PART TWO
THE AUCTION
CHAPTER 8
THE NIGHT BEFORE MARKET is the first time I dream of Kiran.
Maybe this is because since I’ve met him, we’ve never been so far apart. Only two hundred more paces really, not that far, but it might as well be half the country on account of the fences and sliding doors and walls and security systems. It’s the first night I can’t sense his presence. Even in my sleep I feel alone.
In my dream I’m on the auction stage. The wood is rough with splinters that jab into my bare feet. The sun is beating down from a clear, haze-free sky. Instead of buildings and factories, the stage is surrounded by trees. The ground below is dusted with pine needles. The air smells fresh.
The Governess is standing before me beneath a silk-draped awning. Beside her is a Pip who is manning a flat, black machine that’s tallying my votes. Only there’s no one around to vote on me.
And then Kiran appears. He’s wearing his daytime Driver gear, but it’s clean now, and his golden hair is slicked back with oil—just like a Magnate. With his hands in his pockets, he stares at me, judgment in his bright eyes. He walks to the left, then to the right. He looks me up and down. Up and down again. His expression switches between impressed and disappointed. I want to see what parts of me he approves of, but I’m afraid to look down and see what I’m wearing. It feels too light to be a dress. It feels like I might be wearing nothing.
Kiran walks to the Governess, and they exchange words that I cannot hear. She hands him an electronic board, and he writes something on it. A look of relief lifts her features as she shakes his hand, and I’m filled with a staggering sense of betrayal. Suddenly there are chains around my neck and my wrists. Heavy, black chains. They are weighing me down, and though I force myself to stand up as tall as I can, I stumble to my knees.
And then I wake up.
*
THE BUNK I’VE BEEN assigned to sinks in the middle like a hammock, only not half as comfortable. The bars across the bottom of the bed stick into my back, and the sheets smell like the hair glue the girls wear to market. It’s too hot in here to sleep. I’ve stripped down to my underclothes and I’m still sweating.
Today is Auction Day. The day of a thousand maybes. I might finally be able to break free today, to escape the guards, to get out of this cursed city and back to the mountains where I belong. I might be forced up on that stage, too. I might have to stand there in front of a drooling crowd.
I might even be sold.
The farmers in the outliers have market once a week. The high sellers join the city merchants for Trader’s Day, twice a month. Those who make enough to pay the fee for a booth will bring their wares to auction, the only event where girls are sold, which is held on the last day of the month. It’s a spectacle. Regular work is cancelled, and the party begins at dawn.
Whispered voices float across the room from the side wall. I angle my head towards the sound and hear the groan of a nearby mattress.
“What are you—” I recognize the voice: Buttercup, Daphne’s little friend with the slanted eyes. She’s shushed, and the mattress groans again.
“Not now, Daphne,” she says, bored.
I try to lower my right arm, forgetting that it’s been chained to the post. The night-watch Pip didn’t want to take any chances, since I tried sneaking out the latrine window after they brought me in yesterday. I might have made it if that little rat Buttercup hadn’t squealed on me. The chains make a clinking noise, and the conversation pauses.
“It’s just practice,” I hear Daphne whisper. “We’ve been getting quite a crowd outside the rec yard lately.” Her voice is high, and a little too loud. Now Buttercup shushes her.
“That’s just for show,” says Buttercup. “It’s not real.”
“I know that,” Daphne responds quickly.
They’re both quiet.
“You don’t think…” Daphne laughs. “That’s witch stuff. That’s not me. I’m going to be Promised.”
“And I’m not?”
“I didn’t say that,” says Daphne. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Well what did you mean?” Buttercup’s getting sassy.
“Nothing,” says Daphne. “Nothing, all right? I just thought you wanted to practice, that’s all.”
“I don’t.”
“All right,” says Daphne. The mattress groans again. “I’m sorry,” she says, and if I’m being honest, I feel a little bit bad for her. For some reason it all makes me think of Kiran, and his hand on my scar, and how I sent him away.
I roll onto my side, trying my best to tuck my right elbow under my head, and wince.
My whole body hurts.
After they brought me back to the Garden yesterday, my legs and arms were waxed, my eyebrows plucked into thin lines, and my hair and nails were trimmed. They didn’t bother putting me through the weight shifter because there wasn’t really enough to shift, but every other girl with a hint of fat was lined up and molded into a shape the Governess calls “ideal.”
