Camp Zero

Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Chapter One: Rose Chapter Two: Grant White Alice Chapter Three: Rose White Alice Chapter Four: Grant White Alice Chapter Five: Rose Chapter Six: Grant White Alice Chapter Seven: Rose Chapter Eight: Grant White Alice Chapter Nine: Rose Chapter Ten: Rose White Alice Chapter Eleven: Rose White Alice Chapter Twelve: Rose Chapter Thirteen: Grant White Alice Chapter Fourteen: Grant Chapter Fifteen: Rose White Alice Chapter Sixteen: Grant Chapter Seventeen: Nari White Alice Chapter Eighteen: Grant White Alice Chapter Nineteen: Nari Chapter Twenty: Nari Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Guide Cover Start of Content Title Page Dedication Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright I II III V VI VII VIII 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 
 
 “Boldly imagined, intricately designed, and convincingly detailed… This is groundbreaking literary work.” —Ha Jin, National Book Award–winning author of Waiting
 Camp Zero
 A Novel
 Michelle Min Sterling
 
 
 
 
 
 For A & A
 
 
 CHAPTER ONE ROSE
 The Blooms receive their new names on the shortest day of the year. Six women in total. All strangers. They stand in an empty parking lot and wait to be checked in. Snow has scrubbed the landscape clean, capped the roof of the run-down mall that is one of the few buildings still standing on this frozen stretch of highway.
 The Bloom last in line pauses to appreciate the freeze. It’s colder in the North than she expected, and the snow is more delicate. She takes off a glove and watches a flake vanish in the palm of her hand. She’s never seen snow before, and the snowflake feels refreshing on her skin, like a cool cloth pressed to a feverish forehead.
 When she reaches the entrance to the mall, her new Madam introduces herself as Judith. She is nothing like the Bloom’s previous Madam, who drifted around in a linen caftan and calfskin sandals. Judith wears a fur-lined parka, black snow pants, and a pair of steel-toe boots, as if she was hired to demolish the dilapidated mall they’re standing in front of.
 Judith reads off a clipboard. “Your name will be Rose.”
 “Rose,” she repeats. A cloying, sentimental name. Like a grandmother who keeps apple pies in the deep-freeze. She had expected one of the pseudonyms shared among the “Asian Girls” in the Loop where she used to work: Jade, Mei, Lotus. It never mattered that the names were cliché, or that she is as white as she is Korean. Back in the Floating City, ethnicity was a ready-made brand.
 Judith lowers her voice. “I wanted to let you girls choose your names for yourself. But Meyer likes things his way.”
 “Is Meyer my client?” Rose asks, careful to sound casual.
 “He doesn’t want us to use that word here, Rose. Think of him as your collaborator.” Judith opens the front door of the mall and Rose follows inside. “Welcome to the Millennium Mall.”
 The Blooms’ quarters are at the back of the mall in a department store that has long since been pillaged. Metal clothing racks are scattered in jumbled piles, and the beauty counters’ mirrors are mottled. Rose can smell the faintest trace of artificial gardenia as she rolls her suitcase past a perfume display, where an ad of a woman’s glowing face pressed against the bristly cheek of a male model still remains. Her mother never wore perfume and hadn’t allowed Rose to either. She wanted them to smell as they actually did, like the saltwater breeze of the peninsula.
 “When did the mall close?” Rose asks.
 “Fifteen years ago,” Judith says. “It was the first place to shutter when the rigs stopped drilling.”
 Judith leads Rose to the former furniture section where the Blooms’ lodgings have been built out of plywood along an echoing corridor. Each room’s entrance is framed by light, and Rose can hear the sounds of the other Blooms unpacking behind the closed doors.
 Judith opens Rose’s door and deposits her single suitcase on a mahogany four-poster bed. A bear pelt is splayed across the floor, and a rickety plastic chandelier is bolted to the ceiling. A vanity mirror with a small, upholstered stool in front of it is against the wall. The room reeks of damp pleather.
 Damien, her