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  “Kailey,” she says as she reappears next to me, pulling my chin up so that we meet eye to eye, “it will never happen again.” She mistakes my pity for her, and as her arms embrace me, I cry heavier, feeling her compassion for me as an actual, tangible thing, like a warm, steamy towel enveloping me and I pull back, surprised by the solidness of it.

  “Do you feel that?” I ask, my eyes wide.

  “What? My stomach rumbling? Refried beans.”

  I start laughing, from insanity or the goofy look on my mom’s face, I don’t know. Then, to myself, I make a promise that if I ever become a mother, I want to be the mom she is to me.

  Chapter 3

  Enthralled

  Since the attack, I’ve really not had much human contact. I received tons of phone calls from loved ones while I stayed at my mom’s house, and a great number of those being from Amber (who also sent me a cookie-gram and stuffed unicorns), but I didn’t want anyone to see my battered face, so I refused anyone who asked. I didn’t want that look of pity from anyone.

  After four more psychiatric therapy sessions from a more caring psychiatrist, and a few prescribed self-defense classes, the doctor gives me the thumbs up to go back to work. And, funny thing is, I really feel I am ready. After much healing inside and out, and one tiny scar on my forehead and neck (which I did my best to cover up with makeup), I feel good about myself...until I step outside my apartment, alone, in my work clothes, and the visions come flooding back.

  So much blood. I look down and see it, soaking into my new, crisp white, button-down shirt. The broken bottle used to cut my throat waves in front of me, threatening to slice up my delicate skin, daunting me to even try and move.

  I close my eyes, attempting to wash the visions away, and let the sun of a new day shine on my face as I inhale deeply, gathering the courage to walk to the bus. I look down at my shirt, and once again, it’s the cheerful yellow cardigan I put on this morning. I turn right back around into my apartment and call my mom.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she statess, no questions asked.

  As we pull up to my ten-floor office building, downtown, I flash her our sign language, grab my bag, and head inside toward the set of elevators. As each door opens, I allow the other patrons to board, passing on their attempt to hold the door open for me. As I stand, watching them board, that familiar, creeping feeling from others’ thoughts crawls over me, mocking me and my foolishness for not wanting to be in the elevator alone with them. I scan their faces as they shrug their shoulders and I watch them press the Close button.

  Finally, an elevator arrives while I am the only one waiting, so I step inside, press the eight button and take my elevator up, breathing in deep breaths and telling myself how brave I am. I reassure myself that once I step off the elevator and into the office, my colleagues will be there to embrace me, and support me, and console me.

  So why is it that when I enter the offices of Helping Hands, there are so many abrupt hellos and downturned faces? Where are the hugs and kisses?

  Nancy, our receptionist, gives me the pity face I was so hoping to avoid, as she answers the endless phone lines, ending one conversation with, “Kailey Rooke, in accounting, is unavailable at the moment. I’ll transfer you to her voicemail, again.” Her annoyance is as obvious as a clown at a funeral. I grip my hands into fists, wanting to just turn around and run, but I continue to stand in place. I turn and stare at the soothing, sky blue walls, laden with the smiling faces of those that, we, here at Helping Hands, have helped. They encourage me to walk, to venture forth and topple the barriers before me.

  I then hear a loud noise—someone dropping a box in our supply closet for the UPS man—and jump in place, suddenly anxious. I slip my hand in my pocket and caress the ring, begging it to give me the strength I need to last the whole workday.

  I decide to head toward my mail, which is most likely the size of Mount Everest, and as I turn the corner, there I find Amber, bent over her in-box. She raises her straight blond-haired head and her beautiful green eyes widen just enough for me to notice. She grabs our office manager, Sienna, and immediately heads toward her office. I follow slowly behind them, and watch as Sienna breaks from Amber’s grasp and ventures into a copy room, most likely to fix some paper jam left by some unknown individual who made no effort whatsoever to inform her of it. I hear Sienna huffing and puffing as she opens a copier door and numerous other hinged parts.

