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  As she talked, she scooped up the swallow in one hand, flipped the nest right side up with the other, and gently placed the bird back inside the nest. “The part I liked best was when these guys, these space explorers, discovered a new planet inhabited by these cow-like creatures. They were really docile and complacent, so much so that when these other creatures attacked them, they just lay down—literally—and let it happen.”

  She scooped up the second swallow and placed it beside its twin. “So these explorers, they’re like appalled, they’re like, What is this? You just let yourselves die? They just can’t believe it, one guy in particular. He makes it his personal mission to teach these docile creatures how to take up arms and fight back. He convinces them, and then the next time the attackers come for them, they counterattack.”

  The final swallow laid in the nest, Taylor picked up the whole thing and held it in front of her, talking to it. “And these docile cow-like creatures, they’re decimated, just completely annihilated, never had a chance. If they hadn’t resisted only a few would’ve died, but fighting back, starting a war, wiped out almost their entire population.”

  She looked up at me. “Needless to say, the explorer guy was thoroughly embarrassed.”

  I laughed at her deadpan delivery, and she laughed, but then she turned sad again. “Will you help me bury this?”

  We took the birds outside and dug in the soft earth near the shore, along the far side of the boathouse, out of sight of the patrolling guard and his counselor friend, but not the ever-watchful eye of the black orb hanging from an exposed rafter. Dirt caked beneath our fingernails and filled the cracks in the skin of our palms. We placed the birds in the shallow hole and covered them with the loose dirt, stamping it tightly over them until you could barely tell the grave was there. We sat next to each other with our legs crossed, our knees touching, looking at the dirt.

  “I guess it gave me some hope,” Taylor said. “Whenever you’d go against them.” She shrugged. “That’s all.”

  Anyone else I’d probably say something like, There is no hope, but for Taylor, four weeks ago hope was a razor blade smuggled inside her vagina, and now it’s me, so instead I said, “There’s a good chance you won’t be picked for any of the programs. One of the lucky thirty-three percent who get to go home.”

  She shook her head. “No, not me. I’m probably one of the few girls here who still has a fully functioning uterus.”

  I hadn’t thought about it before, but she was probably right. To avoid being chosen for Breeding, a lot of girls’ parents would elect to have them undergo illegal and not altogether safe hysterectomies, supposing they could find a trusted surgeon who didn’t charge too much. Since being here at camp, I’ve overheard quite a few stories of girls dying under scalpels wielded by their own mothers who couldn’t afford or find a willing surgeon and refused to risk their daughters’ fate. Some parents fed their kids anti-growth hormones or testosterone injections to delay their menstruation; you could spot these girls easily enough because they were usually short and not even into training bras by fourteen. And then there were girls like me, whose biology dictated a late start.

  “Plus, I’m wicked hot.” Taylor bopped me lightly on the knee with her fist and laughed. “It’s Breed for me, for sure.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “No worries, I have my back-up plan.”

  “Okay, don’t say that either.”

  We sat in comfortable silence for a minute. Birds made plaintive or furtive calls all around us. I imagined one must belong to the mother of the swallows we just buried. Calling for them, or calling for another mate to start again.

  Taylor poked at my stomach. “Can I see it?”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I want to see how it’s healing.”

  I rolled up my shirt. The scar was fainter, not as red, starting to scab over at its thicker angles.

  Taylor started to trace the scar with her fingers but I felt it someplace else entirely and quickly shoved my shirt back down.

  “Want to see mine?”

  Before I could say no, she shifted her knees underneath her and rolled down the top of her sweats. She’d cut the letters of her name much smaller than she did mine, all in lowercase and not deep at all; it was faded and barely raised from the skin anymore.

  “Here, feel.” She grabbed my wrist and touched my hand to her flesh before I could protest. I felt her warmth and thought of Omalis: her thighs closed around my waist, fingers putting pressure on my wrists as I squirmed beneath her, peppermint breath burning not unwelcome against my cheek. I blushed but Taylor wouldn’t let me pull my hand away.

