Gold Rush

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

A MONTH LATER, I lay back on the shabby bed in my new apartment, studying a water stain on the ceiling. If I tilted my head and squinted, it looked like North Dakota. So, how had things changed? Not a lot, in all honesty. The place in Richmond wasn’t much different from my old home, apart from being in a different state and having pale blue walls instead of cream. And it had a separate bedroom, albeit one I could touch both sides of if I stretched my arms out, plus the hot water seemed reliable if not a little sludge-coloured. As a bonus, it came with a grumpy landlady who lived on the floor below and treated complaining as a hobby.

“You came home too late last night,” she’d told me soon after I moved in.

“Eight o’clock?”

“A lady needs her beauty sleep.”

She’d missed a couple of decades of hers. “I’ll try to be quieter.”

“And don’t forget to lock the communal door. You left it open the other day.”

No way. My unwanted visitor had made me paranoid with regard to security, but I didn’t want to argue.

“I’ll make sure I do.”

I’d make sure to keep out of her way too.

But the place had its good points as well as the bad. I hadn’t seen any signs of the stalker since I left—although I still broke out in a sweat every time I smelled tobacco smoke—and my mind, which I’d temporarily misplaced, was slowly returning.

The alarm on my phone trilled, informing me it was time to get ready for work. I’d picked up a waitressing job for two days a week. The café was nicer than Buck’s—the tips were better, and the clientele didn’t try to grope my butt—but it barely covered my rent.

“You’re first on the list if more shifts come up,” my new boss told me, but I knew the prospect was unlikely. She worked most of them herself, and the other girls showed no signs of quitting.

And that meant I needed to look elsewhere for extra income.

Luckily, the public library was within walking distance of my apartment. I spent a morning there updating my résumé, what little of it there was, and printed a hundred copies. My hopes were high as I started to deliver them to local businesses, but with every rejection, my spirits sank lower. After two days, the only offer I’d had was waitressing Monday to Wednesday in a gentlemen’s club. Topless. I’d sleep in a cardboard box before that happened.

Shoulders hunched, I traipsed home at the end of the afternoon, running through the food I had left in the cupboard. Could I eke it out for another day or two? Think positive, Lara—at least you’ve lost a few pounds.

Of course, the landlady popped out as I tiptoed past. How did she always do that?

“You keep playing your TV too loud.”

“I don’t have a TV.”

“Don’t give me that. Young people these days, they’ve got no respect.”

“But I really don’t own a television. I haven’t even got a radio.”

“Kids were honest back in my day too.”

That was it! I’d had it up to here with that woman. I clenched my fists as I tried to stop my tears from escaping. “Look, I swear I don’t...”

I clammed up at the touch of a hand on my shoulder.

“Just ignore her,” a blonde girl who looked to be my age whispered. “She’s like that with everyone.”

The landlady glared at the newcomer, backed into her apartment, and slammed the door. My ally giggled. “Cantankerous old biddy. Don’t let her upset you. She’s not worth it.”

“It’s not just that.” I sniffed and resisted the urge to wipe my nose on my sleeve.

“What, then? Man trouble?”

I shook my head. “Right now, money trouble.”

She nodded sagely. “If it’s not one, it’s the other. Do you feel like grabbing a coffee? My treat—you look as if you need one.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or depressed by that statement, but I found myself nodding. “That’s very kind of you.”

“I’m Sylvia, by the way.”

“Lara.”

In the imitation Starbucks on the next corner, I told Sylvia a sanitised version of my recent move.

“You’re braver than me,” she said. “Before I came here, I planned for a year, and now I can’t ever see myself moving away.”

Brave? I couldn’t believe that. Stupid? Definitely.

“I’m beginning to regret leaving Baysville. At least I had contacts there. Job hunting’s so much harder when you don’t know anyone.”

She took another sip of her mocha. “It may not be something you’d enjoy, but would you consider cleaning? That’s what I do, and the lady at the agency I work through may have something available.”

I could clean. Heck, I’d had enough practice when I was with Billy. “A cleaning job would be perfect.”

Sylvia gave me Michelle’s number and promised to call her in the morning to put in a good word for me. Could this be the answer to my problems?

Meeting Sylvia turned out to be my lucky break. Over the next month, Michelle offered me a few days a week of housekeeping work in various hotels, covering for staff sickness and vacation. Some were nice, some not so much, but they all paid money and that meant I could afford to eat.

“They love you,” Michelle told me when I stopped by to pick up my pay cheque. “The manager from the hotel yesterday called me personally to say what a good job you did.”

That would be the slimeball who’d squeezed my bottom while I was dusting. I forced a smile.

“That’s good. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of extra hours?”

“Things are slow at the moment, but if more work comes in, you’ll be at the top of my list.”

Where had I heard that before?

I kept my fingers crossed as I walked home, because while I was off the breadline, it still came down to a choice between heating and eating. With my new-found sense of optimism and the sun shining from above, I searched for the silver lining in the dark cloud hanging over my life. Hmm… At least the lack of work meant I had free time to explore the city I now called home. There we go.

Over the next few weeks, I did the tourist thing and visited Maymont Mansion and its beautiful gardens, Monument Avenue, and Agecroft Hall. Apart from a single horrid trip abroad with Billy, I’d never had a vacation, so I pretended I was on one now. The number of Kodak moments made me wish I could take some photos, but I’d pawned my camera to pay for Momma’s medication. Think positive, Lara. Maybe I could learn to draw instead?

