Author: Sophie Jordan

“Mom,” I croak, my throat muscles crying out at the effort. It hurts to even speak. “I want to go to my room.” I look at her, compelling her to listen, to drop it, to take me away from these men. It doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s done.

Her wild eyes scan me, and I know she’s trying to decide the best thing to do. As calm and accepting as she’s been . . . this happening to me has pushed her over her limit.

If I wasn’t so weary, so beaten, I’d lash out at her. Why is she angry now? What happened to the afternoon Pollock first showed up with the headmaster? Why didn’t she get angry then and do something? Take me away, run off with me to some remote cabin in the mountains where I would have been safe from the world?

Now it’s too late for me.

Mom must read some of this on my face. My knees wobble and she tightens her arm around my waist. “C’mon. Let’s get you inside.”

We’re on the porch when Pollock calls back, “She can stay home tomorrow, but I’ll expect her back in school the day after. And I expect no more incidents from her in the future.”

Mom stiffens beside me. I hear her inhale and she starts to turn. I know she’s about to respond.

“Don’t,” I hiss, understanding how this game needs to be played. Maybe I didn’t understand before, but I do now. Fighting back— openly fighting back—isn’t the way.

I urge Mom ahead into the house. When the door shuts behind us, I want to weep with relief. I feel safe inside these walls. Finally able to drop my guard. However false the perception, my body turns to lead, almost taking Mom and me both down.

She cries out my name, wrapping her arms around me and heaving me up. “Davy! Davy!” A feat. She doesn’t weigh much more than me.

She manages to slow my descent. The floor rises up to meet me, the tile cool and slick under my cheek. I sigh and press my palms to the tiles, welcoming the chill into my body. My neck burns like fire.

Mom’s voice is frantic above me.

“Just want to lie here . . . for a bit. . . .”

She tugs at my arm. “Let’s get you into bed.”

“Mom! What’s wrong?” I turn my face at the sound of Mitchell’s voice. He clears the foyer and hurries toward us. “Davy? What happened?” His fingers gently brush the gauze covering my neck.

“Mitchell,” I breathe, a slow smile curving my lips. “How are you?”

“Is she high?”

“They must have given her something. Let’s get her to her room.”

Mitchell picks me up and carries me up the stairs and into my room. Mom pulls back the covers. He sets me down and stares at me, his gaze riveted to my neck as Mom slips off my shoes.

“They imprinted her,” he spits the words out. Not a question. A statement. His hands open and shut at his sides like he wants to punch something.

Mom nods, not saying a word.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. . . .”

I find my voice. “I slapped Zac . . . at a party. . . .”

“You slapped Zac?” Mom sounds appalled.

“He was being . . . jerk.” I giggle at this.

“This is because of Zac?” Mitchell growls. “I’m going to kill him.”

Now I laugh harder. “That would be funny. You ending up . . . killer . . .”

“Mom . . . how could you let them do this?” There are tears in his eyes, and this sobers me. I can’t remember my brother crying. Nothing ever gets to him. Not the fighting with our parents, not getting in trouble at school—not getting kicked out of school. Not flunking out of college and moving into the guesthouse.

It’s not that he was indifferent to all that happening. I know he cared. I know he hated being the “disappointment.” But he never cried. Not like now. Not like he’s crying for me.

“I didn’t have a choice. They just took her. I didn’t know until it was done.”

“You should have stopped them!” He whirls from my bed and faces Mom. “They can’t do this to our Dav!”

“I know!” she explodes, waving her arms through the air at her sides. “But she’s not our Davy anymore!”

This hangs on the air.

Mitchell doesn’t react, and I’m past reacting. I stare at his back. He’s rigid, his spine ramrod-straight, gone is the chronic slouch that is so very him.

Right now, I just want to pull a pillow over my head and hide in my room forever. Even though I can’t. The Agency won’t let me. And I have to finish high school. Not just for them but for me.

And yet there’s some comfort in this bed I’ve slept in all my life, my head resting on my familiar pillow with my stuffed duck staring at me. Dot is faded to a dull yellow now, the polka dots beneath its wings no longer identifiable.

I blink burning eyes. The days of my youth when this duck had been bright and shiny—when I had been bright and shiny—are like a dream. A dream growing dimmer and dimmer with each day. The bed sucks me in deeper and I never want to leave it.

A door slams downstairs.

“Caitlyn!”

Mom inhales at the sound of her name and squares her shoulders like she’s bracing for battle. “Up here, in Davy’s room!”

Footsteps pound the stairs. Then Dad’s in the doorway, panting like he’s run a mile. His hair is wild around his head, like he dragged his hands through the strands. The tie around his neck droops, mangled and twisted, the knot loosened around mid-chest. His suit jacket is missing.

“I came as soon as I got your message. What happened—” His voice dies the instant he sees me.

My eyes well with tears as his gaze lands on me . . . on my neck.

All the life, the last of his energy, bleeds out from him in that one look. Suddenly, he appears smaller, shrunken. A shell of my dad. Empty and dead-eyed.

Just like Mom said: I’m not their Davy anymore.

I’m something else. Not a daughter they can guide through life. They have no control over what happens to me. The Wainwright Agency decides my fate.