  “Do you like me, Jordan?”

  “What?”

  The memory is somewhat of a blur now, even though everything happened so slowly when she did it. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips against mine, and pushed her tongue into my mouth. My first kiss and I was so under prepared. I didn’t know at all what to do so I think I kind of just went limp. Taylor held my face in her hands and kept at it until I finally stopped worrying about what the hell I was supposed to be doing and concentrated on what she was doing, and copied her. That seemed to work, and I think I got the hang of it. I remember the wetness of her, how unexpected it was, how indescribable. Most of all I remember how, the whole time, I was never fully in the moment; I wasted the entirety of our first kiss on thoughts of Omalis, on what her mouth might taste like and what miraculous situation might lead to me being able to find out.

  When the kiss ended, Taylor asked me if that was okay. I don’t remember if I nodded or just said yes or even if I said no, but she kissed me again. She laid me back on the grass and ran her hands over me, under my shirt and over my scar. I felt the dirt from her hands slip into the creases of my skin. She whispered something breathily into my ear, something like “you’re beautiful” or “you’re wonderful,” but I was back on the side of the road near that sound barrier, and hearing only, “Calm down, Jordan. Calm down.”

  Eventually, the loudspeaker interrupted us with its bellowing announcement that groups were to meet in five minutes. We stood up and Taylor looked at me for the first time as if she were shy.

  “You’re the only good thing about all this shit,” she said, and walked away.

  I didn’t know what to think. Now, here in this suffocating space of hindsight, I hate myself for not thinking more about Taylor and what kissing me meant to her, or what it might mean to me. I’m in this windowless, endlessly bright room, completely empty except for the hard cot I’m sitting on, and I’m trying hard as hell to remember what Taylor’s tongue felt like or what her hands were doing or how she smelled, but I’m coming up all peppermint, peppermint, peppermint.

  Nothing else significant happened that day, until the evening, when they drew our numbers in the lottery. I still have the bruises but it has only been a few days, I think.

  They gathered all of us into the dining hall, only the tables and chairs and everything had been removed, replaced by a make-shift wrestling ring comprised of a rubber mat cordoned off by rough ropes wrapped around four upright punching bags. The lady with the bullhorn was back, Bertha I’ve decided, and a couple of guards to round out the evening. The counselors ushered us all into the room until we surrounded the ring, some of us with better views than the shorter girls. I don’t know about anyone else but I could tell what all this new equipment meant before Bertha broke it down for us.

  “As previously stated, we are adopting several new practices here, and one of those is this lottery.” Another counselor handed her a bucket filled to the brim with folded scraps of paper. “We will draw two of your numbers every night for the remainder of your stay, and if you don’t want to go immediately to the Feed Program—” sharp intakes of startled breath all around “—you will enter this ring and box each other.”

  Some “What the hells,” a few scattered “I can’t believes.”

  “You will box, bare knuckle, for two minutes. Bear in min
d that your performance is under scrutiny and will play a large role in determining your placement at the end of the Summer Program.”

  And there was no further ado. She plumbed deep into the bucket, dislodging a handful of paper slips, and read out two numbers. Ninety-six, and Fifteen.

  The crowds parted accusatorially, opening up for the contenders to make their way to the stage. Ninety-six reached it first, a lanky girl with blond hair and eyes red from crying. She stood in a corner and rubbed her palms compulsively against her thighs.

  I found Taylor in the crowd, on the opposite side of the ring, not moving even though a path had opened for her. Some of the girls closest to her patted her shoulders, offering whispered assurances while trying to push her closer to the ring. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, her mouth open.

  “Fifteen, you will now enter the ring,” instructed Bertha. “Or be immediately escorted to the Feed Program.”

  Taylor didn’t even blink at this, just stood there, her face betraying nothing. I couldn’t understand what she was doing, if she really was scared into a sort of paralysis at the thought of being forced to fight this other girl, or if she was making a stand, or…waiting for me to do something. My chest tightened. Okay.

