Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (65 page)

She was texting all the time. She told me
she had some tattoo jobs. I drove her there, and then she
disappeared again for many hours. She claimed she was working on
the tattoo the whole time. But when she asked me to pick her up,
she was somewhere completely different.

I had a feeling she was tricking, so I asked
her about it. She started to cry and said: "I'm not that kind of
girl! Ask anyone! I don't sleep around like that. I'm not like Lucy
and those other girls."

But I could tell she was hiding something
from me, and she wasn't being honest about where she was going or
what she was doing, and who she was with. And since I already knew
about her drug use, the only other thing worth hiding from me was
having sex with someone else. So I was sure she was tricking. But
she continued to deny it and got really emotional and defensive
every time I questioned her about anything.

I told her that if she wanted to just be
friends with benefits, fine, just say so. But since she and I had
been talking about being in a real relationship together, and she
had told me she loved me, it wasn't fair to lie to me, if she was
still seeing other people.

"I swear I'm not seeing anyone else. I just
want to be with you. You are the nicest guy I've ever met. I SWEAR
I'm not having sex with anyone else," she said. She was in tears
again.

She told me she loved me and gave me a kiss.
I smiled and told her I loved her, too.

Later Lucy called me and told me she wanted
to hang out. Nicole had disappeared again, doing who knows what
with who knows who, so I had no reason not to hang out with Lucy. I
took her home with me, and we talked all night. She told me she was
sorry for writing the letter to Veronica and the one to Cho. She
said she felt bad for the way things ended between us, when I found
out she lied to me about me being the only one on her viso
list.

Suddenly Jasmine called Lucy. Jasmine had
returned from Key West a few weeks ago, and had been back in Fort
Myers. She had already relapsed on her first day out, before she
handed me the letters Veronica had written her in jail. Jasmine's
mother was an alcoholic, and they both got drunk to celebrate her
freedom. She shot up Ds just a few hours later.

She had pretended to be clean in Key West,
but I could tell by her posts on her Facebook page, that she was
behaving like every other addict who was in the process of
relapsing after getting out of jail.

Veronica had cheated on me with Jasmine, and
gotten her name tattoed on her wrist. But Jasmine had also dated
Snickers at some point in the past, like everyone else in jail. And
she was Abby's best friend. But ever since she returned from Key
West, she was living with Wigger at Abby's house, sleeping with
Wigger in Abby's bed. Abby's boyfriend Wigger had not only cheated
on her with her own sister Tabby. Now he was cheating on Abby with
her best friend Jasmine. What a guy, what a guy.

Jasmine and Wigger got into a fight, because
he'd been cheating on her with some other girl. Jasmine had enough
and wanted to get away from him, She called Lucy to see if she
could stay with her. They had been in the same dorm in jail for a
while. Lucy told Jasmine that she was staying at my house and
offered that we could come get her.

A few weeks ago, Veronica had told me that
someone really needed to tell Abby what a lowlife Wigger was,
because he was cheating on Abby the whole time while she was in
jail.

Take a moment to fully appreciate the irony
in that. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Veronica felt bad that Wigger was cheating
on Abby! Meanwhile she was cheating on me the whole damn time! She
understood that Wigger was a fucking lowlife for doing that to
Abby, but somehow it didn't sink in, that she was a fucking lowlife
too, for doing exactly the same thing to me.

When Lucy got out of jail and we started
hanging out again, she told me the same thing: someone needed to
tell Abby what Wigger was doing being her back.

So I ended up writing Abby a letter. I
didn't even know her, but I knew what she was going through, and I
wanted to warn her about Wigger, just like people had warned me
about Veronica. It was a simple act of kindness. She deserved to
know. A real friend would have told her. But she had no real
friends. All her so-called friends were drug addicts, who had no
loyalty to anyone, and who would hit on Abby's man in a heartbeat,
if there was drugs or money in it for them. Even her own sister
Tabby betrayed her. And now her best friend Jasmine did, too.