On rainy days, I huddled under my umbrella and walked to the library. While the world outside glistened in shades of grey, I transported myself to far-off places through second-hand romance. I’d given up hope of finding my own Prince Charming, but I still loved to dream. In between those adventures, I flicked through math textbooks to give my mind a workout. College may have turned into a nightmare, but I’d always be a geek at heart.

While I loved the books, the building itself brought back unwelcome memories because it was in the school library that I’d first spoken to Billy. As I’d done every day for the last ten years, I rued ever meeting him. Back then, I’d thought it was a magical moment, but I soon learned not all spells were good.

And Billy Cooper was no wizard.

Teenage me hadn’t had the benefit of hindsight on that fateful day. It was mid-afternoon on a rainy Thursday when Billy Cooper, the wide receiver on the high school football team—some said the best wide receiver ever—strutted into the library and asked me to help him with his math homework.

Me!

Lara the Loser!

What was I going to do? Say no? Of course not—I’d read those stories about the nerd ending up with the football star, and they gave me hope, okay?

I spent an hour working through all the problems with him and explaining two or three times what I’d done, and when we were in class three days later, he passed me a Post-it with a few scribbled words.

Full marks! Your a genius!

I kept that note stuck carefully in the back of my math textbook, and every time I looked at it, a smile crept across my face. Looking back, the fact that he didn’t know the difference between you’re and your should have given me a hint we weren’t compatible, but when you’re sixteen years old, you tend to turn a blind eye to these things.

The next week, Billy came into the library again and slid into the seat beside me.

“Hey, Einstein, gimme some help with the new math assignment?”

Mesmerised by Billy’s grin, I refrained from pointing out that Einstein was a physicist rather than a mathematician.

“Sure.”

Our weekly library sessions became somewhat of a fixture, and I counted down the hours, minutes, and seconds until he walked through the door. Back then, he’d been sweet to me—he’d bring me a soda one week, a bar of chocolate the next.

For a girl with few friends, the attention was flattering. I wasn’t Lara the Loser anymore. I was Lara-who-Billy-liked. People began to notice me, to see me in a different light. Now, I understood it was the attention that had attracted me rather than Billy himself, but as a teenager, I was blinded by his rudimentary charms.

After one particularly gruelling algebra session, he slammed his textbook shut and sat back in the chair, fingers laced behind his head. “I’ve got a game on Saturday. Wanna come? We could go get a burger after.”

Like I was going to decline that offer. My pulse sped out of control as I willed my voice to stay steady. “I’d like that.”

A burger led to a trip to the cinema, and before I knew it, we were making out every night in the back of Billy’s car. He changed me, and I didn’t realise at the time it was for the worse.

With him, I was in the popular crowd again, and with that came a sense of euphoria I hadn’t felt since my pop left. The feeling of acceptance overrode any niggling doubts I may have had over whether Billy was the right boy for me. Not only did I get access to his social circle, he also had money, and he liked to buy me things—snacks, dinner, even clothes.

“The way you look reflects on me, sweetheart. I want you to look good,” he told me one evening before we went to a party.

“Are you sure this top suits me?” I turned back and forth in front of the mirror. “It’s awful tight.” I gave the skirt another tug down. It didn’t cover much.

“It makes your t**s look awesome. I want everyone else to know what’s mine.”

I kept the outfit on. I was seventeen, all right?

Mom saw the warning signs I’d missed. “It’s better to have your own style,” she told me. “Wear what’s comfortable.”

“I’ll wear whatever I want,” I snapped back, because like any teenager, I hated being lectured.

Oh, if only I’d listened.

When the opportunity came to follow Billy to college, I jumped at it. The day our acceptance letters for Brown arrived, we threw a party so wild I woke up on the kitchen floor, minus my underwear and my dignity. Even that didn’t bring me to my senses.

Billy won a football scholarship, and mine was in math. At first, I loved college. As a natural bookworm, studying was fun for me, and surrounded by like-minded people, my knowledge grew. Plus there were the perks of dating a football player.

For the first year, I lived in the dorms while Billy moved into a frat house, but I spent more time in his room than I did in my own. My roommate was nice enough, but we had nothing in common. Life was good, and I thought we’d stay in that arrangement for the whole of college, but a misunderstanding with a goat and a professor’s car led to Billy getting kicked out of Sigma Kappa Phi.

“Assholes,” he said as he shoved his belongings into a suitcase. “They were too tame for me, anyway.”

At first, I snuck him into my room, but the girl I shared with soon got annoyed with him hogging the bathroom. The hair. It was always the hair. He wore it slicked back, stiff with so much gel it felt crispy when you touched it. Plastic. Billy was a Ken doll but without the charisma—I saw that now.

“Maybe we could get a place of our own,” nineteen-year-old me suggested, blinded by what I thought was love.

“Already sorted. Pop’s buying me an apartment. We can move in next week.”

Why wasn’t I surprised? Mr. Cooper thought the sun shone out of his only son’s ass. He was wrong, though. It was the fires of hell glimmering through.

But back then, I’d still had my sunglasses on, and within seconds, I was mentally decorating the living room.

“Ooh, our own place! I can’t wait.”

Mistakes? My life was full of them.