Teacher - Voyeur

Prologue

Hanna

“When we get out of here, I’m going to take ballet. Fuck everyone saying I’m too old.”

“Sofia … we’re not getting out of here.”

“Nonsense. What are you going to do when we get out?”

“Sof—”

“Humor me. Please.”

The pleading and exhaustion she tried to mask with her usual positivity gutted me. Everything gutted me. I wasn’t sure how when I didn’t think I had anything left to give.

It’d all been taken. Again, and again, and again.

I wasn’t even sure how long we’d been here. If I had to guess, I’d say a few months, but we were kept in windowless rooms, given drugs that made time both speed up and stretch on endlessly. I didn’t even know where we were anymore; we’d moved so many times. All I knew was that it was hot, making the flimsy shirt cling to my sweat-soaked skin.

Otherwise, each place was the same. Same dirt-stained mattress. Same smell of piss and hopelessness. Same windowless room.

This time it wasn’t a room with a door, but a set of dividers with a curtain. I preferred the room with the closed door. At least then, it masked the sounds of the horrors going on around us.

The grunts, the cries, the disgusting sounds of skin hitting skin.

A tremor wracked my body, cramping my stomach. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday, not that I could have kept anything down past the nausea. Part of me craved the drugs they constantly pumped into our bodies. Craved the nothingness. Craved the escape from what was being done to my body. Craved the absence of pain.

The other part of me feared what happened in the darkness when I was unaware.

“Please, Hanna.” Sofia’s sluggish voice reminded me she asked me a question. What did I want to do when we escaped the men who took us—the men who sold our bodies like cattle?

Stupid tears burned my eyes because I knew what Sofia didn’t. We weren’t getting out of here unless it was through death—which, as the days stretched on, didn’t sound horrible.

But I answered anyway. Because Sofia was my everything, and for her, I’d pretend.

“I don’t know what I’d do. I didn’t know before all this.”

Before we snuck out of our hotel on vacation in Florida and used fake IDs to get in a club. Before I pushed us to make the stupidest mistake of our lives. Before we were broken down to pieces of meat.

“There’s lots of things you loved,” she argued, her words slurring.

Metal clanked against the headboard as I tried to shift to my side to face her. My arm stretched at an awkward angle from the handcuff, but it wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. Sofia laid on her side facing me too, and even though I hadn’t seen my reflection in months, I knew what I looked like, looking at her.

My twin.

Her cheeks sunk under sharp cheekbones, and dark circles made her look gaunt. Almost like the zombies we’d dressed up as for last Halloween. Her once vibrant green eyes were lethargic and dull, even under the glassy reflection, letting me know she was still high. The only difference was her stringy, almost black hair falling around her shoulders. Before this, I’d been a rioting teenager, resentful to not have anything of my own, so I’d cut my hair and dyed it bright pink. Otherwise, we were the same, and it hurt to look at her.

Her full lips, dry and cracked, did their best to tip into a smile. “You love math. Do math.”

“Math is for nerds,” I answered in rote. Maybe saying the same thing I did before this would help make the game a little more real.

“Then be a nerd,” she slurred, her eyes drooping. “Let’s be who we are supposed to be and fuck everyone else.” Her shaking hand brushed my hair back before it fell limply between us. “When we get out of here, we’re going to deserve whatever life we want for ourselves. So, take it. Take it with me. Promise. We’ll do it together.”

As if the passionate demand had sapped the last of her energy, her eyes slid closed.

“Promise,” I whispered.

How could I deny her anything? It was my fault we were in this mess, so it was the least I could do to promise her the moon and stars, even if it was just pretending to believe it.

“I’m sorry, Sofia.”

“Shut up, Han-Han,” she murmured, her eyes still closed. “We’ll get out of here. Erik is probably tearing the world down, looking for us.”

Maybe. But our captors were like ghosts, moving too quick to be caught, not even real to the outside world.

“He’s going to be so mad we snuck out, and I can’t wait to see his angry face, his eyebrows pulled so low they’ll be right above his lips.” Another slow breath rattled in her chest like it hurt to breathe. I almost thought she’d fallen asleep when she spoke again. “But then I’ll dance away because I’ll be a damn ballerina.”