Praise for Perfected:
“Compelling, imaginative, and unique. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough!”
— Mary Lindsey, author of Shattered Souls
Excerpt - First Chapter
“Remember… You’ll never be one of them,” Miss Gellner said,
repositioning each of us on our divans in the sitting room so our gowns draped
elegantly around our crossed ankles.
She stepped back and gazed at the group of us, her face
pinched and stern like always, but I spotted a tiny glimmer of pride behind her
rheumy eyes. Twenty girls: lovely, demure, quiet. She was pleased with us, even
if she wouldn’t say it out loud.
Miss Gellner blinked, as if bringing herself back to the
moment. “Things won’t change once you leave here,” she went on. “Simply because
you’ll be pampered and spoiled, your life’s mission won’t suddenly be any
different. Remember that. Your sole
purpose is to enrich the lives of your new owners.”
As she said this, she lightly tapped her bamboo training
stick against my back, not a hard whack the way she had done relentlessly when
we first transferred from the Greenwich Kennel to the training center, where
she and her staff could cultivate us into the sort of girls we were bred to be.
This was just a warning tap, reminding me to sit so that my spine was a stem,
and I was the flower resting atop it.
It was a pose we’d practiced daily for the past four years;
during music and etiquette and dining, even during our nightly baths. But the
fluttering in my stomach distracted me, drawing me down into myself. My whole
body felt fluttery: my hands, my feet, even my eyes. I worried that the moment
the two grand doors leading to the reception room swung open, I might flap
away; a feather caught on the wind.
Next to me, Seven bit nervously at her bottom lip. It was
weird to think that by tonight she’d have a new name, a real one. The breeders
at Greenwich assigned us numbers as names at conception: One through Twenty,
since twenty was the maximum number of girls they were allowed to have each
year. I was Eight, but not for much longer. By tonight, I could be anything.
Across the room, Miss Gellner took a few steps towards the
grand wooden doors, resting her hand lightly on the knob before she turned to
face us one last time.
"I want you to keep your composure when they come in.
I've spent four years preparing you for this moment.” She thumped her training
stick on the ground for emphasis. “Four years. Don’t waste them. Each move that
you make, every turn of your head and pout of your lip speaks to my
effectiveness as a trainer and I won’t have that work tarnished. When I open
these doors, I expect you to remember all the things I've taught you.”
The stiff lining of my dress rubbed against my rib cage and
I ached to shift to a more comfortable position, but I held still, staring
straight ahead at Miss Gellner with a soft smile placed carefully on my lips.
“Be sure to hold your tongues,” she went on. “You are not doing the selecting. Do not
ask questions. Speak if spoken to, but keep your answers brief. We don't want
to scare away a potential buyer with a girl who has too forward a notion of
who’s in charge."
Beside me, the other girls were sitting silently. We were
perfectly trained, all of us. And lovely, too. In our new dresses, we looked
like royalty. Miss Gellner had picked out a different shade of gown for each of
us, our first piece of clothing that was distinctly ours. She’d deliberated
long and hard on the color choices. She wanted us each to look different. It
wouldn't do for the customers to think they were getting cloned girls even
though there were plenty of differences between us to set us apart. Yes, we all
had large eyes, spaced perfectly on our heart shaped faces. We all had small noses,
long, thin necks, and rose petal lips. But we each had distinct coloring.
Seven’s hair was nearly black. Sixteen’s eyes were green, the color of fresh
summer grass, and Twenty’s skin was the same warm brown of the toasted bread
that we were rewarded with on Sunday mornings. We were unique. One of a kind.
I was happy with the dress Miss Gellner had chosen for me.
It was the palest shade of blue, hardly a color at all. These dresses would be
the only item that would accompany us to our new homes. Our new owners would
provide everything else.
"We’re lucky to have a number of congressmen and
senators here today," Miss Gellner went on. "Power, prestige, wealth,
you'll be surrounded by the best, which is why it is important that you be the best." Miss Gellner sighed,
nodding her head once. “All right girls. It’s time.”
