Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 (12 page)

“Sister.”

“Whatever,”
I mumble.

Mom continues stroking my hair and rattling off baby names—all of them girls’—until I am asleep.

When I wake up, there is a blanket covering me; Spencer’s shirt is gone, and Angel is keeping watch at my window. The moon is fresh in the sky. I judge it to be around one in the morning.

Refreshed and not the least bit groggy, I feel like I could take on anything… then the birds, Clad, and my father knock right into me and I am reminded that I could never be so strong when all these things hold me back.

“Boy,” I say to Angel, “what do you think would make me happy right now?” I pick him up and stare into his eyes, like the answers might appear as they do in a magic eight ball.

He barks and I put him down. He runs in a circle and then gives me both his paws. I make him stand and dance. “Should I dance, too?”

He barks again.

“If you are sure.”

He barks louder and licks my face.

“Okay, but I need music.”

I think about where I can go to dance at this time of night.

“Indigo, boy,” I whisper into his floppy ear.

I can get a drink, too.

I clomp up to the bouncer in four-inch heels and a leather mini-skirt with gobs of makeup slathered on my face, my best efforts to look twenty one.

“I.D,” the black mass says.

I flash him my fake I.D., with the name that Clad may or may not want to make love to.

“Great,” he says, “now show me your
real
I.D. ”

It says in the Bible if you had as much faith as a mustard seed you could move whole mountains; I wonder how much faith it will take to move this guy.

“My mom is Sydney.”

“Sykes?” he asks, guarding the door like his life depends on it. I don’t think a roach could slip past this guy.

“Yes,” I say, adding one of my rare smiles.

“’Kay, get in.” He steps aside, giving me just enough room to squeeze by.

I shuffle through a mob of gyrators and make my way to the stage where the men are all huddled with their dollars and beers. Ella is wearing a bright pink bejeweled bra and panties; she’s working the pole like it’s a field needing to be plowed.

“Ella!” I wave at her. “Over here!”

She finishes her duet with the pole, and then leaves the stage by a small set of makeshift stairs. She runs at me in heels glued to her feet.

“Bailey, baby, I didn’t recognize you! You look stunning!” She gives me a sweaty, sparkly, perfumed hug. “Where’s your mom?”

“I came here by myself,” I say proudly.

“Wow, rebel.”

“I just wanted to dance.”

“You could have danced anywhere, why sneak in here?”

“I wanted to dance to the kind of music you can only find in a club. The kind where you can’t hear yourself speak, let alone think.”

“I see,” she says, “trying to drown some nasty thoughts, eh? Let me get you some drinks.”

“Make em’ strong,” I say, a phrase I have heard come out of Mom’s mouth more than once.

From the cluster of bucking bodies, I pick out a guy to dance with. He looks young enough to be in college, and isn’t too hard on the eyes. I figure after a few drinks he’ll start to look like Brad Pit and as he’s grinding on me, I’ll be able to forget that I have a boyfriend.

Ella looks all too happy to see me dancing with someone and not sitting at a table alone. She hands me two shots. “Is there any way I can drink both of these at once?” I giggle.

“Girlll, you can try but you’ll probably spill it.”

I throw my head back and let the first shot slide down my throat. The man that was dancing with me claps his hands as I go in for the second one. “Those were amazing,” I shout, sticking my tongue out to Ella as proof. “Get me more!”

“I can’t. The bartender is starting to get suspicious.” She frowns. “Maybe that guy you were dancing with will buy you one.”

I swing around but can’t find him. Besides, with the hard liquor kicking in, and the volume of the music increasing, and bodies multiplying like gremlins, locating him would be a challenge, at best.

“I’ll find another one.” I shrug.

Ella smacks me on the back and says, “Good idea, kid.”

She trots back on stage.

As soon as I turn to seek another dancer/drink purchaser, my eyes land on two strong pecks.
“Hey,”
the pecks say.

I follow the pecks to a face. Green eyes of less intensity than Clad’s look down at me. The young man is dressed like a thug, but his red athletic shorts and yellow bandanna can’t disguise how good looking he is.

“Hi, want to dance?” I ask in a giggly schoolgirl voice.

