Secrets and Ink by Lou Harper Read Free Book Online

sealed. As far as I’m concerned everyone’s allowed a few mistakes, although I wonder why you…”
    “Sold my nubile body to strangers?”
    “Yes, that’s exactly how I was going to put it. At first I thought you were another runaway, but no. You lived with your parents in a big house in South Pasadena. Your father had a good job at the jet propulsion laboratory. Were they abusive?”
    The mere suggestion horrified me. “No! My parents were perfectly nice. Bewildered and lost for a clue what to do with me, but never raised a hand to me.”
    “Then why?”
    “Do you wanna know the truth?”
    “That’s why asked.”
    Well, there it went—my big secret. “Since I was little, I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin. Like something was wrong with me. Being Sasha was becoming another person—confident, sexy, exotic and sinful. It was dangerous and thrilling, and it made me confident. I can’t explain any better. Don’t you feel different when you put on your uniform?”
    “That’s hardly the same.”
    “I know, but it’s an identity. I knew who I was as Sasha.”
    “And who are you now?”
    “Boring old Jem.”
    “I think you underestimate yourself. I haven’t had a boring moment around you yet.”
    I snorted. “Give it time.”
    “That’s the plan. So you dropped the role playing after the arrest?”
    “Ehrm…”
    “You didn’t get arrested again. I checked.”
    Did he now? Well, not all history lay in police records. “I didn’t pick up johns in Hollywood, but I didn’t go straight either. Sure, I kept my head down that year, finished high school, but the moment I turned eighteen, I moved out and in with my friend Riley.”
    “Riley?”
    “Yeah. Riley Moore. We had a place in WeHo… Well, technically in Hollywood, on the wrong side of LaBrea, but it was West Hollywood to us. Four of us shacked up in a two-bedroom, but half the time a fifth or sixth person crashed on the couch or whatever horizontal surface they found. We had odd jobs here and there, I shook my money maker at clubs, various stuff. None of it exactly illegal, but not up and up either. Some sugar daddies on the side. No, I didn’t go beige till years later.”
    “Why then?”
    “You could say Karma caught up with me. Literally. I called her a bitch, and she put a hex on me.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Ms. Karma Jones, from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. I must say, I had it coming. She was only doing her job.”
    “Be serious.”
    “I’m dead serious. I don’t envy meter maids—I mean traffic officers. They have belligerent assholes hurling insults at them day in and day out. It makes them cranky. Although, I think Ms. Jones was cranky to begin with. I would be, with a name like that. Her parents must’ve been some sick bastards.”
    “You are serious.”
    “I told you I was. I apologized to her later, but it didn’t go down like in the movies. Neither of us said anything deep and profound, and there was absolutely no hugging. If I’d tried to hug Ms. Jones, she would’ve smacked me upside the head. And it made no difference about the curse—what was done, was done. My whole life went south three days after she had my car booted and towed. For starters, a house fell on me.”
    He shook his head as if he didn’t believe me. “Oh, c’mon.”
    I popped a few more candies into my mouth and put the box down on the floor. Story-time was just warming up. “It was a beautiful summer day and I was driving around in the hills, looking for this guy who sold pot, but I got lost, and then the car died. It was Riley’s, because mine was at the pound. So I rolled that piece of junk to a curb and started trekking back to the main road, thinking I could hitch a ride from there. I walked past this one lot. It was really steep; you wouldn’t think anyone could build a house there. They built it anyway but didn’t do it right because the whole thing slid off the side of the hill. Huge mess. It