Ruby in the Rough

by Emily Shore

  Thanks a lot, motor mouth.

  “Ruby...that’s a pretty name,” Chastity compliments me, her voice like the ringing of sleigh bells.

  “It’s just a name,” I deflect and button up my wool coat up to the collar. The more layers the better. Inside and outside, you’d have to peel them off me one by one before finding anything. I’m also wearing my cape, but hopefully she won’t connect me with the Ghetto Fox wanted posters.

  After she finishes with her rice, she rubs her hands together. Telltale goosebumps sprout like frost on her skin. I tug my coat closer around myself, but Ink removes his trench coat and wraps it around her shoulders. I almost grumble. The thought of his clothes on her body even if it’s just a coat, the thought of her scent meddling with his...

  “You’re good people. I can tell,” she says in a soft voice. Wistful even. But I sense there is more regret tinting her words than longing.

  At those words, the urge of flight rises like a wild horse rearing up its front legs. Anytime I feel like running, two things happen: muscles get antsy and long to climb and the sound of waves echoes in the back of my mind.

  I don’t like this girl. We need to run.

  She doesn’t fall asleep easily. Ink is the first one to head into the train car where we have old mattresses and dozens of woolen blankets to surround the cocoon of our body heat and keep us warm. It’s the first time I don’t follow him right away. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone else sleeping next to him. Curled up against him. Her body has known the shape of many men, young and old. But only I’ve known Ink’s shape even with all my layers I keep between us. The way his hands always find my stomach every night but somehow never drift higher or lower. The way his knees excavate the backs of my thighs, nudging into the space there. The way his sharp toenails manage to scrape my ankles even when he wears thick socks. Every piece of him belongs to me. Not her.

  I don’t know why I’m so jealous. It’s not like I have any claim to Ink for more than anything platonic. I owe him, but he’s made it clear that I never owe him in that way. We watch each other’s backs. Simple as that. Maybe it’s just her.

  More than all of that, she unsettles me. Gangs don’t part with their girls easily. So, I wait. I wait for every last ember to fade until there is just a curl of smoke no wider than a finger. I wait until she stops tossing and turning, when I’m certain she’s asleep. And then I start to check her. Careful movements. Light fingers scanning her feet and wrists for any marks where they usually put them with only a cigarette lighter for my flame.

  It’s only when I sweep aside her hair on the back of her neck that I find it. The brand of the red hand. I almost jump. The Brothers. The biggest gang in the Ghetto. I’ve seen what they do to their girls. I know the reason why the vent shaft I was in just the previous day smelled like burning flesh. Not even the sweepers interfere with the Brothers. No girls ever run away. Everyone knows what happened to the one girl who tried it.

  Careful not to disturb her, I creep around the mattress and pinch Ink awake, slapping a hand over his mouth to prevent him from saying anything. Then I gesture for him to follow me outside where I proceed to tell him about the red hand.

  At first, Ink muses over the information, thumb and index finger stroking his jaw as he paces.

  “You think she’s a spy?” he whispers.

  I give him one simple nod.

  “Or she’s braver than we give her credit for.”

  “My gut,” I say the two words that have served us well in the past two years, the words that have kept us alive. The same ones that told me we should steer clear of the Hotel truck the one September when there turned out to be an extra guard on the inside. The same ones that caused me to find the clock tower. The same ones that had me move the dumpster to find the vent shaft yesterday.

  After running a hand through his white wisps, Ink sighs, drops it to his side, utters, “Okay, Ruby. Okay. Plan Omega.”

  Our contingency plan. Our flight plan. We keep much of the supplies stored behind the false wall in the boxcar, we take what we can carry, and we run like hell. And when the dust settles, we return for the supplies.

  We’re just about ready to put our plan into effect when the whistling sound alerts us both. Like the shrill cry of a swallow right before a single crack, louder than a gunshot to me sounds. And the blaring light ― a chunk of the sun burning in the middle of the night, marking our location to the world. And Chastity standing on the edge of the boxcar with the flare gun in her hand.