She turned and threw
open the doors. “Ladies… Gentlemen…” her voice boomed as she glided into the
next room. “If you’ll kindly follow me, I’ll show you to the sitting room.
You’ll have a chance to look over each of the girls before you make your
decision. As I told each of you over the phone, the number on your tag will
determine the order of selection.”
A moment later a stream of bodies and voices flowed into the
room. I drew a breath and held it, trying to compose myself, but the fluttering
inside me only grew worse. My vision blurred as the men and women pressed
closer, talking loudly to one another.
“Oh my! They’re so little,” a woman cooed “They look like
twelve-year-olds.”
“I can assure you, they’re sixteen,” Miss Gellner said.
“They’re fully grown; all measuring in at exactly five feet.”
An older man grabbed a lock of my hair and rubbed it between
his fingers. “Like corn silk,” he said to the woman next to him. “Did you say
you were hoping for a blond or a red head? This one almost seems like a mix of
the two.”
“And it does have beautiful eyes. Look, they’re practically
turquoise,” she crooned. “But, I was hoping for a real red head. There’s an
auburn one over there we should look at.”
I didn’t dare turn my head to watch them walk across the
room to look at Ten.
A middle-aged couple finished looking at Seven and circled
around me. I blinked a few times, finally bringing my eyes back into focus as
the man’s dark eyes skated over me. He was obviously quite a bit older than me,
but his jaw was much stronger than the other men I’d seen so far and his eyes
were bright. A sprinkling of gray hairs dusted the dark hair at his temples.
The woman beside him had probably been a beauty when she was younger, but now
she was a different sort of beautiful: regal and refined. She was tall, even
taller than Miss Gellner, with high cheekbones, a strong jaw, and long arched
brows perched overtop piercing blue eyes. Even though she had lines around her eyes
and mouth, her hair was almost as dark as Seven’s, without a hint of gray.
Everything about her intimidated me.
“Now this has some promise,” the man said, looking into my
eyes. “Do you like this one?”
“Oh, John, do we really need to do this?” The woman sighed,
her eyes drifting around the room.
“Do what, Darling?”
“You can cut it with the ‘Darling’, too. It’s not like
anyone’s listening. They’re busy choosing their own pets,” she said, gesturing
towards the rest of the people in the room with an elegant sweep of her arm.
“And you can stop pretending I have any say in your precious little project.
You know I couldn’t care less about getting her.”
Her husband stepped forward, so close their bodies almost
touched. “You know how it looks for us not to have one, don’t you? After all
the time I spent getting this bill to pass. People are saying things. You don’t
want them to think—”
She took
a step away from him, eyeing an old man who had turned his attention to their
conversation. “Whatever you say, Dear,”
she interrupted. “I’m merely along for the ride.”
“You can’t argue that Ruby needs this,” the man said. “We
agreed.”
Her face
softened. “I know.”
He took a deep breath, and when he turned back to me, it was
as if he’d flipped a switch, changing his face back to the same well-groomed
look of prominence and stature I’d seen on it to begin with.
“Stand up and give us a little whirl, Love,” he said to me.
I hadn’t
anticipated the weakness in my legs, but I stood and turned slowly, the way I
learned in my Poise lessons. I kept my chin up, neck elongated, my arms held
out ever so slightly from my sides as if my hands were brushing the skirt of a
tutu.
The man smiled once I faced him again. “And what are your
talents? The Kennel Trainer said that you each specialized in two.”
“My talents are piano, dance, and singing. Although my vocal
range is not as diverse as some.”
His forehead creased, his eyes narrowing, and my stomach
flipped. If Miss Gellner had been standing next to me, she would have lashed me
with her stick. We’d practiced our lines over and over and still I said it
wrong. There hadn’t been any need for me to point out my faults so blatantly. I
should have only mentioned the piano and dance and not said anything about the
singing. I was trying too hard to impress.
“Three talents?” he asked. “Marvelous. I suppose We’d be
getting a little bit more bang for the buck if we go with you then, isn’t that
right?”
