Who are not in jail.
They sat outside, dining alfresco at a small bistro on Ventura Boulevard. The air was hot and thick. A printed red-and-white umbrella threw much-needed shade across their table.
Allie looked down at her amazing lunch. Or was it dinner? She didn’t know what time it was.
She had ordered a mushroom and quinoa veggie burger on a whole-grain bun with sliced avocado, sprouts, and aioli mayonnaise—sweet potato fries on the side. It tasted like heaven, like being saved. Victor had made good on his promise to buy Allie the best meal of her life.
Their two unused chairs sat heaped high with bags of clothing, and Allie now and then glanced down at the iPhone sitting beside her plate. Not for any special reason. It had none of her information on it yet, and no one had called or texted her. She looked at it because it was hers.
“We should have left all these clothes in the trunk,” she said.
“Nonsense. They should be piled all around you. It makes you feel . . . rich. You deserve a sense of plenty.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked suddenly.
The euphoric mood of the meal broke like a fever. Suddenly Allie’s stomach couldn’t decide if it wanted the amazing food or not. She took another bite of her mushroom burger but it seemed to have lost its flavor.
She glanced up at Victor, whose face had gone blank.
“I can be nice,” he said, sounding strangely hurt, like a child.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean you couldn’t. Of course you can be nice. I think I’m just worried because . . . you spent so much today. I guess I’m worried about how I’m going to pay you back for all this.”
“It’s not a problem. I told you. You start to work, I call it even.”
Allie felt her forehead wrinkle. Something wasn’t adding up.
“I thought . . .” But she never finished the sentence.
“You thought what?”
“I thought I would get a job and actually pay you back the money. You’re saying we’d be even just because I was working? So it’s like I’d be working for you?”
Allie dropped her burger. Literally dropped it. It hit the plate, but the top of its bun rolled off the table and landed on the concrete patio, causing a flap of wings as pigeons rushed to claim it.
“Oh crap,” she said.
She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
It all came together in her brain, just in that moment. The multiple young girls all living with the same much older man. The girls having been out working at night, in skimpy clothes, just coming back in the morning. The makeup. Jasmine getting “popped” and having to spend time in “juvie.”
Suddenly it was all so clear.
Allie felt like the perfect fool for not seeing it all along.
“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t.”
“What won’t you?” Victor asked, his voice cool.
“I won’t do anything that’s . . . you know. Illegal. And not . . . something I would do. I’m fifteen. I haven’t even gone all the way with a boyfriend yet, not even somebody I loved. I can’t be part of anything like this. I’ll just go.”
Silence. A long, dangerous one. Allie did not dare look up into Victor’s face. Instead she watched the pigeons fighting over her bun. Pecking at it. Pecking at each other. Forcing each other to drop it.
Finally she braved a glance up at his face. It seemed to be carved from cool marble.
“After I spent almost two thousand dollars on you. You’ll just go.”
“I’m sorry. We can take it all back. We have the receipts.”
“That would take all afternoon,” he said. “I was just getting ready to call it a day.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I’ll take the stuff back. And then I’ll walk to your house or take the bus and bring you back the money. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it right. Anything except . . . you know. That.”
Another long and potentially dangerous silence.
“Well,” Victor said. His voice sounded tight. “I’ll have to have a talk with Jasmine for putting me in this position. She’s supposed to be judging anybody she brings home better than that.” Then he sighed, and the tightness seemed to leave him. To drain out, audibly, with the air of his breath. “Okay. Whatever. I guess these things happen. Let’s just go home. You can stay tonight and then in the morning we’ll figure out what to do.”
They rose and left the bistro together, Allie leaving the best meal of her life abandoned on her plate. She looked back at it, regretfully. At least, in theoretical regret. She no longer had the appetite for it, but she hated to let it go. She watched the pigeons set upon it, eager to tear it apart.
Chapter Sixteen
The Question “What’s Worse than Juvie?” Answered
Allie sat in Victor’s living room in the dark, alone. On the couch, with her knees tightly drawn up to her chest. It was late, probably very late. Of course she was not sleeping. It felt like a blessing to be alone, given the company she had at her disposal. Then again, it felt like a sea of isolation. Allie had, for all practical purposes, no one. It was hard to believe she couldn’t just call her mother to come get her. All her life that comfort had been there for her. It felt beyond frightening to reach for that familiar presence and feel nothing. A void.
She thought of her few friends at her old school in Pacific Palisades. Maybe whether or not they truly liked her was not the issue at a time like this. Still, they weren’t like adult friends who had their own place and would let you crash on their couch. Allie was a runaway now, and needed to avoid parents. Anybody’s parents.
But maybe one of them could just wire some money or something . . .
Allie quietly searched the house for a phone. But as best she could tell in the dark, there was no landline. And if Victor had a phone, it was in the bedroom with Victor. And she had no money for a pay phone.
She heard a soft sound, and spun to look.
Jasmine was walking out of one of the downstairs bedrooms. Allie hadn’t known Jasmine was in the house. She’d thought only Victor was home, brooding in some distant room. Disappointed with Allie, or angry with her. Or both.
Jasmine turned on a soft light beside the couch and sat close to Allie’s hip.
“I’m not your biggest fan right now,” Allie said, avoiding Jasmine’s eyes.
“Look. Allie. We could go on all night about whatever issues you have with me. But that’s not your big problem at this point. There was a lot I wanted to tell you about Victor before you spent any time alone with him. You don’t say no to him. You just don’t.”
“I already did.”
With those words, Allie raised her eyes to Jasmine’s face. Jasmine’s right eye was swollen half shut, a jagged purple bruise forming. Allie’s shock must have registered on her face.
“It’s nothing,” Jasmine said, lowering her face and letting her hair fall over the problem. “I just ran into something.”