The Influencer

Cassie was just gathering the last of the groceries she needed in order to prepare her special dinner that evening for Seth and herself. Her high heels softly tapped the floor beneath her. After doing some serious reflecting on the issue, she had decided she wanted Seth and her career more than she wanted children, so she planned to find out over dinner just where Seth stood on the issue. She wanted to let him know that if he was against children, he didn’t have to make any wild sacrifices if that was truly what he’d been doing. She would check into some form of birth control as soon as she got the chance to schedule an appointment with her doctor. She was due for a checkup anyway. Rayanne wasn’t kidding, she realized to herself, when she said that a man rarely told you what he wanted so much as showed you what he wanted. Her mind suddenly drifted to Kylie Kaminski. If she had been exonerated rather than acquitted at the trial that had occurred a few years ago, that would have made a big difference in her mind. But she knew that to be exonerated meant the jury believed the accused was, in fact, innocent, whereas to be acquitted meant that they didn’t necessarily believe the person was innocent; they were just unable to prove their guilt. The only one who knew whether or not Kylie was indeed innocent or guilty was Kylie herself, and somehow, some way, she was going to try to find out which was which. If not for the sake of her curiosity, then for the sake of the kind family she had learned had taken her in. Didn’t they have a right to know if a possible murderer was living in their house? She was just rounding the corner to the next aisle, and she was in such a hurry that she didn’t see the coffee beans that had spilled on the floor in time to break her fall, as her high-heeled foot slipped out from underneath her.

“No one knows what?” Liz asked later that evening as they were preparing to shower together. She hadn’t wanted to seem rude by questioning Kylie’s conversation with her friend, but curiosity got the better of her. “Huh?” asked Kylie. “I heard you tell your friend that no one knows.” “Oh, that,” Kylie said, thinking quickly. “She asked if anyone else besides you knew I was into women. Although I assume your folks must have some idea, I can’t think of anyone else who knows, but I don’t really care either. I am who I am, and I’m not ashamed or a closet case of any kind.” “That’s good,” said Liz. “If you can’t be yourself, who can you be?” Delvina knocked on the bedroom door. “Yeah?” Liz called out. When her mother appeared, she asked, “Will you two be all right on your own, or do you need help with anything?” “No, we should be okay,” Liz told her. “I’m just going to let Kylie sit on the floor of the tub while I shower, and that way we’ll hit two birds with one stone.” “Okay. Just give a yell if you need anything,” Delvina said as Liz gathered up their sleep shirts and robes and took them into the bathroom, with Kylie slowly moving ahead of her. In the bathroom, with the door shut, they began to undress. Liz noted that while Kylie was no longer pale, she had lost a surprising amount of weight. There were also many bruises still visible on her body, even through her desert-tanned skin. Sensing her eyes upon her, Kylie turned and said, “I must really look like hell.” “No, you don’t,” Liz assured her, “but you sure have lost a lot of weight. More than you needed to.” “I was definitely a heavy one before.” “Just a little chunky, but you looked healthy. If you lose any more weight than you have, though, you may start to look ill.” Liz got the water temperature adjusted and then helped Kylie into the tub before stepping in herself. With Liz handing down Kylie shampoo, soap, and her razor as she needed them, they worked together as a team. Kylie hated every minute of it, though she tried not to let her frustration show. How wonderful it would be if only—if only—I could just stand right up! she thought. Afterward, Kylie sat on the closed toilet lid, brushing her damp hair. “God, girl. Your hair is so long!” Liz said as she watched. “It is, and in light of this new situation of mine, I think I may cut it up to my waist like yours.” “If you think that’ll make things easier, we can have my mom cut it. She cuts my hair and Dad’s, too.” Kylie and Liz were just exiting the bathroom when they heard Delvina cry out in shock from the living room. Liz frowned curiously and headed toward the living room. Kylie followed behind. “What’s going on?” Liz asked as they entered the room where her parents sat in the plush chairs. “You know that reporter you said stopped in at the hospital?” Delvina said. “Yeah,” Liz answered as she and Kylie sat on the couch, with Kylie’s crutches at her feet. “She’s dead!” “What? Dead?” asked Liz, just as shocked as her mother was. Delvina nodded. “She slipped on a pile of spilled coffee beans at the grocery store—not the one you work at—and hit her head so hard on the floor that she died right away.” “Oh my God!” Liz said, turning to glance at Kylie. She studied the girl’s face but was unable to read her feelings. Perhaps this was because she didn’t have any.

