Role Play

Prologue

Nine years
ago

Tarrytown
,
NY

Sierra

I
had to sleep with Lola on a fold-out sofa bed in our new apartment after our mom left our dad. I guess I was in shock from the split-up of our family and losing my brothers, so the memories of those months were blurred in my mind. I don’t know exactly how long afterward it happened, the night Lola and I were woken up by the thuds coming from our mom’s bedroom, and the loud voices.

Mom
sounded shrill and slurred, like I always remembered, but then she cried out in a way that made my insides go hollow in fear. I was suddenly, completely awake.

I hugged my arms around Lola knowing I was no
real protection for my little sister, who was eleven to my twelve. But it felt safer to hold onto her. To know I wasn’t completely alone and scared. To feel a little bit okay because I had to be okay for her.

I listened as hard as I could even though I didn’t want to hear it.
As my mom cried out again.

What was happening
? Would he come out and hit us, too?

Instead we heard the bed thump against the wall, and the sounds of springs creaking
, fast and hard. Even in the midst of the creaking, it sounded like they were arguing.

I listened with all my might, ready to
leap out of bed and drag Lola with me if he came after us, figuring that the stairwell in front of our new apartment complex, down under the first flight, would be the best place for us to hide.

And then… nothing.
Lola snuffled and soon fell asleep. Our arms were still wrapped around each other, creating a tiny bubble we floated in together. I watched the lights flashing from the freeway onto the wall over me, afraid the man would come out to get us next.

But he didn’t
come out, not until morning when he hardly looked at any of us. He turned out to be just another random guy among the many my mom spent years hooking up with, some more memorable than others.

My mom didn’t look any different th
e next morning, though I searched her face trying to find some hidden hurt. Mostly she was irritated because Lola pitched a fit over a skirt she wanted to wear but couldn’t because it was dirty. Mom left early to go to work so I had to pour out the cereal and milk for both of us, and lock up behind us when we went to school.

I had
lost everything. All I had left was Lola.

Chapter 1

Today

New York City

Sierra

My phone started to ring as I was walking down the block. I had to juggle two bags of groceries that I’d bought at the bodega by the subway as I tried to get my phone out of my purse. Naturally I dropped one of the bags and two oranges rolled onto the sidewalk and down into the dirty puddle against the curb.

“Crap!” I muttered. I didn’t have anything to wipe them off, and I didn’t want to put them back in
to the bag. Don’t get me wrong, I loved everything about living in the city—it was my dream to move here for as long as I could remember—but it wasn’t ever easy. Usually I loved the walk home between the row houses that lined the streets with all of the people going by. But I’d had a long day on my feet and another long block to go.

I let the oranges lie and
found my phone. It was Dick. He only called me when there was a problem with Lola. “Hi, Dick. What’s up?”

“Do you know what your sister’s done?” Dick demanded in
his gravelly voice.

“
I’m too tired for guessing games, Dick.
What’s up?
”

“She broke up with me.”

I felt a pang right through the center of my body. The warning shot of worse to come. “Seriously?”

“
You didn’t know?” he demanded.

“No…”
Sure, Lola and Dick bickered a lot, but that’s because Lola was impossible to deal with sometimes. Somehow their relationship worked. In fact, the only bright spot in Lola’s life right now was Dick. He was a NYPD detective and he had literally saved her a year ago, when she was flirting with drugs. It could have ended badly but Dick was the one who had pulled her out of it.

“I knew something was wrong
.” Emotion crept into Dick’s voice, making him sound furious and freaked out at the same time. “I told you she’s been avoiding me.”

Dick
had texted a couple of days ago asking me if anything was going on with Lola. I didn’t tell him that she had stayed out all night several times last week—and again last night. Until I’d gotten his text, I thought Lola was spending more time than usual at his place. I had meant to ask her about it, but I hadn’t seen her today. I wasn’t even sure what her work schedule was this week.

“What are you fighting about now?”
I asked.

“What do you think?” Dick demanded. “She
hates her job and wants to quit. Her boss is an asshole. Blah, blah, blah… I told her I can’t give her any more money this month. I thought she was pouting, but not like
this…
”

It
was a sore spot for me, the money Dick gave to Lola for her share of the rent. I had protested the first few times—when she got fired last spring and again when she had to go to the emergency room to get stitches after she slipped on the icy snow piled at our corner. But after that, I don’t know what we would have done without Dick. Our little one-bedroom place was a stretch, even living on the edge of Astoria among the industrial buildings.

“She doesn’t mean it,”
I protested. Lola couldn’t mean it. She relied on Dick. We both relied on Dick.

