Lost Girls

by Merrie Destefano

  “My name is Indigo,” Madison said in a low voice. “If you call me anything else, they’ll beat me.”

  “Okay. Indigo it is. How long have you been here?”

  Lauren glanced at me, her eyes dark. Madison wore a long-sleeved top, one of the cuffs swinging loose, exposing bruises and long, thin scars that covered her forearm. She kept her gaze on my cheekbones as she applied blush, avoiding my eyes.

  “Do they beat you often?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  The other girls were pretending they couldn’t hear us talking, all three of them pouring their attention over the costumes they had selected for us. Lauren settled into a chair beside me, but couldn’t hold still. She kept tapping me on the arm, as if I didn’t already know she was there.

  “What do they do with us after the fight is over?” I asked. This is what I needed to know. What had happened to Nicole and me, and why? “Those people out there are bidding for us. Don’t pretend they’re not. But what do they do with us?”

  “You really want to know? Even though you already went missing once?” Madison’s eyes turned into long, narrow strips and her nostrils flared. “You fight. And you fight. And you fight. Forever.”

  Lauren frowned. “We already fight.”

  She gave us a grim smile.

  “You fight for your new owner. In an underground club somewhere else, far away from your home and your family. You never see anyone you love again—”

  “Indigo, don’t!” one of the other girls said in a hoarse whisper. “You know they listen in on us.”

  But Madison didn’t stop. She continued to apply my makeup and she continued to talk, despite the single tear that began to trickle down her cheek. She looked eerie, her eyes emotionless, her voice flat, that tear the only sign that what she was saying might actually be true.

  “You live in a cage or a closet and you wish you had a blanket when it’s cold or a glass of water or a change of clothes. They only wash you before a fight and they only feed you when they remember, when they aren’t too drunk or high. They use you like an animal for whatever they want, whenever they want—” She paused to look into my eyes for the first time, revealing the hollow emptiness inside. “You fight and you fight and you never get away. No matter how hard you try.”

  Lauren got up and frantically put on her costume, almost tearing the bodice in the process. One of the other girls was braiding and pinning her hair.

  “I’m going to get away,” she mumbled. “As soon as that door opens, I’m running—”

  But the door was already open and two burly guards stood there, watching us, barring the only exit. They walked inside the room and locked the door behind them.

  “Shut up!” one of them said as he grabbed Madison, then punched her in the face.

  I flinched. Lauren let out a scream.

  Madison crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

  “And you”—the guy shot a dagger-like finger at me—“get dressed. Now! Or you won’t even make it as far as the stage. You’ll have your last performance right here.” He grabbed his crotch with one hand and gave me a dark grin.

  I glared at him, but I knew I was outnumbered.

  So I put on my costume and got ready for my fight.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  One wall in the dressing room was covered with floor-to-ceiling curtains. Behind that stood a two-way mirror that overlooked the fight and the undulating crowd. A guard had opened the curtains and turned on a loudspeaker, broadcasting the fight into our room. The familiar sounds of oof and uuh flowed into the room as two girls slugged and kicked each other on the distant stage.

  “Who’s fighting?” Lauren asked. She stood beside me at the window. We were both trying to ignore the people behind us, the guards and the girls who were what we could become, if everything went as planned.

  I stared through the glass, squinting, my hand shading my own reflection. The girls onstage were so far away it was hard to see their features. But I was sure I knew them. I recognized their fighting styles. “I’m pretty sure it’s Cyclone and Komodo,” I said. “And it looks like Cyclone’s double tapping—”

  “Triple,” Madison said. She was awake again and she now sat in one of the chairs behind us, an ice pack on her cheek. Her words were slightly muffled, like her mouth was swollen. “Two Pink Lightning and one Blue Thunder. We have anything you want. E, Meth, all the usual stuff. Or if you want some espresso, we have that, too. Whatever it takes to get your engine purring.” Despite the fact that she’d been beaten by one of the guards, she still treated Lauren and me like we were honored guests and she was our hostess.

