Seriously? Hot chocolate? Are we in a sitcom or something? Hot chocolate’s not going to fix either of us.
But it sounds good.
I slide out of bed. Together, we tiptoe downstairs with nothing but moonlight and streetlights to guide us. It’s not until we’re in the kitchen that she finally turns on the dim light over the sink.
“Can I help?” I ask.
“Yeah, get the almond milk out of the fridge,” she instructs. I watch as she gets out a grater and two large blocks of chocolate from the cupboard.
“Old school,” I say.
Sarah smiles. “There’s never been a mix that’s as good as the real thing. That’s what my gran says. She taught me how to make it. You mix milk and dark chocolate together, add a tiny bit of sugar and some vanilla. You’ll see. Girl, you’ll be spoiled rotten after this.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been spoiled before, so I’m kind of looking forward to it.
“Where are you going when you get out?” I ask. Obviously, she can’t go back to where the stepbrother lives.
“Gran’s. She lives in Hartford. You’ll meet her if you’re here Tuesday night. She always brings me dinner and we eat together.”
“What about your grandfather?”
She grates chocolate into a pan. “Dead, I guess. She doesn’t really talk about him. I don’t think he was a good man.”
“Are there any?” I ask with a snort, but the minute I say it, I think of Jamal.
“I think so,” Sarah replies, reaching for the other block. “There has to be, right? They can’t all be fuckwads.”
I guess not. I watch her work. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
She shoots me a crooked smile. “Don’t trust niceness, do you? None of us do. So how else are we going to trust it if we don’t show it to each other? Doesn’t cost me nothin’ to be nice to you. I’m going to be real nice to you and tell you to stay away from those messed-up girls.”
I know who she means. “What’s wrong with them?”
Measuring vanilla, she gives me a pointed look. “They’re messed up. Not like you and me messed up, but serious. One of them was top girl for her pimp and shopped for other girls for him. Dude, she was bringing in twelve-year-olds.”
“That’s not right.”
“You know it. I ain’t trusting no pimp-ass bitch. Bad enough men pimp us, we can’t be pimping each other too.”
“Does it get easier?” I ask. “Right now, I don’t know if I should stay or run, be straight or high.”
Sarah puts water in another pan and sets the one with the chocolate in it on top of the stove. “It does, but you have to do the work, y’know? There’s no getting high and then trying to live straight.” She turns on the burner. “It’s a lot easier to believe you don’t deserve better and run back to what you know.”
Her words are like a magical truth to me. All I can think is that if Krys, who hasn’t seen me in years, and Jamal, who doesn’t know me at all, both think I’m worth taking a chance on, why can’t I take that chance too? Two years ago, I had plans for my life that involved more than getting pills and not getting killed.
“I want better,” I say.
“I know, I can see it. That’s why I’m making you hot chocolate instead of pretending to be asleep.” She smiles. “I’m glad they put you in with me. You remind me why I need to keep workin’ too.”
“You might change your mind after a few more nightmares,” I joke, but I’m not really joking.
“No,” she says, adding the milk to the pot with the melting chocolate. “I don’t think I will. You might ask for a transfer when I have one of mine though.”
I nod toward the stove. “I guess you’d better give me the recipe.”
She grins at me as she begins to stir. I grin back.
chapter four
Narcotics Anonymous. Is it really anonymous when you all live together? I mean, we all know each other’s stories, for the most part. Some of us are more open than others. I’m not one of the open ones, but I like to listen. Makes me feel good about myself to hear about the shit lives of other girls.
At least Mitch wasn’t into the hardcore stuff. He liked to give us stuff that made us feel good or want to party. Then pills to bring us down easy. No heroin or crack. Though, I guess drugs is drugs, right?
I’ve been at Sparrow Brook for almost three weeks, which means I’ve been clean a little longer. Sarah says she found it easy to be straight in here, but for me, not so much. The first two weeks were hard. Being around all these hot messes made me want something to take the edge off, bad. But the difference is I wanted pills—I didn’t need pills.
“I miss pot,” says Treena, one of those girls I wanted to join up with when I first came here. We’re not supposed to mention drug names, especially not in a way that makes them sound yummy. Feeding the addiction is not a good thing.
A couple of other girls make noises of agreement. I roll my eyes. She did this last week too, got everyone riled up.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I offend your delicate white feelings?”
Fuck. Here we go. Treena’s been sniffing around a fight with me for the last few days. I’m not sure why. I don’t think she needs a reason other than she seems to think that white girls and brown girls aren’t supposed to like each other. I guess no one ever taught her that we’re all the same with our faces pressed into a pillow and our asses in the air.
Lucky bitch.
“No,” I reply. “But maybe let Sarah finish talking before you start shootin’ off that fool mouth of yours.”
“You think ’cause you talk like us that you one of us? You ain’t, little snowflake.”
A few of the girls laugh, but the rest are silent and tense. The woman leading the meeting, Vesta, sits up a little straighter. “Girls, this doesn’t need to escalate,” she cautions.
Yes, it does. I don’t need a frigging degree to see how angry and hurt Treena is. She kind of reminds me of Daisy that way. Violence is Treena’s answer to cutting or pulling out hair.
My scars itch.
I don’t stand up because I’m a good person, offering myself to her as some kind of douched-up sacrifice. I stand because I’ve been wanting to punch someone—anyone—in the face for a long fucking time. I curl my hands into fists.
Treena comes at me. Girls start yelling and cheering. Sarah shouts at me to stop.
I let Treena take the first swing. She hits me in the side of the head. Stupid cow. It doesn’t really hurt, not nearly as much as when I slam my knuckles into her nose. Oh, that satisfying crunch. Mm-hmm. Warm blood on the back of my fingers.
Someone gasps. Someone else hollers gleefully. Vesta shoves tissues into Treena’s hands and takes her away to get medical attention. Bitch is probably going to get taken to the doctor. Everyone wants a trip outside.
I wipe my hand on my jeans.
“That was stupid,” Sarah tells me.
“Felt good though.” I’m smiling and I can’t stop. Eventually, she smiles a little too.
Treena’s girls don’t bother me. They don’t know what to do with their top girl gone. A couple of other girls congratulate or thank me, even. Others stay quiet as they leave the room. I guess the meeting’s over.