by Megan Lynch
All day long she worked, shoulders knotting up further from her anger, vision blurred by fury. She grabbed another box of anal plugs and threw them down on the belt, hoping whoever was wasting money on that crap would get one stuck and have to explain their dilemma to the emergency room doctors. What a good use of public dollars that would be. No, but keeping refugees would just be too costly.
“Miss?” the foreman asked softly.
Samara startled. Why had he gotten so close?
“Miss, can I see you in my office, please?”
“Oh—of course.”
She followed him up the stairs, and Taye and Bristol craned their necks from the floor to watch them ascend.
The foreman was a short man, about the same height as Samara, with hairy arms and a bald patch on the crown of his head. He wore a red plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up that cut into his thick forearms. He was sweating more than anyone Samara had ever seen before.
“Been a lot of mistakes lately.”
“Excuse me?” Samara asked. She genuinely wasn’t sure whether he meant on the floor or, as his expression would suggest, in his personal life.
“Mistakes. I’ve had to resubmit most of your orders out today. And it isn’t just today, either!”
Samara began to say something, then closed her mouth. She knew she’d been sloppy for the past few hours, but before today, she’d double checked every order to make sure it was right. Please, she thought, please give me a warning.
“I’ve got a…problem myself,” he said. The sweat all over his face gave him the illusion of a glow under the florescent lights. He twisted the rod to shut the venetian blinds that overlooked the warehouse floor.
Inside, something told Samara to run. Samara told that something to shut up. She had run far and long enough. It was time to stand up, not shrink away.
The foreman stepped close to Samara and grabbed her hand. She tried to pull away, but before she could, he was rubbing it against his trousers. “There’s my problem,” he said. “If you’d just help me with this, I’d overlook your laziness.”
She jerked her hand back and gnashed her teeth. “Who do you think you are?”
“Me?” He laughed, but Samara knew fear when she heard it. “I’m a bloke who is saving your ass, that’s who I am! You’d be going back to die if it weren’t for me! And what have I asked for? Nothing!”
“You’ve asked for plenty. And you’re not getting any more.”
He stepped in again, this time with an unhinged gleam in his eyes, and took her hand. This time, he bent back her wrist toward her forearm until it trembled and threatened to break under the stress. She cried out, but he put his fleshy hand over her mouth.
He whipped her around until his face was in her hair, next to her ear. “Now, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want to do that. You made me mad.”
Samara bit him, sinking her teeth into the fleshy part of his hand under his pinky finger. He bellowed out in pain and threw her onto the floor. She very nearly froze in fear, but the extra second he took to check if his hand was bleeding was all she needed to bolt to the door. She was all the way down the stairs before she drew another breath.
Chapter Seventeen
Though all of the others had tucked themselves into the various nests of blankets in the dark that night, Bristol stood at the door like a centurion. Samara had followed the foreman into his office and, moments later, had shot out like a tiger from its cage.
Whatever had happened in there, Bristol was sure they were no longer safe.
He pressed his fingertips into his forehead and massaged at his headache. Inside, his head throbbed with something more than pain. It was an internal warning. He recognized it as the voice that accompanied him back when he’d sneak out at night to go paint, alerting him to danger.
He heard her footsteps, the careful cadence of her gait before he heard the doorknob turn. He touched her arm in the dark. She hissed and jerked away. Bristol’s breath rose into his upper chest and stayed there, slow but shallow.
“What happened?” asked Bristol.
“Nothing.”
“We need to leave again.”
“I can handle this,” said Samara, her shoulders hunching in toward each other. “We are not leaving again.”
“Ha! First of all, you’re out of your mind if you think we’d let you handle this on your own,” said Denver, sitting up from her sleeping bag. Jude, Taye, Cork, and Henry rose from their blankets. Taye pulled the cord hanging from the center of the ceiling and the naked lightbulb above lit up the room. “Second, you’re absolutely right. We are not leaving again.”
“What’s the plan, Den?” asked Taye.
Denver side-eyed him, but continued. “I think I can get my hands on some poison. And once I do, I think I can make sure he takes it.”
Bristol crossed his arms. “You would not.”
“Let’s try and see, little brother.”
“Do you know how much more trouble we’d be in if they thought we’d killed someone?”
“We’re not going to get caught.” Denver said.
“How?”
“There are lots of other workers here. They’d never be able to prove it was us.”
“There are security cameras on the floor. They’d narrow it down.”
“Even if they couldn’t,” said Jude, “we’re not taking the chance that one of them could get locked up because of us.”
“Fine,” said Denver. “Fine. So an asshole thinks he has a little power and decides to beat us up.” Denver gave Samara a look, one that Bristol was familiar with. It was the look Denver gave when she knew there was more to a story, but she wasn’t in a good place to ask. Bristol had seen it many times over the breakfast table back home when she’d asked, in front of Mom, how he slept last night. “Does he just get to walk away?”
