Tarnished (5 page)

“What do you want to know?” she finally asked.

“It’s just a big scary blob in my mind. I don’t even know what questions
to
ask.”

“Yeah, well, it’s kind of a big scary blob in real life, too,” she said. “Not really. I’m making it sound worse than it is.” She fiddled with her fingernails, pulling at the small hangnails on her thumb. “It’s hard to explain, because each one is a little bit different. At least that’s what I’ve seen. The market in Buffalo is small, but there are quite a few free agents there.”

“Free agents?”

“It means they don’t have owners, but they still choose to stay on the black market. Some people just can’t get used to the idea of being in charge of their own life. They need someone else in charge.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a way for them to make money. It gives them a place to stay and a network of people. It sounds screwed up, but I guess it’s the closest thing to a family that they’ll ever get, you know?”

I nodded, even though I didn’t really understand.

“But free agents aren’t the norm. Most markets are there to sell pets to families. Or at least that’s what they claim. The buyer’s credentials aren’t as high as they had to be with the kennels. There aren’t any background checks. It’s all about the money. The highest bidder gets the girl.”

“But you were in the black market and you ended up in a decent home the second time.” I’d met her previous family. They were pretentious and vain, but they had treated her well.

She lifted her chin. “I was one of the lucky ones.”

“But what if someone wants to buy us, someone from a bad home. How will we know?”

“No one’s going to buy us,” Missy assured me. “We’re going in as free agents. We make our own terms.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

I wanted to trust her. If anyone could get us back to Penn, she was my best bet. But even though Missy was confident and strong, I still didn’t trust her entirely.

T
he inside of the car had started off cool that morning, but over the hours it had grown hotter and hotter. By the time the train finally ground to a halt, the metal train car felt like an oven.

As soon as we were certain that the train had stopped for good, we cracked the door, gulping down deep breaths of fresh air.

Missy hitched her backpack up. “We’re going to have to make a run for it,” she said. “Follow me, okay? Even if someone spots you, don’t stop.”

Outside, the train yard was quiet.

“Can’t we just wait until everyone leaves for the night?”

“The train isn’t staying here. We don’t have very long.” She pushed the door open a little wider and swung her legs out, hopping down onto the gravel with a crunch. I squinted, trying to get my eyes to start working again, but the world was too big and too bright. I followed after Missy, stumbling a little as I jumped. My hands and knees hit the gravel at the same time.

“
Run
,” Missy hissed at me, breaking into a run across the tracks.

I stumbled to my feet.

“Hey! Hey you, girls! Stop right there!”

I turned. We were parked next to another train and on the other side of it, a man in a dark blue jacket and a red baseball cap waved his arms at me.

My legs felt like stumps, too big, too blocky to actually move. They were still so sore from walking so long the night before and now the muscles not only felt tired, but cramped from sitting still for so many hours. I couldn’t possibly run after Missy. I turned my head away from the screaming man and forced my body to follow her. Already she’d scrambled across two sets of train tracks and was making her way toward a dark wall of trees on the other side of the yard.

“Wait right there,” the man called after me. “You’re trespassing!”

Trespassing? If he caught me he would turn me into the police. And if the police found me, I’d be back at the congressman’s house before I knew it. But not of my own volition. I’d be a prisoner again. And that wasn’t how I’d planned this to go.

My arms pumped at my sides as I leaped between the tracks. My foot caught on one of the rails and I fell, catching myself on my hands again, but it only took a second for me to get to my feet.

Missy reached the trees and turned around. “Come on, come on!”

I crashed headlong into the woods. Trees slapped at my face and arms, grabbed out for my legs like they were trying to pull me down.

“This way!” Missy grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me down a small embankment. The dead leaves slipped beneath my feet, and I slid, grabbing onto thin trunks and branches. A few times I slid all the way down, but I was back on my feet in seconds. In front of us, a large outcropping of rocks jutted up out of the undergrowth and we dove for them, pressing our bodies into the damp earth.

