Tarnished (9 page)

She finished the drawing and held it up for me to see.

I reached out and traced my finger over the lines. The girl in the picture looked like a stranger. It wasn’t just the short, cropped hair, although that was certainly some of it. I didn’t recognize the person that she’d captured on the page. She looked strong in a way that I didn’t feel. Her chin was raised, her eyes set in a look of concentration. More than determined. She looked fierce.

I was ready to be that girl.

L
ife inside Mr. Bernard’s market existed in a vacuum. Downstairs, in the windowless room, time melted away. Without a view to the outside world, there was only now. No morning. No evening. No bright sun and pale moon. Only dank cement walls and the harsh white glow of the lights that hung from the ceiling.

I had no idea what time it was or how long I’d been asleep when Missy nudged me awake. I sat up groggily, my hand moving instinctively to my pocket to check for the stiff paper of the photos still hidden there.

“Rub my feet for a second,” she said, kicking off her shoes before she flopped down on the cushion next to me and plunked her feet in my lap. “I have all of ten minutes before I’m supposed to be ready for my next gig.”

I kneaded a thumb into the bottom of her foot. “You’re not done?” I asked. “I really wanted a chance to talk to you.”

I needed to show her the pictures. I needed to talk to someone about them. And that man, the one who’d been spying on Seth, too… Did Missy know who he was?

“At least the next one won’t be too long,” she sighed.

“Why? Where are you going next?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Missy snapped, pulling her feet away from me. “I have to change and freshen up my makeup. You can go back to sleep.”

She stood and made her way over to one of the vanities, switching on the bright light above the mirror. A few of the girls moaned and rolled away from the light, shielding their eyes with their arms.

“Don’t go,” I said, trailing after her. “Can’t you say you’re sick or something?”

She rolled her eyes and pulled on a tight red dress. “No. As far as Bernard is concerned, if we can stand, we can work. Actually, in his opinion, standing probably isn’t even that important.” She popped the lid off of a tube of lipstick and dabbed the bright color across her lips.

“But there are bad things happening out there,” I said. “Really bad things. I think we need to—”

Missy stood up with a start, her chair clattering to the ground. “God! You don’t shut up, do you?”

“But you need to listen to me.”

“Save it,” Missy hissed “I have someplace I need to be.”

She glanced in the mirror, frowning, before she turned on her heel and marched away from me and up the stairs.

I
waited ten minutes, enough time for Missy to check in for her next gig. All the while, my blood boiled. Missy was impossible. Insufferable. And I wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.

We couldn’t stay here any longer. If we needed money this bad, I’d find it. A man like Bernard had to have plenty of it lying around somewhere. I just needed to figure out where.

No one seemed to notice when I climbed the dark staircase that led to the showroom. Off to the left, a long hallway was cast in warm light. This wasn’t a hall full of offices like the ones I’d seen earlier. It was surprisingly similar to the hallway in the last market, and it was easy to believe that the rooms behind these doors were painted the same gaudy red, decorated with plush carpets and oversize furniture.

From down the hall, I heard whimpering. I held still, listening, but the sounds confused me. They were small, muffled. Was someone crying? It was hard to tell if the sound was coming from the first door or from somewhere further down. From where I stood, it almost sounded like it was coming from a few different rooms.

I crept further down the corridor and put my ear to the first door. Maybe I was pressing my luck, but I couldn’t just walk away without knowing what was going on. I was done with being naive.

The whimpering sound continued, but now that I was closer, I could hear a thumping noise. It was rhythmic, like the beating of a drum. A man’s voice mumbled something and the whimpering stopped.

My stomach knotted.

I should leave, that’s what my gut was telling me. Step away from the door. Go back downstairs. But I couldn’t just run away, not now that I’d made this decision. And now my curiosity had gotten the better of me.

Maybe it wasn’t a girl crying at all, I told myself as I placed my hand on the doorknob. A wave of relief struck me with this idea. It must have been another one of those sad old men, missing his dead wife. Maybe Missy was in there right now comforting him. She would hold his head against her shoulder and stroke the soft wisps of white hair off of his forehead. Maybe she would sing him a song that his wife used to sing to him and he would leave here feeling happier than he had in months.

I twisted the knob and pushed. Inside, the room looked almost exactly the same as the ones in Buffalo. The walls here were painted a deep plum, but everything else was the same. A bed sat hulking in the middle of the floor.