  I stop in front of Amber’s office, looking in from the doorway. “Hi Amber,” I say. No response. “Amber.” She stares straight at her computer as her eyes tear up, even as I walk into her office, toward her. “I’m sorry I haven’t called.”

  At this point I have no idea how the tears are sticking to the wells of her eyes. As soon as I lay my hand on her shoulder, she relaxes, and the tears flow, heavily. After five minutes of sobs and no words, she finally blows her nose, waking anyone asleep within a five-mile radius. “How could someone do those things to you?” she says as she starts crying again.

  Not knowing what to say, “Sometimes bad things happen to good people, I guess,” slips from my mouth.

  “Yes, they do,” she whispers, more to herself, as she eventually sits up straight and sighs her “I’ve got it together now” sigh. “Kailey, please remember I’m here for you—I’ve always got your back. We’re practically sisters.” She looks at me, teary-eyed. “You and your mom have always been there for me, so I want to be here for you. Please don’t block me out anymore, k?” Her eyes stare at me for a moment and I shake my head. “You sleeping at night? I don’t mean to sound like a bitch, but you look exhausted.”

  “No, I am not sleeping. Every stupid sound I hear in my apartment has me up and running to the nearest weapon. And with every jump of mine, poor Kioto is right there beside me, watching and anticipating,” I say, sadly. Amber looks as though she may start crying again, so I decide to change the subject. “I just want this behind me, so let’s not talk about it right now. How was your date?” I query, with a small amount of forced effort. The slight downturn of her plump lips gives me the hint it was probably not awesome.

  She inhales deeply and says with a scowl, “Like usual. The asshole actually shoved his hand under the table and up my skirt. Twenty minutes flat.” Her scowl then turns into a mischievous grin. “But I couldn’t refuse his request to call me again this weekend.” Her eyes widen as she catches my swallow and she immediately apologizes. “Oh, I said too much. That was so insensitive!” She then gets up and hugs me, practically knocking me over. “I love you, Kailey. Forgive my stupidness, especially after what you went through... It was so extreme... You mean so much to me,” she whispers.

  “Love you, too,” I say as I finish the hug. “Amber, just please don’t let yourself be taken advantage of. Don’t settle. You’re more than that. Look at you! You can have any guy you want, yet you continue to...”

  Her sudden facial changes warn me that perhaps I stepped over some boundary—even best friend boundary. “Who are you to say?” she says, her voice suddenly becoming angry. “I’m truly sorry you experienced what you did, but you have no right telling me who and who not to see. Step back, Kailey.”

  “It’s just—” I stop mid-sentence, knowing it’s a losing battle. “You just worry me sometimes, that’s all. Sorry.” I wave goodbye as I leave her office. It was a typical Amber-Kailey boy-topic conversation, but I find myself brushing my clothes off from the strange creepy-crawly sensations gripping to me since our hug; surely my brain needs another scan at the hospital.

  On the way to my office, I think about Amber and how she’s usually the only reason I get out on the weekends and have any interaction with the opposite sex. We have fun together, but she’s dangerously flirty and tends to pick the wrong guys. She always has, since I met her, at the spritely age of sixteen.

  Amber’s mother, once widowed, abandoned Amber at the early age of fifteen. They cohabited, but while her mother dated men half her own age, taking them on island
vacations, Amber worked to support herself. That’s when we met at Burrito Burgers and our deadbeat parent connection had us conjoined in a matter of days.

  We would assemble burgers, side-by-side, gagging simultaneously every now and then on the stench of overly mature avocadoes and bean spread. Our overweight gigantasaur of a boss would just laugh at us as he shoved singles from the cash register into his forty-four-waist Lee Dungarees, and goosed Amber—his only reason for repeat customers—behind my back. And never once did Amber report him.

