Fallen

Aurora’s lips thinned, but she nodded. “Take it anyway, for me,” she said. “Just to be sure.” Aurora placed her hand gently on Kandace’s arm.

Kandace sighed. She’d felt fine all day. Tired, but that was to be expected, considering the trauma her body had gone through and that she was still healing. “Fine,” she said. The girl had gone to the trouble of stealing something from Lilith House for Kandace and so she’d make it worth the risk she’d taken. Worth the blood she’d shed.

Aurora—and to a lesser extent, Sydney—now felt as close as untrusting, cynical sisters could to Kandace, given their strange circumstances. They were both jaded by life, by disappointments beyond normal, yet they hadn’t rejected her, and that had kept Kandace sane. Particularly after the beating . . . They cared. They’d helped her survive.

She closed the door of the bathroom and unwrapped the test stick, keeping the wrapper so she could put it inside afterward and discard it somewhere where it wouldn’t be noticed, like the large dining room trash to be covered in leftover food. She followed the instructions and then placed it on the tank of the toilet, glancing at the negative result before washing her hands and opening the door. “There ya go,” she told Aurora. “Now you can rest easy.”

Aurora walked over to the test, picking it up by the handle, her expression grim. “It’s positive,” she said so softly, Kandace barely heard the words.

Her blood chilled as she took a step forward, grabbing the test from Aurora and looking at the two blue lines. Positive. “No,” she said, shaking her head. She looked up at Aurora. “I told you. This isn’t possible. There’s no way.” Panic flashed through her. “I . . . Aurora I had my period right before I got here.”

“It must have been a false period,” Aurora said. “That happens sometimes.”

Kandace put her hand on her forehead. She felt sick again. Her head ached. “Oh God,” she said. She met Aurora’s eyes. “What am I going to do?”

She shook her head, biting at her lip. “You’ll have to tell them,” she said. “You don’t have a choice. Maybe they’ll just . . . let you leave.”

“Yes,” she muttered, but some red warning signal flared inside. Would they? Would they just let her leave? Or would she be punished again? This time far more severely than before?

Her gaze moved to Aurora. “You can’t tell anyone. No one at all. Not even Sydney. The fewer people who know, the better.”

She nodded but there was something in her eyes that caused Kandace to question her honesty. No, no, don’t feel that way. Aurora hasn’t done anything to make you mistrust her. Kandace looked at the test. She brought you the test. She was tortured for her efforts. What if it’s some sort of setup? For what reason? She massaged her temples. God, this place was making her crazy. She had to think. How could this be?

“I’ll get rid of it,” Aurora said, taking the test from her.

Kandace started to object, but a wave of nausea suddenly overcame her and she raced for the toilet for the second time that day.

Later, lying in her bed in her darkened room, listening to her roommates rhythmic breathing, she thought of the pills.

Each morning at breakfast, Ms. Harrah came around with a paper cup of vitamins for the girls to swallow with their juice. Kandace, in a small act of defiance, had been palming them and tossing them away with her breakfast trash. Fuck your vitamins, you tyrants.

She’d even wondered if perhaps instead of vitamins, at least one of the pills was a low-dose sedative. She’d originally thought her roommates meek . . . tamed. Or broken. But maybe they were mildly drugged.

She tried to picture the pills in the cup. A large, amber one filled with some sort of oil, one small round pill, a larger pinkish oval tablet, and a very small round, blue pill. Birth control? No. No, it couldn’t be. She could understand the mild sedative. But why would Lilith House give their students a birth control pill when they were restricted from seeing anyone except each other and the all-female staff? It was illogical. It didn’t make sense.

Kandace rolled over. Now she was just being paranoid.

No, she told herself. I am not pregnant. There’s just no way. The test was wrong. It was the only answer.

Because otherwise, she’d gotten pregnant because she had secretly been tossing the birth control pills they’d been giving her. Which would mean she got pregnant after arriving at Lilith House.

And that simply was not possible.CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTDr. Woodrow’s waiting room was cheery and pleasant, a large fish tank taking up the majority of one wall, and a small children’s play area in the opposite corner. Haddie walked past the play area, eyeing it disinterestedly, instead heading to the fish tank where she stood in front of it, tracing a bright orange fish’s movement across the glass with her finger.