Your Favorite Girl (YFG Series) (14 page)

A chorus of groans tapered off to the distinct sound of someone crying.

It was Judy, surrounded on all sides by dirty looks.

The double doors led to a wide hallway with a shiny white tile floor and cinderblock walls.  Somewhere on this floor was where I'd been strapped to the table.  The doors were labeled with words like GENETICS, PHARMACOGENOMICS, and BIOCHEMISTRY, while others were more mundane: STORAGE, RESTROOMS, CAFETERIA.

We came to a junction, where a reception desk sat unoccupied, and Kate led us to the left, down a smaller, hardwood hallway.  Here the doors stood open.  Small offices, also empty.  At the end, we entered
a door labeled BRIAN'S OFFICE.

It wasn't just an office.  It was Brian's home, similar in style to Kate's room, only much larger and clearly decorated by a scientist.  In the center of the room was what looked like a well but on closer inspection I found
it was the housing for a pendulum, a barrel-sized bob hanging at equilibrium at least ten feet down.

A large gyroscope on a platform, shining under display lights.  Shelves of creepy organisms suspended in formaldehyde, some of them possibly human.  He even had his own small greenhouse, where I assumed he propagated Kate's weed.  I was drawn to the golden light of the high pressure sodium bulbs inside, but before I could approach it Kate pushed me through another door.

"He must be in the shower," she said.  "We need to hurry."

"I thought you said you could handle him."

"I can, but why bother if we can avoid him altogether?"

Pete was a
lready waiting in the empty room, standing in the doorway of another elevator.

"This is the only way to the Showcase Hall
," Kate said as we rode.  "Brian bitches about it all the time.  He doesn't like Sean or his guards, and they're in and out of here constantly.  They pick on him."  She sounded please with this fact.

"What did you mean back there when you said confinement?"

"Exactly what it sounds like.  I have the authority to put the Level A and Level B employees on lockdown if they get out of sorts.  That means it's straight to work and back to their rooms.  No social time.  Which really stings for the ones in relationships."

"
Don't you think these people have it tough enough?"

Kate looked puzzled.  "Um, do you know how much money they make?  They have no right to complain about their lives."

"You said this place is a prison."

"Yeah, but still . . ."

The elevator dinged, cutting off the conversation.  Pete and I had to wait while Kate disappeared with Bob into his office.  Bob wasn't happy to see Pete with us, but he didn't resist when Kate pulled him away.

A few minutes later she emerged, a little flustered.  Bob remained in his office, and the rest of us went on through the lobby--empty of Sean's guards, thankfully--and into the waiting room where Kate had drugged and seduced me.

"I don't want any of that stuff this time," I said immediately.

"Good, 'cause you don't get any.  We don't have time."

"The Libido Drug?" Pete asked.

I nodded.

"Can I?" he asked.

"Keeping dreaming," Kate said.

Then we moved on to the Showcase Hall, and my heart started pounding against my breastplate.

Kate led while Pete and I walked several steps behind her.  He looked eager, like an adolescent boy set
to the task of looking up internet porn for the first time.

We came to the window where Flora had been displayed
, on which hung a sign that said, "Currently Unavailable.".  The box was bare and the lights were off.  On the white floor remained a single leaf from the vines they had wrapped around her, and for a moment I was lost in memory of her warm, moist body swelling out of the foliage like a soft fruit.

When I came out of my thoughts, we had reached
Frog Girl's window.  Also empty.  I was relieved.  Who could ever be attracted to one of those things?  Frog Girl, with her disproportionately long legs and her ear-to-ear mouth, would randomly appear in my nightmares for months to come.

"Are they all empty?" Pete asked.

Kate quickened her pace, ignoring or not hearing him.  A few steps farther and I saw white fluorescent light pouring onto the floor.

"This one isn't," I said.

"Who's next?"

"I don't know."

Kate had her face pressed against the glass.  She was smiling and waving at whatever ornament quivered inside, like a child picking out a puppy.

I knew it was Diamond Girl but still had no idea what to expect.

We reached the window, where the white light was blinding.  As my eyes adjusted, I began to make out a human form composed of what I can only describe as a cloud of glitter.  She had white hair, white eyebrows.  Albino skin, though not much showed through the sparkling light all over her body.

"Oh my God," Pete said, and that's when I realized what made her so
glittery.

Dermal piercings covered her from neck to feet, with the
exception of her hands, vagina, and breasts.  A diamond-encrusted human being, sitting on her shins with her back arched and her chest heaving.  Her nipples were also pierced, just like Kate's.

"You should pick her," K
ate said.

"I want to see the others."

"The others aren't as good."

"As good?"

"Yeah."

I started to go on a tirade, but instead I nudged Pete along and headed down the curving hallway.  The next shaft of light spilling across the soft carpet had a pinkish hue.
  I rushed to the window, eager to see the next showcase, the next manifestation of Brian's dark fantasies--or was it Mr. Shriver who designed them?

"
I want her," Pete said, stabbing his index finger at the glass like a child prodding a fish tank.

I couldn't speak.  An acidic pain boiled low in my stomach, rising.  By the time Kate reached us
, tears were streaming down my cheeks.

"I want this one," Pete said to Kate.

"Got a million dollars?"

Pete huffed and turned back to stare at the girl.  "What's she called?" he asked.

I knew the answer before Kate said it.

