What Happened That Summer

Chapter Seventeen

WARNING: Mature-ish content (blame TheJadeWarrior ) Thanks C.J

Mariella Sanchez, to her credit, hadn't forgotten about her twisted past. She had always wondered about what would have happened if someone found out she'd gone to that camp for drug use. She'd always been cautions about her behavior near the corner dealers.

But when she learned that her platform as a former user, could give her credential in a world of law.

Mariella knew the low and she knew the high. That itch that she never allowed herself to even think about; but there is was.

She'd done great things, people always told her that, usually after she won, but sometimes it felt like she was just a nameless lawyer from a nameless town in Mexico. Just another druggie with a sad story and a nice turn around.

Yet, two years ago, a woman named Tracy Fields had approached her, and changed Mariella's life.

It wasn't a life changing declaration of Tracy's part, just an embarrassing confession of a teenage goth. But for Mariella, her words had been shattering.

Tracy had done anything to get the drugs she was addicted to.Even now, Mariella could see the side effects in the young women. Her sunken cheeks, sallow skin, a 'L' shaped lump that was most definitely an inhaler in her left pocket.She'd worked five jobs, stopped eating for a week, before she realized there was only one was, at least in her mind, to get her high. So she'd started to sleep with her dealer, a man named Jason 'The Cutter' Pearson. Turned out, his wrists weren't the only thing Pearson cut.

The scars of Tracy were enough to make any sane person sick, and that's what they did to Mariella. The younger woman had them everywhere, her slight shoulders, her pale stomach, her wasted thighs. It was brutal to see how such a wonderful mind could have been controlled like that.

But Tracy had shyly admitted that Jason had been put away by Mariella, a case that the Latina had almost forgotten about. One of her firsts.

Mariella had gone about her life with vigor the next day, and never forgotten Tracy Fields.

But it would never change what Mariella had done before. Her past might not seem bad to the rest of the world, but to her, what she'd done would always haunt her.

It was just a fact that Mariella had gotten used to, something that would never change.

You could never run from what you'd done, no matter how hard you tried.

***

Lucinda's real name was actually Lucy, and she liked the fact she didn't have to change it that much.

Mostly because Lucinda was proud of her name. It was a family name, carried from her great-great-great grandmother, to her. Her name being a rite of passage. The other part was because she was lazy, and didn't want to retrain herself to listen for a different name.

Lucinda's mother, Lucy, was a tired, dark skinned woman with silver streaks in her hair. She'd never been the smartest or most cultured person, but she'd raised Lucinda the best she could. So it was only fair that Lucinda pay her back.

Hence why the young woman was part of a gang to pay for her mother's needs.

Mirror, her cat, rolled on the desk, the desk he should not be on, because it was Iblis's. The explosive young woman had left over a week ago, and it didn't seem that she was getting back anytime soon.

"You are going to get me fired!" Lucinda hissed at her cat, who merely continued to roll on the papers. "Stop it!"

"I don't think that's how cats work." A deep voice remarked cautiously from the doorway.