  Anyway, my mom was the one who stepped in to fill Amber’s maternal void. One unforgettable evening, after running out to a late-night Delta Chi frat party while I attended a nearby community college, and gorging on some questionable barbeque chicken, Amber introduced me to vodka and cranberry juice. After both of us became ill, I finally convinced her it was time to leave, so she had a “friend” of hers—granted she just met him that night—take us home, to my house. As we both sat in the front seat of this gentleman’s car, smack dab in front of our destination, with Amber directly to his right, he decided it wasn’t time to say goodbye, yet. His hands moved quickly under her shirt and as he groped and attempted to simultaneously touch me, I vomited. She told me to leave the car as she tried to play the offensive against his advances, but he was much larger, and stronger. As I knelt on the ground, vomiting barbeque sauce and vodka, I saw my mother run out the front door of our house to his car. As the boy continued with his conquest, ripping Amber’s bra, my mother had opened his car door, had Amber seated in the grass next to me, and the boy in a headlock within five seconds. To this day, my mom says we were too intoxicated to really know what happened. But I remember, clearly—not feeling a bit drunk.

  I snap back to my senses after justifying my comment to Amber, and decide to stop in the office kitchen for a cup of hot black tea. Tea seems to cure everything for me, from stress to lethargy. My colleagues even say it’s unnatural how excited I get over a cup, but what can I say? It’s my drug, if you will. It’s a bit of homey warmth that seems to tame the nerves no matter what is going on around me, especially these days, when even a fifth of vodka leaves me cold and unaffected.

  As my Lipton bag brews, I reach for my honey bear in the highest cabinet, all the way in the back, and see that it’s now completely empty; leave it up to office colleagues to sniff it out and use it all. I add a shake of powdered creamer and decide to search the mountainous stack of newspapers on the kitchen table for the personals. Reading the lines of hidden angst and desperation are a guilty pleasure of mine. I’m not the only one, right?

  One in particular catches my eyes immediately. I do a double-take and reread it.

  ROOKES and pawns. Chess is played by the gods K-Lee. Search for double happiness over the rainbow.

  “Guess they don’t proof the personals.” Evan, my boss, appears next to me. “Why are you reading these, anyway? Don’t you have a budget to go over?” He’s joking, but I don’t react. “You ok? We’ve missed you.” He hugs me and I immediately tighten up a bit from his closeness, but eventually relax and hug him back. There are no creepy-crawlies, but instead a comfortable feeling of safety.

  “I’ll be ok. Thanks.” He smiles at me and leaves the kitchen.

  I return to the ad, without knowing what to do or even how to feel about it. Is this for me? My mind whirls enough to give me vertigo. Is this for some weirdo, or some lovers’ rendezvous? Am I totally overreacting?

  I tear out the ad, imagining who will be the one to cry, as the papers are public property and now they won’t be able to read “Who’s Screwing Who in Hollywood Now” or “So and So Gets a Boob Job” on the flip side.

  I stumble to my office. It takes me all day to just get through my lousy junk mail and voicemail messages. I then find myself staring at the framed copy of Helping Hands’ mission statement centered on my office wall.

  The company is small, but dedicated to helping those that help—but not, like, on an extreme scale. Helping Hands is more like, we hire a personal chef for a woman who spends her weekends working at a soup shelter—simple things, but things that count. People hire us to coordinate special events for special people. Our clients range from sports stars to city governments, but unfortunately, we’re not getting a steady flow of new money. My boss informs me that people seem to be less willing to reward others for their generosity than they were just over the two years or so. If we don’t get new clients soon, I may no longer have a job. And if I leave, Amber most likely would be out the door with me.

  Without major surgery, we, as conjoined twins, will most likely never part. When I knew they were hiring at Helping Hands, I made Amber come with me for support. She sat, reading quietly in the front lobby while I interviewed, but once the pervert HR manager got a look at her, she was hired on the spot—I had to wait a week for the welcoming call—for “public affairs,” he said. Let’s just say he didn’t last long with Amber on the payroll. After one of his many advances were witnessed publicly, my boss had him fired.

