Nikki was my one and only friend in the entire world.
And I kind of fucking hated her.
Nikki was a hooker who’d found me sleeping under a bench. I’d unsuccessfuly avoided the previous nights downpour and had just shivered and chattered myself to sleep. I’d already been living on the streets for several weeks at that point and hadn’t had a real meal since running away from Camp Touchey-Feely, a nickname I gave the group home I’d been left to rot in. I’m pretty sure Nikki was trying to rob me—or what she thought was a corpse—when she just happened to have noticed I was still breathing.
Frankly, I’m surprised she even bothered with me after realizing I was very much alive.
Not so much living, but alive.
Nikki snorted the last of her blow through a rolled up post-it-note off a yellowed sink that was days away from falling free from the wall. The floor was littered with toilet paper, and all three toilets were on the verge of overflowing with brown sludge. The overwhelming scent of bleach singed my nose hairs like someone doused the room with chemicals to lessen the smell but hadn’t bothered with any actual cleaning.
Nikki tilted her chin up toward the moldy ceiling tiles and pinched her nostrils together. A single florescent light flickered and buzzed above us, casting a greenish hue over the gas station bathroom.
“Fuck, that’s good shit,” she said, tossing the empty baggie onto the floor. Using the wand from an almost empty tube of lip-gloss, she fished out whatever was left and applied it to her thin cracked lips. She then smudged the thick liner under her eyes with her pinky until she nodded in satisfaction into the mirror at her racoon-esque smoky look.
I stretched my sleeve of my sweater down over the heel of my hand and wiped the filth off the mirror in front of me, exposing two things: a spider web crack in the corner and the reflection of a girl I didn’t recognize.
Light blonde hair. Sunken cheeks. Bloodshot blue eyes. Dimple chin.
Nothing.
I knew the girl was me, but who the fuck was I?
Two months ago, a garbage man discovered me in an alley where I had been literally thrown out with the trash, found lying in my own blood amongst a heap of garbage bags beside a dumpster. When I woke in the hospital, with the biggest fucking headache in the history of headaches, the police and doctors dismissed me as a runaway. Or a hooker. Or some hybrid combo of the two. The policeman asking me questions at my bedside didn’t bother to hide his disgust when he informed me that what probably happened was a simple case of a John getting rough with me. I’d opened my mouth to argue but stopped.
He could’ve been right.
Nothing else made any sort of sense.
No wallet. No ID. No money. No possessions of any kind.
No fucking memory.
When someone goes missing on the news, teams of people gather together and form a search party. Police reports are filed and and sometimes candlelight vigils are held in hopes the missing would soon return home. What they don’t ever show you is what happens when no one looks. When the loved ones either don’t know, don’t exist…or just don’t care.
The police searched the missing persons reports throughout the state and then the country with no luck. My fingerprints didn’t match any on record, and neither did my picture.
I learned then that being labeled a missing person didn’t necessarily mean I was missed. At least not enough to require any of the theatrics. No newspaper articles. No channel-six news. No plea from family members for my safe return.
Maybe, it was my fault no one had bothered to look for me. Maybe, I was an asshole and people celebrated the day I went away.
Or ran away.
Or was shipped down river in a fucking Moses basket.
I don’t fucking know. Anything was possible.
I don’t know where I came from.
I don’t know how old I am.
I don’t know my real name.
All I had in the world was reflected back at me in the bathroom mirror of that gas station, and I had no fucking clue who she was.
Without knowing if I was a minor or not, I was sent to live at Camp Touchey Feeley, where I only lasted a couple of weeks among the serial masturbators and juvenile delinquents. On the night I woke up to find one of the older boys standing at the foot of my bed with his fly unzipped, his dick in his hand, I escaped through a bathroom window. The only thing I left with was the donated clothes on my back, and a nickname.
They called me Doe.
As in Jane Doe.