“Fuck yeah,” he says giving me his hand. “I’m Cai, and you are?”

I put my hand in his. “Call me Sykes,” I say, because my first name would be too intimate.

I catch the lyrics to the song that is playing and follow its beat with my body, giving meaning to the every part of the song like an interpretive dancer… or maybe I’m just a little drunk. Cai’s hands travel down my back and wrap around my hips, controlling my movement. His rhythm is way off.

I pick his hands off me when they start to wander too far. Turning to face him I ask, “Can you get me a drink?”

“What do you want?” he screams above the music.

“Anything, Cai, surprise me!” I scream back louder than necessary. I go back to my interpretive dancing, and am just getting the hang of it again when Cai returns with two beers in his hands.

“This okay?” he asks, handing me my beer.

Yeah,
I think to myself,
if we were sitting on some porch up north, listening to the mosquitoes buzz, not in a club illuminated with lights and pulsing with music.

“Perrrfect,” I purr, putting the glass to my lips and sipping.

“Drink it all,” he says. “You’re gonna start to feel real high, real quick.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. What he said doesn’t make sense at all; one beer is not enough to make anyone feel higher than being on tip-toes. I figure he’s probably a little drunk himself, dismissing the comment, I tip the glass back, swallowing my drink, along with everything that seems wrong about Cai.

“You look familiar,” I say, pointing at him with my empty glass.

“Well, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered a face as beautiful as yours.”

“Touché,” I slur.

I’m surprised by how off-kilter my voice sounds, after only having a beer and a couple of shots.
Lightweight
. Trenton’s voice rings in my ears.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Cai says holding my face in his hands. “You look so tasty I could devour you.”

I try to step away but collide with the backs of other dancers. “I should…” I begin to say. He puts a hand over my mouth and shushes me.

“Don’t speak, just dance and kiss. Feel my body like you feel the music.”

“I have a boyfriend,” I say when his hand leaves my mouth.

“So?” He grabs my waist and pulls me into him.

I am far too lightheaded and dizzy for someone who has drunk so little.
It’s like I’m on something.
Cai’s face begins to blur with all the others, and he’s just another body touching mine, controlling it without my permission.

“
Stop
,” I think I say but the words leave my mouth so slowly that I forget them as soon as they hit the air.

All my actions fuse together. One minute I’m pushing Cai off me and the next I’m on stage with Ella, a drunken chorus of men cheering me on as I grind against her.

“I couldn’t have been more wrong about you, Bailey,” Ella says. But I hear
something’s wrong with you, Bailey.

“Ella,” I say, between a break in the music as the DJ changes shifts. “Cai,” I point to him sitting at one of the tables watching me with a grin, “won’t leave.”

“Then give him what he wants,” she says, grabbing my hand and taking me off stage, down the stairs, and straight back into Cai’s clutches. I look at her, confused; as if I’m a little girl being placed in the arms of a stranger to be babysat.

“You want me to pay for the drink?” I ask Cai.

“No,” he says. “How you feelin’? Tipsy?”

Ella is already back on stage. “What did you do to me?” I ask, a heavy tightness spreading throughout my chest.
Oh my, God,
I think,
I’m in trouble
.

“That’s what I was waitin’ for,” Cai says, smiling with one eye closed. “Shit, thought I’d been jipped by a zoomer. That’s authentic stuff right there baby—it wasn’t cheap.”

That’s why you bought us cheap drinks;
I think to myself.
You spent all your money on that zoomer…what is a zoomer?

“Zoom, zoom, baby,” I say.

Cai chuckles and nods his head. “Zoom, zoom.”

I stare at him but can’t think of what to say next. My body sways back and forth—I’m either going to pass out, or fall back into the rhythm of the song that’s playing.

Before I can realize what’s happening, Cai jerks my hand and pulls me to the restrooms located at the other end of the club. I don’t try to stop him. I’m about to upchuck and the bathroom is logistically the perfect place for me to be heading.
Zoom, zoom.

“Men’s,” I say.

He drags me into the men’s restroom, and I run to one of the urinals to throw up. “Why did you take me
here
?” I ask wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

He comes up behind me and, latching onto my hair, snaps my head back. In an instant, I am on the ground, struggling with him as he tries to flip me over.

