Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
I didn’t know if I should feel angry or not. After all, I’d told him to leave me alone, and that’s what he was doing. But the truth is, I was angry. This wasn’t the Jameson I knew. The Jameson I knew always did what he wanted no matter what. I’d never been able to tell him what to do, and right now I needed him to come tell me that I hadn’t just completely screwed up our thing–whatever that thing was–by going in for a kiss when I shouldn’t have.
But that never happened.
What happened was that I fell asleep that night with my phone in my hand, waiting for him to call or text me, and then woke up in the morning with no new alerts, and decided to just go over there myself to see him.
But when I knocked on the door, there was no answer. And when I called his phone, it went straight to voicemail.
And that’s when I noticed that both of the family cars were gone.
I kept knocking. I yelled for him, hoping he’d hear me if maybe he was still sleeping. I even went around back and looked in his bedroom window, and what I saw sent a chill through my veins.
Jameson’s room was empty. The furniture was still there, but his things were gone.
It was the same with the rest of the house. It was like the whole family had packed their things and left in the middle of the night.
No one at school knew anything. I contacted the police the next day and told them I thought something suspicious may have happened. The cops looked skeptical, but did an “investigation” anyway that ended up turning up nothing.
Weeks went by, followed by months. I called Jameson’s phone every day for the first two, then every week for the next three, then stopped. My heart simply couldn’t take it anymore.
Around that time is when I stopped looking out my window at his before bed too.
I tried to come up with scenarios in my mind that would explain where he and his family could be–why they would have just left in the middle of the night without saying anything to anyone–especially me. But none of them made sense, and the ones that did were too dark to think about and gave me nightmares.
The police said there were no signs of foul play. No signs of a break-in or any kind of violence. No one at school had any kind of worthwhile theories, and no one from Jameson’s family had alerted the principal that he wouldn’t be attending classes for the rest of the year.
He was just gone.
The one guy who was there for me when I really needed someone was just…gone.
Chapter 3
Iris
THREE YEARS LATER.
“Remember, the guys out there are just cash cows. That’s how you have to think of them. And you’re just here to milk them for all they’ve got. Every last penny.”
I glance at Eliza in the mirror and feel my heartrate skyrocket. I’m doing my best to finish applying a set of fake eyelashes, and I’m doing a terrible job at it too. I rarely wear any kind of makeup, and the most I’ve ever done to my lashes is maybe a bit of mascara, but never anything as elaborate as these.
“Listen, Eliza–” I start to say but am quickly cut off.
“Crystal!” She instantly corrects me. “In here, I’m Crystal and you are Tessa. And don’t forget that! Okay? We leave our real selves out there, and in here we become other people.”
I nod and take a deep breath that fills my lungs with the stench of cheap body lotion, regret, and female animosity. Crystal and I are sitting in the locker room of Ja-Ja-Ja-Jaguars, a strip club just a few miles down the road from what you’d consider downtown Boxhurst.
Eliza has worked here a few months now and has been telling me how great the money is—especially when compared to working as a waitress or a barista—so to celebrate my 18th birthday I’m in the back locker room of the club, cramming my feet into a pair of her old heels, caking on the makeup, teasing my hair like I’m a babe from an '80s rock video, and trying not to die of embarrassment as tons of other girls walk confidently past me with no clothes on, while I huddle up on a stool in a set of red lingerie with a matching pair of lace stockings.
“Cash cows, cash cows, cash cows,” I say to myself over and over, as though I’m going to hypnotize myself into believing I’m actually confident in what I’m about to do, when really I’m on the verge of throwing up the breakfast burrito I ate this morning—the only food I’ve had all day. “Cash cows, cash cows…”