Tarnished (10 page)

In front of me, one of the men from the kennel pulled open the back to a large truck that was backed into the dock. The door rumbled open. One by one the girls in front of me stepped into the dark interior of the truck.

“I hate to tell you this, sweetie, but you have no rights. You’re a pet. What did you expect would happen?”

The realization that he was right was like a dagger straight through my anger and hatred. The clothes, the pictures, the things I stole… Everything I’d done to get this far, gone. How could I be so stupid, to think things had changed for me, to think I could make my way back to Penn? Wanting something wasn’t the same as being able to make it come true. Wanting—
hoping
—wasn’t enough. It never had been.

Maybe that had been my problem from the beginning. I’d hoped for something more. I’d hoped to be something that I wasn’t, and time and time again I was shown how wrong I’d been. I just needed to accept the truth. I was a pet. My life had never been my own. I’d been created in a lab to benefit humans. I’d wanted to believe that life itself was a gift, something magical that I owned, but the sooner I realized that it didn’t belong to me, the sooner I could stop feeling this pain.

Through the gap between the truck and the loading dock, a cold gust of air knocked into me. The man shoved me between the shoulder blades. I stumbled, stepping from the cement slab into the gritty metal bed of the truck.

The man in the suit reached up, pulling down on the handle to the door and it rumbled back down into place, locking us in darkness. The truck shook to life beneath us and I sank down onto the cold floor.

Seven other girls huddled next to me, but none of us spoke. Each of us was alone in our fear. Each trapped in our own dark cage.

We were husks. Empty bodies. The image of the dead girls swam in front of my eyes. Girls blackened and burned. Girls drowned. Girls cut. Girls who’d had their lives stolen from them until there was nothing left. Behind the roar of the engine, the sound of voices rose and fell. The door thundered open, we all reeled back, startled by the sudden burst of light.

“…willing to pay more than she’s worth.” The woman stood silhouetted in the square of light of the truck’s open door. Her voice had climbed to a high octave and her body shook with anger.

Seth shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t allow it. Of course, you can still take the others.”

He stepped into the back of the truck and reached his hand out to me. “Come on, now,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “Let’s get you back inside.”

Standing in the shadow of the doorway, Missy stood with her arms crossed defiantly over her chest. I couldn’t see her face, but I guessed it must look fierce.

I held my chin high, trying not to let the pressure in my chest overcome me. I wouldn’t look back. I could feel the eyes of the other girls in the truck watching me. It didn’t seem fair, that I was being led away, while they were being taken back to the kennel. I didn’t know them, but my heart shattered, little pieces splintering off for each one of them.

Seth’s fingers were shaking against my arm where he clasped me above the elbow, leading me back into the warehouse. It seemed impossible that he would be frightened, but I could feel the fear trembling through him.

Behind us, the truck bumped out of the parking lot.

Seth stopped next to the man with the spiked blond hair. “I won’t tell the boss what almost happened,” he said. His voice sounded sharp, confident.

The man nodded once. “Hey, thanks man,” he said, clearly shaken. “It was an honest mistake. You know how it is, right? Once their clothes are off, these girls all look the same.”

The man chuckled, but Seth only stared at him, his jaw clenching.

The man shrank back. “I’m sorry. I was just joking.”

Seth didn’t respond. Instead, he tightened his grip on my arm and pulled me back into the warehouse toward his office. Missy trailed behind.

“We don’t have a whole lot of time,” Seth said in a low voice. He opened the door to his office and ushered us both inside.

“What do you mean?” Missy asked.

He closed the door behind him and sank down into one of the chairs near the door. “Shit,” he said, burying his head in his hands. “This is bad.”

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Missy said. “I made a deal with Mr. Bernard. This was all just a big mistake. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No.” He rubbed his temples. “I’ve overstepped my bounds. He couldn’t care less if he made a deal with you. He cares about the money. That’s it. And we just cost him over a hundred grand.”

“That…bastard!” Missy said, choking on the word. “You mean I…I…” She brought her hand to her throat, like she was trying to protect some tender part of herself. “For nothing! I did that for
nothing
!”

Seth’s face was pale and he looked like he might be sick. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Now what?” I asked. “We can’t stay, can we?”

“No!” Missy snapped. “Of course we can’t stay, and now we have nowhere to go. I doubt I’ve even earned enough money for a ride. Not that it matters. He hasn’t paid me yet and he sure as hell isn’t going to pay me now. Maybe he wasn’t ever planning on paying me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Seth said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

He moved to his desk, rummaging through his drawers. He pulled out a stack of papers. “How quickly can you get your things?”

“What do you expect us to do?” Missy asked. “We can’t walk back to Connecticut.”