  We leave everything behind and run even though there’s little point. Before we even make it to the border of the woods, I can hear the gang behind us. The loud wallops and raucous yells of dozens of wild men and boys. Maybe a few girls with them. We have a minute, maybe more. But we both know who they’re after.

  I slow down just enough till Ink’s in front of me, and I give his back one solid push.

  “Ruby, no!” He tries to step forward and reach out for me.

  “If we’re both caught, we’re screwed,” I tell him, holding up a finger in warning. “But if you escape now, I might just get the chance to owe you two life debts. Go.”

  I turn around and run in the opposite direction, not looking back once. It feels like swallowing rusty nails. The torch lights of the gang approach, getting closer and closer until I’m caught in their glow. Like some trapped animal. Bruises litter their cheeks and knuckles from fights, grease and blood stains their clothes, and a hungry glint speckles every single eye. Several of them laugh to each other, others brag and shove, but one voice charges through the rest.

  “Nobody touches her!”

  Holy shit...

  As soon as he pushes his way through the front line to reveal himself, I almost crumple into the ground. Everything in me wants to. Wants to fuse with the mud and roots and earthworms. Nothing in me can identify with freezing. And yet here I am ― frozen as a cold corpse. The demon hiding inside my shadow shakes it off and parades himself right in front of me with the same cocky smile on his face I came to memorize every night he came home with his gambling wins.

  He marches straight up to me with arms wide open and the symbol of the red hand branded right into his cheek. “Aren’t you going to give your brother a kiss, Rubes?”

  “Malachi,” I whisper right before he embraces me.

  They bring me to Brothers headquarters. Mal and I’ve said nothing to each other since our meeting in the train yard. In the back corner of my mind, I wonder where Ink is. If he’s followed us or is elsewhere, using all that book knowledge of his to concoct an escape plan. I can’t begin to wonder what my brother is going to do with me. If he was willing to sell me to pay off his gambling debts, how far would he go for his gang, especially if that gang is the Brothers.

  Their headquarters is actually an old club. Bile rides on an invisible Ferris wheel in my stomach, breaking land speed records as soon as I see it. So, the rumors are true. Stuck on the end of a sick pike is the head of a girl. No more than fourteen years when she was murdered as a warning to others who might try and run. No one knows how long she’s been there. The leader of the Brothers salted her for preservation. Now, she’s etched in my memory. Her dark eyes with a pale vacant film like empty elevators, black hair in broken shreds ― picked apart by buzzards and crows. As soon as we pass her, I stumble on the front steps, and Mal groans, irritated.

  “Enough with the dramatics, Rubes.” He reaches down, gripping my arm and dragging me inside.

  Once inside, I need to cover my ears. All my nights are spent listening to the sound of the wind, the cracking of the fire…and Ink’s low, even breaths since we both know I’m the one who snores. Still, the bass pounds into my skull like a wild boar. Most of the gang scatters when we arrive inside; they join dozens of gang girls. Most of them are dressed like Chastity. I shiver at the thought of my five layers stripped down to just one. Or nothing. My imagination skitters away with thoughts of what I’ll become. Whether gang girl or hotel whore or ev
en a breeder bitch as they call them.

  Mal shoves me up a set of back stairs with two other gang members following us. Once or twice, I pause to eye Mal. There is nothing left of the farm boy I once knew. His overalls and flannel shirts smelling of straw and manure have been traded in for a uniform black as a tar pit that smells of cigars, musk, and the faint hint of perfume. His hair the color of terra cotta still mirrors mine, but it’s shorter and cleaner, more professional. No blades of grass or chicken feathers or bits of goat fur stuck in the strands.

  We reach a door at the end of the hallway just near another set of back stairs. I’ve tried to memorize the layout, but the club is much larger than I thought. Mal dismisses the guards behind us, and the bile in my stomach becomes lumpy and twists together to form knots. There can be only one place he’s taking me, one reason to dismiss the guards. I’m meeting the leader of the Brothers.

