“Wait!” a female voice shouted. The red drapes tore back, and behind it was a woman with brownish blond hair. She stood there for a moment, not saying anything, and then charged across the room toward Brinly at her throne. Brinly, instinctively, cupped the woman’s face with her hands as if to calm her. “Let me go. I’ll go,” she said.
I watched her for a second, and then it clicked. Was that Dana? The girl from Rookridge?
Brinly was shushing her, telling her it wasn’t a good idea, and Dana, in the tiniest voice imaginable, began to plead her case. “I’m the best tracker here. I’m the best. You know it.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Brinly took a deep breath inward and said, “Dana wants to come with you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“She can’t control her shifts yet,” Daggett informed. “We’ve been practicing, but it hasn’t taken.”
Brinly dragged her fingers through Dana’s hair, sweetly petting her head like she were her daughter. “Which is why I’m against this idea. We don’t want something bad happening out there again.”
“It’s too bad, though, because she is the best tracker we’ve got in the entire compound.”
I ignored the two of them for a moment and looked directly at Dana. “You really the best here?”
She confidently nodded but didn’t say a word.
“Then you’re in.”
Brinly sighed. She might not like it, but it’s also not her girlfriend in trouble. I needed the best nose in that city to find Cora. If shit goes south and Dana turns, I’ll chain her up in my car if I have to.
We’re finding Cora.
Chapter Five
DANA
My entire life, I’ve felt purposeless. I was never the prettiest, the smartest, or the funniest, and I was never very social or well-liked. I made it a habit to blend into the background, to never inconvenience anyone with my sorrows or struggles.
It was easier that way.
In a lot of ways, I felt like my life didn’t truly begin until that fateful night of the date auction in Rookridge. I hadn’t even wanted to go, but Tiffany convinced me to. She said Molly would be outraged if we said no, and the one thing we all knew was to never anger Molly. She’d ruin your day, your week, and your life. Because she went to church, people just assumed she was this shining example of what a Christian woman should be, but she was a phony. Always was.
No part of me wanted her to die, but being free from her clutches was…a relief. I was relieved to be free of the Molly, Tiffany, Veronica clique in general. I never felt secure or like myself around them. I was a parrot, dressing like them, talking like them, behaving like them. I never knew who I was.
Till that night. And I have Cora to thank for that.
She found me on the side of the road, bleeding and crying. She stopped me from transitioning, locked me up so I’d be safe, and then even checked in on me a year later. If it weren’t for her, I’d be dead, and I never would have been led to Brinly and her compound. My life was forever changed by two acts of kindness from her. I’m sure she had no idea how much it meant to me, but it meant the world. It gave me my life.
It’s why when Max showed up at the compound and said she was missing, I had to help. I quite literally owed her my life. It was only right that I step up, no matter how terrified I was.
When Rickey and I followed Max out to his car, he stopped and turned around, took a deep breath, and said, “You sure you wanna come?”
I nodded and replied, “Yes.”
If it weren’t for Brinly, he wouldn’t be having any doubts about me. She worried about me a lot, and I guess she had every reason to. I wasn’t like everyone else. I had long given up on the idea that I’d be able to control my shifts, and I had more blood on my hands than anyone from her pack. I was sort of a problem.
“We’re picking up one more person, and then we’re out of here,” Max announced as he shifted into drive.
Rickey and I chose to sit in the backseat together, and every couple minutes he would ask, “You gonna be all right?”
“Yes,” I assured him softly. Rickey and I had been trying to gain control of our shifting together. We’d do the exercises together, take the lessons from Lincoln together, and luckily for Rickey, he was recently successful. I wasn’t. Brinly promised me it’s different for everyone, but I just shrugged it off. I had gotten used to the monthly changes. They were nightmarish, but they were routine.
Max pulled up alongside a nice house by the water. The breeze from the lake made the air crisp and chilly, and I secretly hoped Max would turn up the heat, but I felt weird about asking him.
Cora’s grandmother was on the porch, seeing Priscilla off as she fled to our car through the cold. Wendy waved and laughed like someone was telling a joke in her ear, and then she nearly slipped on the bottom step of the porch. That seemed to only make her laugh more. She was always a bizarre older lady.
Priscilla slammed the passenger door behind her, and mid-laugh said, “You should see how much weed is growing in her bathroom.” She then abruptly stopped speaking when she noticed Rickey and me in the backseat. She turned and looked at Max and asked, “What’s with the lesbians in the back?”
I appreciated
