by Ford, Hannah
Hopelessness flowed through me, strong and debilitating, pooling in my belly and leaving an ache.
I could be anywhere, and the worse part about it was that no one would even be looking for me.
I had no roommate to go home to, no one to check in with at the end of the day. If I didn’t show up at school, no one would think it was weird. They would mark me absent and that would be it – I would be one of the countless students who skipped class or dropped out.
Julia.
She’d been worried about me.
Maybe if she didn’t hear from me, she’d get nervous.
But that was a big if – she would have to text me tonight, right now, before Professor Worthington did whatever it was he was planning to do. And after what had happened with Josh, after what Noah had done to him, I was pretty sure the chances of Julia trying to get in touch with me were slim.
The only one who would be worried about me was Noah. And he was in jail.
Hopelessness and despair continued their assault on my soul, along with a tiredness that seeped into my bones. My eyes started to drift closed, my awareness ebbing away as the lingering effects of whatever Professor Worthington had injected me with had a resurgence.
Charlotte. You need to stay calm. And aware.
It was Noah’s voice, in my brain, so clear and distinct that for a moment I was sure he was there in the parking lot with me.
Try to figure out where you are. Search for any clues you can.
I forced my eyes to stay open, forced my brain to try and work. We were walking through some kind of lot. We were behind a brick building, and the ground was gravel, but it wasn’t a parking lot – there were no cars. To my left, I could see a street, with another brick building on the other side of it. To my right was a chain link fence.
That was it.
No signs.
No landmarks.
No clues as to where I might be.
My hands balled into fists, my nails pressing so hard into my skin that the pressure left little crescent moon indentations.
Fury and panic rose up inside of me.
If he was going to kill me, I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I began screaming and pounding my fists against Professor Worthington’s back. I was sure he would stop, would put me down, would maybe even try to hurt me in some way.
But to my surprise, he kept walking.
“Shhhh, Charlotte,” he said. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s going to be okay.” His voice was soothing, such a change from the way he’d been in the car, when he’d called me an idiot whore.
The change in him scared me for some reason, and I began hitting him harder and screaming as loud as I could. But my voice felt rough and raw and my screams were swallowed up by the cool night wind.
Professor Worthington didn’t vary his stride or try to quiet me or make me stop.
He stayed steady, and for the first time, I realized how physically strong he was. His arms were wrapped around the back of my legs, tight and strong. He was wearing a leather jacket, and I could feel how broad his shoulders were through the material.
He’d always come across as a bit of a nerdy lawyer type, but now I realized at least some of that must have been an act. He was muscular, bulkier than he looked, and I wondered if that was a choice on his part, if he wanted people to underestimate him physically.
It sent a bone-chilling shiver of fear down my spine.
A few seconds later, Professor Worthington set me down on the concrete.
I glanced to my side, wondering if I could make it to the street before he caught me.
He must have known what I was thinking, because he shook his head, annoyed. “Don’t even think about running, Charlotte. I am faster than you. You won’t make it more than a few feet, and then things will be so much worse.”
I licked my bottom lip and considered screaming again. But there was no one around. And I was afraid that if I screamed, I would waste valuable energy that I might need later.
I was already so tired. The jolt of adrenaline I’d felt when I’d first woken up was dissipating, and a heavy warmth pooled in my extremities.
Professor Worthington pulled another syringe out of his pocket. “I will drug you again if I have to,” he said. “Don’t make me do that. Will you walk where I tell you to?”
I nodded.
I wanted to fight, but I needed to stay alive. If he knocked me out again, I would have no chance at figuring out where I was, no chance at trying to outsmart him. Hell, I’d have no chance at anything.
Why hadn’t he killed me while I was passed out?
The question tugged at the edges of my mind. If he’d wanted to kill me, why hadn’t he just strangled me when I was unconscious? He’d had me alone, in his car. Why hadn’t he taken me somewhere and killed me?
Because he wants to torture you.
It was the only thing that made sense. If he wanted to kill me, he would have.
Don’t think about that, Charlotte, Noah’s voice whispered in my ear. Just take things one step at a time. I’m right here with you.
But he wasn’t right here with me.
He was locked up in some jail cell somewhere, with no idea what was happening. When he got out, he’d find me dead, and then he’d somehow be blamed for it. The only thing that gave me some small amount of comfort was that Noah would have an alibi. You couldn’t kill someone if you were locked up in prison.
Or had Professor Worthington figured out some way around that?
My head swam with possibilities, and I forced myself to try and concentrate on what was happening in the moment.
Professor Worthington had taken my wrist and was now leading me toward the back of the brick building that flanked the lot. The building was large and dark, with windows spaced far apart. For all intents and purposes, it seemed deserted.
Was he going to take me into an abandoned building and kill me?
After a few more steps, the professor let go of my wrist, then crouched down in front of a bulkhead and spun a combination lock.
A breeze kicked up and I shivered, a shiver that rattled through me and made my teeth chatter.
Professor Worthington pulled the bulkhead door open.
