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She frowns. “But were you… like me? Did Ravil…?” Her voice fades away like she can’t bear to finish the question.
I shiver. “Not quite, I don’t think. I’m here for… different reasons. It’s a long story.”
She nods and turns her forlorn gaze back to the fireplace. “So’s mine.”
“I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but… are you okay?”
She doesn’t take her eyes from the fire. The flames dance in her eyes. “I don’t know yet,” she admits. “I think today’s the first day I’ve felt like maybe I will be okay. One day.”
Her scars glare at me, each one more alarming than the last. They look so out of place against the peaceful quality of her features. She can’t be more than nineteen or twenty. Too young to carry so much permanent damage around with her.
“Do you want something to eat?” I ask.
She looks at me as though she’s surprised by the question. “Now?”
I smile. “There’s nothing like a midnight snack to make everything feel a little bit better. Trust me on that.” I go to fetch a tray from the kitchen, load it up with food, and return, setting it down on the hearth between us. Angela hasn’t budged from her perch.
“Help yourself.”
She bites into a slice of pizza tentatively. Her face seems to quiver with relief. “I haven’t eaten pizza in, like… six years, maybe.”
“Six years wasted then,” I say with an awkward laugh.
Angela smiles shyly. “Yeah. Maybe.”
I swallow hard. Maybe it’s pre-maternal instinct, or just plain stupidity, but my fingers are itching to reach out and smooth her wounds away. The fresh ones on her cheek especially. I let my hand float halfway across the space between us before I stop myself and sheathe my hand back in my lap.
“Can I ask you another really rude, way-too-personal question, Angela?”
She nods with a mouthful of pizza.
“Who hurt you?”
She glances down at her arms as though she’s forgotten she has scars at all. They gleam in the firelight like they’re absorbing the glow. Swallowing it up in a way that strikes me as unsettling.
“I gave myself these two,” she admits, pointing at her fresh cuts. “Trying to get out of the building they had me in. There was a wire fence I had to slip under.” Then she points to the largest scar on her arm, still scabbed over and nasty-looking. “I needed stitches for this one. My second pimp did this. The stupid thing was that I actually liked him at first. Isn’t that crazy? He seemed nice. I was young enough that I thought maybe he cared about me.”
I reach out and put my hand on hers. She flinches, but she doesn’t shake me off.
“But I realized that it was just an act. He didn’t care about me at all.”
“I’m sorry, Angela.” The words fall flat. Nothing I can think to say sounds big enough for what she’s been through. I don’t even know half of what she’s suffered.
She touches her cheek and winces at the sting of pain. “This was him, too. He had this big ring that he never took off. He got mad andbam,there it goes. I hated that stupid ring.”
I feel the tang of vomit rushing up my throat. I bite down to hold it back, and a second later, I taste salty blood instead.
“June… are you okay?” Angela asks, realizing that I’m not looking so calm anymore.
Before I can think of how to answer, I hear a sound behind us. Angela and I turn at the same time to see Kolya standing by the door. The moment he sees my face, his expression darkens.
“Angela. You should be in your room, sleeping.”
She stands up nervously. “I’m sorry, Don Uvarov. I couldn’t sleep.”
He moves forward, making sure not to touch her. “There’ll be plenty of time to talk later. For right now, get some sleep. You can take the snacks up if you want.”
She throws me a glance, and I manage a smile, even though my blood is pounding like a full-swell symphony in my ears. “Go on, Angela. Sleep well.”