After Abby got my letter, she asked Wigger
if what I wrote was true. Of course he denied it, but he was really
pissed at me.

So now there was a possibility that
Jasmine's fight with Wigger in the middle of the night was just a
trick, to get me to go there. Maybe he and his homeboyzzz were
waiting for me. Well, I wasn't gonna let some little ghetto thugs
intimidate me. After all, I had a gun now! What it do, homeslice?
Holla!

I hid my gun on me and felt like James Bond.
Lucy and I were on a mission! It was 3 am by the time we got to
Abby's house. Jasmine got into the car and told Lucy that she was
upset, because Wigger had been cheating on her. She was sick and
tired of the way he was treating her, so she was done with him. On
her way out, she stole some crack from him.

When we got home, Lucy hid in the bathroom
and smoked Jasmine's crack for hours. She just wouldn't stop. She
left the door unlocked, so Jasmine and I tried to get her to come
out. But she was busy rearranging the towels. Over and over again,
with the twitchy motions of a tweaking crackhead.

Lucy said that she wanted to watch Beautiful
Creatures, so Jasmine and I were waiting for her on the living room
couch. We kept calling her, but she wouldn't come. Then Lucy called
me into the bathroom.

I went inside. She was still rearranging the
towels. Then she said: "I just wanted to let you know that I'm a
very jealous person, and it really bothers me that you are sitting
in the living room with Jasmine."

Jasmine and I had been sitting on opposite
ends of the couch. We really weren't doing anything, just talking,
and we had been calling Lucy over and over, so we could finally
start the movie. But to make her happy, now I sat in the bathroom
with her, so she wouldn't feel jealous anymore. I was getting
really tired. It was 6 am by now.

Suddenly Lucy decided to make dinner for all
of us. At 6 am!

She had made a nice dinner for me a few days
ago, right after Thanksgiving. We had wanted to spend the holiday
together, but then she had been smoking crack around the clock
instead, and tricking. So we decided to make up for it a few days
later instead. She was proud of herself and sent pictures of the
dinner she prepared for me to her grandpa and Nicole. I thought
that was really sweet.

She decided to impress Jasmine with her
cooking skills, and made a little bit of everything she could find
in my fridge and freezer. She made a ton of food. Jasmine and I
kept telling her that we really weren't hungry, but Lucy wouldn't
take no for an answer. So we ate something to humor her. Jasmine
was already nauseous from the Ds she had shot up, but eating dinner
at 6:30 am pushed her over the edge and she started throwing up. I
told her she could lie down in the guest room, but she said she
didn't feel comfortable sleeping in a bed. She preferred sleeping
on the couch. So I brought her some blankets and a little bucket,
in case she had to throw up again.

Then I went to sleep. It was 7 am. Lucy
kissed me good night and told me she would join me in bed in a
minute. At 8 am I woke up, because Lucy sent me a text, telling me
she'd be right in. She did that a lot, sending me texts while we
were in the same house, but she was in one room, and I was in the
other. I went back to sleep.

At 10 am my phone rang. It was a Global Tel
call from jail. I hadn't heard from Veronica since before
Thanksgiving, ever since Wendy was sent to D pod for screaming at
Kathleen, because Wendy found out that Veronica was still sending
love letters to Kathleen. I was done with her. I wasn't even
thinking about her, while I had been spending time with Nicole and
Lucy.

But the call wasn't from Veronica. It was
her friend Cassidy. The girl she had told me to ask about what she
was doing in dorm 2 with Wendy. The one who would tell me that
Veronica was being 100% faithful to me and that there was nothing
going on between her and Wendy.

Cassidy said she was being released from
jail the following night or early morning, and she had nowhere else
to go. Could I come pick her up, and could she come stay with me
for a few days, until she figured things out. I didn't know this
girl at all, but she said she had something for me: a love letter
that Veronica had written to Wendy in D pod. Wow.