The man’s phrasing confused me and I lowered my eyes to the
ground and smiled softly the way we’d been taught to do if we ever didn’t know
how to answer a question.
“So which is your favorite?”
“Favorite?” I asked.
“Which one do you like the most?”
“I’m quite good at all three as long as the song I’m singing
is written for a mezzo soprano.”
“But certainly you have a favorite?”
My mind raced, trying to think over all the scenarios we’d
spoken about like this one in our Conversation class, but I drew a blank. Those
classes were meant to help us understand our new owner better, not to help them understand us. I couldn’t come right out and tell him that I had a favorite.
Miss Gellner would be outraged. Maybe I could try to change the subject? But
then he might realize I was doing it to avoid his question, and he would know
that I really did have a favorite.
It was too complicated an interaction.
The woman smiled slyly. “Maybe she doesn’t understand your
question John. Sure, she’s pretty, but they weren’t bred for brains.”
“I thought you said you wanted to stay out of this.”
She raised her hands and took a step back without saying
another word.
The man tried again. “What I mean to say is: which one of
your talents do you prefer? Is there one that makes you particularly happy?”
I swallowed, hoping to push down the rock that had lodged
itself in my throat. “Well sir, if there’s one that you prefer, I’m sure I’d be delighted to perform for you.”
The man sighed and shook his head. “Never mind. Why don’t
you sit back down?”
I smiled once more and sank back onto the divan, trying to
hold my head high even though my eyes burned.
For the next hour, the groups of men and women circled
around the room. They were all so much bigger than I’d imagined they’d be, not
only in their physical stature, but their presence, as if the room couldn’t
contain them. They gobbled up the air.
Finally Miss Gellner moved us into the concert room. We’d
each been assigned one talent to demonstrate to give the clients a better taste
of what they’d be buying. Four and Five would each be performing an adagio en
pointe, a few girls were
playing the flute and the cello, but the majority of us would be playing the
piano or singing.
Maybe it should have
bothered me that I wouldn’t stand out, but all I could think about as we sat
down in the velvet seats arranged along the edges of the room was Debussy’s First
Arabesque in E major, the song Miss Gellner had chosen for me to play. It
wasn’t an elaborate song. I could play solos that were so much more difficult
like the piece by Prokofiev that I learned last year, but I was glad she hadn’t chosen that one. Sure, I wouldn’t
be able to show off my finger work playing the First Arabesque, but that didn’t
matter. I could already
feel the notes of the song moving up through my fingers and arms, a soft
vibration that settled somewhere at the base of my neck like the warm hand of a
friend.
We moved in order:
One, Two, Three, Four, on and on until finally it was my turn. As I climbed the
stairs to the small stage at the front of the room and sat on the tufted
cushion of the piano bench, it was as if a white curtain had been drawn down
between the crowd and me. I took a deep breath, savoring the moment before I
placed my hands on the keys and started to play.
My fingers floated
over the ivories for only a short four minutes, but my heart and mind quieted.
I didn’t know if the other girls felt this way when they were playing, as if
they were all alone and the rest of the world melted away leaving the air awash
in soft color. I’d always been too embarrassed to ask. What if it meant that I
had something wrong with me?
Those four minutes
didn’t last long enough and before I knew it my fingers had stopped, hovering
over the keys as the last notes died away. A polite spattering of applause
brought me back to the room full of strangers. As I stood, I glanced out into
the audience, allowing myself to imagine which of these people might be my
future owner. Toward the back of the room I spotted the man with the salt and
pepper hair and his wife. Neither of them was clapping, but for just a second
he held my gaze and nodded ever so slightly.
That small gesture
made my face burn with shame. He knew that I lied to him before when he’d asked
me which one of my talents was my favorite. Of course it was piano, but I could
never say it out loud. I was supposed to bring pleasure to my new masters, not
to find pleasure for myself.
A cold sweat broke
out across my back and I shivered, sitting back down on my chair to watch the
remainder of the performances. If he could read me so easily, maybe everyone
else could, too.
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