  Four o’clock finally rolls around, and I’m out the door, my coat whipping in the wind behind me.

  When I get home, after hugging and repeatedly kissing Kioto, I reread the ad for the quadrillionth time and decide it’s gonna be the death of me, so I have to get rid of it. So I light my ginger vanilla candle and, voila! Bye-bye, ambiguity.

  From there, I slump onto the couch and turn on the television, tuning in to local channel 9, WGN. Wow, the news, go figure. I really hate the news, because most newsfeed is a big brown bag of bullshit. Light the fire, because it’s time to stomp it out.

  My attack—“Bucktown Horror,” as they called it—was on the local news every three hours, every channel, every day for about a week—my five minutes of fame. The media had such a way of twisting the facts that I was dying to see what they would come up with next, especially after seeing the report about me on my deathbed, asking to speak to the president of the United States. That was a good one, considering it stemmed from the scavengers rifling through my garbage, finding a ripped out personal ad, which just happened to have a picture of the president on the underside.

  Throughout my life, my mom constantly turned the news off, asking me to instead play games with her. I’m quite the Canasta player, and can really give you a run at Boggle.

  But like many a poor soul, despite my own animosity, I decide to watch anyway. So after ten minutes of warehouse fires, hit and runs, and what fruits and vegetables you shouldn’t eat now, I find myself drawn to the picture of a supposed murder scene in Chinatown, specifically Twenty-Second Street. A store owner was found mauled to death, but no animal was found, only footprints. There were no witnesses.

  As the reporter keeps talking, I don’t hear a word, instead stare wide-mouthed at the sign above the door. It’s the Chinese symbol for double happiness, which I recognize from the many trips I took as a child with my mother to Chinatown; the symbol seemed to pop up everywhere. But this sign is particularly familiar looking to me.

  When the news segment ends, all I hear is “Raine Boman reporting.” Rainbow. “Double happiness over the rainbow.” I turn to read the personal ad once more and end up staring at its ashes.

  *********

  I spend my workweek catching up on e-mails and trying to figure out how messed up things have gotten while I was gone. It’s only been about three months, but as Assistant Controller, I’ll probably spend another month reconstructing the books. Things like the purchase of a box of office coffee shouldn’t be depreciated over ten years, unless we’re looking to have our employee emergency room visit experience rate skyrocket.

  The week actually makes me yearn, a little bit, for a night out, in hopes that maybe if I was out until some wee hour of the morning with Amber, I’d sleep soundlessly for a night.

  Finally, the weekend arrives, and I find I couldn’t be happier. I call up my mom to see what she’s getting herself into these days and it’s basically nothing, as usual.

  “Whatch’y
a doing, Mom?” I ask.

  “Just sitting, looking through the want ads.”

  I taunt quickly, “You’re gonna get a real job?” I cannot even fathom my mother working a nine-to-five job. For as long as I’ve known, my mother has just done oddball jobs, like painting and weeding for friends, and friends of friends, leaving me with distant relatives for days at a time while on her ventures. Despite the fact she would return totally exhausted, never once did she not make up the lost time to me with movies, amusement parks, and moments like sitting in our garage, watching lightning storms.

  “No, just said I was looking through the want ads. On my way to the garage sales section,” she says with a hoarse voice.

  “Oh.” I pause. “You ok, Mom?”

  “My throat is killing me today. Must just be a bit of reflux. I’ll be fine. Always am, right?” She coughs, sounding extremely tired.

  “I survived the week at work,” I say.

  “I knew you would, honey,” she professes, sweetly. “Maybe you can celebrate this weekend with Amber.” She waits for my reply.

  “Actually, I’m calling her next.”

  “Good!” She pauses on the phone for a brief few seconds. “Just please be careful. I trust you’ll make the important decisions for the evening? Don’t leave them up to Amber. I’m too tired to head out to save her ass this evening. You got your pepper spray?”

  “If I can gather the nerve to make it out the door with her, yes, it will be in my purse.”