“Not her fault?” My father’s hands shake on top of the table. “She…she….”

“I fucked men for money.” Everything stops. The room is filled with a silence that’s suffocating. But I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all. “There, are you happy?” I lean back in my seat and wait for his response. I’m not afraid of my father anymore, and honestly, that feels pretty good.

“Anna!” Sarah says, shocked at my bluntness, at my language.

I look at her and give an apologetic smile, but it’s mixed with disdain. I guess I am a little sorry. Not for saying that to my father, but for saying it in front of Sarah. I have more respect for her than my whole family put together. Three years on the streets hasn’t changed my lack of respect for parents who gave me more rules than love.

It’s also the first time I admitted I am—was—a hooker out loud to Sarah. She knew, of course, but when I wouldn’t talk about the years I spent in New York, she gave up and focused on the now. Why couldn’t the lie have lasted a little longer?

My mother turns and then rests her head on the kitchen counter. To pray? To hide her tears? I don’t know.

Truth is, she needed to hear it.

They all needed to hear it.

Sarah looks at me now. “Anna, you’re back now. And your parents are going to do whatever they need to do to make this work for you. But they need to know why you came back. What is it that you want out of all of this?”

My life back.

“Freedom,” I say lightly.

“What do you mean?” Sarah says.

“I…” I’m a little scared to say it, to tell them the full truth. I glance at my father. “I left, before, because of how controlling you were. I couldn’t be who I wanted to be. I just want to have a little freedom.”

“How? How can I let you do anything?” my father says. I’ve hurt him, angered him. “How can you expect us to trust you?”

“I don’t need you to trust me. Just don’t expect me to be your perfect daughter. I was never that girl. I’m not going to church, I’m not going to be a straight-A student, I’m not going to dress up and go to prom or be homecoming queen like you always expected. I don’t know what I want to be, but I know I don’t want to be that.”

“So what is it? You want the freedom to ‘be yourself’? ‘Yourself’ is a prostitute,” my father says. He stands up. “I can’t let you be that anymore. I won’t!”

I stand up, too. “No! I didn’t just wake up one day and say, ‘Maybe I’ll suck cock for a living.’ That’s all you think I am? Just a hooker? You don’t realize I did it because of you. I left because of you!”

The words are out before I can take them back. God knows what my father would do if Sarah wasn’t here. Something to make me take it back.

But Sarah is here, and however angry he is, he can’t afford to let down his disguise in front of her.

Sarah stands and grabs me by the arm. Is she being tough? But her hand feels like a feather on my arm, so light it amazes me.

Still, I do what she wants and walk with her through the sliding glass door on the other side of the kitchen and out onto the back porch.

I know she brought me out here to talk, but I find myself looking at a doghouse at the back of the yard, a water bowl beside it. We never had a dog.

“Anna, I need you to calm down. It’s hard for them to adjust to this, too.”

“Well, at least they get to make their own choices,” I say, still looking at the doghouse. There’s no grass around it, just mud. “If they choose to have their hooker daughter back, they better be ready to face the truth.”

“Listen,” she says. “I agree that they’ll have to accept the truth. They’ll have to come to grips with it. But that doesn’t mean you have to throw it in their faces.”

I turn back to her. My only friend.

How pathetic.

What would Luis think of me now? At least he’d tell me to stand up for myself.

“Yeah, right,” I say.

“Just stop for a moment and think. I want you to try to imagine how they feel.”

I shake my head, not at her, at myself. Why does no one think about how I’m feeling?

“What if I don’t want to think about what they’re feeling?”

I don’t know what she sees when she looks at me. Sometimes it’s like she looks straight into my brain, or soul, or something.

“Why not?” she says in a near whisper.

“Why would I want to be okay with my parents thinking I’m trash? Disgusting? Whatever else they think?”

“You’re thinking about this the wrong way. Yes, they think little of what you did while you were away, but that’s not what I mean. You were their baby, their little girl, and you left them. Ran away. Don’t you think that hurt them?”

I shrug. “Maybe.”

“As a parent, all you want to do is take care of your children, protect them. And they couldn’t.” Her voice gets softer, and for the first time I wonder if she has—or had—a kid of her own. “Now, in some ways they feel like it’s too late. It’s hard for them. Not just about you being a prostitute, but about all of it. They feel like more of a failure at being parents than they think you’re a failure of a daughter. I guarantee it.”

I stare at her, unblinking. I don’t know what to think about what she said. This is all so much. Now I’m supposed to feel sorry for my parents?

I turn away from her and cross my arms. “I didn’t ask to be here. No one gave me a choice. It’s not fair to put all of this on me.” Tears well in my eyes, and I feel like a child. I hate feeling like a child.

Sarah sighs. “Why don’t you hang out here for a while? Try to calm down a bit. Mentally prepare yourself. The truth is this will all go a lot smoother if you and your parents learn to respect each other.”

Yeah, like I can just make myself respect them.

Sarah walks through the door and leaves me alone in the backyard.

I look back out to the doghouse, which stands almost one hundred feet away from where I am on the porch. But I haven’t seen a dog yet, so I take a few slow steps toward it. I still see nothing; maybe it’s not even out here right now. Maybe they don’t even have a dog anymore. They might have killed it the way they killed me. Three years is a long time to live with people like them.

I see a large metal chain connected to a tree about ten feet away that leads directly to the house.

I take a few steps and see nothing. Another few steps and something moves, a small grunt of a lazy animal, and inside the dark hole of the large doghouse I see a bit of black fur.

A few more steps, even slower now.

Then I hear a deep growl. The kind of growl you don’t want to mess with. Slow, confident. Scary.

I’m not scared of dogs, but I’m not stupid either. I’ve met my fair share of untrustworthy dogs in New York.

“Careful there.” I whip my head toward the male voice and see a boy over the fence, standing in the yard next door.

He looks at me, and his smile seems so genuine, so confident, that it can’t be real.He’s probably about my age, freckles and thick-rimmed glasses. A bit nerdy, but cute in a way I’ve missed. The kind of guy I’d never have talked to in my old life because I’d have thought he was too good for me.

But he already made the first move, so…

“No?” I say.

He shakes his head, that small smile playing at his lips. He looks at the doghouse. “He doesn’t have many friends, so he’s not usually good with strangers.”

A nose and a pair of eyes look out at me from the doghouse. Whatever’s in there isn’t growling anymore, it’s watching.

I take a few steps away and look back to the boy, who’s watching me, too.

Who is he? We never had a neighbor my age before. I’m not good at making friends, and I’m pretty sure this kid would hide under his bed if he knew just some of the things I’ve done over the last few years.

But somehow, the way he looks at me with those hazel eyes, bright and alive… It’s like I’m not the girl from the streets, not the girl who sold her body to strangers and fell in love with the man who sold her. Not the girl with no future. Even Luis never looked at me like this. To this boy, I’m just…normal. Just a mysterious girl next door he’s never met.