HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (27 page)

“I hypothesize that you will pass the GED test, Minnie,” she said after I explained the basic gist of what I was studying.

“In a few days, we will know the results and conclude whether you are right,” I responded, tickling her.

After I passed the GED, Jeff and Brenda threw me a small party, complete with pizza and ice cream and everything I loved. I didn’t mind that the only attendees were the people who had taken me into their lives.

Brenda started bringing home employment circulars that I would peruse with a highlighter in hand, circling all the positions I thought I might be good at. I steered clear of waitress positions, never explaining why.

I got my driver’s license, I registered to vote, and I volunteered every week at the homeless shelter with Jeff and Brenda. I thought it was good to remind myself where I never wanted to end up again.

Christmas passed—the first Christmas that I’d received presents since before my mother and I moved in with Jack. Brenda and Jeff bought me a new coat. Ruby and Maggie pooled their allowance money to give me a necklace with a heart charm on it.

The family accepted Minnie, and I became a part of them. On nights when Jeff and Brenda would go out on dates, I happily watched over the girls. I even learned how to cook, and Brenda and I would trade off days for preparing dinner. I sometimes read to the girls before they went to bed.

I was part of a family, and they accepted me. I couldn’t wish for anything better.

Yes, everything was going perfectly until the day I got sick.

It began one night after I’d tried out a new recipe for dinner. It was a hearty stew made out of sweet potatoes, apples, and pork—perfect for the last cold days of winter. Spring had to be coming soon, so I wanted to try the dish before it was out of season. I felt fine eating it, but had to rush to the bathroom with diarrhea afterward. I was scared to death that I’d undercooked the pork—even though it was exceedingly tender and fell apart in my mouth—but no one else seemed affected.

I had to beg off reading to Ruby and Maggie that night. My entire body ached and sudden waves of exhaustion dragged me to the bed. I thought perhaps that if it wasn’t the pork, I was overdoing things—too much too fast. Life had gotten so much better so quickly that maybe my tortured body was having a hard time adjusting.

Try again in the morning, I told myself. My eyelids felt weighted down as I let them fall shut in my bed.

I didn't wake up the next day until 1 p.m., and that was only because of my body hurting so badly. What was wrong with me?

"The flu, I think," Brenda said grimly, studying a beeping thermometer. "You have a fever of 101."

"Is that bad?" I groaned, barely able to get the words out. I felt like somebody had left a dumbbell on my head. I'd always been a healthy child—being bedridden was a foreign idea to me.

"Wanna come watch a movie, Minnie?" Maggie asked from the open doorway. "That always makes me feel better when I'm sick."

"No thanks, sweetie," I said. "Maybe later, though."

"Have you puked yet?" she asked eagerly.

"Don't be disgusting, Maggie," Brenda scolded as I laughed laboriously. Food was the last thing on my mind, proving that I really was sick.

"Better stay away," I warned in a pseudo-serious voice. "I might puke on you."

The little girl ran squealing from the room as I made fake gagging noises. Brenda laughed with a small amount of horror.

"You're good with her, you know," she said. "You're good with both of them, but what you have with the little one is special."

That made me feel good even through my suffering.

"Thanks," I said.

"You ever think about how many kids you want?" Brenda asked, dabbing my forehead with a damp washcloth.

"Kids?" I croaked. "I'd like some one day, but not until I have everything figured out."

"Everything figured out?" Brenda repeated, laughing. "You let me know when that happens. Minnie, I don't have everything figured out, and I've got twenty years on you."

I shook my head. "You and Jeff totally seem like you know what to do in any situation. It's like you have an instruction book stashed somewhere that you study every night before you go to bed. Then, when you wake up and things start happening, you know exactly what to do."

Brenda hadn't stopped laughing. "My only instruction book is the Bible," she said, chortling. "Other than that, it's experience, plain and simple. Experience and communication."

Brenda took the washcloth off my forehead and flipped it to the cool side.

"You're a smart girl, Minnie," she said. "You're making amazing decisions right now. One day, everything will fall into place without you even realizing it. You'll just open your eyes and think, 'this is where I was meant to be.'"

