Girls who don’t pass their inspection are shipped to a brothel in the scarlet districts. The other girls never make it to the television screen. I’ve seen them on television, reluctant yet beautiful teenage brides, on the arm of a wealthy man who is approaching the lethal age of twenty-five. Will I become a murdered reject? Sold into prostitution? These things have happened. I know girls disappear, but any number of things could come after that. Her whole family disappeared after that, moved away, either to find her or because they knew she would never be returned. It happened to a girl in my neighborhood. They disappear from their beds or from the side of the road. Where I come from, girls have been disappearing for a long time. I stand in line with the other girls, and men in gray coats study us.

The big open sky waits in its usual place. We stumble when they let us out we’ve forgotten how to use our legs. I recoil into the blankets with the other girls in horror, not wanting to begin or end. It’s the light of the world through the birth canal, and at once the blinding tunnel that comes with death. We’ve gone too long without speaking, and all we do is bury ourselves more into the dark. She begins to pound and scream-there’s metal in the sound-but none of us help her. I know when one of the girls reaches a wall. We sleep huddled together like rats, staring out, and dream of our bodies swaying. They keep us in the dark for so long that we lose sense of our eyelids.

Chemical garden book