Wilder Girls(11)

We couldn’t sneak her out, not without breaking the quarantine, like the letter says. And it’s too dangerous, anyway, for a girl on her own, but Byatt and I did what we could. Took her up on the roof deck, just to see if we could find the outline of her old house in the trees. It only made her angry.

“I don’t know,” she said as we climbed inside. “Just, fuck.” And then she didn’t speak to us for two days after.

The door to Headmistress’s office swings open, and Welch comes down the corridor with a sheet of paper in her hands. Reese stands up.

“Ladies,” says Welch, “please take a look at the revised schedule. Some of you will have changed rotations.” She switches the old out for new, tacking the paper next to the note above the fireplace. “Girls on the Boat Shift, find me when you can. I’ll be by the south storeroom.”

   I expect Reese to rush up there just as soon as Welch is gone, but she’s halting when she approaches, her legs moving like machinery. There’s talk, still, in the hall, but nobody else has come up to check, and that’s how I know they’re watching.

Reese gets close. I tense up, waiting for the small smile that means she’s got what she wants. Except it doesn’t come.

Wheeling around, Reese is by the couch in a few strides, and her silver hand locks around my ankle. Jesus, it’s cold, and then she gives one tug, hard, and I’m on the floor.

“Reese,” I say, shock jolting through me, and I start to sit up, but she’s already moving. Straddling me, her knees pinning my arms, the heel of her hand pushing at my chin, laying my neck bare.

I’m trying to say something, and my feet are thrashing, and I try to twist my hips, maybe that’ll help, I just need to breathe, just one breath, but she’s pressing harder, landing a silver punch on my chest.

“What happened?” I can hear Byatt yelling louder and louder. “Reese, stop. What happened? What is it?”

Reese turns her head just a fraction, and I manage to fight one of my arms free. I reach around her for her braid and yank her head back. She howls, and there’s a slice and a burn across the blind side of my face. She lays her forearm across my windpipe. Leans.

   I try to push her off, but she’s strong—strong like she’s something more than herself, and there’s Byatt behind her, screaming, screaming. One last ragged gasp before the world goes black, and I say her name.

Reese scrambles away, staggering to her feet.

“Oh my God,” Byatt says, color drained from her face.

I can’t move, hurt hollowing out my chest. We’ve fought before, but only over rations. It always ends there. That’s the line we stay behind.

Reese blinks, clears her throat. “She’s fine,” she says gruffly. “She’ll be fine.”

She must leave after that, because Byatt kneels next to me, and she’s the one who helps me up when I can find my feet again.

I almost don’t check the schedule. I almost just go upstairs to rest. But we pass close by, and I squint, skim past the new Gun Shift pairs and the new guard rotations and find my name. And there it is. That’s why. I’m the new Boat Shift girl.



* * *



—

I’m smiling. I don’t mean to be, but I am, and there are whispers coming from behind me, and I have to stop, right now, or Reese will hear about it and she’ll hate me even more.

Byatt lays her hand on my shoulder. “You should go find her. Talk to her.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

   “I mean, I know it wasn’t right, what she did,” Byatt’s saying, and she’s smoothing my hair off my face. “But she’s—”

“I have to check in,” I say. “With Welch.” I can’t help the brightness in my voice. I didn’t want this—I know it wasn’t supposed to be mine—but I’m proud now that I have it. I’m a good shot. I can carry my weight. I know why my name is on that list.

“Fine,” Byatt says. She pulls back, crosses her arms over her chest, and I can tell she has something else she’d like to say. Instead, she gives me one last look before making for the stairs.

Around me the other girls are waiting. Watching me, new attention in their eyes now that I’m Boat Shift. They’re waiting for me to show them, to tell them what to do, and it’s more than I thought I’d have to carry. But I have to remember that for all the rules that have fallen apart, there are new ones, stronger and more rigid than anything we had before. Nobody goes past the fence—that’s the first rule, the most important, and now I’m one of the girls allowed to break it.

I give the nearest girl a smile that I hope is mature and responsible and then hurry out of the room, still feeling the stares. Welch said to meet her so I go, along the south corridor to the storeroom, where I find her taking inventory.

“Hetty, great,” she says. She looks so tired, and for a second I’m grateful. The Tox doesn’t hurt her as badly as it hurts us girls, but at least between flare-ups, we can count on a moment or two of peace. “Come and help me for a minute.”

   She dumps a stack of blankets into my arms, and I hear her counting softly. I drop my forehead against them, make sure I’m breathing slowly. I think the stitches over my eye have opened up.