My chest shuddered as I gasped for breath. Missy slid her hand over my mouth and held it there, listening. Her own breath was ragged next to my ear.

After a minute she peeked up over the rock.

“What did he say?” she asked, finally taking her hand from in front of my mouth and wiping her palm against her pants.

“Wait…he just said wait,” I panted. “He said we were trespassing.”

Missy rolled her eyes. “Well, no kidding.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even see him there. He must have been behind the other train when I looked.”

“Do you think he’ll call someone? The police? Do you think he recognized us?”

Missy stood back up, brushing the dirt and leaves from off her tights. “Nah, he was just some dumb railroad worker. He’s not going to bother.”

I sat a moment longer and rested my head in my hands. My body was still shaking. All of it. Even muscles I didn’t know existed were cramped and trembling.

“Come on. It’s time to get up,” Missy ordered. “We can’t just waste time sitting around in the woods.”

I took a deep breath and stared up past the branches toward the bright blue sky above me. Why couldn’t we just stay here a little bit longer? Rest. Breathe. The air was crisp and full of the loamy smell of life, so much nicer than the stale air inside the train. It reminded me of Penn’s garden. I wished I could bottle it, take this perfume with me because something told me that the place we were headed wouldn’t be anywhere near as nice as this.

T
he woods weren’t wide, only a small stretch that separated the railroad from the rest of the town. We followed the cover of the trees as long as we could, but after a while they gave way to buildings and we moved out onto the sidewalk. The streets were lined with old brick buildings. A few had signs in the windows, but it was hard to tell whether they were open anymore or whether the signs were left over from years ago when it had actually been busy. Clearly, this wasn’t the best part of town.

A car drove past and I stepped closer to Missy.

“Stop it,” she snapped. “You can’t cower at everything. It draws attention. You have to act like you’re supposed to be here.”

I scooted away.

“There it is.” She stopped and jutted her chin toward the red brick building in front of us.

“That’s it?” I didn’t mean to sound so surprised, but it didn’t look at all like what I was expecting. I had imagined a dark building underground. I imagined tunnels. But this just looked so…ordinary. It didn’t look any different from the other buildings around it: a three story, red brick building with a few boarded up windows on the top floor and a bit of old peeling paint that must have advertised some old store that closed up years and years ago.

“What did you expect? A big sign with your face on it?” Missy laughed at her own joke. “It’s a black market. You’re not supposed to know it’s here.”

Missy turned to face me. She frowned, obviously not impressed with what she saw. “Don’t say anything when we get in there,” she said. She licked her finger and drew it underneath my eyes, rubbing in the makeup that must have smudged my skin. She raked a few fingers through my hair and sighed. “And wipe that stupid deer-in-the-headlights look off your face. It’s just screaming for someone to take advantage of you.”

I clenched my jaw, trying to fake a tough look as well as I knew how.

I followed Missy past the front door and paused, waiting for her to enter, but she kept walking, rounding the building to a side alley.

“Nobody uses the front door,” she said, climbing the steps to a small blue door on the side. Further down the alley, a big white truck was backed up against the dock of the building. Was it loading something? Girls?

The blue door squeaked open and I followed Missy inside a dark hallway.

“Stay behind me,” she ordered.

Look tough, I told myself, stepping behind her. I raised my chin even though it felt so much more natural to cast my eyes down to the ground. I was good at being meek and submissive. It’s what I’d been trained to do. How was I supposed to rewire sixteen years of training?

Missy stopped at the third door. She paused and for a second her hand fluttered to her stomach. It was a small motion, but I saw the fear in it.

She would never want me to notice this small gesture of weakness, but I did.

With a slow, deep breath, Missy knocked on the door.

Chapter Five

“
D
oor’s open,” a man’s voice called from inside.

Missy squared her shoulders and turned the handle.

The room was small. A man sat behind a big wooden desk picking at his teeth with a letter opener. He wasn’t a huge man, but his sharp features and jet-black hair made him appear to take up more room than he really did.

