Page 124 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

“It wasn’t so bad. The worst part was the burns from the irons.

You had to do everything so quick, it was difficult to be careful.

” This I’m sure is true of bottom tier laundries as well as prison ones.

“I got off pretty lightly, but some of the other girls I worked with had some nasty burns, and all we had to treat them with was vinegar.”

“Vinegar?” Khadija arches a brow. “Where the hell did you get that?”

Stolen from the kitchens, but of course the kitchens in my prison would be better stocked than their bottom tier food supplies. I’ve heard them talking about having their meals delivered to their rooms in trays. They probably didn’t come with sauce sachets.

Heat crawls up my neck as I scramble for an explanation.

“We serviced lots of restaurants. The drivers who did the deliveries used to swipe a bottle for us from time to time.”

“Vinegar has antiseptic properties,” Grace says. “It would have helped prevent getting infection. Clever.”

I shrug. I didn’t know why we did it, just that it was what we did. A bit of knowledge handed down from Deviant to Deviant through the years.

Conversation shifts to the cleaning that’s yet to be done, and I try to release the tension in my muscles, let my body relax back down.

Every time I’m put on the spot like that, forced to answer what should be an innocuous question, I panic.

The less I can say about the past, the better.

The more lies you tell, the more likely you are to get caught up in the web you’ve spun.

Besides, I hate it. I hate lying to them.

It feels like I’m stabbing them in the back every time.

“Mm, that does smell amazing,” Ellie says as the bowl of cream is handed to her.

“Can I try some, Mama?” Jassal says, looking over from her lessons.

“When you’ve finished your writing,” Sally says.

Molly’s sat next to her, and also cranes her neck in our direction, her slate loose in her hand.

She’s been taking her time with her writing, forming the letters Sally’s teaching slowly and carefully.

But now there’s the prospect of something better to do, she quickly finishes off her lines and thrusts the slate at Sally.

“Done!”

She doesn’t wait for feedback before heading for Ellie with her hands outstretched. Ellie gives her a bit of a look, but hands the bowl over.

I watch Jassal’s face drop. Unlike Molly, who takes to writing and reading quickly, Jassal really struggles. It will take her a long time to do what Molly’s just done in a few seconds.

“Come on,” Sally says, her voice all soft encouragement. “Not many left to do now.”

Jassal sighs as she turns her attention back to her slate, her brows knit tight together with concentration. But her mouth is pursed with unhappiness.

“I’ll wait for you, Jassal,” I say. “We can do our pampering together.”

Jassal glances over her shoulder at me, smiling, before returning to her writing. The heaviness on my heart lifts a little.

Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe for every lie I tell, I have to do something good. A great cosmic balancing act to keep my guilt in check.

I wish I could just tell them the truth, but every time I think about it, the chants start echoing in my ears, all those other top tier girls lined up outside the courthouse to tell me exactly what I was.

Scumbag. Criminal. Evil.

I’m not a bad person, I want to tell them, just a person who did a bad thing. Most days, I can believe that. On a good day, I can even be generous enough to myself to entertain the idea that the other girls might, too.

But then Rosa’s face flashes before my eyes - the way she looked at me with horror, before backing away from me. My best friend, the only real friend I ever had. If she couldn’t see a way to look past my actions, no one here ever will.

That afternoon, Shemza takes me on a walk along the river.

It’s quite the trek to get to it, and I’m pretty tired when he pulls some furs out of a small pack he’s brought with him and sets them down on the bank for us to sit.

We crossed this river on our way to the village from the beach.

Then, the water was much lower, the raskarrans able to ford it easily.

They carried us in their arms or on their backs so we wouldn’t have to get wet, or risk getting swept away.

Now, it’s a torrent, the water higher, faster and more murky.

I wonder if it will burst its banks. Shemza certainly keeps me away from them, making sure we sit a decent distance from the edge.

It’s pretty here, the trees not so thick, a large swathe of sky visible over the water.

The sunlight filters through the leaves and warms my skin, but without the burning intensity on the beach.

I think of Rachel doing all that walking and travelling to reach the other tribe, and hope her fair skin isn’t burned to a crisp again.

