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was about
chin-length when I first came to the Burn. Now it's an inch or so
above my shoulders. Jessa would have loved to see my hair this
long; she always urged me to grow it out. Now I think of the way
she looked that night a few months ago when she came to me on the
Burn—her hair shaved as Gaea's price for helping me.
    The agent turns the handle and motions the first
woman forward. She looks back at the rest of us and then steps
through the door. I can't see inside, but I hear the buzz of
clippers and the soft hush of voices. Then another door creaks
open, and the agent jerks her hand to wave another of us
forward.
    Finally the agent motions for me, and I step into the
room. There is a small table set to the side. A pair of scissors
and a comb rest there. A broom and dustbin wait next to a metal
grate just like the one Worker 143 manned. That's where everything
goes in this place—it all gets burned. The woman waiting looms over
me, clippers in hand. She barely looks at me. The only part of me
she sees is my hair.
    I step forward and before I've even stopped, the
clippers are up and scraping across my head. I watch the raven hair
flutter to the floor, landing on my bare toes, landing next to me,
stark against the white tiles. When the clippers finally rest, the
woman speaks. Her voice is a hoarse rasp.
    “Sweep it up and dump it.” She nods to the metal
grate. They take our clothes, take our hair, and then they make us
burn it.
    Numbly, I step forward and grab the broom and sweep
all the hair into the dustbin. I cross to the chute and send my
hair down. The smell of burning hair twists my stomach.
    The far door creaks open and I step through. Another
person waits for me. I think it's a woman, but she's almost
nondescript in a plastic apron, gloves, and a surgical mask. She
holds a thick hose with both hands. She tips her head toward the
shower stall in front of her.
    It's a three-foot square tiled area with metal walls
extending all the way from floor to ceiling. Only the side facing
the woman is open. There's a drain in the middle and a shower head
straight down from the ceiling.
    “I'm going to get you wet first,” is all the woman
says to me before she blasts me with cold water. I clench my
fingers and arms together, and I shiver all over. I swear I'll get
hypothermia if it doesn't end soon.
    Then the water stops, and her monotone voice resumes.
“The soap will come out of the shower head. There's a brush right
there on that ledge. Scrub off until I say you're done. You'll want
to close your eyes.”
    I find the brush and rub it across my palm. The
bristles are coarse and unforgiving. Then the woman presses a
button next to her, and yellow soap comes out of the shower head. I
close my eyes. As soon as it hits my head, I cringe. My skin feels
like it's on fire. I start scrubbing, hoping the faster I do this,
the faster she'll press the button and use that awful cold water to
get the soap off of me. I feel like I'm scrubbing off layers of
skin, and I'm clenching my fingers so the thread won't slip from
them and be washed away. Maybe the soap will dissolve me and I'll
slip down the drain, and I can't help but wonder if that would be a
better fate than what awaits me here.
    Then the soap stops, the water hits me, and I gasp.
My skin stings the way a cut stings when first dipped in water, but
instead of a small paper cut, the water bites into my flesh all
over. I look down, and my skin is bright pink, like the sunburn I
got before I left the colony. I suspect these people won't offer me
aloe to soothe the pain. But the thread is still between my
fingers, and I think of Jack—of the way he held me as we waited for
the soldiers to leave, the way he watched me every night as I fell
asleep, the way he'd find little ways to touch me but would never
tell me how he really felt—and I grit my teeth.
    The roar of water fades to a trickle down the drain,
and I don't know how many times the woman tells me to move on
before I