Wilder Girls(24)

“Really, though,” Reese says. “Byatt will be fine.”

“You can’t promise that.”

She frowns, rolls back over onto her bunk so I can’t see her anymore. “I’m not promising.”

“Okay,” I say, and hear her squirm around to get comfortable.

“What about the time we went to that museum?” she says slowly. “The one in Portland.”

Byatt and I used to do this, for the first little while after the Tox. Trading stories from before, the two of us on the bottom bunk, and Reese above, never saying anything but listening. I know now she was listening.

   “Oh, yeah,” I say. “I remember that.”

“I’d never been to Portland before.”

“You’d never been anywhere,” I say with a laugh.

“And we got lunch in that food court, with the soda machines. We kept mixing them all in one cup.”

“It was a fun field trip,” I say.

“My favorite part was when you got sick in the planetarium.”

It’s almost what Byatt would say. Reese is trying, but she can’t get it quite right, because nobody’s Byatt but Byatt, not even the girl in these memories. There’s this place in her, somewhere nobody can touch, not me or Reese or anyone. It’s just hers, and I don’t even know what it is, really, just that it’s there, and that she takes it with her when she goes.





CHAPTER 6


I don’t want the morning, but it comes anyway. Hard and bright, sun out from the clouds. I bury my face in my pillow, dreading the sight of the emptiness where Byatt should be.

The top bunk creaks, and I hear Reese whisper my name. I roll over, ease my eye open, my blind one pulsing with hurt like it always does when I wake. There she is, peering down at me over the edge of her bed. Her hair’s coming loose from her braid, fine wisps of gold falling in her eyes. Small rounded nose and low, flaring cheekbones.

“Hey,” she says, and my mouth goes dry. Have I been staring? “Did you know that you snore?”

Oh. I swallow down what tastes almost like disappointment. “I don’t snore.”

“Sure you do. It’s this little whistling.” She tilts her head. “Like a bird. Or a kettle.”

   My cheeks are hot, and I shut my eye tightly. “This is really nice. I like being bullied first thing in the morning.”

She laughs. I look up just in time to see it. Her hair full of shine, her head thrown back, throat bared to the sunlight. She’s in a good mood this morning. I can’t understand why. Doesn’t she remember what happened to Byatt? Doesn’t she care?

She might not care, but I do. And I’m not letting this go until I know Byatt’s all right.

“Where are you going?” Reese asks as I get to my feet.

“The infirmary.” I bend down, do up my boots. We sleep with them on to keep the cold from setting too deep, but I always loosen my laces before bed. “I’m visiting Byatt. You coming?”

“No,” Reese says, her chin propped on the edge of her bunk, “considering Headmistress will never let you up there.”

Maybe not, but I’m Boat Shift now, and I have the knife in my belt to prove it. If there’s an exception to be made, Headmistress will make it for me. “She’s my best friend,” I say. “It’s worth trying.”

Reese is quiet for a moment, and when I look up she’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite place. Not anger—I know that on her too well—but something softer. “I don’t know, Hetty,” she says. “Is it really friendship with you and Byatt?”

I’ve wondered. Of course I have. And I love Byatt more than anything, more than myself, more than the life I had before Raxter. But I know the warmth in my heart when I look at her. How it burns smooth and even, without a spark.

   “Yes,” I say. “She’s my sister, Reese. She’s part of me.”

Reese frowns and sits up, swings her legs over the edge of her bunk. “Look, I get it’s not my business—”

“You apparently feel the need to comment on it anyway.”

“Because it affects me,” she says, and I’m taken aback by the sting in her voice, by the snarl of her lips. “I like Byatt, okay? But I don’t want you to be with me the way you are with her.”

“You don’t want us to be friends?”

Reese sighs like I’ve said something wrong, like there’s something more I’m supposed to understand. “No,” she says plainly, “I don’t.”

I can’t pretend it doesn’t send me reeling. “Well, that’s—” I start, but there’s nothing after, just an emptiness, and not as much surprise as I’d like. “Okay,” I finish at last, and head for the door. I can hear Reese saying my name, but I don’t listen, just yank the door open and hurry out into the hallway.

It shouldn’t matter to me. I have Byatt to worry about, and besides, I wrote Reese off years ago. Too closed, I remind myself, too cold. She’s only with me because she has nobody else.

The hallway opens onto the second-floor mezzanine, and talk drifts up from the girls gathered below in the main hall, their voices soft with sleep. A few of them will go back to bed once they’ve eaten breakfast. Sometimes that’s all there is to do.