There was silence on the other end, which was somehow more unsettling. Finally, he said, “She’s in
big trouble, Sierra.”

“Trouble?
What do you mean?” My heart skipped a beat at the fear that Lola was pregnant.

Instead, Dick said,
“Lola is a sex slave.”

I
wanted to wring his neck through the phone. “Dick! You scared the life out me. I thought you were going to say she’s
pregnant
.”

“
I wish! We could get married if she had a kid. Maybe it would settle her down.”

“Lola, a mom?
Are you kidding me? She’s a spoiled brat. She could never take care of a baby. She can’t even take care of herself.”

“You don’t seem
to be very worried about this,” Dick said through gritted teeth.

“That’s because I’m not. It’s just another drama
Lola can pull. Like switching stores at the mall—that was a stupid thing to do, but Lola wanted to show up her old boss. And now it’s blown up in her face because her new boss doesn’t trust her, because how can you trust anybody who would do something like that?”

“This isn’t a job at the mall
, Sierra! She’s been cheating on me.”

I didn’t doubt him for a second
. I supposed that said something about my opinion of Lola. “I’m sorry, Dick. If it makes you feel any better, I’m sure she’s been faithful up until now.”

“Why
is she doing this?” Dick demanded, sounding almost humble for him. “I love her.”

“I know… but you know how Lola
wants excitement in her life. All of her relationships before you were chaotic. This could be an old, bad habit rearing its head.”

Th
e situation reminded me a lot of when we had first moved to the city and Lola had quickly snagged two guys on her string. She pitted them against each other, so they would vie for her love. They had to grit their teeth and pretend it was okay as they competed with each other. It was so painful to watch.

But h
ope sounded in Dick’s voice for the first time. “You think she’s trying to make me jealous?”

“Lola wants you to rescue her,”
I explained. “She loves all of your arguing and making up… I mean, why else would she tell a cop that she’s a sex slave, unless she wants you to save her? It’s just another game in the never-ending game that Lola plays with life. If you play along, you could win. Unless you’d rather give up and let some jerk have your girlfriend?”

Again there was silence
. I knew Dick was weighing his wounded pride against his love for Lola. “All right, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

I
felt another pang, this time because of the devotion in Dick’s voice. I wished I had a man who felt that way about me. Lola was an idiot to mess with her relationship with Dick.

I
realized that people were passing by me on the sidewalk, looking at me curiously as I talked about pregnancy and sex slaves to Dick. That was the city. You got so used to the crowds of people that you started to ignore them. There was always a show going on, and I guess I was the show today.

“We’ll figure out something,”
I told Dick. “I’ll call you later.”

I abandoned the tainted oranges and hurried to my apartment. As soon as I got inside,
I dumped the bags on the table and called Lola. It went straight to voice-mail. “Lola, call me when you get this. I need to talk to you,” I said, hearing the irritation in my own voice.

Unloading the groceries,
I got another nasty surprise. As I was putting away the Ziploc bags in the drawer, I found two unopened bills shoved inside. Slitting them open revealed the electric and cable bills.

I
let out a shriek of anger. I had given Lola my half last week so she could pay them from her account. Now they were late.

I
texted Lola right away:
Did you pay the bills because I just found them in the drawer unopened.

As
I waited to hear back from my sister, I did some homework and then made dinner. As the hours passed, I grew more worried.

If
Lola went off the rails for real, she could take me down with her.

We
had moved to the city three years ago from our mom’s latest apartment in Peekskill. The only good thing about growing up in a series of upstate towns was New York City not far down the Hudson River. I worked my ass off to make it in Manhattan and finally landed a position in the Junior section of Lowenstein’s on 5
th
Avenue. Lola’s “fuck it” attitude hadn’t gone over as well. She was lucky to have a job at the Forever 21 in Queens Mall.

I
was planning on moving up, but Lola had refused to take college courses along with me. She said I was crazy—it was going to take me years to get my bachelor’s degree because I could only afford one class a semester. But by the end of this summer, I would have my associate degree in business administration. The store always gave me the evening off for my class, so I was sure that with more seniority and my associate degree, I could make the move to supervisor. But to get a real career in merchandising, I would need a bachelor’s.

I
just wished Lola had more of my own determination to succeed. I couldn’t carry Lola forever, and my sister had better learn that sooner rather than later.

...

Lola didn’t come home that night, and she didn’t return my texts or calls. So I finally stopped trying.

I
had a terrible day at work, and was even more upset with Lola because of it. I almost paid the bills myself when I got home, but I refused to let Lola off the hook. Someone always had to step up when my sister failed. It was getting really old.