Fever. Lauren DeStefano
has to be soon,” he insists.
“Okay,” I tell him. “Soon.”
I force myself to stay awake despite the heavy pull that’s weighing me down. Gabriel and I whisper about our options, which are dishearteningly bleak. All of our ideas lead back to the fence. Ways to climb it. Ways to dig under it. He tells me that he and some of the bodyguards are going to be repainting the merry-go-round, and he will try to get a better look around then.
We sleep, eventually, when the sun is high and being in our tent is like being in the heart of an emerald. Just before I drift off, I feel his kiss on my lips. It’s certain, sincere, and I return it in kind. Something stirs in my chest, and I want more, but I force those feelings away. I cannot rid myself of the sense that we’re being watched.
In my dream I follow the pink pill that Madame forced down my throat. I slide down the tongue that stretches into a dark cavern. I land with a loud splash, liquefied and startled.
Lilac tugs my hair, startling me awake with the pain. “Napping on the job?” she says. I open my eyes. All I can smell, once again, is the charred air and Madame’s many perfumes. Lilac had been curling my hair. I must have drifted off.
Now she is grabbing my wrists and yanking me to my feet, fluffing my curls. “Madame wants to see you,” she says.
“Now?”
“No, tomorrow, when she’s hungover and all the customers have gone. Put this on.” She hands me a wad of sunny yellow fabric that I guess is supposed to be a dress, and doesn’t bother turning the other way while I change into it.
The dress is so long that it drags across the ground, and Lilac has to help me figure out how to wrap it over my shoulder. “It’s called a sari,” Lilac says. “They feel a little weird at first, but trust me, Madame only lets a girl wear one when she wants to show her off.”
“Show me off to who, exactly?”
Lilac just smiles, straightens the fabric hanging over my shoulder, and takes my hand to lead me out.
She drags me out into the night, and the air is so cold, it’s like a slap. Snow is whirling around in wisps that never accumulate on the ground. It’s fitting that snow doesn’t settle—nothing else does either. The girls are forever in motion, everything like cogs in a machine, gears in a giant wristwatch.
Madame runs toward me, arms out, her scarves and billowy sleeves trailing in oranges and purples and silky greens. “Now you look like a real lady,” she says.
Jared stands behind her, arms folded, an orange cord draped over his neck, and a lantern in his fist. His sleeves are torn off, and his arms are muscular and smeared with grease. Earlier I saw him lying under a giant machine that looked like a heap of vibrating car parts strung with lights. Despite the cold, there are beads of sweat glistening on his face. He stares at me with dark deadpan eyes.
Madame pinches my cheeks, twists them between her knuckles. I cringe but don’t withdraw. “You needed more color,” she says, and cackles. “Come, come.” She leads me by the wrist, and Jared follows at a distance. I can feel his stare boring into the back of my head.
Pebbles cut at my feet as I step on them. That’s another strange thing about this place—nobody ever wears shoes.
We pass the Ferris wheel that’s spinning, with no one to ride it. We pass tents that rustle and giggle and glow with flickering lights. The cold wind mutters words I can’t understand. The embers of Madame’s cigarette fly at my eyes. Something is moving in the field of dead sunflowers, following us. At first I think it’s some kind of animal, but then I see the white flutter of Maddie’s dress. Strange child. Even Lilac says so. Says she’s mad and brilliant and wonderful. Says she was meant for a better world.
We walk all the way to the chain-link fence, through which Gabriel and I were once dragged against our wills. From the corner of my eye I see Maddie parting the weeds with her hands. In the darkness her eyes are like sparks. She drags her index finger through the air in the shape of letters, but I can’t quite make out what they spell.
Jared opens the fence, and he watches me the whole time, like he’s taunting me. Like he’s saying, Go ahead and try it.
But, just like the first time Linden took me outside of the mansion for that expo, I don’t run. Something in me argues against it. Maddie writes furiously in the shadows.
I can hear the tide turning out in that darkness, can smell the ocean. My stomach lurches with longing and dread. I can hear something else out there. Something approaching us.
“You’re going to meet someone special,” Madame says, her breath hot in my ear. Her smoke coils around my throat like a hissing serpent.
I think I’ve stopped breathing, because the color emerging from the darkness, in the shape of a man much bigger than me, is all gray.
Nobody is sure exactly why the Gatherers chose the color gray for their jackets and vans. Sometimes the vans are poorly repainted, the windows globbed over with dribbling gray, the tires splashed with it. The jackets are not all uniform—I know that much. They are also hand-dyed, all different cuts and styles. The Gatherers are their own underground group, and while some say they work for the government, one thing that’s certain is that they travel in packs; they find one another, form a shelter somewhere, and wait for opportunities. Maybe they split the money they make off us, and use it to fuel their vans, load their guns, indulge themselves in liquor and whatever else they want.
I think this man’s smell hits me before the color of his coat. Like mold and liquor and sweat. It must be laborious for them, stealing so many girls. Must make them perspire. Especially those of us who fight, scratch, make them bleed any way we can.
His smile emerges next, his teeth rotten like the broken smiles of Madame’s girls.
I take a half step back out of instinct, but Madame wraps her arm around mine, and her nails and cheap jewels are clawing into my skin until I’m sure I must be bleeding from it.
The man cups my face in his hand, and Madame gestures to Jared, who holds the lantern up over my head. And I realize what’s happening. This man, this Gatherer, is looking at my eyes, the way my brother and I would look through apples in the marketplace for the best pick. Something flashes in his eyes like delight. I struggle, though the realization of what’s happening still hasn’t quite reached me. Not until Madame names her price.
And finally, finally, I understand the word Maddie was writing for me.
Run.
Her hands are still moving, screaming.
Runrunrunrunrun.
The Gatherer is arguing, saying he can get girls much cheaper on the street. He looks so angry that he could spit. And Madame is laughing, smoke bursting out of her mouth, saying, “Not like this one, you won’t.”
Run.
I can’t! Gabriel is still a prisoner here. Madame will kill him; I’m sure of it. Kill him when she realizes she can’t turn him into one of her bodyguards. He doesn’t have it in him to hold a girl against her will—to carry a gun, much less shoot one.
And even if I were to run, how far could I get? Jared is standing right beside me, shining the lantern on me, ready to grab me at a moment’s notice. My breath hitches. My mind is in a fury.
Runrunrun.
Run where? Run how?
The Gatherer is indignant, but he isn’t leaving. Madame knows that, one way or another, she will sell me. She’s smug about it. And I should have seen it coming, really. What use does she have for yet another girl? All the girls in this place are wilted, dried out, used up. There’s a whole tent just for the ones that are in all stages of the virus, and she offers them to her customers at a discount. The men leave them, wiping the blood of the dying girls’ kisses from their stubbly mouths. Everything has a price. How long has it been since she had a healthy girl, whole and fully conscious,