Gold Rush

CHAPTER 1 THERE IT WAS. That prickle at the back of my neck as somebody watched me. I glanced at my reflection in store windows as I passed, trying to get a glimpse of who or what might be behind. There! What was that? A shadow flitting across the sidewalk? I whipped around, holding my breath, one hand on the can of pepper spray I carried in my jacket pocket. My eyes darted from left to right, my gaze as jittery as a coffee addict looking for their mid-afternoon fix, then I sagged in relief. It was just a loose shop awning, flapping in the weak breeze that managed to find its way amongst the tightly packed jumble of crumbling apartments and the few stores that clung to life. The locals had christened this part of town “NoHo.” No Hope. As if by giving it a hip-sounding name they could stave off the need for a wrecking ball, which was the only way left of improving things. A solitary soul roamed the sidewalk—a woman on the corner, shoulders stooped as life weighed her down. Her harsh make-up and lack of clothing on an unseasonably chilly night told me what she was waiting for. I exhaled a thin stream of air then forced myself to breathe in and out, slowly, telling myself I was once again being ridiculous. Paranoid. Crazy. Breathe in and out. Breathe in and out. Put one foot in front of the other, Lara. I started towards my apartment, just another girl returning home after a night out, trying to act casual. But my feet didn’t get the message and moved faster and faster, seemingly of their own accord. More than once over the past couple of weeks, I’d given in to the urge to run and ended up pounding along the street. I must have looked like an escapee from the asylum as I was chased by an army of monsters invisible to everybody except me. Tonight that wouldn’t happen. No, tonight I was going to stay calm. Except when I reached the bottom of the rickety stairs leading to the shabby walk-up I called home, I almost sobbed with relief. I abandoned my attempts to look unruffled and raced up the steps two at a time, feeling them wobble beneath my weight. The key was already in my hand, and I stabbed it at the lock. Missed. Missed again. Will you get in the freaking keyhole! I forced myself to pause and used my shaking left hand to help my equally tremulous right one to aim carefully. Twisted the key. Ran inside. The slam of the door echoed in the hallway, and I quickly shot home the two bolts I’d begged the landlord for weeks to install. He hadn’t, of course. In the end, I’d given up and asked the creep who lived two doors down to do it with the promise of a six-pack and thirty minutes in which to stare at my cleavage. But for now, I was home. Home. I’d made it for another night, and I leaned against the door and slid slowly to the floor. How much longer could I keep this up? Believe it or not, I hadn’t always been a lunatic. In fact, until a couple of months ago, I’d considered myself relatively normal. Although in the little slice of heaven I called home, normal could be considered abnormal. I was probably the only person on the block who didn’t indulge, either recreationally or professionally, in some sort of illegal activity. I’d lived in my one-room apartment for almost a year. A tiny kitchenette occupied the corner nearest the door, opposite a small, screened-off shower room that had seen better days. The place sat above Randy’s Grocery Store, or at least that was what the fading sign claimed. I’d ventured in there once when I ran out of milk and found a distinct lack of groceries on the dusty shelves. Everything I picked up was well past its sell-by date. Still, Randy had a steady trickle of visitors throughout the day and most of the night, silent shadows with hoods drawn up to hide their faces. I didn’t know what they were in the market for, but I suspected it wasn’t ramen noodles or a Snickers bar. I’ll be the first to admit the apartment had a lot of negatives. But all of those were cancelled out by one huge, big, wonderful positive; I could afford it. And until two months ago, I’d never felt unsafe living there. Depressed, maybe, but not out-and-out scared like I was now. Things changed not long after I was mugged. I say after, because in the grand scheme of things, the mugging itself wasn’t really that bad. Living where I did, it had been about due. I’d been on my way home that night. Three blocks away, a scrawny kid stepped out of a doorway, his expensive sneakers and designer jeans at odds with his unwashed odour. Wild eyes peered out at me from beneath a tangle of hair, and from the way they rolled, I guessed the reason he’d turned to crime was to fund his pharmaceutical habit. “Gimme your money.” The demand wasn’t original, but when he thrust a gleaming knife in my face, it worked. I handed over my wallet and the week’s wages it contained, then clutched at a nearby lamp post because my legs refused to hold me up. As his footsteps receded into the night, little did I know that he’d stolen my sanity as well. The cops had been sympathetic, and the detective who came out to take my statement spent enough time listening to almost make me believe I mattered. He’d bought me coffee, feigned sympathy, and only looked at his watch once while I told my story. At the end of it, he’d given me his card and said, “If you’re worried about anything, call me.” What was the point? I was realistic enough to know the high the kid spent my money on had worn off by now. I was just another statistic. And at first, I thought the jitters I felt afterwards were a reaction to the theft. That was perfectly normal, right? Surely I couldn’t be the only girl who got a bit nervous walking home at night? Be logical, Lara. I’d lived in Baysville all my life, and this was the first time I’d ever been mugged. Well, apart from the moment Joey Rogers pushed me over in third grade and stole my lunch money, but I couldn’t really count that. I told myself that I hadn’t been hurt, that by the law of averages it wouldn’t be my turn again for a while. Sure, I hadn’t been able to pay my rent on time, and I ended up living on oatmeal for two weeks, but that was just the way my life seemed to be lately. Unlucky. In another lifetime, when I was a child, my pop used to call me Lucky Lara. Each Thursday, the guys came over to play poker, and he’d sit me on his lap and let me hold his cards because he said he always won that way. Back then, we’d lived in a proper house, and I had toys and friends and nice clothes and birthday parties and everything else a child dreamed of. Then a week before my tenth birthday, my luck ran out. As did my father. When he left for work, he’d kissed me on the cheek and said, “Be good at school, Lucky.” I hadn’t seen him since. Gone were the house and the toys and birthday parties. My friends went too, once I no longer wore the latest sneakers or played with whatever toy happened to be in fashion that week. Until that day, I hadn’t realised how nasty little girls could be. I came home crying most days, and when I walked in the door, my momma would dry her own eyes and comfort me. She tried to hide her tears, but there’s no way one person could be unlucky enough to get grit in their eye almost every day. Still, I couldn’t complain. Momma did her best to look after me, even if she was never the same after Pop left. At first, I used to ask when he was coming back, but that only made her sadder, so I stopped. Once, I’d asked if it was my fault he left, and she swore it wasn’t, that he’d disappeared because he simply didn’t love her anymore. Then she’d cried again, and that was the last time I mentioned him. I went from being Lucky Lara to Lara the Loser, or occasionally Lousy Lara for variety. Grades four through ten were spent hiding in the library, avoiding the outside world in general and people in particular. The bullies couldn’t get to me in the library. Mrs. Weiss, the dragon of a librarian in high school, wouldn’t stand any nonsense in her domain. Books were my best friends—math, science, economics—I drank them in. I kept my head down and my GPA a smidgen under 4.0, so my teachers liked me even if nobody else did. But the loneliness? Yes, the loneliness got to me. People say your school days are the best of your life, but at the time they didn’t feel like it. If only I’d known back then it was true, I might have smiled more. Either that or given up altogether. I put in all that work for a bar job and a dingy apartment with water that ran cold five days out of seven. I tried to tell myself things would get better, that happiness lurked just around the corner, but it always remained a few steps ahead of me. And what was behind me? Well, I’d acquired either a genuine stalker or a deep-seated sense of crazy.