I scanned the scene, almost excited to see the old man.

But there was no crying old man. There wasn’t even an artist and his sketchpad in here. Nothing about this was what I’d expected to see.

A man’s broad, sweaty back faced me from where he lay on the bed. The blankets were pulled up, covering his lower body, but I knew that below it there was only flesh and heat.

The man reared back and slapped the girl’s face. “Shut up! I didn’t pay a grand for you to cry the whole time!”

The thing happening here was wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

My head spun thinking of Penn’s warm body on top of mine. I knew how it should be and this wasn’t it. This wasn’t love. This was violence.

I stepped back, my eyes traveling down the bed to the red dress crumpled on the floor and as I did, the man moved. His broad back no longer blocked my range of vision and Missy’s face came into view. Her cheeks were streaked with mascara and the bright pink lipstick that she’d applied not very long ago was smudged and faded. For a split second our eyes met and a single tear dropped down her cheek before she shut her eyes.

I wanted her to leap up and yell at me. I wanted her to shove me out of the room, to tell me that there was some mistake. This thing I’d seen wasn’t what it looked like. But she only lay limply on the mattress, drained of anything that even resembled the girl that I knew.

I turned, not bothering to close the door as I ran.

Chapter Nine

I
stopped at the top of the stairs and collapsed against the wall. What was I supposed to do? If only I had that gun. If only. If only. I almost ached to clutch it in my hand, to point it at that man’s broad, sweaty back. I wouldn’t let him do that to Missy! She deserved more.

On the other side of the showroom, the lights switched on and a second later, a man in a baggy suit rounded the corner, followed by two other men with clipboards. He stopped when he saw me.

“You’re not supposed to be up here yet,” he said, shaking his head before he turned to one of the other men. “Take her to the holding room while I grab the others.”

“Wait. I’m actually supposed to be downstairs,” I said.

The man stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Go wait for the others.”

One of the men grabbed me by the elbow as the other two trudged down the stairs.

“I need everyone to gather by the doors,” I heard one of them say. “Even if you were told to get ready for a showing later, you’re still being asked to come now as well.”

“There’s been a mistake,” I told the man who steered me away from the stairs toward the curtained room that I’d waited in when I first arrived.

He glanced at me for just a second and grunted, shrugging.

“No, I don’t think you understand,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be doing any jobs. Mr. Bernard knows. Ask him.”

The soft humming of voices drew closer and still he ignored me. A moment later the curtain parted and a stream of girls filed into the room beside me. Most of their faces still looked groggy from sleep. Carlie spotted me and hurried to my side.

“What’s going on?” I whispered.

She shook her head.

“Remove your outerwear and take a seat. We’ll be bringing everyone out as a group for inspection in a few minutes,” the man with the clipboard barked, checking something down in his notes as each of us stepped past him into the waiting room.

Bodies moved, arms and legs bending and stretching as clothes fell away. I mimicked the rest of them as best I could, but I could hardly see. My head swam as I tucked the photographs and pendant securely in my pocket before I pushed my clothes underneath the bench. I couldn’t chance them finding my things. What would they do to me if they found out I stole those pictures? Worse, if they found that pendant, the one with the congressman’s address on it, I was as good as dead.

I shivered, crossing my arms over my chest. How was I supposed to follow their instructions when I knew that they were allowing girls to be used this way?

There were more than two dozen of us, stripped down to our underwear. Our worried gazes flicked across one another. There couldn’t have been more than ten years that separated all of us in age, but those ten years had been hard on some of them. Skin sagged. Waistlines widened.

I knew from listening to the congressman’s conversations that the kennels had been raising pets for about twenty-five years, even though they hadn’t started selling them until ten years ago, when those girls turned sixteen. Back then, it had only been legal in a few states, but now that the bills had been passed making it legal almost everywhere, I wondered how many of us there were in the world. How many of those girls found homes to live in for the rest of their lives and how many ended up in a room like this? How many had been forced to do things against their will?

Carlie fidgeted next to me.

“Is this normal?” I whispered.

She shook her head. “Not really. Normally it’s just three or four of us. They don’t like to overwhelm the clients with too many choices. That’s why they get their preferences beforehand.”

