Finding North (Naïve Mistakes Series) Read online

  I wanted to say so much more. I wanted to tell him that my world was coming to an end, in a way. At least it felt like it. It felt like I was on a fifty-foot wave, riding the crest, waiting for the crash...

  Leora: Conall. I'm scared.

  Conall: I know. Sleep tight, baby.

  I put the phone next to me on my pillow, stared at the screen, at that last message: ...baby...

  I was in so fucking deep, man. Something had to go wrong. That's how life goes. I always liked to control life, to foresee the problems.

  But I was out of my depths here. If Conall turned out to be something other than what I thought he was, I'd crash into those rocks at the bottom of that crag and never come back.

  I'd end up like my mother. Or worse.

  I think mom did love dad. I think he's the only one she ever really did love.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  -1-

  "So what does it feel like to date a junkie?" said Barbie Bianca at recess.

  "What?"

  "I know who your sugar-daddy is. Mr. Williams. Coke-head. Is that where he gets all his money."

  "Oh, you should talk." I stood up from my seat, looked down at her (she was a fraction shorter than me.) "How's screwing the biggest dealer in New York going for you?"

  "Wh—what?"

  "Raphael? I know you're with him!"

  "Yeah, well, he protects me."

  "Protects you from what: The Broken Nail Boogie Monster?"

  "You're so fucking jealous. Besides, Raphael is nothing. He's someone I'm screwing for fun. He's dangerous. And your sugar daddy is nothing but a crack head."

  I lost it. I inched forward and yelled into her face: "And yours is a fucking rapist!"

  It was only an iota of a second, then she pushed me. A cheap shot because I could've taken that bitch if I'd been ready. I fell back and hit the edge of the cement table with my back, heard a thud. But the worse part came after:

  It felt like a battering ram had just hit me. I grimaced in tormenting pain. I would've slapped that bitch, but my hand was to my back and I was frozen by the excruciating twinges that were firing from my spine now.

  She grabbed me by the lapels. "You fucking bitch!"

  I started to see spots. My head rolled back. I was being shaken, back and forth. Bianca was shouting, furious!

  What the fuck sprang loose in her!?

  I sensed more people coming around us, crowding in, but I was almost out, couldn't see much.

  I heard a voice in the distance. Headmistress Tabathy? Another teacher.

  Then everything went white.

  -2-

  I woke up in the hospital. Kayla was by my side. I tried to move but couldn't. My back smarted like fucking crazy.

  "Hey, sweetie, guess this means you won't be hopping it up with us at the block party, does it?"

  "Huh? What? Where's Conall?"

  "I called him from your phone as soon as I got here. Twenty minutes ago. He'll be here soon."

  I moved my fingers and looked at them. "Oh, thank god."

  "Testing if you're paralyzed?"

  "Yeah."

  "I do the same when I get hurt. It was just a bad bruise apparently. A very bad bruise. Down to the bone. Man, you really sprang something in her. What did you say?"

  "I told her boyfriend is a rapist..."

  Kayla's face went rigid. She looked out the window.

  "Kayla? What is it?"

  "Nothing, sorry, phased out there."

  I clutched her wrist, fought the sudden twang in my spine. "Stop. Fucking. Lying to me!"

  Her eyes began welling up.

  "I need to go."

  I yanked her! "Ow!" I cried, still holding firmly onto her wrist while my lower back shot bullets of sizzling fire up to my neck.

  "OK, OK, just don't hurt yourself." She sat down on the bed, sighed. "You were right, you know? In the limo on Friday. That I could've gotten him for statutory. That's what he does. He reels girls in with his charm and his fucking tattooed neck and fierce eyes. But screwing them isn't enough. He's a sick fuck. He drugs them. He..." She shook her head.

  "Carry on," I said.

  "Leo, I never told you the full extent of what happened with Raphael and me all those years ago. I mean, I played it down."

  "Well, I figured, but how much worse could it have been? What you told me was horrible."

  "Much worse," she said.