“Do you think Rachel’s okay?” I say to Shemza.

He doesn’t understand our language well, but he knows enough words that I think he can probably guess what I’m asking.

“Rachel good,” he says, giving me the thumbs up. “Vantos…” he searches for the word.

“Grumpy?” I supply, pulling an exaggerated cross face.

Shemza laughs, but shakes his head. “Vantos care?”

“You mean he’ll look after her? Keep her safe.”

“Safe.” He nods. “Rachel safe.”

“Well, good, because she’s my roommate, you know. I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

We don’t have much breath for talking normally on these walks.

Well, I don’t have much breath. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Shemza winded.

The extent of what we say to each other is normally ‘good, bad, okay’ and ‘fast, slow’.

But now that I’ve said more than a few words, I notice that Shemza watches me closely when I speak.

He can’t understand me, but he’s listening to me.

“No one ever listened to me before, you know. Not since…” I hesitate to say it, but then think, what the hell.

He won’t remember enough of what I say to repeat it to anyone.

He wouldn’t know what the important words to remember would be.

Listening to them speak is like a blur of sounds - I’m never even sure where each word begins and ends.

I’m sure it’s the same for them listening to us.

“Not since my friend Rosa, when I was in prison. She used to listen to me, and that was nice, but we were both trapped, so it wasn’t like she could actually do anything with what I said.

Just try to make me feel better. And she did make me feel better.

She used to make me laugh so much. She was really naughty. Liv would have liked her.”

I sigh. Rosa’s been close in my thoughts ever since I got out of prison, but this is the first time I’ve said her name aloud.

“And then she stopped listening to me. Stopped talking to me altogether. I told her something I shouldn’t have. I should have lied, and I didn’t, and then that was that. Friendship over.”

I pluck at some leaves on the ground as emotion threatens to overwhelm me.

When I look back up, Shemza’s still watching me.

The raskarrans are normally open books with their emotions.

They aren’t conniving the way humans can be.

Even the Cliff Top tribe were obvious in their feelings and intentions - awful, but not duplicitous.

But Shemza I find harder than the others.

I guess being healer means he has to control his emotions a little more - difficult to treat a bad injury if your feelings get in the way.

Right now, he wears a very neutral expression, as if he is trying to listen without judgement.

Which would make sense if he could understand what I’m saying.

Instead, I wonder if he wants me to stop blathering on.

But the words are bubbling in my throat now, all the things I haven’t said to anyone, not since the guard whisked me from my cell in the middle of the night, cut the ID chip and prison tag out of my arm and dumped me in some bottom tier apartment, ready to be picked up by Mercenia’s agents once again.

Only this time, it was as a lottery winner, not a criminal.

I wonder about the real Lorna. The girl whose place I took. Her mother thought she’d have a better life in my prison cell than she would on Alpha Colony. Enough to risk everything swapping us over.

“I’ve been given a chance here I never should have had, Shemza.

This life belonged to another girl. A bottom tier girl like the others.

It was her ticket I took. Not out of choice.

I was put in her place, and now I’m here, where she could have had a great life.

I think about that a lot, you know? That I don’t deserve to be here.

There was an innocent girl who won the ticket I had, and she would have crash landed here, and maybe broken her arm, and you’d have looked after her, and it would be her who caught your attention.

Not me. It messes with my head almost as much as all the lies I have to tell so the others never ask how the hell I ended up on the ship in her place. ”

I try to blink the water out of my eyes - not quite tears, but getting close.

“I feel like I can’t win. Whatever I do, it’s the wrong thing.

I feel guilty for lying, but I can’t tell the truth.

I feel bad for enjoying things, like it’s not fair that I get to enjoy this thing that never should have been mine in the first place, but then I feel bad for feeling bad about it, like I’ve been given this chance and I shouldn’t squander it.

And then in the middle of all that is you.

I especially don’t know what to do about you. ”

I must look aggrieved, because he gives me a questioning look.

“I could fall in love with you, you know,” I tell him. “I just can’t decide if that would be the best thing to happen to me or the second worst.”

But, of course, neither Shemza nor the trees have any answers for me.