  After opening the door, Mal pushes me inside the office where we are greeted by another flight of stairs albeit a smaller one. Ever climbing higher. Once reaching the top of the stairs, there is a bar on the left-hand side, the front of it lit in a glowing pattern, back wall radiating rotating spotlights, and dozens of liquor bottles like multi-colored jewels. Chandeliers with crystal drops dangle above our heads. And at the end of the room is a semicircular table with a leather chair. At first, I’m confused because there’s no one here until a door on the side of the room opens. Puffs of steam waft from the room. There might as well be a dragon on the inside. Same red hand tattoo, but his is branded all over his chest and arms like a tapestry. I bite down on my tongue hard to keep from wincing. Were those done all at the same time or over a long period? Nothing else covers him but a white towel around his lower hips.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t interrupt my shower, Malachi,” the man I assume to be the Brothers leader announces, swinging the door wider behind him, revealing a girl who is curled up in the fetal position on the middle of the bathroom floor. Her eyes are closed, but I can tell she isn’t sleeping. Whether from drugs or from physical trauma, I can’t tell. Maybe both due to the bruises on her cheeks and side of her head.

  “Trust me, even if I had, it would have been worth it,” Mal informs him, one hand placated behind his back before nudging me forward, his fist more like a cattle prod.

  I almost hiss at my brother, but I don’t get the chance before the Brothers leader advances toward me.

  “Is this the day I finally won’t be sorry for bailing you out all those years ago?” he inquires just before his eyes coast up and down, surveying me.

  “I said she was here, didn’t I?”

  “Doesn’t look like much, but let’s have a better look, shall we?” He reaches two hands up and flattens back his wet hair that etches his shoulders, squeezing the excess droplets from their ends.

  Before I can even react, he stretches one hand out, grabbing my wool coat and ripping it and the buttons off in one swoop. What I don’t expect is for Mal to kick me behind my knees, causing me to crumble, doubling over. Mal’s hand seizes the back of my neck, driving my face down until my cheek is against the floor. Next, he tears at the strings of my cape and bunches it up in his fist.

  “All these years and you still kept it?” muses Mal, eyes roaming over the cape he used to don when we were growing up. One moment, he would be a superhero, the next he was an outlaw in the forest, the next a prince charming. I don’t stop struggling even as they remove the thick layers one by one.

  “It’s never ending, isn’t it?” jokes the leader when they discover another shirt beneath the one right under my sweater.

  “Oh, trust me, she’s all girl under there,” says Mal.

  “Feisty one at that. But not as feisty as others. She wants the fight, but she’s not used to it. Her hands are too used to climbing up walls to escape instead of using them to fight.” He pauses and leans down to whisper in my ear. “You’re thinking too much. I’ll teach you how to fight, my Fox.” Something in the way he says it makes me believe he coined the title on the wanted posters.

  “Another layer?” My aggravated brother complains when they rip another shirt over my head to discover my thin thermal.

  “Sorry to inconvenience you,” I chuckle into the floor, my sarcastic saliva smearing the hardwood.

  “Let her up,” orders the leader.

  Mal presses down hard once before releasing me. Stripped down to my thermal shirt and long johns, I spring to my feet and almost do a little jig.

  “Feast your eyes, boys,” I taunt, crossing my arms over my chest and tilting my head back to Mal. “Care to measure me again, bro?”

  “That will come later, I assure you,” the leader retorts and circles me because all men have some vulture in them somewhere. “So you’re the infamous Ruby. Our Ghetto Fox.” Finally, he removes my cap so my hair tumbles down my back.

  I drop my arms to my sides, resigned. “Can’t say we’ve been introduced.”

  He places a hand against his ruined chest and lowers his head in a mock bow. “Sawyer Tennyson.”

  Sawyer grips my hand, thumb rolling across my knuckles. He lowers his mouth toward it like he’s going to kiss it, but I know better. Instead, he yanks on my palm, bending my fingers back and driving me toward the ground till I’m on my knees before him. “You belong to me now.” He jams one hand down on my shoulder and coos in my ear, “I think one of us is still overdressed.”

