I wondered if Chubs knew how the story ended.
TWELVE
THE HOT WATER WAS ENOUGH TO MAKE ME FORGET I WAS STANDING IN AN OLD MOTEL SHOWER, WASHING MY HAIR WITH SHAMPOO THAT REEKED OF FAKE LAVENDER. In the entire compact bathroom, there were only six things: the sink, the toilet, the towel, the shower, its curtain, and me.
I was the last one in. By the time I finally walked through the motel room door, Zu had already been in and out and Chubs had just barricaded himself in the bathroom, where he spent the next hour scrubbing himself and all of his clothing until they stank of stale soap. It seemed pointless to me to try to do laundry in a sink with hand soap, but there was no bathtub or laundry detergent for him to use. The rest of us just sat back and tuned out his impassioned speech on the importance of good hygiene.
“You’re next,” Liam had said, turning to me. “Just make sure you wipe down everything when you’re done.”
I caught the towel he threw to me. “What about you?”
“I’ll take one in the morning.”
With the bathroom door shut and locked behind me, I dropped my backpack on the toilet seat cover and went to work sorting through its contents. I pulled out the clothes they had given me and dumped them on the floor. Something silky and red spilled out on top of the pile, causing me to jump back in alarm.
It took several moments of suspicious inspection to figure out what it was—the bright red dress from the trailer’s closet.
Zu, I thought, passing a tired hand over my face. She must have grabbed it when I wasn’t looking.
I poked at it with a toe, nose wrinkling at its faint scent of stale cigarette smoke. It looked like it was going to be a size too large for me, not to mention the somewhat icky feeling that came with knowing where it had been.
But, clearly, she had wanted me to have it—and wearing it, loath as I was to admit it, was smarter than running around in my camp uniform. I could do this for Zu; if it made her happy, it’d be worth the discomfort.
There was no shampoo, but the Children’s League had thought to give me deodorant, a bright green toothbrush, a pack of tissues, some tampons, and hand sanitizer—all travel-sized and zipped up tight in a plastic bag. Under that was a small hairbrush and water bottle. And there, at the very bottom of the bag, was another panic button.
It must have been there the entire time, and I just hadn’t realized it. I’d thrown the first one Cate had given me away, leaving it behind in the mud and brush. The thought that this one had been in my bag all this time—the entire time—made my skin crawl. Why hadn’t I thoroughly searched the bag before now?
I picked it up between two fingers and dropped it into the sink like it had been a piece of hot coal. My hand was on the faucet, ready to drown the stupid thing in water and fry it for good, but something stopped me.
I’m not sure how long I stared down at it before I picked it up again and held it toward the light, trying to see if I could peer inside of the black outer shell. I looked for a red blinking light that would tell me if it was recording. I held it up to my ear, listening for any kind whirring or beeping that would tell me if it was activated. If it was on, or if it really was a tracker, wouldn’t they have caught up to us by now?
Was it so bad to keep it—just in case? Just in case something happened again, and I couldn’t help the others? Wouldn’t being with the League be better than being thrown back into Thurmond? Being killed—wasn’t anything better than that?
When I put the panic button back in the pocket of the backpack, it wasn’t for me. If Cate had seen me she would have smiled, and the thought only made me angry all over again. I couldn’t even believe in my own ability to protect these kids.
Stepping under the shower’s perfect warm spray was already surreal enough without having to hear the click-click-click-beep of Thurmond’s automatic timer to keep my wash time under three minutes. It was a good thing, too, since the dirt seemed to come off me in slow layers. A good fifteen minutes of scrubbing and it felt like I had turned every inch of my skin inside out. I even tried using the bubblegum pink razor that had been included in the hotel’s small pack of soap and shampoo, opening up old and new scabs on my shins and knees.
Sixteen years old, I thought, and this is the first time I’ve been able to shave my legs.
It was stupid—so stupid. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t care. I was old enough. No one was going to stop me.
My mom always came back to me in flashes. Sometimes I’d hear her voice, just a word or two. Other times, I’d have a memory so real it was like reliving the moment altogether. And now, as I kept at it, all I could think of was that conversation we’d had about this very thing, and her smile as she repeated over and over again, “Maybe when you’re thirteen.”
Eventually, I washed the razor off and threw it in the direction of my bag. I didn’t think anyone else would want to use it now. With blood running down my legs, I turned my attention to the nest on my head. My hair was still too tangled for me to run my hands through it. I had to work through it knot by knot, using more of the shampoo than I had ever meant to, and by the time I was finished, I was crying.
I’m sixteen.
I don’t know what brought it out. One minute I was fine, and the next it felt like my chest had collapsed in on itself. I tried to take in a deep breath, but the air was too hot. My hands found the wall’s white tile first, a second before the rest of my body collapsed against it. I sat down on the rough, fake stone floor of the shower, and pressed my hands to my chest, grateful for the noise of the running water and overhead vent, which hid the sound of me breaking into pieces. I didn’t want them to hear me like this, especially not Zu.
It was stupid, so stupid. I was sixteen—so what? So what, I hadn’t seen my parents in six years? So what, I might never see them again? It’s not like they remembered me anyway.
I should have been happy that it was over, that I was out of that place. But inside or out, I was alone, and I was beginning to wonder if I always had been, if I always would be. The water pressure wavered, its temperature spiking as someone in the next room over flushed the toilet. It didn’t matter. I could barely feel it blasting against my back. My fingers went to my bleeding knees and pressed down, but I couldn’t feel that, either.
Cate had told me that I needed to divide my life into three acts and close the first two behind me—but how did someone do that? How were you just supposed to forget?
There was a knock on the door. Faint, almost tentative at first, but more insistent when I didn’t answer right away.
“Ruby?” I heard Liam’s voice call. “You okay?”
I took a deep breath and reached back, hand feeling through the air for the faucet. The water overhead faded to a mere drizzle, and then a drip, and then nothing at all.
“Can you—uh—open the door? Just for a sec?” He sounded nervous enough to make me nervous. For one terrifying split second I thought something had happened. I reached for the towel and wrapped it around myself. My fingers flicked the lock over and were turning the doorknob before my brain caught up.
A blast of icy air was the first thing to hit me. Liam’s wide eyes were the second. The pair of big white socks in his hand, the third.