Page 61

“Then find a reason.” Mary, the Filipino girl from our bunk space, hardly ever speaks. Now her eyes glow with something almost like anger, which is so rare it gets everyone’s attention, even Yrsa’s. “I have a three-year-old daughter, back in the Philippines,” she says fiercely. “I came to Thailand to earn enough money to give her a better life. Now she thinks I have forgotten her. And perhaps she, too, has forgotten me. But whether she waits for me or not, she is still why I eat. Why I live. Because I am determined to get back to her.” She holds up a forkful of noodles. “You must find your reason, Yrsa.”

Dimitry’s face flashes through my mind, as clear and devastating as if it were right in front of me. I feel it like a knife through my heart, so sharply painful it takes my breath away.

Yrsa sniffs, a slow tear trickling down her face. “My little stepsister,” she whispers brokenly. “She was only two when I left Denmark. Not even old enough to remember me. And I was so mean to her...”

“Regret is suffering.” Lucky kisses Yrsa’s cheek. “Think of how much you love your stepsister,” she says, “not of how you hurt her. Focus on all the wonderful things you can do when you meet again, yes?”

Regret is suffering.

Lucky’s words pound through my brain like a mantra as we finish our noodles. The truth is that I should take her advice myself.

I’ve been stuck in regret for days now. Torturing myself over the mistakes I made.

For drugging Dimitry. For not trusting him.

And after he woke up, for not being honest about my own life. Or not nearly honest enough.

I’m sorry,I think brokenly.I’m so fucking sorry, Dimitry.

Yrsa looks at me, and I nod encouragingly, forcing myself to smile. “Now see, when it comes to me,” I say, reaching through the dangerous cobwebs of memory for humor, my old standby, “I just focus on that first tall, chilled glass of delicious white wine. Then another. And another after that...” I heave a dramatic sigh as the other girls giggle. “And even better,” I say, winking at Yrsa, “after all those Loop runs, I’m super fit and smoking hot. I could make a fortune selling the Scam Farm Diet program when we get out of here.”

By now they are all laughing, and suddenly Yrsa is talking again, telling us all about the little half sister she left behind.

I hide behind my funny-girl mask as we chatter our way into the dormitory, marveling that I can manage to pull it off. The truth is that the last few days have been some of my darkest, and it shows in my results. Between my endless self-recrimination and covering for Yrsa, my own performance hassuffered. I haven’t made any significant progress with my own scams for days now.

I’ve been keeping my head down, hoping that my past achievements might lend me a little leeway. But tonight, it’s clear that my luck has run out.

“You.” The supervisor appears just as I’m gathering my towel and toiletries. “You no make target today. Not yesterday either.”

Fuck.

“You lazy.” The unsmiling supervisor prods me with the gun. “Run Loop until I tell you stop.”

I force myself not to react. Reacting only earns extra running time.

Lucky shoots me a sympathetic glance, and I force myself to smile.

Yrsa gives me an agonized look.It’s fine,I mouth to her.

Mary touches my arm as I pass her.

This is how we survive this place. A silent touch, a forced smile. Caring about the person next to you more than about yourself. In an inhumane place, our own humanity is the one thing that means we are surviving.

I walk out of the compound, into the stifling heat, and take my place among the miserable faces of the others who earned punishment. We’re gathered in the square outside the multistoried building that houses our offices. One of the triad guards holds his machine gun in the air, then releases a burst of fire.

He smiles coldly. “Run.”

We run.

I settle into an easy pace. The first few times I ran the Loop, I truly thought I’d die. Five miles would have been a decent run for me under any circumstances. In the thick Myanmar heat, it felt like hell and took me well over an hour to complete.

These days I can knock it out in fifty minutes, but tonight, with the threat of unlimited miles in front of me, I take it easy. It’s a fine balance between running fast enough that they don’t shoot the ground behind me and not so fast I make myself pass out from fatigue.

If I’m honest, a sick part of me has almost begun to relish these runs. They’re as close as I get to freedom.

I glance at the thick foliage beyond the wire fence as I run. As a programmer, Lucky is able to access more on the internet than we can, since we’re limited to the dating sites, social media, and messaging apps we need for our job. She told me the compound is located deep in Myanmar’s mountain jungle, far from any big town. The tall fence is electric, and guards in towers patrol it at all hours of the day and night.

There’s an internal fence, too, which divides us from the commercial part of SK.