─Time for School─

PATTON WAS waiting for us when we returned to the room
.  Straight-backed, light-footed, gorgeous . . . like mornings didn't affect him.  Much to Kate's chagrin, he quickly led me away, leaving her steaming mad and stuck with Pete.

We rode the elevator in silence.  I was overwhelmed by a stilted, awkward feeling, like when I first tried to be flirty with Ted when he would stop in my yard on his daily run, me just a young teenager exhilarated and bewildered by a sweaty abdomen and hip bones guiding my nubile eyes to the mysterious bulge in his shorts.  Or later, when I waited on him at the restaurant, and my infatuation evolved into something emotional, something personal.

Here I felt it all at once.  I wanted his voice to break the silence, but at the same time I wanted him to grab my wrists and push me up against the wall without a word.

Nothing happened.  We came off the elevator and into a small indoor courtyard with grass, fount
ains, stone benches, and even beds of flowers, ferns, and an assortment of dwarf evergreens, above which hung light fixtures like the ones in Brian's greenhouse.

Butterflies and bumblebees everywhere.

"The girls never get to go outside," Patton said as we passed through to a set of heavy double doors.  "Studies show that everyone should walk barefoot in the grass now and then.  Its effect on health and wellness is quite notable."  He swung one door open.  "And it feels great.  Very grounding."

He
walked alongside me and put a hand on my arm to guide me into his office.  Somewhere down the hall I could hear the laughter of young girls, but he quickly shut the door and offered me a seat in one of two bulky leather chairs facing his desk.

I wanted to look around, especially after noticing the examination table, like those in doctors' offices, along the right wall
, but Patton seemed to be in a rush.

"Melissa Reed," he said contemplatively.  "What's your work history, Melissa?"

"I waitressed for a few years in high school," I said.

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Did you go to college?"

"No," I said reluctantly.  I couldn't tell if he was judging me or just assessing my job skills.  With a nervous hitch, I said, "I decided to marry a millionaire instead."

Patton
laughed quietly, nodding.  "Good plan," he said, "but I don't think it ever suited you."

"What do you mean?"

"You're too restless to be a housewife."

"Maybe."

"And despite your education, you seem quite intelligent."

Intelligent?  N
ot an adjective used often to describe me.  When you live your life being treated like you're stupid, it's hard to look at yourself any other way.

"Clearly not too intelligent,
" I said.  "Look what I've gotten myself into."

"But you're alive," said
Patton.  He leaned forward in his chair and put his elbows on the table, resting his sharp jaw in both hands and watching me like a movie.  He was in his early thirties, by my estimation, but his mannerisms were adolescent at times, grandfatherly at others.  Calm and wise one moment, swift and athletic the next.  Like Yoda, only much more attractive.  "The events that brought you here," he said.  "No one else would have survived them.  You were smart to use your husband's estate as leverage.  Mr. Shriver loves money more than he loves fucking and killing."  He laughed, but there was anger behind it.  "Do you know why that is?"

"No."

"Because money affords one more of both, without consequence.  Money buys freedom, and freedom generates more money.  In biology, this is referred to as symbiotic.  Each feeding into the other.  That's why the rich get richer, and evil always prevails."

"Is he going to kill me?"

Patton locked eyes with me deliberately and shook his head.  "I would never let him."

I could tell he meant it, but I was shaking with nervousness.
  Something had come over me.  Maybe it was the battle raging in my mind between wanting to trust him and feeling hoodwinked for possessing such a desire.

"Thanks," I murmured
.  "I like living."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just . . ."

"Scared."

"I guess."

"I don't blame you.  This is a scary place.  Most people would never believe it exists."

He crossed his arms and peered around the room.  I couldn't help but think he looked downtrodden.

"What do you do here?"
I asked.

"I
. . . raise the girls," he said.  "I give them a happy and healthy upbringing, make sure their innocence remains intact without stilting their education.  Just in case."

"In case what?"

He sighed.  "In case the day comes when they can be free.  The ones who haven't graduated."  He emphasized this last word with enough venom to startle me, but when next he spoke his affable tone had returned.  "How did it go at the Showcase Hall?  Did you pick a new girl?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I didn't get past Doll Girl."

"Yeah," he said slowly, "it's all difficult to stomach.  If I were you, I'd hold off for another Flora.  The Floras are the only ones who aren't altered in some way, except for . . ."

I waited for him to finish his thought, but it quickly became clear that he had almost uttered a secret.

"Are they completely paralyzed?"

"The Doll Girl on display, yes."

"But not the . . . future ones."

"Paralysis is instituted in the preparation stage, right before they go in the Showcase."

"That's sick."

"Yes it is."

"Is she in a coma?"

"No, she's fully conscious.  Just unresponsive.  She can't even speak."

"Who would want something like that?"

"Melissa, you'd be surprised at what some men want."

"Are you the one who does it?"

"Of course not."

"But you're the doctor, right?"

"Brian has a team of doctors, nurses, scientists, lab techs.  My involvement with the girls ends t
he day they turn eighteen."

"What happens then?"

"You'll find out soon enough."  Patton drummed on the desk with his fingers, appeared to be thinking.  He said, "I need a personal assistant.  Someone I can trust, someone who can see and hear things and keep those things to herself."

"
I can do that."

Who did I have to talk to anyway?  Kate?  Whatever friendship we'd been developing went out the window this morning.  I was even considering picking Diamond Girl just to appease her.  Something about Kate made me nervous.  Not just her childish temperament; she had a vengeful streak in her, and, given time, those who seek vengeance for everything make rash and dangerous decisions.