Ride or die Page 5

  “Guysborough?” the balding man behind the wheel repeated. They burst into laughter again as they peeled out of the driveway.

  Crystal looked over at Kanika. They were both afraid.

  “Buckle up, girls!” the driver shouted. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”

  Chapter 12

  A New Home

  After about two hours in the car, Kanika and Crystal were asleep. Kanika wasn’t sure where they were. But it was close to eleven when the men shook them awake. They led the girls into a fast-food place, ordered some breakfast for them and told them to use the bathroom.

  “Do your business in the bathroom and don’t be stupid,” the blond one growled. “You’ve got two minutes to be back out here.”

  The girls hurried into the stalls. They came out and splashed water on their hands. They didn’t stop to dry them, just shook the water off as they left. The men were waiting outside the door for them.

  “Get out to the car!” the men yelled.

  On the way back to the car, Kanika noticed a sign just up the highway. It read Hotel Moncton. Kanika knew that Moncton was in New Brunswick. They were in a different province. She nudged Crystal and pointed out the sign. Crystal gulped. Who were these men and where were they taking them?

  Kanika wanted to call Danny. There was no way he could have known that these men planned to take them out of the province. But as much as Kanika had pleaded in the past, Aunt Becky had never agreed to let her have a cellphone. Kanika wished now that she had been more persuasive. She remembered seeing Crystal use her phone on the drive in to Halifax.

  “Let me see your phone,” Kanika whispered.

  “I can’t. They took it from me last night, remember?” Crystal replied.

  Kanika felt panicked. She had never been outside of Nova Scotia before. She had to find a way to contact Danny. But over the course of seventeen hours of driving, Kanika and Crystal remained in fear of their fate. They watched city after city pass by. The men kept a tight rein on them, never allowing the girls to leave their sight. The girls were fed well and they stopped for bathroom breaks. But the men were harsh in their talk and treated the girls like cattle heading to the slaughter.

  When they pulled into a gas station on the highway, Crystal spoke up. “Do you think I can run in and call my mother just to let her know I’m okay?” she pleaded. “I promise not to say anything else. I just don’t want her to worry.”

  The driver turned around. Without warning he backhanded Crystal across the mouth. Kanika jumped. Crystal cried as the blood gushed from her split lip. She held her hand to her mouth.

  “Never ask me that again!” the balding man hollered.

  Kanika helped Crystal clean her bloody lip with one of the napkins from their fast food bag.

  It was almost morning the next day when they stopped at some place other than a gas station or a rest stop. The silver Jetta pulled up in front of a two-storey house surrounded by a rickety fence and overgrown bushes. The windows of the house were blackened and had bars. Kanika hadn’t seen anything like it. But she figured the area must be dangerous enough to cause someone to install bars on the windows.

  “Hellooo, Toronto!” the man with the ponytail shouted. He stepped out of the car to stretch his bones. “Well, Scarborough at least.”

  “Get out,” was all the balding man said to the two girls.

  Kanika and Crystal climbed out of the back seat and followed the men into the house. It was not what they expected. The living room was comfortable and had modern furniture. Kanika tried to get a sense of who lived there, but there were no pictures on the walls.

  A tall, slim woman came walking from the kitchen. She wore a bandana on her head and had a long summer dress on. Kanika could see her long blonde locks bursting from the sides of the thin bandana.

  “It’s about time you jokers got here,” the woman said to the men. “These the new ones?”

  The men nodded.

  She turned to Crystal and Kanika. “Welcome to your new home, young ladies. I’m Dawn.”

  New home? How could they expect Kanika and Crystal to live here?

  “Well don’t stand there looking like two dummies,” she said sharply when neither girl answered. “You both know the deal by now. Come on upstairs so I can show you where you will sleep.”

  The girls silently followed.

  “There are a few items of clothing on the beds in your rooms,” explained Dawn. “They may or may not fit. But you gotta make it work for now. Here’s the rundown. You share this house with four other sex workers. You hos don’t touch shit that ain’t yours. You don’t steal shit. You clean up your own shit. And you don’t give me no shit. Follow that and you’ll survive in here. Got it?”