  With that, he does away with my last layer or what he assumes is my last layer, considering I have one last small shirt, my tight black spandex that wraps around my chest down to my upper stomach. Not even Ink has seen me this naked.

  Eyes journeying downward, Sawyer confesses, “I’ll admit there were times I considered just killing your brother when he couldn’t deliver. It was his hair that stopped me every time. The promise of a big payload. He showed me a photograph of you. I’ve kept it taped on the wall above my head for years now.” He chuckles, cocky sneer bearing down on me like a tanker. “It worked out well, this delay. After all, you’re more developed now.”

  “Glad I could brighten your day,” I emphasize the sarcasm, ignoring his last jab.

  “If your hide wasn’t worth gold to me, I’d consider saving you for myself. Or maybe I can work out a deal with the Hotel. Get second pick or something.”

  The Hotel. How original.

  Even while Sawyer steps back and scrutinizes me, my eyes don’t leave Mal’s. Sure, I knew what his motives were when I was twelve years old, but it still stings. I hadn’t expected it either though I never really gave it much thought. After managing on my own for four years, two with Ink, my brother never entered my mind for all that time but for a passing ghost step on my memory. He didn’t deserve it.

  Now, every memory we shared on our farm returns to me. Of early mornings drinking milk straight from the udders, sorting eggs in the hen house, mending fences with father, patching and sewing with mother, nights spent by the fire drinking tea with honey. His eyes, an earthy brown copy of mine, lack any of the warmth they once had. Too many nights at the tables hardened them, building a prickly frost; everything about him is numb and lifeless as an ice sculpture. He’s only here because Sawyer found a purpose for him.

  “Hmm, she could use a good scrubbing,” comments Sawyer, his feet drawing another circle around my body.

  “Guess you’ll have to bring in an expert since you Brothers are only in the business of messing people up,” I say.

  He takes a step forward, chest nudging my shoulder. I wish my bone there could become a knife because it’d be a perfect bullseye for his heart.

  “True, but I’d sure enjoy giving it a try.” His fingers find my waist, feeling more like burrs prodding my skin.

  Mal clears his throat, interrupting, “So, we good, Sawyer?”

  I turn back to eye my brother.

  Without taking his eyes off me, Sawyer lifts a hand and waves it toward him. “Yes, yes, we’re good. Dismissed. And tell Chastity that she did very well and can h
elp herself to first pick of the inhalers tonight.”

  Inhalers don’t surprise me whatsoever. Even if they’re on the pricier side ― I wonder how many girls Sawyer had to trade for a shipment of those ― inhalers would succeed in addicting his stable all the faster. Everyone knows the chemicals once oxidized remain in your lungs for a much longer period than anything ingested. Inhalers also have another benefit. Whatever is blown out through the nostrils gets filtered into the room. It might be secondhand, but it has its effect ― namely hysterical desire. All gangs operate with drugs on some level. Inhalers seem very suited for Sawyer. A part of me wonders what the Sisters use.

  When the door clicks shut at the base of the stairs, I don’t move a muscle. I keep my eyes nailed to Sawyer and where his hands are. Then, he slides around to my front, keeping his hands on my waist, then lowering them to the drawstring of my long johns.

  “I think it’s time we see the rest of the package.” He says, hungry breath prowling along the edge of my neck.

  I lean up toward him and whisper, “I couldn’t agree more!”

  I do the last thing he expects because his eyes corkscrew like a diving plane when I wrench the towel right off his hips and jab his most sacred possessions as hard as I can with my naked foot. He curses, stumbling back against the bar behind him. It’s not his privates that are so disturbing; it’s the jagged square patch of missing skin on his thigh. I don’t ponder too long. Instead, my flight response kicks in, and I run like hell. I make it almost to the door on the lower level when I hear him growl behind me. I don’t look back, which is a mistake because the full force of his body smashes me into the wall. Gold glitter showers my vision, and I understand what they mean now by seeing stars. Unfortunately, I can still make out the details of Sawyer’s naked form towering over me.

  “Hope you had your fun, Ruby. It’s the last you’ll ever get.”