Violet Grenade

by Victoria Scott

  Poppet is already shaking her head.

  “Poppet, listen, we can’t stay here. There’s too much that’s off.”

  “Like what?”

  I glance into the hallway before continuing. “Like the fact that Madam Karina has a police officer on staff, and that girls rarely go into town, and that no one is supposed to discuss the girl I replaced.” I trace my fingers over the cuts on my arm that were made by someone else’s hand. “Where do the girls go who leave here, Poppet? Why doesn’t anyone talk about them?”

  She shrugs. “I think most that apply to leave go live in Pox.”

  “You have to apply to leave? See, that’s just it. Why would you have to apply?”

  “So you can get paid out.” Poppet steps back. “Look, I really like that you’re asking me to go with you, but there’s nothing bad going on here outside of the Carnations turning on me. On us. Plus, I like it here, even with what’s been going on lately. This home is a better one than I’ve had in the past.”

  The last part she whispers, and my stomach twists. Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe Wilson is, too, when he reminds me, late at night as I try to sleep, to be careful.

  I don’t like it here. Wilson paces back and forth. It’s got me on edge.

  I push my tongue against the roof of my mouth, try to feel the hole that a silver bar once filled. “Maybe you’re right. But…”

  “But what?”

  I hesitate, because I don’t want to say the real reason being in this home bugs me. If I say it aloud, then it becomes real. Eyes cast downward, nerves rattling under my skin, I speak my mind. “What do you think the girls in the guesthouses do? The Lilies and Violets?”

  Wilson raises his hand. Ooh, I know! Pick me!

  Poppet puffs out her cheeks and thinks on my question. “Want to know what my first response to that question is?”

  “I do.”

  “We’d be lucky to find out. Want my second? I’ll give it to you. Probably nothing worse than I’ve done in my past. And maybe a lot better.”

  I dwell on this. Realize she’s right. There’s nothing I could do as a Violet that would compare to the thing I did in my parents’ home. A memory flashes into my mind. One of my mother plucking a splinter from the heel of my foot. I remember the concentration on her face, the smell of rubbing alcohol. It took her ten minutes to get that sucker out, but afterward she made me apple cobbler with vanilla bean ice cream, and we made a fire in the hearth. It was almost Christmas, only a few short weeks before my father changed our lives forever.

  Before he slighted my mother.

  Before he made her into a monster.

  Poppet is dead-on. Nothing the girls do in Madam Karina’s Home for Burgeoning Entertainers can rival the blood on my hands.

  Chapter Thirty

  Inferno

  Ruby reappears in the doorway; the grin on her face is a carefully wrapped gift. “Ready to work, ladies?”

  Poppet gathers the length of her dress and follows after Ruby. We’re halfway down the hall when she turns and speaks in a low voice. “It’s not that I want you to leave,” she says. “It’s just that I’ve decided on this place. For however long the madam wants my help, I’m going to give it.”

  I’m touched by her loyalty, and who am I to say it’s misplaced? So I smile and walk beside her in silence. Twenty paces ahead is a full night’s work, and though my mind ticks with unanswered questions about this place, one thing is certain—the Daisy’s entertainment room isn’t like the Carnation’s room.

  Already, I can hear the psychedelic music and the girls speaking in hushed tones. My pulse races as we grow closer, and my scalp tingles with anxiety. The Carnations’ room was simply called the entertainment room, maybe the E-room if we were feeling lazy. But the Daisies arena is different, and appropriately named “The Inferno.”

  Wilson sits up straighter as we pass by the coin boxes and step inside. And though he’s been submissive after my attack on Mercy, he shakes his head and says, The Inferno? Really? Oh, yeah, now I feel better.

  Stop talking, I respond. And go away.

  He doesn’t go away.

  And as I move farther into the room, I’m glad for it.

  Red starbursts hang from invisible threads throughout the room. The carpet is black, the walls, black, the couches and bar and even the digital placement board—black. Cutouts of crows and ravens mingle with the red starbursts, and the girls weave through them like phantoms, their bodies splashed with white polka dots from a disco ball. Incense is burned in crystal holders shaped like elephant trunks. It smells like human hair caught ablaze, with a hint of sage thrown in for good measure.

