Lisa watched the kids in the room find their places and get settled onto their benches.
Not very long ago, she would have never imagined that she would be a teacher -- although she wasn't a real teacher with a teaching degree and a full-time job -- but she was teaching, and she was getting paid.
That was good enough for now, all things considered.
She was only teaching fine art, but it was still a classroom, and these were her students. All twelve of them. Runaways, abused kids, with substance abuse histories.
Like she had been, once upon a time.
"Okay, class, you have the next two hours to work on your sketches. Make sure you do some free drawing first to loosen up and then pick a composition and work on it for the rest of the period."
The students were focused, intent on doing what she asked. They were happy to be doing something so creative, and she was happy to be their instructor. She'd used art to escape the worst elements of her world when she was younger. These students were probably using it the same way. Getting lost while creating a piece of art was therapeutic. That was why she was working for the shelter, teaching the class. She felt it was paying back her own redemption at the shelter. She'd run away from her pimp in Seattle and had gone to a Catholic shelter for street children, but once she had cleaned up, she had moved to Tacoma to get away from her past. She started over in the city, had finished high school and become a sober adult. She went to college and studied graphic arts, graduating with a diploma. Now, she was working at the shelter, teaching art classes several days a week to the children who lived there. She taught a class at night at the local community college, and she worked as a graphic artist part time for a local company, doing their ads and graphics.
All in all, her life turned out much better than you might have thought, considering the disadvantaged start and disastrous end to her tenth year.
There were several objects around the room that the students could choose to draw, ranging from still life arrangements to superhero figurines posed in various fighting stances, to the shelter's tabby cat, currently sleeping on the table in the center of the room. While they prepared their workspaces, she sat at her desk at the front and checked her messages.
MARIA: I don't know if you're interested, but I recently received a text message from someone claiming to be Thad McClintock, who claims to be the brother of a friend of yours from before. He gave me a cell number and asked me to pass it on to you in case you would like to reconnect with Tess McClintock. It's her twenty-ninth birthday coming up and he said Tess would be very happy to know you're alive and well. It's up to you so I've included her cell phone number. Be careful. Maybe you don't want to dredge up your past. Things are good now, so I would advise you to be careful.
Tess McClintock's brother, Thad?
Lisa sat staring at her text from Maria. Thad was searching for her because he knew that Tess had been obsessed with finding her but had given up. He wanted to find Lisa as a way of getting the two women back together after so long apart and as a special birthday gift...
Lisa had dithered about whether to admit she was still alive and living in Tacoma. How could anyone other than a victim understand what she'd gone through? Sure, Tess was writing articles on missing and murdered women and girls in the Pacific Northwest for the paper, but Tess had such a different life. She had a family, she went to university, she got a great job as a writer for the Sentinel.
Their lives had diverged so much, Lisa was afraid Tess could never do anything but feel pity for her. Lisa didn't want to feel anyone's pity. She was standing on her own two feet, making a life for herself. She didn't want to be seen as the poor victim, with a tragic past.
No one besides Maria knew the whole story. Those she worked with knew that she had been a street kid who was an addict, but they didn't know she'd been abducted and sold into sex slavery. She didn't want anyone to know that. Even her family thought she was dead and that was the way Lisa thought it should stay. Her mother and brother moved away to Portland, and her father died of a drug overdose.
At times she had been tempted to contact her mother, but she didn't want to open up old wounds. Besides, based on what she learned about her mother, she had a new husband and step-kids.
Lisa worried she'd be a complication that no one needed or wanted. If she went home, she knew the police would become involved, would want to track down her abductors, and then people would know that she'd been on the circuit, her photos and videos shared widely as men -- many men -- countless men -- abused her. The videos and photos were still out there in the hands of the worst pedophiles, in their archives and hard drives and print collections. Lisa had seen them and each time she did, she felt sick, for the memories of her abuse would come back, making her chronically sick.
That was better left behind her, in the deep dark past.
Now, she only looked forward.
She still hadn't had a real relationship with a man. The way she felt, she didn't think she would ever trust men again. But Maria told her once she was far enough away from her abuse, she might feel differently. If she didn't, there were plenty of asexual people out there. She could still have friends, even if she never had a normal romantic relationship.
Lisa felt that she couldn't be with a man. She couldn't. Even being touched by a male doctor triggered her memories of abuse now that she was sober, and her emotions weren't numbed by drugs. She couldn't relax or feel desire for even the nicest guy she met who tried to become her boyfriend. The only time she had been able to let a guy touch her was when she'd drunk a bottle of wine and that wouldn't do. She had to stay sober if she was ever going to have a life.
