“Shipped out? As in they were able to leave?” Hope sparks to life in my chest.
Beth shakes her head. “It’s not a good thing. We don’t go home. When they bring new girls in, it’s usually to replace someone that hasn’t been bid on in a while.” Her gaze flits toward the bathroom. “If you don’t sell high enough, or if you don’t get bid on, you become dead weight.”
“Like us tonight.” Paige wraps her arms around her front. “We didn’t get bid on tonight.”
“Which would be a good thing. Instead of being used as a billionaire’s plaything to knock around, we get a break. But that also means we may lose our usefulness. They don’t risk releasing us to run our mouths about this secret club. They ship us overseas. Trafficked to worse countries, to people who do worse things.” Beth clenches her fists.
“And itcanget worse,” Mercy adds.
I don’t mean to, but feeling lightheaded, I sit back on the nearest bed. The linens are clean and white, as they all are, but the pillowcases are a deep burgundy, and all I can think about is that stupid cigar.
Senator Graves.
“Senator Graves? He was one of the ones who came to my house?”
Mercy raises her eyebrows, but Beth flinches at his name. “You must be a catch then. Senator Graves is one of their leaders. They’re called the Eight or something, but mostly it’s Graves’s show.”
I slouch, gripping the foot of the bed I’m seated on. The floor feels like it’s been dropped out from under me. A wave of heat crawls up my neck, and I press my hands into my thighs, trying to breathe through the twist of nausea churning beneath my ribs. A tear slides down my cheek, and I slap it away. But then there’s another. And another.
I stare at the wall. It’s chewed up with scarred scuffs and jagged grooves, and I follow the random cracks to keep from releasing any more choked sobs.
Thousands of questions run rampant in my mind, but I’m still sorting through all the information I received in the first five minutes of being here.
I look down at my pajamas. The pink silk shorts twist at my waist with drips of my rolling tears splashing in randomized patterns. The T-shirt from Tristan adds to my pain, and I lower my head, smelling the mix of cigar smoke and luxury cologne I know isn’t his.
How?
How are they so calm?
They talk about this place as if it’s a minor inconvenience. They stand here, in matching sets, collected. Getting water, going to the bathroom, accepting this as normal. It’s not normal!Why aren’t they beating on the door? Why aren’t they bolting when they get a chance?
“Come on, hun. Let me show you around. They left an outfit for you to change into.” Mercy lightly places a hand on my shoulder and motions to a bed across the thin aisle.
On one of the beds, made to perfection, is a stack of black clothing that looks identical to what the other girls are wearing. I glare at it and shake my head.
Beth moves in front of me and helps Mercy. They each grab an arm and pull me up.
“What’s your name?” Beth asks.
For a second, a stretched-out, dizzying second, I can’t remember. It’s trivial. I’ve been snatched out of my life. It feels stolen from me.
I don’t want to say it. If I tell them—say it out loud—it makes everything real. This messed-up situation real.
If I’m going to survive this, if I’m going to make it out alive, I have to remember who I am. The girl my mother raised. The one who gave unlimited second chances and endless hope.
I glance down at my tattoo, at the delicate black-and-white sketch of a dandelion drawn on the inside of my forearm. The stem is thin and slightly curved. Fine-lined seeds pack into the bloom, with a couple lifting and drifting up and outward. I got it four months after my mother died, and it’s the one memory I replay in my mind daily.
When I look down at it and remember her words, that mantra she preached to me daily, I cling to it like my lifeline. I’m not gone. Not yet. I won’t let them take the last piece of me.
“Thea,” I rasp. “My name is Thea.”
Sleep evades me, and anything I do manage to squeak out is in twenty-minute spurts. At first, it’s the red blinking lights in every corner of the room.Cameras, I realize. Then it’s a few girls talking before Mercy yells at them to shut up, or the tiny sobs and sniffles from some of the girls that crest on and off for most of the night.
When morning comes—or what I assume is morning based on the rustle of bedding and shuffling to the bathroom—I pull the covers over my head and stay there.
That is, until hinges shriek and a low groaning echoes throughout the room. Curious, I toss the covers off and watch as a middle-aged woman with purple hair rolls a cart inside. Glasses of green juice line the top, and she pushes the cart to a spot on the wall before smirking and walking back out. The door clicks, an awful sound, locking us in here.
The mattress dips hard beside me, jolting me out of the half-stare, half-zombie state I’m in. My body bounces slightly, and I blink.
