asked. “Maybe I can chaperone.”
I didn’t want to be completely disgusted by the sound of her voice, but the reaction was instantaneous. “I don’t know. Some art museum.”
“Aren’t the schools supposed to pay for things like that?” Marty asked.
“It’s optional, but I’d like to go.” I hated to talk around Marty because he stared at my mouth, but I wanted to go on the field trip more than I despised him.
“Well, how much is it?” Cricket had asked. At that point, she didn’t try to hide the track marks on her arms. Her eyes were sunken in, and her clothes hung off her body like curtains.
“Forty dollars. It covers the cost of admission and lunch.”
“Is it cheaper if I make you a sack lunch?”
Reminding Cricket that she’d never made me a sack lunch in her entire motherly career would have been futile. Paired with the fact that there was never food in the house, I didn’t bother. It would have only started a fight, and I’d never had the chance to go on a real field trip before now. I was willing to say or not say anything in order to attend.
“It’s forty dollars, Mom. I need it by the end of the day on Tuesday, or I won’t be able to go.”
“I don’t have that kind of money on me, Lydia,” Mom’s voice wavered on the fine edge between composed and irrational.
As much as it pained me, I turned to Marty and asked, “Do you have it?”
He winked and asked, “What will you give me for it?”
Mom didn’t have the courtesy to look appalled, and it was all I could do not to stab him through the fucking heart with my school pencil.
“Cricket, I want to go on the school field trip,” I said with just enough false bravado. Tears brimmed on my eyelids, wetting my lashes. “I need forty dollars by the end of the school day on Tuesday. I forged your signature on the permission slip, so don’t worry about that. The only thing I need is the money. This is important.”
I’d set myself up for disappointment believing I’d wake up to the field trip money Tuesday morning. I imagined walking into the school office to hand over the permission slip and fee like the kids with responsible parents.
What happened instead was I went into the office and begged for more time.
“My mom accidentally took the money to work with her,” I lied, flattening out the crumpled permission slip on the counter. “She works at a doctor’s office downtown. I can be there and back in an hour after school.”
I ditched the last hour of school, hopped on a city bus, and arrived at the club to collect the field trip money. I planned on grabbing it from the stage, stealing it from the bar, or asking Marcel as a last resort. I was going on the damn field trip like a normal high schooler.
But nothing on field-trip-money Tuesday went as planned.
When I stepped into the strip club, it took my eyes a second to adjust from the natural sunlight outside to the artificial red light used inside. I didn’t notice right away that the music wasn’t playing or that the stage was empty. My only objective was to find Cricket and get back to school before the office employees left for the day. If I didn’t make it back in time, I was not allowed to go to the museum the next day. That was unacceptable.
Marcel grabbed me by the hood of my sweater before I made it to the dressing room.
“What the fuck?” I shrieked, reaching back to pry his fingers from me.
“You can’t go back there, Lydia,” he said. He dragged me to the other side of the club by my sweater, unmoved by my struggle to fight him off.
I knew my life was fucked-up, but I didn’t know it had reached dead-mom-all-alone-in-the-world level fucked-up. So when Marcel had dragged me across the dirty floor, my mind immediately thought he was going to assault me. I kicked and hit and screamed, but he didn’t relent.
When he’d pulled me as far from the dressing room as he could, he spun me around and held me by the top of my arms. He shook me hard enough to make my teeth clatter. Marcel shook me until my insides shifted.
“Listen to me, Lydia.” Spit flew from his mouth to my face. His eyes were crazed, moving from my eyes, to my nose, to my mouth, to the