Page 55 of Elijah's Hope
He’d made me start small with shoplifting. Then it had been using me to distract marks while he picked wallets.
Then finally, hisbig planwas the reason I had a freaking criminal record for extortion. Which could have resulted in jail. But because I was a minor and it had been made clear by my public defender that I was under the influence of my uncle, the charges were dropped to a misdemeanor. I was able to pay off my fines with community service.
After that had happened, I told Rip I was done with all of his schemes.
Only now, he was starting to pressure me again. I wasn’t contributing enough, not paying enough toward rent and food. Because with a criminal record all the jobs that were left to me in these parts were shitty waitressing and bartending jobs. Jobs where I had to show as much cleavage as possible to earn anything in tips.
Cleavage. The word came back to me. I had been sitting in the living room watchingThe Bachelorwhen Rip and Jimmy came in to join me, they’d said. Wanted to talk to me about a plan they had. Jimmy had handed me an iced tea—
Wait. That’s right. I hadn’t been drinking. I’d drank that iced tea then Jimmy and Rip had started talking about an easy way to make money. Something they’d said I was born for.
Then it all went hazy. There was nothing after that. Which only made sense if…
They drugged me. Fuck!
I scrambled out of the bed and made my way across the narrow hall to the bathroom. There was a mirror above the sink. I looked at my hair and there was something sticky in it.
I brought it to my nose and winced. I knew that smell. The smell of sex. I lifted my shirt. There were bruises on the sides of my breasts.
Rage tore through me.
“Rip!” I screamed. His bedroom connected to the bathroom so I pulled back the accordion door so I was basically standing at the foot of his bed. “You asshole, tell me what you and Jimmy did to me now!”
He groaned and rolled over. Clearly coming out of his own hangover. Alcohol-induced rather than drugs, I thought. He must be the only man left in the country who wore tighty whities and not for the first time since I had been stuck with him at age twelve, did I curse my mother for dying in that car wreck.
He wasn’t responding fast enough so I reached behind me for the bar of soap on the sink and winged it at him.
“Ow! Fuck! You trying to kill me?”
“I would if it didn’t mean having to go to jail for the rest of my life, because you are not worth it. Now tell me what you did, you sorry son of a bitch.”
He sat up and pulled a sheet over his round belly. “It’s not right, you shoutin’ at me in my room. Go start some breakfast and I’ll be out when I’m decent.”
“Don’t you tell me what’s RIGHT!” I screamed at him. “You drugged me, and I woke up with jizz in my hair. You better fucking talk to me now!”
“Watch your language, girl,” he said, trying to sound stern and I was ready to pull my hair out I was so beside myself. “Listen, it was harmless—”
“Did you let that motherfucker rape me?”
“No!” he objected as if I had slapped him. “I told him that would be too far. I just let him titty fuck you.”
I closed my eyes and breathed through my mouth, thinking I was going to be sick.
“And you watched?” I asked, disgusted. It was the one thing I had been spared of by my sack-of-shit uncle. I’d had to lie for him, steal for him, extort money for him. Every once in a while he’d slap me around. But he’d never touched me that way. I never thought he even saw me as a sexual person. Until now.
“Well…I…filmed it. But that’s not the same thing. I was like the director so it wasn’t dirty or nothing!”
A new level of outrage ripped through me and it took a second for me to recover my breath. “You filmed it.”
“Yeah, it was Jimmy’s idea. You know how much those sex videos sell for on those porn sites. A couple hundred a pop. I told Jimmy we should just tell you outright, but he didn’t think you would agree to it. Said you were a prude or some such shit.”
I wasn’t a prude. I had just figured out real quick I didn’t care for Jimmy touching me.
“And you owe me. You know you do for taking you in when you was little. Now you’ve decided play all high and mighty about breaking the law, you’re not bringing in enough to keep us both fed.”
I gritted my teeth. “You could get a real job.”
Then he did what he always did and reached for his back. “You know I can’t because of my disability.”
