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“I know what you did,” Shae said quietly. “And I won’t forget it. Here’s the new rules. You stay away from me, and I’ll stay away from you. But you get in my face, and I don’t care what kind of beating you try and give me, I won’t go down.”
Maybe Vikka understood her, maybe she didn’t, and maybe the words were just for Shae, but she’d found the little girl who’d saved her mother from an abusive boyfriend, stolen a car, and lived for a month on the streets of Dallas.
She needed that girl if she hoped to survive.
Vikka tried to push past her, but Shae stepped in her path again. Vikka glanced away, probably looking for Twenty-Seven.
Shae spotted him over Vikka’s bony shoulder.
Judah stood in front of him. Huh.
Finally, Shae moved away, and Vikka spat at her, then kept walking.
Whatever.
A guard shouted, maybe at her, maybe at someone else, but she walked over to the edge of their ditch and set her shovel in the ground. It was heavy from last night’s rain.
Judah came over to her. “Shae—?”
“I never had a father,” she said, lifting the dirt. She grunted and dumped it into a nearby wooden wheelbarrow. “And I desperately wanted one. My mom went through a series of boyfriends, and none of them took until we met this guy named Hardy. He fixed cars and smoked pot, but he was kind to me.”
She stuck her shovel again into the dirt. “Hardy took me to the park sometimes, and we’d sit on the sofa together and watchBuffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m not sure why he liked that show, but I wanted to be Buffy. Tough and standing up against evil. And…and then he became evil.”
Her dirt splattered in the wheelbarrow. “He lost his job and started drinking and then, one day, he hit my mom. So hard that she lost a tooth. I’ll never forget that, seeing her front tooth gone. It made her…weak, I guess.”
The wheelbarrow was full, so the prisoner went to dump it and Shae turned to look at Judah.
“I decided I’d never be that weak.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She stayed with him for three years. Two of those were good. One wasn’t. And I saw my mom change from a person of hope to a person of fear. I don’t want to be a person of fear.”
She glanced over at Vikka, digging the trench farther down. “I won’t let it rule me.”
Judah nodded. “But don’t let hate rule you either.”
She frowned at him.
“Don’t let circumstances tell you who you are. They are simply opportunities for you to choose who you will be.”
“I choose to be brave.”
He glanced at Vikka. Back to her. “Everyone has a story.”
The man with the wheelbarrow had returned, and Judah set his shovel back into the dirt. “You might find that you two are not all that different.”
Hardly. “I don’t go around threatening people.”
Judah glanced at her, tossed his dirt into the wheelbarrow.
“If I’m going to survive here, I’m going to need my kasha.”
He nodded, then sank his shovel into the dirt again. The soil was thicker here, redder, like clay. Heavy.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t defend myself?”
“No. But you might be surprised what a little compassion gets you.”
