The girl continued to mumble, and I felt the need to hear what she was saying. Maybe it was my endless fascination with other people’s pain, my constant need to know I was not alone in feeling the world offered me little else. I sank to my knees and leaned closer to the girl. Without warning, she clamped her hand onto my arm. In her grip existed a strength that didn’t seem possible.
“I thought I said no,” she gasped. “I thought I said no.”
She began to cry again. I tried to pull my arm from her grip. I knew my supervisor would be back any minute, but she held on tightly. She kept muttering the same words over and over.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
My supervisor stared down at me with contempt. I couldn’t find my voice. I yanked with all my strength, stumbling and landing on my backside.
“Get up and help me wash her,” she snapped, throwing me a rag.
I felt uncomfortable as I helped my supervisor undress the girl. The sight of her nakedness caused my skin to erupt in patches of heat. I couldn’t imagine ever being so vulnerable. The girl had slipped into unconsciousness; I wondered, had she been awake, if she would have protested our actions.
Her words still rang in my ears: I thought I said no.
Her body was so marked up, the attempt to destroy it, own it, rewrite it so painfully obvious. I wanted to ask what had happened. But I couldn’t speak.
I helped to clean the blood that was smeared on the insides of her thighs. I wiped down her arms that appeared to be covered in newly formed bruises. I washed her neck, which was strangely covered with bite marks.
I cleaned it all away.
It wasn’t so different from the blood I’d helped clean down below. It was just another Templeton secret that I was helping to keep hidden. And for some reason, I felt terrible doing it.
When we were done I followed my supervisor out of the room. My head was throbbing in a way that had suddenly become unwelcome. I didn’t want the pain anymore. I had felt enough pain for one day.
Enough for a lifetime.
“Wait,” I whispered as my supervisor moved to go down the stairs.
She stopped, keeping her back toward me. “I didn’t think you would ever speak.”
“Why?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why did you bring me in there?” I knew I shouldn’t care, but the question sat burning in my throat. My pulse sped up as I waited for her answer.
I watched as her hand reached for the banister. Her fingers curled around it. “I needed help.”
“But you could have asked any of the girls. Why did you choose me?”
Finally she turned to face me. She offered a thin smile. “I asked you because out of all the girls, you are the only one who would see something like that and not care. I knew it the moment I met you. The way you just sat there. Sullen. Self-centered. That’s why you’ll do so well here. You don’t care about anything or anyone.”
No. Self-centered? How could I be self-centered when I didn’t even know who the hell I was anymore? Everyone was trying to fix me into some place. My father’s letter begged me to rage against the life created for me by others. Gwen wanted me to be some silent drone that did her bidding. And while I was so busy working on becoming nothing, everything fell apart. I couldn’t be nothing here. The mangled body downstairs. The broken girl upstairs. What would happen to me if I continued to stay silent?
I didn’t know who I needed to be to survive this place. All I knew was the rules had changed.
Chapter 10
Gwen left me as soon as we reached the main floor, after saying I was free to report to James now that I was considered his personal servant. She left me standing alone with no explanation of what I had just seen.
My head continued to throb, but a new pain accompanied it now. Even within the silence of the hall, I could hear the girl crying out for someone to care. She was screaming for me. I could feel it in the grasp of her hand on my arm. She needed someone to help, to want to help.
Could I continue on with my day as if I had never seen her bruised and battered body? With my sister it had been different. She’d known the consequences of her choices. Part of me would always feel she deserved what she got. Maybe it was a screwed-up way of thinking, but I didn’t believe I would ever be able to come back from that.
I knew in my soul, if I still had one, that the girl was a victim. Something had been done to her. Someone had damaged her. And I was not the sort of person who could watch it and feel nothing. I wasn’t a monster.
I wasn’t.
I attempted to find my reflection in one of the windows that faced the gardens of Templeton. Nothing about the image was clear; it only whispered a sense of what I really was. Even in the murky shadows, I didn’t like what I saw.
When James opened the door, he wasn’t alone. Another chosen one. They were both dressed in clothes much too fine for the boys of the compound—starched white button-up shirts with black trousers and a fitted black jacket. While the second chosen one was handsome, as they all were, I soon realized he didn’t fascinate me the way James tended to. Was this because I had caught a glimpse of James beyond his physical being? I’d seen something behind those mismatched eyes that didn’t belong to all chosen ones. And it wasn’t just the scar. There was life behind those eyes, and it was alluringly dangerous.
“If you will excuse me, Tess, I have to help Frank back to his room,” James said as he placed his friend’s arm around his shoulder.
I nodded and moved to let the two pass. The other boy, Frank, looked a bit ill. Could the chosen ones get sick?
“You go on in. Sorry about the mess,” James said, motioning to his room. He attempted a smile as he gave me one last look before heading down the hallway. I knew it was fake.
I wondered if I would ever figure him out.
