She wanted to be mad at April, for invading her privacy, for telling Maddox this, for thinking that she had the right to do any of it. Orion should be mad at April for that, but she couldn’t bring herself to be angry with April anymore. Her persistence had managed to chip away at Orion’s tough exterior, little by little with each visit.
She could, however, bring herself to be mad at Maddox. Leaning on his car so fucking casually, like he had the right to be there, the right to look at her, to follow a fucking bus across the state.
“I can look after myself,” she bit out, her hands in tight fists.
“I know.”
Orion waited for him to say something else. He didn’t.
He was right. She did not want to be on a bus full of strangers. Her skin had been crawling with the fear of what it was going to be like, wondering if they might recognize her. Her hair was tangled up in a tight bun, a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap low on her face. She’d made sure to put on a lot of makeup, to look older, unlike the girl who’d been plastered all over the news.
She’d done a good job, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t still recognize her. She’d experienced this new world long enough, the cameras, and reporters, the internet, the strangers wanting photos and answers to questions she couldn’t give. She wanted no part of it.
But the alternative to a bus full of strangers was a car with Maddox. Which was worse?
She hated this feeling, relying on anyone else but herself. She even hated Mary Lou a little for tying her to this fucking promise.
“Fine,” she bit out, hating him and herself. “But you’re giving me a ride, nothing else. And I get to pick the music.”
He nodded once, and thankfully, he didn’t have the stupidity to smile like he’d won something. “Deal,” he said with a little smirk, and she wished she could wipe it off his stupid face.
“What happened to Jaclyn’s face?”
They hadn’t spoken a word in two hours. Orion had been certain that she’d wanted this silence between them, Twenty One Pilots blaring from the speakers, Maddox focusing on the road and not on trying to force some connection between the two of them.
But she had changed her mind after about five minutes. The silence was worse.
“Didn’t you ask her that in her interviews?” she replied, voice hard.
Maddox glanced at her then back at the road. He turned down the radio and she responded with a scowl. “Uh, no,” he said. “She wasn’t able to recall much of what happened to her. It’s common, with victims of trauma.”
Orion blinked rapidly. Jaclyn couldn’t remember? She hadn’t said anything to Orion, but then again, they hadn’t made a habit of reminiscing over old times since they’d been out. They hadn’t spoken a word about it, actually, apart from when Orion had told her about Thing One. Jaclyn was avoiding her, Orion knew that, and she didn’t particularly blame her.
It was inconceivable to her that someone could just forget those years of horror, though. That the specifics weren’t embedded in her mind. But maybe Orion was the strange one, for remembering too much, for seeing it etched in every nightmare and every waking hour. For forcing herself to do that.
“They had punishments,” she said, her need to say it out loud suddenly overpowering. Even if it wasn’t her story to tell. “For when we were . . . bad. For when we tried to fight back. It wasn’t good for business, I guess. Not what they paid for. Jaclyn fought a lot. At the start, at least. They have ways to make sure you don’t fight, though. Sick ways. They . . .” She trailed off, remembering the pain, the instruments they used on them.
She realized that she hadn’t told the detectives about that either. Was she trying to spare them the horror of the truth? It wasn’t like they needed to know that. All they needed to know was how to catch the criminals. Maybe she’d just been too weak to talk about it.
“I’d never seen them before, what they used,” she continued. “The internet has been good for a lot of things. I remembered the details, and I was able to look it up, to learn about them.” She looked at him with hollow eyes, a coldness taking over her. She could feel the shift as the memory washed over her. “You’ve heard about the Spanish Inquisition, right?”
He gulped. Nodded.
“Well, these guys, they liked that shit. A lot. Metal, and whips, and chains. And well, other things. Something called a Scold’s Bridle. Of course, I didn’t know that when they were using it on us. It was just a metal mask back then. Reminded me of the one from that Leonardo DiCaprio movie, The Man in the Iron Mask.” She took a moment, a breath, focused in on the metal, the desperation. “You couldn’t eat with it on, couldn’t sleep . . . you could barely breathe. It buckled in the back and always caught your hair, ripped it out.”