“Nooo!”
I scream.

“Shut up,” he says, “you want this.”

No, you do
.
What I want is to run away and find Spencer’s arms.

I stop struggling; having convinced myself it will hurt less if I don’t fight. I pretend I’m just a bag made of skin, containing bones, blood, and organs. No emotions. No resistance. Just compliance.

Hands rip my clothes off.

What happens next is a mis-mash of thoughts; they shoot at me as quick and painfully as bullets.

Cai squeezing my wrists so tight I feel my circulation cutting off. Trying to get up and being shoved back into tile. Crying for him to let go of me and his maniacal laughter.
“It will be over soon.”

What will?
The pain of your hands pinning down my wrists?
The cold tile digging into my spine?
His hands are jack hammers compared to Spencer’s, they are bruising and breaking and I cannot escape them as they tear at my bag of bones, blood, and organs.

I wake up with my head underneath a stall door and my knees bent to my stomach. Cai is gone. He has left bright red finger marks on my wrists as a souvenir.

I sit up and feel my face with shaking hands- it’s wet with tears. I have not been knocked out long. My clothes are at my feet, tattered.

“Bailey?” someone says. “He’s gone. Did he hurt you?”

Ella.

I rise and leave my head behind on the floor, my mind too slow to catch up with the rest of my body. Ella gives me a hand and holds me steady.

“Did he…did you see him
rape
me?” I only remember my clothes coming off and fighting him.

Ella looks at me in horror. “I don’t know. I didn’t see. Do you want me to call the police?”

I shake my head at her.

“He drugged you…” she says in a strangled voice.

I push past her and stumble into the sea of vibrating people. I stand in the middle of the club feeling desolate and hollow.

“SPENCERRR!” I scream, half expecting the club to stop for me, the music to die down and the bodies to freeze. But everything is as it was before I screamed his name. Nothing is eye-catching, or alarming about a half-naked girl standing in the middle of a nightclub.
I’m a clone of every girl here.

“SPENCERRR!” I try again, louder this time.

You could hear nothing above the music.
The kind where you can’t hear yourself speak, let alone think,
I had said earlier in the night.

But I
can
think. Clearly, so clearly that I might burst from the thoughts that fight to be front and center in my head. I press my hands to my temples, cursing my mind for being in such chaos.

“Bailey.”

I start because I think it’s Cai, but then I remember I never told him my name.
Too intimate.

“Open your eyes.”

“
I don’t want to
,” I say, sucking back tears.

“It’s me, Spencer.”

My eyes fling open and I lock my jaw. Spencer’s chest is visibly pumping in and out, his hands balled into fists. “Let’s go,” he says furious. “What the fuck happened to your clothes, huh? Are you a
stripper
here
?
”

I follow him out of the club in a daze.

“I’m so disappointed in you,” he says.

The cool air snaps me right awake.

Spencer corners me against the brick siding of Indigo, his hands on my wrists cupping over the marks left from Cai. We can only see each other’s eyes in the darkness.

“So, how long have you been working here?” he asks, pupils dilated with rage.

I shake my head.

“Spencer,” I say, “I don’t know what happened. I was dancing and…”

“And what? Men were flinging dollars bills at you? Sweetie, that’s called stripping.”

“No,” I say, more serious this time. “I think I was
drugged
.”

He backs off a little.

“What happened to your clothes?” he says slowly as he digests what I’ve said.

“He tore them off.”

“Who?”

“Cai,” I hiss.

“Where is he, Bailey? Is he in the club? I’ll find him.” His chest is pumping furiously again, head spinning around like a true owl. “Where did the bastard go?”

The back door of the club clicks open and, right on cue, Cai steps out with a superior look on his face, like he’s conquered the highest mountain. My eyes flicker to him and I don’t even have to say it—
Spencer knows
.

I slide down the wall.

Spencer puts his fists in front of his face like a boxer and bears down on Cai. “What’s your name?”

“Cai?” he says, like it’s a trick question.

Spencer decks him square in the nose, and blood squirts out, spraying the asphalt and himself. “That’s what I thought.”