The Good Girl

The Good Girl

She opens the envelope and sees that the number has more zeros then she can handle… again. She thinks to herself that she was stupid to try to live alone. Just her apartment’s rent takes about fifty percent of her monthly earnings. She must pay for college, books, food, electricity, and water. She is too poor for the Internet and television, she barely gets by, she lives to get her degree and finally become a nurse as she dreams. She sits idly staring at the number, in a daze she sits for a few minutes. She begins to worry, she knows she won’t be able to make this months rent and the college payment. She is scared and frantic; she does not want to be living on the street, especially with the winter coming in New York. She cannot rely on her drug addict mother, and she doesn’t even know who her father is. She was raised in the ghetto in a neighborhood where gangs ruled and crack was the only answer to a person’s problems. She is just trying to be successful, just trying to leave that past where it belongs… But God seems to hate her. She decides to make a vital decision, one she knows she will regret but must for the better of her future. She runs to her room, and opens her drawers, leaving every one open. She runs to the closet door and leaves it open too. She begins to cry.
Tears flowing down her face, she looks at clothing. She pulls every piece out of her drawers, she combines colors, boots, stalkings everything she has. She feels trapped, afraid, having second thoughts about her decision. She has no other choice; her crack addict mother would laugh at her, tell her to kill her dreams to be in medicine. She screams aloud at her mother although her mother is not there in the room. She continues to choose clothing making the best combinations she feels she needs. She finds the perfect match. She takes off her cloths and replaces the garments of her choice. She now wears a red tube top exposing some cleavage, with a see through black over coat. She wears a teal skirt, with white stalkings and boots that rise to her knees. She sits at her desk, holding back the tears and places makeup on her face. She begins with the mascara, then the eyeliner, and the scarlet red lipstick. She grabs her blush, some light blue under the cheek. Such a pretty girl who now looks depressed, torn, forty years older.
As she walks out of her apartment, she turns back waits in the threshold for a few seconds lost in her thoughts. She closes the light, locks the door, and proceeds down the stairs. Every step seems longer then the last. She walks slowly, shamefully, full of hate for her life. She refuses to give up, she refuses to lose like her mother has. She finally reaches the door with the bright red EXIT over it on the ground floor. She takes a deep breath and pushes the handle. The cool autumn breeze hits her face. She walks a few blocks and stands at the corner.
She stands for a few minutes, and a car pulls up. A wealthy looking man in the silver Lexus brings down the passenger window. She notices a briefcase in the back seat. He asks for the girl’s age, she repeats “eighteen” her voice slightly cracking. He then mumbles something, she replies “Three-Hundred Dollars”. He unlocks the door. She opens it and sits in the seat. The car slowly takes off. Damned man… probably is married and has children; he is most likely rich by the looks of his car, yet he abuses that by taking advantage of a young woman for a few hours of “pleasure”.
The silver Lexus pulls up to a lonely apartment complex, a young female exits the passenger side with a wad of cash in her hand. She slips it into her pocket and smiles good bye to the man in the car. He whispers that he will return. She turns as the car drives off. She opens the door; tears begin to fly out of her eyes and down her cheeks to fall off onto the ground below her. The tears clear away the mask unveiling that beautiful face below it. She runs up the stairs to her apartment, 14F. She struggles to place the key into its lock, the tears blur her vision. She finally gets the door open and slams it closed and locks the three mechanisms quickly. She throws her keys at the table and sits on the floor broken into a million pieces. She cries for hours, until she falls asleep on the floor. She awakens at eight am. She has a class at ten. She showers, and cleans herself over six times. She then dresses like a young woman going places. Books in her hand, and a knife in her pocket for protection, she leaves her apartment an hour early, for the forty-minute walk to campus.