3. Maddison

Maddison

M y mom screwed me over.

It took about two hours of me sitting in the cell to realize this, but I tried to deny it for another hour. At the stroke of midnight, however, my carriage of denial melted into infuriating reality.

This is only confirmed when Officer James walks by my cell, and I ask him if my mother has shown up at all. He tells me he’ll check, and when he returns, the look on his face says it all.

“She hasn’t yet.” He stands in front of the cell with pity in his eyes, which is the second time I’ve seen that look tonight. “Maybe she went to the wrong station. It happens sometimes.”

“She knows where to go. She’s more familiar with this building than the bar.” Shaking my head, I return to the bench. “She screwed me over. Again.” I let my head fall back against the wall hard enough that it hurts.

“Do you need to call someone else?” Officer James wonders. “You can get another phone call if you request it.”

I shake my head from side to side. “There’s no one else to call.”

“I …” He trails off as another officer approaches him.

They talk for a second, and then the officer hurries off.

Officer James gives me a remorseful look. “I have to take care of some stuff, but I’ll swing by in a bit and check on you.” He pats the bars. “Try to think of someone else to call, okay? You don’t want to be in here for days.”

I give him a thumbs-up, and he jogs off, keys jingling on his belt.

“You could always suck his dick,” the woman with bleached hair says. “He might let you out if you did.”

We’re the only two people left in the cell, and it’s been quiet, for the most part. I’ve been grateful for that.

“Leave me alone, Nadine,” I mutter with my eyes shut. “I’m not going to suck anyone’s dick. And besides, he seems like a nice guy.”

She snorts a laugh. “Yeah, because you’re at the ripe young age of just legal. If you were ten years older, he wouldn’t even acknowledge your existence.”

Sighing, I crack an eye open and look at her. “I get that a lot of guys are assholes, but I don’t think he is.”

She releases a condescending laugh. “You na?ve little girl. All men are assholes. And the sooner you realize that, the better your life will be, because you can use it to your benefit.” With that, she stands up, and her heels click against the floor as she wanders to the bars. “Hey, Officer Tony, come get me out of here, and I’ll suck your dick for free,” she calls out.

An instant later, a fifty-year-old man with gray hair and a beard approaches the cell. “What was that, Nadine?” he questions with a firm tone, but the corners of his lips threaten to turn upward.

She reaches through the bars and rubs him. “You heard what I said.”

I expect him to push her away, but he reaches for his keys instead. “I was waiting for you to get tired of being in here.” He unlocks the door and opens it.

Nadine winks at me before sauntering out.

As I sit there with my jaw hanging to my knees, Officer Tony fixes his gaze on me as he’s locking the cell back up. “You new here?” He twists the key in the lock.

“Nope,” is all I say.

I can tell what he wants, and I’m so not going there.

He narrows his eyes. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut about this.”

My lips remain fused, and he blasts me with a nasty look before hurrying off with his hand on the small of Nadine’s back.

“Yuck,” I mutter with an exaggerated shudder. Then I slump back against the wall and start waiting out my time.

For the next ten minutes or so, I sit in peaceful silence, lamely attempting to convince myself that maybe my mom just forgot to bail out. Or perhaps something happened to her. Deep down, the truth brutally sits in my stomach like a bad case of diarrhea.

I’m tired, hungry, and one step away from lying down on the dirty bench so I can attempt to sleep off this shitty night when footsteps approach my cell again. I expect it to be Nadine and Officer Tony, but it’s Officer James again, and he’s wearing a bright smile. It makes me a bit uneasy as I recall what Nadine said right before she left.

“I have good news, kid,” he informs me, and it’s kind of funny he calls me “kid” when he’s not that much older than me. “You made bail.”

So much relief washes over me as I stand up and hurry over to the door. “My mom showed up?” My shock is evident in my tone.

He sticks the key into the lock. “No, an anonymous person paid for it.” He pulls open the door.

Confusion webs through me. “What? What does that even mean?”

He clasps the keys back to his belt. “It means the person who paid your bail doesn’t want you to know who it is.”

Seriously, what the heck is going on here?

“But you know who it is?”

He hesitantly nods. “I do. But legally, I can’t tell you.”

I stand in the doorway, stunned, with my jaw basically bitch-smacking the concrete. Who the hell would pay for my bail? I don’t even know anyone who could afford to.

“Don’t overthink it,” he tells me with a smile. “Just make the most of it, okay?”

I assess him. “Did you pay my bail?”

He chuckles, his eyes crinkling around the corners. “Nah, I don’t have that kind of money. But I do know that when life hands you a good thing, you should be thankful and pay it forward, even if it is by doing something good with your own life.”

I assess him again then grin. “You really are a regular afterschool special, aren’t you, Officer James?”

He laughs as we make our way toward the exit.

As we pass by the men’s holding cell, I note the royals are gone. I’m not surprised. They were probably bailed out hours ago because they can afford it.

“Nah, I just like to try to remain positive. Life’s too short to let the dark shit eat you up, you know?” Officer James types in a passcode on the security box beside the thick exit door that leads to my sweet, blissful freedom. “I do hope I don’t see you again. No offense intended.”

