Chapter 8
It took her and Lia nearly a week to scrounge up enough to manage a very, very small apartment of their own, Whisp tucked in as well, and Hazel and Imp promising to pay part of the rent if they could find a patch of floor for themselves as well. It was kind of nice, just the girls, on their own, finally away from the hawk-like glare of Jaguar, and the sneering of a large portion of the newsies, but at the same time, it was almost terrifying, relying on the others. When she had stopped bothering to sell papes, they did as well, although none of them were trying quite as hard as she was to make ends meet, to keep Jack off of their back's. That, somehow, had become her own special task, her personal job, to keep Jack happy, and at bay.
It was a horrible routine, but so easy to fall into. No one to wake her up in the morning, sleeping through her laudanum haze, rolling herself out of bed in the afternoon, as the sun was starting to set, stuffing day-old bread into her mouth before knocking back a shot or two, and heading out. She usually crossed paths with Jack as he wandered back towards the lodging house, or the Jacobs's apartment, and in the vivid fading light, at best he'd smirk at her, at worst, ignore her.
It actually hurt. Stupidly, painfully. That he could live a normal life, and she didn't have the option. There was a scared fifteen year old back home that she was trying to protect as though she was her big sister, as though she was her family. These girls, Whisp and Lia, and even Hazel and Imp, had somehow become family, and she was watching them all get ground slowly into nothing. And she couldn't stop it.
She was leaning against a brick wall, brooding about it when a voice being cleared startled her out of her haze, her eyes pressing closed before opening, an artificial smile on her lips about to attempt to say something coy when she saw it was Race. She flushed, her eyes dropping, the words she'd been about to speak somehow fumbling out into a "Heya."
He hesitated, his hands already in his pockets, eyes dropping as though he didn't want to see her the way she was. "Heya, Gold. I ain't seen you around lately. At first, I thought you were avoidin me, but then I realized it was just that you were avoidin all of us."
"No! No, I just've been sleepin durin the day. Out at night, you know. Workin. I wasn’t avoidin you, I swear it, Race. Everything happened so fast, and when I wasn’t sleepin, I was workin." She almost didn't want to call it working, refusing to meet his eyes, tugging her ratty shawl over her shoulders, trying to cover herself up a bit more. She felt so cheap, her skimpy clothing not helping matters. The corset, and caught-up skirt, the way her hair was barely held up and falling into her face, the faint traces of rouge still visible on her lips, in spite of being nearly worn off. She knew what she looked like. Trash. And she was. She knew it, deep down, in a way she had never known anything else to be so true. She had let herself become trash.
"Kelly put you up to this. All of you. He walks around like the damn patron saint of all newsboys, and all he really is is a bastard." The bitterness in Race's voice was palpable, she could almost feel the tension in his jaw, his anger.
"I'm so sorry, Race. I should never have..." Her voice broke, and she curled in on herself slightly, feeling lower than dirt, but forcing herself to keep going. "You were the sweetest guy a girl could ask for. You deserve better than me." And it was true. Race had been nothing but perfect with her. The best, the sweetest boy she’d ever known. Even his gambling hadn’t been that big a deal, he lost money and made it faster than she could sell papers, and he was never bitter or resentful about a bad day at the tracks. At least, he had never been, before this whole mess had happened.
"I deserved the truth, maybe. I deserved to know that Kelly had his hands all over you. I deserved a good bye." His voice dropped, cold and soft, and she almost had to strain to hear it, taking a moment to process it, and then the feeling of a knife driving into her gut slammed into her again. She physically winced away from him, swallowing a bit hard, flushing, wracked with guilt.
"Race, I'm sorry. I am so sorry. You're right, I should have told you what I was, what I was doin. I should have told you when I left. I just couldn't face you. The disgust when you looked at me." She wanted to cling to him, to plead until he forgave her. She wanted him to save her, to take her away from this. She wanted him to be like a knight in a fairy tale.
But this wasn't a fairy tale. This was reality. Race took a step back, shaking his head, and finally, horribly, meeting her eyes. There was disgust there, and pity, anger, humiliation. She had done that to him. That was her fault. She hadn’t intended to hurt him, and yet, from the look of his eyes, she had more than hurt him. He seemed to not even know what to do with himself, be angry, or hurt, or forgiving.
It broke her, and even as she tried to hold it in, tears started welling, and tumbling down her face. "Race..." Her voice wobbled, and she took a halting step towards him, ready to throw herself at him and start begging for forgiveness. She needed his forgiveness, she needed him to tell her he didn’t blame her. She needed him to save her. No one else was going to bother.
When she moved forward, however, he moved back, further from her, shaking his head. "You made a fool of me once, Goldilocks. Not again." He glanced away, spotting a group of rough mill workers heading in their direction down the street, and nodded at them, with a dark, and mirthless smile. "Besides, you're working, aren't you? There you go, bet they'd be glad to show you a good time."
Before she could answer him, he was gone, and she was left unable to breathe, on the edge of panic, her mind swirling, beating herself up. She knew, on some rational level, that she had to pull herself together, before a crowd like the one heading towards her crossed paths with her, but she couldn't even catch a full breath, clinging to the brick wall she had been leaning against to keep from crumbling to her knees. She wanted to scream, or run, or rip her hair out, something, anything, but all she had was the sense that she was so numb she'd never feel anything properly again. It was crushing her, choking her, blinding her.
The fact that she was in such a state was probably a blessing. One of the crowd of men had spotted her, elbowing his friend, and calling out, inquiring about her, how much her company might cost. By rote, she answered him. The only good part about it, in the end, was that she got paid, not that cash could heal bruises, or nearly broken jaw bones. Time was the only thing that would heal that, and rest, a good long stretch of healing and pulling herself together. And she somehow never had enough of any of that.