Factory Girl by Josanne La Valley

Author:Josanne La Valley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I’ve been sleepless for at least nineteen hours. No way could anyone in our room sleep. Now it’s midnight and here I am, cutting, cutting, cutting until there’s no connection left between my body and my hand. I’m muttering—​sleep-deprived grousing with every curse word I know in Uyghur and was never allowed to use.

Hey, Big Boss. Tell Hawa to bring me some energy tea. I’d like to shout the words, but I don’t. Where’s my drug? I’d drink it this morning—​at least I think it’s almost morning. It has to be.

I give myself little goals. Five more pockets. I can still count, I just can’t keep my eyelids open long enough to see what I’m counting. My Chinese fellow cutters have solved this. They pinch their eyelids with clothespins to keep them open. Maybe I could borrow some cute little blue plastic clothespins from the seven-to-seven shifters. They’re getting so much sleep now, they don’t need them. Only the cutters are still sleep-deprived.

I’m drifting, but somehow the clip-clop of shoes getting closer and closer breaks through to my consciousness. Little Boss has spotted me and is on her way. She’s a different little boss than usual—​very large and very mean. She pokes us with a rod when she catches us slipping into dreamland. It’s effective. I wake up enough to get my hand moving just by hearing her coming. No quick crrrunch, release to my scissors, more like grrrrrunt, pry the scissor blades apart and push down again, but I’m working. Counting. She stands behind me for a while, then spots someone else and moves on.

At six o’clock I crawl up the stairs, climb to my bunk, and collapse. Clothes still on. No breakfast. Only sleep is of interest. A few hours of oblivion.

“Have a good sleep, Roshen,” I hear Mikray say with a gentleness in her voice that soothes my way into nothingness.

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