Veronica had given the letter to Morgan, the
girl who used to be Kayla's best friend, and who had given my
letter to Veronica, after I asked her to tell me the truth about
what Veronica was doing behind my back. But now Morgan really did
come through for me after all, and instead of giving Veronica's
letter to Wendy, she decided to give it to me instead. Morgan knew
that Cassidy was about to be released, and she gave the letter to
her, so she could pass it on to me, once she got out. Thank you,
Morgan. I owe you one.

I told Cassidy on the phone that I really
appreciated that she was going to give me the letter, instead of
passing it to Wendy, and I promised that I'd be there to pick her
up.

I really wanted that letter! I knew that
once I saw it with my own eyes, I would be over Veronica for good.
I really hadn't missed her at all since Thanksgiving, because I was
so busy with Nicole and Lucy.

Then I told Cassidy that Lucy and Jasmine
were staying with me right now, and to spread the word in jail,
before she got out. I figured it would get under Veronica's skin.
Then I got up to go find Lucy and tell her about Cassidy's
call.

Lucy wasn't in her spot in my bed. And she
wasn't in the bathroom. And Jasmine was no longer on the couch. I
figured maybe they're on the porch, smoking. Nope. Not there
either.

So I texted her: "Where r u?"

Lucy texted me right back: "I'll call u
later."

I figured maybe they were meeting a dope boy
at the mall or something. Who the hell knows? But then my instincts
told me to check the guest bedroom. When I walked in, I found Lucy
and Jasmine in bed together! The same bed where I had found
Veronica cheating on me with Kim a year earlier!

I was speechless. I just walked back
out.

How the fuck could Lucy do this to me? Last
night, when we had picked up Jasmine at Abby's house, we went to
Walmart afterwards, because they both wanted to dye their hair
bright red. While we were walking around the store in the middle of
the night, Jasmine was arguing with Wigger on the phone and told
him she wasn't coming back. Lucy took my hand, and said: "I hope we
will never argue like that. I want things to always be ok between
us. I love you." Then we kissed.

And now this fucking psycho was in my guest
bed with Jasmine! The same damn girl Veronica had cheated on me
with, after Kim.

I really was living in the Twilight Zone.
And Lucy was an eerie copy of Veronica. It seemed like she was
determined to do everything to me that Veronica had done before
her. Or like she was auditioning for the same role in a crazy
horror movie.

I said loudly, but calmly: "Get up and pack
your stuff. I'm going to drop you guys off wherever you want to go.
But you can't stay here."

Lucy came out. She was still high, and said:
"What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean? I want you to get
out," I replied.

"NO! Where the fuck am I supposed to go? I
have nowhere else to go! I'M NOT LEAVING!" she yelled.

I didn't give a shit at this point. She
could go to her grandfather's house, or stay with Cho or G-Force or
Wigger or whoever else. But I wanted nothing to do with her
anymore. I was not gonna let her betray me the same way Veronica
did, because I already knew what happens next in this movie. I had
seen it all before. I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I was
reliving the same situations over and over. Only the names
changed.

Meanwhile Jasmine pretended to be sleeping.
Or maybe she was really just as comatose as Veronica and Norbert
had been, when I had caught them in bed together, and they didn't
wake up, no matter how loud I yelled.

"I'm not going ANYWHERE!" Lucy continued to
scream. I started to feel bad for her. She really really didn't
want to go. She knew she had fucked up again, and she didn't want
it to end like this. We had just made up last night. She had just
told me last night how sorry she was for fucking things up between
us when she was in jail and she had other guys visit her. And now
she fucked it all up again already.

"If you don't leave, I will call the cops
and you'll get arrested for trespassing," I said calmly.

"I don't care! CALL THE COPS! I'm not
leaving! I'M NOT LEAVING!!!" Lucy screamed.

"Don't test me," I replied calmly. "I don't
make empty threats. I really will call the cops if you don't leave.
And you will be in jail two hours later. Is that really what you
want?"