Page 29 of The Favorite Girl

He looked up at the ceiling and turned his back. “Demi, what do you not get? You cannot leave when you want to… the only way out of this estate is in a hearse.”

My stomach dropped. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I don’t even have anything to pack. I’ll just walk through the front doors and close it on the way out. I’m not their property.” I knocked my shoulder into Bradley’s and immediately went to open the door.

But there wasn’t a door handle. “How do I get out?” Frustration was clear in my voice as I flung back around.

Bradley stood with his arms crossed, watching me race around the office and eventually tugged open the curtains.

Except, I fell backward because the curtains weren’t concealing a window that looked outside. The curtains covered a glass window that looked out into an insanely bright, all-white room that blinded me.

But it wasn’t the room that terrified me; it was the fact that a woman was in it. She was laying in the center on a small cot.

“What the…?” I walked backward, staring at her and flicking to the popcorn machine that was sitting in the corner beside the glass.

“I’m calling the police… This is crazy, Bradley. This is illegal.” I was shaking, my entire body went cold as I forced myself to blink and try to find a phone.

“Bradley, what is going on? Why are you working here? What is this?” I was running around like an animal in the middle of a busy interstate. I had no clue what direction I should be going in, no clue if there was even a point of running, because suddenly, I realized the outcome would be dangerous, no matter which way I went. Slamming my hands against the walls, tears stung my eyes.

“Demi. Please just stop,” he whispered. But he wasn’t angry, he seemed desolate.

For me.

Dropping to the floor, I pressed my face between my legs, trying to gulp in long breaths of air.

“The caged girls… aren’t dogs. They are… girls? Humans…” I drifted as my world seemed to close in around me.

“Yes.”

That one word ripped me to shreds. They say lying is immoral, but lying is actually a protective mechanism that helps guard us from something like this.

A truth we can never come back from.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

“You need to dust the wall. Afterwards, I have to take you to the cages to clean them.” Bradley dipped down and, using both arms, lifted me upright.

“Listen to me, Demi. There is no way out, except one. One way out in a sense that you’ll never be harmed.” He held both of my shoulders as his face turned red.

“Okay, tell me the one way out?” I whispered as tears ran down my cheeks.

“If they give you the title.”

“What title?”

“The favorite girl.”

The favorite girl? What was that? So many questions swirled in my mind as I looked through the glass window in front of me. The woman on the bed had not even moved. I crept toward it and put my hands on the glass. I had to help her… I had to save her.

“Why is she in there?”

“Demi, she’s in there by choice. The caged girls sound worse than it is. These are all women who signed up for an experimental study. They are all psychiatric patients of Dr. Ivory’s friend, Dr. Decker Sterling, who were unable to do well with treatment. Now, they are here to be rehabilitated through The Ivory Experiment.”

I didn’t believe him. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t.

“They really signed up to be called a caged girl and live in a glass cage?” I grinded my teeth together as I shook my head. Realization of the way the popcorn machine was right by the window made my blood grow cold. “Wait… Does he watch her while eating popcorn?”

“Yes.”

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