‘You’re fucking kidding me.’
Reaching down, Drake gripped the long, jagged, twisted piece of metal still lodged in the tyre wall and yanked it out. It was aluminium judging by the weight, maybe 18 inches long. If he didn’t know better, he would have said it was part of an aircraft fuselage. In any case, it had shredded the tyre like a razor, buckling the wall and tearing half of it away.
There was shit all along the side of the highway, he realised now. Loose stones, bits of metal, bolts, nails, rusted old exhausts and countless other bits and pieces that had sheared off passing cars over the years. Negotiating such roads seemed to be a case of knowing which path to take through the debris.
Sighing, he tossed the offending piece of scrap aside. ‘I’ll get the jack.’
‘I’ll get the spare wheel.’
Drake shook his head. ‘Forget it. You’re better off in the cab.’
The woman eyed him suspiciously. ‘I hope this is not some misguided attempt at chivalry.’
‘Not my style,’ he assured her. ‘You haven’t been outside in years, now you’re in the middle of the desert. You’ll fry like a vampire in this sun.’
Her skin was already reddened from her limited exposure. She glanced up at the fiery orb beating down on them, and seemed to see the logic of his argument.
‘Fine,’ she conceded, looking unhappy about it. He had come to know her expression of reluctant acceptance quite well.
‘By the way, did you actually use any of that suncream I bought you?’
‘No.’
He stared at her. ‘Why not?’
She shrugged, looking uncomfortable. ‘Because I hate creams and lotions. I hate the feel of them. I would rather burn.’
Drake shook his head. ‘You know what? I give up.’
Ten minutes later, he had the Land Rover jacked up and was busy undoing the bolts holding the wheel in place. It was a physically demanding task at the best of times, but with the temperature soaring in the late-afternoon sun, it soon turned into a grim test of endurance.
The last bolt was a tough one. God only knew what kind of tool they had used to fix it in place, but it must have been a lot more powerful than the foot-long metal wrench he had at his disposal. Even setting it horizontal and jumping on it had failed to dislodge the bolt.
Sweat was pouring down his back, soaking his thin T-shirt, but hard effort was just no substitute for a high-powered pneumatic wrench. Other cars and trucks roared past on the highway, showing not the slightest interest in their plight.
‘Come on, you bastard. Move!’ Drake grunted, heaving once more. The bolt groaned under the strain but held firm.
‘Yelling at it will not help,’ Anya reminded him.
He looked up at her. Sitting in the shade and relative cool of the vehicle’s cab, she looked annoyingly comfortable as she sipped a bottle of mineral water. She was watching him with a mixture of sympathy and, much to his chagrin, playful amusement.
‘Are you enjoying this?’
She shrugged, though the hint of a smile remained as
she
surveyed his sweating torso. ‘Well, there are worse ways to spend the day.’
Shaking his head, Drake went back to work. ‘This could qualify as sexual harassment, you know.’
‘Wishful thinking.’ Growing more serious for a moment, she asked, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘Well, you could talk to me,’ Drake said, muscles straining as he tried again.
‘What would you like me to say?’
‘I don’t know. Surprise me. Tell me about yourself, where you grew up. Give me a funny anecdote. I’m quite easy to please, really.’
‘I don’t remember much from Before.’ She sounded almost apologetic.
‘Before what?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She sighed, took another sip of water and looked out across the desert. It was a while before she spoke again, but when she did, her voice was different. Softer, quieter. ‘You asked me before what my parents were like. I did not tell you because, the truth is, I can barely remember them. My life was different then, I was different. All I see is … flashes, like a camera. Little moments printed on my memory.’
He couldn’t help himself. ‘What happened to them?’
‘They died. In a car crash. They were driving home when another man cut across the road and hit them. They went straight into a tree … and they died. As with your father, it was like a light going out. Or so I was told.’
