“It won’t change anything,” Messy Bun whispers. “They’ll just replace him.”
“It changes something,” Split Lip says. “I won’t say thank you to the man who pulled the trigger. But I’ll say good riddance.”
A hum starts up again in the pipe overhead. The ship shifts under our feet; somewhere metal knocks on metal. Kira guidesme to an empty lower bunk. I sit, my muscles thanking me with a tremor.
“How long have you been here?” I ask no one in particular.
“Five days,” says Bandage Wrist.
“Three weeks,” says Messy Bun.
“Two months,” Split Lip says, and the way she says it tells me she stopped counting somewhere after the first thirty days. She pushes the hair off her forehead with the heel of her palm, a gesture so full of fatigue it hurts to watch. “They move some off. New ones come on. Sometimes someone doesn’t wake up.”
Luis’s mouth tightens. He sits on the edge of the bunk above me, legs swinging small, not touching the floor.
“Okay, so let’s go over this again. You said some of the crew is with them.” I ask.
“Some,” Split Lip answers. “Others are paid to look the other way. Some—” she cuts her eyes toward the door and keeps her voice low—“The captain is paid. He won’t help us.”
Kira presses a bruise pack wrapped in a cloth against my ribs, the old-fashioned kind you break in the middle to activate. Cold radiates into the ache. I guess the need for first aid is common enough that they are kept supplied with fundamentals?
“We’re on a schedule,” she says. “Mornings they check the rooms. Afternoons they ‘train’ the ones they’re shipping off somewhere soon. Nights…it depends who wins at cards.”
The words do what they are meant to do—show me how hopeless our situation is. Despair creeps in, taking shape. The feeling inthe room, lifted just a bit by news of Danner’s death, drops with each detail.
Messy Bun lies back down and turns her face to the wall. The humming girl starts up again, quiet at first. The woman rocking her rests her chin on the girl’s hair and looks at a point on the far wall like she could walk through it if she stared long enough.
“I saw the lifeboats,” I say, because I need to talk about anything that isn’t the shape of a night here. “They look like they’re sealed. Locked.”
“Two are,” Split Lip says. “There’s a third the crew calls the coffin. You don’t want that one.”
I shudder and decide not to ask.
“Radio?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “The wheelhouse is locked when we’re out. When it’s open, they post men outside with rifles. I don’t think the captain speaks English to us on purpose. He does when the other men are around.”
“Are any of the crew decent?” I hear the smallness of the question, the way hope makes your voice too light.
Kira answers, careful. “There’s a baker—works nights, brings bread. He won’t look at us. Once he left a bottle of aspirin on a cart and pretended he didn’t. There’s a kid who mops and always leaves the mop by the door when he goes. Little things.” She shrugs. “Little things don’t open doors.”
“They keep you together on purpose?” I ask. “So you don’t go crazy by yourselves?”
“Together means less manpower to watch.” Split Lip’s mouth pulls. “Together means you can make an example once and everyone learns. They like efficiency.” She takes the ice pack from my ribs and presses her fingers gently along the bruise. “You’ll be black and green by morning.”
“Pretty,” I say. “It’s fine. He’s dead. That helps me breathe.”
“Good.” Kira sits on the bunk across, elbows on her knees. She takes me in like she did gamblers on the mezzanine—assessment, not judgment. “You looked for help up top?”
“I tried,” I say. “I found you instead.”
“Lucky us,” Split Lip deadpans, but there’s no heat in it.
Silence stretches. In it, I can hear the hopelessness starting to gather again. It’s in the slow blink of Messy Bun’s eyes. It’s in the way Bandage Wrist keeps worrying the strip around her wrist, an unconscious hand-to-mouth repetition of a thought she’s trying too hard not to have. It’s in the way Luis’s feet stop swinging.
I won’t let it settle. I’ll let it pass over me, but it’s not going to settle in and get comfortable.
“Listen,” I say, louder than I mean to. It makes every head turn. Even the humming quiets. I make my voice steady. “I told you before…they didn’t just steal me from nobody. They stole me from the four worst men to steal from if you want to sleep at night. Conrad. Atticus. Maverick. Storm. They are going to find this ship.”
