The smokehouse always smelled like salt and burnt hickory, and I always stood at the back of it.
That was my spot. Far from the door, far from Sabine's eyes.
I heard the door before I saw her. Everyone in this pack hears Sabine coming, because she makes sure of it.
Sabine: Ansel, baby, you're dripping on my floor.
He laughed. His laugh was low and warm, and it went through my chest like a hand.
I kept my eyes on the racks and cut the strings slow.
Sabine: Give me one.
He kissed her right there, in front of the whole shift. Her hands went up into his hair and his slid low on her back.
I watched, because looking away would have been admitting something.
When they broke apart, Ansel looked over Sabine's shoulder and found me.
Ansel: Liora. Racks holding?
Liora: Yes, Alpha.
Sabine turned around slow. Her smile did not move, but her eyes did.
Sabine: What did you just say to him?
Liora: He asked about the racks.
Sabine: He asked the smokehouse bitch about the racks. Not you. The racks.
Nash laughed from the hook station. Dov turned his back and found work to do.
That was how it always went. One laugh, one turned back, and I was alone with her.
Sabine: You think I don't see it? The way you stand where he walks.
Liora: I stand where the work is.
Then she pulled my hand over the open stove door and laid my palm flat on the iron.
I heard it before I felt it. A wet sound, like meat on a hot pan.
Then the pain came. It came up my arm and into my teeth and I bit down on a scream so hard my jaw clicked.
Sabine: Go on. Scream. See who comes.
My skin peeled when she let go. There was a white mark shaped like my own palm, and it was already turning red at the edges.
I did not cry. I had learned not to.
Maude came in with the shift list in her hand. She looked at my hand, then at Sabine, then at me.
Maude: Liora. What did you do now?
Liora: Nothing. I don't know.
Sabine: She spoke to Ansel. Like she had a right to.
Sabine's voice cracked perfectly, like she was the one who had been burned.
Maude: Apologize.
Liora: Mama.
Maude: You heard me. Say sorry to your sister and get back to work. Don't make this bigger than it is.
So I did. I said sorry to Sabine for speaking to a man who looked at me first.
I said it plain, with my burned hand held behind my back so no one would see it shake.
Liora: Sorry, Sabine.
Sabine: That's all right. You're not right in the head, and everyone knows it.
She patted my cheek with the same hand she had used to hold me down. Then she went back to Ansel and took his arm.
Ansel did not laugh. He looked at me a moment too long, and something crossed his face that I could not read and did not trust.
Sabine saw it. Her fingers tightened on his sleeve, and she looked back at me with her head tilted.
Then she led him out, and he let her. He always did.
I wrapped my hand in a rag and went back to the racks.
Two hundred and eleven days until the logging job up north took names. I had counted every one.
A look costs a hand. A word costs more. Keep your eyes down, keep counting, get out.