She closed her eyes, fighting back the feeling of wrenching, aching helplessness that such memories still evoked. ‘I was waiting for them to come home, but they never did,’ she said once she trusted herself to speak again. ‘After that, I was surrounded by police, social
workers
, men in suits who I did not understand. I seemed to spend my life in offices and interview rooms. Everyone kept asking me questions and telling me everything would be all right, that they would look after me.’
Anya sat with her head tilted down, hands in her lap, saying nothing as Leonid Cherevin, the director of Atsigrezk State Orphanage, surveyed the folder that represented the sum total of her life. Fifteen years compressed into a few dozen pages of thin, yellowed paper
.
She could hear the scratch of his pen. It was almost out of ink, forcing him to press down harder. Sometimes he’d have to go back and rewrite a word that hadn’t printed right
.
‘Anya, Anya … What are we going to do with you?’ he chided, finishing up his notes and closing the folder. ‘You broke a young man’s nose, bit his face so hard he’ll be scarred for life. This is a serious incident. Very serious.’
Anya said nothing, didn’t move a muscle. She had nothing to say. There was no point
.
He leaned back in his chair, watching her. Cherevin was in his mid-fifties, with jet black hair that she was certain he dyed. But there was no disguising his expanding midsection, or the lines around his mouth and eyes. He smoked too much, ate too much, probably drank too much as well
.
She saw a brief glint of something metallic in his hands. The silver letter opener he always kept on his desk, no doubt an antique; a throwback to the days when men of power and status would use them to open vital documents and communiqués
.
Like the letter opener, his office was ornate, over-decorated, pretentious. Everything about him spoke of ambition that outstripped ability
.
‘Don’t you have anything to say?’ he prompted
.
She sighed and closed her eyes. He wasn’t going to stop
until
she said something, offered some kind of explanation, even if he chose to ignore it
.
‘He tried to attack me.’
‘He beat you?’
‘No. He …’ She swallowed hard, a blush rising to her face
.
She had been a child when she arrived here, a skinny slip of a girl, tall for her age, gangly and awkward. But not now. Her body had filled out, her breasts and hips swelling as she assumed the curves of womanhood. The older boys had begun to notice the changes too, and today one had cornered her in the girls’ washroom
.
She had fought him off the only way she knew how. She hadn’t wanted to. She had abhorred violence when she was younger, but the alternative was unthinkable
.
‘I see.’ She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a smile flick across his face
.
She had never liked Cherevin, and the feeling had grown stronger over time. There was something about his accommodating smile, his half-handsome face, his outward veneer of charm that frightened her
.
Rising up from behind his desk, he paced slowly across the room. She didn’t move, but she could hear the soft thump of his footsteps on the carpet behind her
.
‘The board of directors want to send you to a young offenders’ institution. They feel you’re too dangerous to remain here.’ She heard him sigh wearily. ‘I don’t want that to happen, but I must be able to assure them that you can be trusted.’
She felt his hand on her shoulder, the gesture almost like that of a father showing love and reassurance toward a wayward daughter
.
‘Can I trust you, Anya?’ he asked
.
His hand moved lower, cupping her right breast. She froze,
a
shiver of revulsion and fear running through her. Her eyes opened wide and her heart started beating wildly
.
When the young man had accosted her in the washroom, her reaction had been instinctive. But now her instincts had deserted her. From the earliest age she had been conditioned to respect authority, to obey the rules and abide by what her elders told her
.
But now she was torn. Cherevin was abusing his authority – of that she had no doubt – but it was still his authority. He ran this place. There was nobody higher than him within her reach
.
‘Stand up, Anya,’ he commanded
.
Unwilling or unable to protest, she rose to her feet and turned to face him. She was shaking. She couldn’t stop it. She wanted to be sick
.
He was standing close. She could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath. He smiled at her gently, almost tenderly, reached up and brushed a lock of blonde hair away from her face. His finger grazed her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw down to her chin
.
‘I can make your time here as easy as you want,’ he whispered. ‘But you must give me something in return. Will you give me what I ask, Anya?’