He looked up when we walked in. “Ahh.” He smiled, showing long white teeth. “Look what the cat dragged back in.”

Missy stepped one foot into the room. “Sorry to intrude, Tony,” she said.

“No worries,” he said, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up on his desk. “I’m always happy to see your pretty face, doll.”

Missy turned slightly and grabbed me by the elbow, pulling me forward.

A smile cut across the man’s face. “And she comes bearing gifts…”

“We just need work for a day or two,” Missy said. “A couple gigs.”

His eyes traveled down the length of me. “I don’t remember you. Have we had you on the Buffalo books before?” he asked.

I opened my mouth, unsure how to answer. I turned to Missy.

“She hasn’t been here,” she answered curtly.

“But you have papers?”

Missy swallowed. “No.”

The smile slipped from his face. “Then I can’t use her. No papers saying she’s free, no gig. But you’re welcome to stay. I’ve got a job you’ll be perfect for tonight.”

“If I stay, she can stay with me,” Missy said, “right?”

He frowned and he uncrossed his feet, lowering them slowly to the ground before he leaned forward on his elbows. “You get some papers for her and she can stay.”

Missy shook her head. “I told you, she doesn’t have any.”

“Then I guess you’ve answered your own question,” he said. “We aren’t in the business of housing and feeding homeless pets here. I’m not a member of the humane society.”

“What if I work two gigs?” Missy said quickly. “I can do back-to-backs.”

He cocked his head, considering. The calculating look in his eyes left a sour taste in my mouth.

“Let’s leave,” I said. “We don’t need any of his work. I’m sure there’s—”

“I’ll give you a hundred percent on the second one,” Missy said, shoving me behind her. “I won’t take a penny. And you won’t even know she’s here. That’s a damn good deal. You know it is.”

I gasped. “Missy!”

She ignored me, staring sharply at Tony. He tapped his fingers together, considering her offer.

Finally, he said, “All right. But don’t you tell anyone. I’m not a charity. Got it?”

Missy nodded, her shoulders trembling ever so slightly.

“Go ahead and head upstairs,” he said. “There’s a couple girls up there. They’ll get you set up.”

Missy pushed me back into the hallway, obviously in a hurry to get out of there before he changed his mind.

“And doll,” he called after her, “you might want to rest up. You’ve got a long night ahead of you.”

Missy closed the door with a
click
and leaned against it, letting her head fall back for just a moment. Her hand shook against the doorknob, but by the time she straightened her back, her body was stiff and strong again.

“We don’t have to stay,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to—”

She raised a hand. “Don’t. Just…don’t.”

At the end of the hallway she paused. To the right was the staircase that led up to the second floor. To the left, the corridor turned, leading to another long and narrow hallway. At the end of it was a single gray door, shut tight. It looked just like all the other doors, but something about the way Missy glanced at it told me that it was different.

“What’s back there?” I asked.

Missy turned away from it and started up the stairs. “Those are just a few workrooms,” she said. “But don’t worry, you don’t have to deal with any of that. Remember, no papers?”

My heart sank into my feet. I hated that she’d have to work harder because of me. Hated that I couldn’t help when it was
my
fault we left Canada in the first place. Well, I wouldn’t let her carry our whole load. I’d just have to find another way to be useful.

She stopped at the top of the stairs. The room we’d entered was big, running the whole length of the front of the building. Four giant windows that would have looked out onto the street below were each covered with a dark colored sheet. A bit of light seeped around the edges, casting the room in an eerie, almost twilight, haze. Just below the windows, the floor was strewn with futons and pillows, a nest of bedding that looked both messy and perfectly wonderful after the long cramped ride that Missy and I had just endured. My stiff body ached to stretch out across the pillows and fall asleep.

When we walked in, the few girls who sat scattered underneath the windows, talking quietly to each other, turned to stare. It was obvious that they were all pets, although some appeared to be in better shape than others. A few of them looked like they weren’t much older than me. What had they done to end up here? Had they run away like Missy, or had their masters grown tired of them?

