Portrait of a Donor: A Starters Story (3 page)

How long will he let us stay? No one wants to ask, and maybe he doesn’t know the answer.
Maybe his grandparents will return and we’ll be kicked out.

I press the button again and the mirror disappears. Raj looks over and smiles. Would
he ever go for a girl like me?

Maybe. But not for long, probably. I’m sure his Indian parents would have a fit once
they saw that my skin is darker than theirs.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Raj pulls into the parking lot of a fancy restaurant that doesn’t look like a breakfast
place. There are few cars.

Inside, the place is empty. No customers, no waiters, no music.

“It’s early,” Raj says, looking at his watch.

It
is
only eleven a.m. The restaurant looks expensive, with large stone tiles on the
floor. Maybe they’re imitation. Holo grapes masquerade as the real thing, hanging
from the latticed ceiling.

“Follow me,” Raj says as he walks through the room.

We hesitate. “I don’t think they’re open,” I say.

“It’s okay.” He motions for us to follow. “I know the owner.”

My heels echo on the floor as he leads us to a cozy private room with oak paneling
and a wine rack. One large table fills the space.

“Sit,” Raj says.

He hands us large cloth-covered menus. I notice lunch isn’t even listed, just dinner.
Lee shifts in his chair. Raj has his head buried in the menu.

Three Enders in suits come into our room. They’re not smiling. And they close the
door behind them. The mood in the room immediately turns sour. My heart races. This
isn’t right.

Raj’s expression changes so fast, it’s like that game where you wave your hand over
your smiling face and reveal a frown. He was a different person now. All business.

One of the Enders, a short, stocky man points at me. “I thought she was going to be
blond.”

“I never said that,” Raj says, standing.

Lee and I also rise. I try to push my chair back to escape, but one Ender holds it
in place with heavy hands. Another Ender stands behind Lee’s chair.

Raj comes to my side. To help me?

“She’s beautiful.” Raj pulls my jacket down, stopping at the wrists. “Feel how smooth
that skin is.”

I want to die.

The short Ender comes over and gingerly raises his hand toward my bare arm. I’m stuck
there, with my jacket around my wrists.

“Touch me and I’ll kill you,” I say.

His eyes widen. He withdraws his hand and steps away. I pull my jacket back on. He
whispers something to Raj.

Lee and I look at each other.

“What’s that smell?” he asks me.

“Money,” I say. Raj sold us out.

“No,” Lee says. “It’s the stink of betrayal.”

He jams his elbow into the neck of the Ender behind him. He then climbs up the back
of his chair as it falls backward onto the Ender clutching his throat in pain.

I push my chair into the Ender behind me, but he reaches out and pins my arms back.
Raj and the bald Ender grab Lee while the first Ender shakes off the neck jab.

Lee tried, but we’re outnumbered. The Enders cuff us.

“Sorry, guys, nothing personal,” Raj says. He looks at me. “Another time, another
place, it might have been different.”

“You lied to us,” I say. “Pretended to help us, when all along you were planning on
selling us like slaves.”

“You don’t need the money,” Lee says. “You’re filthy rich.”

“My grandparents are rich, not me.” Raj turns to the tall Ender. “They’re all yours.”

“You won’t want me,” I say as I struggle against the Ender, my hair whipping around.
“No one will want my body. I’ll cut my face. I’ll do anything to make myself unrentable.”

The short Ender smiles as he grips my chin with one hand and strokes my cheek with
the other. “We’ll make sure to protect you from yourself.”

The Enders pull us toward the door.

“Wait,” Raj says. “No one’s paid me yet. I delivered you two donors.”

The first Ender slaps cuffs on Raj. “You mean
three
donors.”

“No! That wasn’t our deal!” Raj shouts.

I look at Raj and almost smile. But the impulse fades fast as I realize that I’m trapped
now, forever. I didn’t even get one complete day of freedom.

The next day in a mansion overlooking the ocean

I can’t stop looking at this new face of mine—Briona’s face. It is positively
exquisite.

