Page 10 of Cam Girl

She left her children to fend for themselves like we were a pack of wild animals.

Survival of the fittest.

The cold from the ground rises through my ruined feet. My knees lock and I stumble, losing my balance. A dog barks from a nearby yard and someone yells in a slur for the goddamn animal to shut the fuck up. Walking alone in Baltimore, at night, is just as stupid as staying in the apartment.

Cash, car keys, shoes, clothes. Then I’ve got to get on the road and not look back. At least until I can figure out a way through this mess.

The money isn’t worththis.

Will my dream job erase my painful memories? Overwhelmingly no, but I’m in this now and there is only one way out.

To get through it.

Chapter 3

Gilli

Being in front of a camera makes enemies.

I guess I thought I knew it all, going into the gig; I’d considered the scrutiny and the mental fuckery I’d face.

I did it anyway.

I thought I could handle the comments. People are always super brave when it comes to posting their personal opinions online, like the anonymity of a username gives them leeway to be complete dicks and steamroll over everyone else.

Or maybe they’re shitty to make up for their horrible lives.

“I should have taken the dude seriously from the start,” I grouse out loud.

There are a lot of things I should have done, I think as I pull up in front of the trailer at three o’clock in the morning, exhausted.No excuses.

Me and my ego, which doesn’t deserve to be inflated, assumed the poster was posturing, when I should have taken one look at the money and called the police immediately. Except the police may not take me seriously.

They aren’t going to do shit for me without concrete evidence.

Pulling to a stop, the engine clicks and I stare at the dented tin can where I’d grown up.

The dingy welcome mat packed with years of grime and dirt, from mine and my sisters’ sneakers, evaporates the last bits of moisture in my mouth.

The old place is a disaster and only waiting for a stiff breeze to blow over. Which was well and good until Ma came into money.

She married well.

For her, not for us.

Her new husband only had one kid on his own and decided he didn’t want to haul around a pack of screaming girls even if they came as a package deal with his new wife.

So Ma did what anyone would do—she enlisted my oldest sister Suzanne to watch us, while our father was on the road, and then took off for greener pastures and left us to rot in the shithole.

Claiming “Daddy will be back to watch you, be good until then.”

My bitterness mingles with a fresh wave of panic.

It’s only for tonight. One night to get some sleep and figure out my next move, to buy myself a little time. Time is one of those commodities that doesn’t care if you’re rich.

Inflating my lungs, I hold stale air inside me until I get my wits together enough to get out of the car. A cracked urn with dead flowers, like some kind of yard-sale Grecian relic, tilts haphazardly on one of the porch boards.

I stare at it, noting how the cracks have expanded their territory, and brush my fingers through cobwebs to get to the base. The key is underneath, ringed unmentionable filth, but when I lift it to the lock, the knob’s unlatched.

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