The v Girl (7 page)

I glare at her
.
“Then he must like everybody. He stares a lot at everyone with an
I-hate-you
attitude.”

I need to put distance between Azzy and me, so I take my batch of the pills and head to a deserted emergency room.

She follows me. “Forget about Rey, it wouldn’t have worked. He isn’t the only one with principles. You would’ve felt horrible.”

She’s right. If I can’t have his one hundred percent acceptance, I’ll feel as though
I’m
raping him.

“It was a stupid plan, doomed from the start.”

I get frustrated with her patronizing tone. All the tension of the past few days comes in full force. “You know what? Maybe one day you’ll feel attracted to your best friend. You’ll wonder how it would be if he made love to you. Because you think he’s so amazing in so many ways that he wouldn’t hurt you!”

My voice rises to yelling levels when she rolls her eyes. “And you’ll want to know what sex is like when it is not forced on you. So you’ll make plans to lose your V, too. Even if there’s nothing else but friendship! Even if you would prefer to wait ‘til you have met a special person, but that’s something that will never happen to you.”

“Friends with benefits? No, thank you.”

“Never say never, Azalea, and let’s talk about it when
you’re
the one eligible for recruitment.”

Azzy ignores me as she shakes off pill dust from her dress. “It’s too much trouble just to erase it from my to-do list.”

“You’re eleven. You don’t have a to-do list. I don’t want them to rape me … while I’m still a V-girl. It can’t be Rey because—” I feel a lump in my throat while looking at the floor. “—I can’t
use
him.”

I look up, and her condescending look makes me shout. “I’ll find a way before the troops take me! Don’t you dare to judge me!”

I storm toward the double doors. I wrench them open, stumbling into someone. Someone who might have listened to my outburst. Embarrassed, I look at my feet.

“Excuse me,” I mutter before looking up. But even without looking at his face I know the colossal body could only belong to a particular cop.

At this moment, I want the ground to open up and swallow me. Because Aleksey is looking at me with cold steel eyes. A wicked, humorless half smile crosses his face. He obviously listened to my diatribe.

“Dr. Velez?” he asks coolly.

I’m speechless. We saw him going to town, why did he come back? I mutely point the aisle where I heard Dad’s voice. With no other words, I walk past him.

“So if you won’t use your friend, I have a friend who loves being used. By
virgins,
” he says.

I want to make a dignified exit and not show him that his words hit me like a punch. I keep walking with my head held up. But my feet don’t respond and I stumble ungracefully. He responds with a weird breathing sound. Has this quiet, broody man repressed a laugh?

I can’t take it anymore. I sprint to my room and slam the door shut.

I’ll make him regret he used the V-word to make fun of me. One day.

Fly your flight my dear dove

Sing your song, make it reach the ocean

I want my
freedom

I want to live in
peace

I want to sing your song

To have your wings

To be able to fly

I want my destiny to leave the path that it is taking now.

The Dove – Eduardo Carrasco

Chapter 8

As days go by, I
fight to mend my self-esteem. I can’t get over my first failed attempt at seduction. First failure, and not likely to be the last. There have to be other options to lose my V, but masturbation isn’t one. I want a shared experience. To feel that someone cares for me during my most vulnerable moment. It’d be difficult to find something like that even under normal circumstances. I stand no chance while there’s war. While there’s hunger.

The air raid left Starville short of communications, which means more shortages in food. More people are enlisting for recruitment. Others scan the ruins for remnants of wallpaper. They say the starch glue is edible. And I’ve noticed the number of rats, stray cats, and dogs has drastically diminished.

The Accord cops distribute food among Starvillers, but it’s never enough. Patriots say Starvillers should pay the occupation costs so most of the Starville production, including food, goes to the war efforts.

We can’t use the provisions TCR saved and without my job we depend on the ration coupons the government gives us. To my humiliation, the rest of my family has started to depend on Aleksey’s charity. He brings us food, but I never eat any of it. Women mustn’t take food from soldiers because they rape the women who accept their food. Then deny it was rape and say it was prostitution. If my family receives Aleksey’s food, that’s okay, but I won’t. I don’t starve, but I never get full. At least Olmo is eating better, although he has got this habit of eating only a part of the chocolate bars Aleksey brings him. Olmo saves the rest in his emergency backpack.

I could use one of those bars at the moment. My stomach growls as I walk down the winding damaged streets toward the museum.

Poncho growls when we reach Exodus Street where some Accord cops are drinking. One of them, Gary Sleecket, leers at me as blatantly as usual. “Why so lonely, pretty?” he shouts before they burst into laughter. I ignore them, hurrying my way to TCR headquarters. I haven’t been there since my seduction failure, and I’m dreading being that close to Rey again.

