Tarnished (3 page)

My face burned red in the dark. “You don’t know that.”

She snatched the pillowcase out of my hand. “You were going to get there with this?” she asked, peering inside. “That master of yours has started a war over you, and what? You’re going to fight him with a pocketknife? It’s not safe for anyone, not the black market dealers, not the Liberationists. Certainly not the pets. Not any of them.”

She moved closer, like maybe she wasn’t done with me. “You can’t just go marching back. It’s not that simple. If you aren’t caught outright by your master, you’d get picked up in less than a minute by someone wanting the reward money he’s offered to get you back. You’re better off here. Stay for a little bit. Get on your feet. I bet you might even start feeling happy in a month or two.”

“Happy?” The word felt like a slap. The thought of being happy without Penn was almost more painful than being separated from him to begin with. “I could never be happy if I stayed.”

Missy snorted and slung her bag over her shoulder. “Fine, don’t be happy. What do I care? At this point I’ll just be satisfied with making my own choices. Heck, I’d be fine just staying alive.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said, throwing up my hands. “You are the most selfish, inconsiderate person I’ve ever met. You came all this way just to make me feel terrible, and now you’re just going to leave me.”

“I never said I was going to leave you. You’re welcome to come with me. I’m just not going to be a part of your stupid plan to get back to your one true love, or whatever he is.”

“Don’t mock me.”

Missy shrugged. Unfazed. She looked out toward the street and I could feel that she was about to leave, this time for good.

“Please, Missy,” I begged. “I have to try. I can’t stay here knowing that Penn’s father is still controlling him. That he’s out there somewhere without me and I didn’t even
try
to get back to him.” I heaved in a breath. “I know it’s dangerous. If all those pets are dying because of me, how can I stay here and do nothing? If I do, they’re still controlling me. They’re controlling me just as much as if I had a chain around my wrist. More than that because I wouldn’t just let them be controlling my body, I’d be letting them control my mind, too.”

Missy didn’t move. She stared at me long and hard. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, tightening her grip on her bag. “But this isn’t my fight.”

“Then you might as well leave,” I said.

Missy stared at me a moment longer. Her eyes narrowed. Did she expect me to feel bad? She was the one who was deserting me. A moment later she tossed my pillowcase at me. It flopped to the ground at my feet and she spun on her heel, heading out into the night.

A lump rose up in my throat but I fought it back. I wouldn’t let her hear me cry. I snatched my things up off of the ground. I had everything I needed: a little money, a knife, a map. What help would she be anyway? If Missy could make her way across the border, I could, too.

I made my way past the construction equipment and out onto the street. I hadn’t really paid attention to the direction that Missy had pulled me in as we left the refugee center and now I was all turned around. I just needed to get my bearings. I leaned up against the cold glass window of a dress shop and closed my eyes, trying to visualize the path that I was supposed to take. But it wasn’t just that I felt disoriented. Seeing Missy had shaken me up on the inside.

The cold from the window pressed into my back, making me shiver. I dug into my bag and pulled out the stolen book. My hands shook as I flipped to the map in the front, wishing that I’d had more time to study it. The volunteers from the refugee center hadn’t found me yet, but that didn’t mean that they’d stopped looking.

“What’s this?”

When I looked up, Missy was standing over me. She plucked the book out of my cold hands.

“What are you doing?” I asked warily.

“I asked you first,” she said, tapping the book against her palm.

“It’s a book.”

“I know it’s a book, stupid,” she said, cocking her head. “What are you doing with it? You can suddenly read?”

“Why did you come back?” I asked, ignoring her question.

She studied me. “You know,” she finally said. “I liked you better when you didn’t ask questions and just did what you were told.”

I swallowed. “No you didn’t.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

She flipped through the book. “I’m not carrying this with me,” she said, tossing it on the ground. She kicked it a bit with her foot, shoving it further into the corner before she emptied the rest of my belongings into her own backpack.

“You can’t just throw that out,” I said, reaching for the book.

“I’m not carrying around a stupid book. We can’t afford to have stuff like that weighing us down.”

“We?”

She stared me down. There was so much power in that stare. I had no idea how she’d learned to do that. “I got down the street and I felt like crap, okay?” she said, hitting her hands against her sides like a child throwing a temper tantrum. “Why did you have to do this to me? It’s not fair.”

“Then leave.”

“I can’t,” she huffed. “You won’t make it ten minutes without me.”

