Tarnished by Kate Jarvik Birch Page A

from Ohio,” one of the girls answered, clearly understanding what Kat meant.
    “Did he look nice?”
    They looked at one another like they were trying to come to a consensus. Finally they all gave a small shrug. Maybe they were deciding to be positive. Or maybe they couldn’t come to a conclusion at all.
    “Was it bad?” Kat asked. She stood and shed her own dress, too.
    “Do you remember last week, when that man with the black hat came?” one of the girls asked. “Remember how he made us open our mouths so he could check all of our teeth?” 
    “Yes,” Kat said. “He wore those rubber gloves.”
    “This was like that,” the girl said. She pulled on a pair of pants and a long-sleeved shirt and curled back up on a pile of pillows across from me. “It took a long time. He was very thorough.”
    “And the other man?”
    “He didn’t stay long,” the girl said. “I guess he didn’t see anything he liked.”
    We all sat for a long time in silence. Their faces were blank, but mine probably was, too. We didn’t wear our emotions on our faces. Maybe they were trying as hard as I was to block out things that they’d seen, things that they’d done.
    “Maybe none of us will get sold again,” someone said quietly after a while.
    Next to me Kat sighed. “Maybe,” she echoed.
    I fought to stay awake, but my eyelids were too heavy. The weariness from the past few weeks draped over me like a blanket. Thick. Suffocating. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw the glint of the gun barrel in Tony’s drawer. Maybe it had been a mistake to leave it there.
    I had no idea what time it was, but Missy still hadn’t returned. Somewhere, she was doing a job as a free agent.
    She could sing. I hoped that’s what she had been asked to do. I pictured her, in her bright green gown, up on a stage with soft lights twinkling down on her. Behind her, a band would play and she would open her mouth and the words would pour out of her, clean and pure.
    W hen I woke, Missy was standing over me. In the dim morning light that leaked past the sheets that covered the windows I could see that she still wore her green gown, but her hair was mussed and there were dark circles under her eyes.
    I moved, sitting up stiffly. My back ached from lying in such a peculiar position for so long.
    Sometime during the night, the other free agents had come in and gotten undressed, although I hadn’t heard any of it. Missy must have been the last one. Two jobs. I guess that meant that she’d been out working all night long.
    “Help me unzip,” she whispered, turning around.
    As soon as I’d freed her from the dress, she kicked it into a pile on the floor and collapsed onto the cushions beside me. She didn’t bother to hang it back up. She didn’t bother to slip back into her regular clothes. She simply tucked her arms beneath her head and closed her eyes and before I knew it she was asleep.
    I scooted closer. It felt strange to stare at Missy while she slept, but I couldn’t look away. She was different asleep. The mask that she wore during the day slipped away. Without the sassiness and bravado, she looked so much more vulnerable. She looked small.
    I studied her face, wanting to find some clue there about where she’d been tonight, but it was blank, wiped clean.
    One by one, the other girls awoke and by the time Tony brought up a pot of oatmeal for breakfast, Missy was just beginning to stir.
    I grabbed a bowl and sat back down at her feet.
    “You aren’t going to get me some,” she groaned, rolling onto her back.
    She was still only dressed in her undergarments.
    “Do you want to get dressed first?”
    She glanced down at herself as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing and shrugged, rubbing at her eyes.
    I handed over the food I’d just gotten for myself and she grabbed the bowl without so much as a thank you, shoveling a spoonful into her mouth. “I’m starving,” she said.
    “I see that.”
    “We’ve got to get out of here,”