She was the first person to figure me out, but I don’t feel ashamed of that. 1) She’s not a cop, and believe me, that makes all the difference. 2) I’m already convinced she’s psychic or has some kind of superpowers, and how am I supposed to contend with Superwoman?

“You don’t have one now, you’re right about that,” she whispers so soft and slow that tears form in my eyes. “But I know you did have one. And if we find him, if you help us find him, we can stop him from hurting other girls like you.”

I shake my head. Was he my pimp? Was he my boyfriend? I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to face it. And I certainly don’t want to tell anyone about it. Besides, who am I to decide Luis’s fate?

She opens up the file, spreads it over the table. “Honestly, Anna, we’ve already found some things about your time in New York, but we still need your help to fill in the holes.”

I look into her eyes, more scared than I’ve ever been. Not terrified, not like when I was raped or when I was attacked in Grand Central or when Luis and I were jumped that one time and he had to pull a gun to get away. Not that kind of fear.

This is bone deep. The kind that stings your eyes with a deep pain in your heart. The kind that you know you’ll never heal from because it’s not physical.

Doesn’t she get it? Doesn’t she understand that I want to forget about everything that happened in New York? Good. Bad. It’s over.

At least I want it to be.

“We know about Luis,” she says. “He’s going on trial and we need your help.”

I press my eyes closed and one small tear escapes, trickling down my cheek, exposing me. I wipe it away quickly, but the damage is done. If she was bluffing, she got the answer she was looking for.

She pulls out a mug shot of Luis. He’s not smiling.

This isn’t a picture of the Luis I knew, the man I gave everything for, and my world crashes in a way it hadn’t before. Even when he abandoned me, he still seemed alive. He still seemed like he had hope for the future.

The Luis in this picture is vacant, his eyes dead.

Is this because of me? Is he empty because I’m not there? Does he regret giving me away?

I shake my head and push away the picture, holding back the panic in the back of my throat. “I don’t know who that is. I don’t know him.” It’s a desperate tactic that I’m sure won’t work, but I have to try. I have to.

“Anna,” she whispers.

I shake my head.

“You don’t have to protect him.”

I keep shaking my head, back and forth, back and forth. My heart breaks, cracks slowly, splinters. Shatters.

“He’s already been arrested,” she says. “There will be a court case in a few months. We’re rounding up witnesses now. He’ll go to trial for quite a few things. Child prostitution, statutory rape—”

“Rape?”

“It means he’s too old to be sleeping with a sixteen-year-old girl. They consider you too young to choose for yourself. Especially since you’ve been with him since you were thirteen. The question is, how long were you sleeping with him?”

She acts like she knows so much.

“Look Anna, we need your help to put him away. We don’t need much, we just need you to testify…tell us what happened. Tell us the truth so we can give him justice.”

“What?”

“We want you to testify.”

“Against Luis?”

She nods.

Maybe Jackson was right. We’re nothing without hope, and as angry as I should be at Luis, as happy as I should be to see him suffer without me there, my very last hope was that he would be okay.

Now she wants me to talk. To help put him in jail.

I don’t know what he deserves, but I know I don’t want that power.

I stand. “That’s the reason you asked if he raped me. You just want to charge him with more things!”

I can’t believe she would do this to me. Or that she’d ask me to do this to Luis. She’s supposed to be a friend.

“I’m not looking to get him in more trouble,” she says. “But if he raped you—”

“No! He saved me. You don’t get it. He saved me!”

Sarah just looks at me. She still doesn’t get it and she never will. No one ever will.

Usually she knows everything, can see the things no one else does, but she’s missing the point here. I was a hooker, yes. I did have a pimp…sort of.

But the only reason he became my pimp—if you could even call him that—is because we didn’t have a better option. I had a dream, and he wanted to help me go after it. We needed money.

In the end, he abandoned me. He sold me to someone else, like I was property. I guess that shows what he was willing to do for money.

But he also helped me. If it weren’t for Luis, I’d have been in the gutter before the sunset on my first day in New York. Was he perfect? No. Especially not toward the end. But if Sarah thinks that just because I left that life I’ll throw him into the gutter he pulled me out of?

She’s not nearly as smart as I thought she was.

I walk out to the parking lot and sit on the hood of her car until she finally comes out. I ignore her until she says my name.

“Anna.” She points to the passenger side door. “I should get you home.”

I give her a look that says she better not say another word, and she doesn’t the whole way home.

Sarah pulls the car up to my parents’ driveway. I pop open the car door, intent on getting as far away from her as possible.

“Anna,” she says lightly.

I stop but don’t look at her.

“I have to go back to New York,” she says. “I’m sorry you’re mad at me, and I wish I didn’t have to leave now, but I do. There are more girls who need my help.”

Why do I feel like she’s accusing me? Like I’m refusing to help those girls with her? And that’s why she’s leaving.

“This isn’t good-bye,” she says. “I just won’t be around for a little while. You can call me anytime.”

“Fine. Bye,” I say and hop out of the car and practically run into the house.

I barge through the door and slam it shut behind me, and for a full second I don’t notice the dog crouching in the hall in front of me.

His bark shakes the mirror next to me. I jump back to get away from the dog and his snapping jaws. Shit.

I can’t handle this. No one wants me. No one likes me. Not even this stupid-ass dog.

“Just shut up,” I yell at him, tears welling in my eyes.

He stops barking.

I blink again, then slump to the ground. Right there, in the middle of my parents’ home with a damn guard dog staring at me, I lose it. Completely. Sobbing in a way I don’t know that I ever have.

It has to be a full five minutes before I calm down enough to breathe and open my eyes. The dog just sits there, watching me curiously. He doesn’t understand, but I wouldn’t expect him to.

He sits with his head so high, his chest sticking out, like he’s so proud to be him. It looks like confidence, but I think it’s the way he is. He’s beautiful, in an odd, sorta scary way.

And as I wipe my tears from my eyes, he inches close to me. I watch closely, unsure if I should move away from him. He doesn’t seem to be the most friendly or trustworthy dog I’ve met.

I drop my hand to my bent knee, and he leans in closer, slowly. His wet nose touches my hand, but his eyes never leave me. I wonder if he wants me to pet him, but then he starts to lick my hand. I’m not really sure what it means, but it feels like he’s being nice to me. Like instead of expecting me to pet him, he’s doing something for me. A slimy something, but it’s the thought that counts.

I wait a moment, then pull my hand away and try to sneakily wipe it on my pants as I stand up. He lies back down like nothing happened, and I sneak past him and hide in my bedroom. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, thinking about everything.

I should know better. I know I’m not supposed to think about the present. I guess the problem is that the past and the future are just as painful.