Page 13 of Cam Girl

The hoity-toity, ivy league-educated, holier-than-thou types. They had matching pocket squares.

I push my glasses up my nose, eyes burning with a combination of exhaustion and rancor.

“Got himself over twenty thousand followers,” Bill added.

“Hearing you talk about those things is throwing me for a loop.” I pinch the bridge of my nose.

None of this is helping. None of this is going to get me out of my current circumstances.

Bill gets me thinking about things better left in the past. Soren certainly never wanted anything to do with me and my sisters, just like his father. Just like Ma.

In response, Bill belches out an off key rhythm like that Aerosmith song. “Then go to bed. I won’t bother you. Unless you want to catch the end ofWhose Line Is It Anyway?”

I push myself off the couch. “It’s a rerun.”

The twisting track of my gut has resulted in complicated knots. On my way to the old room we girls shared, I pause to lift the wedding picture and stand it up straight.

Honey and Alistair gaze longingly into each other’s eyes, with her ginormous diamond ring the center focus of the shot.

The photographer took a shit ton of pictures of the “family” together but those weren’t important enough to frame. Only this one.

“Dick move, Gilli.” Bill’s voice haunts me down the hall.

The first door on the left is the bathroom, squeezed beside a toast-sized kitchen. Mom’s room had been at the end, and the three of us were in bunk beds in the second room.

A stale scent of dust, old lemon cleaner, and forgotten laundry gusts out from the doorway when I push it open. Yeah, I’m not getting any sleep tonight.

I drop face first onto my old mattress. The agony in my head is at explosion levels, accompanied by a symphony of pain from my feet and the broken fingernail.

The trailer is temporary, just for tonight, I tell myself, but where to go next?

I don’t want to leave a trail anyone can follow, and this guy is clearly good at sniffing out personal information. If anyone else falls under scrutiny because I fucked up, I’ll never forgive myself.

He found my apartment, so he’ll find the trailer. He’ll find my work. Unless the whole thing is unrelated.

Stupid bitch.

I groan against the nasty voice in my head.

You need to find a hole to hide in for a while.

There’s no way I can tell my work the truth, either. They’ll get a call in the morning to apologize for not showing up but that’s the most I can do.

They’ll fire me, I’m sure, and I’ll lose whatever forward motion I made with the vet. Even the good relationships I’ve got with my coworkers won’t be enough to save my ass if I come back.

WhenI come back.

The quagmire is temporary. It’s what Suzanne always told us on those long nights alone. The quagmire is temporary, but survival is lifelong.

I flop onto my back and stare at the rungs of the top bunk. Ma’s in Fiji, huh?

Lake Tahoe is a long drive. Too far to trust my rust-bucket car to get me there safely.

But the fishing cabin in Jersey… I remember it, kinda. At least I’ve seen pictures of it before.

I’ve got as much right to go there as anyone else, if the blanket invitation from the wedding still stands.

What’s mine is yours, Alistair had promised us with a grandiose chest puff.Anything you want.

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