“I’ll get in bed first. That way, if you wake up having to pee, you won’t have to struggle to climb over me,” Liz told Kylie as they were preparing for bed that night. “You should be able to reach your crutches if we just lean them up against the bookcase.” “Yeah, I’m sure I could easily reach them from there,” Kylie agreed. Liz got into bed and shimmied over to the other side by the wall. She lay on her side, arms outstretched for Kylie. Kylie leaned her crutches nearby and cozied up alongside Liz. Liz could sense Kylie’s discomfort as she gathered her in her arms. “You okay, babe?” “I suppose,” Kylie said glumly. “It’s just going to take time to adjust to not being able to do the simple things I used to do, let alone the bigger things.” “I know it will,” Liz said sympathetically, “but tomorrow will be a fun day. We’ll go swimming in the pool, we’ll get your stuff out of that noisy old apartment, and we’ll have a blast.” She nuzzled Kylie’s cheek with hers. “Tell me about your friends.” “Well, my closest friends are Nolee, Angelique, and Shayne. Angelique and Shayne and I all went to the same high school, and Nolee—the girl that’s going to help us move you—used to work with me at Safeway.” They lay silently in the darkness for a while. Then Kylie said, “I should get back to work soon.” “To work?” “With the sweeps. My disability checks aren’t going to be very much, and I certainly couldn’t just sit back and not contribute anything to you and your parents after all you’ve done for me.” “Oh, don’t worry about it,” Liz said soothingly, “but if sweeping makes you happy, you can do it anytime you want once we get your computer set up. How about checking into doing surveys or some sort of work-at-home job?” “God, no,” Kylie said firmly. “You won’t make anything that way. At the end of a survey, they almost always tell you that you don’t qualify for it or that their quota has been filled, but they enter you into their drawing. Meanwhile, they probably don’t even have a drawing, so what have you done? You’ve just wasted your time giving a free opinion.” “I see your point.” “As for the home jobs,” Kylie continued, “you have to shell out a couple of hundred to buy whatever products the company has, then you have to struggle to sell them door to door. And when that doesn’t happen, you see that you’ve lost much more than you’ve spent. The company is the one that makes the money, not you. Better to do something that’s guaranteed—and you know what’s guaranteed?” “What’s that?” “The law of averages.” “Oh,” Liz chuckled happily. “Maybe I’ll start back up with it the day after tomorrow.” “Okay, but can you really make that much at it?” Liz asked doubtfully. “Sure, you can.” “But aren’t the odds rather low?” Liz asked, her tone still skeptical. “They are if you’re trying to win a million bucks. Consistency is what matters. You have to make lots of entries every day and keep in mind that the bigger the prize, the lower the odds. The number of sweeps you enter is what helps to compensate for the odds. Get it?” “I guess so, but doesn’t it take forever to enter so many sweeps and to hunt them down in the first place?” “I don’t have to hunt for anything. There’s a sweeps directory I use, and I also use a robotic form filler to save a lot of time. I can make around six hundred entries a day in just a couple of hours.” “Wow, that’s a lot. Any other tricks to help you win?” “Yeah—wishful thinking.” Kylie lay there in the peaceful darkness and listened as Liz’s breathing became regular. Soft footsteps sounded outside the door as Delvina and Randy made their way down the hallway and into their bedroom. The hallway light went off, and their door closed softly. A faint strip of light could still be seen under the door, coming from their room, but that too disappeared a few minutes later. Being that the house was fairly new, it was silent. There were no creaks and groans that go with an aging house as it settles. No windows rattled in their panes, although it wasn’t exactly a windy night to begin with. All Kylie could hear, besides Liz’s breathing, was the occasional passing of a truck traveling down the highway. She yawned and closed her eyes, knowing she would sleep well that night. Until the nightmares began. Kylie was hiding behind the couch as she had so many times before, listening as her parents shouted back and forth at each other, wishing Arlie were there with her. Better yet, she was glad she wasn’t there, for her sake. Instead, she wished she had grandparents or aunts or uncles she could escape to. But neither of her parents had any siblings. Her maternal grandparents lived in Mexico, and her paternal grandparents didn’t want anything to do with her father. They had disowned him and his family for assaulting them after they confronted him for stealing nearly two thousand dollars in cash that they had saved and hidden away under a loose step in the staircase leading to the second floor of their house. “You’re a fucking whore, Callie!” her father screamed. “Yeah?” challenged her mother. “If I’m the whore, then how come it was you who came home last night smelling of flowers and bedecked with lipstick on your cheek? You weren’t