Page 7 of Trade
And now I’m tripping over my boots to keep up with the guard, who’s basically a kid—he can’t be more than twenty or twenty-one—because I’m suddenly terrified of being left behind in the dark.
Every ounce of my confidence has been stripped away as easily as an orange peel. I’m scared in a way I haven’t been since I was a child. Nightmare scared. Monster-under-the-bed scared.
When I was little, I’d go to Dad when I felt this way, and then I had Bennett, and now it’s just me, and I’m not even myself.
We finally reach the dorm, and the guard pushes open the heavy metal door.
“Your stuff is on your bunk,” he says. It’s the first and only thing he says to me. He’s gone before the metal door creaks shut.
My first impression is that the ceiling seems even lower in here. I thought dorms were big, but the room is no bigger than our quarters.
No, notourquarters anymore. Bennett’s quarters. Bennett and Meghan’s quarters.
My stomach lurches, and I try to breathe through it, but the air is close and thick. I swallow desperately a few times, and by some miracle, the urge to vomit fades.
When I look up, two dozen young women stare at me from the bunk beds lining the two walls. I don’t see a living area or kitchenette, only a narrow aisle dividing the room in half. On second thought, the ceiling isn’t actually lower, it only seems that way because the top bunks are so close to the tiles.
I can’t live down here. There are too many floors above us. What if there’s an earthquake? There has never been one in the history of the bunker, but books and movies from the Before are full of them. I can’t run up eleven flights of stairs.
I’m breathing too fast. I’ve got to get out of here. And go where? Outside? Where the men are lining up to rape me?
“Boss!” a familiar voice calls out, distracting me from my panic.
Amy, the Heirloom Produce tech, drops from a top bunk and makes her way to me, slipping across the green vinyl tile in her stocking feet. She has her coverall unzipped and hanging from her hips, exposing a standard-issue white tank top. She grins and grabs my hand. “We drew straws to free up a bottom bunk for you. And it’s in the back!”
She pulls me down the aisle, and as I stumble along, women greet me.
“Hi, Gloria.”
“Hey, bunkie.”
“Welcome to the suck.”
“Sorry to see you here, but happy to have you.”
I try to smile or nod or something but it’s like someone cut the strings between my mind and muscles.
When we get to the second-to-last bunk, I see another familiar face. Cecily is leaning against the metal frame with the same sad smile she was wearing in the bathroom earlier.
“You knew,” I say, the horror taking on a whole new dimension.
“Everyone knew.” Her brown eyes hold mine, and even in the dim light from the single bare bulb in the middle of the room, I can read the words she leaves unsaid.Didn’t you, too? In your gut?
Didn’t I?Working late?Really, Gloria?
“Come see,” Amy says and slips past us into the narrow aisle between bunks, waving for me to follow. With my wide hips, I have to turn sideways.
The duffel bag I take to the gym is sitting on the thin plastic mattress. Whoever brought my bag stacked my dad’s books on the bed, but they fell over, so they’re lying in a pile.Silent Spring. The Secret Life of Plants. The Emerald Planet.
I sit beside them, my butt sinking a little between two metal slats. The mattress is hardly an inch thick.
“What do you mean, you drew straws?” I ask Amy, her earlier words finally registering.
Her upbeat facade finally thins. “Some of us with bottom bunks who know you—and people who you’ve, uh, helped—we drew straws. Well, strips of paper, actually. Short straw got your assigned bunk. Newbies always get a top bunk.”
“I can’t take someone’s bed.” I can’t do any of this.
How am I going to do this?
