Free The Tyrant's Daughter by J.C. Carleson Page A

It takes me several long, breathless moments to realize that it’s my frozen stance that’s making me suffer—my rigid shoulders and planted feet. I need to stop resisting, I tell myself. I need to move
with
the crowd.
    The motion helps. I’m awkward at first; my hips and knees refuse to sway. But Emmy was right—there is nothing to
know
about this kind of dancing. It is simply something to do.
    I watch my feet until they seem to be cooperating. It’s only when I feel confident enough about my movement that I look up and see what has happened.
    Decency has fled the room.
    All around me couples writhe and grind against each other in time to the music. It’s lewd, animal, and I can’t help but freeze in place once more. Next to me, Emmy, sweet Emmy, who even now wears tiny butterfly earrings more suitable for a child, is leaning backward, her arms reaching up and behind her to embrace the boy who is pressed against her like a sweating, grunting human cape. The transformation in the room is complete.
    But television has taught me well. I regain my balance quickly, the initial shock worn off. I’ve seen this, just never in person. In my country, this scene—this lusty, teenage carnival—would end in a police raid and lashings. Or worse. My uncle would be involved. Where judgment could be found, he always was.
    That thought—the mere idea of my uncle’s reaction—unleashes me.
I’m here in disguise. I can be someone else. Someone other than me
. I am here to learn.
    I grant myself a small gift—a moment away from my past.
    Loose-limbed, freed, I intentionally bump against the nearest person, a sandy-haired boy I’ve never seen before. The bump is enough. He turns around, no introductions necessary, and presses against me as if our torsos were magnetized. Behind him, his previous dance partner makes an angry face and then moves on, disappearing into the waves of dancers. I barely register her scorn—I’m trying to stay on my feet as this broad, untucked-shirt-wearing body leans and thrusts against me.
    Tori, grinning and grappling with her own partner to my left, sees me and gives me a thumbs-up. “Daaammn, Laila,” she says approvingly. Her lipstick is smeared, and her eyes are too bright even in the strobe-lit darkness. It’s all surreal.
    But that is precisely why I stay.
Because
it’s not real.
    I don’t think. I just do. I press back against my stranger—my partner—and watch my hands find his chest. I push a little, he pushes a little, and since neither of us yields, we’re crushed together even closer.
    I’ve been sheltered, even captive, judging from the standards grinding around me, but in my American disguise I find it easy to catch on. I feel out-of-body as I look up at him in a way that I mean to be encouraging, and I link one leg over his so that I’m nearly straddling my stranger’s thigh. My dress rides up even higher, and for a second my hand reaches to pull it down, until I remember my purpose. I let the skirt drift where it may.
    There are hands on my skin where fabric once lay, and nearby someone howls like a wolf. It was surely done in jest, but the sound is so fitting that it sends chills down my spine. I move my hands. I move my hips. I move my body against his. Never before have I moved like this. I’m surprised to find that I like it, that my ragged breaths are coming and going in time with the breaths of the boy who is touching me—every time we inhale, our chests are pressed together even that much closer. It’s not pleasure that I feel, exactly. It’s too clinical for that.
    It’s power.
    I’ve always been taught that women should be invisible, that our bodies must be hidden and our voices hushed. In this moment, with this unknown person grinding against me, I almost understand why. Just looking at the stranger’s eyes, heavy-lidded and incoherent, and his hands, gripping and petting as if he were having a stroke, I think:
I have done this
.
    It’s intoxicating.
    I