Six stalls—four toilets and two showers—and a sink-lined walkway. Grimy concrete floor. White cinderblock walls, dripping with slimy condensation. As an eight-year-old, I’d vomited in the third stall from the left after a bad chili dog at the fair. At thirteen, I’d borrowed Shelley’s makeup and applied it in front of the very last sink, a willful violation of my dad’s “not until high school” rule. And a week after my eighteenth birthday, I’d stood outside the fourth stall while Shelley took the pregnancy test she hadn’t had the nerve to take at home alone. But I’d never been marched down the abandoned midway in the middle of the night by a man the size of a small building, passing darkened game booths and locked-tight food stalls on our way into that bathroom. I’d never looked into the mirror and seen finger-shaped bruises rounding my chin or dark circles forming beneath each of my eyes. I’d never been ordered to strip in front of the curtain-less shower while three men watched, their expressions ranging from Gallagher’s objective professionalism to Mustache Man’s leering grin of anticipation.
