Page 3 of Stay Baby Stay

“Sure, you would.”

Kenzie smiles sheepishly. “Okay, fine, I would. But do the math, Hollywood. One night of schmoozing with a bunch of geezers could buy us two weeks in this room. Steph says these parties happen once a month. We’d only have to do like three of them to start saving for a better place.”

“I haven’t even agreed to do one.”

She sighed. “Don’t you want to find a job you don’t hate?”

“You know why I do this job,” I said quietly. The one nice thing about working in housekeeping is that you don’t have to interact with too many people.

“I know, and I’m not saying you have to stop scrubbing toilets. I’m saying, wouldn’t it be nice if you could keep all the money you make from scrubbing toilets, instead of forfeiting it to some bitch who already pays you far below minimum wage.”

Kenzie knows better than anyone how much I can’t stand my boss, Doreen, who also happens to be our landlord.

“I’m not sure how some old guy slipping his hand up my skirt is a better alternative,” I said.

“Well, as someone who’s used to letting guys they don’t particularly like into their pants in exchange for food and basic goods, let me tell you, getting fucked for money feels a lot better than getting fucked over.”

I felt my anxiety shaking my internal foundations like the first rumbles of an earthquake. “You know I don’t do parties, Kenzie.”

That’s when she scooted closer to me and cupped my face in her hands. “I do. And I promise, all you have to do is show up. I’ll take care of the rest.”

The crunch of tires on loose concrete drags me back to the present, into the sticky summer-night heat of the dead mall’s parking lot.

Headlights cut through the dark. An engine grumbles.

The van we’ve been waiting for pulls around the building and comes to a high-pitched halt in front of us.

Kenzie takes my hand as a short, stocky man hops out of the driver’s seat and walks toward us.

“You McKenzie?” he shouts over the hum of the engine. It’s hard to tell exactly what he looks like in the dark, but the rasp in his voice suggests he’s old enough to have been smoking two packs a day for the past twenty years.

“I am,” Kenzie says. “This is my friend. I told Steph about her.”

He opens the van’s sliding door. The interior lights turn on, and I count three other girls squinting against the sudden brightness inside.

The light reflects off Kenzie’s silver half-heart BFF necklace. I’ve got the other half tucked inside my makeup case at the motel, but Kenzie wears hers constantly. It was a birthday present from me to her. I stole it off a clearance rack at a jewelry store in this mall, back when it was still open.

That was three years ago, right before we ran out on our foster family when we were fifteen years old.

Kenzie’s a few months older than I am, but I’m usually the one who looks after her. I don’t mind. She looks after me, too, in her own ways. When we go grocery shopping, she handles the check-out process so I don’t have to talk to the cashier. When Doreen calls to berate me for not doing something she forgot to mention, Kenzie answers and promises to pass along the message—which she promptly forgets.

She does these little favors for me. Things that come easily to her and so many others that feel insurmountable to me. Because she’s my best friend, and best friends look out for each other.

When she squeezes my hand and whispers, “You can do this, Hollywood,” I don’t tell her she’s wrong.

I just think of it as one more little favor. One small way of helping us in the long run.

“Phones and bags,” the driver says, snapping his fingers. Kenzie and I hand over our purses. He tosses them into a black garbage bag, presumably filled with the other girls’ belongings and croaks, “Get in.”

Steeling myself, I let Kenzie go on ahead and then climb into the van behind her.

The door slams shut, and off we rumble into the night.

Chapter Two

Caleb

I count three stone fountains on my way up the winding drive to Russell King’s mansion. Dolphins leaping. Horses spitting. Cherubs pissing into giant clamshells.

---