“Don’t worry about it now,” Seth said. He glanced at me. “Get some clothes on her and be back here as fast as you can.”

Missy grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the office. She moved like a storm, a blast of air. She moved with the kind of passion that boiled up inside me. It was the kind of passion that I was used to pressing down, but inside her it overflowed. It spilled out and into the world.

“This is a disaster,” she said, once we were clear of any listening ears. “You were supposed to stay in the common room. I gave you one task, Ella. One task and you couldn’t even do that!”

I ripped my arm away from her grasp. “You make it sound so easy,” I said. “Stay in the common room. Don’t do any jobs. Make yourself invisible. Don’t share any secrets. Well, you can blame me all you want, but it’s not going to do us any good now. How could you possibly keep a secret like that from me?”

Missy threw back the curtain to the waiting room and I snatched my clothes up off the ground.

“A secret? I was protecting you!”

“I never would have come here if I’d known,” I said, wiggling into my clothes as quickly as I could.

“You don’t think I know that?” Missy asked, turning away from me. “This was the only way. It’s imperfect, but what other choice did we have?”

“That’s not how it’s supposed to be. The things those men are doing to you. It’s not supposed to be that way. That’s not love. Love is about two people sharing—”

“No one said anything about love,” she snapped, and stomped toward the stairs.

I followed her. “But it is. I know it is,” I said. “That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“Well, there’s your problem,” she said, “thinking that there’s a way things are supposed to be instead of the way that they just
are
. People are cruel. People hurt each other. Get used to it.”

“Not everyone hurts you!”

“This whole thing is pointless,” she said. “We’re both fools if we think we’re going to actually get you back. And even if we do make it…what then? What good is it going to do us?”

I lifted my chin. “Penn will help us.”

“Yeah? What’s he going to be able to do? He’s trapped by his father. I’ve seen him on TV. He’s practically the new spokesperson for pet inequality. And don’t tell me that you don’t know it! What difference is it going to make if you’re there? Nothing will change.”

We reached the common room, Missy’s words ringing in my ears. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was useless to try to get back to Penn when the whole world was working against us.

Chapter Ten

M
issy ripped off the red gown and began stuffing her things in her bag. On the cushions in front of me, Carlie’s sketchbook sat in exactly the same spot she’d left it. The tiny nub of a pencil had rolled off of the top and underneath a pillow. I dropped to my knees and picked it up.

I wondered if she’d realized yet that it had been left behind. There was no way to get it to her now. Even if there was, they wouldn’t allow her to use it at the kennel. She’d been lucky to have something that was hers, even if it was just for a little while.

I opened it up and flipped through the pages, past images of girls that I’d never seen before, yet their faces looked so familiar to me. In all of them, I saw a bit of myself. Carlie had captured their essence. Some appeared curious, others thoughtful, but what struck me most was the sadness. The emptiness she’d sketched into all of their features.

On the final page I found my own face, as unrecognizable as it was to me. I traced my finger over the lines. The graphite smudged, bleeding into the white page. She’d drawn me differently than she had the rest of them, but it was hard to distinguish exactly how. I flipped back through the pages. The eyes were different. Not the shape really, but the soul of them. She’d given me life.

“It will make a difference,” I said quietly.

Missy looked up from her bag. “What?”

I tore Carlie’s picture of me from the notebook and held it defiantly as if the determination in that portrait’s face could fortify me.

“I’m going to get there,” I said. “Once we’re all together we can make a plan. We’ll find a way. But I’m not going to stop. I can’t.”

She rolled her eyes. “Wouldn’t it spare us all a lot of trouble if we just faced reality and gave up now?”

“You want to see
reality
?” I asked, digging into my pocket for the photographs. I shoved them against her chest. “This is what reality looks like now! Do whatever you want,” I said. “I’m not going to get this close and then just turn around. It isn’t just about me anymore. Maybe it never was.”

I stepped back and she turned the photographs over in her hands. For a moment she didn’t move as her gaze skittered over the glossy image, absorbing it. And then her mouth opened, a strangled choking sound rising out of her as it hit, the truth of what she was holding.

She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “No. No.”

She flipped through the pictures, her eyes clouding. “Where did you get these?”

“I took them.”

“From where?” She looked up at me, her eyes fierce.

“I found them in one of the offices while you were gone.” I paused. “Seth’s office.”

She shook her head.

“How do you know we can trust him?”

S
eth looked up from his papers, startled, when we walked back into his office. “That was fast.”

“Yeah, well…we don’t have much,” Missy said. Normally, this sort of remark would sound biting and condescending, but when she spoke to Seth, it only sounded like the sad, honest truth.

“Are you sure you can help us?” I asked.

