Ima crouched behind one of the train platform’s pillars, still in disbelief at what she’d done. Her fishnets had a run in them, snagged on the concrete, and her toes bled from running over broken glass. She had no desire to stuff her feet into a pair of ridiculous platform boots, but she had left her normal shoes back at the alleyway.
Her father was patrolling the stairs to the train platform, chatting it up with some of the guards who blocked the entrance. Teenagers with dramatic, spiked hair colored in pixels, like a television screen, lined up outside the steps. As the line progressed, their outfits grew more outlandish—from stripes and checkers in highlighter colors to headpieces and metal contraptions, to one burly guy who wore an entire zebra carcass and nothing else, not even shoes. From what Ima could gather, the passenger train should have arrived several minutes earlier, but never showed. The crowd was waiting for an incoming cargo train to pass through before the guards would allow them onto the platform.
Her father—well, he was just waiting for her.
One time, back when she had just turned thirteen, she got invited to a birthday party. Ima knew Lia had only invited her because Dash asked her to, but it felt good to be included all the same. Ima’s mother had given her permission and even bought her a new dress for the occasion.
New dresses didn’t come often, especially not a dress like that one, with silver ruffles and soft lace, and beadwork along the collar and at the ends of the sleeves. Usually, Ima’s father’s government paycheck didn’t stretch far enough to cover luxury items, but her mother had found a sale that week.
The day of the party, Ima dressed early in anticipation. Lia’s parents had booked several rooms in The Drake Hotel for her Silver and Gold Ball, where everyone wore one of the two colors to gain admittance. Just as Ima had finished putting on a bit of her mother’s makeup, her father came home, drunk and stumbling and stinking of smoke. The minute he saw her, heard where she planned to go, he went ballistic on her—calling her a slut, ripping layers of her dress from her body, until she stood naked and crying in front of him. He took scissors to the dress until he got bored; then he turned the scissors on her, carving derogatory names into her forearm with the inside of one of the blades. She begged him to stop, promised that she had never even kissed a boy. “I know you sneak into that blonde boy’s room,” he warned her. And then he did something that Ima never, ever wanted to think about again. Ima managed to squirm away from him, barely; and her father still has a thin scar on his right shin from when she stabbed him with the scissors.
She had a feeling this night might end the same way if her father managed to get his hands on her. Only this time, she’d plunge the knife through his heart, if she could.
“Look at that.” Dash crouched next to her, eyeing the metal supports that extended between the platform pillars. “Think we can scale it?”
Ima pulled the mukluk impersonation over her knee. “Not in these boots.” Despite her annoyance at the sexiness of her outfit, Dash had made sure to hide her worst scars with layers of material, thankfully.
Dash nodded in agreement. “You couldn’t scale it yourself, but maybe you can hang on to me.”
Ima glanced at him; Dash’s shoulders had broadened over the last few years, and he’d shot up about a foot, but even he didn’t have the strength to climb to the train platform with an additional one hundred and ten pounds on his back.
Ima’s chest filled with bitter disappointment that rose through her throat and stopped at her eyes, threatening to spill in the form of tears. Everyone from her school would be at the concert, just like Lia’s party. And tonight her father seemed out for blood. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised—her father ruined everything in her life—but why this? Her one night of freedom, her one night to spend time with Dash beyond the four walls of his bedroom, her one night to socialize and be a normal teenager—it all seemed to drain away from her as the minutes passed, like the charge on her phone when she played too much music.
YOU ARE READING
Socialpunk (Socialpunk #1)
Teen Fiction"This book would be good for those that enjoyed the Hunger Games!” ~ Cover 2 Cover Blog "When I read the first page, I did not anticipate that I would be finishing the book that night, but I did. I had to. I didn’t care that I was up until 3:00AM."...
