There could be security I don’t see. There could be cameras. I’m not worried about being prosecuted—my father would never let that happen—but I am afraid about what could happen tomeat home if I get caught. I’ve never seen my father really, truly angry with me, but I know this would be enough to find out what it’s like. If I’m caught, I’ll shame him, disgrace the family just as thoroughly as the rest of my plan will if I’m found out.
The question is if it’s worth it.
I close my eyes briefly, envisioning the future where I turn around and walk back to the coffee shop empty-handed, going forward with my life exactly the way it’s been planned for me. A future where, years from now, I look back at this one pivotal moment and wish I’d been braver.
That I’d taken a shot at giving myself something to hold onto, to remember, in the years to come. An attempt at taking back a little bit of my power.
It won’t change my future, and it won’t fix everything—but it’s something.
Something Ineed.
It’s surprising how easy it is. Maybe they don’t really look for thieves, not in places like this. Perhaps they don’t expect a girl like me to walk out with a five-figure dress in her bag. I walk in, careful to make sure I’m in no one’s line of sight, and then I grab the dress. In one swift movement, quicker than I thought I was capable of really, I get it off the hook and wadded up in my bag, the black felt hanger discarded behind a row of decorative potted plants.
My heartbeat is thudding in my ears so loudly I’m not sure if I could have heard an alarm, even if one went off. I walk out of the store as quickly as I can, feeling shaky, my knees like water, but my feet keep propelling me forward, away from the store, back towards the coffee shop.
Not more than fifteen minutes, surely. I wait for the wailing of an alarm, the shouts of a salesperson, and footsteps clattering down the sidewalk towards me.
But there’s nothing.
I feel heady with adrenaline, almost giddy with it. I have to force myself to look bored and irritated when I get back to the coffee shop, so my mother won’t notice my sudden change in mood. But inside, I’m elated. Thrilled.I can’t believe I did it.
For the first time in my life, I’ve broken the rules. Done something objectivelywrong, something that I shouldn’t have. Something that would get me in trouble.
It makes the rest of my plan seem less dangerous somehow. More doable. My heart is racing so hard it hurts. I clench my hands together in my lap as we get back into the SUV, feeling as if everyone around me must know that there’s something in my bag that I shouldn’t have, like a flashing signal that I’ve stolen. That I am, for the first time, being abad girl.Not in the way my mother likes to say it when I don’t sit up straight at the dinner table, or I talk back or fail to show the proper excitement about being sold off like a broodmare.
Really, truly,bad.
A thrill of shuddering, unfamiliar excitement ripples through me as the car pulls back onto the highway, back towards home. I’m not finished with my plan yet. But it’s a start, and it’s already more daring than I’ve ever been.
---
When night falls, I feel fidgety and anxious, barely able to sit still through dinner. My room is a minefield of stolen things now—the dress hung up in my closet, wedged between other dresses in the back, well away from prying eyes. A few items of my mother’s makeup that I don’t own and filched from her bathroom while she was napping—black eyeliner and red lipstick that she’d say was too grown-up for me if I asked to wear it. Sky-high heels. An outfit for a different woman—one I’m not, but I desperately want to be.
An outfit to get fucked in.
What I’m doing is dangerous. I know it is. All throughout dinner, I turn the plan over and over in my head, thinking of all the reasons I shouldn’t. My mother takes my silence as sullen moroseness, chiding me for it, and all the while I can’t help but think how shocked she’d be if she really knew why I’m so quiet.
That instead of seething over the futility of my situation, I’m trying to remember when the guard changes for the night. When I might have one small opening to slip out of the front gate and out to the main road, where I can hitch a ride into town.
A thoroughly dangerous thing to do. A girl my age, alone in the desert in a provocative dress, hitching a ride from a stranger. It’s a stupid, reckless, foolish idea. It very well might end in my innocence being taken from me anyway, by someone my fatherdoesn’tchoose, if I pick the wrong person to flag down. But that, in and of itself, is a choice. Taking the risk. Taking my future into my hands, no matter how the night turns out.
I think of the alternative, again and again. A faceless man, a stranger I don’t know—or maybe even someone I casually do, from one of the other families—leading me to our wedding night suite. Strange hands plucking away my wedding dress, an unfamiliar mouth turning up in pleasure at the sight of my wedding lingerie. A body I don’t know, one I don’t want, on top of me. Taking me. Making me his, when I never chose to be.
My stomach twists at the thought every time, with fear and revulsion that makes the fear of going out into the unknown tonight seem like nothing. This won’t save me from being handed over to another jailer without ever being asked if I want to hold my own keys, but it will be one singular act of rebellion that’s in my power to enact. When I go to that marriage bed with a man I don’t want, he’ll think he’s taking something from me.
But I will have already given it away.
When dinner’s over and I’ve asked to be excused, claiming a headache and early bedtime, I scurry back up to my room. There, I look at my array of stolen goods like a nervous magpie, preparing for the night ahead.
The dress fits, thankfully. I hadn’t had time to give more than a cursory glance at the tag when I snatched it. It molds to me like a second skin, the silky fabric containing just a hint of stretch to make it cling to me all the better. It hits mid-thigh just as I’d imagined, and paired with the high nude pumps, my tanned, slender legs look miles long. The dress pushes up my cleavage to its best advantage, framing the space between my breasts with that reinforced ‘v,’ and the straps cling to my shoulders, showing off my sharp collarbone and toned shoulders. The dress is perfect, exquisite, everything I’d hoped it would be.
I feel different in it. Brave, powerful, even seductive. I run a brush through my black, wavy hair until it shines, apply the eyeliner in as crisp of wings as I can manage without much practice, and slick on the red lipstick that nearly matches the dress. With shaking, nervous hands, I slip the lipstick and my card that has a few hundred dollars on it into a silk clutch, resisting the urge to bite my lips anxiously. I don’t have any plans to try to get someone to buy me drinks tonight. I don’t want any man thinking I owe him anything. If I follow through with every step of my plan, it’ll bemychoice, not anything I’m bargained into.
Even just going into a bar, ordering a drink, and flirting would be something. Even if I can’t bring myself to take that final step, I’ll at least have had one night out. One moment where I can glimpse the kind of life Icouldhave, if I’d been born someone else. Anyone else.
I wait until the house is silent, until the clock has ticked past when I know every one of note—my parents, Elena, will be in bed. I wait until I hear José’s footsteps making his rounds past my door, going off in the opposite direction. Then I make a break for it with my high heels in my hand, hoping for a silent exit.
Every tiny rustle and creak makes me freeze, my heartbeat painful in my chest.I’m going to get caught, I’m going to get caught,I think over and over, but I keep going anyway. There’s no excuse I can make, not dressed like this. No possible reason for skulking through the house in a dress I shouldn’t own, in makeup I shouldn’t be wearing, my mother’s high-heels in my hand. It’s get out of the house without being seen or nothing.