A real life with meaning. Not one where she was numb to everything.
She glanced around at the kids in her class. They were like her -- street kids who had seen it all. The boys had either been drug runners who were addicts themselves, or turned tricks on the gay strolls in Tacoma to pay for their drugs. The girls sold themselves for drugs, and lived in cheap hotels with their pimps. Most of them had run away from abusive homes, where they were physically or sexually abused or neglected. They were all seeking some kind of redemption, and the shelter was a safe space for them to get sober, get help and find some meaning in their lives.
Art was therapy for them, and Lisa was happy to provide instruction and help with that.
It gave what she went through meaning.
She understood these kids and what they felt, what they feared and what they needed.
She walked around the room and watched the students sketching. Some of them were really quite talented and it made her so sick to think that all that talent was almost wasted on the streets, drowned in alcohol and drugs and abuse. Destroyed by evil men who only thought about money or their own perverted sexual desires and pleasures. Her little world was now dedicated to healing herself completely, and helping others like her heal as well.
She did yoga every day. She ate a totally clean vegan diet. She didn't drink or smoke or do any illegal drugs. She barely used Tylenol. She meditated every day for at least ten minutes. She limited her social media consumption, and read only uplifting fiction -- stories of redemption like hers.
She had a tiny apartment that was decorated to be minimalist -- white and pale green and warm pink on the walls, the furniture, even her clothing. There was nothing extra anywhere.
All of this -- the tranquility that she tried so hard to create in her life -- was disturbed by Thad trying to find out where she was as a favor to Tess.
She had followed Tess's career as much as she could when she escaped her pimp and was accepted into the shelter and started making her own life. She knew Tess was a bit of a crusader for child victims, and that it was because of her. She had read about Eugene's capture and initial confession, which he took back, claiming it was all John Hammond and Eugene's father, Daryl.
Yes, they were involved, but Eugene? He was the real monster.
He was planning to kill her that night down in the porn room. He'd raped her and abused her and took out his anger and sadism on her. He was going to kill her and had tried a couple of times, his hands around her throat, choking her into unconsciousness.
Then, John Hammond found them and stopped him, punching the eighteen-year old Eugene, knocking him out. Hammond took her, got her dressed, and then locked her in a room in the old service station where she waited to find out her fate.
They decided to take her away, send her to Seattle, sold to the highest bidder.
That had been the last time she'd seen Paradise Hill, her father, mother or brother.
From Seattle, where she was trained to be a good sex slave, she'd gone to a huge mansion up north, slave to a man with lots of wealth and a penchant for young blonde girls, but she'd grown older and had been passed onto someone new who didn't mind a girl over the age of fourteen.
From Bellingham, she'd been sent to Tacoma, and then down to Portland, shuttled from city to city, passed from owner to owner, used in pornography and sold over and over again to men who wanted sex with underage girls.
That had been her existence for almost five years, until she'd run away and went to Seattle.
She'd turned tricks for a while as a street prostitute, addicted to meth, working long enough to pay for her drugs and of course, keep her pimp, Mark, happy. Then, she'd run away from Mark, spent some time at a shelter, then she moved to Tacoma and found her new life.
She hated to see the peace and quiet that she'd worked so long to find shattered by someone from her old life.
At the same time, she longed to contact her mother and brother again. Family was the one thing she missed more than anything. She missed holidays spent together, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, summers at the lake near Paradise Hill. She'd kept track of her brother's doings, and he seemed to have done all right. Her mother remarried and had new step-kids.
Lisa sighed and turned to watch the kids working on their sketches. They'd finished free drawing to warm up and were now focused on their longer studies.
Maybe she should let Maria give Thad her number in Tacoma.
It would be nice to talk to Tess. Maybe she could travel to Seattle and even visit her mom. She had four days off from her job so why not?
She sent Maria a text.
LISA: I'd like to talk to Thad. Give him my cell number.
She waited and soon enough, Maria texted her back.
MARIA: I sent Thad a text and he got right back to me. You should expect a text soon. He's hoping that you can meet him for coffee, catch up on news. It's his sister Tess's birthday coming up and he's sure that if you would like to meet with her, Tess would be over the moon.
Lisa smiled. Tess's birthday was coming up. They'd spent so much time together as kids. It would be nice to be someone's birthday present.
She exhaled, excited for Thad's text. Meeting with him might be the start of a new chapter in her life.