A Work of Art (20 page)

“You heard her,” Joey said. “Get out.”

Mac put on his shirt and left. Before I could think more about it, Joey pulled me down on the bed. I ripped off my sweater and threw it in the corner. My bra was next. Joey unbuttoned his jeans.

And then I heard the door open. “Hey,” a voice said. I looked over. Johnny was standing by the bed, staring down at me. “Can anybody join this party?”

“Um . . .” I looked to Joey. Joey would tell him to get out. But Joey was smiling at me. Did he not realize his uncle was standing there? I sat up on the bed and crossed my arms over my chest.

Johnny sat beside me. He tried to move my arms away, but I held them stiff. “Hey, now,” he said. “Don't be like that.”

Panic welled up in me. “I don't want to do this.” I sounded like a little kid.

“It's okay,” Joey said from my other side. “We can get under the blanket.”

“You sure this is okay?” Johnny asked.

“Tera, come on.” Joey touched my shoulder. “It's not a big deal. You were making out with that other guy.”

I wanted to explain how making out with two guys was a long way from having sex with my boyfriend and his much older uncle, but I couldn't think clearly enough to form the words.

Joey leaned closer, like he was going to kiss me, but I shoved myself off the bed and darted to the corner where I'd thrown my bra and sweater. “Just leave me alone, okay? I want to get dressed.”

Johnny sounded amused. “She wants us to leave her alone.”

“No, she doesn't.” Joey made a shooing motion with his hand. “Give us a minute.”

Johnny left the room.

When we were alone, Joey came to the corner where I was sliding my arms through my bra straps. “Listen, Tera.” He picked up my sweater before I could grab it. “We're just having fun.”

And that's when I realized Joey must have planned this whole thing. That's why he left me alone earlier. So he could talk to his uncle and lay out how it would go.

I snatched my sweater. “It's not fun for me.”

“It was fun ten minutes ago. Why not now?”

“Because.” I could feel the drug wearing off, and I was starting to feel seriously disgusted with myself. I pulled my sweater over my head and made a beeline for the door. “I just don't want to, okay?”

Joey followed me to the living room. Heavy bass vibrated the floor, and a black light gave everything a ghostly glow.

I stood there and didn't know what to do. How was I going to get home? Mom would kill me if she had to come pick me up.

Joey backed me against the wall, his teeth glowing neon-white under the black light. “Stop running,” he said. “You're embarrassing yourself.”

I tried to move away. “I'm not running. I just want to go home.”

He squeezed my breast. Not a caress. More like a honk. One hand tangled itself in my hair. The other snaked around my waist. His mouth felt wet on my ear. “I'm not taking you home yet. First I want to fuck. Just you and me.”

“Stop it.” I tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let go. No one seemed to notice. The woman with the talon fingernails leaned against the opposite wall, mesmerized by the lights on the stereo. The two people going at it on the recliner still had their heads under the blanket.

“Stop what? You don't like this?” His arms felt like tentacles wrapped around my waist. “I brought you here to fuck,” he said. “So let's go
fuck.
”

“Leave her alone, Joey.”

Joey froze and eased his weight off me. We both looked toward the voice.

Sadie was sitting up on the recliner, glaring at him, her hair a tangled mess. Whoever she was making out with struggled to sit up, too. I recognized Sadie's friend, the one who'd picked her up from work the other night.

Joey's eyes wandered over each of us. Me, Sadie, Sadie's girlfriend. Then they fell on me again. He shook his head and stalked off toward the kitchen. “Fucking tease!” he announced to the ceiling. “A complete fucking bore!”

My cheeks flushed with humiliation. Tears stung my eyes. I blinked them dry before they could fall.

“Hey.” Sadie got up from the recliner and put her hand on my arm. “You okay?”

I nodded, afraid of what would happen if I tried to talk.

“He's a prick. Ignore him.”

I studied her face in the black light. Was she high, too? She didn't look it. A little drunk maybe.

“I know he likes you,” she said.

