Читать книгу Thrive - Mary Borsellino - Страница 5

Hannah, the girl in the red rabbit mask, brings food to Olivia's cell twice a day. Hannah is two or three years older than Olivia, but no taller and much thinner, and she stares at the trays of food — rice and gravy and vegetables — as if these small, cold meals are the most important thing she's ever seen and much, much more valuable than Olivia's money.

Two meals is less than Olivia's used to, but on the third day she pushes her hunger out of her mind as much as she can and eats only a small portion of the meal before offering the tray to Hannah.

'Do you want some?'

'I'm not supposed to,' Hannah says, but Olivia can see her eyes behind the red rabbit mask, and Hannah's eyes are more like those of a starving wolf than any kind of rabbit.

'Who am I gonna tell?' Olivia replies, gesturing to the tiny, empty cement space of the room. That makes Hannah smirk. It's the first smile Olivia's seen from her.

'Go on. Really.' Olivia holds the tray out again, and after another moment's hesitation Hannah takes it from her.

Hannah eats like she expects the food to be snatched away from her at any moment, scooping mouthfuls in, almost without stopping to chew. Her sleeve falls back as she raises the spoon to her mouth again, and Olivia can see that Hannah's skin looks sore and tight around the ports installed in her thin wrist. She must have had them put in very young for her body to have grown that much around them.

That makes Olivia feel sorry for her. That Hannah had ports put in and yet wound up here, masked and starving, is the most unfair thing Olivia has ever seen in her life.

'Do you guys have my schoolbag?' she asks Hannah as Hannah eats, 'Or have you sent it to my parents as proof of life or whatever? I'm asking because my glasses are in there and I want to take my contact lenses out.'

'We have it. I'll ask,' Hannah says. She eats the next bite of food more slowly, like she's realised that Olivia gave it to her in exchange for glasses. Olivia's pretty sure that people who're kidnapped aren't supposed to make little unspoken trades like that, but she can't see why not. This whole stupid awful thing is supposed to be about giving everyone something they want, isn't it? The maskers want money, Olivia's parents want Olivia back. Everyone wins. Hannah wants dinner and Olivia wants her glasses.

Olivia also wants to know how much they think she's worth, but hasn't found a way to ask that won't sound weird and creepy.

'I'll see what I can do,' says Hannah.

Olivia smiles. 'Thank you.'

'Don't,' Hannah says sharply, putting down the spoon and leaving the room. Olivia notices that despite the dramatic exit, Hannah finished all the food before departing.

Olivia's room used to be a store room. It has little holes in a spaced-out, regular pattern around the walls where shelving used to be attached to them. Everything's been scrubbed, so it isn't dusty or dirty. Olivia appreciates that, and makes a note that she should tell Hannah to say thank you to the other captors on Olivia's behalf.

It sucks being locked in here, but Olivia's always cheered herself up by noticing all the ways things could suck even more than they do. Like: they gave her a bucket with a lid to use as a toilet, which is about a thousand times better than a bucket without a lid would have been. There's a flickering, faintly buzzing bare lightbulb attached to the ceiling, and the switch is located by the door so she can turn it on or off as she wants. There's a small, slatted window high up on one wall, which doesn't do much in the way of light but keeps her from running out of air to breathe, and that's absolutely something that belongs in the "plus" column of things going on in her life right now.

The bedroll they've given her doesn't stop the cement floor from being hard and cold, but she has a blanket and a pillow. At home she has quilts and cushions and everything else she could possibly want for a good night's sleep, but since Hannah doesn't even seem to get much food, Olivia suspects that comfortable bedding doesn't happen much in her kidnappers' lives. She's sure that they've given her the same level of luxury that they have themselves; maybe better.

It's not like she likes being held hostage; but it's not especially awful, considering.

A few hours later, Hannah comes back with Olivia's schoolbag in her hands.

'Am I allowed to say thank you now, or are you gonna get all weird and broody at me again if I do?' Olivia asks.

She can't tell for certain, what with the mask in the way, but she's sure that Hannah rolls her eyes.

'You're weird,' Hannah says.

'You're a masker,' Olivia retorts, dumping her school supplies on the floor and picking up the case of contacts stuff from the resulting pile of rubble.

'Yeah, but that's a cool kind of weird,' insists Hannah. Olivia snorts.

'Please. Anything that needs to be stridently defended as cool is automatically not cool. And oooh, scary, I got ambushed by a bunny and a cat and a fox and a mouse. What a joke.'

