Liberty Begins (The Liberty Series) Read Online Free Page B

good myself. So I took a one-minute scalding shower in my disgusting shower stall, holding my breath the whole time and trying not to rub up against the wall. Whenever I accidentally touch it, I think of algae and sewers and zombies — because that’s what the walls feel like — and I yelp. Tonight I’m lucky and don’t touch anything. I get out and spray it down with a mold and mildew spray that does nothing to the stains that were here when I moved in. It smells industrial-grade and makes me lightheaded, but it doesn’t seem to do anything else. Still, it makes me feel better to make the effort.
     
    Then I head for my bedroom, grab my gray sweats and my favorite pink sweatshirt, and head back to the kitchen to put the shells in to cook. After setting the timer it’s back to my bedroom, where I turn on all the lights and proceed to unmake my bed. I start at the top, taking the pillows out of the pillowcases, then taking off the fitted sheet and lifting up the mattress to look underneath. I do it with all four corners.
     
    I’m looking for signs of bed bugs. They say you can usually see little drops of blood. I don’t know why I make my bed every morning when I just tear it all apart every night. I’d considered leaving it alone, but I couldn’t just leave my sheets and my comforter in a big pile ... it’d looked too inviting, like the bugs would choose to burrow under it, safe and warm. Waiting for me. So I make my bed everyday, like I have since I was a child, craving some order, and come home and undo it. I take the flashlight off my nightstand and look closely near the foot of the bed, where I’ve read they usually like to hide.
     
    Nothing tonight. I remake my bed and happily collect my macaroni and cheese and a glass of water. And as I sit eating, alone at my chipped card table in my plastic orange chair that I pulled out of a dumpster, I wonder. I wonder if there are lap dances ahead of me, and whether I’ll make rent this month without them. I wonder if there is a life for me anywhere out of here, and whether luck really has anything to do with it.
     
    * * *
     
    Morning has a way of making everything look better in Vegas. At least for me. I can imagine there are many hung-over visitors who don’t feel the same way, but I love to see the sun come up. No more cockroaches. No more rolling around in my sleep, twitching in fear of bed bugs. Just sun, cereal and coffee, my hair in a ponytail and my pajamas. It felt like the opposite of stripping.
     
    Today I was working the day shift. I had to get to the Chest by ten thirty, to be ready to go out on the floor at eleven. I would be dancing for the hard-core alcoholics and guys who hadn’t gone to bed yet. I never made any money at this shift, but it would give me an opportunity to work on my routine and bug Alex to let me stay and do a double. If I was going to stay just onstage, I needed to work as much as possible. My rent was cheap, but I was still barely making it. Rent, groceries, laundry, gas, car insurance, my business license (which you need in Vegas to strip legally) and anything else that came up, like clothes I needed for work and occasional trips to the hardware store for flashlights and insecticide, had left my bank account flatlining. I had no money left over each month to save. I had no cell phone, no computer, no television. Lucky for me I didn’t have any vices, either, like smoking or drinking, because I wouldn’t have been able to afford them, even for a day. It was no wonder I spent a large amount of my time at the library. Free Internet. Free books. Free magazines. Otherwise I would have gone crazy.
     
    When I left our apartment in Eugene, Oregon last year after my mother died, I had nothing. I couldn’t even pay her emergency room bill. I stole five hundred dollars from Ray right before I left so I could afford the gas to get to Nevada and hopefully have something left over first month’s rent. My mom had been behind on our