  “Who are we supposed to fight?” I asked, never taking my eyes off the stage. I could see a dim reflection of Madison in the window. She was watching me with curious intent.

  “That hasn’t been revealed yet,” she said. “But I’m sure it will be a good match.”

  Lauren took my hand and spoke in a low whisper. “You tried to get me to change my mind about this place. I should have listened.”

  I matched her tone. “I just would have taken your tickets away. I still would have come.”

  “Why?”

  “I had to know.”

  She hung her head and chewed on her lip. “You know what I did, don’t you? I could tell by the way you acted in the car.”

  This must have been the time for absolution. Both she and Dylan were hiding something and I needed to know what. Instead of speaking, I released a heavy sigh.

  “I didn’t sleep with him,” she confessed. “It just looked that way.”

  My head snapped up.

  “We were all at Brett’s party, two days before you went missing. You and Dylan were broken up. He got so wasted, he went into one of the bedrooms to pass out, and I followed him in. At first, he thought I was you—”

  I stared at her, not believing what was coming out of her mouth. I wanted to stop the words, as if it could change the past.

  “When you came down the hallway, he had just realized who I really was and he was leaving the bedroom—”

  My chest tightened, my skin two sizes too small.

  I could see it, Lauren with her arm around Dylan’s shoulders, the lipstick on his cheek, her hair messed up and both of them staggering toward me, their clothes rumpled. He kept trying to push her away, saying things like, enough already and get lost.

  But when her eyes met mine, I saw the true story.

  She thought she’d finally gotten my boyfriend. When he was drunk and high and we were broken up and I’d quit the Swan Girls. It was like she’d been waiting for that moment since we’d become friends. She now had my boyfriend and my team. She’d beamed proudly, her chin lifted, her eyes half-closed.

  I’d wanted to smash that pretty face with my fist.

  Dylan had continued to shamble closer, unaware that I was just a few feet away. He licked his lips and tried to untangle the arms that were wrapped possessively around him. Then he lifted his head. Shock filled his eyes when he saw me, then sorrow, then shame, all within an instant.

  I had spun on my heels and stormed out, leaving the party and my pretend friend and my former boyfriend behind. I didn’t care that he was struggling with drug addiction and needed help. I only knew that they had both betrayed me and I never wanted to see either one of them again. I almost got my wish. I desperately needed to blow off steam, so when Nicole showed up after school, a pair of Platinum Level tickets in her hand, the primal urge to fight came back.

  I had said yes, hell yes.

  Lauren had become Odile to my Odette. She was my evil twin and the Black Swan. She had tried to steal the prince’s heart, and it had driven me to destruction.

  And I’d almost died because of her betrayal.

  Now she stared at me, wanting forgiveness, hoping I would tell her that everything was okay. But it wasn’t. It would never be okay again. Nicole was dead. And as far as I was concerned, it was all Lauren’s fault.

  “Go to Hell,” I s
aid and turned away from her.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  A moment later, the fight between Cyclone and Komodo ended. Cyclone won, her hand held high above the screaming crowd, her blue hair drenched with sweat, a thin smile on her face and an insane look in her eyes. Komodo had been badly beaten, so many bruises on her arms you could barely see that dragon tattoo. She shouldn’t have accepted the challenge today—she hadn’t recovered from our fight the other night and she now sprawled on the floor, a mess of broken pieces that looked like they might never fit back together again.

  Lauren tried to get my attention, her eyes pleading, her words fast and quiet because she didn’t want the guards standing behind us to hear.

  “You wouldn’t leave me here, would you? We have to stick together. We have to get away—”

  One of her hands touched my shoulder and I brushed it off. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her anymore. She was the reason I’d gone missing. “No, I wouldn’t leave you here,” I said, although as soon as those words left my lips, I wondered if they were true.