His eyes traveled between the two of us, finally coming to rest on Missy. “I can,” he said.

They were the words that I wanted to hear, but the way he said them made it sound like he was losing something. And maybe he was.

He stuffed the papers he was working on in an envelope and took a deep breath, standing. “I’ve made new papers for each of you. In case you need them. This way, if someone stops you, it’ll be harder for them to track down your real history.” He held out the envelope to Missy. “I’ll tell my uncle that the two of you left out of the blue. He’ll be pissed. I know he was hoping to get his hands on you for good this time, but it’ll be a dose of reality for him. It’s not healthy for a man to get everything he wants all the time.”

Missy took the envelope tenderly. For a moment her fingers rested against his. “Thank you. You’re the only one who’s ever truly been kind to me,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ll never get a chance to repay you.”

The longing on his face broke my heart. “It’s been my pleasure.”

Missy rose on her tiptoes and placed a soft kiss on his lips.

His face flushed and I turned away, not only because it felt like I was intruding on a moment that didn’t belong to me, but because it hurt too much to watch. Seth was such an unlikely person for Missy to love, but she did. And I understood. You couldn’t choose whom you loved, just like you couldn’t choose if you were born a pet or a princess or a poor boy in India. It just happened to you.

“Well, I guess we should get you two on your way,” he finally said. “I paid a cab to take you wherever you need to go. It’s waiting for you down the street. I’ll walk you to the back door. You should be safe to leave from there.”

Across the warehouse, the men in suits were already wrangling together another showing. A handful of girls once again stood on the platform being examined by a couple in expensive-looking clothes.

Seth cracked open the back door and I slid past him out into the back alley. Missy turned around, pausing in the threshold.

“I wish things had been different,” she said.

He nodded. “Me, too.”

“Come with us,” she blurted.

Seth froze, soaking in her question. He closed his eyes as if he were letting himself imagine what it would be like to say yes. When he opened them again his face looked pained. “I can’t,” he said, softly.

“It’s not worth it. When he finds out you let us go…” Her voice trailed off.

“I have to take my chances,” he said.

“But I need you,” Missy said. Her voice sounded so small, like a fragile baby bird teetering on the edge of its nest. Full of fear, but
wanting
.

Seth swallowed, shaking his head. “I can’t.”

T
he cab sat idling on the corner, just like he said it would be. The driver glanced in his rearview mirror at us as we slipped inside, squinting his eyes appraisingly before he turned around to get a better look.

Missy glanced back over her shoulder toward the warehouse.

“We need to go,” she said. Her voice still sounded shaky. Small.

The cab driver frowned at us. “You sure I’m allowed to be driving you two?”

Missy tapped her hand against the seat. “Yes, get a move on it.”

“You look like those pets. Aren’t you supposed to be with someone else?” he said. “I talked to a guy on the phone. Where is he?”

“He arranged to pay you, didn’t he?” Missy asked.

The driver nodded.

“Then what’s the problem?”

He sat for a minute staring at her. He didn’t look like the smartest man. Maybe it was the way his jaw hung a little limply so that his mouth was slightly open. Finally, he smacked his lips and nodded, like he’d come to a decision. “Well, I can’t go anywhere if I don’t have an address,” he said, still eyeing us warily. “Where to?”

Missy looked to me.

“Congressman Kimble’s house. In Connecticut,” I said.

Missy turned again to look out the back window and her face went white. “We’ve really got to hurry,” she said, pressing against the back of the driver’s seat as if she could actually push the car forward with the strength of her hands.

I turned to look out the rear window. A black sedan pulled to a stop outside the warehouse. The windows were tinted, but the dark head that loomed behind the driver’s seat looked like Mr. Bernard. If he found us, I doubted that he would let us go so easily again.

“You want to go to a congressman’s house?” the cab driver asked.

Both of us nodded.

“I still need an address,” he said. “I don’t just have the direction to famous people’s houses memorized. This isn’t Hollywood Tours.”

“Well, we don’t have the address,” Missy said, panicking a little now. “Can’t you just look it up?”

“Doubt it,” the driver said. “Those political types don’t usually like people to know where they live.”

“Wait!” I said. “Will this work?”

I dug deep into my pocket. I hadn’t shown Missy the collar, but I didn’t have time to worry about her judgment right now.

“Here.” I shoved the necklace into his hand. “That’s where we need to go.”

He held the pendant between his fingers and turned it in the light, admiring the way the tiny diamonds glinted in the sun. Missy’s mouth dropped open, but she quickly recovered.

“Does it work or doesn’t it?” she asked.

He squinted at the engraved words. “Yeah, I can get you there,” he said, pleased with himself as he jotted them down in a little notebook on the seat next to him. “But it’s outside the city. It’s going to cost a lot.”