  Kanika and Crystal nodded fearfully. Kanika hadn’t even heard the term “sex worker” before. Is that what she was now? But she knew she wasn’t a thief. She had no plans to touch anything that didn’t belong to her.

  “I’m a sex worker, too. But I’m also queen bee,” Dawn continued. “I’m the ho that keeps the rest of you bitches in line.”

  Dawn explained that the girls would be using hotel rooms to meet men, or tricks. She said that someone would be nearby, waiting for them. She showed Kanika and Crystal a few signals to use if they needed help or if a trick pulled a weapon. She also told them how to set up tricks to rob them.

  Kanika had a hard time taking in all the information. How was she supposed to go and have sex with strangers? Or rob them? The idea of having sex with dirty strangers for money terrified her. Kanika never knew a life like this existed.

  As her mind wandered, she also wondered if this was how her mother ended up a prostitute. Had her father been someone like Danny who preyed on young girls and forced them into “the game”? Kanika became angry. She had thought Danny loved her. How could he make her do such things? Maybe her mother had loved her father, too. And he had forced her into a life that led to her death.

  It was close to five in the morning when Dawn came into Kanika’s room.

  “The other girls will be making their way back soon,” Dawn told her. “They’ll be tired. So stay out of their way. You’ll meet them in the morning.”

  Kanika nodded.

  “Get used to this life,” Dawn warned. “The boy got you in, and trust me, there’s no getting out. So grow up fast. Or you’ll be in for a world of hurt. This business is about money. You make it, you live. You don’t make it, you’d better steal it or take the heat. Goodnight.”

  After sleeping what felt like only minutes, Kanika was awakened by Dawn. She was yelling for Kanika and Crystal to come downstairs. They made their way to the kitchen, where a bunch of girls were bustling around, preparing to eat breakfast.

  “Meet the other girls,” Dawn said.

  Kanika scanned the room. Her eyes moved to the table and met the gaze of the skinny Asian girl painting her nails. Kanika slapped her hand over her mouth. It was Panama!

  Chapter 13

  Reunion

  Kanika rushed to the table and parked herself in the chair beside Panama. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Panama stopped painting her nails and stared into Kanika’s eyes. They just looked at each other for a long time. Kanika read Panama’s face. It was pleading for help. But Dawn was watching closely. Panama remained silent.

  “How are you, Panama?” Kanika said at last. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Hi, Kanika,” Panama replied softly.

  “You two girls know each other?” Dawn inquired.

  “Oh, yes. Panama is from Guysborough County like me. We . . .”

  “Guysborough? What the hell is that?” one of the girls hooted.

  “Sounds like some kind of back-woods hick town to me,” Dawn said and laughed.

  “It’s in Nova Scotia,” Kanika announced. “It’s on the East Coast.” Everyone except Panama and Crystal la
ughed at Kanika.

  “You proud of that?” Dawn joked. “Girl, get the hell out of here with that east coast, Scotian shit. Don’t nobody care where you come from. We only care that you don’t be stupid and that you don’t do anything to get all of our faces kicked in. You ain’t no better than the rest of us. We’re all trapped in this crazy-ass nightmare.”

  The other girls went about gathering their breakfast. Dawn left the room.

  “Do you want to grab something and eat it upstairs?” Panama asked. She motioned to Kanika. Kanika grabbed a bowl of cereal and followed Panama up to her room. Panama closed the door behind them. She set her nail polish down on the dresser and sat down on her bed. Kanika sat beside her.

  Kanika knew Panama had a dark story to tell. And Kanika wanted to hear every word. Once Panama was finished, Kanika would tell a dark story of her own.

  “You remember Gabe?” Panama started.

  “Of course. The creep.”

