ENERGY WAS SWIRLING rapidly through my body. So many thoughts fired off in my head, I had to keep myself busy. I pulled my clothes out of the laundry sack, and searched for enough hangers to hang up the couple of outfits I planned on wearing to work the next couple of nights. Black lacy top, tight shimmering black skirt and my black smooth bra, all hung to dry. I pulled on the thin strapped black see-through camisole and instantly my mind swirled to Shane’s face when he saw it. Damp to the touch, warm from being nestled between my cotton v-neck tops I wrapped it around my hands and pushed it to my nose. Inhaling, I wanted to go back and tell him I was worth anything he’d be willing to accept. The woman in me wanted to prove I was worth everything I had to offer, and yet the little girl in me was scared he’d reject me because of choices I was forced to make. Food or starve, a warm bed to sleep in or the cold dark sidewalks hugged by wrinkled asphalt. Selling my body for money wasn’t a choice, it was a result of survival.
I was pulling on my black stretch skirt when Sybil came busting into our apartment. Her face flushed crimson, matching her bristle red hair as she scurried across to the kitchen sink and thrust her hands into the stream of water. Her breathing was jagged with huffs and growls. Her clothes pulled and tattered, the neckline of her shirt stretched and ripped.
“You scared the shit out of me. Where have you been? What the fu—. Are you okay?” I asked as my problems vanished at the sight of her. Sybil looked like she had been run over by a bus. Her normally clear tawny eyes were dark and bloodshot. Vaulting her gaze between her hands and me, I could see she had dark arcs under her eyes, full moons of deep purple and black bruises circled both of her eye sockets.
“Ro, I just spent the last twenty-four hours fighting for my life. I don’t wanna get into it with you right now, okay?” she blasted as she rubbed her hands under the clear water streaming from the faucet. I watched as the water drained a light Kool-Aid red.
“Is that blood? What the fuck is going on?”
I pushed the handle on the kitchen sink and clutched her by her biceps. Sybil and I were prostitutes without a pimp, renegades. That’s what they call us. But being renegades, we had to watch our backs constantly. She whimpered and winced at my grip.
Seeing Sybil fucked up stirred within me the same fear and helplessness that pummeled me every time my mom flew off the handle and beat me. Feelings I’d buried and ran away from my whole life.
“It’s nothin’ Ro, I took care of it.” She pulled her arms out of my grip and spun to her bed, taking off her tattered shirt before she tossed it to the floor.
“Holy shit. Sybil, who the fuck did this to you?” I asked as I carefully dragged my hands down her bony spine and across her hip. Clusters of fist-sized red and purple splotched bruises coated her back. Lengthy scratches, too many to count, the shape of fingernails webbed through her ribcage on either side of her backbone draining down behind the waistband of her skirt.
Sybil flinched as I pulled down her skirt and panties, exposing just the top of her ass. The scratches continued dragged down across a handful of more bruises.
“I can’t tell you, Ro. Please don’t make me say,” she mumbled in a shaky voice. Frozen from the pain or embarrassment, Sybil pulled her skirt and panties back up over her ass before she wrapped her hands across her bruised and broken body.
I grabbed one of the damp V-neck T-shirts from my bed and gently pulled it over her. Braless when she held up her hands she had just as many bruises across her chest and stomach. I watched her face as she helped me pull the shirt down. Grimacing at the pain, her puffy eyes almost swollen shut now, filled with tears, her lips, cracked and dry, bruised and inflamed, quivered as she tried to hold back her cry.
She knew I was going to find out who did this to her. It was a matter of time before I’d be able to figure out what miserable fuck beat the shit out of her. Beyond all the bullshit, the stupid fight, the miscommunication and all the other crap, seeing Sybil like this bled deep in my heart. There was no way I was going to let any miserable fuck get away with what they had done to her.
“Carl, right? It was that cock sucker Carl. He’d been after you for months—”
“No,” she whispered.
“Was it that asshole, Trey?”
Sybil shook her head. “No, it wasn’t Trey either.” She took a shaky breath, trying to collect what little energy she had left.
“Dax, right?”
Like a tire with a hole, her breath hissed as she began to deflate.
“It was! It was that piece of shit wannabe-pimp that did this to you, wasn’t it?”
Sybil’s nostrils flared as her breathing increased and her body started to shake. “Ro, don’t do anything. It’s over,” she whispered through chattering teeth.