  The she told me:

  "You'll fuck anything when you're high." (Conall had said the same thing.) "You'll also fuck anything when you're not high but have been using for a while. It's like your brain is Jell-O or soup until you get that shit out of your system. Raphael starts you off slow. He slipped half an E in my drink when I was fifteen. Fifteen. It didn't hit me. It never hits you at first. After the second or third time it did. He was slow, took his time. He said, 'It's just so you know how it feels, OK? No pressure.'

  "Well, I liked it. Everyone likes E. The world is fucking dandy on it. No problems anywhere. Shivers and shakes down the pores of your body at the slightest touch... They don't call it the love drug for nothing.

  "We were at a club when it first hit me. I sat on the floor and he chilled out behind me with two girls on his side. And he stroked my back all night.

  "They call it the 'Love drug,' Leo. Not the sex drug. Because it makes you feel like you're in love. Nice, eh?

  "He did nothing to me that night. And, of course, because I was high, I didn't question the fact he had two other bimbos (much older by the way, real big tits. Not like me) on his side. I thought, well, if he's got these babes on his side and still gives me attention, well, I guess I must be something special, right?"

  Conall suddenly barged in. "Leora!" He was out of breath. I'd been holding Kayla's hand and she began to move. I squeezed tighter.

  Conall ran to me and cupped my face, kissed me. "What the fuck happened?"

  "I'm gonna go," said Kayla.

  "No!" I grabbed her, felt a twang again and grimaced. "Please, Kayla. Please..."

  "No, it's fine, you guys—"

  "NO!" I shouted. "Conall, could you give us a minute?"

  "Sure. You must be Kayla. Pleasure to meet you." He held out his hand.

  Kayla stood up, did a sort of a curtsy and gave him a hand like this was a scene out of Pride and Prejudice, shook it lightly.

  "Ladies." He walked out, sat by the window.

  But Kayla got straight back into her story. That she hadn't commented on the hot guy who'd just left the room only confirmed the gravity of what she was telling me. No jokes today.

  "So, at the end of the night, he took me home. As the days went by I got closer and closer to him—"

  "Wait, he knew you were fifteen right?"

  "Of course he knew. But you know what it's like when you're that age? Some fuckturd talks to you about love and you think you've discovered something no one has ever heard about in the whole friggin universe. Hell, you think you have something in common with jolly old Shakespeare that no one else has ever seen. That you're somehow different to everybody else. Now add to that the chemical imbalance the drugs were churning in my head. Yeah, they call them 'Designer' drugs like they're made by fucking Gucci or Louis-Vuitton or something.

  "Goddamn bullshit.

  "He spent two months doing that with me. Slipping me some E, talking to me. Eventually, I took the E myself. I knew where to get it at his place or from anyone of his dealers. I never had to pay for it. Not with money at least.

  "Of course, around that time my dad was also in full-swing. You know, I told you about that. And I really don't wanna get into it. And, of course, I told Raphael. I thought he was my big fucking hero because he broke my dad's jaw. I didn't give a shit. The guy deserved his fucking jaw cracked. My mom found out about dad's 'hobbies' after that. And that was that.

  "Yeah, big hero. Meanwhile, what I didn't know, is that Raffie was doing the same shit with about seven other girls at the same time. The only difference is they weren't his d
aughters. You know that one chick was fucking thirteen? Thirteen, Leo. That is fucking sick! But when you're that age, walking around with the big boys and girls, you think you're one of them. That's why there are laws against this shit, man. Because kids can be influenced! Trust me, I know.

  "He one girl for each day of the week or something. The guy has like a hundred apartments. (OK, not that many. But a shitload.) Some on the Upper West Side, others down in the friggin Bronx. He has bases everywhere, so that he can work the full spectrum, you know? Doesn't matter the financial value of the pussy, he'll get it all." That last line of hers had been said with all the venom she could muster.

  I clutched her wrist harder, trying to swallow the horridness of what I was hearing. She was right, I'd never heard it in so much detail. And I don't think I would've been able to handle it when we'd first met. You gotta be tough to face that shit. As I lay on the bed there, I could imagine what you must be made of to actually live through, and survive.

