“I know what you said. I didn’t believe you. Not then, not now. Christopher Harrison wouldn’t have risked his vice presidency for a mere girl.”
Helen turned and looked at the wall. She’d never been so close to crying. Not in seventeen years. She had sacrificed everything when she accused Vice President Harrison of rape. She thought she was doing the right thing getting him demoted and sent to a remote cell, but in the end he just hurt more girls like Becca.
Ajana rapped on the two-way mirror and the guards came in.
“Put her back in her cell,” the Vice President said.
Helen waited while one guard unlocked her and one guard stood five feet away, Taser aimed. Here, the word cell meant something very different.
97
BECCA
MIND: BLOWN. MIA WAS OUT riding again today, so I had a couple of hours to snoop after clearing up the breakfast dishes. I sat on the cozy armchair, reading one of her schoolbooks. I figured she must be in grade eleven—but the history was completely different. There were comparison maps of the earliest America, showing the Louisiana Purchase, the Ohio Territories, the Republic of Texas, etc. Stuff I’d never heard of.
Turning pages quickly, I found a chapter on the “States Period.” It said that the country was mistakenly divided into unequal, inefficient “states” that served only to create disharmony and tension. Finally, after Civil War II, those boundaries were erased.
Then there was a Reclamation period that lasted fifty years, where the United was sensibly divided into its six even land sections, A through F, and further divided into evenly apportioned numbered areas. Like B-97-4275, for example, I thought bitterly.
“Put that down at once!” Mrs. Argyle had opened the door soundlessly and was now looking at me with rage coloring her red face even redder.
Shit! I leaped from the chair and quickly shoved the book back into the bookcase, picking up my dust cloth at the same time.
“How dare you!” she went on while I tried to figure out what a submissive servant should look like. “This is not your room! That is not your book! How dare you treat Miss Mia’s things as if they’re your own!”
I stood with my head down and my hands behind my back. In two seconds I could grab one of the books behind me and whip it at her pulsing temple. End of rant.
“Do you understand the difference between the family we serve and yourself?”
No doubt it was a rhetorical question, but I nodded.
“There is a hierarchy in this house, and you are at the bottom of it! Do you understand?”
She went on like this for several more minutes, and I nodded occasionally.
“Now, get yourself together—you’ll be serving in an hour!”
Since I was always serving, I looked at her blankly.
“We’re short-staffed, and the President is having a state luncheon,” she said. “You will be serving.”
Eh? What was that?
“You’ll watch the other servers and do what they do,” she said impatiently. “It involves putting plates down and picking them up. Surely you can do that?”
I bit the inside of my cheek to squash a snarky answer and nodded.
“You’re done in here,” she sniffed. “Present yourself to the cook downstairs.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, trying to channel Cassie’s meekness.
She looked at her watch, gave me another glare, and huffed out of the room.
My chest was about to explode. This could be it. This could be when I kill the President. The end of my mission. My permission to go home, if I still had one. If I lived through it. I rushed to Mia’s closet and delicately lifted cashmere sweaters until I found the gun at the bottom of a drawer. I popped out the magazine—and then stared in dismay. There. Were. No. Bullets. “Goddamnit!” I whisper-shouted. “Goddamnit!”
Then I thought, Maybe the bullets are somewhere else. I had to get downstairs but I took as long as I dared to search the rest of the closet—shaking out shoes, riffling through underwear, shirts, pockets. Nothing.
Shit. Well, thanks to the Crazy House, I had a million other weapons at my disposal. If I had to kill him with a soup spoon, so be it.