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prologue

spring, 2010

it was unmatched life experience that bestowed in her eyes the sultry gleam that separates women from girls. although she viewed her “life experience” like bruises on a peach, men of all ages still found ways to see past the indications of damaged goods long enough to offer her a drink. hell, it was less than an hour ago that one such man called her “gothic perfection” and cried on her shoulder. 

her boyfriend agreed that a crazy life can “grow a girl up quick”; it was only last november that she turned seventeen.

in public, her demeanor was trim, graceful and uninhibited. in the privacy of a jacksonville motel bathroom, she straddled the toilet seat backwards and used the tank’s lid as a desk. she signed the bottom of a handwritten note, “miss you, dusty,” creased the letter in thirds, and slipped it in the envelope.

fishnets pressed patterned diamonds into her thighs beneath a mesh skirt--flared and sagging like a sickly tutu--and boots with leather laces fell an inch short of the scar on her left knee. raven-black hair framed her cheeks. crimped lashes fluttered against heavy rings of liner. plastic pearls crowned her form-tight blouse with a single lacework sleeve while matching bracelets garnished the bare arm. a stud in her brow. a stud in her nose. six earrings and two open piercings.

the ensemble was black--always black--except the silver eyelets on the boots, blue painted nails, and brown irises in her sleepy eyes.

the bags were black too; garbage bags swelling with the life of a dead man, now like four tumors in the sterile bathroom. she already forgot his name, though his expression as he begged for death was crystalline in her memory. out of all five, he was the first to plead for the pills, nearly snatching them from her palm after demonstrating the difficulty of using a shotgun.

“the butt sits on the ground like this. see, robin?”

her name wasn’t robin.

“but my arms are too short to reach the trigger. i tied floss from the trigger to my toe, but i wasn’t strong enough to go through with it. i bought a revolver last week. before i could use it, i found you.”

he asked if they could do it with the shotgun--she would do him, then herself--but the pills were cleaner so she talked him out of the weapon.

jules--her name was jules again--untied the neon draw-string of the first trash bag. an invisible billow of cologne and tobacco puffed from the open tumor and the stench watered her eyes and clung to the bathroom walls. she inhaled through her mouth, rummaged through the bag, and placed the items in a row along the faux-marble countertop: a leaking bottle of old spice, ten balled neckties with gold tacks and cufflinks, a leather wallet containing twelve-hundred dollars, a cellphone, the revolver, a universal remote control, headphones, reading glasses, a wooden box of cigars, a polaroid camera--

“julesie-baby! get the hell in here!” trevor was in the bedroom, drunk and probably naked.

“give me two minutes, baby!” she called back and transferred fifty dollars from the wallet into dusty’s envelope. 

jules turned the camera over in her hands. her mother owned a similar model years ago. the old hag once spanked jules and her sister for wasting such expensive film on make-believe fashion shoots and pictures of their baby brother with a staged cigarette hanging from his lip.

jules held the camera two inches above her eye line, pursed her own charcoal lips, and snapped a picture. the device whirred and clicked and spat out a photo. she shook it and waited as the yellow milk became the image of a girl.

mom referred to her dad as “hollywood” on the few occasions jules got up the nerve to ask questions. she never met the douche, but knew from her own mysterious physique that his nickname held at least a dime-bag of truth. her skin was olive, not the paper-thin wonderbread skin of her cousins and friends; easy stretch marks, flat cheeks and beady eyes like a calling card for TRASH. where jules came from, even the skinny girls had stretch marks.

she refocused her attention to the photo, held it to the light, and narrowed her eyes. she rubbed her thumb on the girl’s face, then crumpled up the picture and threw it in the bag. she knuckled both hands on the counter amongst the dead man’s artifacts and studied herself in the mirror. she sighed.

the wig came off first. she unpinned the synthetic hair and dropped it in the sink. her real hair was the color of a railroad spike; about the same length too.

“jules! get your trashy ass out of the bathroom!”

“trev, chill!” 

mascara left blotches and streaks on the folded washcloth like ink from a broken quill. she pressed the rag into her cheek and buffed away cream foundation to reveal the scattered freckles she loathed. she pulled the blouse up her body and over her head, draped it on the curtain rod, then readjusted her white tank-top.

again, she posed for the camera. when the picture emerged, she yanked it out and shoved it in the envelope without glancing at the result. she licked the glue and sealed the letter; money and photo inside the manilla sheath. 

“hey in there!” trevor yelled again, “are we gonna do this?”

“i’ll be right out!” jules looked again at the black defiled cloth, then whispered to herself, “i need to put on my makeup.”

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