I smiled and tried to respond, but a fit of wet, wretched coughing stole my voice. Brenda watched me struggle for air, her face a picture of concern.

"I really don't like that cough," Brenda said as I forced some water down my ravaged throat.

"It's not my favorite, either," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Whatever this is, we're going to address it early," Brenda said, clapping her hands once. "Don't worry about changing out of you pajamas. I'm going to take you to the clinic."

As soon as Hailey, the babysitter, arrived, Brenda and I took off. Usually, I would've loved the opportunity to log miles behind the wheel, but I didn't even ask. Simply shuffling to the car was all I could really do.

The doctor listened to my heart, took my temperature, and looked at my throat and ears.

“You’re running a fever,” he murmured, almost to himself.

“Isn’t there a bug going around?” Brenda asked. She’d accompanied me to the examination room.

The doctor laughed shortly. “Believe me, there’s always some bug going around.”

He turned around and pulled a needle and several vials from a drawer, along with a tourniquet.

“Let’s take some blood and figure out which bug this is,” he said.

I squeezed my eyes shut as he tied the tourniquet around my arm and cleaned the inside of my elbow with a cotton swab. Brenda held my other hand as the needle pierced my skin. I couldn’t bear to look at the blood leaving my body. It gave me too many bad memories.

“All done,” the doctor announced. “Hold this gauze to your arm and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The door shut behind him and I finally opened my eyes. Brenda was watching me sympathetically.

“Squeamish?” she asked. “Me, too. I didn’t watch.”

I laughed shakily and pushed my hair out of my eyes. My forehead was slick with sweat.

In what seemed like no time at all, the doctor walked back in, studying a printout on a clipboard. He looked up at me sharply.

“Have you been engaging in any high-risk behaviors?” he almost demanded. “You know, like sharing needles?”

Sharing needles? Did he mean for using drugs? I was aware of Brenda freezing beside me.

“I don’t do drugs,” I said quickly, feeling almost offended.

“Well, young lady, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” he said. “You’re HIV positive.”

Brenda gave a tortured gasp, showing me some indication of how I should be reacting, but I felt only numbness.

“So, this is bad,” I said, not sure what else to say in the stifling silence of the examination room.

“Yes, this is very bad, Minnie,” Brenda snapped, not looking at me.

I was taken aback. Was this my fault? Did I do something to get HIV? I’d heard the name before, three letters that rolled into their own doom-filled word, but I thought it was only reserved for druggies and other “bad” people.

Was I one of those “bad” people?

The doctor had been talking, but the buzz in my ears had drowned out his words. I tuned in again for the tail end of his speech.

“So pick a long-term health care professional as soon as possible,” he said. “You’ll want to start taking action immediately.”

The ride home was painful. Brenda never met my eyes, staring straight ahead at the road and gripping the steering wheel tightly. She let out a breath she must have been holding when we pulled into the driveway. Jeff’s car was there, meaning he was back from work already.

“Just go lie down, Minnie,” Brenda said, still not looking at me. “I’ll check on you in a few minutes.”

The pervasive crappiness I felt because of my fever and other symptoms was amplified by my despair. Why was this happening to me? Why was Brenda so upset?

I walked into the house, Brenda following a few steps behind me.

“Minnie! You’re back!” Maggie chirped, running to me with her arms open for a hug.

“Maggie! Stop!” Brenda shouted. “Minnie’s sick! Go to your room!”

The child stopped in her tracks, unused to being yelled at by anyone. I didn’t remember Jeff or Brenda ever raising their voices in anger in this house during the three months I’d been here.

Maggie’s lower lip puffed out and tears glistened in her eyes. My heart ached as she turned on her heel and scuttled to her room. I didn’t so much as look back at Brenda as I went to my own room.

The accompanying slammed door made me aware that Brenda and Jeff went to their own room to talk. It was adjacent to the guest room, where I’d been staying. When they started talking, I realized that I could hear every word.

“So you know how Minnie’s sick?” Brenda asked, sounding halfway hysterical. “It’s freaking HIV.”

“What?” Jeff repeated, dumbfounded. “She told us she wasn’t using!”

“Well, she must have been lying,” Brenda said. “My God, she must have had it this entire time, since when we met her.”