“I already did.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and you’re pretty much in the same spot that I left you. If you want
any
chance of making it back, you need me. It’s not something I’m proud of. It’s just a fact.”

“I’m not helpless,” I said. “I can figure it out.” Which was worse, trying to find my way back to Penn all by myself, or doing it with Missy? I snatched my book back. “I’ll carry this. I can carry all my stuff.”

“Do you want my help or not?”

I took a deep breath.
No, I don’t want your help
, I wanted to yell. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from screaming it. “Yes,” I finally muttered.

“Well then listen to me.” She snatched the book from my hand. “This thing is heavy. The first rule: don’t lug stupid stuff around.”

“It’s not stupid. It’s a map,” I said, snatching it back. I tore out the small clump of pages from the front.

“Fine, keep them,” she said. “But you can’t carry your own things. What? You’re just going to walk down the street carrying this?” She held up the pillowcase. “You realize we’re trying
not
to draw attention to ourselves, right?” She shook her head, dumping the rest of the contents of my bag into her own before she zipped it with a huff and marched off.

I chased after her, cramming the torn pages into my pocket. Maybe she was right, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

“If you want me to help you, then you’ve got to listen to me,” she said. “First things first.” She stopped mid-stride and spun around to face me. “We can’t go walking down the streets with you looking like this. You’re practically a neon sign with a huge arrow pointing at the two of us. Look at the two runaway pets!”

She snatched up a piece of my hair. “We’ll start with this.”

Chapter Three

“
W
ait out here,” Missy said, pushing me up against the brick wall of a convenience store.

The bright overhead lights from inside bled out onto the street. I stared through the window, watching the way the crisp jingle of the door’s bell made the cashier turn his eyes away from the TV just long enough to glance at Missy. My stomach clenched for just a moment, afraid that he would recognize her for what she was. It didn’t matter that we were in Canada now; he could still turn us in.

I wasn’t sure how she’d done it. How had she stopped looking like a pet? Maybe it was the dark makeup around her eyes that I could see more clearly now that she was cast in bright light. Maybe it was the torn up clothes and the wild hair, or maybe it was something subtler. She carried herself differently, even than she had when we were together a few moments ago.

I studied her as she moved up the aisles, snatching a few things off of the shelves before she made her way back to the counter. It was hard to tell what the difference was. Something had changed in the slope of her shoulders, the swing in her hips.

We’d spent so many years learning how to glide when we walked, learning how to hold our bodies so that they looked fragile and elegant like a flower balanced on its stem. Carriage was just as important as any of the other skills, but it seemed that when Missy walked through the door she forgot all that.

It wasn’t a glaring difference. Not to someone who hadn’t studied this sort of thing. But it was apparent to me. It was as if she’d shed the skin of her old body and had climbed inside a normal girl, one who had gone to high school and rode in cars with boys. I didn’t understand it, but I wanted to. I wanted her to teach me how she’d done it, this metamorphosis.

Missy’s face was tense when she finally pushed the door open and rounded the corner to find me. Maybe the easy and confident way she had carried herself inside the store wasn’t so natural after all.

She shoved a few dollar bills and some change into her pocket. “That’s almost all the money I had left,” she said, scowling as she pulled me around to the other side of the building where two metal doors stood slightly ajar. She opened one up and peered inside.

“Oh, this place is gross,” she moaned, glancing back out to the street. “Damn. It’s going to have to do.”

She opened the door wider and shoved me in, following close behind. It was a bathroom, but even though it was a big box of a room there was only a metal toilet and a shallow sink inside. The long fluorescent lightbulbs flickered up above, giving off just enough light so that the corners of the room stayed hidden in shadow. It was probably for the best. At least the darkness hid some of the dirt. The places where the light hit were grimy and unwashed. Next to the sink, a small trash can overflowed with paper towels, a few of which had fallen onto the ground, now wet and stomped with dark footprints.

Missy thumped her bag down on the back of the toilet and riffled through the plastic bag full of things she’d just gotten from the convenience store.

“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the toilet.

I stared at the dirty metal bowl.

“Get used to it. You’re going to see a lot worse on the road.”

I lowered myself down onto the edge. “What are you…” My voice trailed off as Missy pulled a pair of scissors and a box of hair dye from the bag and set them on the edge of the sink.

“Do we really need to?” My voice came out a small squeak.

Missy nodded. “I’m sorry.” It probably wasn’t a phrase she was used to saying, but at least she sounded sincere.

