by Lex Thomas
“That’s no way to live, Will,” Gates said. “Right, guys?”
The nearby Saints cheered in response.
“Usually I’m the reckless one, but you all make me feel like a librarian,” Will said.
“No, you’ve got it wrong,” Gates said. “We believe that when good fortune comes our way, that we have a responsibility to enjoy it as much as possible.”
“Responsibility to what?”
“Not to what, to who. To our friends that didn’t make it this far. All of us have lost people that were close to us. Boyfriends, girlfriends…” Saints around the table nodded in solemn confirmation. “I had two brothers and three sisters when this all started, and now, y’know, it’s just me,” Gates said.
Gates rubbed his eyes, like the memory had just given him a headache. Poor bastard, Will thought, Gates probably had to watch it happen too. He couldn’t imagine how terrible that was. The image of David’s corpse drying up in their living room popped into Will’s head and his mood sank.
“You have to enjoy life for them,” Gates said. “Out there, any day could be your last. Hell, it’s no different in here. You gotta enjoy the good times while you still have the chance. Like tonight. We have each other, no one is shooting at us, and we have some vodka. I want to have a good time!”
More cheers through the room.
“My brother died,” Will said. He was surprised how the words fell so easily out of his mouth. He hadn’t said it out loud before.
Gates’s demeanor grew more serious. “That was David? The one from your story?”
Will nodded.
“Somebody pour Will another drink.”
A Saint girl placed collapsible camping cups in front of Will and Gates, with an inch of vodka at the bottom of each. Gates raised his cup.
“To David,” Gates said to the room. The room said it back, and the sound of thirty-odd strangers saying David’s name together took Will’s breath away. All the sadness, all the love Will felt for his brother came rushing to the surface. Gates saw the effect the toast had on Will. He gripped Will’s shoulder firmly and stared at him, his red eye unblinking.
“You’re all right man, you’re good,” Gates said.
Gates’s encouragement actually helped to steady Will.
“You mind giving me a minute?” Will said.
“Sure, man. Of course.”
Gates got up and walked off. Will picked up his cup. The idea that the best way he could mourn David was to enjoy his life as much as he could was intoxicating, and he really hoped was true. He raised his cup into the air.
“This one’s for you, David,” Will said to himself. He downed his drink.
As the night continued, they fed him more vodka. Someone gave him a pill and said it was a muscle relaxant. He ate three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a whole sleeve of water crackers. Will’s world began to blur and lose shape. He remembered playing a game of monkey-in-the-middle with an empty pistol, where it was him and Gates tossing the gun over Fowler’s head. He remembered talking a lot of shit, to a lot of people. He ran his mouth about how they shouldn’t trust Zachary. He told them about P-Nut’s weakness for girls, how he was a fiend for them. He told them all sorts of stuff. It was nice to talk to anyone at all, and he didn’t give a damn what he was saying. Life had been so shitty to him lately that he felt he’d earned this night of drinking and partying and not giving a fuck.
At some point near the end of the night, the girl with the baby chick hair was sitting in his lap. He couldn’t remember when she had sat down, how long she had been there, or what they had been talking about so far. But her warm weight felt good on his leg, and he wanted to keep squeezing the softness of her waist forever. The party was still in full swing, but Gates wasn’t with him anymore.
“I have another McKinley question,” baby chick said.
“Lay it on me,” Will said.
Baby chick looked around with a hint of mischief in her eyes. She leaned in close, and for a moment Will thought she was going to kiss him, but she leaned further in until her mouth was by his ear, and whispered, “Where do you get condoms?”
He turned his head until his lips grazed the tender skin of her earlobe. She smelled like baby shampoo.
“The Sluts trading post is the easiest place,” Will whispered.
She drew her head back and smiled.
“You want to see my room?”
“Yes,” he said.
The baby chick girl took his hand and pulled him away from the table. He fell on his face immediately. The world had tilted and no one had told him. He heard her laughing, at least he thought it was her. The cool concrete floor felt amazing against his cheek.
