Blood could cleanse her.
And revenge now had a face and a name.
A job title.
Dr. Bob Collins.
And now, now Orion had a purpose.
Orion had been avoiding mirrors. She hadn’t looked in one since she was in the bathroom at April’s house when she was just a girl, fussing with her hair and biting her lips to try and make them redder, swollen. Kissable. She didn’t dare look at herself now. She didn’t want to know how ugly she’d become.
The Cell didn’t have mirrors. They didn’t want to give them anything they could attach identity to. Ownership.
The hospital had them, obviously. Windows reflected. Orion had caught snippets of her slim, long, womanly body. Raggedy almost. Her hair thin and dehydrated.
She hadn’t seen her face though.
Her hand wiped the condensation off the mirror, steam still rising from her skin after her scalding shower.
She forced herself to look. Her skin was faintly pink, slightly burned from the temperature. Hot water was all she could cope with; she was trying to get the water to melt the dirt from her skin.
Her face was blotchy, her freckles gone now. She had spent so much time in her childhood wishing for them to disappear. Trying to sneak her mother’s makeup to cover them up.
“Be careful what you wish for,” she muttered to the woman with clear skin and tired eyes.
Her face was slim. Gaunt. Everything was a hard edge. But that made sense. She had been lucky to get one meal a day for the last ten years, a can of soup usually, so everything on her body was gaunt. No fat. No muscle because they didn’t want them strong, able to fight. Orion suddenly promised herself she’d start getting strong. Building muscle. Running. Maybe this hotel had a gym.
She continued to stare at herself. Wet hair flat, clinging to her skin. It was long now, almost to her butt. She wanted to cut it, die it, rehydrate it, and she noted then to make a hair appointment when she had some money. Maddox said stipends would be coming soon, and more money than we would know what to do with eventually, once the bureaucracy of it all was worked out.
Her eyes were the worst part. There was nothing in them. Empty. She couldn’t do anything about that though. No eye salon she could go to. She bent down and splashed cold water on her face.
A child giggled.
Toys clattered.
The room changed.
Memories from her childhood were fractured, almost gone. But not this one. The one where she played with blocks. Her mother watched her, but she looked different. Almost beautiful. Cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and unhappiness hadn’t chipped away at that beauty yet. Her baby brother gleefully played beside her.
“Oh, Ri, Ri. Momma loves you so much,” her mother says, pinching her chubby cheek.
Orion snapped herself back upright, back into the bathroom.
Her reflection was different now.
Not empty, but full of tears. Of lost memories. Lost lives.
Adam.
That was the last time she’d think his name. The last time she’d remember his smile. It would kill her, those memories. That loss. That blame. It lay at her feet. If she had been more fucking sensible, she would’ve made it home. She would’ve figured out a way to get her brother out. To protect him.
But she didn’t, and he was dead. Revisiting memories of him would do nothing but cause her more grief, nothing but bring thoughts of the things she wished she could say.
Orion snatched a towel from the rack and held it up to her face, inhaling the smell of cheap detergent, the feel of something clean and dry. She’d not had that in so long. Showers and clean towels.
Memories.
She forced them down like the vomit crawling up her throat at the thought of her mother.
Her dead mother.
Cancer, Maddox said. Orion would’ve put her money on an overdose. But since she didn’t have any money, she didn’t have any to lose. She hadn’t had a mother to lose either. Not really. Upon reflection, cancer sounded about right. Sickness born from her insides. Punishment for her sins. Or maybe she’d willed herself into it. If anyone could do something like that, it was her mother.
She always had an ailment. Her neck. Her back. Her migraines. Her fibromyalgia. Anything to get her a little attention, give her an excuse to lay in bed all day. Orion’s disappearance did that also. But then her father. Her brother. She hadn’t been strong enough to survive in this world alone. She couldn’t handle it. Orion could only laugh at the thought. Outsiders might’ve believed this story of a saddened mother, dying of a broken heart because all her family was gone.
Orion knew better.
Her mother’s love for her had died long before the cancer ate her up.
Orion forced herself into the clean, cheap clothes. Underwear that were simple and a little too big. They weren’t anything special. Cotton, plain. Probably from Walmart. But to Orion, they were precious.