fixing to be no drag queen, were you?” “Oh, go to fucking hell, bitch! You’re so damned delusional. You don’t have a fucking clue as to what you’re saying.” Kylie dared peek over the top of the back of the couch. Her mother stood defiantly, hands on her hips, as her father paced back and forth as if he were a caged animal. Suddenly, her father reached out, grabbed her mother’s neck in his hands, and pinned her against the wall. At first, Kylie’s mother was terrified, but then she reached out for her husband’s neck as well and began to squeeze in the same manner hers was being squeezed. If she was going to be strangled to death, so was he. Kylie watched in utter horror as her parents squeezed each other’s necks tighter and tighter as they gagged and fought for air. Finally, she’d had enough. She jumped out from behind the couch, not caring what harm might come to her, and shouted, “Stop! Just stop it right now!” Startled by the unexpected outburst, her parents released their grips on one another and turned to gaze at their horrified daughter. “What are you doing here?” her father demanded, gazing curiously at her as if she were a stranger. Kylie was too scared to speak. “Answer me!” Kylie’s lip trembled. “Todd, leave the girl alone,” her mother ordered. “You shut up and mind your own goddamn business!” her father snarled. Then he started toward Kylie. “You get out of here now, you little brat. You’re nothing but a waste of a mistake that never should’ve happened!” Kylie’s heart was pounding in her chest. But before her father could reach her, her mother grabbed him from behind and put him in a headlock. “I’ll kill you if you touch her! I’ll absolutely kill you!” She spun him around to face her, and he struggled to catch his breath. “I’m sick of your shit! You get your ass outta this house this minute or so help me God…” She kicked him in the balls. Her father howled in pain just as Kylie’s hand brushed against something cool and hard on the floor behind the couch, where she’d retreated to once more. She looked down and saw the gun just as Liz was gently shaking her awake. “Kylie! Kylie, it’s okay. You’re just having a nightmare.” Kylie’s eyes snapped open. Liz was peering down at her with a concerned expression. A moment later, Delvina appeared and said, “She’s bound to have nightmares for a while. You would too if you’d been in such an accident.” “I’m okay now,” Kylie said, content to leave them to believe that her nightmares were about the accident. She’d had some pertaining to that, but they were quite sparse compared to the nightmares she still had—and probably always would have—of her sordid childhood.

After having a delicious country-style breakfast, Liz helped Kylie into her car. They headed for Kylie’s apartment, where they were to meet Nolee. Kylie was surprised at just how exhausted she was by the time they’d reached the apartment. “Out of breath there, huh?” asked Liz. “Yeah, it’s amazing how strenuous even the simplest things have become.” “It’ll get easier. Come. Let’s sit on the bed until Nolee gets here. It’s probably the most comfortable place to sit for now, don’t you think?” Kylie nodded and hobbled into the bedroom on her crutches. They sat side by side on the bed. “Okay?” Liz asked, slipping her arms around Kylie’s body, which seemed surprisingly frail. Kylie nodded again and wrapped her own arms around Liz, who felt strong and confident in comparison. Kylie looked into Liz’s attractive face. Her skin was smooth and flawless, though ghostly pale compared to hers. “Thanks for all you’re doing for me,” she said in a soft, wistful tone of voice. “It’s my pleasure,” Liz said, lips seeking Kylie’s. The loud knock on the door abruptly spoiled the moment. Liz rose to let Nolee in as Kylie struggled to pull herself up and onto her crutches. Liz and her friend were approaching the bedroom just as Kylie managed to stand upright. “This is her,” Liz told her friend. “The one and only Kylie Kaminski.” Kylie and Nolee made eye contact, and Nolee sized Kylie up. Although Kylie could see a trace of pity in the girl’s eyes, she wasn’t sure she liked her very much because she was so mean-looking overall. Liz looked a bit intimidating, which made her feel safer, but this girl looked downright cold. Despite other flaws like a disproportionately large nose and lips, she had nice hair and a nice athletic figure. “Hi, Kylie,” Nolee said with a smile, teeth gleaming white in contrast to her dark skin. