Kayla

 

Dante takes me back to his clubhouse in Missouri, and for the next week I live there, in a small one-bed room with an en-suite shower and sink, a luxury I rarely enjoy. For the first day, I just sit in my room and rest, take a shower, feeling sweat and smoke and heat wash away from me, and then rest some more; and then, when a woman a couple of years older than me brings me a plate of food, I devour it.

 

I learn things by listening, at my door, at the walls, at the window. I learn that War Riders is a motorcycle club based here in Missouri, that Dante is the leader, that the men who kidnapped me and tried to sell me were called the Wraiths. I learn that the man who scared me is called Ogre and he is an efficient part of the War Riders, but a wildcard. I learn that the ginger man is called Dogma.

 

The clubhouse is split into two sections. One is the dormitory, where some of the men live, and all of the club women. As far as I can tell, the club women are mostly in their twenties, all attractive, and all here for the express purpose of cleaning and cooking and sleeping with the War Riders. Most of them are loud and sassy. I hear them sometimes outside the dormitory wing, talking loudly, giggling louder. Their leader is a woman named Angelica, a curvy, tall woman covered with spider tattoos: one on each elbow; one on each shoulder; one on each hand. She is older than most of the girls, around thirty, and she sneers at me when I pass her in the hallway. And I am forced to pass her in the hallway after the second day, because Dante visits me in my room.

 

I keep the door locked. When it begins to rattle, I back away to the window, ready to climb out and run into the street. My window opens right onto the War Riders’ parking lot. One of the first things I did when entering was make sure I could open the window. I can, but not all the way. Still, if it came to it, perhaps I could squeeze my way out. It might result in scraping my skin raw, but that’s a price I’ll have to pay. Then I hear Dante’s voice: “It’s me.”

 

That shouldn’t bring me any comfort. This man is a stranger, after all. And yet when I hear his voice, I relax, if only a little. I go to the door and say: “Are you alone?”

 

He chuckles, low so no one will hear. “Yeah, I’m alone.”

 

I unlock and open the door, locking it behind him. He is wearing a T-shirt. He’s been outside, working and sweating, and I can see through the back of the white shirt. Dante has thorny tattoos bristling up his arms, twisting around, and then blossoming into a flowerless, sharp garden on his back. For a moment, it makes me think of the thorny flower in my hair, the way it cut my scalp. This man could do more damage than that flower, I know, much more damage. This man could ruin me, if only just because he is a man and he is a stranger.

 

When he turns to me, he is chewing on the end of a toothpick.

 

“The other girls are starting to resent you,” he says.

 

I stay silent. More often than not, staying silent is better than saying anything. Better for survival, anyhow.

 

When he sees I’m not going to say anything, he says: “I have to put you to work, Kayla. You’ve got to cook and clean like the other girls. Alright?”

 

I nod shortly.

 

He chews on the end of his toothpick, and then moves it to the corner of his mouth. When he talks, the toothpick moves around.

 

“You don’t say much, do you?”

 

I shake my head.

 

“Why’s that?”

 

His pitch-black eyes move up and down me. The first night, one of the men dropped a bag of clothes outside my room. A bag filled with clothes I wouldn’t normally wear: spring dresses which show off my legs; low-cut tops; heeled shoes. Dante’s eyes linger on my legs for a moment. I tell myself I don’t like the way he looks at me; I cannot trust him and he should not be looking at me like this. But as he looks, I feel something, a shiver almost, whispering up my inner thighs.

 

I open my mouth—and then close it. I am not about to tell him about Master and the Compound and all that stuff. I can’t tell him that I have to keep running because, once upon a time, Kayla Pearson was a kid in a cult. No, I will not tell him that. So I stay quiet.

 

He shrugs, and takes his toothpick from his mouth. “Fair enough. I’ll see you around, Kayla.”

 

I nod, and step aside.

 

The next morning, Angelica knocks on my bedroom door at eight o’clock in the morning. She doesn’t wake me. I have been awake since six o’clock, as I am every morning. Six o’clock is early enough so that nobody else is awake and I can listen to the sounds of the clubhouse, listen for danger, listen for anybody from the Movement. I imagine one of the smiling Movement gentlemen approaching the clubhouse and asking, with smiles and politeness, if there is a Kayla Pearson here. If that happens, I will be out of the window in no time. But it doesn’t.

 

Angelica thrusts cleaning supplies into my hand and says: “Your job is to clean the rooms and the showers and to restock the refrigerators and to cook burgers at noon. Got it?”

 

I nod, and she says: “Would it kill you to say a few words?”

 

I shake my head.

 

She makes a huffing sound and leaves me there with the supplies.

 

I spend my days cleaning and cooking. The cooking is the best part because I get to be in the bar area, where sometimes Dante is. He’ll look up through the kitchen partition and smile at me, and though I’ll look down and pretend I didn’t see, I like that he notices me even if I don’t want to be noticed. It confuses me, because ever since the Movement I have had a cursory experience with men. Drunken and regretted one night stands, nothing more.

 

I steal, too, over the next few days. Little things, like knives and forks if they look expensive, sometimes petty cash left lying around, anything I can get my hands on. I can’t help it; it’s who I am. Steal, scurry, plan for escape.

 

Escape—but to where? That is the problem. I could escape tomorrow, but where would I go? What would I do? This is a good gig, but there’s always the danger of somebody from the Movement finding me. I am a woman without a destination. There is no end goal in sight except for the next meal, the next day, the next town. Ever since I left the Compound, I have lived by one rule: survive. But now, as I catch Dante’s smile through the kitchen partition, I begin to wonder if there might be more. I try and kill the thought, but it resurfaces despite me.

 

Dante knocks on my door a couple of times over the week, in the evenings. I let him in and we talk, or, rather, he talks and I listen. He doesn’t really say much. He tells me about his bike, how he needs to get a new part fitted, or how once he crashed it and slid on his leather for a hundred yards, almost dying. He tells me anything that comes to him, and I’m content to just sit there and listen. It’s like he just wants somebody he can talk to as a person, someone unrelated to club life. The men treat him like the boss, and the women treat him like some kind of high school jock, giggling if he glances at them. I do neither. I just sit, and listen.

 

One night, he wanders over my bed and lifts up my mattress with one hand, the other fiddling with his toothpick. He has this trick he does without seeming to know he’s doing it. He’ll flip the toothpick around his forefinger, and then his middle finger, and then back around his forefinger, all in one smooth movement. The first time he does it, I can’t help but stare at his hand, try and track the movements. Tonight, he lifts up the mattress and looks down at my hoard. Mugs, cutlery, a bit of cash. I seize up, fists clenched. I’ll have to fight, or run. Fight or flight. That’s what your life comes down to when you’ve turned into an animal.

 

But Dante just drops the mattress and says: “Isn’t it uncomfortable sleeping on a mug?”

 

He turns to me, smiling. His smile is cocky and handsome and I have a hard time looking away from him. It’s the sort of smile a woman like me has never had turned on her, mostly because a woman like me spends most of her time fleeing from place to place, never settling, and doing everything in her power to stop smiles like that from being turned upon her.

 

I don’t know what to say, but I don’t need to say anything. Dante sticks the toothpick in his mouth and swaggers past me, out the door, and down the hallway.

 

I lock the door behind him quickly. The tension releases only when I hear the click of the lock. Then I go to the wall and lean against it, slide down and slump on the floor, panting. He could’ve killed me for that, or beat me bloody, or turned mean and set his big man Ogre on me. He could’ve done innumerable nasty, pain-inflicting things.

 

“But he didn’t,” I mutter into the spring evening light.