He looked at me and licked his lips. His eyes were pure black and soulless.
“Go,” he said.
“What?”
“Go down there.”
I took a step toward the bulkhead and glanced down. I’d imagined dirty stairs littered with trash and used needles, but the concrete was swept clean. From somewhere in the distance, I thought I could hear the murmur of voices, but I wasn’t sure.
I hesitated. “Please,” I said. “I don’t –”
“Go!” Professor Worthington screamed. He grabbed my arm and pushed me, and I stumbled and fell down the concrete stairs. I tried to catch myself with my hands, but the force of my fall was too much. My arm buckled under my weight, and the bones in my wrist vibrated with the force.
I cried out as I collapsed into a heap at the bottom of the stairs.
A second later, Professor Worthington’s feet appeared next to me. He reached down and grabbed me by my hair, snapping my head back. “Look what you made me do,” he growled through gritted teeth. “Now get up. Get up right now.”
The breath had been knocked out of me, and I took in a deep breath through my nose, trying to calm myself down.
“Get up!” Professor Worthington screamed. “Get up right now, you filthy little whore!”
I stood up.
As soon as I was fully upright, Professor Worthington pushed me up against the wall and pressed his body into mine.
“Charlotte,” he said. “I really do no want to have to hurt you, baby.”
I hated that he was calling me baby, hated the feel of his hands on my body.
I turned my face away from his and squeezed my eyes shut tight.
“I will hurt you, though, if I have to,” he said. “Now walk.”
He stepped back and pointed down the dark hallway. He’d left the bulkhead open and the tiny bit of light from the abandoned lot shined down onto the floor. But ahead of me was pitch black.
The voices I’d thought I’d heard were gone, and now the air seemed still and dead.
I had no idea what was waiting for me at the end of that hall.
I hesitated, and Professor Worthington kneeled down and began to pull something out of his boot. A plan flashed through my mind– if I could hit him hard against the back of his head, I might be able to get away.
I raised my arms, but before I could even think about bringing them down on the back of the professor’s head, I saw the glint of the knife.
Professor Worthington pulled it all the way out of his boot and straightened back up.
He tossed the knife back and forth between his hands, and I shivered, marveling at how different he suddenly was. I couldn’t even begin to imagine him at the front of the classroom anymore, teaching us. He’d seemed so different then – a militant law school professor, in the middle of a divorce, with his tweed jackets and khaki pants.
Now he wore a leather jacket and heavy work boots, and his eyes were crazed.
I wanted to scream, but I knew it would be a waste of precious energy. There was no one around to hear me. But I also knew that if I walked down that hall, into whatever hell he was leading me toward, I had less of a chance of anyone finding me.
Noah, I thought. Noah, where are you?
He’d sworn to protect me, now here I was, alone, without him.
“Charlotte!” Professor Worthington barked. He grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back harder and harder until I yelled out. “Move!” he growled, pushing the tip of the knife into my skin.
I had no choice.
I started walking.
***
The smell.
It was familiar.
Must and sweat and something else – cedar and leather.
My eyes were becoming adjusted to the darkness now, and I took in the walls, the rough concrete and cement, the grittiness of the floor underneath us.
Force.
Professor Worthington had taken me to Force.
For a split second, I was flooded with relief. I knew where I was. Force was filled with people. I wasn’t in some abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere where Professor Worthington could keep me for months without anyone having a chance of finding me.
But the relief was short-lived, burning out like a spark that doesn’t catch flame. I was at Force. Which meant no one would help me. I’d been attacked by Audi James here, and no one had tried to stop him – in fact, they’d led me to him willingly. That waitress, the one with the dead eyes, had been here, screaming for help. And no one had cared.
I felt my shoulders sag, felt my body on the precipice of giving up. I was suddenly filled with weariness, the kind of weariness that made me want to just lay down and let Professor Worthington do whatever he wanted to me.
I was so tired.
We were coming to a set of double doors now, and Professor Worthington pushed through it, even though the wide red bar across it warned that it was for emergency purposes only.
As soon as we were on the other side of the door, the darkness ebbed, the corridor lit with dim industrial lights that lined the ceiling.
There were also doors off this hallway.
And it was a lot more familiar.
The hallway.
It was the one where Noah and I had chased Josh. Professor Worthington must have led me in through a back way, and I was walking down the hallway from the other side.
We reached a door, and Professor Worthington stopped outside of it.
He looked at me, reached up and slid his fingernail down my cheek. I wasn’t sure if he meant the gesture to be intimate, but it didn’t feel intimate. He scraped his nail right into my skin, and I could feel the delicate top layer of my epidermis splitting and leaving a shallow scratch.
His sandy blonde hair was slick with sweat, his complexion ruddy. A smile passed over his face, his eyes clouding. He liked that he’d left a mark on me, and his face took on an almost a dreamy quality, as if he couldn’t wait to do more.
He reached down and opened the door, pushed me roughly inside.
“Stay there,” he said. “I’ll be back to get you soon, darling.”
He turned around and shut the door, and I heard the sound of a key in the lock.
