I walk one more block, grit my teeth, narrow my eyes, and tell myself I am iron, I am steel, I am unflappable.

I enter another church.

I never thought I’d spend so much time in them for reasons other than worship. I grip my field hockey stick in one hand. I don’t even play anymore. I simply like weapons, and I like flexing my fingers around it as I pass through the musty vestibule, ignore the holy water and the candles, and take my customary spot in the fifth pew from the back, laying the stick across my bare legs.

I’ve been summoned by my Dark Overlord, and I can’t say no.

Such is the life of a former teenage call girl who’s being blackmailed.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon so there’s no service now. I glance around at the other churchgoers; a few scattered faithful are here. Or desperate, depending on how you slice it. As I scan their bent heads, I wonder if anyone hears their silent pleas. Maybe some are even asking for forgiveness for their sins, which is what I’d be doing if I were a religious girl.

But I’m not.

I hear the familiar sound of Miranda’s heels clicking across the stone floor.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

When I reach one in my head, she’s sliding into the pew, maintaining a two-foot distance between us as if getting closer to me would infect her. I kind of wish I had pink-eye, could touch my eye, then zoom in on her with the pad of my index finger just to watch her pull away and freak out.

But then, she’d find some way for me to pay for that too.

She says nothing as she stares at the sweeping altar ahead of us. Her golden blonde hair is piled high on her head with a clip, her medium length bangs swept over her ear. She looks amazing, especially in her sharp grey skirt that fits well and the pretty indigo blouse she wears. She’s lost about twenty pounds in the last six months.

I want to tell her it wasn’t the twenty pounds that did it. But she’d never believe me. I’m dog poop on her shoe, a gnat buzzing by her ear, the smoke alarm that won’t stop bleeping.

I am nuisance made human with killer legs and face to boot.

I am her worst nightmare.

Or I was until she realized she could turn the tables on me.

She bows her head, clasps her hands together and steeples her long fingers, pale pink polished nails meeting at the points. I imagine what one would look like chipped.

She’d shriek in displeasure, like a kettle on permanent boil. I stifle a smile.

“You should pray, Harley Coleman,” she says crisply.

“It’s not my thing.”

“It should be.”

“Thanks,” I say, but don’t give in to this request. To others yes, but not this one.

Rule Number One when being blackmailed: maintain some lines.

The more you bend, the more your extortionist tries to break you.

She begins a low prayer, inaudible to anyone else, but crystal clear to me.

It’s the Catholic prayer of purity. “Jesus, lover of chastity. Mary Mother, most pure, and Joseph, chaste guardian of the Virgin,” she says, the icicles in her voice stabbing at the last word.

I roll my eyes and bob my head as she continues on, substituting “begging you to plead with God for me” to “begging you to plead with God for Harley.” She finishes with “Have mercy on her,” though she doesn’t mean a word of what she’s saying. There is no mercy for me from her. Well, unless I told my mom everything. And telling her anything or everything is the one thing I will never do. Never as in never-ever-ever.

Rule Number Two: Know your own lines.

I’m stuck here. Protecting my mother. I have to protect her.

“Ah,” she says with a hearty sigh and a hugely false smile. “I feel so much better, don’t you? Cleaner, right?”

“Like I just took a bath in holy water.”

She glares at me. “You jest in God’s house?”

I nod. “I do. I do jest in God’s house. Frequently, in fact.”

“I’ll take the pages now.” She holds out her long-fingered hand to me, her wedding band with its sapphire and diamonds reflecting across the stained glass windows.

I dig into a side pocket in my purse and hand her a thumb drive.

She takes it, looking at it with disdain. It’s part of the routine: I give her a thumb drive every time and every time she regards it like a diseased object. “Hmm. You couldn’t bother to print it out?”

“I don’t have a printer.”

She snorts, then slips it into her vast purple purse. “I want this book done soon. One more month at the most. You need to work on the next chapters. And make them tawdry. Make them sordid. Make them as lurid as they can be.” I inhale sharply. This woman is sick. “Then, give her the redemption she doesn’t deserve,” Miranda adds in her cool, calculating voice.

I stand up, eager to play even a lowly two of clubs in the form of leaving first. “I’m late for my British lit class.”

“You can expect a followup from me sometime this week.”

“Sometime, like anytime?”

She shrugs smugly. “Perhaps any day of the week.”

Rule Number Three: Know when to bluff.

“If you don’t tell me the day, I’ll tell my mom everything.” She may hold most of the cards, but the thing about blackmail is everyone has something to lose. Including Miranda. I don’t want my mom to know about the book she’s forcing me to write anonymously, but she doesn’t want my mom to know she’s making me write it either.

She purses her lips. “I’ll email you.”

“I can’t wait.”

As I scoot out of the pew, she grabs my wrist and her pink nails dig into my skin. I fantasize about brandishing my field hockey stick and whacking her upside the head. There’d be a brilliant gash across her forehead. Blood would ooze into her blue eyes and leave a sticky trail in her blond hair.

“Don’t. Sass. Me,” she says in a low hiss, determined to have the last word.

I yank my wrist from her, clamp my lips together and let her have what she wants. My silence.

I leave, but I don’t go to British lit, because I don’t have classes today. I have a dinner at my mom’s house. It is date night with a new man, and so she needs me there. She always needs me. And I need her.

Page 3…

It’s been my mom and me as long as I can remember. I don’t remember much about my dad, so this story won’t be about him. All my memories are of my mom, starting with how unhappy she was after my dad walked out when I was six.

My mom was miserable for more than a year. She cried late at night, deep tears that could fill rivers and overrun their banks. She thought I was asleep, blissfully in dream land and unaware of her pain. But I heard her phone calls with friends, her “what did I do wrong” pleas, and her desperate, endless self-doubt. She missed the bastard, against her better judgement.

She tried to hold it together during the days, but I’d still find her crying in her cereal, or wandering aimlessly around the apartment, sniffling, and missing, and hurting.

“Don’t cry, mom,” I’d tell her, and she’d wrap me in a tight embrace.

“I won’t, darling. I have you to make me happy.”

After endless days and nights like that, she started to heal, to let go, and eventually the sobfests died down.

Then she was ready to start over. To carve out her new happy.

Dave was the first after my dad. I was in third grade, and Dave spent many nights at our house. He had a son one year older than me. Sometimes, when Dave visited in the evenings, my mom told us to play together. She and Dave wanted to chat and have some time alone.

“I’m happy again,” she’d whisper to me before she closed the door to her room. “Isn’t it great to see me happy?”

“Yes, mom.”

“You’ll play with Dave’s son. That would make me so happy right now.”