Page 32 of Ordinary Girl

“You need to make sure someone’s with you. Call first, we’ll get someone to come over. But, yeah, you can hang out at the clubhouse.”

“Okay.” She forces the smallest of smiles, but she doesn’t drop her arms. “Thanks.”

I shoot her a smile back, and then get out of there, with only the tiniest hint of guilt still gnawing away at me.

Fifteen

Ana

Kaspermeans well, but the more I look at him, as he lounges against the bar, one elbow resting on the counter top, surrounded by club girls all openly flirting with him, the more it kills me inside. What happened to mama, it was my fault. I’d been attracted to Kasper, of course I had. He’s exactly my type…wasexactly my type. But I look at him now and I feel sick. It was my fault. My mama was shot dead, and it wasmyfault. Because I wanted to be closer tohim…

“You okay, honey?”

I glance up as a woman I don’t recognize sits down beside me on the battered leather couch close to the pool table. “I don’t know, to be honest.”

She takes a drag on her cigarette, turning her head away to blow smoke up at the ceiling. “I’m Cady.” She looks at me and smiles. “I’ve been away. From here, I mean. This place.” She takes another drag before offering her cigarette to me. An offer I decline. “Took a bit of a break. Spent a couple of years in Iceland, of all places.”

“What’s wrong with Iceland?” I ask, and immediately regret it. I don’t give a shit why she went to Iceland, I don’t even know why she’s telling me this.

“Nothing.” She shrugs, glancing around the unusually quiet clubhouse. But it’s the middle of the day. They’re probably all out doing something, I’m not sure I want to know what. “Just not somewhere I ever wanted to go.”

“So, why did you, then? Go, I mean. To Iceland.”

She looks at me, smiling slightly. “I wanted to hang out someplace different. Somewhere I’d never been before.”

“Okay.” I’m not really in the mood for conversation. I’m only here because Freja didn’t want to leave me home alone. She was coming here to cook up some food for yet another club party, so I had to come, too. I’m not supposed to be left alone, am I? They keep telling me it’s because they’re trying to keep me safe but I know it’s really because they know I’ll just run if I’m given the chance. And they’re right. They think if they keep it up long enough I’ll give in: accept that this is my fate, my life now. They’re wrong. I’m still getting out of here, I just need to choose my time more carefully.

“Anyway,” Cady sighs, stubbing her cigarette out in the ashtray balanced precariously on the arm of the couch. “I’ve been hearing all about you. Sorry to hear about your mama.”

I don’t respond. Don’t look at her. I keep my eyes down.

“But, you’re in a good place here. It might not feel that way right now, but you’ll get used to it.”

My head snaps up, and I glare at her, my stomach a knot of tension, anger burning through my insides. “What if I don’twantto get used to it? Have any of you thought about that?”

She takes a second before she says anything, but her gaze doesn’t waver from mine. “They aren’t keeping you prisoner, Ana.”

“It feels like they are. I can’t go anywhere alone, can’t see my friends or go back home–”

“This is your home now. There is no other option.”

I feel stupid, hot tears prick the back of my eyes and I furiously try to blink them away.

“Honey, you have to listen to me. Listen to me, Ana. It will be so much easier if you just let this all happen. Believe me, I know, because I’ve been there. I’ve been where you are, and I got through it. You will, too.”

I frown. “What do you mean, you’ve been where I am?”

She shifts her body around to face me, tucks her legs up underneath herself. “Okay, maybe the circumstances were a little different, but this wasn’t the kind of place I saw myself becoming a part of either. I came here because of Kel–”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you need to understand that you can either fight this, or accept it. And the second option is gonna make your life so much easier.”

I turn my head away, focus on the bar where Jep’s busy unloading crates of beer. And I can smell chili and fried onions coming from the kitchen, but no matter how nice those cooking smells are, my appetite still refuses to return. How can I eat when my stomach is permanently twisted up?

“Ana, look at me, sweetheart.”

“Did they send you here, to talk to me? Try to get me to fall into line?”

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