“Your turn,” Leah grinned, sliding out of the seat. And though my fingers trembled and the wires blurred in my vision, she guided me, patient, whispering, “That one, now pull. Good. Again. Hear it?” until the car growled for me, too. We both slapped our hands over our mouths to muffle our laughter, our eyes wide in the dim garage light,hearts pounding.
Quickly, Leah made the car quiet again, and for thirty minutes, because that’s all we could really risk, we sat there. Leah in the passenger seat. Me in the driver’s. I curled my fingers around the wheel, pressed my foot down on the gas as far as it’d let me with the car off, imagined throwing the car into reverse and breaking through the garage door. I imagined what it would feel like to ride through the night, the wind in my hair, and I closed my eyes as tears welled.
“Happy seventeenth birthday, Arden,” Leah said softly. “What do you want this year?”
I turned my cheek into the cool leather of the seat, peering through tear-blurred lashes at my friend’s freckled face and blue eyes, her orange hair catching red against the dim light. I didn’t know how to answer. I’d never been allowed to want for anything. But I stared at her a little longer, her expression tired, and my heart warmed with desire. “I want to see you smile again,” I whispered. “Really smile. Like you used to.”
Her eyes turned to glass, her lips wobbling, and I reached a thumb out, brushing a stray tear from her cheek. “It’s truly a wonder, Arden, how good your soul is after being molded by such an evil man.”
Butgood, I knew, had its limits—especially surrounded by evil.
?Arden?
I remember when I stole it: the lighter. Silver, weighty and cold, with V.S.—Viktor Shaw—carved into the side. I’m not even sure why I took it. I just remember lying alone in his massive bed, shivering and bruised, with the lighter and a case of his cigars resting on the bedside table. I think maybe I just wanted to know Icouldtake something, and although I should’ve felt more guilt after the maid was blamed and killed, I didn’t because it was mine. I’d never really owned anything before. I loved crouching in a dark corner, away from everyone else, and clicking the flame awake. I can’t tell you how many times I considered it, burning the place to the ground, but that meant death for everyone, even the youngest of kids, and I just…couldn’t.
But yeah, stealing the lighter was like releasing a floodgate of want. I stole a ring next. Then a bracelet. Always small things. I was more careful after the lighter, making sure what I took wasn’t noticeable enough to warrant anyone’s death, but the lighter remained my pride and joy.
When I turned eighteen, I finally got my own room. Viktor began grooming new Dolls. I wasn’t retired, not by any means, but I was given more space and left alone more often. My room was twice the size of the closet I’d been sleeping in, with a wooden bed frame shoved against one wall and a cracked mirror that warped my face when I stood too close. The wallpaper peeled in strips near the floor, water-stained from pipes groaning behind the plaster. Many of Viktor’s friends visited my bedroom on rotation, but for the most part, I was still able to make the room mine.
Someone had lived in the room before me. The signs of them littered the space like a friendly ghost. There were notches whittled into the bed post that I decided to add to with every night that passed, and there on the headboard, just behind my pillows, were the words,To the great escape. They were carved over again andagain, as if it was the previous tenant’s nightly mantra to do so. In their memory, I carried it on, using a rusted switchblade to hollow the letters further. It brought me some peace to know someone craved to leave as much as I did, and I hoped that maybe since it was no longer their room that maybe they’d escaped, that maybe I still could, too.
I also stopped hiding my stolen treasures in the kitchen plant and made a new shrine out of the room itself. Loose floorboards beneath the window. The hollow belly of a pillow. A tin stolen from the pantry and tucked under my mattress, rattling with trinkets. Little proofs that I could take and claim.
Leah found them one night when she came to smuggle me a cigarette. She laughed at first, sifting through the bits like they were a child’s toys, until she pulled out the lighter. Then she grew quiet, thumb dragging across the engraving. “You’re going to get yourself killed,” she whispered, but not with anger—with awe.
By then, Leah wasn’t just my Handler anymore. Viktor had promoted her, using her knowledge of engines for something more lucrative. She’d gone frommanaging Viktor’s Doll to stealing cars for him, training others to do the same. I should’ve been proud, but mostly I was jealous.
“It’s dangerous work,” she told me, shaking her head. “That’s why I didn’t put your name forward.”
