billion book
Chapter 20
Amelia’s stomach twisted, images of the ever-widening circles of degradation she fell into assaulting her recollections. Getting high to mask the shame and distance herself from her choices. Giving handjobs or trading blowjobs to smooth over debts or charm favor from heavy hitters. Even experimenting with more organized sex work to supplement the dismal cash flow from her menial fast food jobs.
All while maintaining surface appearances of the good, churchgoing girl who raised zero red flags at school or her rare sightings around the neighborhood. No matter how thickly she painted on the wholesome facade, Amelia sensed the layers of moral compromise suffocating her from the inside, hardening her once-soft heart into something calloused, brittle and utterly disillusioned.
And always, the glaring absence of anyone who remotely gave a shit about her well-being, or stepped in to derail the spiraling chaos. Even as she actively demolished the long-abandoned concept of her innocence, it was tragically preferable to confronting the frigid emptiness of solitude.
Yet through it all, a lone, flickering lifeline remained… her rock and moral lodestone for resisting complete surrender to society’s depraved fringes…
“Ruby…” Amelia spoke her best friend’s name like a fervent prayer, remembering those cherished adolescent years when the two fiery Latinas were inseparable. “For the longest time, she was the only steady, positive force in my life. The one person who didn’t look at me with pity or judgment despite my transient home life and sketchy associates.”
A melancholic half-smile curved Amelia’s lips as memories of her whip-smart, righteously indignant homegirl surfaced.
“Ruby always had this indomitable spirit and stubbornness about not succumbing to the shitty hand our neighborhood tried dealing us. Wasting our potential with cheap highs or hustling on the corner held zero appeal for her ambition to get educated and make something of herself.”
Amelia worried her bottom lip, shame flickering hot in her chest.
“I used to lie straight to her face about the depths to which I had already plunged, desperate to convince my oldest friend I was still a good person worthy of her loyalty. But Ruby saw straight through my deceptions, calling me out whenever I acted shifty or flaked on our usual hangouts for days at a time.”
Her eyes grew distant, unfocused, absorbing another fragmented sequence of ghostly recollections assailing the shores of her psyche…
“For real, ‘Melia?” Ruby shouted, stalking down the sidewalk after a stone-faced Amelia. It was nearly midnight with the two of them making the dangerous trek from Amelia’s crap job to her ramshackle rooming house. “You been bouncing on the pipe this whole week again, and those pendejas you roll with been turning you out? Don’t even try lying – I see the marks all over your arms!”
Whirling on her heel, Amelia met Ruby’s fiery glower of reprimand with an imperious sneer. “Back off with the lecture, Ruby. What I do is mine, not yours. And you can take your judgey bitch attitude and shove it up your-”
The harsh retort was bitten off by Ruby grabbing her firmly by both shoulders, giving her a vicious shake.
“Look at yourself, ‘Melia! This ain’t you, letting those basuras drag you out to the goddamn gutters.” Angry tears shone in Ruby’s eyes, voice wavering with unbridled frustration. “You’re better than getting zoned out and selling your self-respect to make their twisted rules. Why you keep destroying yourself over and over again to stay down with those idiotas?”
Racked with shame and self-loathing, Amelia lurched free from Ruby’s grip and averted her gaze, inwardly shriveling from the compassion and tough love she felt so undeserving of.
“Don’t you get it yet, Ruby?” she muttered icily. “There is no better version of me, no matter how many chances you give. This is what I deserve – being some trashy, lost ghostchica burning through the quick life instead of wasting air with pipe dreams that ain’t never gonna happen.”
Steeling herself against Ruby’s stricken expression, Amelia turned on her heel and stormed off into the humid night, the reek of the city’s despair clinging to her tarnished skin…
Amelia shuddered back into the present moment, shrouded in anguished silence as tears streaked her hollowed cheeks. Philip watched her with naked worry radiating from his expression, but he made no move to rush her or interrupt the tide of poisonous memories she needed to finally purge.
After several steadying breaths, Amelia spoke in a hoarse rasp, “That was the night Ruby and I stopped speaking for nearly two years. My stubbornness kept me sprinting headlong into oblivion no matter how many times she risked life and limb to pull me back from the edge.”
Her fingers pleated the bedsheets with aggravated tension, the old guilt wracking her slight frame in spasms. “Ruby eventually made the healthy choice to keep her distance after exhausting all her fiery protests and heartfelt interventions. Distance from the soulless monster her best friend was well on her way to warping into permanently.”
She slowly lifted her gaze to Philip’s, beseeching him with silent torment clouding her lovely features. “Can you fathom how far I must have fallen to alienate the person who saw my potential and self-worth more clearly than I ever did? Ruby refused to abandon hope that I could change and have an actual future… right up until I shattered her faith too many times to keep catching me.”
Her words hung in the electric silence like a dooming epitaph, daring Philip to absorb the sickening depths of degradation at which Amelia’s revolting choices could only hint. His eyes shone with heartbroken empathy, chest constricting with the enormity of Amelia’s desecrated existence.
No child, no matter how tragic their upbringing, deserved to be stripped of selfhood and human dignity to such scarring extremes before even flowering into adulthood. And yet… Amelia had not merely survived, but miraculously risen from the proverbial ashes more radiant and cherished than her grimmest days could have foretold.
Philip ached to gather her into the shelter of his arms, swaddle her in the steadfast promise of unconditional love and reassurance that no matter the lurid revelations to come, she would never have to claw her way through darkness alone again. He was here and he wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how disturbed or appalled she feared him becoming.
But something in Amelia’s tormented gaze gave him pause, an unspoken plea for space flickering behind the rawness – just for now. So Philip stayed anchored in watchful stillness as the woman he loved with every shred of his being steeled herself to unravel even more of her worst nightmares, determinedly slaying every last skeleton festering in her closet.
Because only after shining the scorching light of truth into those lightless recesses could either of them hope of emerging reborn on the other side, no longer hamstrung by poisonous secrets and anguished pasts.
Amelia took a fortifying breath, tapping into some vestigial well of shattered resilience as she prepared to exhume the most haunting, unforgivable epochs of her downward spiral. And silently prayed that the bedrock of Philip’s devotion would remain unshaken when he glimpsed the depravities scourging her soul…