Page 8 of Trade
Panic clutches at my chest and fresh tears fill my eyes. I’m not a crier. I don’t want to cry in front of these women. I watched them walk to the lottery time after time, and I didn’t cry then.
The shame burns.
“Too bad,” Amy chirps. “It’s yours now.” Her grin fades. “You helped my sister after she won the lottery, you know. Gina Armstrong. She works in Facilities now.”
“That’s great,” I manage. I vaguely remember a brunette with two black eyes and a broken jaw, her torn nails digging into my forearm.The tea will work, won’t it? It has to work.
I’d lied. I’d sworn to her it would—one hundred percent—and if it didn’t, I had something else. Dad never lied to the women when they came to him for the old recipe made from plants considered weeds in the Before. I understand why he wouldn’t, the principle of the thing, but it always felt like another act of violence to me, to withhold comfort from a person in pain.
I pick the first volume ofFlora of North Americaout of the pile and hug it to my chest, tracing the worn corner of the cover with my thumb. I wish Dad were here. So he could live every minute with the lottery hanging over his head? So he could watch me shoved out of the bunker, knowing exactly how the women look when—if—they come back?
I clutch the book harder until its edges bite into my palms, the horror taking on yet another dimension. How did I not see it before? I knew. How did I tuck it away in my brain like the other things you don’t think about? Death. Meghan with the long hair who your husband complained about daily until he suddenly stopped mentioning her at all.
“I’ve got the bunk above you,” Amy says brightly. My brain shorts so bad I swear I can smell it sizzle. She’s happy. How is that even possible?
“Okay, kiddo,” Cecily calls from the aisle. “Scram. You’re way too chipper for the circumstances. Let Gloria and me wallow in misery together for a little while.”
Amy pats my thigh. “Don’t stress too much. The odds are one in six hundred and fifty-seven.” Her eyes widen. “Oh, actually, I guess now it’s one in six hundred and fifty-eight.” She smiles like that’s good news. Like I’m not the one who’s improved the odds.
With that, she squeezes out, and Cecily squeezes in. I scoot the book pile over with my butt to make room for her on the mattress, wiping my face with my coverall sleeve.
For a moment, we sit in silence. The other women are hanging around in the middle of the room where the light is brightest or by the door where they take turns peering out the small square window into the hall. Cecily and I have a degree of privacy if you don’t count the woman in the next bunk over who’s listlessly staring at the ceiling.
“Everyone knew, eh?” I finally sniffle and ask.
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“How long?”
She shrugs. “A few months. He was discreet. Meghan—not so much.”
A thought hits me. “Oh God. Did she live here? Was I going to get her bed?”
Cecily shakes her head. “No, she was down in N-8.”
I exhale. “Thank God for small mercies, eh?”
Cecily hums in agreement and rests her shoulder against mine. The tears threaten again. And the shame. I’m truly afraid for the first time in my life of what Cecily had to face years ago—and live with every day since.
“I thought Bennett was avoiding me because there’s some problem with the water system, and he didn’t want me to worry.”
“Oh, there’s a problem with the water system, too.” Cecily flashes me a wry smile.
“I knew it.” I bark a laugh while fresh tears roll down my cheeks. “At least the odds are good. One in six hundred fifty-eight.”
Cecily lets out a long, ominous breath. I look over. Her face is grim, and her eyes are sad.
“Tell me,” I say.
“They’re going to pick you. At the next lottery.”
Everything inside me drops—my heart, my stomach—like whatever has been holding them in place for my whole life has suddenly disappeared, and my guts are in free fall, and there’s no floor, no bottom, no end.
I sit straighter and wrap my arms around my middle to hold myself together. What else can I do?
“How do you know?”
“You have to think like Command. Right now, every single married woman in this bunker is freaking out. Everyone knows you, Gloria. Theylikeyou. And there was no man more respected than your dad. If this can happen to you, it can happen to them, right? No one is safe.”