  A girl with a fiery braid faces away from me, but I see the way her head falls back, how another girl dangles a white pill above her open mouth like one would a tuft of bread above a koi pond. The pill freefalls, and both girls giggle. Soon, they are hugging and rubbing each other’s arms in ecstasy. Ruby leans her head in my direction. “Last time I’ll ask. Sure you don’t want to try one? You will sooner or later.”

  I shake my head. Drugs aren’t my thing, though every time she offers, I can’t help wondering if they could help me silence Wilson for good.

  Would you really want that? Because without me…

  Ruby places a pill on her tongue and swallows. “Dinner of champions.” When I offer a shy smile, she bumps my shoulder. “Come on, Domino. You should try laughing once in a while. You don’t have to worry anymore. For most of us, this is where the train stops. We’re serious when we say if you’re a Daisy, you’re family.”

  That word is like a bedside lamp in the dead of night. Eerie shadows, sudden creaks, footsteps falling lightly across your blackened room, all soothed with a little switch.

  Family.

  Poppet refuses the drugs, too, but isn’t shy when mingling with the other girls. It takes longer than it did with the Carnations for Madam Karina to arrive with her black marker. I’m guessing she starts on the bottom floor and works her way up.

  “Get in line, ladies,” the madam says. “Hands out.”

  We do as she says. I get the number six written on my hand, and Poppet gets a five. She finished well last night, so I knew she’d be ahead of me. Still, we are close to the bottom. There are only seven girls, and my being number six doesn’t fare well. We’ll have to work our way up the chain. It’s the only way to advance again. And I will advance. This is my plan now, and I’m committed. It’s hard, though, because my sketchpad isn’t as useful here as it was downstairs. Not when dancing is the dominant source of entertainment currency.

  Madam Karina glides through the velvet-curtained doorway, and soon heavy boots fall upon the stairs. Mixed with the sound is the clicking of heels.

  Our customers have arrived.

  Poppet comes to stand by my side, and a silent understanding passes between us. She may not want to leave with me when I go, but it doesn’t stop her from desiring a place among the Violets. It’s what everyone wants inside Madam Karina’s Home for Burgeoning Entertainers, even if they’re too afraid to fight for the position.

  Eight customers file into the room. They move toward a circular bar that’s aglow in a red light. Champagne bottles and plastic glasses await their arrival. There are no silver coins in their pockets for booze. The champagne will do just fine. That’s not what they came for, anyway. They came for Poppet and me. And for the other girls.

  And they came for the drug buffet.

  The customers open their painted beaks like baby birds awaiting their mother. White pills skydive into their mouths and their throats thank them kindly. Ruby approaches a black box perched near the far wall and turns a knob.

  The music grows violent.

  And the dancing begins.

  Poppet and I dance alone for a long time. She’s terrible at moving her body, and she’ll admit as much, but what she lacks in rhythm she makes up for in energy. When she spots a woman hardly moving to the beat, Poppet takes the lady’s sweaty palms in her own. Sh
e raises them over her head and shakes them until the woman laughs. Then she guides her toward me, and I dance on the opposite side of her.

  I don’t touch her, but I stay close.

  Swallowing my trepidation, I yell in the woman’s ear. Ask her name. Her hobbies. Offer to get her another drink. She refuses the drink, and I’m glad for it. Her eyes are fully dilated and I can hardly understand her responses. But she seems happy to dance between Poppet and me, and a few minutes later, another guest joins us.

  Two, I think, but we need more.

  A hand touches my waist and I spin around, heart pounding. The man’s fingers leave my skin when he sees he’s upset me. I take in his solar grin, his lean body, his blond hair.

  Jack.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Eyes Open

  It’s too-old-to-be-touching-me-that-way Jack. Too old to put a smile on my face, but I smile anyway.