“Yes,” mumbled Samara.
“No,” said Jude. “I have an idea.”
Denver snorted through her nose. “Whatever it is, we’re not doing it. Your idea days are done.”
“Let’s just go to sleep,” Samara said.
“At his age, he’s not doing illegal things for the first time. He hired us! That’s illegal. There must be more.” Jude stood firm on his feet. “He wears a watch. Let’s take it to the police.”
“You can’t just take someone’s watch to the police.” Bristol knew he needed to talk Jude down in order to shield him from Denver—and Denver from herself. “They’re busy people. If we had a claim and proof, that might be something.”
“He’s not doing illegal things for the first time…” said Samara. Bristol watched as her eyes went from vacant to bright. “Jude, that’s great idea. We need to organize.”
“Organize what?” asked Taye.
“Wrong question.”
Taye grinned. “Organize who?”
“The other women he’s attacked.”
Bristol’s breath froze in his throat.
Chapter Eighteen
Denver crept down the catwalk to the room where ten other women slept in the dead of night. Over the past few days, they’d talked to some others who were in the same situation as Samara, and tonight would be their first meeting with all of them there. Denver’s poison idea turned out to be quite popular among the club that no one wanted to be in, but no one expressed interest in wanting to deliver it personally. Denver insisted she didn’t mind, but Bristol had talked her out of it.
At first, the women that Denver and Samara had approached seemed reluctant to talk, and many insisted they didn’t have time. Denver was learning, though, that people always made time for what was important to them. Before it had been sleep. Now, above all, it was making sure the smelly man with the sickening sense of entitlement was brought to justice one way or another.
The moment Denver and Samara entered the room, all of the women began speaking at once.
“He told her that he’d deport me if I didn’t—”
“He grabbed my hair and shoved me
down on the—”
“I haven’t been able to look at my husband since—”
“—me too!”
As much as Denver wanted to get on with the details of how they’d bring their monster down, she stopped to listen to every story. Most of the women were in the country illegally, fleeing other unsafe countries. The stories were all similar in both tone and content: the foreman had called them into his office, told them something along the lines of “you owe me” or “you messed up.”
They were unified on their problems and the desire to bring him to justice, but there was no consensus on how.
“We can’t go to the police, since most of us are here illegally. We could try homespun justice, but if we got caught, the risk of being deported isn’t worth it,” Denver reiterated.
Samara was being too quiet. Denver wasn’t used to working alone—she needed a partner. They needed to overthrow this foreman as soon as possible so Samara could start healing and she could have her partner back. Stephen would never be back, she knew, but at least there was a chance with Samara. Even if she’d never be the same, at least she’d be there.
The other women slowly transitioned from offering their ideas on how to move forward to retelling their stories. Denver was going to try to redirect them, but stopped when she saw Samara’s face. She was clearly taking it all in, nodding and drawing breath as if she was waiting her turn to say what exactly had happened to her. In this room, Denver was the immensely fortunate one. Even though the man she loved was dead, most all of her sexual experiences had been reciprocal, both trying to fill each other up. She’d never been emptied and cast aside. It seemed to her that through these retellings, these women were attempting to re-right themselves.
“We should write these down,” said Denver after more than an hour of listening. “And send them out.”
Samara lifted her chin slightly. “In the packages?”
“Yes.”
“The police will come,” said one of the women with a tremble in her voice.
“One of us can watch for them. There are more than enough of us to share work to cover for one or two missing workers. We’ll hide when they come, then when another foreman comes, we can work until…”
“Until when?” asked Samara.
Denver sighed. “Hopefully there’ll be a lull between this jerk leaving and another one coming. That may give us enough time to come up with our next move.”
Denver woke a few mornings later with a folded letter in her bra. Most of the women were not comfortable writing the stories themselves, so Samara and Denver did interviews and wrote them all. They all ended the same way: if you receive this and want to help, please call the police at 8 p.m. and tell them to go immediately to 1700 Industrial Avenue…
She knew it would be fine to just fold it twice, but she’d opted to keep folding until it was a tiny square, in case the foreman heard crinkling and grew suspicious. She knew he wouldn’t, but she couldn’t shake the habit. She was far away from anyone caring so much about control. In a way, this guy was the perfect target. He had, for years, gotten away with heinous behavior. He never expected a consequence. Not from these invisible women.
They’d agreed that the first same-day package they sent of the day would have the letters inside. Denver’s letter held a copied version of Samara’s story. Samara had handed it to her, and Denver had simply folded it up, unread. If Samara wanted her to know, eventually she would tell her.
The other women caught their eyes in subtle fractions of seconds to communicate that they had mailed their letter. The rest of the day continued as usual. The concrete floor pounding against Denver’s feet, the rough cardboard irritating her fingers, the shrieks of the forklift amplified in the open space.
