Page 3 of Torment

“Jeez.”

“Anyway, a normal person in that situation would apologize profusely and scurry out as quickly as possible. They’d probably also arrange for the front desk to send the couple some sort of apology gift, like a free bottle of the most expensive champagne. But not me.”

Lauren’s eyes widened. “What did you do?”

“I just thought to myself, ‘Oh, it’s Friday. They must be participating in the Joining ritual’. It wasn’t a fully conscious thought. More like deep in my subconscious. Anyway, I stepped past them like it was nothing and went into the bathroom to start wiping things down.”

“Oh, no.” Lauren pressed one palm against her forehead.

“Oh, yes,” I said glumly. “It took me a while to catch on. The couple went silent, and then the guy started asking me what the fuck I was doing. I turned around and saw them both glaring at me, wrapping themselves in the sheets, and I was so confused. Then it hit me. I looked like a perverted freak. I said sorry and left, but it was too late. They made a complaint.”

“Didn’t your manager understand, though?” Lauren asked, her brows dipping in a frown. “I mean, he knows who you are, right?”

I nodded. “I’ve explained it to him in the past, but that incident wasn’t the first misunderstanding that occurred at the hotel. Or the worst.”

“Oh.” She grimaced.

The hotel job was the third one I’d lost since moving to the city eight months ago. I’d been fired from a similar position at another hotel for basically the same reason as the most recent one, and before that, I’d been let go from a waitressing job at a piano bar on Toulouse Street because the owner realized who I was. She said she was sorry, but she wanted the place to have a positive vibe, and if any customers happened to figure out who I was, it might bring their mood down.

Not my fault, but not exactly her fault either. It was understandable. I’d had what some people might politely refer to as an ‘interesting life’ so far.

Not-so-polite translation: I was a sad, screwed-up weirdo.

After my rescue from the underground shelter eight years ago, I’d been sent to Baton Rouge with all the other New Eden victims for a sort of crash course in state education and general life lessons. That took up three years of our lives. There was a lot to learn. Not just everything we missed at school—crammed into mere months—but basic things like how to use a cell phone, how to open a bank account, how to dress, and how to speak to other people. Everything that came so naturally to others was brand new to us. It was beyond difficult, and most days I wound up crying myself to sleep.

We were lucky, however, in the sense that our case attracted so much attention worldwide. Thousands of generous well-wishers donated money to a charity set up for us, and in the end, we were all allocated some money from the endowment. Around fifty grand each. Unfortunately, a lot of the money went toward our education and living costs over the years, so in the end, it actually wasn’t a hell of a lot. Much better than nothing, though, and it certainly helped.

After we all finished our studies in Baton Rouge, most of us drifted off to various corners of the country, not wanting to be anywhere near the state of Louisiana after what we went through. I went to New York for a while. Then Chicago. After getting sick of huge cities and the claustrophobic feeling they gave me, I tried out some smaller cities and towns in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, and Minnesota.

All very different places, but always the same result. Wherever I went, people recognized me as ‘that girl from the New Eden video’. I was constantly inundated with requests for interviews from the media, and people would often walk up to me on the street and harangue me with question after question when I was simply trying to grab a coffee or do some grocery shopping.

A lot of them were nice and genuinely concerned about what I went through, but I could tell it was like grief porn for another large percentage of them. They wanted to hear the worst of the worst from me; wanted to hear every sordid little detail about what went on at New Eden. It excited them to hear it for some twisted reason. Maybe because it made them feel fortunate to have enjoyed relatively normal existences compared to me and the other women and children I grew up with.

After a few years of this, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I dyed my blonde hair dark red and started wearing heavy eye makeup so that people didn’t recognize me as often. I also legally changed my name. No one except Lauren or the other New Eden people called me Jolie anymore—it was Jo-Jo or simply plain old Jo to everyone else. As for my last name, I’d closed my eyes and stuck a pin on a map to pick a new one. The pin landed on Sinclair, Wyoming.

That was my identity now. Jo Sinclair.

Still, things didn’t magically change with the birth of my new identity. I was the same damaged person, and no matter what I did, I felt like I was failing all the time. Falling further and further behind every day. I felt a throbbing ache in my guts whenever I compared myself to my peers, because so many people my age or even younger than me seemed to have it all so damn together. They had college degrees, careers, long-term relationships, even kids.

I couldn’t even hold down a steady entry-level position, let alone anything else.

I’d always wanted to go to college, but that didn’t work out for me either. I felt overwhelmed by everything when I tried to go a few years ago, like a fist was constantly squeezing my lungs and heart, so I dropped out halfway through the very first semester and never looked back. Since then I’d worked at a series of mediocre jobs, all the while wishing I could just be a better person. Stronger. Smarter. More capable.

But no matter what I did, no matter what I tried, it always felt like I’d never catch up to anyone else my age, because half my life was stolen from me. I was angry and tired all the time, and I just wished someone would scoop me up and take care of me for a while, shielding me from the cold, stark realities of life.

I knew that wasn’t exactly the most progressive feminist way of thinking, but it wasn’t about me being a woman. It was about me being a human who was totally exhausted by life and what had been done to me. I just wanted someone to care for me and control my life while I recovered and tried my best to finally get my shit together.

That was all.

I knew deep down, there was a better version of me somewhere, hidden inside the deepest recesses of my body—a bright, brave Jolie telling me I didn’t need anyone else to help me or take control. Telling me to stop drinking so much, grow up, move on, do something, anything other than this depressing cycle. But the fear and lethargy always won out, and I kept on living my life the same old way each and every day.

“How do you do it?” I asked, looking at Lauren. She was around my age, but she seemed fine. She didn’t wallow in misery like me. She had her life together. “How do you keep going despite all the crap?”

She sighed. “Believe me, I have shitty days too. Most of the other people in my course are either in their late teens or early twenties. Then there’s me, twenty-six and still two years off graduating from my first degree. No boyfriend, because there’s just no time with everything else, even though half the other people my age are freaking married already. It sucks. But I just do it. I keep thinking to myself that it’s hard now, but in a few years I’ll have a degree and a decent job, and then I’ll have time for other things like boyfriends. That’s what you have to do. Think about the future and try to keep the past in the rearview mirror. Otherwise you just spiral.”

I gave her a faint smile, hoping her positive attitude would finally rub off on me. She was the reason I’d moved here in the first place.

We’d always remained in contact over the years, but she’d moved straight to New Orleans after our education in Baton Rouge was complete, as opposed to me who went all over the place, aimless and wild. After a conversation near the beginning of the year, where I’d admitted how stunted and hopeless I felt, she suggested I move here. She said it would be good for me to be around a friend who genuinely understood what I’d gone through.

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