She had her hair tied in loose pigtails and a smirk on her face that said she was hoping I was the latter.
"Neither," I said with a shrug. "I'm a broke ass bitch looking for a guy I know who lives around here. I've got fifteen bucks and a dog I didn't ask for, so I was just hoping you'd take pity on my busted face and point me in the right direction."
The girl with dark skin and a bubblegum pink bikini top rolled her eyes and pointed to the empty chair opposite her. "I'll take a favour," she said. "How long you gonna be in town?"
"Honestly? I've got no idea," I replied. "But I'm good for a favour if you wanna trust a girl with a fucked up face."
"Oh good, you know about that. I was worried no one had pointed it out yet," the last girl said, smirking at me as I rolled my eyes. She was a redhead with lips painted ruby red and a glazed look to her eyes that said she was stoned. I guessed she was one of the girls who didn’t love her line of work and medicated to forget how much she hated it. It was a shitty kind of life, but there were a lot worse to be had.
"Yeah, I noticed," I replied with a tight smile to let them know I didn’t want to go into that right now and they gave me those been there done that looks which made my heart ache. "I'm hoping it'll fade fast. Either way, I'd really like to find this old friend of mine."
The girls exchanged a look and the redhead shrugged, pushing to her feet and slapping on a bright smile which contrasted with the deadened look in her eyes. "I’ve got bigger fish to fry," she said, grabbing her purse and sauntering over to a silver BMW that had just pulled up.
"He's a regular," the blonde explained. "I'm Lyla, this is Dianne."
"Di," the other girl growled, flipping a look at my baseball cap. "I never went in for the Red Ranger much."
"Green Ranger for life," I agreed. "But the kid I stole it from clearly had poor taste. What's a girl to do?"
"I'm pretty sure that a girl is supposed to like the Pink Power Ranger," Lyla put in. "But I was more of a Pokémon kid myself."
"Psh, the Pink Ranger was such a princess. I'm telling you, it's all about Green," I replied, waving her off and Di grinned. I got the feeling me and her were soul sisters, at least when it came to kids TV.
"Girl knows her shit," she said, elbowing Lyla like she should know that too and I laughed.
"You know the trailer park over by the pier?" Di asked and I nodded.
"I grew up around here once upon a time," I replied with a shrug. "What about it?"
"That's us. Everyone who's no one lives there or at least hangs out over there. You wanna come pay me that favour then you'll find me there if I'm not here. During the day obviously - if it's night then I'm wherever the party is happening."
"Got it. I'll be there. I'm Rogue by the way - I know, my mom was stoned like ninety percent of the time so I blame that for the name."
Di nodded like that was good enough for her, which it should have been. Everyone who grew up on these streets knew the only currency any of us could rely on which was really worth a damn was our word. If you kept your word then you were someone worth knowing. If you didn't, then you weren't. Simple as that. Di was willing to offer me the information I wanted to test my worth. If I showed up to pay back that favour I owed her then I was worth her time, if not, no harm done but I'd be best off not showing my face around here again any time soon.
"Shoot then, who are you looking for?" Di asked and Lyla perked up too.
"An old friend of mine. He was in line to be a pretty big player around here back in the day and I can't imagine him ever moving away. The name is JJ Brooks," I said, swallowing the lump in my throat as I spoke his name aloud. Those boys had been nothing but the memories of ghosts to me in all this time and now I was resurrecting them. I