  “He did this to me. He’s the reason I’m here. They took me from the hideout that day, Gabe and three other guys. I thought we were going to Halifax to meet up with some of Gabe’s friends. But it was a lie. He dropped me off at this scary house. He fed me to Dragon.”

  “Who is Dragon?”

  “He’s the pimp. He owns all the girls here. And he is very cruel. He has all kinds of young guys working for him, recruiting girls.”

  “That’s what Danny did to me and Crystal.”

  “Danny fed you to Dragon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gabe and Danny are both recruiters. Danny was one of the guys who helped Gabe drag me from the hideout. Gabe smooth-talked his way into our little secret in the woods. It was only so he could find girls to give to Dragon. I can’t believe there was a time when I said I wanted to marry him.”

  “I know.” Kanika thought about Danny and her dreams of their life together.

  Panama was near tears. “Kanika, it was so horrible what they did to me.”

  Kanika hugged Panama. She felt her pain. She had lived it, too.

  “I tried to fight them off,” Panama said. “But those boys beat me up so bad. I had a black eye and two broken ribs by the time those two thugs rushed me out of Nova Scotia. They wouldn’t even let me go to a doctor. I was in so much pain.”

  “I promise, I looked for you, Panama,” Kanika said. But she felt guilty. She started out to find her friend. But after getting caught up with Danny, she lost focus and fell in love. She had stopped looking for Panama.

  Several hours had passed by the time Panama and Kanika finished talking. By the end they were both crying. Kanika was heartbroken to hear that Panama was dragged kicking and screaming from the hideout. Panama had been so frightened from that point on, that she never resisted the men again. Kanika wished she had stayed. If she hadn’t been scared off by the boy, she could have been there to help her friend.

  “And it doesn’t get any better, Kanika,” Panama explained. “I’ve watched girls get punished for not making enough money, or for causing a fight with other girls. It’s even worse punishment if they try to leave.”

  “That scares me,” Kanika said in a whisper.

  “One of the girls here tried to leave. When Dragon caught her, he beat her so badly that she didn’t wake up for two days. He wouldn’t allow any of us to touch her. I thought she was dead. When she woke up, she was lying on the floor in the same place she was beaten, soaked in her own dried blood.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “And whatever you do, don’t come back without any money. Last week, one of them came back empty-handed because she got robbed. Dragon tied her up and burned her with cigarettes until she screamed for mercy. Then he sent her back out to make up the money she lost.”

  “But didn’t Gabe try to stop this? And why would Danny do this to me? He was supposed to be my boyfriend.”

  “None of them were ever our boyfriends, Kanika. Danny gets paid really good money to find stupid girls like us for Dragon.”

  Kanika started to cry again. “I don’t want this, Panama. I just want to go home.”

  “You have to be quiet, Kanika,” Panama sniffled. “We don’t want the other girls to hear us crying.”

  “I’m scared. I don’t want to go out there tonight. What if I don’t make any money? What if Dragon beats me until I die?”

  Panama hugged her tightly. “It will be okay, Kanika.”

  A gentle knock on the door made the girls pull apart. They wiped their faces with the sleeves of their sweaters.

  “It’s open,” Panama called.

  Crystal peeked her head in the door. “Mind if I come in?” she asked.

  When Panama nodded her head, Crystal slipped into the room and shut the door. She climbed up on the bed and crossed her legs. She looked down at her hands. But she didn’t say a word.

  “Everything okay, Crystal?” Kanika asked.

  Crystal was trembling with fear. “My . . . my period started.”

  “Oh my god,” Kanika said.

  “What do I do?” Crystal pleaded.

  “You’ve got to tell Dawn,” Panama said. “They’re gonna send you on all the creep calls.”

  “What’s that?”

  Kanika could tell Crystal was almost afraid to ask.

  Panama explained, “They get really weird requests sometimes. People wanting to pee in a girl’s mouth or do other crazy things. And some of them don’t care if a girl is on their period.”

  “Eeew! That’s frigging gross,” Crystal moaned.