Seven o’clock came. Bristol, charged with watch, signaled through the chain that there were no signs of police from the roof. That was good, Denver thought. Whoever had read their letters had followed instructions. Her upper lip was still wet with sweat.
The energy in the giant room changed as eight o’clock grew closer. People looked longer in her face, and the overall pace, which usually slowed a bit as the day waned into evening, grew faster and more frantic.
The foreman didn’t seem to notice.
Orders kept coming in, and Denver’s mind swung wildly from fear to fear. What if no one had called? What if the police had decided not to come? As dire as things were, Denver thought it would be worse if the women here were ignored. Their suffering had been silent for too long.
Eight o’clock came. Went. Orders came in and out. Feet hurt. Fingers burned. Ears ached. The same as every night.
At ten, the whistle blew. Once again, Denver untied the canvas apron from her waist and hung it on a worn peg on the wall.
“What do you think happened?” whispered Samara from the neighboring peg.
“I don’t know,” said Denver. “But I’m afraid that—”
Jude ran to them. “They’re coming,” he said under his breath, then continued speed-walking down the line with his warning.
Denver and Samara wasted no time. Together with the other women, they walked out the back door and climbed into the dumpster. Since yesterday was trash day, it easily accommodated all ten of them. Denver stood beside it and offered her basketed hands to boost everyone climbing inside. As she catapulted Samara into the dumpster, she heard the police man shouting inside. Please don’t let them check their citizenship status, she prayed before jumping for Samara’s outstretched arms above.
Inside, just one level of trash bags broke her fall. The bags squished under her as she found her feet. Though the stench weighed heavy against her and threatened to overpower her senses, she opened her mouth to breathe and pressed her ear against the cold, rusted metal.
No one else made a move. They only looked to her. Denver wished Samara would, but she seemed to be more comfortable looking to Denver leading her out this time.
“Sounds like they got him,” Denver whispered to the group. “But if no one’s come to get us yet, they must be still inside…”
She listened hard and heard a car door slam and what sounded like a fleet of cars driving away. No sirens, which she was glad of—there hadn’t been a struggle. But no one came for them.
“Should we go check?” asked Samara.
“No,” said Denver. “This is what we all agreed on. Someone will come, I know—”
“What if they’ve checked the boys’ citizenship status?” asked one of the women whose teenage son was inside. “We should go and see if they’re okay.”
“I can still hear voices,” said Denver. She hadn’t heard a voice since the cars had driven away, but she needed to maintain control for everyone’s safety. She remembered Metrics officials, lying to them all of their lives, for largely the same reason, and shuddered. “Let’s wait at least an hour.”
They waited for what felt like two.
Finally, the door squealed and the dumpster rang with a coded knock: once, then twice. Everyone inside, Denver included, breathed audibly, no longer able to smell the garbage, overcome with relief.
Denver climbed to the top and poked her head over the edge. “All clear, little brother?”
Bristol put his hands on his hips. “All clear, sis.”
Jude, Taye, Cork, Henry, and a dozen others came out to help the women out of the dumpster and onto the ground. Denver took in fresh air, glad to be filling both lungs with air that wasn’t rotten.
“Well,” said Taye, his voice booming with charisma, “they did it! Hip, hip!”
“Hooray!” shouted every male voice. The women were quiet, but Denver couldn’t stop her smile, especially when Samara reached for her hand and squeezed.
Chapter Nineteen
Since no one had informed the management team that one of their foremen had been arrested, Jude and the others enjoyed a morning off. The second foreman wouldn’t arrive until noon, and when he did, he would find a few dozen warehouse workers dressed and ready to work, innoce
ntly awaiting one of their betters to come unlock the technology cabinet where the scanners were kept.
Jude slept until the sun had been up for hours. He dressed in his blue jumpsuit, extraordinarily similar to the orange one he’d worn while in Fox County Juvenile Detention Center, and headed downstairs, where Samara, Bristol, and Denver were already in their aprons, sitting huddled on the cement floor.
Bristol handed him an energy bar. Normally, they ate these in giant bites, as fast as they could, while running to fetch the next order. Today, Jude actually tasted it. It tasted completely different than he’d expected—nutty and fruity and not altogether half bad. Though probably because of the way his body was used to consuming it, it still had the same stomach-turning affect.
“It can’t be that different,” said Denver, looking at Bristol.
“What can’t be?” asked Jude.
Denver and Bristol laughed. Samara looked over her shoulder, an outline of a smile on her face that didn’t seem to come from within. Denver re-crossed her legs on the floor. “When Bristol and I were little, we made a little city in the sewer.”
Jude recoiled. “In the what?”
“I know. So gross. But it was right before they separated out the Unregistered from the rest of us in school—right before we got our watches. Bristol and the other neighborhood kids and I would crawl down under the street and play. It was pretty dirty down there—”