I almost laughed, but instead my face crumpled and I had to cover it with my hands.
A fucking tease. A complete fucking bore.
Was he right? I felt like he might be right.

“You want to go somewhere and talk? Come on.” She pulled me toward the screen door. I followed her like a lost sheep.

She guided me to the porch steps and pulled me down beside her. Her hand felt warm compared to the cold air.

“You can't just leave your girlfriend,” I said.

“She's all right. She gets it.”

We both sat looking out at the dark yard. Everyone else had gone inside. I pulled my knees in tight. My breath fogged in front of me.

“He's a complete dick,” she said.

“That's not what you said before,” I mumbled. “You said he was harmless.”

“Did I?”

I nodded. I sounded bitchy and ungrateful. I knew I did.

“Sorry. I thought he
was
harmless.” She shook her head. “He was with me, anyway.”

“You dated him?” The thought didn't hurt, but it did surprise me.

“I wouldn't call it dating. We had sex.”

“Oh.” I waited for the flash of jealousy. It didn't come.

“He's not all that,” she said. “He's not even that good.”

“You don't think so?” And here I'd thought it was just me. My inexperience.

“And he's been lying to you about how old he is.”

“What?” I whirled to face her. “How old is he?”

“I think he's twenty-two. Maybe twenty-three.”

So much for his fake ID. Now I felt betrayed on top of everything else. “What an asshole!”

“Uh-huh.”

I stared out at the yard, remembering what I'd let him do to me—not just Joey, but Mac and Johnny, too. And Joey had wanted it to happen.

Was he so starved for sex that he had to lie about his age to get me to sleep with him? He had probably lied about saving money for an apartment, too. And then he pretty much drugged me to get me to have a threesome . . . with his
uncle.
Maybe his mom wasn't even in prison. I could see him making up the whole prison story just to give himself a bad-boy image.

So he's some kind of bad boy?
That's what Mr. Stewart had said when I showed him my Joey sketches. I'd gotten mad because it made me feel stupid. But he was right.

Shit. My
Girl on a Bus
painting. It probably sucked, too. I knew it did. I'd known it all along.

“You okay?” Sadie asked.

I closed my eyes. “Just pissed.” It felt good to be pissed.

“Pissed at me?”

“Not at you.”

“Do you need anything?”

No
, I started to say. But then I thought of something she could do, something a friend would do for a friend.

“Do you think you could give me a ride home?”

The county jail website made a big deal about what not to wear to a jail visit. No shorts or miniskirts. No tank tops. No hats. I put on an old sweatshirt and my loosest pair of jeans, told my mom I was going to work, and caught the bus downtown.

Fear sat in my gut like an ice block. I hadn't talked to my dad for more than two weeks, and I had no idea what he'd be like, how he'd act. I wanted him to know I was doing everything I could to help him. I wanted him to appreciate what I'd already given up.

And most of all, I wanted to hear what he had to say about the photos on his computer. I needed him to tell me they'd gotten there by accident.

The bus dropped me off right in front of the jailhouse. A woman and her little boy got off with me. All of us trudged up the short flight of steps. I opened the door for them, but the boy plunked himself down in front of the building's sand-filled ashtray. His mom pleaded with him to get up, but he kept wailing about how he didn't want to go in, how he didn't want to see his daddy. I almost knew how he felt. If I'd thought Dad was guilty, I'd have wanted to do the same thing.

I could still hear the kid crying as I walked to the front desk. A gray-haired woman checked my license against the approved visitors' list.

“I've never been here before,” I said. “I'm not sure how this works.”

“You'll get the hang of it.”

I didn't want to get the hang of it. I wanted Dad out of here. I wanted to know he was innocent.

She pointed to a roped-off queue, where a couple of guards watched me approach with bored expressions. They made me put my purse in a locker. I went through a metal detector and got patted down. Then another guard walked me through a maze of corridors, where metal doors clanged shut behind me. Every door was guarded.

