She licks her dry, cracked lips. “Why did you jump? Are you the same age as me?”
I shake my head.
“No?” she mutters.
I nod.
“You are?”
I roll my eyes, getting tired of this. I want to speak. I open my mouth, the words teasing the tip of my tongue gently, but like always when faced with something I don’t want to deal with, I choke, and my mouth slams closed.
“You’re broken, Dove. You will always be broken.” I shiver, The Shadow’s voice echoing over my flesh. He followed me everywhere. I woke during the night and swore I saw him lurking in the dark corner of my room. Everywhere I went, I could sense him. Is he here, too?
“Wait!” Rose interrupts my internal meltdown, inching forward. “Dancer? You were a dancer, too?”
My head snaps up, my eyes eating up the distance between us. I nod, my long red hair falling over my shoulders. I lick my swollen lips, wanting to force words out, but they don’t come. They never do. But then—“Yes.”
“Wait!” Her hand comes up to silence herself. “You do speak?”
I chew on my lip. “Yes. I just don’t like to, and I have issues when I’m faced with unfamiliar trauma. It’s a defense mechanism that happens when I’m scared.” I shake my head, forcing myself to be quiet. I don’t want to sound weak.
Rose seems to understand, without understanding. My chest begins to flutter. Can I like her? I don’t like anyone. “Well, I danced at a hip-hop club. For money. Having no family and being broke as shit isn’t always fun, but fun doesn’t pay the bills.” Rose is beautiful. Her skin is a few shades darker than mine, but more on the lighter scale. She’s clearly part African American. When she smiles, her straight white teeth beam. “I’ll go through the dance styles, and you tell me what yours was?”
I nod, excited with the new lead.
She eyes me up and down. “Hmmm, ballet?”
I freeze.
“Ballet?” she asks, smiling. “I was right!?”
I shake my head. “No.” She was right, in a sense, but it has been a long time since I hung up my slippers. Now, I don’t dance for pleasure. I dance to live. Literally.
“Damn. I was sure you looked like a ballet girl.”
I roll my eyes at her judgment. “Okay.”
She laughs. “All right, all right, I know, that was bad. Okay, how about hip-hop?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Jazz?”
Shake.
She raises one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “…stripper?”
I gulp, my lips curling under my teeth. I nod.
“Damn!” She laughs. “Little preppy princess is a stripper. I mean, I see it. You got that whole my son’s girlfriend thing going on.”
I glare at her.
She chuckles again. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a filter.”
Clearly.
“Well, how long have you been here for?”
I bring my finger to the ground and write twenty-two. “Twenty-two girls later…”
“And they’ve all left?” she asks, fear glassing over her eyes briefly.
With good reason.
I offer her a sympathetic smile. “They just disappeared. I don’t know where to. I never spoke to any of them like I am you.”
“To where?” Roses whispers.
Heavy boots slap against the ground as metal keys clink together, interrupting my answer.
“Twenty-two!” one of them hollers, a skull bandana covering the lower half of their faces.
Four of them. The same four who always come to collect. They’re all heavily garmented in black clothes. Black jeans, shirt, hoodie, and black beanie. It’s obvious they’re hiding their identity. Since the night that one of them took me, I’ve not seen anything of what they look like. I wince internally from the memories of the intruder, the stranger in the neon mask. Was it one of the four? But even as I think it, my eyes falling over their bodies, I know that all four of them are too tall, too large. The rapist—because that’s exactly what he is—was skinny. Too short.
I relax. For now.
Reaching for Rose, I catch onto her arm. I don’t want them to take her. I like Rose for some reason, and I don’t like anyone. Something inside of me has latched itself to her. My soul recognized hers like an old friend, as if they’d been friends for lifetimes before ours.
One of the guys snorts, tilting his head back to look at the other, who is watching me carefully. His dark green eyes peer into mine. He’s death draped in sin, tormenting me to come out and meet my maker.
I blink, breaking the eye contact. They never speak much. Silence, like