Somewhere, in a dark room, the baby chick kissed him. She pushed him onto a bed and laid herself onto his body. Her tongue met his. Salty-sweet lips.
“Take off my shirt,” she whispered.
He went for it. His hands grabbed cotton and he pulled. With the room spinning all around him, it was far more difficult than he thought, but he managed to get that shirt off of her. What was underneath her shirt was so much softer than cotton. He wished he could see it straight.
“You’re fun,” she whispered in his ear. And that was the last thing Will remembered.
15
LUCY STARED AT A PILE OF BROKEN GLASS on the floor below her. She was in a push-up position, and she was naked. A circle of Sluts stood around her, shouting.
“Fifteen…,” Lucy said as she lowered herself toward the glass. She barely pushed her way back up. Her fully extended arms quaked.
“Again! Push, you little bitch!” someone shouted at her.
It was day seven of Naked Week. The Sluts had told her for days that she didn’t stand a chance, that she’d never make it this far. They said eleven girls had died during Naked Week, and they were now stuffed in random locker graves through the school. It was all Lucy had been thinking about for days, her naked body hanging dead in a five-by-one metal box.
Half of her had thought about running. No, most of her had. She was sick of living like this. It had been endless, pointless abuse. She was Cinderella to sixty-three evil stepsisters. They all picked on her. She survived on only oatmeal which, most of the time, they threw at her. They slapped her, tripped her, purposefully spilled shit on floors she’d just cleaned and made her clean it again. There wasn’t a day where they hadn’t mocked her naked body, poured cold water on her, or flicked her nipples when they caught her off guard.
She’d told herself all kinds of excuses to stay along the way, but the one she repeated the most was that she’d wanted this. She’d signed up of her own free will because she’d wanted to be like these girls. Tough. Unafraid. Sluts all had this odd way of smiling, like they were wearing an invisible suit of armor that made them invincible, and they were amused that you didn’t know about it. Actually, it was Violent’s smile. Everyone else just seemed to copy her.
Lips wore it too. She crouched in front of Lucy, planting her hands on her knees and shoving her face forward like a lip-less gargoyle.
“You better start pushing or I’m gonna shove your face in that glass,” she said.
“No boys will smile at you then,” another Slut said.
“You better hit sixteen! I’ve been dealing with this ‘fifteen’ bullshit for a week now!” Lips screamed.
Lucy’s arms were blazing with pain. Her waist was rapidly sagging down.
Lips stood up. “Pathetic!”
She wasn’t going to give Lips the satisfaction of giving up. The pile of clear glass shards glinted underneath her. Jagged spires pointed up at her eyes. Curved shards from broken bottles waited for her face, ready to plunge through her cheeks if her head were to come crashing down.
Lucy bent her elbows. She felt her chest muscles pull tight and blossom with pain. She tried to stop her descent, but realized immediately that she could only push hard enough to slow it, not stop it. Blades of glass crept toward her face.
All of a s
udden, Lucy’s muscles shut down. Her smooth cheeks, the tender skin of her lips, the thin membrane of her eyelids, it all plummeted toward the mound of glass knives.
She felt something yank on the back of her hair. Her naked body slapped down onto the floor, but the hair-puller kept Lucy’s head cocked all the way back, and Lucy’s face stayed out of the glass pile except for a single shard that pricked the skin of her chin.
She was able to do half a push-up, enough to get a knee under her and get on all fours. She rolled to the side and saw that it was Lips who had held her hair.
“You’ll never get any stronger, will you?” Lips said, disgusted.
Lips kicked the shard pile at her. Lucy barely had time to cover her face. She felt stings of pain all over her forearms, stomach, and thighs. She lowered her arms from her face. Glass shards were all around her. Dots of blood popped up all over her bare body, and those dots began to swell into little round berries of blood, before succumbing to gravity, and dripping down her skin.
“Take her to the freezer,” Lips said to the other Sluts.
