The Wanted Read Online Free PDF Page B

either side. The woman, Red, as I had already nicknamed her in my head, punched in numbers on the keypad and scanned her wrist. The door unlatched, and I was dragged towards the bed.
     

     
    My bony butt sank warily into the most comfortable mattress I had ever touched. A satin bedspread swirled around my dirty legs, which were striped with dried blood, the patterns almost wanting to eject me so I didn’t sully their beauty. I gazed down at my hands, clasped over the heavy canvas jacket. The tarnished buttons and frayed pockets were almost a comfort. I put my hand into one of the pockets and fished out a folded piece of paper. Hope flowed through me too quickly, warm and golden. I had to clamp down on these feelings before they destroyed me because as I opened the paper, while Red was busy locking the door behind her, the short list of items caused my heart to shrivel inside me along with my faith. I remembered the last time I’d read a list like this. Black words scrawled on lined paper encompassed death, love, hope. This was just a grocery list: Tinned tomatoes x 2, rice, beef, tampons. I quirked my eyebrow at the last item. The soldier had a wife and maybe a daughter. It was something I needed to remind myself of—everyone had a family. Something, someone to lose.
    Red huffed, standing over me with her hands on her hips. She held out her hand for the note, and I gave it to her. She scrunched it in one hand without reading it and shoved it in her pocket, her skirt so tight on her hips that I could see the little ball of paper bulging under the fabric.
    Eyes wide and critical, she drew a breath and lunged at me.
    I leaned back on the bed, frightened of this enormous woman pressing her breasts into my face. She dragged her fingers through my hair, and I struggled not to suffocate.
    “Sit up!” she barked impatiently. “I’m not going to hurt you, child.”
    Still naked under the jacket, I felt vulnerable to say the least, but I sat there like a good girl, like someone else, and let her run her hands through my hair, inspect my eyes, and pinch at my skin like I was an animal on show. Because I promised. Even though every part of my dark, scrawny body wanted to smack her so hard I’d leave a bony handprint on her cheek, I knew I wouldn’t get far.
    “What are you doing?” I asked, my voice muffled through a curtain of my own hair.
    She looked over the top of my head as she replied, “Getting your colors right.”
    “My colors?”
    “Yes. What you need to change, what you can keep.” What I could keep?
    I gripped the quilt on either side of me like it was cement that could hold me in my place. Maybe I could hit her a little?
    She seemed indifferent to my reaction and continued inspecting me, but when she made a move for my jacket, I put my arm up to block her, pushing back at her assault. I wasn’t doing this again.
    Her large head gave a tiny shake. I didn’t have time to react before she whipped her hand into her breast pocket and tapped a black device to my arm. My body jolted, feeling and sounding like it had cracked in half like a dry branch.
    My eyes rolled, my speech thick in my mouth. “Wha… why…?”
    Her fuzzy image became larger in my eyes until she filled the whole room. Her thunderclap voice slammed against the walls.
    “You didn’t do as you were told.” The words ‘do as you were told’ echoed and ran down the walls like dripping paint.
    My arm stung with the familiar prick of a needle. My body slumped and gave in to a familiar feeling. I was right back where I started.

 

    GRANT
    I watched her treading or rather storming towards my garage. The look on her face was not what I had expected, and it irritated me. She should be afraid, trembling. Uncertain. Instead, her large, uneven, young eyes took in my home, my world, seeming more curious than afraid. That would soon change.
    I cursed my inability to escort her myself. I imagined my hand clamped around her thin arm, my legs strong and