  “I’ll do it,” I yelled, raising my hand enthusiastically and practically bouncing up to the ring. “Pick me, I’ll do it, I want to.”

  Bertha stuttered into her bullhorn, “You-your number was not drawn.”

  “Make an exception,” I said.

  “Remove yourself from the ring at once or I will instruct the guards to open fire—”

  Or she said something equally threatening like that, but I’m not too sure because I was no longer listening. I was striding across the mat, staring a frightened, waif-thin stranger two years older than me in her bloodshot eyes and pulling my elbow back, readying my right hook. She took the punch well, better than Jeremy can take a friendly stiff-arm even, didn’t fall or anything, but of course I’d thrown it soft, just trying to get things going. I barely registered any sounds around me, or registered it all in bursts, like fireworks popping all around me, and then she came at me—hard. I must’ve torn the scab off her emotional scarring because she just let loose, crying and screaming and pummeling and kicking. Her form was shit but she had me on the ropes in no time, arms up to protect my face, bent forward to shield my precious internal organs. Perhaps I hadn’t thought this through.

  I was certain she’d drop me well under the two-minute time limit, but it was a bullet from behind that did it. The small of my back burst open and my knees hit the mat, wet with my own urine. I’d never felt pain like that, thought I was dying, but still alive enough to feel ashamed that I’d just pissed myself in front of so many people, in front of Taylor. When the second bullet splintered my shoulder I had a split second to feel grateful before my head hit the mat and I blacked out.

  I came to in the infirmary tent, half expecting to see that strange woman again, the resistance fighter. I didn’t really realize how much I’d wanted to see her until a real nurse came in instead. She told me I wasn’t dying, that in fact those bullets were rubber, like the kind the police used to shoot at rioters back when anyone bothered to protest anything. I’d be bruised and pissing blood for awhile, and in quite a bit of pain because she said she couldn’t give me anything for it, but at least nothing was broken. She wouldn’t tell me anything else, just let me lie there, feeling the throbbing degrees of my pain as it fluctuated between a manageable dullness and nausea-swelling acuteness, depending on how I breathed. I didn’t even know if my intervention had helped Taylor at all, or if they made her fight anyway, or if she didn’t fight and was taken away, or if now I’d be taken away, although that didn’t really concern me because I figured they wouldn’t bother with an infirmary stint if that were the case.

  After one night spent in the tent, sleeping fitfully and peeing with a catheter, they let me go the next day because I had a visitor. At the time, I was grateful for being out of bed, even though it hurt slightly to walk, but they let me use an actual bathroom on the way to the meeting rooms and there was only a moderate amount of blood in my urine. Five minutes alone in that room with Omalis, though, and I wanted to go back to that tent, to that ring, to anywhere but there.

  But, of course, I was happy to see her.

  She looked different, dressed down in a red v-neck t-shirt and dark blue jeans, no makeup or discernible perfume, her hair up in a ponytail that barely managed to keep all the hair in. She was standing beside the table when I came in, her arms crossed, and she didn’t invite me to sit. Her naked lips frowned at the corners, her eyes narrowed.

  “I’m quite disappointed in you,” she said.

  “Funny how much I don’t care,” I shot back, even as my heart started up with its annoying racing. I could feel my neck heat up with the tentative beginnings of a blush, and I realized how gross I must look, in two-day-old unlaundered sweats (though someone had changed out my pants while I was passed out); my tangled hair; unwashed, doughy skin swelling with fresh bruises. I couldn’t smell myself but that didn’t mean I didn’t reek, especially without her usual combo of scents to mask my odor.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  “It kind of hurts to sit.”

  “Funny how much I don’t care,” she mimicked, but she didn’t say it angrily and she couldn’t even get through it without faltering into a smirk. Which, goddammit, made me smile too.

  She shook her head. “You are unbelievably stubborn.”