  “Didn’t see you downstairs,” he hollers over the music. “Had to pay again to come upstairs.” He returns his hand to my waist. I’m not sure I like that. I’m not sure I don’t like it, either.

  I lean forward. “I got promoted.”

  He raises thick eyebrows to show he’s impressed. “That what you want? To stay in this fairy-tale castle?”

  I hesitate before answering. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “I could help you do that is all.” His hand is still on my waist. I can feel it there like a bee sting. “You need those coins, right?”

  I nod.

  “Tell you what; I’ll help you out, but you have to help me, too.” He smiles, but his eyes don’t smile with him.

  I lean close to his ear because I need his coin, and because Poppet has our other two customers entertained. “What do you want?”

  He squeezes my hip, his fingers digging deep. “Tell me one true thing about yourself every night.”

  I forget his touch. He wants me to talk about myself? I wonder why he cares. I’m one girl among many.

  My mind snaps to the house I want so badly, and my reservations slide away. “Show me what you can do to help me, and I’ll talk.”

  His other hand finds my waist, and he lifts me into the air. I’m so surprised that I laugh. The sound is foreign, someone else’s happiness. Jack jostles me over his head like I’m a child, light as a snowflake, as the disco ball dances across my face.

  “I have here in my hands the most beautiful girl in the room,” he bellows.

  The smile leaves my face, afraid the other girls won’t like what he’s saying, but now the other customers are laughing, too. They take a hesitant step in our direction, and when Jack gathers my legs into his arms and clutches me against his chest, they take another. His body feels slight against mine, dainty almost. I imagine him without his shirt, bones above his hips sharp as lightning slicing the sky.

  Cain could destroy him.

  I don’t know why my mind always goes there. Destructive, wicked places. Who’s stronger? Who’s more dangerous?

  I am, Wilson answers.

  His voice disappears inside the folds of my mind when Jack hands me to another customer. A boy of fifteen, sixteen at best. He’s missing a canine tooth, and there’s an insistent freckle in the center of his bottom lip. The boy celebrates the gift Jack has given him, raising me up to show his strength. I’m still being cradled like a doll, and realizing, remembering, I hate people’s hands on my body.

  The boy’s hand trails down my side where a viper slithers in faded green ink.

  “Let me down!” I yell.

  He lets me down.

  I figure I’ve undone Jack’s work, but he’s created a ripple in the tide, and now the customers have circled around Poppet and me. Jack’s hand finds the bottom of my back. A gentle nudge, and I’m pressed against my friend. Poppet’s small eyes enlarge when she finds me so close.

  The room holds its breath, and then Poppet pulls me into her orbit. Now my hands are on her shoulders and her hands are on my hips and Jack reaches over to touch my bottom lip. My mouth opens on instinct, a venus flytrap welcoming a slippery-legged insect.

  He tips his glass, and champagne rushes down my throat. Poppet does the same when he balances it over her lips. Jack raises the glass and the music thrum, thrum, thrums and my mind goes fuzzy and alert at once. Focusing on everything and nothing, becoming one with the dancing bodies. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.

  Oh, Holy Father.

  Forgive me my sins.

  It doesn’t take long for me to understand it was more than champagne I swallowed. Three whirls around my merry-go-mind and I knew. I didn’t care that Jack slipped me something as much as I should. It pushed Wilson down the way I thought it might, and now the people that reach out aren’t as intimidating as they were before. Poppet grabs hands with a customer next to her, and another one, too. We form a circle and sway side to side slowly, though the song calls for something much faster. Jack takes a piece of my hair in his hand, and I close my eyes to his touch.

  I don’t know the first thing about him.

  But he wants to know about me.

  Should I tell him I’m lethal? That I’m as safe as a highball of arsenic? That would go well, I think. Jack’s hands find my neck, and I’m pulled away from the pack of customers, singled out like a gazelle, a hyena in pursuit.

  I open my eyes, and Jack is everywhere at once. How can a skinny guy take up so much space? Maybe guy is the wrong word for him. He’s in his mid-twenties, I’d say. But I can already spot the place his hair will thin, like it’s holding its breath for an especially windy day.

