station. Throw herself on their mercy.
Not a great set of options.
Maybe she could simply be more direct with him. Tell him what she did and did not want in the way of attention. It felt worth trying.
“Can we talk about something else?”
The light turned green, and Victor stepped on the gas, causing the car to surge forward too suddenly.
“Of course. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
Allie breathed deeply for what felt like the first time in ages. In as long as she could remember.
As they stepped out of their fifth clothing store at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, all four of their arms laden with bags of purchases, Victor stopped and regarded her again. A sea of humanity flowed around them like a river, turning them into an island of two.
It was helpful to Allie to be in this place. Upscale malls she understood. It was a relief to have part of her old world handed back.
“What else do you need to be happy?” Victor asked.
Allie’s chest filled with a warm sensation. Had she been misjudging him? Did he really want her to be happy?
“I think this is enough for clothes.”
“That wasn’t the question. I didn’t ask if you had enough clothes. I asked what more you needed to be happy.”
“Oh. Well . . .”
At first her mind only felt blank. She knew she missed money. Just the normal feeling of having money in your pocket to do what you needed to do. There was a safety about it. You could take a cab. Make a phone call.
A phone call.
It hit Allie, just that suddenly, what she missed most among her many abandoned belongings.
“It would be nice to have a phone.”
She said it hesitantly, then almost wished she could grab the words back again. A phone was expensive. Then again, so were all these clothes.
“Of course. Of course you need a phone. On to the Apple Store.”
It was just that easy. Ask, and it appears.
Almost like having parents.