“None taken,” I reply as the door beeps open. The chatter from the other side is like sweet music to my ears. “Because I feel the same way.” Then I step through the door, feeling lighter, which is weird considering I’m walking out of jail. But I’ve never had something like this happen to me, where I’m handed a freebie with no strings attached. And, while most of me is dubious that a catch is hidden in this gift, a tiny part of me wonders if I’m finally getting a break.

That positive outlook on life goes straight into the canal when I return home. My mom is MIA, and the house is quiet and a mess, like someone ransacked through everything. What they were looking for is beyond me since we own nothing but a holey sofa, a cracked kitchen table, and a few lamps. The only valuable item is my money, and it’s gone—all of it. My mom cleaned me out. She even stole all my change.

“Dammit.” I kick my wood-panel bedroom wall then slump to the floor. Between work and getting ready for school, cleaning up hasn’t been a priority, so clothes, makeup, shoes, and some food wrappers are scattered across the carpet.

I need to shower and clean the place up, but my mood and energy level are at zero. And not only over the money. I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours, so sleep deprivation is kicking in. I need to get some rest, but it’s not an option. Neither is cleaning. What I need is take a quick shower and come up with a starting point to begin my search for my mother dearest. Because, while there is a chance she may have spent all of my cash by now, if she hasn’t, I need to get it back. If I don’t, I can kiss going to college goodbye.

I grab a pair of clean, cut-off shorts, a tank top, a pair of underwear, and a bra before hurrying into the bathroom and turning on the shower.

The small space is also a mess, with toiletries and towels thrown everywhere, and a handful of pills have been dumped across the yellow-stained linoleum floor. The place looks like when my father would run out of drugs and desperately begin to rip the house apart in his strung-out state, convinced that he somehow accidentally forgot where he hid his stash. While I was the one who had to clean up afterward, I’d let him go on for as long as he wanted to since, once he gave up, he’d invest all of that restless energy into screaming and hitting me.

“Where’d you hide them?” he once screamed in my face. “I know you took them, Maddison! They don’t just disappear.”

I was eight years old and cowering in the corner of the living room by the floor lamp that he had just broken, hugging my knees to my chest, as if balling myself up would protect me. It didn’t. Nothing ever did. And a moment later, he smacked me across the face so hard my ears rang.

My chest ached, and my eyes burned, but I didn’t cry. In fact, I didn’t make a sound, not wanting to escalate the situation further.

He let out a scream with his hands balled to the side. “I hate this place, and I hate this family so much!” Then he reeled around and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him with so much force a glass on the table fell onto the floor and shattered into pieces.

“What the hell did you do?” my mother asked, rushing into the living room. Her eyes were swollen, she had a welt on her cheek, and she curled her hands into fists as she assessed me and the broken glass. “Why do you have to bother him when he’s upset?” she shrieked, her face bright red, her eyes bloodshot. “Goddammit, Maddison, I told you to stay away from him.”

“He found me,” I pointed out, my tone hollow and familiar.

“Well, you should’ve hidden better.” She shook her head then looked at me with disgust. “Clean up the glass.” With that, she spun around and stormed into her room, slamming the door behind her.

Then I was alone. And while it was lonely, peace wrapped around me, like my lungs could thrive again.

Tearing myself from the memory, I climb into the shower and scrub my body down then wash my face and hair. I break record time and am hopping out less than five minutes later.

I hurriedly get dressed, not bothering to dry my hair or put makeup on. Then I collect my house keys and wallet with the plan to go to the bar that I believe my mother was at when I called her. If she’s not there, I’ll ask around and see if anyone saw her or heard her say anything that would offer me a clue as to where she went. As I slip my shoes on, though, someone knocks on the door.

Strange. People rarely stop by since my dad has been in jail.

I slowly get up from the sofa and go to the living room window, where the dusty curtain is drawn shut. Carefully, I pull it back and peek outside.

Standing near the front door of my apartment is a taller guy wearing a hoodie with the hood drawn over his head. While shadows mostly conceal his face, it’s clear the monstrosity of a figure has to be Drew.

I curse under my breath as my gaze sweeps the front area of the apartment complex. As I suspected, more people are hanging around in the parking lot beside an old, beat-up red car—two more guys and a girl to be exact. All of them are wearing hoodies, and they’re causally glancing in this direction.

They have to be the same people who tried to jump me earlier.

This is so bad.

I move away from the window and duck down, even though there’s no way they can see me with the curtain closed. But the anxiety of them being just outside has me wanting to hide.

I crawl back to my room and quietly shut the door as Drew knocks again, this time with more force.

“Mads!” he calls out. “Just come out, and let’s get this over with, okay?”

“Yeah, Scar Man, I’ll get right on that,” I mumble under my breath as I sink onto my bed.

Another loud knock.

And another.

And my hope that I’ll be able to stop my mother from spending all of my money dwindles with each one.

Eventually, my eyelids grow too heavy to stay awake anymore, and I surrender into the darkness of sleep, a tiny part of me wishing I never had to wake up again, because I’d take the hellish nightmares over the hell of the reality that is my life.