Page 4 of Brave
Without thinking. Without stressing.
Just to see if she still could.
And then what? She didn’t know what time it was, but she knew it was after midnight. Where in D.C. could she possibly go at this time on a Friday night?
Second Friday of the month, to be exact.
Where did they go on the second Friday of every single month, for almost two full years before Piggy ran away and fucked up all their lives?
Black Light, of course.
Shaking from more than just the cold now, Puppy shut off the water. For a long time, she sat in the bottom of the tub, dripping and thinking.
There was no way she could go to Black Light. Not after what Ethen had done. They’d never let her in the door.
Not that she was responsible for his cruel behavior, but she still shared in the blame. Because, of course she did. She was part of his menagerie.
Her membership probably wasn’t even good anymore.
Still, Black Light was familiar. It was the only BDSM dungeon she’d ever been to. Where else but there could she go?
She dried off as best she could for how wet she was. Wringing out the wet terrycloth hand towel, she had a minor panic attack trying to figure out how to hide them. Her mother wouldn’t care if she got up in the morning and found a few wet things in the bathroom. Pony, on the other hand, would know she’d broken the rules. She would tell Ethen, he would issue a punishment, Pony would have a meltdown the entire time she did whatever he commanded, and everyone would know it was all Puppy’s fault.
Wadding both the bath and hand towels up in as small a ball as she could, she stuffed them under the sink behind the feminine care and cleaning products. Flicking off the bathroom light, she then crept back out into the bedroom she shared with the only person she considered both an enemy and a friend. The only friend she had. Ethen’s erstwhile spy.
Pony breathed so softly. Even after her ears tuned in to the rhythmic whisper of air, it was hard to tell if she was awake or asleep. Pony was good at pretending and she never snored.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The soft illumination of distant streetlights bled into the room through cracks in the window blinds, but it was enough to turn some shadows darker than others while some furniture lit up faintly. She felt her way along a three-foot stretch of wall from the bathroom door to the corner that opened up onto the bedroom as a whole. Around this corner was the closet and Pony’s narrow cot.
Slowly, she reached for it. Painstakingly silent, she slid it open.
The closet interior was nothing but a pitch-black maw gaping open in the dark. Reaching in, Puppy took the first thing her hand fell on… a shirt by the length and feel. Back into the closet she went, wincing at the soft clatter of plastic and wire hangers bumping together, until she found a pair of soft cotton pants, hanging by the ankle hems in the clasps of a skirt hanger, just the way Ethen preferred it. Because for the life of her, no matter how much time had passed, she could not make herself do the laundry in any way but the way he had preferred.
They were probably yoga pants by the feel of them, but they still had her neat iron creases cutting so sharply down the legs that Puppy could feel them in the dark.
She got dressed as silently as she knew how and then she sat on the edge of her bed, still without any lights on at all, trying to get her stomach to stop knotting. She felt sick to the core of herself. Her muscles locked so tight that it was all she could do not to run back into the bathroom for another ice-water shower until she felt better.
Except, she never felt better. And she never would until she got this… this knotted sickness… out of her.
That would never happen. Not for as long as she stayed like this—an official ward of her mother, and an unofficial prisoner of Pony and Ethen. A ghost of the brave person she used to be, but certainly brave no longer.
Puppy grabbed the backpack with her wallet tucked safely inside. That was almost laughable. She had her ID, but her mother had taken her driver’s license just as fast as she was released from the hospital. Truthfully, this wasn’t even her wallet. Hers had been checkbook style, made of soft brown leather and engraved with her name, which Ethen had given her—all four of them, in fact—one year for Christmas.
Her mother had taken that too.
What she had now was a cheap, plastic pink thing found at the same Goodwill that most of her and Pony’s clothes had come from. It had sparkles and a Hello Kitty sticker on the front and had probably belonged to a six-year-old before her. But there was a pocket inside for money and her debit card. Although she hadn’t been able to keep the panic attacks at bay long enough to hold a job, her mother made sure there was always a little bit of money in her bank account for buses, taxis, and such.
Her cellphone was in the kitchen, on the charger where Pony put it every night, lined up in a neat row of two—with Pony’s always first, hers always last, and Ethen’s always missing. They were pay-as-you-go phones from Walmart, but at least they worked.
And that was how Puppy found herself sitting at the end of her mother’s driveway at just after midnight, in hot pink yoga pants and an orange shirt that looked like a jack-o-lantern. The colors clashed, but she didn’t dare go back inside to change. She couldn’t risk the taxi coming while she was inside. What if it honked? It was better to look as if she was incapable of dressing herself than risk waking Pony up.
She felt ashamed, and useless, helpless, and she never used to be.
It was that last part that gave her the courage to get into the back of the cab once it arrived and let it carry her all the way downtown to Black Light. She wouldn’t stay long, she told herself. She’d just walk inside—and probably only make it as far as Luís in the psychic shop or Danny at the security desk before marching right back out again, but at least she’d be able to hold her head high and say she’d done something.
She’d just walk in say hello. Just hello. To someone other than Pony. She could still do that much.
Couldn’t she?