  Someone was escorting Cyclone off the stage, two large men in business suits. They weren’t like the rest of the crowd. These guys had an Eastern European look with their high cheekbones, shaved heads and expensive tailored suits. Cyclone swiveled toward them, blue hair spinning around her, a confused expression on her face. She was shouting and struggling to get away, but since her microphone was shut off, we couldn’t hear what she was saying. A twinge of pain centered in my chest, something I couldn’t shake and I knew would never go away. She was disappearing into the night, just like Nicole. Cyclone, aka Janie Deluca, had been one of my competitors but I had never wished her this. I fought the moan that slid out of my lips when the two men lifted her off her feet and carried her down the stairs.

  “She put on a good show and she got a good price,” Madison said matter-of-factly. “She’ll get good handlers. The best ones always do.”

  I knew what she was saying wasn’t true. “What about Komodo?” I asked. She still lay, crumpled and broken on the stage floor, not moving.

  Madison’s reflection continued to watch me. She shrugged. “No one has made an offer for her yet. We will wait and see.”

  It was as if I was on the stage then, staring down at Komodo, at the blood and the broken bones. She faded away and the sounds of the crowd continued to thunder in the background, a song of violence that would never end. And, just like the other night when I had beaten her, I didn’t see Komodo, the Dragon Girl, anymore.

  I saw Nicole, the Pink Candi girl, my friend.

  Something had happened here, but I couldn’t piece it together yet. The back of my skull started to ache, fissures of pain radiating downward, like my head didn’t connect with my body. I rubbed my fingers over the base of my neck, all the while staring out at that stage where a girl’s body lay, discarded and broken.

  “Pink Lightning could fix that headache,” Madison said behind me. “One hit and you’ll be feeling great again.”

  But that was just one more stone in the wall of lies that I kept hearing. The pain in my head wasn’t because I was craving some drug. It was caused by the battle I’d been fighting with myself since I’d been kidnapped, part of me wanting to know what had happened, the other part refusing to let myself remember.

  If only I could push through—

  The announcer’s voice came over the intercom then, his deep voice echoing throughout the arena and being piped into the dressing room where we waited. “Just like I promised,” he exclaimed, one hand waving over his head with theatrical flair. “We have something special for you tonight—a girl who’s never been defeated in a fight, not once—”

  The crowd roared and my eyes flared wide in response. They were talking about me.

  “And she’s going to be fighting someone from her own team, a girl who until a few minutes ago was supposedly her friend—”

  This had never happened before. No one in Phase Two ever challenged anyone from their own team. It was wrong. We were supposed to have each other’s back.

  “Listen to what we recorded from their dressing room a few minutes ago—”

  Another voice came over the loudspeakers, a hushed whisper amplified so we could hear everything she said. You know what I did, don’t you? I didn’t sleep with him—it just looked that way. It was Lauren. And a full second later, my voice followed. Go to Hell.

  I wanted to say, you frigging bastards, to everyone in the room with me, Lauren included. But at that point, it became hard for me to focus. Two things took place almost simultaneously, and in my mind they merged as one event—

  The first thing—and this was probably why everything got so jumbled in my mind—was when I felt a prick in the crook of my left arm. The notch of pain forced me to glance down and, when I did, I realized both of the guards had pinned me in place and Madison was giving me a shot of Pink Lightning. But she didn’t stop with one. She gave me another and another, until my knees wavered beneath me and those guards were holding me up.

  The room turned as bright as the sun, one of my hands tried to block out the light, my head slipping backward, but even when I closed my eyes the light remained. I groaned, a soft thud of pleasure surging through my limbs and my heart pumping out something that felt like pure lightning, like I wasn’t made of flesh and blood. It felt like I was a god, standing on Mount Olympus, ready to fly, wings spread wide, all the humans around me tiny and insignificant. I shrugged off the guards who held me, kicking one of them until he fell against the mirrored wall, the force cracking the glass. I glanced at the mirror, my reflection splintering and fracturing until it looked like there were countless versions of myself staring back, all of them stronger and fiercer than I’d ever been before.

