I’d heard Uncle Jericho and my dad talking about things like this, as crassly as they always did.
A ‘virgin auction.’
I shuddered at the thought of it. It’s such a disgusting idea, and I worried that they would try to make me go to one. I thought that maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be that horrible to their own blood. Or maybe they thought I was already a whore, sleeping around with any guy who would have me. But they know nothing about me. I am a virgin, and I don’t want to give anything to a man who would think I have a price.tag
“You don’t even know if I’m still a virgin, Uncle Jericho.”
“You are,” he snaps back as he continues to pressure me to put on that sad excuse for a dress.
“What, are you going to take me to the doctor’s to verify this?” Sheltered as I am, I know there’s no actual way to determine if someone is a virgin, but an asshole like my uncle probably still believes there is.
“We got ways of knowing, girl. Your buyer will know for sure. They’re very experienced with girls’ first times,” he cackles, slapping my father on the shoulder when we get to him, and he laughs too.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this, Dad,” I say, shaking my head.
“I need money, baby. And you’re not exactly helping with the bills very much.”
I grind my teeth. I’m his daughter. He’s supposed to protect me. He’s supposed to care for me. More than anything else right now, I feel terribly alone.
Uncle Jericho continues, “This is really the best you can hope for, Baylee. We’re doing you a favor.”
A favor? I can’t even begin to understand my uncle's twisted logic.
I turned down some boys in high school. My self-esteem was never great – with relatives like these two, was it any mystery why? Anyway, I thought any interest guys showed was part of some cruel joke. I have learned a little better in the years since, I know my worth, and I never wanted to give myself to just any man. I wanted my first time to be with someone special — I want it to count somehow.
Now? It looks like I’m going to end up being given to the highest bidder. Me and a bunch of other girls are about to be paraded out on stage like we are pieces of meat instead of living, breathing human beings. All of us eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, that fact being fetishized by all these creeps here. It’s enough to make a girl lose faith in all men forever.
Everything has been going so wrong in the past few years. My mother passed, and then my grandmother not too long after that. That’s what sent my father down this dark path. It’s what led him to fall into Uncle Jericho’s bad influence. At least, that’s what I told himself.
I fidget with the ring on my finger, a habit. It belonged to my grandmother, her wedding ring, and the one thing I have to remember her by. It’s not a fancy ring, given that she was never a very rich woman, but that doesn’t matter to me. Holding it fills me with memories of a better time. Of being ten years old and helping her in her little garden. She put so much pride into that little patch of dirt, and I did too. Raising vegetables and hoping they’d turn out nice and juicy. From the tomatoes she grew herself, she made the sweetest spaghetti sauce, always saying it was the product of all of our work together.
What would she think if she saw me now? Standing on a shoddy-looking stage in the dark, waiting for a bunch of disgusting old men to come out and throw money at the chance to deflower me. My first time, sold off to make Uncle Jericho a quick buck. He doesn’t care if they’re nice to me, he doesn’t care if they are sweet or tender with me. All he cares about is himself, and I’m just an asset he conned my father into selling. All so that he can have some more money to buy another fix and keep my father drunk out of his mind.
Grandma always told me how important love was. That I would find a man some day and I’d want to give myself to him completely, and that would be the start of the best years of my life. This isn’t it. This feels like it can only be the beginning of something truly awful.
My only hope of getting out of here in one piece is that hot biker who I saw following us out here. I mouthed ‘help’ to him and then he disappeared. Did he give up? Decide I wasn’t worth it?
Is he waiting in the dark for his chance to bid on me?
I need a hero, someone who will ride in and save me from all this, but that’s the stuff of movies and romance novels. That’s not real life, and there aren’t enough real-world heroes out there to save everyone who needs help.
Not tonight, anyway.