Wilder Girls(33)

“We’ll get ants.”

“We’ve got worse.” I lean over the trash can, root through to the bottom where some girls try to bury things for themselves. There’s a pack of jerky—just what we need, but I hesitate. I watched the rest of Boat Shift throw away enough food for all of us. I shouldn’t take anything. I don’t deserve it.

But it’s not just me I’m here for. It’s Reese too. And we both need to eat if we’re going to make it to the Harker house tonight. “I’ll take the jerky, and that thing of honey mustard nobody wants.”

   Cat grabs a box of melba toast and a packet of rice. She waits a moment before sneaking a minibox of raisins into her pocket.

“It’s Lindsay’s birthday,” she says quietly. “Please don’t tell.”

I check over my shoulder, to where Welch is leaning against the doorway, fiddling with the keys. She doesn’t seem to have heard.

“Sure,” I say. It’s the least I can do after the pier.

I show my pickings to Welch as I leave the pantry, do my best to keep my hands steady. How can she just stand there like nothing’s wrong? Like she’s not keeping my best friend locked up somewhere? I put on a smile, try to keep from wondering what’s happening to Byatt while I stand here in the kitchen, flecks of her blood still dotting the floor.

“All right,” Welch says absently. “You’re fine.”

I bite back the urge to rip the answers out of her, hurry out of the kitchen, back to the main hall, where I’m startled to find Reese sitting with Carson. She’s staring at her boots, and Carson is watching helplessly with that look I recognize, the look of someone beaten almost into submission by Reese’s impassive silence.

“Hi,” I say as I approach. “Carson, this is a nice surprise.”

“?‘Surprise’ is the right word,” Reese says. I frown at her—it isn’t fair to snipe at Carson, who never knows it’s happening—and she shrugs.

“Morning” comes Julia’s voice from behind me.

   “Oh, good, another one,” Reese says, but she sounds a bit gentler, looks almost rueful as she smiles at me.

I sit down next to her, try to keep from raising my eyebrows as Julia takes a seat opposite me. We keep mostly to our own circles, but now that I’m Boat Shift, are Julia and Carson part of mine? Or are they here to make sure I’m keeping all the right secrets from Reese?

It’s a stifling quiet as we eat. I have nothing to say, and I know Reese certainly doesn’t, and every minute we spend here is one I’m not looking for Byatt.

Carson sits up straighter, opens her mouth to start a new conversation, and Reese levels her with a look. “We don’t always have to be talking, you know.”

“Sorry,” I say, giving Reese a sidelong glare. She has the decency to look a little guilty. “We’re just tired.”

“No problem,” says Julia. If anything, she seems re-lieved to not have to make any more conversation. There’s a fresh bruise peeking out from under the hem of her shirt, and she looks exhausted, like it’s sucking the life from her as it grows. I watch as she spits out a mouthful of blood, and leaves it there on the floor, not bothering to wipe it up.

I can’t finish my half of the jerky. Just the smell of it’s making me sick, and if I pay attention, if I think about it too hard, I can feel a tingle starting behind my blind eye, breaking through the low haze of pain. Reese doesn’t say anything, just takes the jerky from me and stuffs it into her pocket for later.

   She looks like her dad in this light. Like the way he looked before. The same strong chin, the same eyes, all washed over with gold.

I wonder what she thinks of when she looks at me. Not my parents—I never kept a photo of them pinned to my wall like some of the other girls did.

I don’t think of them much, my parents. I know I should. I did right after the Tox, for the first month or two. I lined up for my radio call and we had short, stilted conversations. But then they cut off our access, and things got worse, and then it didn’t matter anymore. Because if I see my parents again, they will want to hear how I missed them, how it was the worst thing that ever happened. And I’ll be lying, if I can say it at all.



* * *



—

Part of me really thought it would be that simple. A locked door, somewhere deep in the house, and Byatt on the other side of it.

Part of me really was an idiot.

After breakfast Reese followed me outside, and she kept watch as I peered through the window into Headmistress’s office. Nothing—just the bulk of her old desk and a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner.

“Byatt’s not there,” I told Reese, and I told her the same thing as I checked every classroom and every office. Every storage closet, every bathroom. The whole house unlocked like it was waiting for me, like it had something to prove. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t think past the throbbing in my head, couldn’t feel anything but the guilt of failing Byatt like this.

   And Reese took my hand, like she did last night, and she led me back outside. The air bracing and quick, waking the blood in my skin and thinning the pain in my head until it was barely there anymore. “There’s still tonight,” she said quietly. “It’s not over yet.”