Wilder Girls(25)

   But across the mezzanine is the door to the infirmary staircase, and up there somewhere is Byatt. I’m wondering if I can work the lock with the point of my Boat Shift knife when the door jerks open, and there’s Headmistress, stepping off the last of the rickety, narrow stairs.

“Excuse me,” I call, hurrying over. Headmistress looks up from the clipboard she’s carrying. As soon as she sees me, she shuts the door behind her. “Is Byatt all right? How’s she doing?”

“I think perhaps there’s another way you might begin this conversation,” Headmistress says. She’s dressed the same as always, slacks and a button-down shirt, her sturdy hiking boots the only concession to what’s happened at her school. In her slacks pocket I can spot the edge of a bloodstained handkerchief, the one she uses when the sores on her tongue burst. “?‘Good morning,’ for instance.”

I stop and take a deep breath, fight the impulse to push past her. “Good morning, Headmistress.”

She smiles brightly. “And good morning to you. How are you today?”

This is torture. That’s what this is. “I’m good,” I say, through gritted teeth, and she raises an eyebrow. “Well. Sorry. I’m well.”

“I’m very glad.” She peers down at her clipboard and then, when she realizes I’m not leaving, clears her throat. “Can I help you with something?”

   “Byatt’s up there,” I say, like she doesn’t know. “Can I go see her?”

“I’m afraid not, Miss Chapin.”

“I won’t even go into her room,” I plead. “I’ll just talk to her through the door or something.” I don’t care if I don’t see her. I just have to know that she’s okay. That she’s still her.

But Headmistress is shaking her head, giving me that smile adults always have in their pocket, the one that says they feel sorry for you in a way you can’t understand yet. “Why don’t you go downstairs for breakfast?”

This isn’t fair. This is my home as much as hers. I should be able to go where I like. “It’ll only take a second,” I say.

“You know the rules.” She locks the door to the infirmary stairs with one of the keys on the ring she always has hanging from her belt. I clench my fists to keep myself from ripping it off her. What does any of this matter? We’re all sick—it’s not like seeing Byatt will make either of us worse. “I’m sorry. I know you must miss your friend.”

My friend. My sister, that’s what I told Reese. I should’ve called her my lifeline. “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”

It’s clear Headmistress won’t change her mind, and I’m about to turn and leave, to think of some other plan, when she presses the back of her hand against my forehead, the way my mom used to, to check for a fever. I reel back, startled. She only makes a disapproving sound and does it again.

   “How are you feeling?” she says. “You don’t seem warm.”

It takes me a minute to remember, but she’s talking about when I got back from Boat Shift. That was the day before yesterday, but it feels like ages ago.

“I’m fine,” I say, inching away uncomfortably. Headmistress doesn’t usually like to let you know she cares.

Before the Tox it was different. I remember the first time I met her. How nervous I was, coming up here from Norfolk all by myself. Thirteen and alone, and I missed my mother, and when Headmistress saw me getting teary during the school tour, she told me her door was always open if I ever needed someone to talk to or even just a little space away from the other girls.

“Well,” Headmistress says, plucking a piece of lint from the collar of my jacket, “I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better. I’m sure your friend Miss Winsor will follow suit. And in the meantime she’s lucky to have you looking for her.”

It runs through me like a current. “Looking for her?” Like she’s missing, like she’s gone, and I heard Headmistress right, I know I did.

For a moment her expression freezes, and then she smiles, strain showing through. “Looking out for her,” she corrects me. “Now why don’t you go down to breakfast? You must be hungry.”

   I linger for a beat longer, enough to see Headmistress’s knuckles turn white where she’s gripping the clipboard, and that does it. I back up, give her my best smile, and head down to the main hall. There are the other girls, dotted in clusters, taking small, controlled bites of molding bread and breaking the edges off stale crackers.

It punches back into me. Everything that’s happened, everything I’ve seen and the secrets I’ve kept. The others are rationing food and starving themselves through breakfast, and I held what they needed in my own two hands.

I can’t do this. Not now.

I pick my way through the others, to the double doors at the front entrance, and slip outside. My jacket is too thin to keep out the cold, but it’s better here than in the main hall. At least this way nobody can remind me of what I’ve done.



* * *



—

I spend the rest of the day out by the water, at the point where the stones are bleached and smooth. I count my fingers as I lose the feeling in them, let the weak sun scatter across my numb skin. When I get back to my room for the night, Reese is already there, sprawled on her top bunk. Asleep, or pretending to be. This distance between us is getting too familiar. But at least this time she’s not avoiding me. At least this time she’s here.