But seeing everything I’d stolen, I think she realized how far I was willing to go just for ownership ofsomething.
“Fine,” she muttered. “I’ll ask Viktor if you can come on the next run.”
And just like that, I stopped being only a Doll.
We crowded into the garage like the strays we were, a group of seventeen to twenty-somethings, the air thick with gasoline and dust, Leah pacing in front of us with her hair tied back in a scarf. She held a wrench like a priest holds a chalice. These were her sermons, her rituals. She taught us how to break into a car withoutshattering glass, how to hot-wire in under a minute, and how to keep your face blank when a patrol passed.
I sat on a crate, watching the others’ eyes follow her like she was sunlight, like she was the only thing that mattered in the dark. Everyone was eager to be her number one. She should’ve chosen me—I knew it, she knew it—but Viktor had already decided otherwise. He said I was too precious to risk, and so he chained me to her in the way he always did. Leah wasn’t allowed to ride with me. We were to always be sent out separately. She was the leverage, the anchor, the body left behind so I wouldn’t run. While she stayed locked in his grip, I was the one sent out to carry her instructions into the night.
When she pressed the keys of one of the bikes we were allowed to take to a checkpoint mid-city into my palm, her thumb lingered just long enough to brand me. “Don’t screw this up,” she whispered, low enough that the others wouldn’t hear. “Change into these. Your Doll outfit won’t do for this,” she explained, handing me a stack of ratty, worn clothes.
I wish I could say it was difficult to leave her there, but honestly, I was about to feel the wind in my hair forthe first time and couldn’t wait. I changed into ripped jeans that were a little too big and an over-sized black hoodie before slipping into converse nearing the end of their lifespan.
The bike was waiting near the garage door, polished chrome catching the dim light. My heart hammered as I swung my leg over the seat. I’d done so a handful of times by then, all of us forced to practice by riding to the end of the street and back. The leather was cold, stiff beneath me, and for a second I just sat there gripping the handlebars, staring at the gate like it was the edge of the world.
I slid the key into the ignition, twisted, and the engine came alive with a roar that shook the floor under my boots. It was louder than I remembered, angrier, and the vibration climbed up my arms until it felt like the machine was inside my chest.
The gate yawned open and the others surged forward first, engines snarling in chorus. For a second I froze, blinded by headlights and smoke, until instinct kicked in. The bike leapt under me, and suddenly I was airborne without ever leaving the ground.
The road tore beneath us. A knot of riders cutting through the dark, shoulders hunched, wheels spitting sparks when we leaned too sharp around corners. I tucked myself into their formation, swallowed by the roar.
The street kept unfolding, block after block, the city rising around us in fractured neon. The wind clawed at me, ripped my hair free, flattened my hoodie to my skin. My laughter spilled out wild and sharp. I was a streak of noise and speed, keeping pace with the others.
The one at the front—Thorne—was our guide. We were both eighteen, but he rode like he’d been born with gasoline in his blood. I had admittedly watched hima lot,especially when I got to hangout in the garage with Leah. Him and the boys working with her were always shirtless, and while I wish I could say I kept my eyes to myself, I was still a horny teenager, and I guess, well, looking back on it, that was kind of nice. It was normal to be seventeen and have a crush, and I loved that Thorne let me have that little bit of normalcy when I watched him.
By then, he was far removed from the scrawny guy who'd waved at me four yearsbefore. He was broad-shouldered, the sleeves of his jacket folded and bunched upward to reveal muscled forearms veined from wrench work, and had a smear of engine grease still across his jaw like war paint. His hair was black and too long, snapping behind him in the wind, and every time the streetlights caught his face I saw the sharpness of his grin, reckless and alive. He rode like he wanted to break the machine, like every turn was a dare, which was in and of itself captivating. His back was straight, his hands easy on the handlebars, but there was no mistaking the violence in the way he cut corners or let the back wheel skid just to prove he could tame it.
I don’t think I’d ever really noticed a boy in the way I noticed Thorne. Not then. I’d noticed Rafe, but it was different. With Rafe it felt like kinship, like two caged animals pacing the same bars, our eyes catching between the thin slivers of freedom we weren’t supposed to have. Rafe was recognition, a shared grief.