She felt his hands on her breasts again, fondling them, squeezing them harder until she let out an involuntary gasp
.
She backed away a step, trembling, tears in her eyes
.
‘No. I … I can’t,’ she stammered. ‘Please, I don’t want—’
She was cut short when he swung his arm around and backhanded her across the face. The blow caught her completely unawares, and she fell back, her momentum carrying her around so that she landed face down on his desk. Papers, folders, pens and other paraphernalia clattered to the floor
.
Still dazed by the strike, she felt him pulling and yanking
at
her trousers, trying to tear them away. With his other hand, he grabbed a handful of her long hair and pulled hard, jerking her head back
.
‘It’s not your place to refuse me, Anya,’ he hissed in her ear as her trousers at last came away, exposing her. ‘I own you now. You do what I say, when I say it. It’s time you learned that.’
Tears were streaming down her face, blurring her vision. She could taste blood in her mouth, her ears rang from the blow
.
She knew what was coming. She didn’t know what it would feel like, but already she felt the growing disgust, the horror, the hatred of knowing what he was about to do, and being powerless to stop it
.
She heard the clinking sound of his belt being undone, and tensed up, trying somehow to prepare herself for what he was about to do. Just get it over with, she thought. It won’t take him long. Once it’s over, I can leave
.
Then, through her blurred, tear-streaked eyes, she saw something glinting on the table in front of her. Something metallic
.
The letter opener
.
She didn’t think, didn’t pause even for an instant to consider the implications. The moment she felt him, hard and insistent against her, she snatched up the crude weapon, swung it around and plunged it into his kneecap
.
‘He was right about one thing,’ Anya conceded grimly. ‘The board did want me transferred to a young offenders’ institution. Only he could have stopped them, but he would never do that. Not after I left him walking with a stick for the rest of his life.
‘They spent a good hour telling me all the reasons I was a bad person, why I couldn’t stay at the orphanage, why I needed “a higher standard of care”. I wasn’t listening, not really. I knew what they were going to do the moment I picked up that letter opener. I didn’t see
how
they could send me anywhere worse than Atsigrezk.’ She sighed. ‘I was wrong.’
A crowd had gathered in the canteen to watch the spectacle, cheering and hollering every time the new girl took a hit
.
Anya grunted as her back slammed into the unyielding wall, knocking the breath from her lungs. She looked up just as the bigger girl, Ludmilla, drew back her clenched fist and slammed it into her face
.
Pain exploded through her head and her vision blurred as she fell to her knees, blood dripping onto the scuffed linoleum floor. Once more the other young women cheered and laughed, glad it wasn’t happening to them
.
It was a pack mentality, and Ludmilla was the alpha female. Anya knew they weren’t going to interfere in this. She was on her own. She had been on her own since the night the police arrived at her house
.
Taking a step forward, Ludmilla snatched a clump of Anya’s hair, brought her arm back and struck her with a brutal right hook
.
This time there would be no absorbing the hit. She went down, limp like a rag doll, her head striking the hard floor. Blood flowed from her burst lip, pooling around her, staining her hair and face. Stars and strange blobs of light swam across her eyes
.
‘Had enough now?’ Ludmilla yelled right in front of her, specks of spit flying in her face. ‘Stay down you stupid little bitch, or you won’t get up next time!’
‘I should have listened to her,’ Anya said, looking back on the scene with a sad, reflective expression. ‘All she wanted was respect. She would leave me alone if I stayed down. Just stay down.’
No
.
You did everything they told you to. You accepted every
decision
they made, every humiliation, every piece of you they took away. And what did it get you?
She could endure no more, could sacrifice nothing else
.
Get up
.
A sudden fire of defiance leapt up inside her, burning away fear, pain, grief, weakness. Her vision clearing, she spat bloody phlegm on the floor, managed to get her arms beneath her and slowly pushed herself upright
.