Liberty Begins (The Liberty Series)
Liberty Begins
© 2013 by Leigh James
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
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Cover Design by Leigh Berry; cover art, Shutterstock
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Table of Contents
Chapter Three: Special Delivery
Chapter Four: Not That Kind of Girl
Chapter Five: What's Behind Door Number Three
Chapter Eight: Thinking of Jumping
Chapter Twelve: For Better or Worse
Chapter Fourteen: The Right Path
Chapter Sixteen: You Don't Want to Know
Chapter Eighteen: From the Cradle to the Grave
Chapter Nineteen: It's a Shame About Ray
Chapter Twenty: The Difficult Kind
For my mother,
Otherwise Known as Cha Cha the Great
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Galatians 6:7
I didn’t know how long I had been lying on the floor, looking up at the man who had ripped my family apart. In that moment, staring into each other’s eyes, I remembered everything, every lie he’d ever told me. His eyes told me he was afraid.
He should be. It was his turn.
“Liberty, you can do this,” a voice said, squeezing my shoulder. That voice filled my body with warmth, with hope. “You’re not alone.”
I thought about everything that had brought me here, to this dirty floor in this dirty building. I had finally found a home, far away from here. But I needed to let my enemy know that I hadn’t forgotten about him, about what he did. He didn’t deserve to sleep at night, to enjoy a hot meal, to watch baseball. He didn’t deserve normal.
He deserved justice.
“Let’s finish this. It’s okay,” that loving voice whispered in my ear, and I knew he was right.
I closed my eyes and fired.
There was only one thing that had ever made me more nervous than going to work at that club. That was being alone with my mother’s boyfriend, Ray. There were at least some parts of my job that were redeemable. I couldn’t say the same for Ray
.
But I didn’t have time to think about that now, which was good, because I never really could stand thinking about him. Right now I had to go to work. And at work I had to stay alert.
It’s Thursday, our busy night, when the convention-goers are out for their last hurrah and the weekend tourists are just starting. At The Treasure Chest, we always make our best money on Thursdays. They don’t have as many girls on as Friday and Saturday, and we all have a lot more opportunity for attention. Not that I want it. I know that doesn’t make sense to anybody, but it’s the truth. I get there at nine and in the locker room the girls are talking, trying on their crazy, tiny outfits, teasing each other. I always listen to them before we go out on the floor. It soothes me to be around the hum of other people after being in my quiet apartment all day. They talk about the crazy things their kids had done that day, the fights they’d had with their boyfriends, how they had waxed their own bikini lines and how bad it hurt — but how aerodynamic it would make them. I did my own waxing, too, but I couldn’t make up funny stories about it like Adriana or Keisha could, so I just kept quiet. I pretty much always kept quiet. All the other girls had plenty of things to say, to fill up the space.
The Treasure Chest is considered upscale for Vegas, and we have some of the prettiest girls. There are about thirty of us in total, mostly young with a couple of lifers thrown in. In stripping, you’re a lifer if you’ve done it for ten years or more. Most of us, myself included, start at twenty one. So even though the lifers are still relatively young, they’re getting old for this place and they know it. They make jokes about getting traded down to the Gulch. “At least the drinks are cheap!” Tracey says sometimes, after a shift where she can’t get anyone to go to the Champagne Room. She laughs when she says it, but her eyes look hooded and I think she might be scared. You don’t make good money at the Gulch, and from what I hear the management encourages mileage.
I’m always nervous before I go out, and I don’t like putting on my outfit, but I do enjoy the makeup. For those few precious minutes in front of the mirror, it was like I was a little girl again, digging through my mother’s overstuffed makeup bag. I had better makeup here, more expensive stuff, but I remember the distinct smell of her inexpensive, sparkly eyeshadows and blush. If hopefulness had a scent, that’s what it smelled like, even though her compacts were cracked and plastic. It promised transformation, something better than what was already there. I would lock myself in the bathroom and rummage through her bag whenever she was napping on the couch, holding my breath so she wouldn’t wake up and catch me. And after, as I looked up at myself in the mirror, all of ten with bright blue eyeshadow on, I thought I looked pretty. Not as pretty as my mom, but no one was as pretty as my mom.
So now, it always comforted me, the sparkly eyeshadow, the black mascara, the hot pink blush, the process of transforming my face into something that made people stare. My beautiful mask. Playing dress up with my face was so much more fun than playing dress up with my body; because if you looked at just my done-up face, I could be anybody. I was almost perfect. I could be one of those girls out to dinner with my fiancé, having a two hundred dollar bottle of wine and not even blinking when the bill came. I could be any one of those girls at a club, from a
suburb across the country, who’s just in the city for the weekend. With a face like this, I could be waiting for my boyfriend to bring me a twenty-dollar drink that I might not even finish. I could be wearing a beautiful dress and a thousand-dollar watch, have a decent apartment and good job to go back to, and parents and siblings somewhere, all hoping I’m being safe and waiting to hear about my crazy weekend in Vegas.
But I don’t actually have any girlfriends, and my watch is a cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark one I bought at Walmart. I’m not from the suburbs, and I’ve never had one of those nice, ridiculously expensive dinners at a five-star restaurant with anyone. I don’t know who my father is and my mother, rest her soul, is dead. My sister’s gone. No one cares if I’m safe. The only place I’m going after work is my cheap apartment in the scary part of town, with my mask off before I even leave the building. I will eat macaroni and cheese that came from a box and go to bed, alone. So no, I’m not wearing a nice dress tonight. In fact, underneath my white button-down shirt and short plaid skirt that resembles a schoolgirl’s uniform — a slutty schoolgirl’s uniform — I’m wearing a leather thong and a black bra that has cut-outs for my nipples. And hot pink fake-suede sky-high spike heels.