It was all I had left of her.
I’d heard the story a hundred times from Mama—she was kind of obsessed. Saint Catherine of Alexandria was smart and beautiful, and didn’t want to give it up to some king, so he put her on the breaking wheel, which is this torture device. You’re laid out spread-eagle on a big wheel and people hit you with sticks until you’re good and broken. Except Catherine was holy, and the wheel broke when she touched it. So instead, the king took a sword and chopped off her head. Saint stuff is crazy violent like that. The palm branch she carries is supposed to be a symbol of triumph.
Mama would pray, Help us to break the wheel, Catherine, as we knelt by the bed at night. And I never got it because Catherine still got killed in the end, so what’s the point? Why the palm branch? But Mama would just shush me and say, Saint Catherine may have died, but she wasn’t ever broken. Mama would tap the palm branch with her finger like, See?
And for the first time maybe ever, I did see.
I saw that while part of me was certainly dead and gone, the whole of me wasn’t going to die. I had let myself be broken, but maybe I could be remade. I could become something stronger. If I was strong, I could keep my promise to Mama. I could make sure my little sister stayed safe. Maybe she should go on living with the nuns. With them, she could have the life Mama wanted for us. She’d go to school. She’d learn about God. But not me. I would stay in the shadows and watch over her from a distance. I would never let anything hurt her.
I slept that next night with a shard of glass in my hand, and no one touched me. In the morning, when Bug Eye yelled at us all to wake the hell up, I was ready.
He wanted to see what sort of Goondas we could be, and I lined up with all the other new recruits like we were getting ready to march into battle, the most laughable little army on earth. The Ketchup boy was nowhere in sight, so I focused instead on taking stock of the other kids, deciding which ones looked weak, which ones I could beat in a fight. I was the only girl, but it didn’t matter. I would be stronger than any of them.
I let my pain and exhaustion sink down and slide out of my body until I was completely empty. The day before, I had been a fragile vessel made of clay. I had been broken down to dust, but a storm had come and churned me up. Now I was a hunk of mud.
And I was ready to be put on the wheel and shaped into something else entirely.
? ? ?
Rule 8: Know the value of what you take.
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Question: What is worth more than diamonds and gold? What is the most stable currency? What thing, when stolen, becomes most dangerous and precious of all?
Answer: a secret.
? ? ?
An hour of silence goes by in the torture chamber, and I feel a little calmer. I figure that if Michael were going to turn me over to the guards, he would have by now. Which means he probably doesn’t know what to do with me. Which means that maybe, just maybe, I have a shot at getting out of all this.
He’s frisked and handcuffed me again, this time checking my hair. My bobby pins are in his pocket. I had tried to hide the phone between the toilet and the wall, but he checked all around the room as well. Michael always was a fast learner. I try to console myself with the fact that the phone wasn’t going to help me get out of here. No one is coming to rescue me.
Michael has said only one thing: “My dad didn’t kill your mom.”
I am not interested in what he has to say on the subject. I continue lying on the cot and staring at the ceiling, where there’s a water stain that looks like an elephant with wings. Michael’s sitting in front of his computer, trying to figure out if there’s anything saved on the USB adapter. He doesn’t seem to be having much luck getting it to do anything.
“Why are you here, anyway?” I ask. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Switzerland or something?”
Michael shifts in his seat. “My school sent me home.”
“Why?”
He doesn’t answer.
After a while I say, “They were lovers, you know. My mom and your dad.” Now I’m just being mean. It feels good. “Yep. Your dad used her, knocked her up, and when he was finished with her, he killed her.”
“You’re wrong. He wouldn’t have killed her. He’s not like that.”
“I’m sorry, have you met your father? He’s not exactly in line for sainthood.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michael says. “Everyone assumes he’s this terrible person because he’s in mining, but it’s not true. And besides . . . he told me that he didn’t kill your mother.”
“He told you.”
“Yes,” Michael says stubbornly, still not looking at me. “I asked him.”
I watch him type. “You poor thing,” I say, shaking my head. “You still worship him, don’t you?”