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had tried, and had found that for the first time in her short life she couldn't think of a thing to say. It had felt as if a block of dry, salted marble had been caught in her throat. She couldn't swallow, couldn't so much as groan.
    She looked at her favorite poster on her bedroom wall. On it, a soft pink background framed a detailed drawing of a resplendent unicorn. Sparkles swept from the unicorn's golden hooves. Its tail and mane danced in an unseen wind. Moonlight reflected ever-so-delicately in its shockingly blue eyes. As a little girl, she had always loved unicorns, but suddenly, she hadn't understood them. Suddenly, she had never felt so lost.
    "Did someone hurt you, dear?" the voice had asked.
    "Yyyyy……yes," she had managed, and then the tears began to flow. They had been the first she'd shed since the incident. It had been an enormous relief to admit she'd been damaged, somehow akin to opening her veins and letting poisoned blood flow out and to the floor. Painful and terrifying, it had nevertheless been a release of tension that had been building for three days.
    "We can help you, dear," the voice had said. "You're not alone. Many of the women here have been hurt, too, and we are all healing together. Do you want to tell me what happened?"
    "Yes," the girl had repeated, though she hadn't known if she could. "My boyfriend…" she had begun, then found it was as impossible to say what the voice on the phone already knew as it was to stop her tears. "My boy…" and another bolt of pain had hit her. This had been like nothing she had ever felt. She hadn't known she could hurt so much. She had wanted to die, to kill herself. To kill him first and then kill herself so as to blot out the world's evil and its damaged goods in one fell swoop.
    "It's alright, dear," the voice had said. "There's no rush. I'll be here all day. You just take a few deep breaths and try again."
    The girl had felt her tears begin to slow. She had wondered why she hadn't called the number the first day like she'd wanted to. She had wondered why she hadn't told her mother the night it had happened. "I've lost control," she had suddenly blurted.
    A moment of silence had followed while the girl had time to renew her tears and worry that the line had gone dead. "We'll help you get it back," the voice had said into the silence. And though the girl hadn't believed such a thing was possible, she'd wanted it enough to stay on the line and listen to the silence a few more seconds, a few more minutes. Eventually, she had begun to talk.
     
     

2
     
    "Josie?"
    The woman looked up quickly, startled from her little trance. The pendant– a fist of power embedded inside the universal symbol for 'woman'– jerked in her hands and swung violently. She gathered it up as she checked her watch. It was 6:33 a.m. As reliable as ever , Josie thought.
    The speaker was Josie's roommate and best friend, Steph. They had been both trained and recruited together. "What are you doing?"
    "Oh, just…" Josie remembered again the unicorn poster on her old bedroom wall in those days before her encounter with an abusive man, "…just thinking." That bedroom, that whole life , was as far away from her now as any place or memory could be. She suddenly realized she was not only older now but entirely different in so many ways. The worst of it was that back then she had at least known who she was and what she was supposed to be. Now, she could barely define herself beyond the roles she played for The Cause.
    A tiny flame of fear popped into life then. It flickered for a few moments– What will the headwomen do if they knew what I've been thinking?– before going out.
    "Well, save your philosophical outpouring for later," Steph said. She stepped forward and wrapped a long, lean arm around Josie's shoulder. "Dirty Gertie is waiting." She added a feigned evil smile, but Josie didn't respond to the intended humor.
    "Seriously?" Josie asked. "Before breakfast?"
    "Well, she wasn't