The Contestant

iii

She was asked to take off her clothes. This was the most embarrassing part. She was cleaned quickly in a small stockade of showers. The powder they used was like Clorox and the shampoo used to clean her hair was like tar. Poppy didn’t complain, it was the first time she had taken a real shower in weeks.

For the most part, she and her mother had taken quick washes using the kitchen sink. Their toilet worked but the shower had stopped working long ago. On busy mornings, her mother would bathe using the kitchen sink as Made used the one in the failing bathroom. Thusly, Poppy didn’t really complain about the shower.

Afterwards, she was given some comfortable pajamas and a thick terrycloth robe. Her feet were slipped into slippers. She had gone in one way and come out another. They had taken her wings. She was a clipped bird, unable to fly without them.

They took her name and assigned her a number. She knew that when they gave her the number, it would glow on her skin like ink. When she won (this was not an uncertainty), the numbers would fade into a scar on her wrist. She pictured these scars and numbers at night sometimes. Everyone had an old number in their skin. Her mother’s was 9365132SP. It sat on her skin like faded white chalk.

Poppy wondered what number she had been given.