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“I’m sorry. But, what the hell? He paid a fortune for this uniform and look what they’ve done.”
“You’ll be fine.” I went to the supply closet where spare uniforms were kept. I grabbed replacements but then I saw she was still standing there with her arms wrapped around herself, clearly trying to protect herself. “I know the gravy isn’t that great. Come on. You don’t want to be stinking of it all day. It’s horrible stuff.”
She was still crying.
“Don’t cry,” I repeated. “They’ll know they’re getting to you and that’s never good. You’ve got to be a fighter here.”
“I’m not a fighter.”
“You’re in the deep end, Ash, you’ve got to do something.” I pushed her into the shower, keeping out of the way as the water cascaded over her head. I didn’t even know why I was helping her. There was nothing I can do. My dad would have a fit if he knew I was helping a no one.
“I didn’t want to come here.”
“No one ever wants to come here. This is what we do though. We find a way around it.”
“This is what you did?”
“It’s what we all do, Ash. Don’t let them get to you. Come on. Get out of those clothes.”
She sniffled and I waited.
I wasn’t going to strip her out of her clothes. This was the fight she needed.
“I can’t believe you hit that girl with your food tray.”
I thought about the way she sat on Gael’s lap several weeks ago. “She deserved it.”
“I don’t think anyone deserves to be hit.”
I didn’t say anything else. This girl, I didn’t know where she came from, but it was clear she wasn’t from around here. She certainly wasn’t a part of the life either. This world wasn’t for her, not even by a little bit.
“Thank you,” she said.
I turned to see she’d stripped out of her gravy-stained clothes. “What for?”
“For not abandoning me. I … I don’t know what I’m doing.”
I should leave. This wasn’t my fight and I was already trying to make it through high school. The Monsters had made it a lot easier for me, but I couldn’t seem to move. Folding my arms across my chest, I nodded. “No problem. You’ve got to learn to protect yourself.”
“We’re not supposed to have to protect ourselves in school.”
I blew out a breath. “This isn’t like any other school, Ash. You’ve got to learn fast, or next time, it won’t be gravy they’re pouring over your head.”
Chapter Eleven
Vadik
Blood was on my hands.
Blood covered all of our hands. Not right now, but I knew it was there. I counted my victims. Today, my personal death count rose to fifteen.
I sat outside on one of the many benches my father had installed. The truth was I wanted to go and find Emily. Everywhere I turned, arrangements were being made for this fucked-up ball. I didn’t like it.
It wouldn’t be long before I met Emily’s betrothed. She had no idea her father had sold her.
“You okay?” Caleb asked, walking toward me.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“How come you didn’t turn up?”
Normally, after a raid and kill, I would go hang out with Caleb. We’d talk about bullshit and it would make me happy.
“Didn’t feel like it.”
I hated killing people. Caleb knew that about me, and I thought, in a way, he understood, but at the same time, he also wasn’t quite on board with my reasoning for it. Some of the lives we’d taken, they’d been innocents. With my hands resting on my thighs, I didn’t see what was in front of me, but I saw the wife of one of the men who tried to report us to the police. He’d been working for my father and because he wasn’t paid the right salary to which he felt he deserved, he turned rat. The entire thing went ugly. My dad took his death as a personal responsibility and to the whole of the Monsters, he used it to teach me. That was what Caleb, River, Gael, and myself, always were, a teaching episode.
Our parents didn’t truly care, not really. Well, maybe in some way they did, but it never lasted. Their caring lasted as long as their teaching, or until the next teachable moment. Anyway, the man himself had been chained up. Unlike Caleb’s dad, mine liked to prolong the torture of his victims, so he hadn’t been fed for nearly a week or given any water. He was dehydrated and starving. His wife, she’d been chained up, given sustenance. At my father’s command, I was to shoot her in the leg, in the stomach, in the arms, and then in the head.
I couldn’t not follow his command. At the time, I’d been twelve years old.
This was how fucked up our world was.
We didn’t have the kind of fathers who wanted to play soccer or go to parent-teacher night. No, our dads taught us how to be killers. None of us had any right being at that school. Being around people, let alone near Emily.