Lucy could see her breath. It came out in foggy huffs, lit blue by the single bare bulb above her. Her body hadn’t stopped shaking for the entire four hours that she’d been locked in the kitchen’s walk-in freezer. She knew why Lips had locked her in there. It was the last day of Naked Week, and that vindictive cow wanted to squeeze as much suffering into the remaining hours as she could.
This was almost the end. As soon as they let her out of this ice box, it would all be over. Lips would have to eat her words. She will have proved herself. All Lucy had done in the past week was work, get yelled at, get pushed around, flinch about every five minutes, and eat oats off the floor. She couldn’t believe she’d endured it all. They had to respect her after this, she’d taken all they could dish out. As miserable as she felt now, with her blood running cold, and her teeth chattering uncontrollably, she was impressed with herself. She never would have imagined she could handle all this.
Lucy heard a metal plink and looked up. The freezer door opened, and Violent stepped in. Lucy’s eyes widened with hope. She hadn’t seen Violent since her first night in the cafeteria, and she’d been getting more and more upset about it. She felt in her heart that if she could just talk to Violent, she could cut this whole Naked Week thing short. They had history together. The other Sluts never would have been so bold with their abuse if Violent had been there to see.
“Where have you been?” Lucy said through clacking teeth.
“None of your business, is it?” She shook her head at Lucy. “I hear you haven’t been doing well.”
“What? That’s not true. I’ve been doing everything anybody’s asked.”
“People have been saying that they don’t think you want to be here.”
“I—I don’t want to be cleaning people’s feet and getting kicked in the ribs and scrubbing ovens if that’s what you mean,” Lucy said.
“Lips told me about your attitude. Your lack of obedience. This is your chance to show us you’re Slut material, and you haven’t shown us anything yet.” Violent sighed. “You’re going to have start Naked Week over.”
“No,” Lucy muttered. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not. It starts over now. This is day one.”
Violent turned and walked to the door. She stopped in the doorway, with her back to Lucy.
“First task,” Violent said. “Get out to the cafeteria and bring a mop. Someone threw up.”
Violent left, leaving the door open behind her. Lucy stood trembling. Whatever semblance of friendship she thought she’d had with Violent had been an illusion. She’d made an awful mistake joining this gang. The Sluts weren’t tough, they were sadists.
Lucy didn’t follow Violent out of the freezer. She began to pace again, much faster this time. Another week of being treated like she was subhuman? And what would happen at the end of that week? A third week? How about a month of being blindfolded and hit with sticks? She wasn’t cold anymore. She was sweating.
Fuck these girls, Lucy thought, I’m out.
She charged into the warmth of the dark kitchen, and out into the light of the cafeteria, which was filled with boisterous conversation, and the chock-ch-chock-chock of Sluts slamming their knives down into the long cafeteria table before sitting down to eat. Lucy didn’t slow a bit, she walked straight for the exit, on the other end of the dining room. The further into the room Lucy got, the quieter it became. She could feel all eyes on her, and although a growing fear was beginning to accompany her boiling anger, for the first time, she didn’t care one bit that she was naked.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going, slave?” she heard Lips say.
Lucy kept walking. Something hard whacked her in the ear. Lucy stumbled left as pain stabbed into the side of her head. Her filthy, blackened scrub brush fell to the floor in front of her filthier toes.
“Oh! Direct hit!”
Lucy turned to see Lips stand up from the table, about ten feet from her. Lips smiled until her eyes were little knife wounds and her mouth looked like someone had placed a small shovel on Lips’s face and stomped on it. Lucy pulled her hand away from her ear. Fury electrified her at the sight of her own blood.
She dashed at Lips. Lucy saw the surprise flash across her ugly face. Lucy punched her in the tit. Lips wasn’t expecting it, and she wasn’t blocking for it. Lucy hadn’t really been aiming for it either, she’d swung wild, and that was just where her fist hit. Lips winced, and Lucy was able to shove her to the ground. Lucy pounced on her, ready to beat her face in, but the other Sluts pulled Lucy off.
