Portrait of a Donor: A Starters Story Read Free Page B

comes to my side. To help me?
    “She’s beautiful.” Raj pulls my jacket down, stopping at the wrists. “Feel how smooth
     that skin is.”
    I want to die.
    The short Ender comes over and gingerly raises his hand toward my bare arm. I’m stuck
     there, with my jacket around my wrists.
    “Touch me and I’ll kill you,” I say.
    His eyes widen. He withdraws his hand and steps away. I pull my jacket back on. He
     whispers something to Raj.
    Lee and I look at each other.
    “What’s that smell?” he asks me.
    “Money,” I say. Raj sold us out.
    “No,” Lee says. “It’s the stink of betrayal.”
    He jams his elbow into the neck of the Ender behind him. He then climbs up the back
     of his chair as it falls backward onto the Ender clutching his throat in pain.
    I push my chair into the Ender behind me, but he reaches out and pins my arms back.
     Raj and the bald Ender grab Lee while the first Ender shakes off the neck jab.
    Lee tried, but we’re outnumbered. The Enders cuff us.
    “Sorry, guys, nothing personal,” Raj says. He looks at me. “Another time, another
     place, it might have been different.”
    “You lied to us,” I say. “Pretended to help us, when all along you were planning on
     selling us like slaves.”
    “You don’t need the money,” Lee says. “You’re filthy rich.”
    “My grandparents are rich, not me.” Raj turns to the tall Ender. “They’re all yours.”
    “You won’t want me,” I say as I struggle against the Ender, my hair whipping around.
     “No one will want my body. I’ll cut my face. I’ll do anything to make myself unrentable.”
    The short Ender smiles as he grips my chin with one hand and strokes my cheek with
     the other. “We’ll make sure to protect you from yourself.”
    The Enders pull us toward the door.
    “Wait,” Raj says. “No one’s paid me yet. I delivered you two donors.”
    The first Ender slaps cuffs on Raj. “You mean
three
donors.”
    “No! That wasn’t our deal!” Raj shouts.
    I look at Raj and almost smile. But the impulse fades fast as I realize that I’m trapped
     now, forever. I didn’t even get one complete day of freedom.

    The next day in a mansion overlooking the ocean
    I can’t stop looking at this new face of mine—Briona’s face. It is positivelyexquisite.
    I cross these long, athletic legs and lean forward to look in the mirror. Even when
     I was a little girl, my skin was never this beautiful. Cheekbones impossibly high.
     Lips full and proud, as if swollen from kissing.
    Who I was, just another old Ender, doesn’t matter. I’m Briona now. I look at her face
—my
face—in the mirror. These liquid eyes. This ebony skin, with a special luster to
     it. I run my hand over my cheek and then down my neck, my shoulder, my arm, all the
     way to the back of my hand. So smooth. So young. And worth every penny.

TRUST NO ONE.

    If you enjoyed this special STARTERS story, look for Lissa Price’s novel ENDERS. Callie
     is ready to fight for the truth—even if it kills her.
    Here’s a sneak peek.
    Excerpt copyright © 2014 by Lissa Price. Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint
     of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random
     House Company, New York.

CHAPTER ONE
    My hand went to the back of my head and I swore I could feel the chip underneath my
     skin. But I couldn’t, of course; it was buried deeply under the metal blocking plate.
     It was just the surrounding scar tissue I felt, hard and unforgiving.
    I tried not to touch it. But it had become an obsession to finger it like a splinter
     in a palm, or a hangnail on a thumb. It haunted me all the time, even here, making
     sandwiches in the kitchen. Helena’s kitchen.
    Even though she was dead and had left the mansion to me, I couldn’t help but be reminded
     daily that it had been hers. Every choice, from the sea-green tiles to the elaborate
     island in the center of this gourmet kitchen, was hers. Even her housekeeper, Eugenia,