Girl One(40)

The room felt smaller, more intimate, the air suddenly charged. I was intently aware of Cate next to me, long hair spread across the pillow and nearly touching me. She smelled like sweat—briny and sweet at once—overlaid with the peppermint sting of her castile soap. Stubbornly, I wanted to point out that Cate wasn’t entirely right; Bellanger had been involved every step of the way. But I was distracted, thinking about the thin space between our two bodies, my pulse quickening.

“A girl at my high school was a lesbian,” I offered instead.

“Was? It’s not a temporary state.”

“Yeah, sorry. Is. I just don’t know her anymore.”

Lacey. That was her name. She’d dyed her shiny, shoulder-length hair with Kool-Aid sometimes, neon colors against her otherwise plain outfits. Like me, she’d stayed on the fringes of things, biding her time, keeping her head down. One time—in line in the cafeteria—she’d told me how much she liked my backpack, and a square-jawed kid a few spots down had started stage-whispering, “Man-haters club,” until Lacey and I had wordlessly gone to opposite sides of the cafeteria.

“Yes, we’re all over the place, I hear. Dozens of us,” Cate deadpanned, and I started to apologize, not sure why this memory of Lacey had only made me more flustered, but she went on. “I’d almost respect you more if you just wanted to sleep with Thomas. Better than thinking he’s a savior who’s going to find your mom. ’Cause, from my perspective? You seem to be doing most of the legwork.”

I hesitated, remembering Emily in the attic, the predictions that had stuck with me. “If I tell you something, will you think I’m crazy?”

“I won’t,” Cate said, matter-of-fact, like that wasn’t an option.

It was easier to tell her while lying in the dark, listening to her soft breathing, not having to watch her face. Emily French, Girl Five. The people coming through the glass. The birds falling. Those words that could have been future-touched, brought to us by a different time. Me, lost, alone; Tom leading me to my mother. “What if there’s something strange about each of us?” I asked when I was done telling her. “Something special…” I trailed off.

We lay there together, silent for a while. “Hey.” Cate propped herself up on one elbow, resting her head in her hand. “I’m a healer. You know that much.” I waited, sensing by the intimate shift in her voice that this was important. “My mother helped people with herbs. She’d give women comfrey-leaf baths to heal their tearing or a red clover infusion to regulate their cycles. It was all in knowing when to administer the right medicine. She taught me to do that too. I was proud of the work I did. But for me, ever since I changed, it’s something else too.”

“What do you mean by changed?”

“Things became real,” Cate said simply. “One day a woman brought her daughter to me. The kid had broken her wrist. Her arm was bulging. Curved, like she was wearing gloves that were too big for her. I kept telling this woman to take her daughter to the emergency room, but she was paranoid as hell. Living off the grid and convinced doctors and the FBI were all in it together. I could see what would happen. She’d let her daughter’s wrist heal without a cast and it would always give her problems. It was up to me. So I…” Cate sat up, leaned forward, took my wrist very gently. She held it, cradled it, and the warmth grew, a faint and pleasurable pins-and-needles sensation, beneath her touch.

“I had to hold her wrist for half an hour, maybe. I had to tell them to be patient, because I knew it was working. I couldn’t let myself doubt myself. Then that girl walked out of there as if nothing had even happened. She shook my hand when she left, nice strong little grip.” Cate let go of my wrist, fell back into bed. “My mother did her best, and she was good. I thought following in her footsteps was enough for me. But now I know I’m real. Like everything else was just practice for who I am now.”

“That’s why you weren’t surprised,” I said softly. “About Fiona’s … abilities.”

I felt Cate’s smile in the dark beside me. “It crossed my mind that it has something to do with the way we were born. But it’s also just who I am, you know?” She paused for a minute, impatient, then brightened. “Like when you’re first having sex, right? You go through the motions, and it’s good, it feels fine, and you think you’re doing it. But then the first time you’re with someone that you really-really like—and she knows what she’s doing—and it actually works for you and you realize—this is sex. And it makes you look back at all the other times and think, yes it was fine, but was it this? Was it real?”

It was unfamiliar to me, the way Cate described her abilities. Real. Not strange. A return to what she’d already been, not a departure to unexplored lands. “I could feel it,” I said. “When you touched me just then? Like a tingling.”

Cate was quiet for a long moment.

“What?” I asked, nervous I’d said the wrong thing.

Her voice was gentle, verging on laughter. “I wasn’t actually doing anything. I don’t know what you felt, but I wasn’t healing you. Hard to heal you when there’s no wound.”

“Sorry. Forget it.” That warmth spread at my pulse points. Cate could turn me clumsy and awkward so quickly; I tried to find it annoying.