The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black Page B

seemed as if you’d been bitten. And there were necklaces, spelling out the word “cold” in looping cursive letters.
    An elderly lady with short gray hair was paying for a packet of water-purifying pills and tins of food when Tana passed her at the checkout counter. The lady wore a Chanel-esque black suit and carried a gold-tipped cane with mother-of-pearl roses along the length. Her back was bent, making her seem hunched like a vulture.
    “What?” the woman accused the clerk, her rheumy blue eyes steady. “You think dying is just for the young?”
    Tana left before she could hear the clerk’s reply.
    In the next store, the boutique, she thumbed through lacy satin gowns with names like Innocence Shattered and Ruined Blossomand Sliced-Open Apple of Sin. She found a pretty blue dress that she liked and which would have probably fit her, but at a hundred and twelve dollars, it was way too expensive. Tana had the same forty that she’d had at the gas station. She’d left the bag of bills where she’d knocked it, on the ground next to her car. She hoped it was still there. If she was going to hole up someplace and wait out the next forty-eight hours to see if she was infected, she’d need more money, no matter its provenance. And she’d need the money even more if she went to Coldtown with the rest of them.
    At least there was a sale rack in the back with marked-down clothes. She managed to find a wrinkled gray slip dress about a size too big for her priced at twenty-five bucks. She got that and the cheapest pair of underwear in the store—crimson with ridiculous black lace trim and a silly bow—for an additional ten.
    The bored-looking clerk, a man with huge silver studs through his ears and a tattoo of a snake wrapped around his neck like a noose, rang her up and took her money with clear disdain.
    She knew she was going to look kind of overly fancy and also a little bit naked in the slip dress, but she wasn’t willing to face an actual vampire while wearing a hilarious slogan nightshirt. And all she wanted to do with her current clothes was set them on fire.
    She took her purchases in their glossy black boutique bag with purple tissue paper wrapped around each garment and went to the showers. There, she was able to pay a dollar for fifteen minutes in an individual stall and three dollars for packets of body wash and shampoo, a tiny toothbrush kit, and a towel only slightly larger than a washcloth that had to be returned.
    A large mirror hung in the hallway outside the stalls, where women and girls sat on benches, lacing up Chucks and rolling on deodorant. Seeing herself, she stopped to stare at her reflection as though the girl in the glass was someone else, someone unknown and unknowable. Her black hair looked wild, with bits of twigs and leaves stuck in it. The skin around her eyes was dark as a bruise, probably half from sleeplessness and half from smeared mascara that she made worse when she’d splashed her face with water. Even her blue eyes looked gray under the harsh overhead lights. Her once white dress was as bad as she’d guessed, brown at the hem where the root beer had soaked into it, striped with dark streaks of blood and dirt. There were at least two visible rips in the fabric, and her high boots were spattered with grime and mud.
    But the worst part was her expression. She made herself try to smile, but it came out wrong. She’d once seen a bunch of vintage mug shots in a magazine and there’d been one she’d stared at for a long time. There’d been something off about the girl in it. Now Tana saw that strangeness in herself.
    She wasn’t okay. She really, really didn’t look like someone who was okay.
    Going into the stall, Tana hung her pocketbook, towel, and bag of clothes on the hook farthest from the nozzle, unlaced her boots and tied them together, so they could hang with her other things. Then she pulled off her mother’s baby doll dress, her bra, and underwear and tossed them into