Wilder Girls(13)

A year and a half back, in early spring sun. I was out in the jack pine grove when it happened, in the tangle of trunks and limbs, Reese and Byatt watching as I walked out on the lowest branch as far as I could go. And I fell, which wasn’t strange; we were all of us covered in scabs and nicks then, some of us turning a corner too fast, some of us sewing our hems too short, some of us pressing sharp things into ourselves just to see what it would feel like. It was what came after.

I stood up, laughing, but then blood started dripping out of my right eye. Slowly at first, and then faster and faster, running down my cheeks and pooling in my mouth. Hot like it was about to boil, and I started to cry because I couldn’t see.

Byatt swore and grabbed my elbow. Reese took the other, and they rushed me to the house. I kept my eyes closed. I could hear other girls, hear them talking and giggling and falling silent as we passed by. Byatt tucked her body in close to mine. She was the only thing that kept me on my feet.

In the main hall, Byatt sat with me on the stairs while Reese ran to get the nurse. We sat there for a while, I don’t know how long. Byatt held my hand in both of hers while I leaned on her shoulder and bled on her shirt. When Reese came back, she had Welch with her, and they pressed gauze to my right eye until it dried. Until they could see the skin of my eyelids fusing together.

   The nurse was gone. Three other girls were sick. Everything was starting.

They quarantined the island the next morning. Helicopters overhead, military issue. Days of doctors in hazmat suits swarming the house, tests and tests and no answers, just a sickness spreading through every one of us.

“Yeah,” I say. I have to clear my throat. “I remember.”

“It’s still like that outside,” Taylor says. “Here at the house you have it so easy, but out there it’s like the first days. Like we don’t know a damn thing.”

Maybe she’ll tell me the truth. Maybe I’ve earned it, now that I’m Boat Shift. “Is that why you quit?”

It’s the wrong question, and Taylor’s face changes the second I ask it. Eyes cold, mouth a flat line. She gets to her feet. “You’re welcome for the crackers. Put them back when you’re done.”



* * *



—

Reese doesn’t find us for dinner. She’s made curfew, that’s all Welch tells us when we ask, but we don’t see her, not when I pick up our rations from the kitchen, not when Lauren and Ali come to blows over a fresh pack of hair elastics and Julia has to pull them apart. That’s my job now too, I remind myself. I’m Boat Shift—I’m that girl.

   Her bunk is empty when we get to our room, and I think I see the flash of her silver hand out of the corner of my eye, heading farther down the hall. I force myself to look away.

“I should be the mad one,” I say to Byatt as we settle into bed. “She strangled me, not the other way around.”

“You took something from her,” Byatt says. “That’s how she sees it, anyway.”

I hold my breath, tip my chin up to keep the prickling in my eye from turning to tears. She can’t really think I did this to hurt her. But that’s Reese—always protecting herself from some threat I can’t see. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“I don’t think she cares about that.”

There’s a moment as we adjust, me with my back tucked against the wall, and Byatt flat on hers, taking up most of the bunk. We’ve slept like this since the start of the Tox, first to stay warm, and then just because we got used to it.

“You could refuse the spot,” she says once we’re settled.

“I might’ve,” I say sharply, “if she’d asked.” But the anger doesn’t last. I sigh, shut my eye. “I just don’t know how, with her.”

Byatt makes a small noise. “Thank goodness I’m here, huh?”

“You have no idea.” Some days it’s fine. Others it nearly breaks me. The emptiness of the horizon, and the hunger in my body, and how will we ever survive this if we can’t survive each other? “We’re gonna make it. Tell me we’re gonna make it.”

   “The cure’s coming,” Byatt says. “We’re gonna make it. I promise.”





CHAPTER 4


Taylor was right. When Welch wakes me the next morning, it’s before sunup. My eye’s gummy with sleep, leaving me blind, and it takes me a beat to put her together.

“What’s going on?” I say. She gives me an extra shake.

“Downstairs, quick as you can. We’re heading out.”

The door clicks shut behind her. Reese is still asleep up on her bunk, but Byatt rolls over and pushes up onto her elbows.

“You’re going?” she says, voice heavy and hoarse.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. You’ll be careful.”

It’s an order, and I smile a little in case she can see. “I’ll try.”

Welch is waiting with Carson and Julia by the time I get to the closet outside the kitchen. Carson’s missing three fingernails after a flare-up had her scratching at the infirmary door, and Julia’s deep brown skin is spattered with bruises that grow every day. Nobody’s sure what puts them there, only that their color never fades.