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” Kylie smiled politely and said, “Nice to meet you, too.” “You excited about moving in with Liz?” “I am,” she said with a smile of her own. “Phoenix is so different than this place. Don’t you miss it?” “Nah, Phoenix is like an infectious disease. It just keeps growing and growing and spreading out all over the place.” The three of them made small talk for a few more minutes, then Liz and Nolee began to haul stuff down to Nolee’s pickup while Kylie boxed up her belongings as best she could, given her condition. “So what do you think?” Liz asked her friend when they were out by the truck. “Well…” Nolee said hesitantly. “Well, what? You can be honest with me. We’re friends, aren’t we?” After an additional few seconds of hesitation, Nolee said, “Okay. I don’t like her.” “You don’t like her?” Liz asked with surprise. “She may look like a cute, harmless girl on crutches, but I don’t know, Liz. There’s just something not right about her. Something’s off.” Liz was too stunned to say anything. “At least she can’t hurt you. I mean, I would think a girl who couldn’t walk would be harmless.” “I would also think I could kick her ass if she could, but why in the world would she want to hurt anyone either way?” Nolee shrugged, unsure of what to say. Finally, Liz said, “Promise me you’ll at least try to like her?” “Girl, you know I love you too much to make false promises to you, but yes, I will try to at least like her. She’s a real cutie and all that, just like you said. She just gives me bad vibes, is all.” “What kind of bad vibes?” asked Liz. “I don’t know. I just don’t know how to explain it. It’s one of those gut-feeling kind of things. So there’s really no way she’ll ever walk on her own?” “No, no way. She had three cracked vertebrae and nerve damage in her legs. She can move her legs and even stand unassisted for a few minutes at a time, but they’ll never be strong enough for walking on her own.” “That’s a real bummer.” They finished tying the blue plastic tarp over Kylie’s boxes. “Liz?” “Yeah?” “Don’t you think it’s quite a coincidence with the judge dying and then that reporter who hounded y’all in the hospital dying too?” “Yeah,” Liz admitted, “but stranger things have happened.” “Well, let’s just hope they don’t get any stranger than they already are.” “Oh, will you stop being so paranoid?” Liz said. “Her family’s dead too, Liz. You told me so.” “I said knock it off.” “Okay, okay. My lips are sealed.” Liz changed the subject, deciding to bring up Nolee’s sister. “She and the little one are doing okay. She says it makes her feel sort of old in a strange kind of way to be called Mom, which recently started happening, but she’s okay. Just broke and tired as hell.” Not long afterward, Kylie was squeezed in between Liz and Nolee in the cab of the truck, giving Nolee those strange vibrations as they headed for the Sobek farm.

Kylie was fully moved in with Liz and her parents by the end of the weekend. The things she didn’t need at the house, such as her bed, were stored in the guesthouse. The days passed uneventfully, and Kylie quickly became part of the family. She would often cry tears of happiness, in which the joy of having the loving family she’d never had before hit her, but only when she was alone. If she cried in front of the others, she would have to explain why she was doing so or come up with a story to cover the truth altogether, and Kylie hated to lie to these people. Kylie began to receive disability payments and insisted on giving some to Liz’s parents, who insisted in return that she call them Mom and Dad. She did, and it felt like the right thing to call them, as they really were like the mom and dad she’d never had. They accepted the payments not because they needed them, but because they knew it made Kylie feel good to know she was doing her part by contributing to the household. She resumed entering sweepstakes every day and amazed everyone with just how much she could win. “Not that we thought you were fibbing or anything, but we just didn’t see how one could win so much,” Delvina said one evening when they were settled in the living room, something that had become a regular after-dinner ritual. Kylie and Liz had their alone time starting at around 9 p.m., about the time her parents retired to their room. They’d sit up and read or watch TV in their room for a couple of hours, understanding that they were young and needed some space of their own. “What will the selection tonight be, ladies?” asked Randy as he went through the rented DVDs they’d recently received in the mail. “Oh, just surprise us,” said Delvina from her comfortable plush chair. Randy slipped a DVD into the player and sat in his own chair closest to the big-screen TV, while Kylie and Liz lay together on the couch against the opposite wall. Delvina reached for her coffee cup, which sat on the small round table between hers and Randy’s chairs. Partway into the movie, Kylie slid down onto the floor and crawled over to the cage her new friend lived in so she could open the door and let her friend out to run around and enjoy the attention Kylie lavished upon her in the evenings. “Oh no,” moaned Liz. “You’re not going to let that thing out again, are you?” “I told you rats need their freedom,” Kylie said with laughter, finding Liz’s repulsion toward rats amusing. “Rats are smart,” Liz’s mother said, sticking up for her. “Tinkerbell’s been a good girl, anyway.” The door opened and out sprang the large, soft brown rat. Tinkerbell ran straight to Kylie and climbed all over her, relishing the way Kylie scratched her back. A few minutes later, Tinkerbell decided to explore. Kylie crawled after her, enjoying the freedom from her crutches and the exercise she got from “chasing” Tinkerbell. “Don’t let that thing on the bed,” Liz called after her. “Smart and friendly or not, vermin are still vermin.”

