Streetlife

42 - The Call

TESS POV

I wrap my arms around myself as I had just been stripped, searched, finger-printed and processed. I was given my one phone call, but I can't seem to bring myself to use it yet. Right now, dressed in my own clothes as I wait to see what will happen to me, I was told that I would be brought to Rikers if someone didn't come and bail me out. I am freezing and every bone in my body aches as my head pounds and my eyes burn, my high now worn off big time.

I am beyond angry with myself for allowing myself to get this low and in this predicament, for who the hell am I supposed to call? I can't call Warbucks whatsoever! He'd kill me for sure. No way! I'd rather rot at Rikers than to face him especially since he already gave me a second chance and there was no way he was giving me any more.

"Got any smack between those legs?" I hear a drunk, older woman with stringy hair and no teeth ask in a grovelly voice as I turn and shake my head, trying my best to keep it together for I'm sure my hair is a matted mess, I must smell badly, and I know I must look as bad as she does if not worse. I hadn't lost my teeth yet but if I kept this shit up I damm sure would along with the rest of my looks. What little of them were left.

"What's that? You look like a junkie! You can't tell me you ain't no junkie!!! DO YOU GOT some smack???" She asks louder as I try to swallow down the bile in my throat my stomach cramping even more.

"N...no. I...I don't."

"Leave the poor girl alone! She don't need to answer to your scrawny ass, Beverly!"I turn to see a butch looking woman with a snake tattoo on the side of her neck yelling, and I quickly turn back to look at the ground. Keeping to myself seems like a good idea right now, and I just wish I could get a cell to myself, but I know that me being here in holding would give me no such luck. I I should make my call, I really should as my mind scrambles and I know I have no choice, no choice in the matter but to call Julius and knowing damm well it was really Lena who was going to help me.

I hated that about myself. I hated that she was always taking care of me, and that she begged me to go to rehab, she begged me to get clean, she begged me to take care of myself. What other kind of fucking life did I know at this point? Didn't she get it? I was nothing. I had failed myself, I had failed my grandmother and I had failed my little Fannie.

Tears spring to my eyes once again as I slowly get up requesting my one phone call, for I knew if I didn't I'd die. Even if that was something I really wanted right now for who in the hell would miss me. No one.

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LENA POV

"I am beyond exhausted. Jesus Lord!" I sigh loudly as I have managed to make myself another cup of tea for it just seemed like the days are never ending.

And it didn't help that this heifer had invited herself to live here and now knew what we all did for a living. On top of that her knowing Warbucks was my man made my veins pop and I knew from now on she was going to use it to get to me. BUT, I refused to let it and knew she was getting her fuckin rocks off by doing it. But that was the thing I was learning about her, she lied and half the shit she said was to bait me. So truth was I didn't know what the bitch knew and didn't. But an apartment? Really? I guess only time would tell.

"Just leave her be, I guess," Julius sighs as well as he plops down beside me on the couch and we both put our feet up on the coffee table. "I mean, Miss Thang is right. Callie is an adult baby. Even if her head is in the damn clouds ninety-nine percent of the time dreaming of her life in California."

"Don't you hate that she's being used, though? Stef is really using the hell out of her. Bossing her around, constantly smoking pot and getting high, and making Callie think she's some fucking God. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, c'mon, Jules," I sip my tea as I continue to feel fried beyond belief.