James hadn’t been lying—the room was a disaster. It had only been two days since I had last been here, yet it looked worse than before. The books I had so carefully put away were thrown about the room. The floor was littered with multiple balled-up pieces of sketching paper. There was a pile of clothes lying in a corner.
With a heavy sigh, I began to straighten up. An hour must have passed before I realized James still hadn’t returned. The room was presentable, and I wondered if I was supposed to wait around for him. Did he want me to?
The last time I had been in his room he’d seemed distraught. A little wild in his ramblings. So unsure.
My head continued to hum with pain.
I was about to leave when something caught my eye. Underneath a pile of papers on his desk laid the novel he’d snatched from my hands during my previous visit—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I pulled it out and held it in my hands. It wasn’t clear to me what was so secret about this book.
Cautiously, every so often glancing at the door, I began to flip through the novel. It had been years since I’d read one. But it didn’t feel like a moment of freedom; it felt like an invasion. Something about this book was so private to James he hadn’t wanted me to see it, even when he was so willing to share the rest of his library and music. Perhaps something in this book would reveal why James seemed so different from the rest of the chosen ones.
The binding was worn, evidence that James had read this on multiple occasions. Inside, on the fading white of the pages, he had underlined numerous quotations, writing notes in the margins. Within this story of a man created from the body parts of the working class by a scientist obsessed with producing life, James had attempted to define himself.
One page of the novel was folded in. On it he had circled lines with an evident passion: “I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.”
Around this quote he had written the same sentences over and over again: I know what she is supposed to be for me. What part of me wants
her to be. But I won’t be a monster. I can’t.
My skin erupted in goose bumps as if it recognized something my mind couldn’t quite comprehend. I forcefully pushed out the image of the girl upstairs that briefly entered my mind. Why I thought of her, I’m not sure. But beneath the fear was something else. The tiniest part of me was desperately curious to know who this girl he wrote of was. Did I want her to be me? It would be impossible. And besides, what would cause me to desire that at all?
Did James feel some connection to these words? Did he feel alone? Miserable? Was it even possible for one of them to feel any of these things at all?
I didn’t hear the door open. As I moved to put the book back under the stack of papers, I saw James standing in the doorway. His expression was emotionless, but his hand had begun to twitch. I saw his face slowly transform into fear, then anger.
“I thought I told you to never touch that.”
I dropped the book and scrambled away from his desk. I didn’t know how to apologize, not correctly. It wasn’t something I regularly practiced. James looked devastated, horrified that I had read something so private.
I wanted to know this boy who could play music so beautifully. The boy who smiled despite knowing I was a natural. The boy who took me away from the laughing chosen ones. The boy who was miserable and alone.
The boy who I sensed wanted to know me, too.
The boy who perhaps felt the things I felt.
The boy who could maybe convince me it wasn’t wrong to feel them.
“Leave. Now.” How strained his voice sounded.
“Please,” I begged, “I can explain.”
“Just go.”
“I meant no harm, I swear it. I saw it lying there and—”
He slammed the door shut, causing me to jump. James moved to his desk, sat down, and started scribbling furiously on a sheet of paper.
“James,” I said, caught off guard by the way his name sounded issuing from my lips.
He stiffened. Did hearing it cause him to feel something as well? He slowly put down the pencil, keeping his back toward me.
“I had no right to read that. None at all. But…I liked it. The book. I mean, I can understand it. At least the parts I read. They made sense to me.”
I sounded like a rambling idiot. I didn’t know how to do this. The pain in my head intensified.
He finally turned to face me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. If he could look at me, face me, maybe we could talk this out. I needed to make things right.
“I told you not to touch it. When I tell you to do something, you are to do it. Or have you forgotten why you’re here?”
His words stilled everything inside of me. They were empty. In that moment, he sounded like every other chosen one. I bit my lip and shifted from foot to foot. It took everything in me to control myself. There were so many things I wanted to say in response.
His hand reached for the book and he pulled it to him, looking down at it. For the briefest of moments, in the seconds where he didn’t think I was watching, I saw him caress the cover before he put it into a drawer.
When he looked back to me I could see the man he had trained his whole life to become. If I could ignore the shaking of his hands, I might have believed that this was who he wanted to be in life. But I did see his hands shake. And I had read the notes in the margins of the books: What am I capable of? Is there life outside of this place? Do I have a soul?
“I need you to leave. Go. Report to your supervisor. I’m done with you for today.”
“No.”
The word had slipped out of me without warning. I felt my heart beat with approval; I felt strength. Excitement. I felt a little like the me I had forgotten.
“Excuse me? This isn’t some game, Tess. You can’t just go around sneaking into piano rooms and defying direct orders and expect nothing to happen. There are always consequences. Always.” James curled his hands into fists, placing them against his knees. His words sounded more like a plea than a reprimand.