The way I look feels unnatural. My feet are still bright red from where a Pip scrubbed the calluses off my feet, and the rest of me is blotchy from a full-body skin scrub. I’m glad I don’t have freckles or moles—those girls had to spend hours beneath a laser getting evened out.
The time passes too quickly, and soon other girls are up whispering to each other in excited tones. Those who’ve been through this before start to snap at each other. A few lie silently, probably nervous about their first time on stage. Most have been looking forward to this day for weeks.
The overhead lights flicker on—all but the one in the center, which has been blinking since before I was thrown in solitary.
My blood buzzes.
I sit up slowly, the grimace still weighing down my face. I wait for my assigned Watcher, offering no help as he lifts my arm to unbuckle the restraint. He sticks like sap to my side as he brings me to the latrine, holding the door open while I go. Even though I know he couldn’t care less, it’s still humiliating. I only glance in the mirror, disturbed by the way the high arch of my eyebrows makes me look constantly surprised. At least that dreaded bracelet is off my wrist.
Twenty minutes later I’m walked to a line in the main foyer outside the theater so that I can get my one-and-a-half-pill breakfast allotment. All the Garden girls are here now. Fifty or so of us. There are a few new ones I don’t recognize who must have arrived in my absence, and several more missing who have been Promised or handed over to Mercer the Pimp in the last twenty-four days. Most of us will go to auction today, but as always, there are a few bitter ducks in the back of the line. The Governess doesn’t feel this handful of girls has been conditioned enough yet to make an appearance on the stage. I can hear their whining all the way from where I stand in the middle.
“I hope your new friend doesn’t plan on holding your hand all day. It will kill your bidding,” says a girl behind me. Daphne. Her freckles are now completely gone, leaving flawless, pale skin. Her green eyes sparkle. She’s talking about the Watcher, who’s checking his messagebox an arm’s length away.
Heat rushes through my veins. Maybe it’s the light on her perfect face, or the way she’s always acting like she’s better than me, but I forget all about feeling sorry for her.
“Shut up, Daphne.”
“It’s nice to see you too,” she says.
It’s the first time we’ve talked since Straw Hair ran herself into the fence, and I’m reminded all over again how awful it was.
“You could have stopped her,” I say under my breath.
“Who?” she asks innocently.
“You know who. The one with yellow hair. The new girl. I know you saw her.”
Daphne’s ultrathin eyebrows lift. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You shouldn’t have laughed at her.” The Watcher has heard my tone sharpen, and in a warning, winds his printless fingers in the shoulder fabric of my dress. Surely he has orders not to touch me today; bruising can’t look good on the auction block. But I suppose there’s always makeup for that.
We’ve reached the front of the line. I tilt back the pills and swallow them with a swig of water. Though it’s normally tasteless, today a sour tinge makes my jaw hurt.
I splash the rest of the water on the Watcher’s jacket. He tilts his head to the side, just slightly, before stepping out of line to get a towel from a Pip.
“Oops.” I breathe, for the first time in a while, as soon as he turns his back.
“You think you’re so much better?” asks Daphne as we step away from the table. “Calling the other girls names and getting them in trouble. Don’t pretend to be innocent.…”
“It was different and you know it,” I interrupt. It’s not like I enjoy picking fights. Besides, Sweetpea started the last one when she and her friends began making fun of me.
“She was swimming in the pond. It was funny.” Daphne shrugs. She’s quickly losing status as my half friend/nonenemy, and working towards full enemy. “She should have been happy. Her paperwork had just gone through.”
“She was Promised?” I ask.
“Yes. Just that morning.”
I picture the boy waiting for her by the fence. Remember how upset he was. He must have known she’d been sold. For some reason that brings a strange ache in my heart.
“You should have stopped her,” I say again.
Buttercup walks by with another girl, their arms linked. She giggles loudly, and I see the strain in Daphne’s face.
“I’m going to be Promised today,” Daphne announces. “And you won’t see me crying about it.”
“You won’t see her crying about it either.” I glare after Buttercup, remembering how she told on me for climbing through the bathroom window. My scalp still hurts from where the Watcher dragged me back in by my hair.
Daphne’s head whips around to face me. “You’ve been in solitary too long this time. You’re not making any sense.”
I give her a look. “I can explain if you want.”
