Chapter One

(this corresponds to Chapter 22 of "The End of the Beginning")

There'd been a point where the sound of a motorcycle, any motorcycle, could make her breath catch and make her stand a little straighter, thinking maybe it'll be him this time. And whatever she happened to be doing, Aisha would stop and just listen, waiting to see if she'd hear his step, his key. Anytime she heard a motorcycle outside.

But you couldn't keep that sort of thing up living in Charming, there were enough motorcycles around that you'd be climbing the walls inside of hours.

Instead, she'd let the sound of them fade into the background, even when she could hear them right next to the window, listening instead for a silence when he'd abruptly cut the motor. It wasn't until the silence that she'd start to breathe quicker, do an inventory, systems check, was everything right, the way he wanted it? The small apartment was pristine, the bed unwrinkled, and nobody had to know it was because she hadn't slept in it in the last three nights, preferring instead to curl up around the boots he'd left, the ones she'd brought back to a perfect mirror-like jet-black shine, just like he knew she would.

But tonight, when the silence came, and the motorcycle cut off in the parking lot, it wasn't for her. Despite the fact that it had pulled her out of sleep, just as it happened all the times she waited for the days, when he'd come for her… this time, when she went to the window the man outside wasn't the one she expected. It was one of the others. The young, handsome one; she'd seen him before. Her breath caught, hand held at the edge of the curtain, wondering how they'd known to look for her here, wondering if he'd told.

He wouldn't have. Couldn't have. He'd promised, the very first time.

Without thinking about it, her hand went to the spot where her cheekbone met her temple, like it did probably a dozen times a day, tracing the two lines of the scar she'd had for a year now. And like it always did, it told her who she was and where she belonged, and though she kept the lights off so that the man outside wouldn't know he was being watched, she wasn't afraid anymore. Whatever the reason he was here, it wouldn't be for her. She'd stay hidden, the way he wanted. The way they both wanted.

She'd been fifteen.

Fifteen but looking younger, both from being hungry what had seemed like most of her life, but also because to stay a kid might mean flying under the radar, not suddenly coming to the notice of one of her mother's johns or worse, the dealers who'd become pimps when the money ran out. It was why she kept her hair so short, buzzing it down until it was barely a half-an-inch long and you could see the blue shadows at her temples. She stayed out as much as possible, as far away from the house as she could, just one of the kids that hung back into shadows in this part of Santa Rosa, where the sound of a motorcycle meant someone's mom was going to be kicking them out for a few hours, and the beautiful parts of Humboldt seemed to have broken down by the time you got into these hills.

Aisha'd been named by her dad, but there weren't any memories beyond that, and the first of the "dads" that had made their way through the house had made sure to let her know she wasn't his. After that she stopped asking.

By the time she was in junior high, the boyfriends had given way to something else, as her mother's prettiness had been eaten away by the meth and most of the men who stopped up here could see the desperate calculation in her eyes. Amber, her mom, didn't have it in her to be a good thief, or a particularly good whore for that matter—always in debt to someone or other, one of the dealers who'd started looking a little too closely at Aisha before she'd taken the clippers to her dark hair. Amber thought she knew what she was doing, though, thought so even when she'd decided that ripping off her johns would be a better way of evening the score with the dealers, get them off her back for a bit.

That wouldn't have been the first time Aisha'd come home at dawn, hoping to sneak in for some sleep and a shower before Amber woke up, hoping there wasn't anyone there who might notice her, only to find that someone had decided to teach her mother a lesson. Usually, she'd wake up eventually, light a menthol cigarette with shaking hands, and survey the damage in their bathroom mirror. If it was something makeup wouldn't cover, she'd just take some pills and sleep it off until she felt like it wasn't her problem. You're going to get yourself killed, Aisha would think, surprised at how little that thought had come to scare her, wondering if maybe that was the point of the whole thing.

