Naked

NAKED

stacey trombley

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Stacey Trombley. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Entangled Teen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

Edited by Stephen Morgan & Elizabeth Vail

Cover design by Kelley York

Interior design by Jeremy Howland

Print ISBN 978-1-63375-007-4

Ebook ISBN 978-1-63375-008-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition July 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Chapter One

S
ometimes being interviewed by the police is like a game.

It’s kind of fun, keeping them from the truth. At least until they get pissed and start hitting, bruising, breaking. Then it’s not so fun anymore. But until then, I have to keep my head up or I’ll never make it out alive.

I shift in the metal chair, uncomfortable, and lean away from the cold table.

Hiding the truth is easy when no one knows anything. What sucks is when the police know more than you do. If they catch you in one lie, the whole web collapses.

Good thing the woman in front of me isn’t a cop. She hasn’t
said
she’s not a cop, but she doesn’t have to. The way she smiles at me with the kind of innocence I used to have, it’s pretty obvious.

“What’s your name?” she asks. As if we’re just normal people having a casual conversation. As if she doesn’t know how dangerous that kind of information is for someone like me.

“Exquisite,” I say.

“That’s very pretty.” She says it so sincerely that for a moment, I think she believes me. Maybe she really is as naive as she looks.

In my world, naive might as well mean dead.

“My name is Sarah,” she says.

Why in the world would she think I care what her name is?

“Okay,” I say.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.” The word slips out before I even think about it. That’s my go-to answer, a lie I’ve told so often I almost believe it.

“Hmm, you don’t look nineteen.”

Funny that in all the times I’ve been in police stations, a hundred set of handcuffs cutting off my circulation, my age has never been questioned. I’m nineteen. They know I’m lying—my seventeenth birthday is still months away—but they don’t care.

No one cares.

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

A creak grabs my attention, and I look to the door. There’s a small window where the asshole cop watches us. My black eye throbs, even though it wasn’t him who gave it to me. Someone else gave me that black eye, with the same hand he used to hold against the side of my face as we fell asleep together.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got better luck with the woman in a suit than the man behind the window. The way he shakes his head every time he sees me, it looks like he wants to hurt me—he’d enjoy it.

“You don’t like the police, do you?”

My attention shifts back to the woman.

“Nope,” I say honestly, despite my minor surprise.

“Well, it might help you to know that I’m not a cop.” As if her being a cop was ever a possibility. “And I’m not here to get information and leave. I’m here to help you. If I can.” She smiles, like she’s trying to put me at ease. Yeah, good luck with that. “You’re sure you’re nineteen?”

“You calling me a liar?”

She smiles. “No. It’s just, if you are nineteen, there’s nothing I can do for you. You’ll go to jail, or go back to that life out there, on the streets. I don’t want that. And somehow, I don’t think you want that, either.”

“Why would you think that?” Now I stand. She thinks she knows me. She thinks that she gets it, thinks she gets me.

Her eyes soften, they grow…sadder somehow.

I don’t let myself show her any change in my expression. My walls keep the nightmares away. The second they fall, I’m screwed.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “But I can usually tell if I can help someone. And I think I can help you.”

I blink. My walls almost fall then, nearly crash down and crumble all over my feet, but I catch myself before it’s too late.

I make my face blank, impassive. Don’t let her see beneath my mask. It’s a trick I learned for when guys pay for me. An hour. All night. Never let them see how I really feel.

It’s more important than ever that I keep strong, keep this woman from getting to me, seeing too much.

“But if you were, say, sixteen,” she says, “I could help you. Give you a new life. No jail, just hope.”

I sit back down and look down at my hands. I don’t like how much she knows, suspects.

“What do you think you can do for me?”

She stands and walks slowly around the room. When she walks behind my chair, my heart pounds. I hate not being able to see her. I don’t care how kind she seems. I’m in a police station. I’m not safe.

“I really wish you’d tell me your real name.”

“Why?” I ask, just as she finishes her round and faces me once more.

“Because I don’t feel right calling you Exquisite, and I’d like to be able to have a real conversation with you.”

I roll my eyes. “I know better than to think you care. No one cares.”

She faces me again. Her eyes are a pretty brown, surprisingly firm for how soft she seems. “Do you really think that no one in the world cares? Or just no one in a police station? No one in the city? It’s not possible that someone out there would want to help you, somehow, someway?”

I think about this for a moment. “Some people want to help, but that doesn’t mean they can.”

“Well, then we’ve established that I want to help. So can’t I at least know your name?”

At least she’s trying something other than broken ribs and swollen eyes. But if she’s really as innocent as she seems, then she’s not in a position to help. Anyone who knows the truth will hurt me. Anyone who doesn’t know the truth is better off believing the lie.

“I told you my name,” I say.

Her shoulders deflate like she’s disappointed, and she tucks a loose strand of brown hair behind her ear. She takes in a deep breath and pulls out a file from her briefcase. “Will you at least tell me why you’re here?”

“Doesn’t that file already tell you why?”

She looks down. “There’s not much here. It says you go by the name Exquisite.”

