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Magda yanked my arm hard enough for it to zing with a burning pain. “Are you insane? What were you thinking, shouting at a Guardia?”
My mouth hung open while I panted and watched my friend. “I…” The words dried up. I was insane. I knew the risks.
Hubris had gotten the better of me.
Her eyes were wide and wild. “Carmen, when will you learn that this world doesn’t value heroines? You can’t be noble anymore, Corazón.” Her mouth had twisted into this sour expression relaying how scared and hurt she was.
I rested a hand upon the one she was currently using to grip my bicep. “I’m sorry, Magda. I got caught up.”
She nodded slowly. “We need to get back.”
I nodded, and gave her a hug. She seemed to accept my apology, but we didn’t speak another word while we walked.
That eerie, violence-tainted silence was agonizing. I wanted to talk about what I had seen, but I knew that it wouldn’t end well. Silence was easy. Silence didn’t hurt anyone. Silence didn’t make things worse.
Once we had gotten through the back door, Magda took the fruit to our room and I went to the dressing room to get changed. I took my time wrapping my heels in cotton, suddenly caught up in what Magda said.
She was wrong; I had power just like them. But I didn’t use it because I was afraid. I got lost in daydreams of what could’ve happened if I had been born with the Élites. I only had a few fuzzy memories of my family, and they definitely weren’t Élites. But they also didn’t have any power.
The other dancers chatted around me.
Maybe they had stolen me from an Élite family?
“¡Vámanos! Ya es hora,” Maestra Cecelia called from the dance studio.
I shook my head.
But… If I could be an Élite, I would have the power to change the world, too.
One thought about how Mateo and Giancarlo had used me squashed those thoughts as quickly as they had come. The world was a dangerous place for every creature save the predator that sat on top of the food chain.
Chapter13
Pretty Pink Dreams
The world around me was fuzzy. Everything was somewhat dark and vaguely pink. Usually the lights in our apartment made everything look sort of yellow, or orange, but today, with my head clouded and my senses jammed up with the fog of my own problems, everything was rose-colored.
Like vino de fresa.
“It was a much better idea to celebrate tonight instead of y-yesterday,” Magda hiccuped.
I smiled. “We could barely move after practice.”
She giggled. It was a light sound, floating in the air high above us. We were laying on our beds on opposite ends of our room, wearing simple house dresses. The night was cold, but the small furnace under the window did an adequate job of heating the entire room.
I smiled at my friend’s words as they swirled above us like glittery smoke. “It’s Saturday. How do you feel now?”
The rustling of fabric on fabric had me turning over to look at my friend. The world tilted on its side as I moved. I blinked my eyes several times to help everything return to normal. Magda wasn’t the same crisp form I remembered looking at when we’d first sat down in our room after a day full of chores and costume fittings. She was fuzzy, and I couldn’t quite make out where the bed sheets ended and she began.
I squinted, trying to pin down her form. Her face was red, like a heart. That reminded me of someone.
“Magda, do you love the boy in the restaurant?” I asked slowly. Usually, I tried to avoid talking about her true feelings for him, because love was a sensitive subject with the Withering.
“Ronaldo?” she laughed, and the sound was like tinkling bells. I joined in.
Magda shook her head back and forth several times as the ghost of a laugh echoed on her smiling lips. “Absolutely not. But he is an extremely good kisser.”
My skin went hot, so I sat up and took another sloppy swig of the heady wine. It was a bit more nutty than I had expected when first opening it. The sensation of it sliding down my throat made me feel very good. It had been a long time since I’d been kissed.