Kylie had lived with Liz and her family for three months when she hobbled into the grocery store, now a bit more comfortable on the crutches, though still not liking them at all. She missed the days when she could simply up and walk—or run—to wherever she wanted. The store was almost deserted when Kylie entered. The three other cashiers were closing their registers for the night when a black man approached Liz’s register with a six-pack of beer and some candy bars. Liz glanced at Kylie and smiled as she made her way over to the end of the bagging area. The manager was locking the door on the opposite side of the store. Liz was ringing up the items before her when the man said, “Ain’t any of these goddamn Safeway stores open all the time?” Liz glanced at the man, startled by his anger. “No, I’m afraid not.” She told the man how much he owed. He fumbled for the amount, dropping change all over the counter. Now, Liz’s surprise was turning to annoyance as she gathered it up while the man stood helplessly gazing out the front window. A moment later, she gave the man his change and receipt, then bagged his items and handed them to him as well. “Finally,” he muttered, now impatient. Liz glared at him. The end of one of Kylie’s crutches extended out into the man’s path as he grabbed his bag and turned to leave, kicking the crutch out from under Kylie’s weight and sending her toppling backward onto the hard floor. “Hey!” she cried out. “Sorry,” the man muttered. “Shit happens.” Kylie might as well have been a stack of papers so cruelly knocked over and not a person. “You asshole!” Liz screamed as Lloyd came running over to them. But Liz’s annoyance was now full-blown rage as she chased the guy and grabbed him from behind before he could exit the store. The man tried to fling Liz off as he was abruptly yanked back into the store. His purchases went crashing to the floor as he attempted to free himself, but to no avail, for just a few seconds later, he joined his items on the floor. Liz continued cursing the man in a mad fury and kicking at his fallen body as the manager phoned the police. Together, they restrained him until the police arrived. “This is kidnapping and assault!” the man shouted. “You fucking white trash! Goddamn white motherfuckers, I’ll kill you! I’ll fuckin’ kill you all!” Two police officers came rushing into the store, guns raised, as Kylie was fumbling to get to her feet. The woman, whose tag read K. Cranston, kept her gun aimed at the man’s head while her partner, J. Potter, yanked his cuffs off his utility belt and placed them on the still-swearing man. He dropped the racial slurs and threats as soon as he saw them coming. “Yeah, yeah, come on, buddy,” Potter said. “Tell it to us at the station.” Both officers lifted the cuffed man to his feet and led him out to a squad car as other officers came to take their statements.

