Wilder Girls(55)

His eyes flick open, glassy and bright. Beautiful, and for a moment he’s just Teddy. Just a boy, but then he speaks.

“Hello,” he says. Empty. No recognition waiting underneath.

He’s trying to get up, trying to crawl his way over to me, and if he does, he will hurt me without meaning to. I am worried I will let him.



* * *



—

It is the strips from my hospital gown that do it.

They are long, and he knots them together, makes them longer. Smiling. His mouth open, something starting to move behind his teeth. Shadowed, delicate, and there—there—a vine crawling out from inside him to curl around his lip. Like the kind that slink across the fence at Raxter. Like the kind that drape from tree to tree.

His hands tying a rope like they aren’t his anymore. And more vines, another and another, branching and winding in a black tangle, blood leaking from his mouth, from his ears. Reaching for me, like they’re looking for a new home. I start to know what the rope is for. But I don’t do anything. I sit so my legs are tucked under me. I watch the Tox go to work.

   On his knees. A rope into a noose.

His eyes never close. His grip never changes. He is pulling right until the end.





CHAPTER 16


There is not enough difference between the white of the wall and the white of the floor. I am having trouble keeping them what they are.

There is a stain on what I think is the floor and it is a little ways away from my foot. I am watching the edges of it come and go.

There is a sound in the room. I am having trouble telling what it is.



* * *



—

This is with my eyes closed.

A cut on my left ankle, about as long as my thumb. A bruise rotting down from my right kneecap. Nothing on my thighs, only a tenseness inside them.

At my hips three indents in the skin where the strap has pressed. A patch rubbed pink on my ribs. The IV marks on my hand.

   My wrists are clear since they started using the softer restraints. More bruising up by my throat. A red welt on my cheek from the branches in the woods at Raxter.

With my eyes open there would be more.



* * *



—

They come in to move the body. The body, that’s what I’m saying instead of you know.

Three people, their faces covered. They pick the body up. They put it in a bag.

“Did she do that to him?” one of them says.

“Nah,” says the other. “You should’ve seen it. Kid did it himself. Not sure there was anybody home anymore, if you know what I mean.”

That’s what the Tox does when it doesn’t want you. Like the twins, Emily and Christine. Like Taylor’s girlfriend, Mary. You were watching, I want to say. You must’ve seen.

“How come she hasn’t done it yet?”

“Dr. Paretta says it’s her hormones. Says they help her get along with it a little better.”

They carry the body out. I stay. I am sitting, and there is red on the soles of my feet. I’m not looking at anything. No, no, I’m not looking at anything. I will never look at anything again.



* * *



—

I expect them to move me. I expect them to put the IV back in my arm, to do up the restraints again. But nobody comes and nobody minds when I move to the empty gurney next to mine.

   When I sleep, he is there.

When I wake, he is there too.



* * *



—

When it’s my turn it is only Paretta. I roll over, close my eyes, but she uncurls my limbs and sits me up. An oxygen tank waiting by my bed, tubing and mask bright yellow.

“Well,” Paretta says. “I’m awfully sorry.”

Nothing to say to her. I just stare, and stare, even when she puts the whiteboard in my hands.

She sits down on the edge of the gurney. Teddy gone, and she is covered from head to toe, skin showing only around her eyes. When she reaches out I let her. Let her push my hair off my face, wipe the crusted spit from the corner of my mouth.

“I brought you something,” she says. From one of the pockets in her plastic suit, she pulls out a Raxter Iris. A little bit crumpled, the stem splitting, but the petals are still blue. It’s still alive. “You liked them downstairs, I think, so. Here.”

She gives it to me, and I cradle it in my palms. Indigo drape and the barest spots of yellow hidden at the center. Hetty used to pick them for me during the summers and tuck them in my hair.

“Listen,” Paretta says. “We can’t stay here anymore. There’s Teddy, and something happened at your school, and our study’s been ended. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

   I think she’s waiting for me to absolve her. Instead, I close my eyes and hold the iris up to my nose. Sweet, and something of salt, of Raxter.

“All right,” I hear her say, and the wheels of the oxygen tank squeak as she rolls it closer. “You just have to breathe, okay? It’s as easy as that.”

I keep my eyes shut as she slips the oxygen mask over my nose, tightens the straps so it stays in place. Doesn’t bother strapping my hands down, keeps her touch gentle and soft. She knows there’s no fight left in me.