Infuriating - Onley James Page 0,57
fingers digging into Day’s hip. “Sorry.”
“It wasn’t so bad. It was better than getting fucked. Most of my money would have gone to whatever pimp decided I was his to turn out and they would have gotten me hooked on drugs, just like my grandma. Carl was the lesser of two evils. Instead of doing drugs, I ran them. It wasn’t exactly a financial windfall, but it was enough where I could get food and necessities from the bodega. I was too young for a real job, and I didn’t have a birth certificate or a social security number anyway. I would write letters to Sarah and tell her how great I was doing, but I think she knew it wasn’t true.”
Jackson had imagined Day’s childhood had sucked. Nobody as prickly as Day had come from a happy place. That level of self-protection usually came from years of emotionally insulating yourself from the next disappointment or heart break. But Jackson still hurt for Day. Life had been kicking him in the face pretty much since birth and Day still hadn’t gotten to the part where he’d supposedly killed his best friend. Jackson wasn’t even sure if Day knew he was just vomiting up his entire past to him. Maybe he thought Jackson would see his ugly past as a reflection of himself. He was wrong.
“She showed up on my doorstep one day. She had her bags with her. By then, I’d been there for almost two years, just treading water. I could tell she was shocked at how bad I looked, but she just smiled and dropped her bags and acted like we were staying at the Ritz and not in some disgusting motel with mold on the ceiling and stains on the mattress. I tried to convince her to leave, to go home. But she said there was nothing left for her in Idaho, and she couldn’t handle her parents and their constant babying of her. She said she had enough meds to last her six months, and if she hadn’t made it by then, she’d go home. I should have tried harder to make her go back, but I was just so fucking lonely, and it felt so good to have her there with me, to have somebody sleeping next to me every night. She made everything better.”
Jackson wished there was something he could do or say to lessen the anguish in Day’s words. The guilt was clearly weighing on him in ways Jackson would never understand. He had his own burdens to bear, his own wounds that hadn’t healed, just closed. Whatever Day was about to confess, it couldn’t be worse than the things Jackson had been forced to do in the name of fighting a war he hadn’t even believed in. But none of that mattered. Day was all Jackson cared about. He just needed Day to be okay.
“For a while, we were fine. Sarah even managed to get work as an extra from time to time. Then she started getting plays in small theatre productions. Nothing that paid, but good experience. We would eat pizza and go bowling with her theatre friends. That’s when I learned about camming. I was too young, but nobody knew that. Her friend, Lola, told me all about the money she made and how even guys, especially gay guys, could make good money, too. Sarah said it was illegal. That we could get in trouble for child porn, so I just let it go. But then Sarah got sick. Really sick. It happened so fast. We thought it was just the flu. Maybe bronchitis. But we didn’t have insurance. Sarah was a runaway and I was underage. She was afraid if she went to the hospital, she’d get sent home and I’d go into foster care. She was always looking out for me.
“One day, after a visit with Carl, I came back to the apartment to find Sarah struggling to breathe. She was so pale and her lips were blue and she wasn’t responding to me. I was so scared I called 911. But there was nothing they could do for her. She had a horrible infection throughout her whole body. A fungus had destroyed her new lungs because her anti-rejection meds had left her too immuno-compromised to fight it. She was only in LA for five months and she’d managed to live more than I had in the two years I’d been there…and it killed her. I killed her.