No, it was far from the first time she'd come back to it, but this time he was still there, standing over her mother, who'd obviously taken a couple of good ones to the face and wouldn't be getting up anytime soon. Amber was still breathing, though, which was more than you could say for Tex, the dealer/boyfriend/pimp du jour, who was missing the better part of his jaw and had a ragged, dark hole where his left eye was supposed to be.

She was caught up in looking at what had happened to Tex's face, surprised at her own thoughts (Good, she was thinking, good. He won't be after me anymore, looking at me and thinking he could make a lot more money out of me than he'd ever get out of her. At the very least, that fear was done with. There'd be the next one, but at least he wouldn't be the one to turn her out. Not yet.) She was so lost in this that she didn't notice that the man who'd done it (obviously, the gun still in his hand and a cellphone in the other) was still there, and that he'd stopped short and was staring at her. She took a step back, then stopped. Start running, and for all she knew he'd think she was running to get the cops. So instead she just stopped, breathed, and waited to see what he was going to do.

The man looked down at her and sighed a bit, all business. "You her kid?"

Aisha nodded.

"Right. She'll be OK, she sleeps it off a bit. You want her to see a doctor?"

She shook her head. He didn't waste time looking surprised. "Fine. OK, kid, here's what's going to happen. Some friends are gonna come up here and clear this piece of shit out of here," gesturing to Tex with the gun, "and if she's up they might have a few words with her about who she tries to rip off next time she's turning tricks. Her and this dead piece of shit here. So you're gonna clear out while they do, and you were never here tonight, and if you want to come back in a few days, you're gonna just forget you saw any of this, right?"

She looked up and met his eyes, and nodded again, then found her voice. "Wait."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "I don't have a lot of time here, kid."

She nodded, and without wasting any motion, stepped delicately over to Tex's body, grasping and half-lifting his dead weight by the collar of his jacket. It wasn't easy—she'd never been strong—but she was able to move him enough to get the roll he carried inside his belt and the bag in the inside pocket of his leather jacket. She tossed both at the feet of the man standing there. She could tell he wasn't the sort to register surprise, but there was a fair amount of it at the back of his eyes. "What's this?"

"He comes here last, gets what she made after he picks up his money from a lot of other girls. There's probably a few grand there. That in the bag, well, he doesn't do the shit he has the girls doing. Says meth'll eat out your eyes. That's probably some seriously pure coke. It'll get to you another few grand, you move it now." It was the longest few sentences she'd strung together in almost as long as she could remember, but she was thinking fast now, desperately calculating and trying to keep her brain moving a few steps ahead of her words.

He laughed. "And you're giving this to me?"

She shrugged, met his eyes. "Yeah. I figure I owe you." She held his gaze just long enough for her meaning to be clear, and saw him look at her for the first time, a searching stare that took her in, dissected and catalogued her, then spit her back out.

He whistled slowly, then started very quietly to laugh. "I thought you were a boy."

She nodded again. "That's the idea."

He laughed again. "It's not a bad one. So why give me this?" He was still gesturing with the gun, this time at the roll of cash and the baggie that sat on the bloodstained carpet between them. "You could probably use it, I figure it even belongs to you."

She shook her head, heart beating faster. "No. It's for you. OK? It's for you. I want—"

He looked at her. "You want to buy something? What do you want?"

"I want out of here. I want you to take me with you."

She half-expected him to just laugh at take off, but instead he holstered the gun and gave her a searching look. "What the fuck are you talking about? How old are you, twelve?"

"Fifteen. There's at least six grand there if you count the coke. It's yours. I want to go with you."

She'd expected it not to work, expected if it did work it would be a long desperate negotiation, that she'd have to explain or promise or something, but instead he just shrugged. "Fine. I don't have time for this. Pick that shit up. This dead fuck's got a bike out back, get his helmet and meet me around the side."

Ten minutes later she was wrapped around him, making the run from Santa Rosa to Charming, for the first and last time.