Arden opened her mouth to speak, eager to tell Lark of the vitamins and fertility treatments and the horrible rooms with metal beds, but I held up my hand. Of all the things I could rely on Arden for, sensitivity was not one of them.
“Lark,” I said slowly, meeting the young girl’s gaze. “The girls in those Schools—I was one of them—were never going to learn a trade. Out here we’re called sows, and we were meant to birth children. As many as we could, to populate the City of Sand.”
Arden couldn’t help herself any longer. “They are taking us to the City, and Eve is going to be given to the King and then you and I are going right back to those Schools, right back to those beds.” Her voice cracked as she said it.
“No,” Lark said. She bit down hard on her fingertip and spit the cracked skin aside. “That’s not possible.”
“I didn’t want to believe it either, but I saw them—”
“You saw wrong,” Lark snapped. She sat forward on her knees. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Headmistress is evil . . . but that isn’t possible.” She shook her head. “Maybe it was just your School. They wouldn’t do that to us—for what?”
Arden lunged forward, her hand closing around Lark’s thin arm. “Listen to us,” she hissed. Lark flinched at her hot breath. “Listen to what we’re saying. They need to populate the City. How do you think they’re going to do that? How?”
“Get off me,” Lark said, shaking her arm. “You’re crazy.” But as she slunk into the corner, her voice was softer, less certain.
“If you want to be some sow for the rest of your life, then you can,” Arden went on. She leveled a finger at Lark. “But we’re not going back to the Schools, I won’t, I’m not going to—” Her mouth twisted before she could get the words out. When she sat down her body seemed so much smaller and weaker than before.
I felt someone watching us and I turned, meeting Fletcher’s gaze in the dusty rearview mirror. The music faded and he slid open the back window of the cab.
“Don’t you worry, my pretty sweetheart,” he said. “I’m not taking you back to School.” He lowered the mirror to look at Arden’s bare legs. “Three ladies . . . so pure? I could get much more for you elsewhere.”
With that he dialed up the music again, rapping his fingers against the side door. Come an’ take-ake-ake your time-ime and dance with me! Ow!
Arden didn’t speak. Instead she tried the metal lock on the cage again, banging at it until her fingers were red. The landscape whipped by us, a blur of yellow dirt. The tree branches reached toward the road like gnarled fingers.
“What does he mean?” Lark asked, looking up at me. Her lower lip trembled as she spoke.
I hated her right then, this stranger, for being so familiar to me. In her face I saw someone I used to be, a girl who was so sure of the purpose of School, with its walls and its rules and the orderly lines that filed past the bedrooms and into the dining hall. She thought she could go somewhere else and be given something different, something better. Another future.
“You’re getting your wish,” I said, unable to stop the cold words from escaping my lips. “You’re not going to see the Headmistress again.”
Chapter Twenty-four
WE SAT IN THAT TRUCK FOR HOURS, OUR LUNGS CAKED with dirt. Even the sun abandoned us, sinking low between the trees. We’d fallen in and out of sleep, thinking we had time—time to prepare, time to escape—but then the gadget at Fletcher’s belt called out, waking us.
“Fletcher, you devil! What’s your ETA? I have too much demand and not enough supply.”
I was pressed into one corner. Lark slept in the other, and Arden curled up in a ball at my side, their faces just visible in the reddish glow from the taillights.
Fletcher brought the strange radio to his mouth, pushing a button on its side to stop the static. “Cool your crotch,” he chuckled. “I’m camping for the night. We’ll be there in the morning.”
Static filled the air, then a callous laugh. “Tell me what you got. Come on, give the boys a little preview.”
I imagined the same men I’d seen by the shack, their hides tanned to a leathery brown, gathered under a tarp in camp, awaiting our arrival. I pressed my nose through the bars, desperate for more air.
“They’re all steamers,” Fletcher offered, his eyes glancing at us in the rearview mirror. “I’ll give them to you tomorrow, you crud guzzler.” He threw the radio down and turned his music on again.
Back at School, I had once argued for the goodness of people, and the great capacity for change. But listening to him laugh, the radio held lightly in his hand, I sensed only depravity. One thing Teacher Agnes had said was true, even now: Some men saw women purely as a commodity. Like fuel, rice, or canned meat.
Arden watched me from the side of the cage, turned so her back was to him. “We have to get out of here,” she whispered. “Tonight.”
“But he’ll kill us,” Lark said, pulling the worn blanket over her legs.