Funny Girl

CHAPTER FIVE

Evie didn't go back up to her room. She needed to breathe, and the day was clear and crisp, with that tell-tale smell of Fall in the air. She could have used a light jacket, but didn't bother going back into the hotel. She turned left and started walking.

It was amazing to her how little this town had changed since she'd left it ten years ago. It was like a time capsule, preserving all the nuances of a time she worked so hard to forget. As she passed by Golden Park, a quarter acre of patchy green grass with an ancient and dangerous metal playground and a few swings, she could remember climbing the sharp-edged structure as a child, a little boy named Checkers chasing after her as she giggled. He finally caught her at the top of the tunnel slide and pinned her down with a triumphant grin. "Gotcha!" Evie had squirmed, but she was laughing so hard her chest hurt.

"Evelyn!" a hoarse male voice had roared, and she had gone completely still, breathe caught in her throat. It was Bill. She wasn't sure what she had done wrong, but she knew he had found something. He was always there, it seemed, watching, waiting for her to do something inappropriate or stupid. He was trying to shape her into a decent young lady, he said. He was trying to help her, because she had way too much of her degenerate father in her. Evie never knew what that meant. She had never met her biological father, and her mother couldn't be persuaded to speak a single word about him.

"Get off, Checks," she had hissed, shoving him off. He'd obliged, and Evie stood up, just as Bill's hand reached through the metal grates and grabbed painfully at her upper arm.

"Look at me, Evelyn."

She did.

"What the hell do you think you are doing with that boy?"

She looked down, and hoped that Checkers had vanished. She didn't want him to get in trouble for whatever imaginary offense Bill believed had been committed.

"We were just playing chase..."

Bill squeezed harder, and tears began to form in Evie's eyes from the pain, but she didn't cry out.

"Decent girls do not let boys climb on top of them like common sluts. Do you understand me?"

When she didn't answer quickly enough, he shook her through the grate. "Do you understand me?" he growled.

"Yes sir," Evie said.

She couldn't have been older than seven years. She took a deep breath and walked past the park. She really did need to sell that house. It felt urgent now. She couldn't keep a link to this place. There was a reason she had left, and more than sixteen years worth of reasons never to return. But what if the inspection failed somehow? Evie wished that instead of having a nervous breakdown in front of him, she had asked Harry about the inspection. She'd gotten the feeling during the meeting that he had exaggerated about something – especially taking into account Edward's reaction. She knew next to nothing about real estate though, so it was impossible to conjecture what he could be doing.

Evie felt uneasy now when she thought about Harry; her Evie Pinto act was blown, and all that was left was just her, weak little Evelyn Frank. Now that he knew she was such a loser, there was nothing to prevent him from taking advantage of her. Isn't that what Bill had been trying to help her with for most of her childhood? She was a deviant person by nature, inherently weak and prone to inappropriate behavior. It was drilled into the marrow of her bones. But part of her rebelled against that. It was the part that got fired up enough to get her out of this shithole. The part that said no, enough is enough. I am not a disgusting, worthless, creature. It was in her. She knew that too. The two parts of her couldn't figure out how to merge into one person; that's how Evie Pinto was born.