I cross these long, athletic legs and lean forward to look in the mirror. Even when
I was a little girl, my skin was never this beautiful. Cheekbones impossibly high.
Lips full and proud, as if swollen from kissing.

Who I was, just another old Ender, doesn’t matter. I’m Briona now. I look at her face
—my
face—in the mirror. These liquid eyes. This ebony skin, with a special luster to
it. I run my hand over my cheek and then down my neck, my shoulder, my arm, all the
way to the back of my hand. So smooth. So young. And worth every penny.

If you enjoyed this special STARTERS story, look for Lissa Price’s novel ENDERS. Callie
is ready to fight for the truth—even if it kills her.

Here’s a sneak peek.

Excerpt copyright © 2014 by Lissa Price. Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint
of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random
House Company, New York.

My hand went to the back of my head and I swore I could feel the chip underneath my
skin. But I couldn’t, of course; it was buried deeply under the metal blocking plate.
It was just the surrounding scar tissue I felt, hard and unforgiving.

I tried not to touch it. But it had become an obsession to finger it like a splinter
in a palm, or a hangnail on a thumb. It haunted me all the time, even here, making
sandwiches in the kitchen. Helena’s kitchen.

Even though she was dead and had left the mansion to me, I couldn’t help but be reminded
daily that it had been hers. Every choice, from the sea-green tiles to the elaborate
island in the center of this gourmet kitchen, was hers. Even her housekeeper, Eugenia,
remained.

Yes, it had been Helena’s crazy plan to stop the Old Man by using my body to assassinate
Senator Harrison. But it was my fault that I had volunteered to be a body donor in
the first place. I had been desperate to save my little brother, Tyler, then. Now
I couldn’t take it back, any more than I could get
rid of this horrible chip stuck in my head. I hated the thing. It was like a phone
the Old Man could call anytime, a phone I had to answer and could never disconnect.
It was the Old Man’s direct line to me, Callie Woodland.

The last time I had heard from him was two days ago, while I was watching his precious
Prime Destinations being demolished. He had sounded like my dead father, even used
his code words:
When hawks cry, time to fly
. I’d been thinking about that ever since. But as I stood at the kitchen counter spreading
the last of the peanut butter on whole wheat, I decided that it had been the Old Man
playing tricks on me. Cruel, but no surprise coming from that monster.

“Finished?” Eugenia asked.

Her crackly Ender voice cut through me. I hadn’t heard her come in. How long had she
been watching? I turned to meet the scowl on her wrinkled face. If this was my fairy-tale
life, living in this castle, she would be the ugly stepmother.

“That’s enough. You’re emptying my entire pantry,” she said.

That wasn’t true. I’d made several dozen sandwiches, but our pantry could feed us
for a month. I placed the last one in the insta-wrap machine, and the thin veg-wrap
encased the bread instantly with a high-pitched zip.

“Done.” I tossed the sandwiches into a duffel bag.

Eugenia didn’t even wait for me to leave before she began wiping the counter. I’d
obviously ruined her day.

“We can’t feed the whole world,” she said, scrubbing invisible stains.

“Course not.” I closed the duffel bag and slung it over my shoulder. “Just a few hungry
Starters.”

As I put the bag in the trunk of the blue sports car, I couldn’t get Eugenia’s disapproving
glare out of my mind. You’d think maybe she’d be nicer, knowing my mother and father
were dead. But somehow she resented me for Helena’s death. It wasn’t my fault. In
fact, Helena had almost gotten
me
killed. I slammed the trunk. Eugenia only stayed because she adored Tyler. That was
okay; I didn’t have to answer to her. She wasn’t my guardian.

My hand went to the back of my head, and I absentmindedly scratched at my chip wound
before I caught myself and stopped. When I looked at my fingers, my nails were dirty
with blood. I winced.

I pulled a tissue out of my purse and wiped them as best I could. Then I walked out
the door of the garage that led to the garden. Mossy stones, wet from the morning
dew, led to the rose-covered cottage guesthouse. The place was quiet, no movement
behind the windows. I knocked on the rough-hewn door, to see if he was back, but no
answer.