“I told you that.”

“The police seem to think you’re a prostitute.”

Of course they do. Other than the smeared lipstick and six-inch heels—clue number one—they’ve seen me in here before. “People make lots of assumptions,” I say.

“So it’s not true?”

I don’t respond.

“Who gave you that black eye?”

“A man who also thought I was a hooker,” I say. Sometimes I impress myself with my ability to spin the truth to my advantage. Sure, the cop thought I was a hooker, because I am. Or was. Or something.

This is one truth she’ll never get out of me.

Her eyebrows rise. “So, a man sexually harassed you, you refused him, and he hit you?”

I shrug. Sounds like a pretty good story to me.

“If that’s the case, why haven’t you made a phone call? A few statements and you’re free to go.”

I blink. She’s got me there. I search for a lie here, something to tell her, some excuse about why I haven’t called anyone, why I still can’t. Instead, I give the kind of answer I truly hate: an honest one. “I don’t have anyone to call.”

The only person I can call, the person who would usually bail me out, is the person who put me here. Sort of. I mean, I kind of put myself here. It must not say it in the file, but I pulled a gun on the cop when he stopped.

Sometimes emotions are too strong to control. He’s just lucky I didn’t pull the trigger.

But Luis is the reason I was on the street with a black eye. Luis is the reason I had nowhere else to go. And now I don’t think I can ever go back.

Once broken, some things never heal. With him, I felt as close to whole as I could get in that little apartment. He found me. Saved me. Loved me.

But now we’re broken, too.

Sarah watches me for an uncomfortable moment like she’s contemplating something, then puts the file down. “Can I show you something?”

My eyebrows pull down in what I’m sure is an unattractive way. “What kind of something?”

She stands and smiles to reassure me. “Follow me.”

Still very confused, but curious, I follow her. The creepy cop is gone now, and we walk down the hall freely. No handcuffs, no guards. I’ve never been this free in a police station. We get to the main entrance, where there are glass cases of posters. A few wanted posters to the right, but the entire left side is covered with about fifty missing person posters.

“Thousands of kids run away each year. Did you know that? With nowhere to go, they often end up in prostitution.” She says it like a teacher or something, talking about a subject we’ll have a test on later, not like it’s something I’ve lived through.

Does she know I’ve experienced this firsthand? Or is this a game, too? A test to see if I’ll slip up and reveal something?

She says, “Those kids don’t realize that their parents still look for them. Some parents never give up.”

I look over all the posters, all the missing children. What kind of lives have they found on the streets? Did they end up like me? Selling themselves for the hope of a new life? How many of these kids are already dead?

Then I see a set of familiar dead eyes staring back at me from one of the posters. The name reads Anna Rodriguez. I look at all of the posters with the same casual indifference, but the image from that one is seared into my brain.

The girl is young, innocent. Her skin is a pretty olive color, dark enough that most people wouldn’t guess she’s only half Puerto Rican. She wears a ponytail with wisps of unruly curls falling into her face and a simple string of pearls around her neck.

I’m surprised this is the picture they chose—it’s not perfect enough. Those curls would drive my blond trophy-wife mother crazy.

I almost laugh thinking about what she’d say of my ratty hair now. Or how about the running makeup, split lip, and rose tattoo on my ankle?

“Recognize any of those girls?” Sarah says.

I shrug. “Nope.”

She seems to believe me, which is good, because I mean it. I never knew that girl, and neither did her parents.

I don’t dare look her in the eye again. Without another word, she takes me back to my cell and I’ll admit, I’m a bit relieved.

“Just hang in there a little longer,” she says.

I don’t have the energy to ask her if she’s done with me, if she plans on questioning me again.

All I know is I cannot let her know the truth.

The fact that my parents still have missing person posters up, are still looking for me… I’m not sure what to think of it. If they knew where I really was, what I was really doing…

The things my mother would say would be bad enough. But my father? He’d disown me. I’m sure of it.

I pace in my cell. Back and forth, back and forth.

Life would be easier, I suppose, if I were that girl. Normal. Worrying about homework, choir practice, and who would take me to homecoming.

That girl wouldn’t have a bruise forming on her upper arm from being held down, stolen from the one person she loved. That girl wouldn’t be sitting in a cold cell, wondering how the cops will hurt her next.

Anna Rodriguez.

The name rings in my head, a ghost from a past I’ve tried so hard to outrun.

But what I ran to…was it really better?

Guess not anymore.

Good little Anna. Pretty little Anna.

That’s what my parents thought I was. They dressed me up with their expensive clothes, did my hair up in pigtails and curls, put pearls around my neck. Then they expected me to smile and pretend that was what I always wanted—to be just like them. Perfect.

But I’m not. I wasn’t then, and I’m certainly not now.

No, perfect isn’t even close to what I really am. How about dirty? Ruined? Tarnished? Yes, that’s the word my mother would use. Tarnished, like her heart necklace. Once shining with a bright gold sheen, now rubbed and used, its real value exposed. What it always was to begin with.

Cheap.