The only difference between me and a real Jane Doe was a toe-tag because what I was doing sure as shit wasn’t living. Stealing to eat. Sleeping wherever I could find cover from the elements. Begging on the side of freeway off-ramps. Scrounging through restaurant dumpsters.
Nikki ran her chewed-off fingernails through her greasy red hair. “You ready?” she asked. Sniffling, she hopped on the balls of her feet like she was an athlete amping up for the big game.
Though it was the furthest thing from the truth, I nodded. I wasn’t ready, never would be, but I’d run out of options. It wasn’t safe on the streets, each night in the open was a literal gamble with my life. And not to mention that if I lost any more weight, I wouldn’t have the strength to fight off any threats. Either way I needed protection from both the elements and the people who lurked around at night before I ended up a real Jane Doe.
I don’t think Nikki was capable of registering the feeling of hunger. Given the option, she chose a quick high over a full stomach. Every single time. A sad fact made obvious by her sharp cheek bones and dark circles under her eyes. In the short time I’d known her, I’d never seen her ingest anything but coke.
I judge her and I feel shitty about it. But something inside me tells me that she’s better than the thing she does. When I’m not extremely irritated with her I feel almost protective of her. I was fighting for my own survival and I wanted to fight for hers, but the problem was, she didn’t want to fight for herself.
I opened my mouth to lecture her. I was about to tell her that she should lay off the dope and change her main priority to food and her overall health, when she turned toward me. There I was, my mouth agape, ready to rain down judgment on her regarding like I was better than her. The truth was that I could’ve been knee deep involved in the same shit before I lost my memory.
I closed my judgmental mouth.
Nikki eyed me up and down, appraising my appearance. “I guess you’ll do,” she said, blatant dissatisfaction in her tone. I refused to cake on makeup or pluck out all of my eyebrows just to draw a thin line in their place like she did. Instead, I’d washed my hair in the sink and used the hand dryer to speed along the drying process. My face was makeup free, but it would have to do, because if I was going to do this, I was determined to do it my way and without looking like Nikki.
Yep, I am a judgmental asshole.
“How is this going to work again?” I asked. She’d already told me ten times, but she could tell me ten thousand times and I still wouldn’t feel comfortable.
Nikki fluffed out her limp hair. “Seriously, Doe, do you ever listen?” She sighed in annoyance but continued on. “When we get to the party all you have to do is cuddle up to one of the bikers. If he likes you there is a good chance he might want to take you in, keep you around for a while, and all you have to do is keep his bed warm and a smile on his face.”
“I don’t know if I can do it.” I said meekly.
“You can do it, and you will do it. And don’t be all shy like that around them, they won’t like that. Besides, you’re not the shy type, that’s just your nerves talking. You’re all rough edges, especially with that horrible case of foot-in-mouth syndrome.”
“It’s eerie how you have me pegged in the short time you’ve known me.” I said.
Nikki shrugged. “I’m a people reader, and believe it or not, you are very easy to read. Like for example, right now you’re super tense. I know this because your shoulders are all hunched over.” She presses my shoulders back. “Better. Stick out your chest. You don’t have much to work with up top but without a bra, if you keep your shoulders back, they can catch a glimpse of a little nip, and guys love the nips.”
That was it. I could get a biker to like me, he would protect me, hopefully long enough for me to figure out plan B. “Worst case scenario is that he’s only looking for a quick one-time thing and he’ll throw you a few bucks and send you on your way.” Nikki made it sound more like a vacation than prostitution.
I could fool myself into thinking that if I wasn’t soliciting on the street then I wasn’t like Nikki, but the truth was no matter which way I twisted the facts, this plan would turn me into a whore.
Judgey McJudgerpants.
When I wracked my brain for other options, I’d come up as empty as my stomach.
Nikki pushed open the door, and sunlight invaded the dark space as it swung back and forth. With one last glance at the plain-faced girl in the mirror, I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
It was a comfort knowing that whoever I was before my slate was wiped clean didn’t know what I was about to do.
Because I was about to sell her body.
And whatever soul I still had.