Clients?
My head spun, thinking of Missy in that room. The man with her was a “client.” So were the men who liked to draw nude girls and dance with us. What would these clients want me to do?

Worse, would Mr. Bernard’s men try to sell me to a new owner?

The curtain whooshed open and all of us raised our heads, standing up straight. Like actors on the stage, we’d been taught how to look when there was an audience present. As my body followed suit automatically, the realization of just how ingrained our training had been made my stomach turn.

“Okay, I need you all to make your way to the viewing platform,” the man with the clipboard said.

I followed behind Carlie, the group ahead of me moving seamlessly, elegantly. Now that there were eyes watching, the girls moved as if performing a dance. Feet glided across the floor. Backs stood erect. Arms balanced perfectly to our sides. So many of these girls had been treated poorly. They’d been used and rejected and still they could walk across a cold cement floor with so much grace that the room transformed around them. Did any of the people watching us even realize what a gift this was?

One by one we stepped up onto the platform, standing shoulder to shoulder. Around me, the other girls held their chins high, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to fold in on myself, to curl into a ball.

The chairs set up in front of us were still empty, but the sound of voices carried over to us from across the room. I turned to see a group making their way over to us.

One of Mr. Bernard’s men led the group. There were only three of them: two men and one woman, all dressed in crisp, tailored suits.

As they neared us, the woman’s eyes locked with mine, narrowing as she appraised me. My stomach knotted. I hadn’t had very much experience with people, but something told me not to trust her. Not to trust any of them. There was a cold apathy that emanated from them, an indifference that sent a chill down my spine. I took the smallest step away from them. Maybe if I stood with poor posture I would make a bad impression.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable,” the man with the clipboard said, gesturing to the seats.

“No need,” the woman said, shaking her head. “We won’t be long.”

“But there are twenty-seven of them,” the man with the clipboard said. “It will take at least an hour to get through them all, even with only a small sample of their talents.”

The woman dismissed his comment with a wave of her hand. “We aren’t interested in talents,” she said.

The floor dropped out from under me. A sale. This was a sale.

The man looked down at his clipboard. “I’m sorry, Ms. Gibson,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”

“We’re more interested in health,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “These are the youngest ones you have?”

“These are all of them. I was told that you wanted to look at them all,” the man said. “But I can assure you, we only keep the best. Mr. Bernard is very discerning. If he doesn’t think that one of them is fit, he’s got connections with other dealers who’ll take them.”

“So you say,” the woman said, “but this one here is certainly over twenty. Look at her.” She poked at the girl’s upper thigh. “We won’t be needing this one. Or this one.” She moved down the line, pointing out the girls with a derisive nod of her head.

Hurriedly, one of the men in suits corralled the rejected girls and whisked them back to the waiting bay. My legs twitched, watching them slip away without me.

Less than a dozen of us remained.

Next to me, Carlie stood as still as a statue, barely breathing. I hardly knew her, but I wanted to reach out and grab her hand. I needed someone to hold onto, someone to steady me. And to steady her in return.

The woman stopped in front of us. “You,” she said, staring coldly into my eyes. “Step down for a moment.”

I did as I was told.

“Take all their measurements,” she said to the man beside her.

He pulled out a tape measure. The cold plastic only lingered on my waist for a moment before it moved down my hips. Quickly he jotted the numbers down in his notebook.

“When you’re done with that, move on to the oral exam.”

He pulled on a pair of white rubber gloves. “Open your mouth.”

I swallowed. “I’m not one of the ones you should be looking at. I’m not for sale.”

He cocked his head, staring at me as if he didn’t understand the language I was speaking. “Open your mouth,” he said again.

“But there’s been a mistake—”

“The only mistake is you not listening when you’re given instructions,” the man said. He reached up and grabbed my cheeks, gripping the hinge of my jaw to force my mouth open. My head snapped back with a jolt.

He peered inside my mouth and I squeezed my eyes shut tight, trying to ignore the whistling sound of his breath. A tear dripped down my cheek and into my ear, but I concentrated instead on taking deep breaths through my mouth. I wouldn’t think about the way he touched me. I wouldn’t think about the fact that they hadn’t even bought me yet and already they were treating my body as if it belonged to them.

A moment later, he let go of my face and uncapped a marker that he pulled from his shirt pocket. Hastily, he scrawled two big, black numbers on my upper arm before he moved on down the line without a second glance in my direction.

