Page 189 of Everything Under the Sun

“Why?”

Drusilla sighed. “You’re safe in this room,” she said. “It’s a rule that most respect: no one trespasses in another’s home. But if you walk out that door, you’re inviting anyone to claim you as their own.” The look in Drusilla’s eyes was enough to bend my resolve.

The face the girl wore before was just a mask, the same one I wore when pretending with Kade. It was how I knew, without actually knowing, that Drusilla was just like me. It was how I trusted her so easily and could ask for her help so quickly.

“Please stay in the room,” Drusilla said once more.

Relenting, I closed the door.

I walked slowly across the floor, my movements hindered by my thoughts. A fight to the death? No. I can’t let that happen. But what can I do to stop it? My eyes burned and watered; I sniffled back the tears tearing their way to the surface, and although I kept them from falling, it wasn’t enough to hide the emotion erupting inside of me.

“Don’t cry,” Drusilla told me. “Never cry over the things you cannot control—figure out how to control them.”

I pressed the bottom of my palms hard against my eyes and rubbed in a circular motion to soothe away the itch. Inhaling a deep breath, I rounded my chin defiantly, adopting strength and rejecting weakness.

“You’ll see him tonight,” Drusilla reminded me, and she went back to work on the material. “Use your time here—a few more hours—to figure out what you’re going to do. Kade will take you to the fights. He always does. Figure out your plan now. When the time comes, either it will work, or it won’t.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then you start fresh and come up with another one.”

My shoulders rose and fell.

“And how long have you been here?” I asked.

Drusilla paused.

“I’m on my eighth try,” she answered, and looked back down at the fabric in her hands.

Defeat washed over me like a wave.

But Atticus doesn’t have that long…

59

ATTICUS

I fell on my hands and knees when Driggs shoved me into the kennel; the concrete floor scraped skin from my palms. The chain-link door slammed shut afterward, and the sound of a padlock clicking into place followed, further filling my stomach with dread.

Driggs, and the armed men with him, left without a word; other prisoners shouted curses at them as they walked by.

I was surrounded by cages. Up and down the narrow walkway, and on both sides, two dozen of them lined neatly against the baby-blue brick wall. At one end of the room there was a steel door with a little box window; above it, in white letters on a red background a sign read: Employees Only.

I threw my head back and laughed so hard and so loud my voice echoed off the walls.

“What’s so fucking funny?” a voice from the cage on my left asked.

“Yeah—why don’t you shut the fuck up?” said the one to my right.

A flurry of other voices rose over my laughter then, most expressing irritation, a few with questions of the world beyond their prisons.

“Where’d you come from?” said one man in a kennel across from me. “I have family in Frankfort—is it still standing?”

“Were you the one who gave Driggs that shiner?” asked a woman in a cage next to the man. “I hope so—I hate that red-headed piece of shit!”

My laughter continued until there were tears in my eyes and I could barely breathe.

The man across from me, with stringy yellow hair and pale blue eyes, watched me with curiosity for a moment. "I laughed like that once,” he said, “fifteen minutes after my son died. Because ten minutes before that my wife had died. And a day before she died, my daughter had died. By then, all you really can do is laugh, I guess.”

---