Wren
The van shakes violently, causing my teeth to rattle as it hits a row of potholes.
I'm sitting on a metal bench that's bolted to the floor, my hands clutching the edges to keep me from falling off. Something tells me that showing fear right now would be like bleeding in shark-infested waters.
My father didn't even look at me when they came.
That's the part I keep circling back to, the thing my brain won't stop picking at like a scab. He opened the front door, stepped aside, and stared straight ahead while a man with a curling viper neck tattoo and dead eyes said, "She'll do."
She'll dolike I'm a couch someone's hauling off to Goodwill.
Twenty-three years of being his daughter, and those were the last words I'll ever associate with him.
The van takes a sharp left and I slide on the bench, catching myself with one hand. The guy in the passenger seat glances back through the mesh divider. He's got a scar that runs from his earlobe to the corner of his mouth.
"Sit tight," he says in an accented voice that sounds all too much like gravel crunching.
I sit tight.
I've been doing that my whole life, honestly. Sitting tight. Keeping small. Staying out of the way while my father drank and gambled and borrowed from people who charge interest in blood. I worked two jobs to keep the lights on. Picked up his prescriptions. Cleaned the vomit off the bathroom floor on Sunday mornings. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew there'd be a bill coming that I couldn't pay with overtime shifts and coupon clipping.
I just didn't think it would beme.
The van stops. I hear gravel under the tires and the low hum of a gate opening. I brace myself for a warehouse. A basement. Some concrete room with a drain in the floor. Every crime show I've ever watched is playing a highlight reel behind my eyes, and I'm already planning how to scream, who to beg, what to offer that I haven't already lost.
The doors open, and instead of the gray concrete of a derelict warehouse I was expecting, I’m facing the clean white walls of a spa.
Not a strip mall nail salon. An actual, legitimate, high-end spa with a stucco facade and recessed lighting and a woman in a white coat standing at the entrance holding a clipboard. There are topiaries flanking the door. Topiaries. Perfectly sculpted little green spheres like this is a resort in the Hamptons, and I'm here for a weekend of hot stone massages and cucumber water.
"This way, please," the woman says. She's got a European accent I can't place and cheekbones that could cut glass. She smiles at me like I have an appointment.
I look back at the van. The guy with the scar is already lighting a cigarette, leaning against the bumper like his job is done. Delivery confirmed. Package intact.
"Miss," the woman says again. Patient. Professional. "We're on a schedule."
I follow her inside because what else am I going to do? Run? In what direction? I don't even know what city I'm in anymore. We drove for hours, and somewhere around hour two I lost track of the turns.
The interior is warm and smells like eucalyptus and something light and floral. There's soft music playing, the kind with no lyrics that exists only in elevators and therapists' waiting rooms. A girl in scrubs appears and takes my jacket, and another one offers me tea on a silver tray, and it's all so aggressivelynicethat my skin starts to crawl.
Because nice doesn't make sense. Nice isn't part of the equation when your father uses you to cover a gambling debt.
"We'll start with a bath," the woman with the clipboard says, leading me down a hallway lined with frosted glass doors. "Then hair, skin, nails. You'll be fitted for clothing after measurements. Do you have any allergies?"
"Allergies," I repeat.
"To products? Fragrances, dyes, latex..."
I stare at her. "I don't... no. No allergies."
She makes a note on her clipboard. "Lovely. Any existing injuries I should know about? Bruising, scarring?"
My stomach drops. She's not asking because she cares. She's asking because she's checking the merchandise for damage.
"No," I whisper.
"Wonderful. Right through here."
The bathroom is enormous. White marble, a freestanding tub already filled with milky water, towels folded into perfect rectangles on a heated rack. Two women are waiting inside.They don't introduce themselves. One of them gestures to a robe hanging on the back of the door.