Finally, I got to the visitors' lobby, a big rectangle of cinder-block wall. It smelled like floor cleaner. Chairs were lined up on one side of a glass barrier, separated from each other by cubicle walls.

A guard led me to an empty chair and pointed to a telephone hanging on the divider wall. “You talk through that.”

“Do you know when—?”

“Now you wait.”

I clamped my mouth shut and waited. In the cubicle next to me, a woman sobbed.

Minutes passed. I breathed onto my cupped hands to warm them and rocked in my chair to keep the jitters at bay. The concrete walls were gray and bare except for a few signs posting the rules for visits. Two guards hovered in the corners.

The woman next to me finished her visit. Another woman took her place. This one kept tapping her foot and sniffling. I imagined she was like me: tense and freezing and trying not to think about what this person she loved was doing here. I looked around for the woman with the little boy but didn't see her. Maybe the little boy didn't have to see his daddy after all.

My eyes were starting to burn from staring at the empty space on the other side of the glass. I closed them, just for a second, and when I opened them, there he was. A guard was bringing him in.

I almost didn't recognize him. He kept his head down, but I saw how his face sagged. His eyes were red and puffy. His orange prison jumpsuit hung on him, and he shuffled when he walked. The guard practically pushed him into the chair behind the glass.

I fumbled for the phone and pressed it to my ear. “Dad!”

No response. He looked at his hands, rubbed the ink stains on his fingers.

“Dad.” I waved my hand at the glass. “Pick up the phone.”

His eyes flicked toward the movement. I watched him take a deep breath, watched him stare at his lap before picking up the phone.
Come on, Dad. Look at me.
Slowly, he lifted his eyes to mine.

“Tera.” His voice sounded tinny and distant. I almost cried when he spoke my name.

I searched for something to say. All my planning, and I didn't know what to say. “You look good,” I began.

He grunted. “You didn't have to do this.”

“Visit you? I wanted to.” I made myself smile even though my heart was breaking to see him like this.

He waved a hand. Impatient. “The money for art school. You spent it. Why did you do that?”

My smile wavered. “To help you.”

“I didn't ask for your help.”

My chest tightened. This wasn't right. He was supposed to be grateful. “Dad . . .”

“Do you know what I went through to save all that money?”

“I had to get you a lawyer. Someone who knows what they're doing.”

“Oh, yeah.” Sarcasm dripped from his tone. “Charlotte Gross definitely knows what she's doing. She must be an expert at finding naïve girls and taking their money.”

I shook my head. “It wasn't like that.” Was it? Did she swindle me? Or was Dad saying all this because he knew how guilty he was?

“It doesn't matter. You blew it, Tera.”

How could he say that? After what I did for him. “She'll help you.”

“You
had
to spend that money, didn't you? And now you're stuck here. Stuck here so you can turn out just like your mom.”

“I'm not stuck. I'll save up so I can go next year.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, like talking to me was giving him a headache. “All the work I put into you. All that time I spent molding you so you could study with the best, so you wouldn't have to struggle like I struggled.”

How to make him understand? “The lawyer will get you out of here. To me, that's more important than—”

His hand cut the air. “It's
not
more important. Nothing is more important than you. Goddammit, Tera. How could you be so stupid?”

I shrank back like he'd slapped me.

“You can't help me,” he said. “
She
can't help me.”

“Why not?”
Please don't tell me you did it.
“Why can't she help you?”

“I'm sick of all this pussyfooting around. Didn't she tell you what they found?”

Please, no.
“You didn't mean to.” I shook my head. “You're innocent.”

When he laughed, I wanted to bury my head and cover my ears. “You think anyone will believe that?” he sneered.

“She's good,” I said, desperate now for him to agree with me. “She's won a bunch of cases and she'll prove that—”

“I'm tired of hiding. You don't know what it's like to spend your whole life hiding.”

“Stop it, Dad.” If I kept shaking my head, it wouldn't be true.

“Do I have to draw you a picture?”
THWACK!
His palm struck the glass.

I flinched, eyes wide.