In disbelief, I walk-sprint to my bedroom, tear open the bottom drawer of my dresser, and open the box stuffed in the back.
Completely empty. It’s where I’ve kept all my extra cash from the last few years I’ve won from all my bets. Over ten thousand dollars fucking gone.
Every last bill.
I don’t trust banks, so hadn’t deposited my savings, believing my apartment would be a safer place. Fucking wrong on that one. Shit.
“Fuck!” I shout, throwing the box across the room and gripping my hair. “Fuck. Fuck!”
It’s all gone. My freedom, my way out, the only opportunity I had of releasing myself from my uncle’s iron-clad shackles. The room darkens around me, and all I see is a faint space of red. This is not fucking happening. There is no way Sasha just took everything I’ve ever worked for and left. Left me with nothing but a run-down apartment decorated in nothing but fractured furniture.
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I dial her number but it goes straight to voicemail, no surprise there, so I send her a text to call me immediately, knowing deep down in my gut I will never receive that phone call from her.
She did not just wipe me clean of everything.
There is no way she just stripped me of my freedom. Of the fucking freedom I’ve been working for years to achieve.
This can’t be happening.
Please . . . don’t let this be true.
Sitting on my bed, my head in my hands, a dull pulse flickers in my throat. Utterly defeated. There is no other way to describe it.
“Fuck . . .” The word slips off my tongue, hanging in the heavy air. The urge to punch the living shit out of my brick wall is coursing through me, burning up and down my arms. The deep-rooted anger I’ve harbored for years upon years, roaring up inside me with a sullen vengeance.
No. Fucking. Way.
Why? Why the hell would she do that? I thought what we had was good. And now she’s just . . . gone?
As is my freedom—just like that—vanished within a blink of an eye.
Step One: Grieve
HOLLYN
“Three . . . two . . . one . . . HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Blue and silver confetti bursts into the sky as Nivea-sponsored hats and noisemakers bounce around on the screen. Couples kiss, people celebrate, and everyone is having a jolly freaking time as Ryan Seacrest says some emotional bullshit about starting a new year.
“Talk all you want, Ryan, you’re not going to get any taller,” I mumble, a Cheez Doodle hanging out of my mouth, permanently marking the corner of my lips in an orange hue. Sighing, I nibble on the doodle and say, “Happy New Year, Prince William.”
Glancing over, I take in Prince William, my goldfish. Or should I say, my dead goldfish. He went belly up two days ago but I’ve been too lazy to flush him.
“I would kiss you if you weren’t stinking up this entire apartment. Your smell is rather offensive so I’m passing.” Flopping over the arm of my sofa, my Cheez Doodle falling onto my chest, I reach for my can of air freshener, stick the doodle back in my mouth, point the freshener toward the ceiling, and press down on the button.
A mountainy mist sprays into the air filling my apartment with a rugged aerosol smell. Fake, yet refreshing, as if I’m snorting up an aspen tree.
This is the life. It’s now the start of a new year, and I have a coated ring of processed cheese tarnishing my lips, my hair tied into a rather unattractive knot by the chip clip that once held my doodles shut, and my rainbow-striped toe socks from middle school dangling off my feet, giving no definition to my little piggies at all. Yup, living it large.
Spraying my air freshener again, just for the hell of it, I watch the mountain-scented aerosol fill the air as it slowly falls to the floor, coating the once-new carpet with its foresty splendor.
“You know, Prince William, this year’s ball drop was slightly anti-climatic. Is it just me or do you feel the same way?” I ask the deathly floating common carp. Peering over at him, I oddly wait for a response, conjuring one up in my head.
“Blub, blub, blub, I agree, Hollyn,” I say in a creepy bubbly fish voice.
I take in my surroundings: bags of chips scattered across my coffee table, pictures of celebrities torn out of magazines on the floor, a wet spot on the carpet from my air freshener binge, and Cheez-Doodle fingerprints scattered over my couch, almost like a leopard print.
This is what rock bottom must feel like.
Shaking my air freshener, realizing it’s finished, I let it roll out of my hand and across the carpet. Tears start to fill my eyes over the depleted aerosol can. Yup, this is one-hundred-percent rock bottom.
I wipe under my eye as the front door to my apartment flies open and my best friend, Amanda, pops through the entrance, her boyfriend, Matt, tagging closely behind.
“Happy New . . .” she pauses and then starts whipping her hand feverously in front of her nose. Beside her, Matt starts to cough and quickly pulls his vest over his face as a mask. “Oh my God,” Amanda complains. “Did a forest die in here?”
With a blasé attitude, I respond, “I got carried away with the air freshener.”
Sitting up, I take in their party garb. Amanda is in a tight-fitting sparkly dress that’s peeking through her long, black pea coat, and Matt is in his classic dark-wash jeans, button-up shirt, and vest. He’s shaking and blowing into his hands trying to calm the cold that is capturing the Colorado skies outside.
“I thought you two were going to a party,” I say, lying back down and sticking my hand in a chip bag, rifling around for crumbs.
“We were but it got lame.” Amanda walks into the living area and takes in the scene, her nose cringing from the disarray of my apartment. “You’re a pig, Hollyn.”
“Gee, thanks. Care to comment on the condition of my bush as well?”
“And I will be in the kitchen.” Matt quickly disappears where I can hear him rummaging around in my fridge.
“Your goldfish is dead,” Amanda points out.
I tear open the chip bag and start to lick the cheddar and ranch seasoning off the foil. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Do you have anything other than tabasco sauce and a lonely grapefruit in here?” Matt calls from the kitchen.
“No, but bring the tabasco sauce in here, I’m thirsty.”
“Yes, bring the tabasco sauce in here,” Amanda deadpans, her eyes judging me. “You can join Hollyn in licking her trash.”
Never wanting to be a terrible hostess, I hold out the pretzel bag to her and ask, “Want to down the salt at the bottom?”
“Do you really want tabasco sauce?” Matt asks, holding it out to me. I reach for it but Amanda quickly swats it away, the bottle rolling across the ground, joining the air freshener.
“She is not drinking tabasco sauce. For God’s sake. Hollyn, look at you.”
No need for a cursory glance, I know the appalling reflection I will see in the mirror. I’ve already established rock bottom once I started speaking for my fish. To take in my appearance all over again will be detrimental to my already shattered and bruised self-esteem.