One girl, who had been filing her fingernails on the far side of the room, stood and walked over to us. She was older than the rest. Time had settled over her in layers, padding the skin around her waist and upper arms.

“You’re back,” she said, stopping a few feet from us and folding her arms across her chest.

It was a defensive pose. Had Missy done something to make this girl dislike her? Considering it was Missy, this didn’t seem too unlikely.

Missy moved right past her, leading me deeper into the room. “Hi Julia, it’s good to see you, too.”

Julia didn’t look amused.

“I didn’t plan on coming back,” Missy said. “I’ve had an unexpected hitch in my plan.”

It was obvious to me, if not to everyone else, that she meant me. I was the hitch.

“Don’t worry,” Missy said, stopping at a large rack of dresses that spanned the wall. “We don’t plan on staying. You only have to put up with me for a day or two.”

Julia’s face softened a bit, obviously relieved.

Missy raked her hand through the wall of gowns. The sight of them made my stomach flip. They weren’t exactly like the gowns that I’d worn at the congressman’s house. Those had been sewn from fabrics in soft pinks and corals. These were brighter: reds and fuchsias and deep jewel greens. These dresses weren’t quiet or well-mannered. They screamed. They flaunted. They were meant to turn the girl who wore them into a showpiece.

But none of the girls in the room were wearing gowns now.

“So, she’s another free agent then?” Julia asked, nodding her head in my direction. “That’ll make nine of us. That’s kind of a lot for such a small market, don’t you think? I don’t know if Stan has that many jobs for us. That means we’ll be—”

“She’s not doing any jobs,” Missy interrupted.

It was an odd thing to say, caged and vague. Why not just come out and tell them that I didn’t have any papers? But her answer satisfied them.

We stood in uncomfortable silence for a moment. All those eyes searching my face, trying to map out my story there.

Finally Missy spoke. “This is Gigi,” she said, catching my eye before she pushed me forward a little bit.

I smiled cautiously.

“She’s going to lie low for a day or two,” she went on. “Her old master died in a car crash a few weeks ago and his wife tried to dump her at the border, which didn’t go well with the tightened security. Luckily, I ran into her. For now I’m going to show her the ropes so she doesn’t get taken advantage of.”

The lie rolled off of her tongue like she’d rehearsed it.

So that explained it. We couldn’t trust anyone. Maybe it was naive faith in our similarities that made me want to trust them. I wanted to believe that we were all sisters. We could help carry each other’s burdens. But maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe we each needed to look out for ourselves. Missy must have thought so.

“Are you still going to try to cross?”

“No.” Missy shook her head. “It’s impossible.”

Julia nodded like she understood, but a small glimmer of disappointment flashed across her features.

“I think we’re going to head back to one of the big markets,” Missy explained. “Maybe we’ll work there for a little bit, save up.”

“Well, you both look like disasters,” Julia said after a moment. As she drew closer to me, a strong floral smell drifted off of her. “Why don’t you go back to the showers? I’ll see if I can round you up a little something to eat.”

The showers were at the back of the building. They were dingy and small, half a dozen stalls lined in a row. But they were stocked with soap and the water ran strong and hot.

As soon as the water was on, Missy drew the curtain and stepped in beside me.

“Don’t trust anyone,” she whispered. “Don’t tell them who you really are.”

“I won’t.”

“You have to promise.”

I swallowed. “I do. I promise.”

“Good.” She smiled and let her head fall back into the hot stream of water, closing her eyes as the water washed away the dirt and makeup that had streaked her face.

A
fter we were scrubbed clean and changed into clean clothes, Missy and I found a place on a few lumpy pillows near one of the windows. Julia had cobbled together a meal for each of us: an apple, half a granola bar, a cup of dried cereal.

