The Last Girl by Joe Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

her own across the reader. This is the only other door in the facility that opens for her and Lily.
    “Hey, let’s stay out here. Those machines give me a fuckin’ headache,” Lily’s Cleric says to Simon. “They’re not goin’ anywhere.”
    “That’s not protocol,” Simon says.
    “There’s a camera in there with them, and this is the only way in or out. We’ll be right here.”
    “It’s okay, Simon,” Zoey says. “We’ll be fine.” She nods once at him, and before he can protest, she and Lily enter the laundry.
    The ceiling is well over twelve feet high with no handholds anywhere on the bare walls, which are painted a dingy yellow. Or maybe they were white once and gave up the fight to stay so. The washing machine and dryer are stainless steel giants, their squared shoulders touching in the center of the room. Three seamless chutes protrude from the ceiling at the far end. Beneath them are wide cloth baskets heaped with clothing of different colors. The black eye of the camera in the middle of the room stares down. Zoey stares back.
    “Come on, Lily, let’s get to work.”
    They begin sorting the laundry and hauling it from beneath the tubes to the washing machine. It is painfully dull work that lost its excitement after folding the very first load of garments so many years ago.
    They start the washing machine, and the entire room comes alive with sound. It’s not so loud that they need earplugs, and she’s gotten used to it over the years. They spend the twenty minutes it takes for the load to wash sitting on the floor drawing letters in the dust. Lily rocks beside her and shrieks with delight every time she completes an entire word correctly.
    Zoey draws a circle over and over. It is the wall outside. But really does it matter if the walls are square or round? They are walls and do their job well.
    She stands and moves to the laundry chutes. Their dark hollows run straight up and out of sight. Even if Lily were able to give her a boost, how would she climb up the slick sides of the metal? And if she were able to shimmy up to a different level, what then? The walls would still be there, the guards, the cameras. Nothing would change, except she would be punished.
    The washing machine signals its completion with a buzz and they switch the load to the dryer beside it. After they repeat the cycle a half hour later, they take their heavy baskets around the wall beside the dryer and set their burdens at the foot of the folding table.
    The table is eight feet long and four feet wide. Beyond it is the garment elevator, an apparatus built into its own shaft that runs all the way to the fourth floor. It has three extendable trays spaced ten inches from one another. The clothing is folded and stacked on the appropriate tray. When the elevator is full, a button is pushed on the wall and the doors before it slide shut. It stops at each level, depositing the garments into storage closets before returning empty. Zoey has considered climbing inside the elevator time and time again. First off, she doesn’t think she can fit between the shelves, she’s been too afraid to try—and this is the first time in months that their Clerics haven’t been right on the other side of the little wall. No, she doesn’t think she can get inside unless she were able to unfasten one of the trays. And again, what would it solve?
    Nothing.
    She’s in this room for a single purpose—to clean the clothes and return them. People wear the clothes, dirty them, send them down the chutes, and it starts all over again.
    Zoey hears a strained creaking and looks down at her hands. She’s wringing the collar of a guard’s uniform so hard the material squeaks. She releases it, her bloodless fingers throbbing.
    “Do you like birds, Lily?” she says in a low voice, loud enough to be heard only by the girl beside her. She glances in the direction of the camera and is reassured as always that they are shielded from view. This is the only place