Please let them think I’m not good enough. Please, please, please.

They moved down the row, measuring waists and hips, carefully examining the insides of our mouths and then writing down their findings in a notepad.

“This one has signs of neglect,” the man said. “I don’t recommend using her.”

It didn’t take long for them to examine us all. The woman flipped through the men’s notes before slowly taking us in one last time. She walked down the aisle, glancing from the notebook to the number scrawled on our arms.

“You,” she said, pointing to a girl at the end of the line. “Step forward. And you. You. You.” She worked her way closer to me. “You,” she said, pointing to Carlie. “And you.” She looked me in the eye before she turned to the man in the suit.

No
. I shook my head, even though no one was paying any attention. I could yell. I could argue. I could claw at them with my fingernails and they wouldn’t listen to me. That much was clear. But I wouldn’t let them keep me. The most I could hope for was to escape when they tried to take me away. And if I couldn’t, I’d escape when we got to wherever they were taking us.

“We were hoping for more, but you’ll inform us if you receive any new ones with our specifications. The kennel needed them yesterday.”

The kennel?

My heart stopped and my head spun as the image of the red door materialized behind my eyes. The red door where they sent imperfect pets. Wasn’t that who I was now? An imperfect pet?

There was no escaping the red door.

The weight of a thousand hands pressed down on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. All sound rushed away, as if a drain had been pulled and now all the noises that had once filled the room were being sucked away. Funneling. Spinning. Swirling.

Far away, I heard the sound of screaming. Was it me?

I blinked at the other girls, trying to focus. Their mouths were shut tight, but their eyes were large. Their necks craned toward the back of the warehouse.

“Norraaiiitttoooottttaaaaeeekerrrr…”

It sounded like my head was underwater. The thick roar of it filled my head, but underneath it I heard that sound. They were words. Those sounds. They were words.

“I made a deal with him, you bastards! Are you listening to me? She isn’t yours to sell!”

The tide pulled back and sound rushed back at me, crashing over my head. Missy stood on the loading dock, once again wearing the red dress, pounding on the chest of a tall man with spiky blond hair. Her tiny arms flailed, but it didn’t even seem to faze him. He swatted her away, frowning.

“Listen to me!” she yelled.

But clearly he wasn’t listening. He picked her up and started carrying her across the warehouse toward the doors that led down to the common room.

The woman turned her nose up in disgust and glared at the rest of us, as if we had been the ones who had made the outburst. As Missy continued to yell, the distaste on her face only grew more apparent.

“I would recommend having that one put down,” she said to the man in the suit. “That sort of behavior is toxic. It has to be extinguished the moment it’s spotted before it contaminates the group.”

Put down. Put down. Put down
. The words knocked against the inside of my head. I needed to do…something. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think beyond the red door.

Across the warehouse, a door opened and Mr. Bernard’s nephew, Seth, stepped out, obviously concerned about the outburst.

I saw his lips move, and a moment later he was sprinting across the warehouse. He ran awkwardly, flat-footed and loping, but his face was determined.

“Put her down, Vic,” he said.

Missy’s face, tight with rage, relaxed a little as he set her down.

“This is highly unprofessional,” the woman from the kennel said. “Can we please wrap this up? We’re on a tight schedule.”

“Certainly.” The man in the suit nodded. “You have a way to transport all of them?”

“The truck is parked in your dock,” the woman said. “You can load them up now.”

“All right then,” the man said, addressing us. “Those of you who haven’t been selected, head back to the common room. The rest of you, come with me.”

He shoved me forward. I dug in my heels, but I couldn’t stop him from moving me.

“Would you like them to get dressed before you leave?” he asked the woman, nudging my back with his clipboard.

She glanced back at us and shrugged. “No need. We’ll be dressing them in uniforms at the facility.”

Behind me, someone choked back a sob. It was a lonesome sound, hopeless and heartbreaking. How could a person stand it? To have their soul pushed down this way. Broken over and over again.

Anger spiked inside of me, spearing through the weakness. They couldn’t treat us this way. They couldn’t prod our bodies like animals. We weren’t cattle that they could brand and herd, driving us to slaughter. This was
wrong
.

“You have no right to treat us like this,” I spat back at him.

The clipboard dug deeper into my back and the man let out a snort of a laugh. “I don’t have the right?”