Wilder Girls(12)

“We’ll probably go out again tomorrow or the day after,” Welch says, taking the blankets back from me. “Yesterday’s shipment was small, so with any luck they’ll supplement it.”

The best we can hope for is some extra food, and maybe a blanket or two. In the early days there was more. Contact lens solution, so Kara didn’t have to wear her glasses. Insulin for Olivia, and Welch’s birth control, to manage her hormones. But they stopped coming after a month or so, and even Headmistress couldn’t get them back. Left Kara without her lenses, Welch without her pills, and Olivia dead.

“So where do I meet you?” I ask. “And what do I bring? Is it—”

“I’ll come fetch you.” Welch gives me a once-over. “Make sure you’re getting some good rest. And try to avoid displays like that fuss in the main hall, if you would.”

“Tell that to Reese,” I mutter.

“Oh, sorry,” I hear from behind me. I turn, see Taylor shifting from foot to foot in the doorway. At first I think she’s here to give me a hard time about taking her spot on Boat Shift, even though she’s the one who gave it up, but she’s focused on Welch.

   “Didn’t mean to interrupt,” she continues. “Welch, can I catch up with you later?”

A look passes between them—quick, almost nothing, and gone before I can pin it down. “Sure,” Welch says lightly.

Taylor ducks down the hall. I stare after her, trying to spot whatever the Tox did to her. Nobody’s sure what her flare-ups have left her with, not even the other girls in her year. Whatever the changes, they must be hidden under her clothes.

“Remember, Hetty,” Welch says as she finishes tallying the blankets. I snap back to her. “Rest and hydration, and no fuss. Away with you now.”

Out in the corridor I’m just in time to see Taylor disappearing into the kitchen. Welch wouldn’t tell me what to expect past the fence, but Taylor might.

I follow her, sidle into the kitchen to see her kneeling by the old fridge, one arm wedged behind it.

“Um,” I say, and she jumps, free hand flying to her belt where she used to keep a knife during her Boat Shift days.

“God, Hetty. Make a noise, won’t you?”

“Sorry.” I inch closer. “What are you doing?”

   Taylor glances over my shoulder, still holding herself coiled and tight, and then smiles a little. I watch the tension drain out of her. She sits back on her heels and pulls a plastic sleeve of crackers out from behind the fridge. “Want a snack?”

Hiding food is strictly forbidden. A few girls tried it near the beginning, and it wasn’t the teachers who came down hard but the rest of us. Boat Shift took them outside to have a talk and left them bloodied in the courtyard. Taylor, though—she’s earned some leeway. I can’t imagine anybody punishing her.

“Sure,” I say, and sit down next to her on the checkered tile. She hands me a cracker. I feel her watching me as I take a bite. “Thanks.”

“I put these here sometime last summer. Figured one of you girls would’ve found them by now.”

“Nobody’s gonna look back there,” I say. “Too many gross cobwebs. And, like, mice or something.”

Taylor scoffs. “When was the last time you saw a mouse around here?” She swallows a cracker down in two bites and wipes crumbs off her mouth. “So? Ask what you want to ask.”

“What?”

“Your name shows up on the Boat Shift list and you’re in here talking to me by accident? Okay, Hetty.”

I take another cracker, but my mouth is dry, and I wind up just holding it in my clammy palm. “I guess I’m wondering what I should be prepared for. I mean, what, we go pick up the stuff and come back? It can’t be as easy as that.”

   Taylor laughs, and it’s the kind of thing where you hear it and laugh along with her because if you don’t, she might cry. “They use the lighthouse at Camp Nash to tell us they’re coming. Morse code or some shit. I don’t know. But Welch’ll come in and wake you if they give the signal. She likes to leave early so you can get home before sundown. It’d be nice if they could just drop the stuff here, save us a trip.”

I’d never even thought that was a possibility. “Why don’t they?”

Taylor takes another crumbling bite of cracker. “They say it would risk contamination,” she tells me, mouth full. “Really, I just think they can’t get around the rocks off the point. Not like they’re the Navy or anything. Not like the Navy’s supposed to be good at that whole sailing thing.”

It’s startling, hearing this hallowed process rendered in bitter words. But then, she’s been a lot closer to it than I have.

“Is it…” And I have to stop, find the right words. “Is it as big as it looks out there?”

“Big?”

I think of the grounds, the way the pines have gotten taller, the way they seem nothing like what I’ve seen from the roof. In the woods the Tox is still wild. No girls for it to pick apart, so it got into everything else. Out there it blossoms and spreads with a kind of joy. Unbridled and vicious and free.

   “Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”

Taylor leans forward. “Do you remember what it was like? That first day?”