Jeff was silent for a few moments. I pressed my ear against the wall in time to hear his next words.

“I can’t believe she brought that into our house,” he said. “Do you think she knew about it this whole time?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Brenda said. “I don’t want her here. I don’t want her around the girls. What if she—oh God, I can barely even imagine—what if one of the girls picked it up from her? Maggie—Jesus help me—Maggie’s always hanging around Minnie. What if she got a cut, oh, I can’t think about it, I can’t.”

“She can’t stay, we agree on that,” Jeff said. “We’ll get the girls—and ourselves—tested, just to be safe.”

“Oh God,” Brenda said softly, and I realized she was crying.

“I’m just so … I don’t know, disappointed, almost,” Jeff remarked. “We were really helping her turn her life around. The GED, the driver’s license, the job search. Her first job interview was this week at that new shoe store. It almost seems like a total waste of our time. A total loss of everything we did for her.”

“HIV is a death sentence,” Brenda agreed. “She might as well not even try anymore.”

“HIV is a death sentence. She might as well not even try anymore.”

I barely heard that last part. I was ripping my pajamas off my body as quickly as possible. How could I escape this skin? How could I escape this life?

All I knew was one thing: I had to flee before Brenda and Jeff threw me out. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t stomach the idea of Maggie witnessing it. No. I just had to leave.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater before stepping into a pair of sneakers. Out of habit, I grabbed the satchel that functioned as my purse. It had everything I was proud of—including my license and GED certificate. Brenda and Jeff had teased me, asking if I carried it around so I could show it to everyone I met.

I shuddered. Only rage—and despair—was driving me. I was exhausted, beaten, broken, and dirty. I had to get out of here. This wasn’t my home. I would never have a home.

I eased my door open and stepped quickly down the hall. A footstep behind me as I reached the front door made me cringe.

“Minnie? Where are you going?”

I turned to see Maggie, and held a finger to my lips.

“I have to leave,” I whispered. “What was the time we had the most fun together?”

“The time we went caroling,” the little girl answered immediately.

I smiled and almost laughed through my tears. The entire family—and I, at the time when I believed I was a part of it—had gone caroling around the neighborhood during the holidays. When we performed “Jingle Bells,” I realized that Maggie had been singing different lyrics.

“Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg,” she had belted out, her face angelic.

I had begun laughing and singing her version, remembering it from my own schooldays. Soon, we had the rest of the family singing the incorrect lyrics, and more than a few doors slammed shut on our performance.

“That was my favorite, too,” I told the little girl, who stood in confusion in front of me. “I want you to always, always, always remember that time, no matter what.”

I left without hugging her. By that time, Brenda and Jeff’s words had invaded my mind, making me feel more infected than my actual diagnosis. What if I infected her? I could never live with myself.

I ran as if I could outpace my feelings, my past, and my apparently doomed future just by moving my legs faster. My satchel slapped my back almost painfully, driving me on. I didn’t care that my legs burned, or that my lungs struggled to get air. While my body labored, my mind had to focus entirely on forcing it to perform. I didn’t have a spare second for thinking.

How long had I been running? It seemed like my whole life. My mother and I had run from insurmountable bills. I’d run from Jack and certain death. I’d run from Mama and a life of prostitution. And now I was running from Jeff and Brenda and their certainty about my future-less life.

The road ended in a parking lot, and I realized that I could hear the crashing waves of the ocean. My breath was coming in ragged sobs, my already shaky knees knocking against each other. I remembered coming here with Jeff, Brenda, and the girls. We’d bundled up against the biting wind and walked along the shore, picking up pretty seashells and squirreling them away in our pockets. I still carried one of them in my satchel, one with a delicate curl, speckled on the outside. Those days were over, the days of going anywhere with anyone. I couldn’t do that anymore. I was sick. I was going to die.

Stairs led to the beach below the bluffs from the parking lot, but I walked over to the cliff face instead. A sheer drop-off led straight down to the waves. They crashed and roiled as I stared down at them. The shore was nothing like it had been the day I’d come with the family. The sun had warmed our faces and the sea had been playful and blue.

Now, the water was black, mirroring the hardness of the steel gray sky. There was nothing friendly about the sea today.

