Where the Drowned Girls Go(Wayward Children #7)(35)

“I’ll be quiet,” she spat. “I want to stay here, but that doesn’t mean I want to hurt—” Her mouth worked soundlessly, unable to find a name to fix on, until she gestured angrily to the nameless girl. “—my friend. I don’t want to hurt my friend. The rest of you can go screw yourselves.”

“Thank you,” whispered the nameless girl.

Cora only nodded. “Okay. Regan.”

“Yes?”

“No one’s keeping track of you right now. That’s a good thing. I want you to go into the woods, as far as you can, and find a deer. Ask them to show you how to get out of here.”

“She can talk to deer,” said Emily. “Of course she can talk to deer. Nothing else makes sense about today, so why shouldn’t she be able to talk to deer?”

“What am I supposed to do if I find them?” asked Regan.

“Wait in the woods.” Cora managed a smile. It wasn’t a very encouraging one. “We’ll be out by moonrise.”

Then she turned and walked toward the building. The others followed, and Regan was left outside, alone.





14?THE POWER OF NAMES


EMILY MANAGED TO HOLD her tongue until they were back in their dorm with the door closed. As soon as they were safe, she rounded on Cora, demanding, “What’s your plan? How are we getting out of here?”

“Tell me about your door,” said Cora.

Emily blinked. “It was … I found it in one of those janky haunted houses people set up around Halloween,” she said. “It was next to the exit. It said ‘be sure’ on it in these dripping blood letters, so I figured it was the way to get to a bigger scare. Instead, it led to a world where it was always harvest, where it was Halloween every night, and I danced with monsters and sang with scarecrows, and I was happy.”

“Uh-huh,” said Cora. She turned to Stephanie. “You?”

“Dinosaurs,” she said. Her tone turned beatific. “I went where there were dinosaurs.”

“Right.” Cora turned to the nameless girl. “You?”

“I already told you.”

“You told me how it ended. How did it begin?”

The nameless girl took a breath. “There was a door in the foundation of our house. I’d been … My father had been drinking, he’d been hitting my mom, all I wanted was to get away. So I got away.”

“Yeah.” Cora turned to Rowena. “You?”

“I’m not part of your little gang,” said Rowena. “I’m here because I want to be.”

“That isn’t—”

“I’m eleven.” Rowena spat the words out like they tasted sour. “Okay? I’m eleven. I was missing for three hours, and when I found my way back through the veil of clocks to the door, I looked like I was six years older than I was supposed to be. I fell through the door when I was six and I came back out physically twelve. My parents don’t believe I am who I say I am. I’ve been here for five years and I could graduate tomorrow, if I had anywhere to go. You can all go running back to your happy little fantasy worlds. If I went back through my door, I’d be dead of old age in less than a month. So leave me out of this.”

Cora nodded. “You’re making the right choice,” she said. She paused. “The veil of clocks … can you do anything with time?”

“What? No.”

“It was worth asking.” She turned back to the others. “Now that we all know what we’re watching for, we leave tonight. I honestly expect at least one of those doors to show up as soon as we’re clear of the grounds.”

“How?” asked Stephanie. “The doors are locked, the grounds are walled, and the matrons are everywhere.”

“The false headmaster gave us the key, even if he didn’t mean to,” said Cora. “When he gave Miss Lennox back her name, he broke whatever hold this place has over its graduates. He brought her back to herself. The matrons will be distracted, trying to help her.”

“Why do you call him the false headmaster?” asked Emily.

“No one remembers him when they’re not looking at him,” said Cora. “He can’t build anything. He’s a nasty man, full of nasty thoughts, and most of them are about being forgotten. I think that’s why he gave Miss Lennox her name back. To punish her for what we did. He wanted her to remember, even if it was only for a little while, that she was going to be forgotten. His door … wasn’t kind to him.”

None of the doors were kind, not really, not even when they gave people exactly what they wanted. The Trenches hadn’t been kind to her. They had given her the freedom to figure out who she was. But they had also given her a war, and a hundred drowned sailors, and the smell of blood mixed with saltwater. They had given her nightmares that would be with her until the day she died. They had given her scars, and only some of them were visible.

“So?” Rowena folded her arms. “Being headmaster doesn’t make you a nice person.”

“What’s the name of the school?”

“The Whitethorn Institute. Don’t be stupid.”

“If the man we’ve met is the headmaster, and he’s completely forgettable, how do we know the name of the school? If it’s his name, too, we should forget it. It hasn’t been stolen from him, but the things he went through on the other side of his door stole it from everybody else.” Cora spread her hands. “We haven’t met the headmaster. We’re being lied to. We’re being lied to and held captive and I’m done. We leave tonight.”