Article 5 (Article 5 #1)(15)

My mouth hung agape. Her beating. Or his.

“Hands on the table,” Ms. Brock repeated. I looked at the other girls. Rebecca was the only one standing, and most of her was hidden behind a guard.

“Girls…” I started, but I couldn’t remember their names.

None of them moved.

“What’s wrong with you?” I shouted. Randolph grabbed my wrists and slammed them down on the table. They burned and then went numb as I struggled. “Let go of me!”

He did not. With his free hand he brought the baton right in front of my face, so that I nearly went cross-eyed staring at it, and then he smacked me once, right in the throat.

I couldn’t breathe. It felt like my windpipe had been crushed and what was left was on fire. A choking reflex took over, but the more I gasped, the more I panicked. No oxygen was getting through. He’d broken my neck. He’d broken my neck and I was going to suffocate. Bright, white streaks cut across my vision.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, take a deep breath,” chided Ms. Brock.

I tried to scratch at my neck, but Randolph held my hands down. His face was getting blurry. Finally, finally, a tiny bit of air siphoned through. The tears streamed down my face. Another breath, then another. God, it hurt.

I’d fallen to my knees, my tingling hands still pinned to the table. I tried to speak but no words came out. I gaped at the faces of the girls around the room, who refused to meet my eyes. Even Rebecca was now staring into her lap.

No one was going to help me. They were all too scared. I was going to have to do what Ms. Brock said or I would be hurt much worse. My body felt as if it were filled with lead. Eyes on Randolph, I flattened my quaking hands on the table.

And with that, Ms. Brock wheeled back and slammed the narrow rod across them while the other girls watched, paralyzed by fear. A silent scream broke through my constricted throat. Immediately red lines from the whip burst into welts over my knuckles.

The look on Ms. Brock’s face was pure madness. Her eyes swelled until the irises were islands within a sea of white. A row of blunted teeth emerged beneath her retracted lips.

I jerked my hands away, but Randolph raised his baton again. He was a machine. Cold. Dead. Completely inhuman.

I snapped them back into place, swallowed a burning breath, and ground my teeth together.

Again and again, Ms. Brock struck the backs of my hands. I pressed them so hard against the table my fingers turned white. I forgot my audience. The pain was excruciating. I buckled again to my knees. Long welts criss-crossed over one another, until finally one cracked and bled. There was blood in my mouth, too, from where I had bitten the inside of my cheek. It was warm and coppery and made me want to vomit. Tears poured from my eyes, but still I made no sound. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of hearing me crumble.

I despised Ms. Brock with a level of hatred I had never known. I hated her more than I hated the MM and the Statutes. More than I hated him for taking my mother. More than I hated myself for not being strong enough to fight back. I directed every fiber of hatred toward this woman until the pain and the anger became one.

Finally, she stopped, wiping away a line of sweat from her brow.

“Dear me,” she said with a smile. “What a mess. Would you like a Band-Aid?”

*



HE’D left a flower on my pillow. A white daisy, with clean, matching petals and a long green stem. The thought of him lifting the window, placing it delicately where I rested my head made something ache deep inside of me.

My eyes were drawn to the windowsill, where he’d left another flower, this one smaller but no less perfect. It made me smile to picture him picking just the right ones. I pushed up the window and leaned out, half expecting him to be waiting, but he wasn’t.

Another daisy lay evenly spaced between our houses, on the grass. Thrilled with the game, I climbed through the window then bent to add it to my growing bouquet. I glanced around and found another, a few yards down, near the back of the houses. It angled into his yard.

Giggling, I followed the trail, one daisy at a time. My anticipation grew, envisioning how he’d take me in his arms when I found him, how he’d touch my face just before he kissed me.

I climbed the deck and called his name as I pushed through his back door. The room was dark, and it took several seconds for my eyes to adjust.

Something was wrong. I felt it, tingling at the base of my neck, warning me to go no farther.

“Chase?”

He was wearing a uniform. The blue jacket was pulled back to reveal his belt. My insides went hollow when I saw the gun and the empty slot where his baton should have been.

“Ember, run!” I jumped at my mother’s voice. She was kneeling on the far side of the room, her fingers spread over the coffee table. Ms. Brock was there, her whip raised high.

I looked down in horror to see the blood running freely over Mom’s knuckles.

I dropped the daisies and tried to get to her, but Chase blocked my way. His eyes were cold and empty, his body only a shell of the boy I’d known. With a baton in one hand he backed me into the corner, crushing my flowers into the carpet beneath his boots.

“Don’t fight me, Ember.”

*



I BURST from the nightmare, sweating, even without the blankets. Moisture beaded on my forehead, my neck, and dampened my hair. My throat was hot and thick and bruised to the touch. My hands throbbed furiously, as if my skin were on fire.