She glances back at Buttercup, a little worried, and then back to me. Her green eyes harden like glass.
“You really are a witch,” she hisses. “Not just some dense mountain hack like I thought. Your family is probably relieved to be rid of you.”
I’ve shoved her before I’ve even thought about it. She’s flung backwards into three other girls, but doesn’t fall. I’ve got to hand it to her. Instead of crying for a Pip, she wheels back and charges me.
I’ve fought too many times with Bian and Salma not to see this coming. All I do is step out of the way and Daphne crashes to the floor. I can see the tears streaming down her cheeks when she gets up. Poor baby.
“You missed,” I taunt between clenched teeth. Every pair of eyes in the foyer is upon Daphne and me.
She runs at me again, but this time I stand directly in her way, and just before she hits me, I clasp my hands together and chop at her midsection from the side. It works. I knock the wind out of her, and she collapses to her knees. Before I can jump on her, I’m flying through the air. I thrash my arms and legs, but something is gripping my body like a vice.
The Watcher. He’s holding me solidly from behind, and he’s squeezing so tightly that I’m forced to abandon my attempts to attack and focus instead on loosening his grasp from my waist.
“Let go!” I shout at him. The pressure is pumping in my head, making black spots appear in my vision.
“What … is … this?” a high voice shrieks from behind. The Governess erupts into the room in a burst of bright yellow-and-red cloth. Her dress is tiny around the midsection, rising at angles over her chest and sticking almost straight out at her hips. The skirt resembles some sort of upside-down wire basket, and her blonde hair is curled into a mountain above her forehead.
“She started it,” cries Daphne.
“Shut up!” I say. The Watcher squeezes again and I wince.
“Put her down,” the Governess orders. When he doesn’t respond, she flails her hands for her Pip assistant. “Tell him to put Clover down!”
The Pip approaches the Watcher timidly. He’s flustered; his face is slightly flushed.
“Sir,” he says, clearing his throat with a stream of pips. “Sir?”
Finally the Watcher puts me down, but he keeps his hands clamped firmly on my shoulders.
The Governess marches towards me and leans as close as she can without allowing her overly stuffed skirt to touch my skintight black uniform. Her made-up face is so severe she’s scary.
“This past month has been the best of my career. Why is that? Ha!” All the silent girls surrounding us jump. “Because you were out of my hair.”
“Hard to imagine, with hair so big,” I say, staring back. “I could probably stand out in the rec yard and still be in it.”
“Silence!” she screeches. She pulls back, adjusting her dress. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your time here, Clover, because it’s about to come to an end. I don’t care if another girl gets one bid today as long as you’re sold.”
I feel my face drain of color. She smirks, knowing that she’s gotten to me.
“After market, I’ll be either meeting with your buyer or transferring your ownership papers over to that Pimp, Mercer. Either ways, you’ll wait out your time in solitary,” she continues. “You and your little friend. I don’t want you two near the other girls.”
She wouldn’t sell me to the Virulent like she’s threatening, would she? Mercer the Pimp hardly pays anything for the girls he takes back to the Black Lanes. But I can tell from that crazy look in her eyes that she means it.
Daphne’s on her feet now, though still hunched over. Her cheek is swelling from where she collided with the tile floor.
“Sort of beats the idea of solitary if there’s two of us there, doesn’t it?” I say, unable to hide the tremble in my voice.
“I can’t … not with…” Daphne’s stammering.
“Maybe you’ll kill each other, and then problem solved,” says the Governess. “Daphne’s out for today,” she says in a flat voice to her assistant. I hear a stream of pips from him in the background.
“I’m … what? Out?” cries Daphne disbelievingly.
“Look at your face in the mirror, dear,” says the Governess. “We can’t skim that before the show. There’s not nearly enough time, what with everything else that needs to be done.”
“But I was nearly Promised last time!” shouts Daphne. Her gaze switches to Buttercup, whose mouth has dropped open.
“And you weren’t,” the Governess responds in a flat tone.
“The Watcher grabbed me,” I spout quickly. “There will be huge bruises.”
“Any of which can be covered with concealing powder. Don’t,” she points a long, fake nail directly in my face, “even try it. You’re going. And your paperwork will be signed by the end of the week.”
With that, the Governess stalks away, leaving both Daphne and I speechless, encircled by the wide, shocked eyes of the other girls.