  “It is, but they pay more money. So, it’s bad but it’s good, if that makes any sense.”

  What Panama was saying made Kanika feel nauseous. She knew that she couldn’t stay. She decided that at her first chance, she would run away. She would get to a police station and ask for help.

  Kanika told Panama and Crystal what she wanted to do. She asked them to escape with her. Crystal said no right away. She was too afraid of what might happen to her if they got caught. Kanika was sure her best friend would come along with her. But Panama hung her head.

  “It’s not worth the risk, Kanika,” Panama said. “You can’t get away.”

  “But don’t you want to make it home to your parents?” Kanika asked Panama. “They love you, and they miss you so much.”

  “And I miss them. But that’s the thing. I will never make it home to them. And if I do, it won’t just be my own life that will be in danger. Theirs will be, too. Dragon has guys everywhere, and will hurt people to get back what he thinks is his.”

  The room went completely silent as the three girls thought about their fate.

  Chapter 14

  The Game

  In the month since Kanika arrived at the house in Toronto, days seemed to blend into each other. Kanika began to learn how things worked between the girls in the house. She had to figure things out on her own, as Panama was always out on trick calls. There were a lot of kinky men with sick fantasies of tiny exotic Asian teens.

  It didn’t take long for Kanika to find out that Dragon slept with the girls. On her very first day there, Dragon burst into her room in the middle of the night. Having Dragon force himself on her made Kanika want to vomit. But she was too afraid to resist him.

  But there was one girl named Ru that Kanika had never seen Dragon treat like his property, to have sex with whenever he wanted. Ru always brought in a lot of money. But she was bold and sassy instead of scared like the other girls. Kanika talked to Ru as much as she could. Maybe she could figure out a way to avoid Dragon.

  “Don’t mess with Dawn, whatever you do,” Ru warned Kanika. “She’s Dragon’s right hand. And she’s as jealous as they come. She’s a crazy bitch. She knows Dragon gets with all his girls. But if she thinks you actually want him, her claws will come out. If she thinks Dragon is taking a special liking to you, she’ll slice you
in a minute!”

  Kanika found that news scary and strange. It seemed like everyone was Dragon’s girlfriend, since he was everyone’s pimp. But there was no love involved. The girls were scared of what Dragon might do. And Dragon acted like he owned all the girls. In what kind of world could one guy have all these girls any time he wanted to and nobody else could say a word about it?

  “I’ve noticed that some of the girls seem jealous of each other,” Kanika said.

  “It’s all about loyalty. They are all competing to show Dragon that they are the most loyal.”

  Kanika’s talk with Ru was eye-opening. She tried to stay clear of Dragon when she could. She never wanted to be his favourite. She never wanted to be on Dawn’s bad side. One evening, Kanika got a taste of Dragon’s cruel wrath. She had been lucky and received a hundred-dollar tip from a trick. The trick was an older man and Kanika thought he probably felt sorry for her. She was relieved to have received such a tip, and she was sure Dragon would be pleased. Maybe he would leave her alone for a little while. But Kanika was in for a shocking surprise when Dragon counted out her money that night.

  “Where did you get all this extra cash?” he growled.

  “It was a tip.”

  “Like hell it was. You think I’m an idiot?”

  Kanika was confused. She thought Dragon would be happy. But he was angry and she didn’t know why.

  “Answer me!” Dragon screamed.

  Kanika had no idea what to say. She’d already told the truth.

  Before Kanika could answer, Dragon hauled back and plowed his fist into her face. Kanika was stunned and the room went black. When she opened her eyes, she was on the floor. Panama and Crystal ran to her side to help her.

  “I don’t understand,” Kanika said.

  Panama whispered in Kanika’s ear as she helped her to her feet. “Did you sleep with a trick without a condom?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ask you to?”

  “No.” Kanika steadied herself and rubbed her swollen cheek.

  “Men usually give big tips like that if we agree not to use a condom. But Dragon forbids that. He doesn’t want any girls with diseases.”