Chapter 4: Put Your Sleeve Down

Hazel set the plate on the counter before it could fall.

"That is my grandmother's ring," she said.

Vivi blinked. She looked down at her own hand and then up again, wide-eyed and puzzled. "This?" She turned the band so the green stone caught the light. "Oh. I found it in a box in your old room, with some other things. I thought it was costume jewelry."

"It was in a drawer. Under the lining."

"Was it? I did not know."

"You found it under the lining of a drawer," Hazel said evenly, "by accident."

Vivi's lip trembled. "I only wore it because I missed you. It made me feel close to you while you were gone. Is that strange?"

Rosa made a sound in her throat, short and sharp, and said nothing.

Hazel looked at the ring. Grandma Mae had worn it for forty years, in the garden, in the kitchen, at the market, and the silver had gone dull where her thumb pressed. When she gave it over she had closed Hazel's fingers around it and said, "Do not let anyone talk you out of this one." A week later she was gone. A neighbor had found her. Hazel had been told by phone, by a stranger, standing in the hallway of a house that was not hers.

"Take it off," Hazel said.

"Of course, I just..." Vivi's face crumpled. "It feels so..."

"Take it off, Vivi."

She did not mean to grab. She reached for Vivi's hand to slide the ring off herself, nothing more. Her fingers closed around Vivi's wrist, and under the skin she felt a pulse, fast and light.

Vivi screamed.

It was a perfect scream, high and cracked, and it tore through the kitchen. Hazel let go at once, but Vivi had already stumbled back into the counter. A tray of pastries slid off the edge and hit the floor with a crash. The cooks froze. The boy dropped another glass.

"You hurt me!" Vivi gasped, clutching her wrist. "Hazel, please, I did not do anything!"

"I barely touched you."

"It hurts, it really hurts."

The swinging door banged open. Claudia came through first, heels loud on the tile, with Gregory and Theo behind her. Behind them a gray-haired woman in pearls tried to see over Theo's shoulder, and Gregory turned and said, "Margaret, please, it is only a dropped tray," and shut the door in her face.

"Vivi!" Claudia crossed the kitchen and gathered Vivi against her, one hand cupping the back of her head. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"She grabbed me," Vivi sobbed. "I only wanted to give her cake, Mom. I was so happy she was home, and she just..."

"I took hold of her wrist," Hazel said. "She has my grandmother's ring. I asked her for it."

"Your grandmother's ring?" Gregory frowned.

"The one Grandma gave me. Vivi is wearing it."

Everyone looked at Vivi's hand. She lifted it, and the stone sparkled under the kitchen lights. Vivi looked hurt. "I did not know it was special," she whispered. "If you want it, Hazel, you can have it. I only wanted to feel close to you." She started to pull the band off, then stopped, and looked at Claudia with a shaking chin. "But she hurt me so badly."

"She is bleeding," Claudia said.

Hazel looked. There was a thin red line on Vivi's wrist where her nail had caught the skin, or where the edge of the counter had. It was tiny. She could not have said which.

"It was an accident," Hazel said.

"An accident." Claudia's voice was thin. "You have been home forty minutes."

"Mrs. Whitmore," Rosa said, stepping forward. "I saw..."

"Rosa." Claudia did not turn her head. "Please."

Rosa's mouth closed. She looked at Hazel with her whole face tight and miserable, and then she looked at the floor.

"It is a piece of old jewelry, Hazel," Gregory said, rubbing his temple.

"Then give it back to me."

"Enough." Theo had come to her side. She had not seen him cross the room. He was taller than she remembered and broader through the shoulders, and his jaw was set. He took hold of her upper arm, hard, to pull her away from the counter, and the grip landed right on an old bruise under the wool.

Hazel jerked back.

The sleeve rode up.

Nobody spoke. The kitchen light was very bright. On the inside of her forearm, from wrist to elbow, ran a ladder of raised white lines, some thin, some thick, some still pink at the edges. Above them were three round marks the size of coins, shiny and puckered. Hazel had stopped noticing them a long time ago. In the dorm everyone had them. It was only now, in front of her family, that she saw them as other people would.

Theo's hand loosened. His eyes dropped to her arm. His face went blank, and she saw his throat move.

"Theo," she said. She did not know why. It was an old habit, the sound of his name.

He looked up. His lips parted. For one second she thought he would say something real.

"Put your sleeve down," he said, low. "Vivi will get upset."

Hazel stood still.

Three years ago she would have held out her arm and made them look. She would have said, this is what your school did, here, and here, and here. She would have waited for her mother to gasp and her father to go pale, and for someone to ask her who had done it and how long and why. She would have waited a very long time.

She pulled the sleeve down, slowly, one hand over the other, covering each mark. Nobody stopped her. Nobody asked. Behind her, Vivi gave a small, wet hiccup.

---

The scream came again in her head, and it was not Vivi's.

It was dark. The van smelled of gasoline and damp rope. Her wrists were tied behind her, and a rough bag had been pulled over her head and then taken off, because the man was afraid she would choke. She was sixteen. She could hear the engine and the road. Beside her, so close their shoulders touched, sat Vivi.

Vivi had been crying. Hazel had heard her, a high, stuttering sound, and had tried to say, "It is okay, I am here." Then she had felt fingers slide over hers in the dark and squeeze. Hazel had squeezed back. She had thought, She is so scared. I have to look after her.

It was only later, a long time later, in a bare room with a bare bulb, that she thought about those fingers.

They had not been shaking. They had been steady and dry. They had pressed her hand once, firmly, like someone pressing a button to be sure it works.

In the room there was a phone on a table. A man with a scarf over his face switched it to speaker. A woman answered after two rings, her voice rough with sleep and then sharp with fear. Hazel knew that voice. She had thought about it every night.

"We have your daughters," the man said. "Both of them. You have until morning."

"Please," her mother said. "Please. Please do not hurt them."

"We only want to talk about the money. But there is a problem. We can only do the first handoff for one of them tonight." The man looked at Hazel, and then at Vivi, and his eyes went flat. "Which one?"

Silence on the line. Hazel could hear her own heart. Next to her Vivi was crying, loud now, and she wanted to say, "It is all right, she will pick, she will pick."

She remembered her mother's breath. Then she remembered her mother's voice, clear and fast, with no pause in it at all.

"Save Vivi first."

---

"Hazel."

She came back with a jolt. Someone was gripping her shoulders. It was Rosa, whispering, "Breathe, breathe," and Hazel realized she was gulping air like someone coming up from deep water. Her face was wet. She had not felt it.

Across the kitchen, Vivi sat on a stool with Claudia's arm around her. Gregory pressed a wet cloth to her wrist. Theo stood by the door with his hands in his pockets, looking at no one. The cooks had gone back to their trays and were working in complete silence.

Vivi lifted her head. Over Claudia's shoulder her eyes met Hazel's, and the tears were gone from her face. Her expression was calm. Her mouth moved without sound, three words, and Hazel read them as clearly as if they had been shouted.

"You still know."

Then her face dissolved back into sorrow, and she buried it in Claudia's neck.

"I think," Claudia said, in a tight, cold voice, "that we all need to calm down. Hazel. Look at me."

Hazel turned her head slowly.

Her mother's eyes were red, and her lips were pressed into a hard line. She was not looking at the marks Hazel had covered. She was not looking at the clothes that no longer fit or the hollows in her cheeks. She looked at her like a spill on a nice rug.

"I do not know what they did to you in that place," Claudia said. "I do not want to know tonight. But you have been home less than an hour, and my daughter is bleeding." She drew a long breath. "If you cannot behave, there is another school."