As soon as he was gone, my legs crumpled under me and I slid to the floor. It was the strangest sensation, almost like I didn’t even know that I was going to do that until I felt the hard ground beneath me.
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to know what was in this room. I didn’t want to know where I was. All I wanted to do was lay my head down and go to sleep.
No, Charlotte, I heard Noah’s voice in my head. Do not fall asleep. You need to stay awake.
But I’m so tired, I whispered back. Please, Noah, I’m so tired.
I could tell I was fading into a hazy state, fueled half by emotional exhaustion and half by the drugs that were still in my system. I could feel my consciousness slipping away, replaced by a dream.
In it, I could see Noah, could feel him with me, felt him picking me up and carrying me out of the room. His arms were strong, stable.
“You came,” I said, surprised. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with a crisp white shirt. I was wearing a shimmery pink dress with a sheer bottom, the strips of fabric cut and tiered, designed to slip and flow around your legs. It had spaghetti straps and a fitted bodice, the kind of thing I could never wear in real life because it was made for girls with waiflike figures and flat chests.
“Of course I came,” he said.
“Noah,” I said. “I was so scared.”
“You don’t have to be scared, Charlotte. I will always protect you.”
I murmured his name again and closed my eyes, burying my face in his chest. Comfort rolled over me, extinguishing the panic that had burned through me just a few moments ago.
I knew it was just a dream. But I didn’t care.
I wanted more drugs. I wanted to stay in this half-awake state, where I knew nothing was real and I didn’t care. This was how drug addicts must feel, I thought, slightly stunned at my new revelation. I’d always thought it was a matter of willpower, but now I realized I had been horribly wrong. If this was how it felt to be high, I understood why they never wanted to come down.
I laughed, almost giddy.
I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like a movie. How insane, me, Charlotte Holloway, the star of my own movie!
A laugh escaped my lips, but it sounded strange, bubbly somehow, like I was laughing underwater. It tasted sweet, and I realized I’d never tasted a laugh before, didn’t know that laughs could have flavors.
I laughed again, just to try it, and the sweetness exploded in my mouth, like liquid cotton candy.
You are cracking up, Holloway, I thought. You are losing your shit.
I laughed again, only this time, the laugh tasted bitter and burnt, like I’d licked a piece of wood.
I frowned.
I didn’t like the new taste of my laugh.
What was the point of being able to taste your laughs if they were going to taste like old tree bark? And where was Noah? I couldn’t feel his arms around me anymore.
“Noah?” I tried. “Noah?”
But he wouldn’t answer.
“Noah!” I screamed. “Noah! Answer me! Where are you?”
“Relax,” a voice said. But it wasn’t Noah’s voice. It was someone else’s voice. A girl. “Just relax, sweetie.”
“Noah?” I tried to turn away from the girl’s voice. It sounded too grounded, and I felt it reach out and try to pull me back into reality. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be with Noah.
“Sweetie,” the voice said, and now I felt a tiny, cool palm on my forehead. “Sweetie, relax. I think you’re hallucinating, but it’s okay. Eve
rything’s going to be okay. It’s just the drugs.”
I closed my eyes tight and tried to block her out, but it was no use. The warm comfort of my dream was starting to recede and the harsh reality of my situation was closing in on me, its cold fingers forcing me out of my cocoon.
“That’s it,” the girl’s voice cooed. “That’s it, honey. Wake up.”
I swallowed and opened my eyes, saying one last quick prayer that I would wake up back in my dream, that Noah would be carrying me out of here like I was a fairy princess.
Instead, a pair of deep blue eyes stared back at me.
I sat up.
“Are you okay?” the owner of the blue eyes asked. She held a water bottle out to me. “Here, drink this.”
I glanced at it, but the water looked gritty and had a slight brown tinge to it. It looked more like pond water than something I would want to drink.
“No,” I said, swallowing around the lump in my throat. “That’s okay. I’m fine.”
I got my first real good look at her then. It was the girl from the other night, the one who’d been our waitress, the one who’d grabbed my ankle and told me she was in trouble, that they were going to kill her.
My eyes took in the room, the desks, the chalkboard up front, the shackles that were attached to the walls around the perimeter.
I was in that room. The school room I’d dreamt about, the one they’d been keeping the waitress locked up in.
Bile rose in my throat.
“Oh, no,” the girl said, sounding dismayed. “They didn’t tell you.”
“Didn’t tell me what?”
“That you’re going.”
“Going where?”
“To the auction.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, even though of course I already knew the answer.
“I mean they’re going to put us in the auction.”
“And we’re going to be bought?”
“Yes.” She nodded, her face serious. “I’m Mikayla, by the way.”
“Charlotte.” I noticed there was a bruise on her cheek, blooming purple and green, and she must have noticed me looking at it, because her hand rose to her cheekbone.
“It doesn’t hurt,” she said.
I didn’t ask her how she got it. I didn’t want to know, and besides, it was unimportant. However she got it wasn’t good, and all I knew was that I needed to get the hell out of here.
