by Anna Carey
Page 33
I felt someone watching us and I turned, meeting Fletcher’s gaze in the dusty rearview mirror. The music faded and he slid open the back window of the cab.
“Don’t you worry, my pretty sweetheart,” he said. “I’m not taking you back to School. ” He lowered the mirror to look at Arden’s bare legs. “Three ladies . . . so pure? I could get much more for you elsewhere. ”
With that he dialed up the music again, rapping his fingers against the side door. Come an’ take-ake-ake your time-ime and dance with me! Ow!
Arden didn’t speak. Instead she tried the metal lock on the cage again, banging at it until her fingers were red. The landscape whipped by us, a blur of yellow dirt. The tree branches reached toward the road like gnarled fingers.
“What does he mean?” Lark asked, looking up at me. Her lower lip trembled as she spoke.
I hated her right then, this stranger, for being so familiar to me. In her face I saw someone I used to be, a girl who was so sure of the purpose of School, with its walls and its rules and the orderly lines that filed past the bedrooms and into the dining hall. She thought she could go somewhere else and be given something different, something better. Another future.
“You’re getting your wish,” I said, unable to stop the cold words from escaping my lips. “You’re not going to see the Headmistress again. ”
Chapter Twenty-four
WE SAT IN THAT TRUCK FOR HOURS, OUR LUNGS CAKED with dirt. Even the sun abandoned us, sinking low between the trees. We’d fallen in and out of sleep, thinking we had time—time to prepare, time to escape—but then the gadget at Fletcher’s belt called out, waking us.
“Fletcher, you devil! What’s your ETA? I have too much demand and not enough supply. ”
I was pressed into one corner. Lark slept in the other, and Arden curled up in a ball at my side, their faces just visible in the reddish glow from the taillights.
Fletcher brought the strange radio to his mouth, pushing a button on its side to stop the static. “Cool your crotch,” he chuckled. “I’m camping for the night. We’ll be there in the morning. ”
Static filled the air, then a callous laugh. “Tell me what you got. Come on, give the boys a little preview. ”
I imagined the same men I’d seen by the shack, their hides tanned to a leathery brown, gathered under a tarp in camp, awaiting our arrival. I pressed my nose through the bars, desperate for more air.
“They’re all steamers,” Fletcher offered, his eyes glancing at us in the rearview mirror. “I’ll give them to you tomorrow, you crud guzzler. ” He threw the radio down and turned his music on again.
Back at School, I had once argued for the goodness of people, and the great capacity for change. But listening to him laugh, the radio held lightly in his hand, I sensed only depravity. One thing Teacher Agnes had said was true, even now: Some men saw women purely as a commodity. Like fuel, rice, or canned meat.
Arden watched me from the side of the cage, turned so her back was to him. “We have to get out of here,” she whispered. “Tonight. ”
“But he’ll kill us,” Lark said, pulling the worn blanket over her legs.
“We’re already dead,” Arden snapped.
I nodded, knowing that she was right. I had felt it in the storehouse with Leif, my spirit bending, bending, agonizingly close to a break. Fletcher would not change his mind. He would not show some sudden decency. There would be no moral awakening in the middle of the night.
I shifted toward Lark and Arden, covering the side of my face with my hair so Fletcher would not see my lips move if he glanced toward us.
“We can go when he sets up camp,” I said, my nerves awakening.
I looked out beyond the bars, hoping to see a road sign, an arrow, some indicator of where we were, but there was only darkness.
HOURS LATER, THE TRUCK PULLED OFF THE ROAD, ITS tires bumping over rocks and broken tree limbs. We stopped in a clearing. The sky was overcast, with no moon in sight. The landscape had changed. The thick trees gave way to open land, short shrubs, and sand that glowed red in the headlights. Rock formations towered above us, something between mountains and cliffs, their shapes cutting strange shadows in the stars. Fletcher climbed out, stretched his arms, then turned to urinate in the short brush.
“Just do what we said,” Arden whispered, grabbing Lark’s wrist.
“I know,” she said, pulling away. Her voice was rigid. “You told me already. ”
“We need to go to the bathroom. ” I banged against the metal bars. “Please, we need to get out now. ”
Fletcher zipped up his pants. “What?”
“She said,” Arden continued, wiping her black hair off her forehead, “we need to take a piss. ”
Fletcher nodded, as though he understood that wording much better. He shined a flashlight into the cage, then out into the shrubs, where a battered house stood at the base of the giant rocks. “All of yous?”
“All of us,” Arden responded. Even Lark offered a convincing nod.
Fletcher moved the beam over Arden’s face, then Lark’s, then mine. I squinted at the stinging light. “You’ve got two minutes. You can go over there, in the woods. ” His flashlight moved over the patch of charred trees, black and twisted from where a fire had swept through. “But if you dare even take one step without my permission—” He pulled his gun from his belt, wielding it in the air.
Lark’s breaths quickened as Fletcher opened the giant padlock. We filed out, Arden first, then me, then Lark. Fletcher kept the beam on our backs as we made our way to the trees.
The woods looked more menacing in the glow of the flashlight. The branches, now stripped of their bark and leaves, reached toward us, beckoning us inside.
“Not yet,” I whispered, unsure if it was Lark or myself who needed reminding. We took slow, careful steps through the short brush. New growth shot up between the ashy roots, tall grass and ferns, hopeful signs of resilience.
As we reached the edge of the tree line, Arden turned to me. Her gaze softened. Her mouth curled slightly, a sort-of smile perceptible only to me. This may be good-bye, she seemed to say, her eyes reflecting the starlight. I’m sorry if it is.
We stepped once, twice, and three times into the woods. I glanced off to the right. I could see two trees, but nothing beyond. Then Arden said it, so low I could barely hear her: “Now. ”
I took off, my body weightless as it darted over downed tree limbs, through prickly brush, moving deeper into the charred wood. I kept my arms outstretched in the dark, feeling my way through it.
“You little—” Fletcher called out behind us, his heavy boots clomping down in the clearing. “I’ll cut your throats!”
Lark and Arden ran across the woods, splitting up somewhere in the blackness. Then the first gunshot rocked the air, quieting the birds and insects. I fell to the ground, scared Arden would cry out, but there was only the sound of footsteps, twigs snapping, and Fletcher’s loud, raspy breaths behind me. I kept moving, crawling over the tangled brush, but Fletcher was getting closer. His shadow weaved in and out of the trees, moving steadily forward.
I struggled to my feet, my ankle twisting. There, beyond the charred forest, a light in the window of a house winked at me. I could just decipher the front porch, the tar roof a solid block against the shaded landscape.