Where the Drowned Girls Go(Wayward Children #7)(26)

For a long moment, the room was completely silent.

“I am,” said the nameless girl.

All four of the others turned to look at her. Her cheeks reddened.

“I came here because my parents said it would help me,” she said. “I’ve done everything I was asked to do. I’ve followed all the rules, even the ones that don’t make sense, and for what? I’m still shrinking. I still don’t have a name. Anything that starts to feel like a name disappears. Maybe I’m doomed, but I’d rather be doomed in my own room, with my own things around me, than be doomed here, where they make me eat shredded wheat for breakfast and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and act like cheese is the root of all evils. I want to go home.”

The longing in her voice was complicated and undeniable. She might not know where home was anymore, but she knew she wanted to be there. She knew she wanted to wrap it around herself and let it carry her away.

“You’ll never get better if you run,” said Rowena.

“I’m not getting better now,” said the nameless girl. She looked earnestly at Rowena. “We’re friends, aren’t we? We’ve always been friends. I’ve never asked you for anything. Well, I’m asking you for something now.”

“I’m not running away from school,” said Rowena. “I came here because this is where I need to be.”

“You don’t have run away,” said the nameless girl. “You just have to promise not to tell on us when we do.”

“I want … I want this to matter, but it doesn’t,” said Emily. “You understand that, don’t you? No matter how much we want to leave, we can’t. The doors are locked. The grounds are walled in. We’re all being watched, and that goes double for Cora. We’re here until we graduate, or until our families take us home.”

“That won’t happen,” said Rowena.

Sumi looked at her curiously. She shrugged.

“My first dormmate was this weird kid who liked to say math was negotiable and she could do the calculus at the heart of the universe if we’d give her some chalk. She wrote her parents every week, asking them to take her home. She said all the right things. But they never came for her, and when she finally graduated, her dad said something about how all that silence had been worth it if it meant they got their daughter back. Don’t you understand? They never saw her letters. The matrons control the mail, and the headmaster controls the matrons, and if he doesn’t want us talking to anyone on the outside, we won’t. There’s no rescue coming. You’re here until you graduate. That’s the only way out.”

“And you still don’t want to leave?” asked Cora.

Rowena shook her head. “I like it here. I like the rules and the structure and waking up every day knowing the air will be breathable and the water won’t be. I don’t enjoy having the laws of physics treated like a game of red rover, okay? Some kids get magical worlds full of sunshine and laughter. Me, I got ‘the floor is lava’ from a place that really meant it. I could graduate tomorrow if I wanted to. But out there, in the real world, doors can pop out of nowhere and sweep you away. Out there, the rules can change.”

“Huh.” Cora looked around the room, assessing every line and angle. “You’re right.”

“What?” asked Rowena.

“The rules never change in here. The rules never change at all.” Cora turned back to Rowena. “Be sure. That’s what all the doors say. Everyone I’ve talked to—and people at my old school talked a lot—has said that. Be sure, and if you are, wonderful things can happen to you. Be sure. If I was ever sure in my life, I was sure when in that room, when I told the Drowned Gods I didn’t belong to them. It was my moment of catharsis, and I can’t be the only one. This place is like a psychic licorice shop. A hundred flavors of ‘sure,’ and somehow none of them are enough to bring back the sun, none of them are enough to open a door, for anyone? That doesn’t make sense. Someone’s keeping the doors away.”

“The matrons say we have to give up the idea of going back, because it doesn’t happen,” said Emily uncertainly. “That’s part of why it’s so important we learn to let go of where we went, what we … were. Because even if we don’t, we’ll never get to go back.”

“Lots of people go back,” said Sumi. She waved a hand, like she was trying to brush away a particularly unpleasant smell. “Not everyone. Most people can’t be entirely sure they’d be happier in one place over another, so they don’t find their doors again. But lots of people go back. They have the right combination of selfish and lonely and hopeful and stupid and earnest and selfless, and they find their doors, and they go back. There’s more students here than there are at Eleanor’s. Someone should be able to find their door. If no one can, what does that say?”

“What does it matter what that says?” asked Stephanie. “If they’re being locked, they’re being locked. We don’t have a key.”

“Sometimes you don’t need a key,” said Sumi. Her smile verged on feral. “Sometimes a crowbar is good enough.”

“I have a plan, I think,” said Cora. “But I’m going to need you to work with me—even you, Rowena. You don’t have to come with us, but you have to be on our side.”