Officers Potter and Cranston listened as the man before them, now known as Caleb Holmes, told a very different story from the one told by the victim and witnesses at the store. Cranston stood by the door while her partner sat next to Holmes at the table that stood in the center of the small, ill-lit room. “So let me get this straight, Caleb,” Potter began. “Even though you have a mile-long record for violence, drugs, theft, and a million other things, you actually want us to believe that for no reason at all this cashier went batty on you simply because you’re black?” Caleb Holmes sat staring at his arms, which were extended out in front of him on the table. He had a guilty expression on his face, though he tried to hide it. “I’m asking you a question, Caleb,” Potter prodded. Holmes kept his eyes downcast as he said, “I told you what happened. They hit me with every race name in the book. It was a racial thing, a hate thing. Now I ain’t saying nothin’ else without no lawyer.” “Come on, Caleb,” Potter said, his patience wearing thin. “This was no goddamn hate crime, and you know it. Don’t you dare try playing that old race-card bullshit with me, buddy. It won’t work! You wanna pull that shit, go to someplace like Arizona. Even Texas loves that shit now. They’ll buy anything you say. But not here, Caleb, not here. The people who treated your ancestors poorly, who discriminated against blacks in general—it’s all in the past. People rarely do that these days. So let’s talk about what really happened, okay?” Caleb remained silent. “You probably didn’t mean for that poor girl to fall, but nonetheless, you couldn’t be a man about it, apologize, and help the girl to her feet. Instead, you had to drag race into the issue and threaten to kill them, didn’t you? I just may grab you and give you a few kicks of my own if you’d done that to someone I cared about. And you’d deserve it!” Holmes remained silent. Even he was smart enough to know that denying this would be worthless. But he still tried again anyway after a while. “It’s my color.” Potter leaned close to Holmes. “Or maybe it’s your fucked-up behavior. If anything happens to these people, that’s your ass, pal—black, white, polka-dotted, or striped. You hear me?” With much reluctance, Caleb Holmes nodded. Potter glanced over at Cranston. “Lock him up. Let him cool off for the night.” Cranston led Holmes to an old-fashioned cell, of which there were only a few, being such a small town. Only one other cell was occupied by a man who was dozing on his bunk, seemingly unaware of the commotion around him. “This is bullshit!” screamed Holmes as Cranston opened the cell door and motioned him inside. “I didn’t mean for the bitch to fall!” “Well, I mean for you to get in there and stop screaming,” Cranston said firmly. “Damn you for this, bitch!” Holmes roared as Cranston locked him in the cell with a loud metallic clank before she shrugged and said, “Cry racism.” “Why you doin’ this?” Cranston shrugged again. “They stick all the nasty jobs on me. Must be because I’m white.” She turned and headed out of the cell area. “Could be because I’m female, too.” Caleb Holmes continued his tirade long after Cranston walked away. It finally woke the guy a couple of cells down. “Hey, fella, could you keep it down over there? I have the hangover from hell, and you’re gonna make my poor head split open.” Holmes peered through the bars toward the other man’s cell, eyes narrowing. “Oh, why doncha mind your own fucking business, you white-ass loser!” he screamed. Then he continued on about how tough black people had it and how whites always had it in for them, despite the other man’s continued protests. Holmes’s voice was becoming hoarse when he was suddenly invaded by the strangest feeling ever. He suddenly wanted to die. He no longer cared to put whites in their place. He just wanted to die. Just like that. Alarmed over the strange and sudden desire for death that overcame him like a tidal wave, he sat on the smelly old bunk and tried to calm his nerves. He didn’t understand the way he was feeling. He’d never wanted to die before. Despite how rough he had it whenever he’d been locked up for simply trying to survive or because people would fuck with him, he’d never wanted to die. If anything, being locked up only made him all the more determined to take back his freedom, get high, sell his stolen goods for an easy buck, and pick on every white piece of shit he could without getting his ass beat or thrown back in the slammer. He hated whites; he hated life. But he loved to get high and make dough off someone else’s shit—shit that should’ve been his to begin with. Tears began to stream down Caleb’s ebony cheeks. Good God, what was the matter with him?! Don’t be a pussy,he told himself. Face this injustice like a man! He stood up from the bed abruptly, wiped the tears from his face, and then turned back toward the bed. He yanked the blanket from it and grabbed the sheet underneath, exposing the torn vinyl-covered mattress below. He tore the sheet into strips and then stepped up onto the metal-rimmed toilet seat that was by the barred door. Taking a strip that was a few inches wide, he tied one end to a bar that ran horizontally close to the ceiling. Then he tied the other end around his neck, pulling the slack as taut as possible, and prepared to step off the edge of the toilet seat. Caleb Holmes knew he was working against his will. He didn’t know what the driving force was behind his actions, but he knew he couldn’t stop himself. He’d lost all control of his body. And his life.