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stands the most frightening man I’ve ever seen. His bleached blond hair is long and wild like the mane of a lion. His tan skin looks like a leather bag that’s seen too many years. Blue marks that trace his cheeks in jagged semicircles must be old tattoos, though I’ve never seen anyone marked like that. I know at once he’s not one of us. He’s an outsider.
    His lips pull back in a sneer as he sees my fear, revealing gaping holes where most of his teeth should be. The five or six left are sharpened to crude points. His clothes are worn, dirty, and reek of sweat and a spicy herb I’ve never smelled before. The scent is as overpowering as his appearance, and my hand jumps to cover my mouth and nose before I know what I’m doing.
    His sneer curls up higher, and he chuckles. He loves that I’m shocked. He’s eating up my fear and wanting seconds.
    When I don’t move, his impatience grows. He nods to the left. “Outta the way, Breeder. Got precious cargo comin’ through.”
    I don’t like his tone, but I manage to shuffle my frozen frame sideways. He gives a tug to the leather thong he’s been holding in his brown fist, and a girl trips forward.
    A girl my age with dead eyes and a dog collar around her throat.

CHAPTER THREE
Janine
    I stare at the girl’s face. At the collar. I’ve never seen a more pathetic creature in my sixteen years. The collar should be bad enough, and belonging to this horrible man has to be a fate worse than death, but the bruises and slowly healing scars paint a picture that is more gruesome yet. My eyes travel over the purple skin under her eye, a jagged scar on her neck, a burn mark on her bare bicep. My eyes travel down her tanned flesh to her tattered clothing, skimpy and hardly hiding the bits and pieces this man sells to whoever will pay at the night bazaar.
    Her eyes lock onto mine.
    The look isn’t desperate, or pleading. It’s more vacant than that. Like she isn’t seeing me. Or, she is, but I’m nothing. I’m a potted plant, a piece of furniture.
    The wild man tugs the leather leash, and the girl starts forward. They move past me and toward the common room, leaving me behind in my horror.
    I want to scream—to run.
    A nanny comes around the corner and points a finger at me. “You. D Hall girl. Get in the common room. Now.”
    I do as I’m told. My legs can still work.
    The common room is a wall of noise and movement when I get there. All the tattered couches and tables have been shoved to the side. Nannies and orderlies have set up rows and rows of chairs all facing the front of the room. The projector screen is rolled up. No horrible production videos on contagion or the joy of motherhood this time. Why are we here?
    An arm is waving at me in the crowd. Sabrina, my roommate, flags me over. Her head, decorated with a big, pink bow today, towers over the rest of the girls in her row. She’s in the back, a habit she formed after many, many complaints of not being able to see past her six-foot-one, two-hundred-pound frame. I scoot by two pregnant girls in their fifth month, before finding the seat Sabrina saved for me.
    “So, my bet is a public flogging for Dr. Merriweather,” she says, nodding toward the empty space up front. “What’s yours?”
    I try to think of something to say. The horror of seeing that girl still clings to me. “I don’t know,” I mumble.
    “Try,” Sabrina says, straightening her precious pink bow tied around her scalp. “Otherwise, this is no fun.”
    This is no fun , I think. “Oh, I don’t know. A play Nanny Tracy wrote about the joy of menstruation.”
    Her almond-shaped eyes lift with glee. “Oh yes.” She lightly claps her hands and then adopts her Nanny Tracy voice. “‘Girls, your period is your friend. Say it with me: men-stru-ation. Now give your sanitary napkins a hug.’”
    I smile, letting Sabrina’s lightness float me for a moment.
    When the outsider walks in with the leashed girl in tow, all the conversation is sucked