Wilder Girls(56)

A moment, and then a hiss, a valve releasing. I look at Paretta, and I make sure she’s watching as I breathe deep, and I let it in.

It’s like when you drink water for the first time in a long time, how you can feel the cold in your veins. Except it isn’t cold, it’s a fizzing kind of heat, catching and growing.

I won’t mind ending this way.

Paretta gets up, and I think she’s leaving when she stops at the foot of my bed. “Tell me one thing,” she says. “If you can. I’ve been trying to understand how Teddy got sick.”

I manage a shrug.

“Because nobody else did,” she goes on. “And I can’t think of anything he did differently.”

Oh. I can.

   Teddy taking off his mask, Teddy with his hands in my hair, Teddy disappearing and something else taking root inside. I pick up the whiteboard, and I write:

I kissed him would that do it

For a moment Paretta just stares. And then she laughs, only it sounds like something else.

“Good luck,” she tells me, and turns quickly so I can’t see her face. A click, and the door is shut.

Over the announcement system a woman says it’s time to begin evacuation procedures. I can hear people moving, talking, all calm and measured. No panic. No rush. They’ve known this was coming.



* * *



—

A twitch in my legs, and a thrum running through me. Like a plane engine before flight, like the moment before a flare-up but bigger, so much bigger. My body shaking, my body pulling apart at the seams, and I close my eyes, but it doesn’t matter. I can still see. I am still here.

Sweat across my forehead, and this is too much, I wasn’t built for this, I can feel something moving in me, behind my ribs, up to my heart, and the air is squeezing out of me

I can’t

Not like before not like the glitter and the calm this is fracture this is breaking

this is an ending I wasn’t supposed to let go

The tips of my fingers they’re turning black a Raxter Blue and it all disappears everything until out of my chest like a column of light a scream

   I’m nothing

I’m

I’m done.

And now, now it hurts.



* * *



—

I sit up, the iris falling to the floor, and I hold my fingertips under the light. Black, like I dipped them in ink. It reaches all the way to my knuckles.

This is what happens to things when they’re from Raxter, when the island’s knit itself into their bones. This is what happens to them when they’re dying.

I push the oxygen mask off my face. It’s done its job.

I get out of bed and stay close to the wall as I make for the door. My legs are steady enough, but I can feel the weakness in them. They’ll give out before long. I take a short rest at the gurney next to the door and lean close to the window looking out into the corridor. My reflection stares back at me. The skin under my eyes is mottled blue and yellow. Even through my hospital gown I can tell my ribs are pushing out, and my hair is matted, stiff with sweat.

And then I see it. In my arm, there, a flicker in the mirror. A bulge in the flesh, a shiver in my skin. I can feel a pulse in my wrist, patterned like a heartbeat. I am dying, and the darkness inside me is trying to flee. I press my finger against the burning skin and feel something recoil. A tendon, maybe. But maybe something else.

   Leave it alone, part of me says, keep it for yourself, but if I am dying, I won’t do it as anybody but me.

I find a scalpel under the bed by the door. Trace a light line down the inside of my arm. The blade is cool against the heat of my skin, blood beading faintly.

The same line, but I press this time, drag the blade slow. Blood like this is rich and dark. It wells up until it spills over, trails down to my elbow. Again, and again, until a tingling spreads through my wrist, until I know I’ve hit something deep. Pain, gripping and everywhere, and a scream through my body, but I am always hurting and I know what to do.

Put down the scalpel, pry my skin apart with slick fingers. A flash of bone, and the world is swimming around me, vivid and blurred. I slide my thumb and forefinger in, swallow a whimper, and spread the sides of the cut.

I don’t know until I see it, but then it moves. Glistening, thick like a muscle. Twitching softly and radiating heat. A worm.

I try to pinch it between my fingers, but it’s too slippery, so I keep trying, keep wishing somebody had left a clamp lying around. It’s writhing now. It knows what I’m doing. And finally, I get a good grip and yank it out of me.

It’s like ripping out a fishhook. A tear in my flesh, and blood springs up fresh. But it doesn’t matter now. I have it in my hands. It’s dead, or dying, not moving at all, and I can get a good look. The color fading, a milky white showing through underneath. Ridged and segmented down the length of it. And it’s long, could run maybe from the tip of my middle finger to my wrist. A parasite. It was inside me and I didn’t even know.

   A violation, but a gift too. It let me find a reason for everything I felt, at Raxter, in Boston, and every day in between. It let me match my body to my mind. I can thank it for that, at least.

I look back at the window to see my reflection, to see if I look different. But I don’t. Same me, same old same old but I think I think maybe something is missing