I’m relieved when Mom and Dad leave. Mitchell lingers, sinking down beside me on the bed. He touches my back and I flinch.

“Please. Just go.”

I hear his breath, ragged and sharp beside me, and I can’t even summon enough emotion to care that I might have hurt his feelings with my dismissal. The bed lifts back up as he stands.

The door clicks shut after him and I curl into the tightest ball possible, dragging Dot against my chest. Closing my eyes, I stop resisting the fog rolling into my mind. Latching on to a random tune, I wrap myself in it and slide into sleep, where I don’t have to think about anything anymore.

The first time I wake, Mom’s there, trying to force soup on me. Like I have a cold or the flu. Like it’s just a sick day and I’m home from school.

She holds the spoon to me like I’m a baby—or an invalid—in need of feeding. I motion it away with a moan.

“C’mon. You have to eat, Davy.”

“Not hungry,” I mumble, and roll onto my side, facing the window, my head pounding. After a while, I feel her weight lift from the bed.

“I’ll just leave the soup here.”

I don’t bother telling her to take it. I don’t want to eat. I just want to sleep and wake up in the morning like none of this ever happened. Like everything has been a bad dream and I’m the girl I used to be.

The following morning, Mitchell wakes me, shaking my shoulder gently. “C’mon, Davy. We need to remove your gauze.”

My eyes fly open with a gasp. The burning throb in my neck instantly reminds me of everything that’s happened. His fingers brush the edge of the gauze and I give a little yelp and shoot up, pressing as far back as I can into the headboard.

Mitchell holds his hands up wide in the air like I’m pointing a gun at him. “Hey, Mom showed me the aftercare instruction paper. We should have removed it already. You don’t want to get an infection. We need to clean it.” He holds out his palm. A fat white pill sits there. “And I brought you one of Mom’s pain pills left over from her knee surgery.”

I shake my head and clasp both hands around my neck. “I—I . . . No. Don’t touch me.” I don’t want anyone to touch me.

“Davy—”

“I don’t want to see it.”

He dips his head as though understanding that. “Okay. You don’t have to look at it. Let me take care of it then.”

“No. You don’t understand. I don’t want anyone to see it. Especially you.”

He blinks. “Why not me?”

I punch the mattress beside me. “Because you’re my brother. I don’t want you to see this thing on me!” I motion furiously to my neck.

“Davy, it’s not going to change how I see you.”

“It changes everything!” I hear my words, recognize how shrill my voice sounds, but I don’t care. “Out!” I point to the door.

Mitchell’s lips compress, making him resemble Dad a lot right then, but he doesn’t say anything else. He just rises and turns for the door. I watch him walk away, my heart in my throat, my fingers still clasped around my neck, like he might turn back and try to pry my hands away and see the imprint for himself.

Once the door clicks shut, I slide back down on the bed, my fingers loosely clinging to my throat, still holding my neck as if I can somehow hide what’s there. Cover it up so that no one can ever see it. Even me.

Imprinting falls under the purview of the State. No civilians or local police agencies may impede a representative operating at the behest of the Wainwright Agency. . . .

—Article 13B of the Wainwright Act

FIFTEEN

I DOZE IN AND OUT ALL DAY. THE GAUZE AT MY NECK begins to itch and chafe terribly. It stings with a heat that seems to come from beneath the skin, but I still can’t bring myself to remove it. The fear of infection serves as no motivator.

I just can’t look at it. And neither can anyone else.

I stare at the fan blades whirring above me. The spinning slats hypnotize me, matching the rhythm of the song humming softly from my mouth. Lyrics escape my chapped lips, practically soundless on the air. Even with the pulsing warmth in my neck, I’m cold. Goose bumps break out over my arms, but I can’t will myself to move. Even to cover up. The blanket I kicked off in my sleep is wadded at the foot of the bed. I shiver, letting the song in my head and the whirring fan lull me.

A knock sounds at my door.

I don’t say anything, waiting for them to go away. Mom checked on me when she got home an hour ago. Like Mitchell, she tried to talk me into removing the bandage. She finally left when it became clear I wasn’t in a talking mood. Nor was I inclined to remove the gauze from my throat.

Idly, I wonder if I’ll ever be in a talking mood again. The prospect of staying here in this bed forever seems alluring.

My head falls to the side, and my gaze sharpens on the photo on my bed stand. It’s a close-up of me and Zac. My dark hair is swept up off my shoulders. The sweetheart neckline of my pink homecoming dress is just barely visible. I thought I had looked so sophisticated that night. I never felt like I was particularly pretty. My eyebrows were a little too thick, my chin a little too sharp, my eyes too big. Like some kind of elf creature. But Zac had called me beautiful. And the way his eyes widened when he first saw me, I believed him. In the photo, Zac’s hand covers my shoulder so completely, almost possessively, like he feared I might slip away if he didn’t hold me. Obviously, he doesn’t feel that way anymore. I guess I can understand his ability to let go of me now. But not the betrayal. My hand drifts to the bandage. Not this.

Staring at our photograph, I remember the way his hand felt on me, the sensation of it on my shoulder . . . everywhere, really. Like he couldn’t keep himself from touching me. An ache starts at the center of my chest and I curl myself tighter. Reaching out, I put the photograph facedown.