Anna lowers her head in disapproval.
“Alexa, this is—” She casts her eyes down at the slim black binder, appalled and unable to find words to describe the heinous crimes against the young girls For Sale.
She picks up the binder from the floor and turns the page—
More girls, more codes.
Then turns another—
More girls, more codes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she speaks out loud, stomach heaving from the sour smell of vomit.
I stare out from the Nest, part of me relieved that Anna is finally aware of our situation, another part fighting the urge to pull her back inside the Body in case she messes things up.
I thought you’d try to stop me going to the police, I say.
“Since when have I been able to stop you from doing anything?” she says.
Since I made you into my stepmother, I reply.
I stay seated in the Nest while Anna continues to page through the binder, a tight clench to her jaw. I do not recognize some of the girls and wonder where they are now. Another house? Another country? Are they still alive?
One girl with painted red lips, I note, is particularly young. Her eyes are sad, her eyebrows drawn in fine pencil. She’s been dressed in a black silk skirt with slits on either side. A matching low-cut top slashed across her soft, unformed shoulders. She is seated uncomfortably, cut adrift from a life where unicorns fly and daydreams are wild, where butterflies land on freckled hands, the fizz of cherry-ade tickling the hairs on her nostrils.
Flash.
I am sitting on my bed dressed in a red mandarin dress, a Hello Kitty toy forced in my hand.
“Smile, Xiǎo Wáwa,” he says, a camera directed toward me, “it’s your birthday!”
Flash.
Balloons are raised in the corner. Ten, to match my years.
My red mouth instructed to perform heinous crimes.
Flash.
He leaves. The door silently closed behind him. The Body afloat. Cast, like an eleventh balloon.
Flash.
Tick-tock—
Wake up, Runner shouts, I need your help.
I watch Anna slap closed the black binder.
“I suggest that whatever it is you’ve got us all involved in stops right now.”
Quick, get her back inside, Runner orders, she could screw up everything.
I do as I’m told, forcing Anna back inside the Body and enlisting Runner for help, who is only too keen to assist, giving Anna a quick shove. Her dislike for Anna because she believes her a bystander.
Over the years, I’ve tried to explain to the Flock that we needed some kind of mother to care for us, but also to make more bearable what had passed between my father and me—the Body believing it was older when Anna took the Light and allowing my nine-year-old self to dissociate. It was just more manageable this way. I guess because part of me needed someone to rebel against, someone to blame, and let’s face it, stepmothers are such an easy target. Look at Cinderella and Snow White. But the terrifying reality of my having knitted myself a mother figure hits me. A certain and unescapable realization that Anna wasn’t, isn’t, and never will be my real mother.
I’ll never have one.
Because my mother is dead.