Buck Weaver founded The Comanche Resistance after he came across some solar e-readers at the museum ruins. He used them to learn survival and fighting skills, and secretly shared what he was learning with his most trusted friends, including a fourteen-year-old Rey. As they got stronger they started to scheme acts of opposition like hiding provisions and specially sabotage against the Patriot trains. Only a dozen of us remain because TCR has lost members to recruitment. We don’t have decent weapons, and if the local government discovered us, we’d be executed.

I take a deep breath before entering the training room.

“Hey! You’re back!” says Duque, pulling me into his arms. I smile widely. It’s good to know at least someone missed me.
I missed you, too, Duque.
He leads me to the place where his fiancée Veronica is talking to Cara Winston and her daughter, Holly, but I’m not in the mood to join the conversation.

“It’s too bad the law doesn’t permit me to take her place,” Cara says grimly. Unlike me, Holly hopes to marry a local boy one day. If she survives recruitment and plays her V-card, she’ll find a husband quickly. Like her mom, she’s slim and blonde. Just the kind of girl Starville bachelors prefer. And unfortunately soldiers.

The mirrors are still where I put them. Luke Rivers is already warming up in front of them, his straight black hair falling on his forehead and framing his almond-shaped eyes. Rey trusts him, but I don’t understand why he’s here. The Rivers are one of the few Starville families with enough resources to bribe the local authorities to make them ineligible for recruitment.

My heart skips a beat when I see Rey. I never felt like this before around him, but butterflies are somersaulting in my stomach. He greets me stiffly. Can it get more awkward between us? Something about the way he looks at the mirrors tells me he’s thinking about the last time we were here together.

I can’t stand the awkwardness so I leave the room to enter an adjoining room in which the roof has collapsed. The sunlight blinds me for a moment.

Nats first and later Patriots used this room to behead their enemies. The room’s tragic past and the strange sounds heard at night are the reason for the rumors of a haunted museum. Here, Mathew Berkley is using a highly illegal object: our very outdated solar gadget. On sunny days, it gives us limited access to the wired.

“No news on Midian?” I ask. Up until the night of the air-raid, we kept contact with Midian’s resistance.

He shakes his head. “We haven’t received pigeons either. Fanny has been praying for their souls.”

Fanny is Mathew’s pregnant wife. At twenty-two, Mathew’s been married for six years and is expecting his second child. Starvillers think getting engaged at thirteen and married at sixteen is natural. It isn’t. It’s an aftereffect of war and recruitment.

I throw some bread crumbs to the floor whistling “The Dove,” my dad’s favorite song. Mathew joins me. Our messenger doves magically appear and fight for the bread crumbs. Most gadgets are traceable, but a trained dove delivers the message only to someone who knows the password. We write in codes that later translate into the Comanche language.

When I return to the mirror room, everybody is holding a broomstick.

“Duque will take charge,” announces Veronica proudly as she kisses her fiancé’s cheek.

TCR members are supposed to learn a combat skill and then take charge as the instructor in one of the sessions. Today, Duque will train us in wooden sword combat.

We start with a warm up and simple combat exercises. Very easy.

When we pair up for more complicated exercises, the ditched sessions take a toll on me. I’m usually part of the top four fighters, but today I have problems defeating Veronica, the most recent addition to TCR. When I finally manage to beat her, I’m sweaty and bruised. Even with our rudimentary protection gear, I get hit twice. While fighting Cara, I get my lip cut. It’s humiliating. Ignoring the pain, I swear I’ll wake up at four a.m. every morning to practice.

Veronica notices my struggles and taunts me. “So, V-girl, will you ever take charge?”

I frown. I haven’t been the greatest contribution to the resistance lately, but Veronica isn’t the most significant contributor either. Rey usually keeps the youngest of us out of the most dangerous missions: Holly, Duque, Veronica, and me.

Rey scowls. “Leave her alone.”

But I’m already sliding mattresses to the middle of the room. “I’ll take charge!”

“Not another first aid lesson, V-girl?” asks Joey.

I shake my head. “Freestyle wrestling. Grab a mattress.”

“Yes!” Luke says enthusiastically.

“Work in pairs,” I command. Cara and Holly, Divine and Joey, Veronica and Duque, Luke and Rey.

Everyone’s eyes are on me. I have to demonstrate first.

I walk straight toward Mathew, who is in a defensive stance over the mattress. Inside I’m feeling less secure than I’m trying to appear. He’s strong, but I’m fast.

Aware of Rey’s proximity, I show off a little. In a sweeping move, I’m behind Mathew pushing his knees with mine, balancing him off. Using my hips to gain strength, I punch his side. He lands with a thud.

Mathew smiles. “Nice! Way to go V-girl!”