  "Soon I was popping three, four, sometimes even seven E's a night. Of course, by that time he was screwing me, hard, and regularly. It hurt a lot of the times. I mean, just physiologically speaking, there were"—she swallowed—"differences. Know what I mean?"

  I nodded.

  "I didn't care. He was my fucking bad boy 'hero' because he broke my abusive daddy's jaw. As they say: Out of the frying pan..."

  The well of tears finally broke through as she told me. She sobbed and reached for a tissue.

  "Go on," I urged. "You need to get this out."

  "He did it... He did it... He fucked me so much and in so many places, Leo. Meanwhile, he was fucking everyone else as well. By that time, I was off the edge already. Eventually I started to notice the signed. I started to notice the bimbos with big breasts that he took around with him. But I didn't want to notice. I wanted to live in that cloud, the one created by his euphoric chemicals.

  "So, one day, at Hotel Houston—that's his main base, you know. All the other places are just overnighters—he was having a party. He's always having parties. Life's a big fucking party to that slimeball. And, I don't know, maybe I'd lost my innocence to him. Maybe I was starting to look like a grown-up. Who fucking knows. But that was the first time I'd actually 'seen' him with another girl. Whereas I'd seen the signs before, now he just did it out in the open. First the kisses, then his hand under her dress. Then into the bedroom. That fucker didn't even bother to close the door!

  "I was high already. Four Es. But even four Es can't dull your senses enough to make it all go away. At least they couldn't mine. Not on that night. I opened the door. There was his ass, the skank's thigh-high legs in the air while he was doing. And telling her he loves her.

  "Just like he used to tell me...

  "So I snorted a line of coke. My first ever. Then another. Now that made me forget. I felt like the fucking Queen Bee. No reservations, no worries. I went over to some dude with abs the size of bricks, looked him in the eyes, undid his buckle and went down on him.

  "Motherfucker didn't even ask me my age..."

  She shook her head.

  "You know, Leora. My dad did horrible things to me. But I was still technically a virgin when I met Raphael. He took... He took..."

  She clenched her jaw. The tears were gushing down her cheeks now. Her chin trembled so much that she couldn't speak anymore.

  "It's OK, baby," I said. "You don't need to say it. I get it." I started stroking her arm but she fought me away.

  "Don't—(sob, gasp)—Don't feel—(sob)" She took a deep breath, composed herself. "Don't feel sorry for me, Leo. Don't. You can't feel sorry for me. Because if you feel sorry for me, or if I feel sorry for myself—(sob)" She fought for breath. "...then the pressure will be too much! OK? It happened. It happened. And it's over.

  "Even when my dad was doing all that fucking shit to me, babe, I also dreamed of that one love, you know? The gentleman." She gave a sad laugh, gestured to Conall outside. "The Brit!

  "I never wanted to be a whore, Leora."

  "You're not a whore—"

  "Wait." She held her hand up. "You know, Bianca's only sixteen because she's such a fucking brainy-buff, skipped a grade or some shit. But that skank is also human, Leo. As much of a bitch as she is, as loose as she might be, I couldn't stand by and watch her make the mistakes I made. I wanted to go confront him. Because I'd put it behind me. But when it started happening again in my backyard, to someone I knew, even if we don't like her...

  "I don't know... Something snapped on Friday. It had been building up. Then when I saw her on the stairs, being all 'Oh woe is me' I wanted to go and slap some sense into her. Because a guy like Raph would take that woe-is-me and play the player.

  "And even she doesn't deserve that, Leo. No one does."

  It occurred to me that, on some level, Bianca probably already knew this. Which is why she'd snapped at my accusation. I had mixed emotions about it. Did it justify her reaction? If she were my friend, would I be more sympathetic to her? I didn't deserve to be lying here on this hospital bed, that was for sure.

  But one thing was clear, I decided not to press any charges against her.

  But I also decided that somehow, someway, I was gonna get that fucking bastard Raphael, even if it killed me.

  Kayla put her head down on the blanket and I held her. "I love you, Leora. You're the only person I've ever truly loved."

  "I know," I said.

  -3-

  The same big African American nurse ("Nurse Thompson") who'd spoken to me when Kayla was in here on Friday, walked in the room.

