I scramble up, gripping the standard-issued clothes to my body.
“Screw you!” When the steel door shuts, I huff a curl out of my face.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Ms. Too-good-for-us. What … did Congressman DuPont get tired of you and throw you back here?”
I spin on the balls of my feet.
Juliette approaches, looking gaunt as ever, the hollows of her cheeks too defined, eyes sunken beneath pale skin. She looks me over. I hadn’t realized how much sun I’d gotten, how healthy my skin was until what it used to be stares back at me. Her lips curl. “Don’t look at me like that. Tomorrow they’ll plaster the makeupon me and fill out my bra—I’ll look as good as you. Maybe even better once we’re done with you.”
Done with me?Several other girls creep forward. I look around. “Where’s Beth?”
Another woman in the back speaks up. I forget her name and instantly hate myself for it. “She was Culled, along with Tonya.”
I let my eyes rest closed for a moment, saying a silent prayer, most likely in vain, that they’re not hurting or in pain.
“It should’ve been you,” Juliette snaps. “I was ahead the night of the Culling. If it wasn’t for Slade seeing his chance to sleep with you flash before his eyes, you’d have never been saved.”
Tears spring to my eyes, and I take a moment to pull on the outfit in my hands. “I-I know,” I say when I pull the last of my shirt down over my stomach. Except Slade hasn’t tried to sleep with me once. In the beginning, he avoided me, like he wasn’t even sure why he’d taken me. He’d confused himself. But then he opened up to me, and I got to see a side of Slade no one here knows. Pretty sure he shocked himself.
I smile thinking about what we’ve shared and the connection we’ve made despite the horror of this new life.
“You find it funny?” Juliette seethes. “She finds it funny!”
The other girls taunt and growl.
“No! No, I don’t.” I seek out the cameras in the corners of the room. I wish I could tell them. How kind, how unlike the others he is. That he’s in this for the long haul to undermine EV, but that it takes time.
But what have you done? Nothing.I flinch at my own thoughts.
When I look around the box of a room with tiny beds and women barely holding on, I can’t believe I did so little.
Coward.
“You probably think he’ll save you again tomorrow night,” another girl snips.
I shake my head, moving toward my old bed. “I told him not to. I don’t want to be saved over you.”
Juliette cackles, and the hair on my arms rises at her condescending tone. “You think he’ll listen to you. He’s a powerful congressman, and you’re nothing but red-headed trash.”
Okay. This is getting ridiculous. I sit on my bed. “Whatever, Juliette.”
She looks past me, her chin raising just enough to catch my attention. But before I hear the shuffling of feet, a shadow stretches in my periphery. There’s a quick dip to the bed, a sharp laugh, and then my head snaps back as my hair is yanked. It’s forceful and stings.
“Hey!” I cry, but then another set of hands pushes me off the bed, and I tumble to the floor. My shoulder slams into the bedrail of the bed beside mine, jarring a hiss. I twist, but the fingers still caught in my hair yank my head back again.
Juliette’s voice cuts through the chaos. “Thought you could just walk in here like you didn’t hang us out to dry?”
Another girl slaps my cheek, her breath sour as she breathes a “yeah” across my face.
I stagger upward, feet scraping the jagged concrete. The girls circle me, and a fist jabs into my ribs. Then another lands on my cheekbone. The brutal thud cracks near my eye socket, and white explodes behind my eyelids. Needle-like pain radiates out, and I stumble back into the corner of the room, shrinking to the floor once again.
“Okay. Juliette that’s enough,” a girl says.
“Enough? It’s not nearly enough. She took what was supposed to be mine!”
My vision splits as I’m kicked in the side of the head, and the yells and screams morph into a muffled slog.
“Stop! That’s enough.” It seems to be the only voice of dissent in the room.