  “How do you feel?” His words slide down my back, sticky-sweet sap oozing from the trunk of a tree.

  “Good.” I cross my arms over my head and let the music hold me up by the collar. How long have I been dancing? An hour? Three? “You put something in my drink.”

  He smiles shamefully, shifts to his right.

  That’s when I see Cain over his shoulder. His jaw is tight, and his hands hang heavy by his sides, the muscles jumping in his biceps. He reaches for me and pulls me away from Jack. But Jack’s not one to be abandoned so easily. He makes a grab for my wrist and tugs.

  I turn around, and his face blurs in and out of focus.

  “You didn’t tell me anything,” Jack accuses.

  I bow for whatever reason. “You haven’t guaranteed me anything yet. Tomorrow, we’ll see.”

  “Domino,” Cain says low in his throat.

  Jack ignores him. “Tell me.”

  I don’t look back at Cain. Instead, I keep my gaze steady on this man who does as he pleases. This man who is laughter and playfulness to Cain’s biting truth and solidarity. “Okay, Jack,” I say. “You want to know something about me?”

  He nods, solemn.

  I lean close. “I was born with my eyes open. When I slid from my mother’s womb, my eyes were open. I see everything. I don’t always pay attention, but I see it.”

  “Do you see me?” he asks.

  “Yes, you,” I answer. “One day, you may wish I didn’t.”

  Cain touches my shoulder blade and I spin around, head downstairs toward our place beneath the stars. My blood kicks in my veins, and my mind thumps recklessly. I answered Jack’s question, but it’s Cain who has my attention.

  Tonight, I’ll ask him a question of my own.

  Already, nerves fire through my body, anticipating how he’ll react.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Asteroid

  It’s the first night Cain has come for me since I’ve become a Daisy. I never expected it, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t secretly hope he’d show.

  We head behind the house in silence and take our places in the two plastic chairs. The one I sit in has a back leg that’s shorter than the rest. I rock side to side to hear the off-balance thumping. Eventually, Cain reaches a hand over and lays it on my arm to stop me. Maybe that’s why I did it in the first place.

  He lights a cigarette and we watch the Lilies’ and Violets’ guesthou
ses. I think about Lola, wonder what she’s doing in there. Question why I care. Then I look at Madam Karina’s empty flowerbed. Wonder how often she prayed for her mother to give her a fistful of violets and say she was worthy. As worthy as her sister who moved to Detroit and opened her own business.

  I turn to Cain. I’ve got a bombshell question up my sleeve that I’m ready to toss into open water, take cover and wait for the salty sting. “Why do you work for Madam Karina?”

  His cigarette is halfway to his mouth when my question hits him square between the eyes. He doesn’t bring the cigarette any farther. It just sits there, wrinkled, crumbling ashes onto his lap. “What do you mean? It’s a job.”

  “Does she pay you?”

  “That’s a pretty personal question.”

  My teeth snap together. “Well, let’s try being personal for once. We’ve done enough tiptoeing.”

  “You don’t want to know why I’m here, Domino. If you did, you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”

  I shoot to my feet, and my head spins. Whatever Jack put in my drink takes full effect. Cain must see how dizzy I am because he stands, too, flicks his cigarette toward the ashtray, doesn’t get anywhere near it. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I put a palm flat against my forehead. “Just answer my question. I need someone to be straight with me. Just one person.”

  “Well, that person isn’t going to be me.”

  I spin on him and close the distance between us. “Then why are you doing this? Why come out here with me? Why try to protect me?” I point a finger at him. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the little things you’ve done. And don’t kid yourself into thinking I need protecting.”

  Cain lowers his head. “Back away, Domino.”

  “Why? What happens if I push?” I shove him in the chest. I don’t know why I’m antagonizing him. Because of the champagne and drugs, maybe. Because I’m afraid of getting too close, most likely. Better to scare people off than to be left again. I grab Cain’s shirt and lean in, so close I can feel the warmth of his body. “Never mind pushing. It’s the pulling that scares you most, isn’t it?”