You can’t let yourself go. You can’t get fat, or too ugly, or too sick. That’s what happened to Jade. Sure she was a little on the heavy side, but not fat, not by a long shot. She was older than us, too. A lot older I think. Maybe her metabolism slowed down or something. Whatever. They cut her food rations anyway. She seemed so weak all the time. Once she fainted in front of me. I begged Ricardo to give her more to eat and he slapped me hard across the face, pinned me to the floor, and put his knees on my chest. I felt like my ribs were going to snap. He told me never to speak to him like that again. I don’t tell him what to do, he tells me, he tells me, HE TELLS ME!! And then he gave me one more slap just to make sure I got the message. Jade got even sicker after that. She was hungry all the time. But when they finally started feeding her again, she started to purge. Imagine that. They gave her an eating disorder. Nobody would sleep with her anymore because she was so weak and her breath stank. They tried to fix it. Tried to get her to eat and stop purging. They put her in the hole, thinking that would do it. Scare her into compliance. It got so hot down there she passed out. I saw them drag her body out. She was limp and drooling, shaking like she was having a seizure or something. They dragged her to another room. I heard Casper call her worthless. I heard Ricardo tell Buggy to deal with it.
I never saw Jade again.
I now know something I didn’t know before. Stephen Macan isn’t Stephen Macan. He’s an asshole and a liar. It was all a lie. Everything, and that includes Ricardo. Without her being there, Tasha described in perfect detail everything about my first encounter with Stephen Macan. She knew he asked me about a scarf for his daughter, and that he got a phone call from his wife while I was talking to him. Tasha told me he’s done it before. That’s his thing and it was Ricardo who made the call after Stephen signaled him and not his wife. The scarf and the phony wife were made up to make me feel more comfortable. It was all a ploy. I wouldn’t have fallen for a puppy in the back of a van or somebody offering me candy, but I sure fell for that.
Tasha told me Stephen’s real name is Ivan Markovich. He’s a Russian and his nickname is Stinger. We’re his business. He uses guys from the neighborhood, guys like Ricardo, Casper, and Buggy to run his operation. A bunch of Russians coming in and out of this building would attract the wrong kind of attention, Tasha said. I asked Tasha why they call him Stinger and she said, “Isn’t it obvious?” Then I laughed because his nickname suddenly made perfect sense to me. Nothing in my life had ever stung as hard as Ivan Markovich.
I get drugs to numb the pain—weed, booze (booze counts as a drug), cigarettes (those count too) and Oxy (that’s my favorite. Hell, it’s everyone’s favorite). The high is almost indescribable. It’s like you’re in agony every moment of the day and then suddenly no more pain. The drug wears off and then pain comes back, but multiplied, way more intense than before. It’s not a normal kind of physical pain. It’s more like the pain of wanting the drug so badly it physically hurts. It’s like the drug woke up a pain that was always inside me. It was a pain I could feel only when I wasn’t high. I wanted the Oxy to make it go away. Does that make sense? I’m desperate for it and they know it.
It sure makes it easier to do what they want me to do. Rat follows maze, rat pushes lever, rat gets reward. Rat doesn’t follow maze, rat gets shocked, rat disappears like Jade. Me? I stay out of the hole because I follow the maze. I do everything I’m told. Since Jade vanished I’ve seen a few other girls go down into the hole for one violation or another. All I know is I don’t want to go back in the hole ever again. When they come out, the girls are always different. They don’t talk as much. They stop looking you in the eyes. They become invisible. That’s what the hole does to you. It makes you disappear. But I don’t need the hole to become invisible. I just have to go outside where nobody looks at me. Maybe that’s because they’re afraid of Buggy and Casper who are always my escorts.