Before I had a chance to prepare myself, she grabbed a chunk of hair from off my shoulder and snipped. A long lock of hair fell to the ground and I stifled a cry.

“I’ll be quick,” Missy said. “Let’s just get this done. I promise, you’ll survive.”

She kept snipping, moving around me and turning my head from side to side until the floor was littered with piles of hair.

She grabbed the box of hair color. On the front a beautiful older woman stared out at me with dark hair almost the same color as the congressman’s wife. “Almost done.”

The liquid was cold on my head. A tiny bit dribbled down my back and Missy wiped it off with a bit of toilet paper.

“Give me your face,” she said, tilting my chin up. In her hand she held a dark pencil, probably the same one she’d used on her own eyes. Her hand was steady as she traced along my lids. She took her time, turning my head this way and that. When she was satisfied, she finished off by brushing a bit of black onto my lashes.

“You’re going to have to rinse in the sink.”

The water felt like ice no matter how much I twisted the faucet and by the time the dye was rinsed, my neck was frozen and numb.

I stood up, shivering. “Can I look?”

“Not quite,” Missy said, dabbing at a bit of the makeup that had smeared below my eyes. She stood back, taking me in as I blotted my hair dry with a clump of stiff brown paper towels.

“Okay.” She nodded.

I stared at myself in the mirror. The lighting was terrible and the surface was blanketed with a thin film covered with scratches, but I could see my reflection well enough to know that I looked nothing like the girl I’d been half an hour ago.

My damp hair was cut in a blunt line ending just below my ears. Never in my life had I had short hair across my forehead, but Missy had trimmed it so that it lay straight across my brow, cutting a crisp dark line above my eyebrows. The dark brown color set my eyes off in stark contrast.

“It’s not perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than before,” Missy said defensively, reacting to my stunned silence.

But I wasn’t angry. I didn’t hate this new look. If anything, it strengthened me. Maybe now this new girl, the one that stared back at me from the mirror, would have a fighting chance to make it back to Penn. She looked tough, and strong, and fearless.

And I wanted to be her.

I turned away from the mirror and caught Missy’s eye. “Thank you.”

The compliment caught her off guard. “It’s fine,” she said, brushing my words away. “We should get going. If we spend too much time in here they’ll probably report us and that’s the last thing we need.”

Hastily, we scooped the chunks of hair that littered the floor into the garbage, and in a couple minutes the place looked slightly better than when we’d found it.

Outside, the air was crisp and goose bumps spread up my arms and along my exposed neck. I wrapped my arms across my chest.

Missy watched me out of the corner of her eye. “We’ll see if we can find you a jacket,” she said. “But I’m practically out of money.”

I pulled the small wad of cash out of my pocket. “I’ve got some.”

“Where’d you get this?” she asked, counting the bills I held out.

I swallowed. “I found it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Sure,” she said, smiling like maybe I wasn’t such a disappointment after all. “This helps. It’ll give us a little bit of breathing room before we have to get creative.”

“Creative?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Right now we have other things to think about.” She glanced down at my feet. “How good are those shoes?”

I shrugged. They’d gotten me this far.

“Well, you’re about to find out,” she said, sighing as she tucked her arm through mine. “Actually, the middle of the night is the best time for walking. There’s no traffic, no eyes to stare at you. Mostly the world is quiet, which is great for thinking, if you like that sort of thing. Or singing.” She hummed a few soft notes, accompanied by the beat of our feet along the sidewalk.

I’d never asked Missy what her talents had been, but now I guessed that one of them must have been singing. She would have been trained classically, of course, and wouldn’t know the songs that Penn had sung to me, but for a moment I wished that she did.

We moved along in silence. Every once in a while Missy would begin to hum again, but it never lasted long, certainly not long enough for me to piece out what the tune was.

“Tell me about the pets,” I said.

“What pets?”

“The ones that died.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets and frowned. “I shouldn’t even know about it.”

“Then how do you?”

The smallest smile pricked the sides of her mouth. “You know how they are. Forgetting we’re in the room. Forgetting we have ears. Forgetting that we actually understand things. If my master knew how many conversations I’d listened in on…”

Her eyes sparkled, but only for a moment.

“My master bought me from a black market dealer,” she went on. “They’re getting scared. I don’t know if NuPet is sending anyone out to talk to its clients, but four days ago, a man from one of the markets came to see my master,” she said. “It was almost midnight when he showed up. I was sitting in the chaise lounge like always—I never want to lay eyes on that stupid chair again.”

