in her eyes that was like a bucket of ice water in his face. The girl wasn’t kidding around.
“You think my sister’s a piece of work?” she asked, again with a simmering rage behind each word.
“Don’t even think about trying to mess with me, Mikey.”
“Look,” he said, “I have no intention of saying anything. Who would believe an addict like me, anyway?”
“That’s what I was thinking, too,” she said.
“Don’t blow it, Mikey. Don’t ever blow it or I’ll hunt you down and slit your scrawny neck ear to ear.” Mikey slumped back onto the couch. Besides the rage behind the threat, something didn’t seem right.
“You’re not the nice twin, are you?” he asked.
“No one’s nice, Mikey,” she said as she turned to leave.
“As much as I love a challenge, don’t make me come back and prove it to you.”
Switching the part in her hair was easy, though such a small change hurt like hell as follicles were shifted in a new direction. As mirror twins, it had to be done. Tori never thought her father paid that much attention to the girls, not enough anyway. She bought a latte at an espresso stand in downtown Port Orchard and walked along the waterfront. It was late afternoon by the time she pulled in front of the house behind her dad’s car. The old pear tree was in full bloom, a cascade of blossoms stuck to the pavement.
“Dad?” she called out. No reply. Typical. No one is ever here for me, she thought. The house was the same. Smelled the same. The furniture in the living room was placed as it had been before Tori went to serve her sentence. Tori was unsure what she’d expected. She had that strange feeling as if she had been away on vacation and expected the world to be turned upside down in her absence. But there wasn’t anything different about the O’Neal home. Dex was washing his hands in the kitchen. With the tap gushing into the sink, he hadn’t heard her come in. He turned and smiled at the sight of her.
“How was your run this A.M.? You got out of here like a bat out of hell.”
“Fine.” She slid in to a seat at the kitchen table.
“Tired. Long day. Ran a few errands.”
“Good. Sit down and I’ll make dinner.” He swung open the refrigerator door and brought out two cans of iced tea. Tori hated that canned tea, but she was Lainie just then.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said, pulling open the top. The relationship between her father and sister was closer than her own with either. Tori wondered about that. Was it because she’d hated or resented him and he was merely reflecting her emotions in their relationship? He wasn’t unkind. He was cool. But not now, not to Lainie. She decided to bring it up.
“Tomorrow will be a long day,” she said.
“Not looking forward to it.”
“Your sister? That place?”
“Probably both.” She decided to gamble with her next statement.
“We’ve talked about it before,” she said.
“I don’t like seeing her.”
“We’re obligated. We’re a family.” Obligated.
“She doesn’t even appreciate us.”
“Don’t get me started. You know where I fall in that argument.” Tori felt a surge of hope.
“Yeah, she’s not so bad.” Dex O’Neal let out a laugh. It was the kind of chortle that cuts to the bone if one is the target of the rub.
“Honestly, Lainie, your sister scares me sometimes.” Tori could have probed a little. She could have pushed her father’s buttons, but she chose to keep her mouth shut. She’d sit there, play nice, and seethe quietly. She always knew where she stood in that family.
It had rained all night. Tiny bullets of water glanced off the window of 7-Pod. Lainie O’Neal curled as tight as a hermit crab in the scratchy military-issue blankets that outfitted her sister’s bottom bunk. There were only three girls in the pod. None of them seemed to care one whit about anything but themselves and their own misery. Lainie put the girl named Tara at about sixteen. She was a sullen-faced biracial girl who had almond eyes that illuminated nothing of her soul. She was on the bunk above Tori’s. The other girl was named something like Gigi or maybe G.G. It was hard for Lainie to determine her story at all. She barely said two words. Officer Hector told her where she was sleeping and that the girls wouldn’t engage with her if she ignored them.
“The less you say, the better,” he said.
“I want to go home.”
“Like I haven’t heard that before,” he said. Lainie spent the day and the early evening on a filthy red beanbag chair in the juvenile correction center’s lounge watching MTV and wishing she could be home with her father. For dinner, she ate a rubbery chicken wing and some mashed potatoes. She pretended to be angry about something.
“Act mad. People will leave you alone,” Tori had advised. That her sister had been living like this for months crushed Lainie.
“It was a damn accident,” she said.
“Nothing more, just a sad, stupid accident.” The rain continued to streak the window above her bunk bed. It was dark, desolate. The door to the pod was locked. A toilet and washbasin in the corner was there in case any of the girls needed to use a bathroom during the lockdown hours. The idea was disgusting to Lainie. She’d rather hold it for eight hours and writhe in pain than suffer the indignity of using a communal privy. Tara didn’t seem to mind at all. A half hour into the darkness of the pod, Lainie heard footsteps, the sound of a key inserted into the lock. She turned in her bed as a hand went over her face. She couldn’t breathe. What is happening to me? The smell of chewing tobacco came at her.
“Shut up. You’re mine.” Lainie rolled onto her back, twisted her frame to try to get some leverage. She wanted out of there. She clawed into the darkness. The sticky hand over her mouth pushed harder. She couldn’t breathe. She was a virgin, but she knew what was happening. She knew what that man was trying to do to her. Please, God, don’t let him rape me! “Stop it, you little bitch. You’re ruining my game here,” Hector said.
“I like a good dust-up in the sack, but you still have to get the job done.” Why isn’t Tara or G.G. or whatever her name is doing anything? Lainie was unsure how it happened, but he was on top of her. Somehow he had slithered under the blanket. She could feel his body and she started to cough, then vomit. Vomit of chicken wings and mashed potatoes spewed over the bed, onto the officer, over the surface of the scratchy blanket.
“You fucking dirty little bitch!” She was choking on her own vomit. She couldn’t breathe. She fought, and she fought hard. There wasn’t a moment in which she wouldn’t have begged for her life, even if he’d loosened his grip enough so that she could. No one who’d been pinned down, held tight with the hot breath of an assailant all over her, would deny the feelings that spun through her terrified mind. He put his hand on her breasts and pushed before he bent down, panting, and whispered in her ear.
“I know what you did,” he said.
“Don’t piss me off. You did a real number on your sister, you little privileged bitch. You mess with me by saying anything and I’ll kill your sister and your dad. After I feed them to the sharks in Puget Sound, I’ll go out and have waffles and eggs for breakfast. And then, I’ll come looking for you.” He released her. A sliver of light fell over the room. The door shut. Lainie was crying, coughing, choking. Tara climbed down and took her over to the toilet. She handed her a towel.
“Get a grip. Pull yourself together,” she said.
“What the hell was all that drama tonight, Tori?”