  "My my my, you two again. It's a regular South Central up in here, i'n't." She walked over and grabbed my chart, looked me up and down with one of those "don't try bullshit me when I ask you a question" looks.

  "School fight?" she asked, looking up from the clipboard.

  "M-hmm," I said.

  "You pressing charges?"

  "Um, no."

  She paused, looked slightly shocked, then composed herself as if suddenly understanding. "Provoked her?"

  "Kinda."

  Nurse Thompson put the chart down, came over and pressed some spots on my back. I gave a yelp of howling discomfort.

  "Girls, it really isn't my place but I'm gettin old and whenever you get old you start to look back at yo' life and you see things in a whole new perspective." She fanned her hands around as she'd said "whole."

  "You girls are young. Whatever all y'all are into, or were into, or are thinking of gettin into, it's never too late to change and start again. And, in yo' cases, yo' life hasn't even hardly begun! Get what I'm saying?"

  "Yes ma'am," Kayla and I said in unison.

  "See, now that's why I like y'all. You might be into some rough shit but you at least got manners. Now, the gentleman sitting outside there, is he with you?" She looked at me.

  I nodded.

  "Young lady," she said to Kayla, "get him in here."

  "But—"

  Nurse Thompson lowered her chin and eyed Kayla down with a "are you really going to try not do what I just said" look.

  "Yes ma'am," Kayla said.

  She went to the door, called Conall.

  "So, Mister, I don't think you are her brother and so I'm assuming that you need to hear this. Miss Caivano, you are fine. You have a very deep bruise down. Now, there's nothing to worry about, but it gonna hurt like hell if you get on and do any of that hanky-panky, catch my drift? And it's possible that you spasm up and then make a funny movement and we'll have you in here, immobilized for three days. What is that saying: The passion of the moment and paying for a lifetime or something? Catch my drift?"

  She eyed Conall and me, waiting for a response.

  "Um, yes, ma'am," Conall and I said simultaneously. Kayla was silently giggling. One sidelong glance from the nurse and she tried to suppress it even further.

  But I saw the nurse twitch into a small smile herself, and then force herself back into that bad cop look she was doing so well.

&n
bsp; "So, to put it any more bluntly and just in case you didn't get it: no sex for at least a week. At least! You could irritate the muscles and then you'll be on your back for much longer than that. OK? I also imagine, being your age and living in the rich side, that you count calories and go to the gym and do spinning and whatever else y'all kids do today to get and keep a man. Well, none o' that as well. Nothing for at least a week. Understood?"

  I nodded.

  "Now, I don't know if you tried but you sure as well probably can't walk. So we'll bring you over a wheelchair so you can get on outta here. Prob'ly gonna be like that for a day or two. So, lucky you, you'll get sick leave from school. I suggest you start preparing for finals in those two days. It's never too early..."

  She waited, stared at me. When I finally said, "Yes, ma'am," she continued.

  "OK, then. Now, unlike your friend here, you are a minor, so we have to wait for your mother to come through to have you discharged. We cannot currently reach her. Your headmistress was authorized to provide consent for the initial examination but she said wanted your mother or someone else to handle the discharge so that it would be certain she would be informed. Only problem, is we can't reach your mother."

  "Oh, um, Maria has legal charge to give Medical Consent in case my mother's not available," I said.

  "Maria." It wasn't a question.

  "Yes, Maria Gonzalez."

  "I see. OK, then. And where can we find this Maria?"

  "At my home."

  "Alright." Her tone had eased now into something warmer. Although I understood that she'd put on the tough-nurse act out of care as well. She eyed each of us individually, pulled in her chest as if preparing to say something, then stopped herself, started to walk out.

  "Um, nurse?" I said.

  "Yes, honey."

  "Thank you, um, a lot...for everything."

  "Just doin my job." She looked at us three again. "And a little more."

  -4-

  "I feel real sexy now," I said to Conall as he wheeled me into the elevator of my apartment block.

  "I can't think of anything funny to say to that without overstepping the boundaries of propriety."

  "Oh no, you did that when you started talking about Juliet."