From the corner of my eye I see Rey smiling appreciatively, and I have to fight the impulse to grin at him. “Take turns to try to make your opponent fall to the ground. Then switch partners.”

In no time, everyone is wrestling as I monitor the pairs, giving feedback here and there. I command them to switch partners. I almost snort when I correct Veronica’s technique as she struggles to keep her balance against Divine.

I’m giving some feedback to Holly and Duque when someone grabs me by behind. In a fraction of a second, my back lands on the mattress and Rey’s hard rock body is above me, his face only an inch from mine. His hands grab my wrists above my head. I forget how to breathe.

He grins playfully. “Don’t ever leave your defenses open.”

I struggle to recover my composure. There’s nothing but friendship between us, but my body doesn’t know the difference. A hot, electrical sensation spreads all over my body. Rey’s eyes have mischievous glint. His body lingers over mine more than it should before he stands up.

I’m left feeling dizzy. My accelerated breathing embarrasses me. At this moment, I realize how wrong I am in regarding him as a saint. He’s a man. A hot-blooded man who sets my body on fire.

The rest of the afternoon is spent scheming and plotting. With our rudimentary weaponry and the ban on gunpowder, the most we can do for now is to mess with Patriot roads and railroads. We’re extremely cautious and start sabotage missions only when storms and tornados erase our tracks. If Patriots discover us, Starville will suffer the same destiny as Midian.

Rey asks for volunteers for the next mission: An excursion to the electric wires that run north sixty miles from the lake. He’ll create an untraceable server with a wireless connection there to give us access to sites free of government censorship. Bandits, weather, beasts, and soldiers are risks we have to consider. We don’t have vehicles, so the five volunteers will have to hike for days. Some of us will have to stay. If the mission goes wrong and nobody survives, there’ll be Comanches left to continue the resistance. My dad, Mathew’s wife, and Baron Diaz don’t train with us, but they’re members, too.

Everyone volunteers and now it’s supposed to be Rey’s call. He’s not a tyrant, but the kind of leader who values his people’s opinions. The first opinion he asks for is mine. I hate being on the spot, so my tone is nervous. “You and I, Rey. Cara because she’s great with weapons, and Mathew because he’s our best hacker. Perhaps Luke wants to stay this time because he was part of the last two missions, but I’d take Luke’s sister, instead.”

“What? Elena doesn’t even know about us,” says Luke.

“As bait,” I explain. I was expecting Luke to get angry, but he laughs along with everyone else. He knows his sister has been a bitch with everyone here.

Others suggest a similar line up.
Rey will go, along with Cara, Mathew, and Luke. There’s only one spot left. I fight for it with all I have. But at the end Rey chooses Duque. Of course, Rey always overprotects me. Hell, it makes sense for him to do so.

The meeting ends and I hurry to gather my backpack.

I find Poncho, and we dart through the streets. While running, I feel my bruises aching and a stubborn determination to achieve my goals. I have two objectives in mind: One is to become TCR’s top fighter. The other is trying to find a partner to lose my V.

I pass Olga Buzko’s house. It used to be Angie’s home. She was nineteen, a spinster’s age and afraid of being recruited, but Rey put off marriage to raise Reyna. She married Buck Weaver to get a marriage tattoo. Azzy gave her the cold shoulder after that, but I would’ve done the same. You don’t belong in society without a tattoo, and you can’t get other tattoos without the marital one. I’d do anything to avoid recruitment, including marrying a man I don’t love.

I hear loud footfalls behind me; I turn to find Rey catching up with me. Did he hurry through whatever he had to do at the museum to find me?

He doesn’t look comfortable around me, and I’m at a loss for words that’ll make us both feel better. If I were a person who knew how to apologize, I’d say:
I’m sorry
. I tried to force him to do something he didn’t want, and now he acts awkwardly around me. But what’s the point in apologizing? Words can’t change the past.

“Lily, can’t we at least be friends?”

Friends
. The word stings for a reason. “Not yet. Give me some time.”

His eyes look pained in a way that has nothing to do with sudden physical exertion. “I wish we could go back to what we were before.”

“Me, too. I just feel … embarrassed at the moment. And before I ... I have to take care of some things.”

He understands what I mean. “Some things? You mean you’re still trying to … you know—”

This whole conversation feels wrong and I can’t stand it. “I don’t want to talk about this, and especially not with you.”

His face is a mask of frustration. Rey grabs my hand before I can dart away. “Wait, Lily. Please … don’t do anything. You shouldn’t do something you’ll regret after recruitment. You don’t have to.”

Well, it’s easy for Rey to say that. I might be accompanying the troops toward a life of sexual slavery soon.

“Yes, I have to.”