Why had I never been in control of my life? Even when I was living on the streets before Mama found me, I’d been living on everyone else’s terms. The only reason I ever darted left was because someone was approaching on my right. I turned into a shadow to make sure no one saw me. How could I take my life back and do things on my own terms? I stared out over the drop off, watching the waves slap against the rock bottom of the cliff.

Brenda had said that HIV was a death sentence and that I shouldn’t try anymore. I didn’t have the strength to try anymore. All I’d been doing was trying to survive—trying to come out alive on the other side of everything that anyone had ever done to me.

But why should I continue existing with a death sentence? Couldn’t I take matters into my own hands? Couldn’t I leave this life on my own terms? I stared down at the black water, kicking a pebble off the edge. It was a long way down.

“You going to jump or what?”

I whipped my head around and squinted. A tree with bare branches shook and shivered in the wind, buffeted in its precarious position at the top of the cliff. At the tree’s base a figure sat, leaning against the trunk.

“Excuse me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes and approaching. As I got closer, I could see the man sitting there, dressed in a puffy jacket and beanie, an open notebook balanced on one knee.

“I asked you if you were going to jump,” he said again, almost cheerfully. His gray eyes mirrored the color of the clouds. “I can’t sit here all day and wait for it, you know, if you’re going to do it.”

I stood and looked down at him in absolute shock, my mouth opening and closing again.

“You know, I don’t think that fall would even kill you,” he continued, putting a pencil in the notebook to mark his place and closing it. “But the bluff on the other side of the beach has all these great boulders at the bottom. That would be a sure shot. Wanna walk over there and check it out?”

Check it out? Son of a bitch.
Son of a bitch.

“Son of a bitch!” I shouted. “You clueless asshole! You have no idea what has happened to me!”

And so I told him. Every gory detail. The fact that I was homeless and had never truly understood a concept of home or family where I could belong and be secure. I started with my life of poverty with my mother. That hadn’t been so bad, of course, except for the fact that it had driven us into the arms of a psychopath. Said psychopath had made me flee into the streets, where I’d dodged humanity until I started eating out of dumpsters.

That was where the madam of a glorified brothel had “saved” me and pretended she was family until she started selling my body to the highest bidder. Another monster tortured me and violated me in ways I was only just beginning to comprehend. And then I sought help from two Christians who turned against me because of an illness that was apparently going to kill me.

“And no one ever even called me by my real name this entire time!” I yelled. “I’m Jasmine, not ‘slut’ or ‘Jazz’ or ‘Minnie.’ It’s Jasmine, the sick girl, the one who has HIV.

“That’s right,” I said, building to a furious crescendo, “I have HIV. It’s a death sentence. I don’t have any more reason to be here. I shouldn’t even try to keep going anymore. Because every time I try, something else drags me down. I was going to have a future, in spite of everything. But now I have this disease. It’s robbed me of my future. I’m dead already.”

I had half expected the man to flee during my tirade, but he sat calmly, giving me his undivided attention. When it was apparent that I was finished, he cleared his throat.

“Feel better now, Jasmine?” he asked, smiling.

I sank to the ground, my legs unable to support me any longer. The funny thing was that I really did feel better, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

“You know what else has a death sentence?” he said conversationally. “Life. Everyone’s going to die. That’s a simple fact of existence. Everyone has to die of something.”

He was right, of course, but I shook my head stubbornly.

“I want to die of old age,” I said, “not HIV.”

The man’s laugh infuriated me, but my body was cashed out. I couldn’t get away from him even if I wanted to.

“You don’t know a damn thing about HIV, do you?” he asked.

“I know it’s going to kill me.”

He shook his head. “No one dies of HIV. HIV is only a precursor to AIDS. And nobody really dies of AIDS, either. It only weakens your immune system, so you usually succumb to something else that your body would normally be able to fight off.”

“So that’s all I have to look forward to?” I asked. “My HIV turning into AIDS and something stupid like a cold offing me?”

“I don’t know where you’ve been getting your health information, but you have a lot to learn,” the man said coolly. “Maybe that would’ve been true decades ago, but with advances in medicine, you’ll likely never get AIDS. You’re going to have to be taking pills every day for the rest of your life, but you’ll probably still die of old age if that’s how you want to go.”

