Free Sunset City by Melissa Ginsburg

sends me a birthday card with twenty dollars in it every year. I always throw it out.”
    â€œEven the money?”
    â€œYeah. I don’t need his fucking money.”
    â€œShit, you should give it to me,” I said. “I’d take it.”
    â€œHa. Too late.” Her birthday was a month ago already.
    â€œYou’re a spoiled brat.”
    â€œYep.” She laughed.
    â€œWhy do you throw the money away?” I said.
    â€œHe used to fuck me.”
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    She pointed at the refinery, the pipes interwoven, going every direction.
    â€œI loved driving past here. You can see it from the freeway. I used to pretend fairies lived in it. They made the fires with their magic.”
    â€œAre you serious?” I said. “It’s not funny.”
    â€œGive me a cigarette.”
    She wasn’t smiling. We sat smoking, listening to the car radio. I was shocked.
    â€œDoes Sally know?” I said.
    â€œI told her, after he moved away,” she said. “It’s weird, though. I don’t think she remembers.”
    â€œHow could she not?”
    â€œIt was a long time ago. There was a lot going on.”
    â€œDanielle, that doesn’t make sense.”
    â€œShe was such a freak after my dad left. It would have upset her and caused problems. She didn’t want me home alone. Without Uncle Alex I would have to take the bus home from school and be by myself in the afternoons.”
    â€œBut maybe if you’d told her sooner—”
    â€œShe wouldn’t have cared, she was fucked up already. The divorce was bad. My parents were both such jerks. She worked late, she got drunk every night on her fancy bottles of wine. I basically stayed in my room and watched TV.”
    â€œDanielle, my god. I’m sorry.”
    â€œWhy are you apologizing? It should be her. She should apologize.”
    â€œWell, he should,” I said. “Fucking bastard.”
    â€œHe came to visit, at Thanksgiving. I guess it was a couple of years later. We had a bunch of people at our house. And he showed up.”
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked.
    â€œNothing. He ate dinner. I didn’t talk to him, I was at the kids’ table in the breakfast room. They gave us that sparkling apple juice that comes in a fake champagne bottle.”
    â€œWhy didn’t she throw him out? Or call the police?”
    â€œI don’t know. I figured she must have forgotten. How could she invite him to Thanksgiving?”
    She was crying then. I hugged her.
    â€œGod, I hate her,” Danielle said. “I fucking hate her.”
    Later, after she started dancing, she talked about the abuseopenly, like it wasn’t a big deal. She mentioned details, coloring books he’d bought her. He used to close the curtains and make her undress in the middle of the living room. He liked to sit in this big recliner while she watched TV naked. She liked this show, an after-school soap opera for kids called Tribes . I remembered it; I’d watched it, too. Danielle said a lot of the dancers at the club had been molested. She joked about it being a prerequisite for the job, that they might as well ask about it in the audition. The recliner, she said, was blue.
    It was all such a long time ago. As I drove I thought, No one cares about that now.
    I kept driving, longing for a silent, dark place, beyond the streetlights and the lights of the city. But the city never stopped, it reached and reached. There was no sky beyond the hovering, staining smog. I killed my headlights, as a test, and I could see the road easily, lit by the air. The grid stretched endlessly, inescapable. I made a U-turn on the wide road, headed to the center of town, wishing there was somebody who could help me, tell me what to do.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    I slept terribly and woke too early, with echoes of Danielle’s voice in my head. I couldn’t believe she was gone, right when we were going to be friends