A minute or two later the church doors swung out, and I watched a man stumble down the steps. Was he drunk? It was hard to tell whether the wooziness was from fatigue or alcohol. I wasn’t sure if he was the man in the confessional until I saw his face. It was beet-red from crying. Most definitely Anthony.
Don’t do it. Don’t be a creeper, the voice in my head said. I ignored it.
I followed Anthony at a distance. He didn’t get into a car; instead he dragged his feet down several blocks to an apartment building. He fished out his keys and grabbed the mail from the 2B slot. I scribbled down the address and waited as he disappeared. I didn’t know what I could do with this information, though.
Don’t waste your time on this loser.
I squeezed my eyes shut to drown out the sound. Buzzing in my ears. Louder, louder, louder.
You’re powerless. You can’t help this guy.
He’s a loser.
Just like you.
You can’t be helped.
You can’t be saved.
No one wants you.
I shuffled back to the rectory, head low, hands shoved deep in my sleeveless hoodie’s pockets. By now, the church people had packed up the bake sale. A flash of black caught my eye. A few priests stood together in a circle, including my uncle, conversing softly. One of the priests laughed, hard. Even from afar I recognized him. He was the priest who’d been at the bake sale, and he seemed significantly younger than the rest. I took a few steps closer before I stopped, turned around, and walked up the rectory steps. What would be the point of approaching them?
Once I was in my bedroom, I locked the door and stripped in front of the mirror. I inspected every inch of my body with loathing, rubbing my thumb over a faint blood stain on my inner thigh. Great. Of course I’d get my period right now when I was already in a bad mood and Aleks. Couldn’t ovulation sync up with girl-me?
I looked in the mirror. Poked my bloated lower abdomen. Flinched. Felt the ghosts of dozens of hands. And for a moment, I could hear everyone chant, “You have to! You have to!” loud enough it shook my body’s core. I didn’t see the beautiful boy I was supposed to be. I didn’t see an ugly girl either. I saw a victim, and that scared me way more than just being ugly.
I redressed quickly, scooting to the bathroom to use a tampon and wash out the blood from my underwear. Beneath the hot water, I scrubbed the fabric together, sudsing up, gritting my teeth against the pain. I was dangerously close to remembering. Not that I’d forgotten, but I didn’t want it at the forefront of my mind. That was my old life. This was my new one. And if I remembered one thing, that meant I’d soon remember the rest.
I flopped on the bed and glanced at the notebook. Anthony’s desperation looked back at me. Twenty-five thousand dollars of debt. I couldn’t imagine. How did anyone climb out of such a huge hole? It’d take winning the lottery, years of work in a good industry, not splurging on anything ever. Living on dried ramen and potatoes, and by then, with all the interest accumulating every day, you still might not be able to pay it off. Like one woman I’d read about who had twelve thousand bucks’ worth of debt from college and now, thirty years later, had paid more than two hundred thousand dollars with no end in sight.
To get that far in debt because of his girlfriend’s spending habits, though? That seemed even worse. Maybe it was an unbelievably stupid mistake to give her access to his accounts, but that didn’t excuse what she did. Of course, laying the blame on her didn’t take care of the problem either.
My eyes drifted to my closet, the boxes at the top. I swallowed. There were a lot of ways to make money, one way in particular that had earned me a pretty decent nest egg. Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed a step stool from the hall closet and brought it into my bedroom. Cautiously, I pulled the box down to the floor.
This wasn’t for me, I reminded myself. It was for Anthony.
I pulled off my sewing machine’s dustcover and unwrapped its cables, then spread them out on the desk, moving my laptop to the side. Next I got out a small folder of sewing patterns and fabric I’d collected over the years. The whirring of the sewing machine and tap-tap-tap of the needle moving through fabric was familiar, although my hands trembled a little with each seam and dart.
You really think you can help? the voice in my head nagged. You can’t do it.
But couldn’t I sit back, doing nothing. I had to face my fears and try. And if there was one thing I could do without too much thought, it was this.
It took a few hours for me to create a few cosplay pieces, a little longer to take photos with my phone. I sat by my computer, gazing at my online shop, which was listed as CLOSED. I’d shut it down a few weeks ago, but I still had a bunch of unsold items. Cosplay pieces that I’d packed away in one of the boxes now sitting in my closet. Stuff that my fellow anime geeks would’ve paid good money for. Stuff my friends—former friends—would’ve fawned over.
For a moment I felt the temptation to check my social media profiles, see what was going on, see how many people missed me.
I needed to get away from the computer. I didn’t want to slip.
But I had to try to help this guy. This wasn’t for me. It was for a stranger in need. And I was going to raise one thousand dollars to give to him, as a motivator to dump his girlfriend and fight his debt.
With a deep breath, I pressed OPEN and began to upload pictures and descriptions of the new items. Almost instantly, before I could even finish my listings, I received a shop notification: item sold. I looked at the time of the listing and sale: under five minutes. A lucky, fast sale—
Except my notifications lit up again, and again. I printed shipping labels and order confirmations as I sorted items on the floor. I’d need boxes. Fast. Damn it.
You’re too slow.
I snapped my fingers. Liquor store.
With all of the shipments of alcohol, they’d have tons of boxes in their recycling out back. Since I wasn’t going in with a fake ID to try and buy something, they wouldn’t care if I took any. I could buy a few rolls of wrapping paper from the dollar store as well as permanent markers and shipping tape. If I covered the alcoholic logos on the boxes entirely my packages wouldn’t get denied. I could do all of that tomorrow, easily.
I could do this. I could help someone get his life back on track.
For the first time since it happened, I believed things were going to be okay.
7 Aleks
That night I set an alarm on my phone to make sure I didn’t sleep in too late. Miraculously, the voice was mostly quiet, just like the room. It was almost too good to be true. I didn’t trust it. Every few hours I’d wake up and pinch myself to see if this was real, although once my alarm clock went off I pulled my pillow over my head. Five more minutes.
No. There wasn’t enough time for five more minutes. I needed to get to work. With the previous day’s sales, I was confident that I could hit my goal of one thousand dollars, so I hustled off to run my errands.
By the time I returned with tons of boxes and packing supplies and logged into my site, my heart almost stopped. My shop’s inventory was cleared out. Completely.
I looked at the total profits, then read them again. Unbelievable. In the course of one night and one morning, I’d sold just over two thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise. I grabbed a notebook and scribbled down the numbers to double-check. Even though the system was laid out clearly, I always liked keeping track of everything by hand. It helped me recognize the realness of it all and gave me a sense of pride. I’d started paying taxes when I was sixteen because I sold over five thousand dollars’ worth of costumes last year. At the beginning of this year, I’d hit the three-thousand mark, which had boosted my confidence that I could get into a good arts college and major in costume design.