  “Step away from her,” Madison warned. “She’s ready to fight now.”

  I was, too. I was ready to rip sinew from flesh, to crack bone and shatter skulls. I snarled at her and she raised her hand, palm up.

  Then the second thing happened and it was even worse. The door opened, freedom calling from the other side, a waft of air that tempted me to run but before I could respond, a body was shoved toward me.

  Barely breathing, bloody, arms and legs bound, and a gag in his mouth.

  Agent Bennet.

  He fell to the floor, unable to get up.

  He was the one who was supposed to rescue us, but now it looked like he might not survive. Lauren and Bennet and I were alone, no one to help us. Unless, maybe, that text to my dad got through and he understood what it meant. Unless he knew how to find us and he somehow managed to get here in time and he had a small army with him...

  “You’re going to fight for me or this man and your friend, Lauren, will die. Both of them. Painfully and slowly. While you watch,” a sinister voice spoke behind me.

  If Pink Lightning hadn’t been flooding my veins, giving me strength, I would have cringed. I recognized this voice. It was the man who bought and sold girls and boys like stray dogs. It was the man who had sent Nicole to her death.

  It was the man I’d run away from, all the way down the mountain.

  I didn’t want to see his face. I knew that everything would come flooding back as soon as I looked into his eyes and I was too terrified to remember. But that didn’t matter, because he took my face in his hand and turned me toward him. The first thing I saw was the row of new track marks on his arm. Four red pinpricks, so fresh they each still held a glistening bead of blood in the center. It was his way of showing he was stronger than me, he was the alpha, he could crush me with one hand no matter how much Pink Lightning I had taken.

  I fought the trembling in my legs and the shudder that blurred my hands. I didn’t want to look at him and he seemed to sense it. A coarse laugh bubbled up from his chest, and he lifted my chin, feeding off my fear, forcing me to lift my gaze.

  He towered over me, shoulders broad, muscles pumped, every inch of him screaming that he was in charge and he could take down anyone who stood in hi
s way. His eyes were the color of slate, the color of a world without light or hope, his skin and hair so pale they were almost devoid of pigment.

  “Rachel Evans from Santa Madre,” he said, revealing that he knew exactly who I was and where I lived, and I remembered how my driver’s license had been in my pocket when I was found. He’d been sending me a message. I know who you are and where you live. He watched me as I processed all of this. “I knew you would come back and I’m glad you did. You’re worth twice as much as before. I can’t believe how many times your stupid patron ripped up the invitations I sent him for you to attend the Platinum Level. He won’t be ignoring my instructions ever again.” He laughed again. “The only way we could get you here was to invite one of your friends. It worked. Both times.”

  My muscles had grown strong enough to shake off his grip, but the cold expression in his eyes kept me trapped. I wanted to stop the memory that I knew was coming. But it was like trying to fight a tsunami, a force of nature caused by something that had quaked long ago and far away and was much stronger than I was. Then the wave swept over me, knocking me backward, a sensation so visceral I couldn’t tell whether it was a memory or whether I was really being carried out to sea, right now, away from that lake where all the Swan Girls had been swimming together for too long.

  I was here, but not back in this secluded dressing room…

  .

  I stood in a corner, watching Nicole as she fought, as she lost, horribly. Twice I tried to run up onstage and help her but, after the second time, two strong guards grabbed me and held me back. Meanwhile, Nicole lost consciousness—a sign that the fight should be over—but the other girl wouldn’t stop. She must have been double tapping and, maybe nothing seemed real to her anymore, but she was close to beating my friend to death. The crowd yelled and screamed and gyrated as if this was a fantasy they had been hoping for, dreaming of—

  The only rule here was there were no rules.

  I stopped trying to break past the guards and fight my way toward Nicole. Instead I backed up, taking two cautious steps away from the guards, hoping they wouldn’t notice. My fight was already over and I’d won, so maybe that would grant me a little grace.