We devoured the food, gnawing the apples down to the seeds and picking every last crumb of cereal off of the bottom of the bowl. I knew I should try to make it last, but I was starving.

The sun moved further west and the room grew darker. With the shift in light, the girls grew antsy. Legs uncrossed and then crossed again. Hands jumped from neck, to arm, to hair, moving to tangle strands in loops around fingers.

When two pairs of footsteps beat their way up the stairs, the girls froze. It reminded me of the game that Ruby had begged me to play with her over and over again, freeze tag. It seemed so strange to think that only a couple weeks ago I’d played it with her on the back lawn. She would run in circles on the grass, jumping and twirling until I yelled freeze and she would halt, trying not to fall while giggling over whatever silly position she had stopped in.

But these girls were not giggling.

The man who stepped into the room was the same one I met earlier, only now that he wasn’t sitting behind his desk, the height of him appeared to have quadrupled.

Behind him, a pet followed, carrying a large, steaming pot.

“Good evening, gals. I’m glad to see you’re keeping yourselves busy.” He snorted a little as if he’d just told himself a little joke that only he understood.

From his back pocket he pulled a folded sheet of paper. “Let’s see what we’ve got on the docket,” he said. “I’ve got two potential buyers coming in. One is flying in from Ohio and the other is from upstate, I believe. Both seem pretty serious, so I want everyone out on the showroom floor tonight.”

There was a slight shifting around me as the energy in the room changed, but I couldn’t tell if it was excitement or apprehension that made the air buzz and flex.

“On second thought…” He paused and looked around the room as if he were taking inventory. “You.” He snapped his fingers, pointing to a pale blond girl in the corner. “You, you, and you.” He pointed to a few other girls scattered throughout the room. “I want the rest of you to stay here. You still need to be presentable, but I’ll only call you down if I need you. Got it?”

They nodded.

“Good.” He shook out his paper again. “And it looks like a busy night for the rest of you, too. Some of you are double booked.” He looked directly at Missy. His eyes were steely and unforgiving, as if challenging her not to follow through on her word. “We’ve got clients showing up at nine, so make sure you’re down on the floor fifteen minutes early. I won’t tolerate tardiness.”

Around me heads nodded in agreement.

“All right. Line up for dinner,” he snapped, and the group jumped to their feet.

T
he soup rumbled and gurgled in my stomach as I sat back and watched the girls get ready for the evening. Missy pulled an emerald green gown down from the giant rack of dresses and slipped it over her head before she plopped down in front of me.

“Zip me up.”

I tugged on the zipper and the corseted bodice cinched in her already small waist. With her hair washed and combed out, she looked almost exactly the same as she had the day I first met her.

“Where will you go?” I asked. “What sort of jobs do they send you on?”

She turned to face me with a sour expression. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

“I’m not worried. I only want—”

“Just remember what I told you in the shower earlier and let me deal with this.” She motioned to the gown as if it was so much more than just a dress, as if inside the yards of fabric someone had woven together a dense tangle of ideas.

No one talked as they dressed. Instead, the room was filled with the quiet whispering of so many dresses swooshing past one another as the girls moved from wardrobe to mirror to vanity.

Tony stalked the room as the girls finished getting ready. One by one, they lined up against the wall for final approval.

“This dress is wrong. Go change,” he ordered the girl at the front of the line before he continued down the row, pointing out flaws, the frown lines on his face growing deeper, as if these girls were purposely offending him.

He stopped in front of a girl wearing a short black dress and his eyes narrowed. The girl folded in on herself, visually shrinking in front of Tony’s gaze.

“Look up at me,” he huffed, jabbing a thick finger under the girl’s chin and cranking her head up so that their eyes met.

The other girls shifted on their feet, as if they sensed a storm coming. I could feel it too, like lightning building, and I wished I could make myself smaller, wished I could disappear inside the pile of pillows.

“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the girl’s face. “Who did your makeup?”

Even though she was across the room, I could hear the girl swallow, could hear her shallow breathing quicken.