“So what? Are you going to report me? I can afford another slash mark,” I replied with a laugh. I could handle two slash marks. I would never do anything to earn three.
“Stop.”
I couldn’t. Not now.
“Tell me you want me to leave.”
“I already told you.”
“Say it again. Say you want me to leave.”
The pain in my head was getting worse. It had been a hell of a day. But I couldn’t back down.
I watched as he fought with himself. But he couldn’t say the words. Instead he looked up at me and asked the question I had been asking since the morning, since forever: “What do you want?”
I took a deep breath. And then I answered him. “I don’t want to be a monster, either.”
“Tess,” he replied, the tone of his voice altering suddenly.
“Yes.” I shut my eyes to keep the room from spinning.
“You have blood on your collar.”
And then everything went black.
Chapter 11
“Don’t touch me!” I screamed.
When I came to I saw James’s hands coming toward me to help me up. I moved out of his reach, pushing myself with my feet against the floor to the edge of his bed. His jaw tensed as he stepped away from me. He took a deep breath before pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of his ridiculously formal jacket.
I was mortified. Not because I’d passed out, but because I had regressed into the natural, the girl who feared to be touched by a chosen one. As if somehow I could catch their soullessness by mere physical contact.
I had no idea if he had a soul. I was too busy fighting for mine.
I pulled my knees to my chest and let my head fall forward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out.” I swallowed, took the handkerchief he offered me, and pressed it against the back of my head.
“You look exhausted,” he remarked, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall across from me. It was almost as if he wanted me to think we were equals.
“I’m fine. Really, I am. I hit my head while cleaning the banisters earlier today.” I’m sure he could tell I was lying.
Maybe he didn’t need a book to see a part of me.
The weight of his gaze suddenly felt suffocating. “Please. Tell me something to do. I need to perform a task,” I begged quietly.
“I have some clothes that need ironing.”
We didn’t speak as I worked. Sometimes I felt him looking at me. How strange that a body can feel what the eyes cannot see.
“I’m sorry about the mess. I’ve never been good at staying focused on one thing. I’ll start a project, and some question I have will get me going in another direction completely,” he quietly told me as I worked.
In less than half an hour I was done with the task. He mumbled a thank-you and turned back to his schoolwork on his desk. I made my way to the door. My hand barely grazed the knob before his voice halted me.
“You can’t go. It’s too soon.”
“I thought you wanted me to?”
“I don’t want you to leave. You seem so tired. Why don’t you just rest a bit?” He spoke softly.
I nodded and took a seat in the chair on the other side of the room. “What are you working on?” I asked, nervous to not be occupied with work of my own.
“A project for science class. We are studying the mating habits of rabbits. Completely dull and useless information. There’s no way I’ll be selected for any medical job,” he replied, pushing his book away from him.
“My sister died. We buried her yesterday.” I pressed my lips together. I didn’t know why I’d spoken up and certainly could not understand why I’d spoken about this thing.
“How old was she?” James asked after a long silence.
“Nineteen.”
He inhaled sharply. “You were sent here because of her?”
“She was a silly girl.”
“Silly to hope?”
“Yes.” I nodd
ed. “Silly to hope where it is impossible.”
“There are rumors that certain cases have worked.”
“Rumors from a people desperate to believe that God hasn’t forsaken them for science,” I spat.
I couldn’t help it. I knew the anger had slipped out between my words, and I was terrified that my face betrayed it as well. Most of all I was horrified by the way my voice hissed when I said the word science.
He cleared his throat. I began to tap my foot furiously on the wooden floor. The dizziness was returning.
“Tess?”
“Hmm,” I quietly responded.
“Don’t you have any friends you can talk to? Not that I mind hearing about this. I just don’t really know what to say. I’m not…I’m not trained for this kind of thing. I will probably do more harm than good.”
I offered him a small smile. “You’re doing just fine. Besides, I don’t really have any friends, so I wouldn’t know the difference.”
He turned to face me, his eyes still holding the same intensity as before.
“Don’t they let you have friends at the compound?”
I frowned. “I choose not to.” It was one of the only choices I was allowed to make in my life, and I had made the wrong one. Maybe if I had someone to talk to, the pain would at least be bearable. I wouldn’t have to slam my head against a cement wall to keep from going mad. Maybe I would have been able to help the girl upstairs. At least I would have known what words of comfort sounded like.
His brow wrinkled. “Why would you choose that?”
Because I was scared. If let anyone in, they would see what I had become.
“I’m not exactly a people person,” I began.
My father once told me I saw the world differently than others. He said he meant it as a compliment, but I never forgot the tears in his eyes as he’d spoken the words. It was one of the last things we talked about before the council took him.
“I had one friend though. Henry. I mean, I wasn’t always a social pariah,” I managed. I didn’t want James to think I was incapable of human connection. For some reason, I needed him to know I hadn’t always been like this.
Chosen Ones (The Lost Souls, #1) Page 7