“But I don’t want to have HIV for the rest of my life,” I said, my lips trembling from the weather and my emotions. “I just want to be normal.”

The man leaned forward suddenly and covered my hand with his. “I’m sorry, but you don’t get to be normal anymore, Jasmine. Who wants to be normal, anyway?”

I jerked my hand away from his. “I want to be normal,” I said. “My life has never been normal. And don’t touch me. Aren’t you afraid that you’re going to get HIV?”

He laughed like I’d just made a hilarious joke. “Didn’t anyone tell you how this works?” he asked. “Or did they just tell you that you had HIV and turned you out the door?”

My stony silence told him everything he needed to know.

“Well, it shouldn’t have been like that,” he continued, nonplussed. “You can get HIV several different ways, none of which include touching an affected person’s hand. Sharing needles is one way, and you don’t look like an addict to me. Unprotected sex is the most likely culprit—you said yourself that you were basically a prostitute at that nightclub.”

I inhaled sharply through my nose. Unprotected sex. Of course. None of the customers at Mama’s nightclub had ever worn condoms during their time with me, no matter how hard I tried to cajole them. Had it been Don Costa—the mob boss who had taken my virginity? Or what about Lamprey—the limp, wealthy noodle who could only get it up while touching something that had once belonged to the Don? Surely it hadn’t been Tracy, the murderous old pervert who’d probably ruined me for life on sex. Or maybe it had been. Maybe it had been all of them, all of the men who’d paid Mama for the pleasure of my company and the use of my body.

“Maybe I’ll just get hit by a car,” I said glumly. “That would be better than having HIV for the rest of my life—thanks to some jerk-off.”

The man wrinkled his nose in mock distaste. “Hit by a car? That’s so …
normal
.” He said “normal” like it was something distasteful. “Can’t you think of anything more exciting?”

A helpless smile made my lips twitch involuntarily. “Falling out of an airplane.”

“Boring.”

A giggle escaped from my mouth before I could clap a hand over it. “Struck by lightning?”

“Happens more often than you’d think. Next.”

“Eaten by a shark.”

“Now you’re talking,” he said. “What else you got?”

“Victim of an ancient curse,” I said, not believing that I could possibly be laughing over weird ways to die.

“Excellent, excellent,” the man said, flipping his notebook to a clean page and taking up his pencil. “This ancient curse—how do you get it?”

I thought for a moment. “Well, I’m an explorer—”

“Been done before,” he said briskly, jotting something in his notebook. “Something else.”

“Okay. I’m the last of an old family who’ve all been struck down before their time.”

“I’m intrigued,” he said, his pencil scratching away at the page. “Continue.”

“Determined not to end up like my mother and father, who had died in a freak house fire, I go to a family friend for help. He tells me of an ancient curse cast upon an ancestor to wipe out his entire lineage, and I’m the last one in the cursed line. I have to travel across the globe to right the wrong.”

“Perfect,” he muttered, underlining something in the notebook. “And you know what the best part is?”

“What?”

“You don’t die,” he said, looking at me and smiling. “You right the wrong. You remove the curse. You have children. You live to be a ripe old age, and then you die.”

“Boring,” I teased, laughing.

He held out his hand and I took it tentatively, shaking it.

“I’m Nate, by the way,” he said, “Nate King. It’s nice to meet you, Jasmine.”

“Nice to meet you,” I replied, feeling suddenly shy in the face of this man’s kindness. I realized with a sudden rush that I had been prepared to end everything until he talked to me.

“Listen, I remember you saying something about not having a home,” he said almost nonchalantly. “I have one that’s a little too big. How about you come live with me?”

I shook my head incredulously. “Why would you do a favor that big for someone you just met?”

“Believe me, it’d be you doing the favor for me,” Nate said. “I’m a writer.” He gestured at the open notebook like he was gesturing at a cockroach or something equally disgusting. “I can barely take care of myself, let alone my house. If you wanted to help me out around the place, like some light cleaning, occasional cooking if you wouldn’t mind, I’d let you stay, rent free.”