She crinkled her forehead, concentrating, trying to remember. Off in the distance, a siren wailed. The sound made me shiver, like it was a warning, a harbinger of things to come.

“I recognized this dealer right away,” Missy went on. “Some of them aren’t too bad, but this one…” She swallowed, composing herself. “He must not have seen me sitting there because I’m sure he would have had something foul to say to me. Instead, he launched right in. He was so worried that people would find out about the deaths. He kept saying that.
They can’t find out. They can’t find out.
I’m assuming that he meant NuPet, although he never really said. He just kept wiping his hands on his pants and looking toward the door like he expected someone to come bursting in at any second. It was just…weird…to see those men act that way, you know? They’re used to the world behaving exactly the way they want it to.”

“How many pets have died?” I asked

“I don’t really know,” Missy said. “He said he knew about four. And those were just the ones they found near their market! The last one was dumped outside the doors of his office, like a mouse that some cat dropped on the doorstep. But the rest were spread out a bit more. I think that’s the reason he came by, to ask my master to help pay off the cops.”

“But don’t they need to find out who’s doing it?”

She shook her head. “Probably. But they don’t want the feds involved. I think that’s what’s scaring them. It’s not like they really care about the girls. They’re just upset about people finding out.”

“Why?”

“They each have different reasons. The black market dealers don’t want any attention drawn to them. So far, NuPet has been fine with them reselling pets after their masters are done with them, but I’m sure it’s not really legal. And then there are people like my master. They’re just afraid their friends will find out that they bought their pets secondhand. My master told everyone that he got me from a breeder in California, which is technically true. I was bred there. But he’d never tell anyone that he actually bought me from a black market. He’d be appalled if any of his friends found out. He doesn’t want them to know I was just another one of his cheap finds.”

“It doesn’t seem like that should matter,” I said.

“Well, it does,” Missy snapped. “Anyway, my master kept asking who the dead girls belonged to.
Whose pets are they?
he kept yelling. Like he could just go track down the owners and solve everything.”

Her face was white. Her eyes wide.

“Whose pets were they?” I asked.

Missy shook her head. “They don’t know. The microchips were removed from all of them and I guess they didn’t do a very delicate job cutting them out either.”

Both Missy and I lifted our hands to our necks at the same time, feeling the place where the microchips had been. The cut on my neck was healing nicely. It was difficult to tell in the dark whether Missy’s hand hovered above a new wound and I wondered whether she’d had to cut out her microchip the way I had when she ran away or whether it had been removed a long time ago, after she’d been sold by her first owner.

“But it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “How could my leaving make any difference? It’s not like I’m the first to leave. There are other girls here. They’ve had plenty of others here before that. For years. Why would girls start showing up dead after I left?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “Maybe you didn’t cause it all to happen, but you must have been the tipping point. Maybe it’s because your master made such a big deal of you leaving. Before that, people were probably too embarrassed to admit when their pets ran away. I mean, it’s pretty humiliating, and these are not people who want to be made into fools.”

“But it doesn’t explain things. You think all those people would kill their own pets? After they spent all that money on them?”

Missy shrugged. “Someone like that might rather kill their pet than have it run away.”

She was right. I knew it. My fingers flittered to my pocket, to the collar. I couldn’t imagine what the congressman would do to me if someone turned me in. Death seemed like the best option.

“Maybe the other girls heard that you were free and it put ideas in their heads,” she went on. “All I know is that I don’t want to end up dead along with them.” She glanced around. “It’s going to be getting light soon. Can you walk any faster?”

My feet already ached, terribly. My heels felt raw and chafed, and the pinky toe on my left foot felt like it might have already fallen all the way off from the amount of pain that radiated up my leg.

“I can try.” I groaned, hardly picking up the pace. “What happens when it gets light?”

Already there was more traffic on the street than when we’d left. In front of us, a car turned the corner and its headlights flashed over us like a spotlight, making me freeze in my tracks, but the car buzzed past us, the driver a young woman bleary eyed and yawning.

“If it gets light, it blows our cover and we’ll have to waste one whole day before we can get back across the border.”

“Our cover for what?”

Missy sighed, clearly annoyed by my questions as well as my pace, and hitched her backpack up on her shoulders. “For sneaking into one of the cars.”