It's a lie, though, the bravado. Olivia's certain that Hannah isn't fooled for a second. Being grabbed like that had been terrifying, her face covered by a pillow case as she was thrown into the back of a van. Olivia hadn't known before that moment that it truly was possible to be so frightened that she couldn't even scream.

The memory makes her hands shake, so she puts aside the contacts case for the time being and looks up at Hannah instead.

Hannah's hands are a little lighter than Olivia's own. The rest of her skin is covered by her worn, faded clothes and her mask.

'Are the others your family? Your parents?' Olivia asks. Hannah shakes her head.

'No. My parents are dead.'

Olivia wants to say 'I'm sorry', but knows that to do so is risking another abrupt exit from Hannah, and Olivia doesn't want her to go.

'They're just a gang I'm running with,' Hannah goes on, breaking the short silence. 'I don't care one way or the other about them, and they don't care about me. It's a job, not a family. What's that?'

She points at a smaller drawstring bag among the stuff from inside Olivia's schoolbag. It's printed with a design of cutesy cartoon sharks and dolphins.

'Oh. My swimming stuff. I would've had gym today.' Her hands are steadier now, so Olivia starts taking out her contacts. 'I really love it. I'm shitty at it, but I still love it. I had to beg my parents to let me do it. My dad wanted me to do riding instead. I had to really fight for it.'

'You must love it,' Hannah agrees, a dubious note in her voice, as though she can't imagine why anyone would.

Olivia's glasses feel comforting on her nose, like there's a thin layer of force-field between her and everything around her. Usually she only wears her glasses at home, in the evenings. Her mother says she's prettier when people can see her face properly, so in public she always wears her contacts. It would be silly to worry about being pretty among maskers, though. They don't think a person's face has anything at all to do with who they are.

'I swam in the real ocean once.'

'Bull,' Hannah says bluntly. 'I don't care how rich you are, nobody swims in the ocean. All the money in the world isn't gonna stop you from rotting inside and out if you get that shit on you.'

'Not this ocean, loser,' Olivia shoots back, unsurprised by Hannah's protest. 'One of the safe ones. You can stay in the water for an hour and not get sick at all. The hotel that owned the area even had sand imported and heaped up all along the edge of the water, so it was like being on a beach from an old movie. There was a palm tree.'

'If they'd gone to that much trouble to simulate it, why not have a tide pool like everywhere else, where people could stay in it as long as they liked?'

'Because the real ocean is nothing like a tide pool. Nothing.'

'Well excuse me, your majesty. Us ordinary mortals don't have your wisdom on such matters.'

'One day I hope you do see the ocean. I hope you get to swim in it. I hope I'm there to call you dumb names when it happens.'

Hannah shakes her head. 'How much money do you have, that you can do insane, impossible, fairy-tale things like swim in the ocean?'

'Not me. My dad. I don't even get pocket money — I have to ask him to buy anything I want. My mother has to do that as well. Since our servants buy the groceries, he says she'd just spend it on stupid stuff. He gets to pick what dresses she wears. That's where his money comes from, dresses. He has a factory.'

'Dresses? Nobody gets rich enough for a proper kidnapping from dresses.' The look Hannah gives Olivia is dripping in disbelief, even with the mask in the way.

'Well, it's not only dresses. Shirts and blouses and socks and things, too. All the cotton and wool that they use is unmodded, so people pay a lot for it.'

Hannah gives a low whistle. 'I bet. That's crazy.'

'Unmodded sheep have this oil in their wool, lanolin. I'm allergic to it. My dad still makes me wear clothes made in his factory, even when they itch me. He says it'd be bad for his reputation if his own family were ever seen dressed in anything but his label.'

'What's so special about unmodded that makes it so expensive?'

Olivia shrugs, as puzzled as Hannah. 'My dad says it's more authentic than other kinds. Here, this is one of the most expensive ones he sells.' She picks up her coat from where it lies crumpled among her school stuff and passes it to Hannah.

'It's so soft,' Hannah marvels, stroking her hand over the sheepskin as if it's the pelt of a small warm animal.

'Astrakhan. That's what this kind's called. It's not wool, really. It's still on the hide,' Olivia explains, surprised at how much of her father's lectures she's retained. 'I guess it's leather, or fur. Skin. The ewes are cut open while they're pregnant and the foetus is skinned. That's how you get astrakhan.'

Hannah pulls her hand away from the coat as abruptly as someone touching flame. Her face wears an expression of deep revulsion for a few seconds, but it fades soon enough. Olivia thinks it must be hard to hold onto horror for very long if you live in Hannah's world. Otherwise you'd never have a chance to feel anything else.

'Gross,' is all Hannah says, handing the coat back.