“We’ve given you the address! The payment is already arranged!” I yelled. “Why are we sitting here talking about it? Just go! Go!”

Both he and Missy jumped a little at my outburst. It wasn’t like me to yell, but it felt good. Maybe Missy was rubbing off on me.

The driver gave me an annoyed grimace, but he didn’t argue. Instead he turned around in his seat and put the car in drive. The engine purred beneath us as the car bumped forward into traffic.

Missy slumped back into the seat. “I can’t believe you kept that…
thing
.”

“It didn’t feel right to leave it behind,” I said.

She shook her head. “I couldn’t wait to leave mine behind.”

“I guess I wanted to remember.”

“What could you possibly want to remember? That collar represents everything that’s ever gone wrong in my life,” she said. “Every decision that was made for me, every dream I didn’t get to follow, every person I’ve had to say good-bye to. Why would you possibly want to remember that?”

I stared out the window.

“That’s exactly why I wanted to keep it,” I finally said. “It wasn’t because I wanted to remember it fondly.” Although there were the good things. Penn. Penn had been good. And Ruby. “It just didn’t seem right to leave it behind. To forget.”

Missy shook her head. “Forgetting is all I want to do.”

Maybe that was true, but I didn’t believe her. If she really wanted to forget she never would have agreed to come with me. Besides, she didn’t seem like the sort of person that could forget, not when there were other girls who were still living through it. To forget would be to turn a blind eye. To forget would be a lie.

“What’s going to happen to him?” I asked after a while.

She turned away from me, looking out the window. “I don’t know. If Bernard finds out that he was responsible for me leaving again…” She shook her head.

“What?”

“He’ll kill him.”

“But I thought they were related!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Missy said. “No one’s safe. Not with Bernard.”

We stayed silent. Missy’s hand rested on the seat next to mine. I scooted closer to her. There was nothing I could say to make her feel better. There were no words that could fix this thing. And so I sat. I sat and let the warmth of my body next to her be enough. It was what I could give her. My silence.

It seemed impossible that we were finally on our way to Penn. I closed my eyes and let myself think of him. I’d spent hours imagining him, yet somehow at a distance, afraid that if I let myself get too close to the memory of him, I wouldn’t be able to pull myself away. I could get trapped there, inside one of those memories: the way it felt to run my fingers through the soft hair at the base of his neck; the heat of his hands on my back; the velvety touch of his lips against my own.

We wove our way through traffic, getting lost in the sea of cars that surrounded us. The taxi passed sidewalks full of people moving in such a hurry. I wondered where they were going. Was it really as important as the looks on their faces suggested?

After a while, the city gridlock gave way to bridges, and finally to the wide stretch of the highway. Beside us, thick patches of trees rushed past. The golden slant of the setting sun made their shadows stretch long. It would be dark soon, but the day didn’t know it yet. The orange light looked like it had set the world on fire. It flashed off of windows and glowed atop shingled rooftops.

Missy and I both tensed as we drew nearer. The taxi slowed as it approached the narrow driveway that led to the congressman’s house.

“Don’t pull in,” Missy said, tapping the driver on the shoulder. “You can drop us off down the street.”

The car bumped off of the road, stopping near a dense tangle of trees.

“You want me to leave you here?” the driver asked. “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

“We know,” I assured him.

He eyed us warily as we climbed out onto the gravelly shoulder of the road.

“You two be safe,” he called back to us. “I can always come back for you if you need me to.”

The car idled as the driver drummed his fingers nervously against the wheel. Maybe he was worried to leave us alone, but his gallantry only lasted for a moment before he must have realized we weren’t his problem. The tires skidded on the gravel, kicking up a cloud of dust, and a minute later the car disappeared around the corner, leaving us alone. I started off toward the tall hedges that lined the driveway back to my old home.

“What are you doing?” Missy asked.

“It’s this way.”

“You can’t just walk down the driveway and ring the doorbell,” she huffed. “And we can’t just stand out here on the road, either. Someone could see us.”

She pulled me over a low stone wall, ducking into the branches behind it.

“I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry,” I apologized.

The closer we got to Penn, the fuzzier my mind became. My limbs trembled, so full of excitement and fear and worry that they hardly felt like they belonged to me anymore.

Missy rubbed her hand over her face. The night was coming on fast and I could hardly make out her expression in the dim light that filtered through the trees.

“We need a plan,” she said. “It feels like we’re walking into this thing blind.”

“I guess we can’t really do anything yet,” I said. “We’ll have to wait until everyone goes to sleep. Then I’m pretty sure we can sneak up to Penn’s room.”