She smiled close-lipped, and instead of answering, she shrugged.
Drusilla was a strange girl, I thought as the hours passed, but she was intelligent beyond my understanding, and she seemed like the most determined person I’d ever met, even though she never mentioned what she wanted to do with her life other than escape Paducah—I believed she would do it someday. And she never told me how she ended up with Kade, or what made her heart so hard and unforgiving. But I had my theories. Maybe the person Drusilla once loved was dead; maybe he had been killed in one of the bloody fights that seemed to be the centerpiece of life in Paducah. I knew little about my new friend, but what I did know for sure was that my first impression of Drusilla had been right: she was much stronger underneath than what appeared on the surface.
Drusilla was a good person, but despite her good heart and caring nature, after three hours of friendly conversation, she still refused to help me escape.
“Like I told you,” she said, “I’m not going to risk my own plans for you.”
“So then you do have a plan?”
“Of course I do. Tonight, I leave this place. It’s been three weeks in the making—this time it’s going to work.”
I stood in front of a tall mirror, turning left and right to see my outfit at every angle, my hands lost in the ruffled layers of a long, black skirt. I wore a long-sleeve white blouse cut low in the chest where my small breasts looked much bigger than they really were, pushed up by the corset. My dark hair was loose around my face, where long, wispy tendrils hung on both sides in springy curls; the rest of it held together by that long braid. My eyes were heavily dusted with brownish-pink eyeshadow; black eyeliner had been drawn perfectly on the upper and lower lids; my lips had been painted, and there was pink blush in my cheeks, and although I liked Drusilla’s work very much, I thought the girl staring back at me in the mirror was someone I didn’t know.
“But couldn’t you take us with you?” I asked.
“No.” Drusilla put away the makeup on the vanity. “I have to be…there”—she was careful about giving away too much information—“at a certain time; even a minute later and they’ll leave without me. You could go with me if you wanted, but there’s no time to break that man out of the trenches first, and I know you’re not going to leave without him.”
“No. I won’t leave without him,” I said right away.
Drusilla wiped the vanity off with a rag, and then slid the stool underneath it. She sighed, and turned to face me and placed her hands on my shoulders. “But because I like you and I feel like I can trust you,” she said, “I’ll tell you where you can find him.”
My heart raced. “You will?”
Drusilla nodded.
“I didn’t trust you before,” she said. “If Kade knew I told you where the trenches were, and you left this room to find him, he’d lock me in here tonight. And this is not the night I need to be locked up.”
“I understand.” I paused, and then added, “So then is that the only reason you asked me not to leave?”
“At first, yes,” Drusilla admitted. “But at the same time, I didn’t want to see you get hurt. Kade’s a bastard, but many of the people beyond that door are a hundred times worse than he is.”
I was glad I’d listened to Drusilla’s warnings.
“Thank you,” I said.
Drusilla smiled weakly, and her hands fell away from my shoulders. She went to the closet and dug around inside.
“You can wear these flats if you want,” she said, emerging with a pair of black dress shoes dangling from her fingers. “They’re all I have in your size.”
I tried the shoes on and they fit perfectly.
“So…when should we expect Kade to take us to…the fights?” My mouth was dry suddenly, and I found breathing slightly more difficult, but I kept the anxiety bottled. Atticus had never once left my mind in the past couple hours, but inevitably I had to think about the worst again.
“You can expect him anytime,” Drusilla answered. “But I won’t be going.”
The small fraction of comfort I felt with Drusilla vanished with the news.
“This is the night I leave, remember?”
“He won’t force you to go the fights with him?” I asked, assuming it was that kind of relationship.
Drusilla shook her head.
“Kade and I made a deal when I first came here: He never forces me to watch those barbaric fights, and I don’t cut off his dick while he’s sleeping.”
I blinked, stunned.
“Now listen closely,” she told me, peering intensely into my face. “You exit the building the same way Kade brought you in—through the big glass doors—and then you slip past the school busses.” She grabbed my elbow and pulled me along to the window. “Do you see that building across the street?” She pointed, and I nodded. “Behind it—you can’t see it from here in the dark—but there’s a fork in the road. The street signs are gone, but the one you’ll want to take is the one with the old accounting office on the right; the building is blue.”
I listened carefully, drawing a map in my head using the things I’d already seen, and hoping the rest I would remember.
“Go one block down that road,” Drusilla continued, “and turn left. The building you’re looking for used to be a Humane Society. They keep the fighters locked in there, in the cages.”
Atticus is locked in a cage? I couldn’t bear the thought!
Kade entered the room behind us then, and Drusilla shuffled away from the window without looking the slightest bit guilty.
With frayed nerves making my palms sweat, I stood there for a moment, watching Kade as his eyes swept over me.
“You look good,” he said, nodding with approval.
I didn’t have it in me to respond; I was too overwhelmed with what would happen next. And it hadn’t gone unnoticed in my mind that before I could get to where Atticus was being kept, it would have to be after he had fought to the death. And it also didn’t go unnoticed that Drusilla had used the word “locked” regarding Atticus’ cage, but I’d have to figure out how to get him out of the cage when I got there. If I made it there. If Atticus made it back there.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join us this time?” Kade asked Drusilla, a hint of sarcasm in his tone.
She smiled back at him, but I could tell right away that, just like before, it was fake.
“Absolutely sure,” Drusilla answered. “I have work to finish here”—she waved a hand at the strips of fabric on the floor—“got two buyers this week, and one is coming by in an hour to pick up her order.”
Kade waved a dismissive hand. “Whatever,” he said, and then turned his attention to me, and the look in his eyes made me terribly uncomfortable. “I may sell you soon anyway,” he told Drusilla. “Replacements are easy to come by, and I need a companion who doesn’t complain so much.”