Then they did something unexpected. The Sluts started to cheer. The whole gang converged on her. They were smiling. They hugged her, they patted her on the back, and mussed her hair. They told her how great she did, how awesome that was.
“What’s going on?” Lucy said to them.
“Congratulations,” Violent said in a big voice, as she came weaving through the crowd. She wrapped Lucy in a heavy quilted blanket and pulled her close.
“Ladies! We’ve got ourselves a Slut!”
“I don’t understand,” Lucy said.
“I knew you had the killer instinct somewhere in there,” Violent said. “I just didn’t think it would take you so long.”
“What do you mean?” Lucy asked.
“Naked Week ends when you fight back. Naked Week could’ve been Naked Afternoon, if you had fought back that first day.”
Lucy furrowed her brow. She couldn’t help the flush of embarrassment.
“Some girls just need a little more time than others. But in the end every Slut gets tough. That’s what binds us, right, girls?” Violent said, and the Sluts nodded. “We don’t wait for permission, we don’t take any shit.”
Lips came walking up, smiling like a proud parent. She held a plastic salad bowl full of bloodred water.
“Not bad, girl,” Lips said. “Now, let’s get that white out of your hair.”
16
WILL OPENED HIS EYES. A WAVE OF NAUSEA rolled down from his forehead and plopped into his stomach. His temples throbbed with dull pain and his mouth felt like he’d been chewing on socks. He wasn’t in the elevator, and it took him a few seconds to remember why. He was lying on his side, on a bed in one of the processing facility’s containment cells. The baby chick girl from the party was standing over him, next to the bed. He watched her slip into a pair of black tights. She pulled on a gray cashmere sweater. Her wispy, white-haired head popped through, and when she saw him awake, she smiled.
“See ya around,” she said, and turned for the cell’s clear door, which was open to the hallway.
“Hey, wait,” Will said. He looked down at himself. All of his clothes were still on, even his shoes. “What, uh… what happened last night?”
“You don’t remember?”
Will shook his head. His brain felt like liquid sloshing up on the sides of his skull. “Parts, I guess. What did you and me, uh, do…?”
“Nothing X-rated. You feel asleep,” she said. Will was relieved in a way. He’d hate to have missed his first time. The girl laughed and skipped out of the cell. “Don’t forget your bag. It’s in the hall.”
Oh, no, the honey. Will sat up suddenly and he nearly vomited. Too fast, too soon. His body despised him. He stood and a head rush made him stumble one step sideways. He swore his head was about to collapse as he walked out of the cell.
Will’s backpack sat on the floor, just outside in the hall. He bent down, and the blood flowed to his head. His headache pulsed. He unzipped his bag fast. He was shocked to find his bottle of honey was still inside. He reached in and gave it a satisfying squeeze. He didn’t understand. How had no one taken it? They could have gotten away with it for sure.
Will looked down the hall to where some Saints were hanging out, beyond the airtight doors in the front room where the bus had crashed through. They were doing a massage train. The kid in front told an animated story and used his hands a lot because he didn’t have anyone’s shoulders to lay them on.
Will wished the party didn’t have to end. He thought about the life waiting for him in the elevator. Hungry, cold, and alone. Only going out at night. Trusting no one. He’d seen the love between the Saints last night. They worked together, had fun together, and watched each other’s backs. Will remembered what that used to feel like.
But he felt out of place. This wasn’t his gang. He didn’t want to push his luck by hanging out any longer and turning into the annoying house guest who wouldn’t leave. Will zipped up his bag and shouldered it. He headed for the exit.
“Where you going?”
Will turned to see Gates; he was disheveled and shuffling into the hallway behind Will. His eyes were barely open and he looked like he was in just as much pain as Will.
“Figured I should get going,” Will said.
Gates wiped his hand down his face. “Huh? Where?”
“Back home,” Will said. “I really appreciate you letting me hang out last night—”