  I shrugged, trying to fix my face back into some indifferent expression.

  “Well, I suppose there’s no need to ask you how everything is going.”

  I could sense that laughing was only going to hurt my kidneys so I swallowed instead, which wasn’t much better.

  “I’m compiling quite an impressive file of your reckless theatrics,” she said. No matter how her voice changed as she spoke to me, a higher inflection or a throaty down-swing, her eyes stayed steady on me. I can’t say whether or not she even blinked because I was trying real hard not to look her in the eye, but without being obvious about it. “There’s actually a pool going among the mentors to guess what sort of disruption you’ll cause next. No one bet on this latest, I might add.”

  Gambling folk, my kind of people. Something in common with my captors after all. Was this the onset of that Stockholm thing Taylor was talking about the other night?

  “I suppose I shouldn’t refer to your stunts as ‘theatrics,’ or even as ‘stunts,’ really. In truth, I find them quite brave.”

  Thump thump thump thump. Every vein in my body started goddamn thump-thump-thumping.

  “It isn’t much of a morale boost for the others, but it is something. It means something for them to see someone, one of their own, still fighting, in whatever way she can. But you aren’t really doing it for them, are you?”

  My scar itched. All my bruises ached and my mouth filled with the memory of Taylor, and I became aware of having to pee again.

  “Parents visit next week,” she said, her jump in topic so surprising I almost voided right there. “Don’t suppose you will be giving them too many details of your days, hm?”

  The words struggled thickly out of my wet mouth, “Isn’t that your job?”

  “Your secrets are safe with me.”

  More thumping. What could she know about my secrets? I wished I’d been able to get to my pills that day, calmed down my head spinning all sorts of scenarios, my body reacting to them.

  “Are you even going to inquire about your friend?”

  My brow knit a dubious line, my mouth forming the word but no sound escaping before she clarified: “Taylor Reed. You two are….”

  She paused just long enough to drop her arms nonchalantly to her sides and lean in with her a head a bit more, arching one delicately tweezed eyebrow.

  “…close.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Taylor.” My palms started to sweat. I wiped them on my pants, where I ho
ped they didn’t leave a dark streak on the gray.

  Then something changed in Omalis, something shifted. She seemed to decide something, straightening up and closing her eyes, only a second longer than a calculating blink, and when she opened them—there, there it was, the change. Somehow. Something. She took a step forward, edging around the table that separated us.

  “She’s rather pretty.” Her voice was different, deeper, further away. It sounded almost familiar. “Older than you, but you like them older.”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “It’s all right. It’s natural, especially in a place like this, under these circumstances, to seek comfort in someone else. Someone…warm.”

  I could feel the heat crawling over my entire body, the ceaseless thumping now in my ears as they filled with the rushing sound of blood. She continued to step forward, and I matched her pace, stepping back.

  “I am happy for you. Though, truthfully, I must confess, I am also disappointed. I thought you had a crush on me.”

  Oh god. I hit a wall, nowhere to go. All that heat, all that noise inside my head, snapped away. Just cold, just silence, except she was still talking.

  “You made me that bracelet and all.”

  “S-stop it.”

  I closed my eyes but I couldn’t disappear. She could still see me. Fuck, she could still see me.

  “And how you tried to flirt, playing coy. It was…precious. Though as much as I will miss it, I should say I am also grateful. I feared one day, had it kept up, I would be forced to turn you down.”

  Breathing got hard, stopped all together. There was red behind the blackness of my eyelids. I tried to push into the wall, but there was nowhere to hide. She wouldn’t shut up.

  “Gently, of course. Perhaps if you were a mite older, somewhere around Taylor’s age, I could consider an affair. But you, Jordan…you are only a child.”

  I couldn’t stop it. She was right in front of me, right there. I could feel the moisture of her breath on my closed eyes and she wouldn’t stop talking, she was even—oh god—laughing a little, she wouldn’t shut up and I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—listen, didn’t want to listen, had to make her stop stop stop—