I chucked what was left of my cupcake in a nearby trashcan, appetite lost. “What kind of asshole turns his daughter out on the street? And what about your mom? She didn’t help you?”
Kacey’s shoulders jerked up in a shrug as she picked at her cake. “She didn’t say a word. She never has. She’s quiet and meek. My dad isn’t abusive to her, not physically. But he can turn off like a faucet. Cold, bone-dry silence for days if he’s really pissed, and my mom can’t handle that.”
“So she let you go?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t understand how people could turn on their own children. That kind of parental failure—no, violation—was completely alien to me. My childhood had been ridiculously free of troubles. Sure, Dad was hard on Theo, and Mom was a compulsive worrier, but that was the extent of my complaints. My parents were good people.
They should’ve been your people, I thought, looking at Kacey. In a weird twist of fate, we each ended up with the wrong set of parents. Mine would’ve loved her and doted on her. They would’ve nurtured her music and been proud of her accomplishments. They’d give firm, appropriate discipline instead of throwing her out of the house.
A terminally ill child was something her parents deserved. My plight, given to that cruel father and spineless mother, would make more sense. If Kacey and I switched families, I’d no longer be afraid of the emotional burden I was leaving behind, and she’d be cherished forever.
“My mom didn’t fight for me,” Kacey was saying. She chucked her cupcake away too. “She lost her voice when she married my dad. I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for that. But even so, I still call her sometimes. She doesn’t say much, but I think she likes when I call. To know I’m still alive anyway.”
“How did you survive on the streets?”
“I wasn’t on the streets. I followed Chett, the boyfriend my parents caught me with. He told me he wanted to marry me, so I tagged along as he followed one get-rich-quick scheme after another. I followed him here. He was running out of money, so he had this great idea I could be a model.” She made air quotes around the word. “I shut that shit down immediately.”
“Good.” My hands closed into fists and I jammed them into my pockets.
“But once I told Chett I wasn’t going to cooperate, it was all downhill. I was underage. I couldn’t drink, gamble, or even get into an eighteen-and-up club. He got tired of me real quick. Dropped me on my ass when he met someone else. Some showgirl.”
“What did you do?”
“I hitched back to California, thinking I’d try again with my parents. Go back to school. I did really well in school, actually.”
“I believe it,” I said.
Kacey smiled gratefully. “I made it as far as Los Angeles. I was staying at the YMCA and met Lola. She was nineteen, and in the same sinking boat as me. She’d just scraped enough money together waiting tables to get a cheap studio apartment and let me crash with her. When I turned eighteen, I got a job at the same restaurant, and we spent off days busking in parks. I sang and played my guitar while Lola played drums. A few months later, we found a want ad from a gal who wanted to put a band together, and the rest is history.” She held up her hands. “And that is why, to this day, I’ve never stepped foot in a casino.”
I nodded absently, my emotions roiled into a frothy rage at the men in Kacey’s life who had failed her so fucking badly. “What happened to Chett?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” She said it calmly enough but I’d learned by now that everything Kacey felt was revealed in her large, luminous eyes. She cared about everything, passionately.
She goes all the way up to eleven.
That thought helped to quell the anger that was chewing at my gut.
“Feel that?” Kacey asked. “That’s the night dying a slow and painful death thanks to my sob story.”
“I’m sorry I pried.”
She waved my apology away. “I don’t mind. I like talking to you. I don’t normally talk about my life. Ever. Then it gets bottled up and I do something stupid like call my parents. I get rejected, rejection makes me drink myself into a stupor, I start a riot in a green room and next thing I know, I’m waking up on my limo driver’s couch.”
“A vicious cycle.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kacey said. “The couch part wasn’t so bad.”
A short silence descended. Despite every admonishment to keep to my schedule and not get close to this girl who was leaving in two days, I felt myself leaning in, wanting to hold up the pain she’d trusted me with. Wanting to give her something in return.
“Do you want to come to the glass studio tomorrow?” I asked. “You could see how it all works, or maybe watch me make something…”
I felt the back of my neck redden. I sounded completely arrogant and totally boring at the same time. As if I’d asked her to watch me polish my coin collection.
But then Kacey clapped her hands together. “Are you kidding? I’d love to.”
“Really?”