Chapter 13: Shattered

The paper she had hastily scribbled the name of the drug on crumpled in Claire’s fist before she even realized she was holding it. The numbers blurred together, a few hundred she could barely afford, for pills that wouldn’t fix anything.

The man she had bought them off, had looked at her like she was something scraped off a shoe, the kind of glance reserved for people who buy syringes at 3 AM or cough medicine in bulk. Claire stuffed the receipt into her jacket pocket, the paper rasping against the loose foil wrappers already nesting there. Her fingers brushed the cold plastic of the bottle, and for a second, she imagined twisting it open right there in the parking lot, dry swallowing three just to feel the numbness crawl up her throat.

Claire’s muted footsteps made their way back towards the road where she would have to find a bus, the gate barring her way had its hinge screeching like a dying animal as she pushed against it. She kicked it twice, once out of frustration, once to make sure the sound matched how she felt. Inside, the pills rattled in their bottle, a tiny percussion section keeping time with her pulse. The parking lot lights flickered behind her, casting long shadows that stretched toward the highway. One of them looked like Vincent’s silhouette, shoulders squared, hands in his pockets, watching her. She blinked, and it was just a dumpster.

The fat man had smelled like old fries and regret. Claire counted the crumpled bills, Joe had slipped her two twenties, a ten, and a handful of loose change that barely covered half the pills. She pressed her hands against her forehead, the cold seeping into her skin as she tried to steady her breathing. The urge to vomit rose like a tide, hot and acidic, but she swallowed it down. This wasn’t like the nights alone in her room, where the walls pressed in and the memories played on loop. Out here, under the indifferent sky, the shame was public.

His fingers had brushed hers as he handed over the pills in a greasy paper bag. “You’re short.That wont buy all of it,” he had said, not unkindly, just stating a fact. Claire didn’t look up. She knew his face would be the same as all the others she had sought it out from, pity laced with disgust, the kind reserved for girls who traded dignity for relief. The bag crinkled in her grip, the sound louder than the distant laughter of kids on the swings. She wondered if Vincent ever took her mother to parks like this, if they held hands under the same trees where she now walked past like a wounded animal.

The first pill dissolved under her tongue before she reached the bus stop. Bitter, chalky, a promise of numbness. Claire leaned against the plexiglass shelter, her reflection warped and fractured in the smudged panels. The bus was late, or maybe she’d lost track of time again. Time did that lately stretched like taffy, then snapped back without warning. She’d blinked once in the parking lot and suddenly it was dusk. Blinked again, and the fat man was counting her money with sausage thick fingers.

A notification buzzed in her pocket. mom. “U ok?” Simple, direct. She imagined her typing it one handed, the other gripping a steering wheel, her car idling outside her work as she ate before rushing back to work. Claire thumbed the screen but didn’t reply. What would she say? That she’d just traded her last shred of pride for a handful of pills that wouldn’t even scratch the itch? That she could still feel Vincent’s hands on her hips every time her mother posted another ideal couple selfie? The bus wheezed to a stop, its doors folding open like an invitation. Claire stepped in, the pills rattling in her pocket like dice.

The bus seat beneath Claire was cracked vinyl, the splits in the material catching at her jeans like tiny, insistent fingers. She pressed her forehead against the grimy window, watching the streetlights smear into yellow streaks as the bus lurched forward. Her phone buzzed again. Joe, probably but she let it go to voicemail. The pills in her pocket weighed nothing and everything at once.

Three stops later, a woman boarded with a toddler balanced on her hip. The kid’s shoes lit up with every step, flashing red against the bus’s dull floor. Claire stared, transfixed, until the mother caught her eye and shifted the child away. The message was clear: You don’t belong here. Claire almost laughed. She didn’t belong anywhere. not in her mother’s house, not in Vincent’s bed, not even in her own skin anymore.

The bus hit a pothole, and Claire’s teeth snapped together hard enough to taste copper. The jolt sent her hand flying to her pocket instinctively, panicked, but the pills were still there. The rattling sound morphed in her head for a split second: not pills, but the click of a belt buckle. Not her pocket, but the rough cold touch of a basin digging into her cheek while Vincent’s phone light painted her thighs blue.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Wrong. That wasn’t how it happened. The basin came later. First was the backhanded smack, the marks in her palms when she tried to push away, the way the third man’s wedding ring caught the moonlight as he held her down. his voice, calm as a podcast host: Tilt your head left, girl. The lighting’s better. The camera flash stuttering between the shadows of the other two. They had filmed it all. Gleefully.

The bus’s fluorescent lights flickered like a dying strobe, casting Claire’s reflection in the window in jagged fragments. Between the flashes, she saw not her own gaunt face, but Vincent’s phone screen that small, glowing rectangle that had framed her humiliation like some perverse art project. The memory hit in shards: the cold press of the basin against her cheek, the way the third man’s breath smelled of stale alcohol as he whispered “Hold still”, the click of the phone camera, syncing with the sound of her own choked sobs.

A woman’s laughter from the front of the bus snapped Claire back. Her fingers dug into the vinyl seat, nails catching on a loose thread. That’s how it had started, with laughter. Those strangers who had stolen everything from her, joking about their “private show,” their voices blurring into the cicadas’ drone. She’d thought it was a joke, Vincent could not do this, not to her, not until the first hand clamped over her mouth. The second man, had he been the one with the tattoo? had pinned her wrists while the third unbuckled his belt with one hand, the other already fumbling at his zipper. Claire’s stomach twisted. She could still feel the wet floor under her knees when he finally let her go, hours later, the phone’s battery dead from filming.

The journey home had been a blur, she briefly remembered being uncuffed, struggling to run away and then slumping. The showerhead had spat lukewarm water in uneven bursts, the way it always did when the building’s plumbing fought with itself. Claire remembered pressing her forehead to the tiles, the grout lines digging into her skin like a grid, some pathetic attempt to map the fractures inside her. The water had run pink at first, then clear, but no amount of scrubbing erased the phantom press of fingers between her thighs or the way Vincent’s phone light had carved her into pieces. She’d retched until her ribs ached, the shower drain swallowing her vomit along with everything else.

Flash. The third man’s wedding ring catching on her nipple as he twisted a sharp, bright pain that made her gasp. She thought she heard Vincent’s voice from somewhere behind the camera: That’s the shot. Keep making that face. The phone’s red recording dot blinking like a cyborg eye.

The water had turned cold before Claire realized she’d been sitting in the shower for hours. Her knees were raw from pressing into the porcelain, fingers pruned like dead things. The tiles smelled faintly of mildew same as that basin had after. She remembered the way her fingernails had scrabbled at it, how the marks had lodged under her skin like tiny accusations. An amused voice had cut through the night air, detached, professional: Turn toward the light, toy. No, chin up. Perfect. The camera shutter clicked in time with the third man’s thrusts, syncing her humiliation to the rhythm of his hips.

Flash. A hand clamped over her mouth not to muffle her screams, but to angle her face for better composition. Someone’s belt buckle dug into her hipbone. The third man had paused to adjust his phone’s flashlight, bathing her in a clinical white glow while the others chuckled. Like a car wash, one of them joked, and the laughter buzzed in her skull like wasps. Claire had squeezed her eyes shut, but the afterimage burned brighter behind her lids: Vincent’s phone screen tilted just so, framing her splayed legs like a museum exhibit. Art, he’d called it later, wiping smudges off the lens with his shirt hem. Raw human truth.