“Fighting back does nothing but make things worse.” Mary Lou’s eyes darted in Jaclyn’s direction.
Ri didn’t know it then, but she would discover later that Jaclyn fought back often in the beginning, when her will was still strong. It wasn’t a surprise, considering how feisty she was. But when Ri found out how she was punished, she would understand why someone like Jaclyn would stop fighting.
Orion sat in silence for a long while. She looked around the room and took it all in. She thought of the John Sanford and Patricia Cornwell novels her mother loved so much, and the true crime books she devoured like her Pall Malls. Ri ended up reading those same books, because she needed an escape, and she didn’t have the money or resources to choose who authored her escape. She’d read all about men like this, who treated people as objects and life as disposable.
She had learned to love those books, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She knew it was weird to be so interested in the horrific murders of another, but the books exhilarated her nonetheless. And it was the only thing she shared with her mother, their only commonality. She became addicted to reading about lives that were much worse than hers. No magic carpets, handsome princes, or mythical creatures. She had loved the reminder that things could always be worse. A perverse way of not letting her miserable existence seem so bad.
Until now. Now she was living that worst-case scenario. Now she had become the victim in those tragic stories she devoured and obsessed over. She had been plunged right inside one of those crime books because she’d kissed Maddox for too long, lingered in a dream for too long, ridden home late. She was the pawn, controlled by sick needs, and it was all her fault. It’s all she could tell herself.
Ri would later conclude—because she had nothing but time to think—that it made sense. She was cursed from birth by way of genetics and fate.
Some people were put on earth to be shat on. Divine comedy for those pulling the strings. Ri was one of those people. Maybe she deserved it. Maybe, in some past life, she’d sentenced herself to this. Maybe her parents carried it in their DNA, passing it over to her like cancer or mental illness. A Darby through and through. A life of depravity and despair.
“Do you have any good stories?” Mary Lou asked again, seeming to sense the storm raging inside Orion’s head. “We’re fresh out. I think I’ve told all mine at least three times over.”
“And they’re thrilling, lemme tell ya,” Jaclyn added, scoffing.
Ri’s eyes trailed to Jaclyn and she scrunched her brows. “Has she always been like that?” she asked, leaning toward Mary Lou and lowering her voice.
Mary Lou shrugged. “She’s grown worse, but she’s never been a people person.” Her eyes darkened. “Which I guess I understand—people can be pretty horrible.”
“And her?” Ri nodded toward Patricia.
Mary Lou’s lips turned down, her eyes softening. “She hasn’t adapted well. Not many of them do.” There was resignation, knowledge there.
“How many have there been?” Ri asked. The questions served nothing but her sick addiction. To dreary lives. Misery.
Mary Lou’s eyes went to the floor. Lines of distress wrinkled her forehead. “We shouldn’t talk about it,” she said, giving her head a slight shake. She forced a smile. “What’s your name?”
“Orion,” Ri responded, though her thoughts belonged to the girls who came before her, and whether they went quick or not. “But everyone calls me Ri.”
“Nice to meet you, Ri,” Mary Lou said, extending a petite hand.
Ri scooted closer, avoiding the crimson stain, and she shook Mary Lou’s hand gingerly before returning her hand quickly to her lap.
“Tell me something about you,” Mary Lou said. She was trying to distract her. Ri could see that.
“Are you telling me that this is my life now?” she asked, the words spilling out on their own. She couldn’t help the panic and confusion that set in often, hitting her in waves for much of her first year in The Cell. “I’m stuck here until the day they decide to kill me? Is that what you’re saying?”
Mary Lou put a hand on her shoulder, meant to comfort. Her other cupped her cheek. Ri bit her lip again. “We’ll find a way out,” she whispered softly. “It just takes time.”
Two
Ten Years Later
It was summer.
Another one of those humid, broiling days that kept the adults inside and left the children to play.
Sun shone brightly from an azure blue sky as the children ran around in their front yards, screaming in delight when the cool water from the sprinkler or the paddling pool doused their warm skin.
A father mowed the lawn, a beer in his hand.
Across the street, an older woman tended to her hydrangeas, wide-brimmed hat protecting her wrinkled face from the sun’s harsh rays.
Squirrels scuttered across power lines.
A house unlike the rest had a yellowing lawn. No flowers in the yard. No children. The paint on the house itself was chipped, and a white junker van sat in the driveway.
“No Soliciting” was printed in large block letters on the front door.
A mother running with her child in a stroller frowned at the house, annoyed at her husband for not buying them something in a neighborhood with a homeowners’ association. What a disgrace!
The inside of the house was what you would expect by looking at its exterior. Dirty. No, beyond dirty. It was almost like something you’d see in Hoarders. Beer cans and empty takeout containers littered the floor, dirt and dust on everything, and a rancid scent clung heavy to the air. The TV blared in front of a sofa where Thing Two—as the lost girls called him—watched with a beer in his hand and feet on the cluttered, dirty coffee table. He cursed at the screen as the newsman discussed the Rams football team moving back to Los Angeles.
He hacked a loogy into his beer can and tossed it to the floor. “Goddamn, Kroenke needs a bullet in his head, man.”
He glanced back at Thing One to see if he had heard. Thing One was covered in sweat stains and he took heavy, hitched breaths as he reached for a box of cereal in a cluttered cabinet. A cockroach ran across the filthy kitchen counter in front of him, and he let out what could only be described as a shriek, throwing the box across the room.
His eyes wide, he took a steadying breath before storming toward Thing Two.
“When the fuck are you gonna do the goddamn dishes, you lazy piece of shit? Do you not see these fuckin’ cockroaches?” he yelled, swiping Thing Two’s feet from the coffee table. They hit the ground with a thud.
“What the fuck, man?” Thing Two groaned, wincing. “What’s your malfunction?”
Thing One poked him in his scrawny chest. “You’re my malfunction, you dumb sonofabitch!” Spittle flew from his mouth, landing amongst the stain on Thing Two’s dirty wife beater. “This is my mother’s house, and if she sees it like this, she’s gonna kill me. And if she kills me, I’ll come back from the fucking grave and skin you alive.”
Thing Two scowled at him. “Dude, maybe if you took half the effort to go for a fucking walk every once in a while you wouldn’t have a goddamn heart attack making a bowl of cereal,” he said, chuckling. “And you need to back the fuck up. Your breath is fuckin’ nasty. Whisky already?” he scoffed, shaking his head.