Yet. She thought about that. She should be scared, but all she could feel was the smooth wood under her buttocks and the slick flimsy against her stomach. Naked, she thought, naked and vulnerable.
“Talk,” Crablegs ordered, and turned up the light.
She just wanted the light to go away, to go back to her cotton-wool dreams. She whimpered.
“That’s it, that’s better.” He filmed for a moment, then adjusted something near the microphone. “Now, tell them how much you want to get out of here.”
She wanted the light to stop. She wanted to lie down and sleep. “Please,” she said. A tear slid slowly down beside her nose, under the curve of her cheekbone, across the corner of her mouth and dripped off her jaw. “Please,” she said again. “Please. . .”
“Tell them.”
“I want to go home.” It didn’t matter that she slurred, it didn’t matter that after all she had been through to be an adult in the eyes of her parents they would see her like this: naked, vulnerable, weeping. “I want to go home. Please. . .”
He turned off the light. “You can stop now.”
But Lore couldn’t stop. Her weeping turned to wet heaving sobs, to hiccoughs.
“Oh, shut up. And get off the chair.”
She slid to the floor, clutched at his trouser leg.
“Get off me. Jesus.” He wiped at the slime on his leg. “Jesus.” He threw something at her—a handkerchief. “Clean yourself up.”
He left, carrying the chair and camera, still wiping at his trouser leg.
Her sobs steadied. She cried in a low monotone for hours and hours, until they gave her more drugs, and she slept.
But today is her birthday, at least it might be. Today, she can think a little.
The day began unpleasantly, when the pill she was handed with breakfast half dissolved in her mouth before she could swallow it. Afterward, when Fishface left, she spat clots of soggy white power into her hand, and wiped her hand on the floor. She ate nearly all the food on her tray in an effort to get rid of the taste on her tongue. Some time later she noticed that the leftovers on the plates were sausage, and croissant, and juice. Breakfast. It must be morning. And that was when she started to think, to try count the days, and realized it was her birthday.
Eighteen. She now owns her share of inherited stock in the family corporation. She is rich.
When Fishface brings her lunch tray, she is alert enough to slide the pill under her tongue and pretend to swallow. She can feel it dissolving and wonders how much will get into her bloodstream before she can spit it out.
Fishface’s hood moves slightly in what Lore interprets as a smile. She stares blankly at the floor, hoping he will not notice she is more alert than usual. She catches sight of the white smears on the floor and her heart jitters. She forces herself to look away, look at anything but the floor, and after a moment, he leaves. She waits, listens. Hears a door opening somewhere, then closing. She spits the pill into her hand. Where can she put it?
There is bread with the meal. She tears off a crust and pokes a hole in the dough, then hesitates. Maybe they give the scraps to a dog. They might notice if it fell asleep. She searches the floor of the tent, finds a tiny tear in the plastic. Underneath, she can feel the long, scratchy grain of old wood. She pushes her finger one way, then another, finds a crack between the planks. She squeezes the pill through the hole and into the crack.
By now her lunch, soup and bread, is cold. She looks at it and remembers: Stella is dead. For a moment, she wishes she had the pill back, wishes she could just drift here, not thinking, until her parents pay up and she can go home. Then she will find it is all a nightmare. She never went to the resort. Tok never called. Stella isn’t dead.
All of a sudden she is angry with Stella. You have no right to make me grieve! she thinks. Her situation is difficult enough without grief—she needs to be able to think, to plan, not to feel leaden like this, awash with memory. When she gets out of here, she will tell Stella exactly what . . .
But Stella is dead.
Grief is more terrible than she ever thought possible. It is as though there is a hole