Wilder Girls(67)

   “It’s fine,” Cat says, coming to stand next to me. “We’ll handle this ourselves.”

The first and most important thing to do, we decide, is to shore up the front doors. Claire and Ali lead a group to the classrooms to raid them for leftover desks and chairs, anything we can use to build a barricade. Julia and Carson head for the kitchen, looking for tools to pry the dining room tables up from where they’re bolted to the floor. Landry even pitches in, takes some of the younger girls to the dorms to tear the ladders off the bunks.

And me, I’m rooted to the ground, stuck there in the middle of the hall. For a year and a half we’ve been as safe as we could ask for. The fence, regular supplies. Welch and Headmistress to hold us together. A year and a half, and in a week I’ve torn it all apart.

Sarah and Lauren are dragging the couches over to the front door. Cat’s nearby, looking adrift without Lindsay next to her, and I think I can see Julia in the dining room wrestling with the bolts on the long tables. I start toward the dining room, but before I can get far, a door slams down the corridor, and Headmistress comes sweeping out of the office, Taylor at her heels.

She looks better than she did at the gate. Clothes smoothed—sharp lines and folds fresh, like she’s got an iron hidden somewhere—her hair back in its neat gray bun.

   “Up,” she says, clapping twice. “Everybody up.”

There’s a pause, the whole room still. We’re not used to her like this—she’s usually removed, distant, her words spoken by Welch. But I guess that’s not an option anymore.

“Well? Now,” she barks, and we scramble to our feet. She winds her way through us and climbs up to the middle of the staircase, where we can see her. “All right, everybody line up. By year, please, and last name.”

It takes us a minute because it’s been a long time since we broke ourselves up like this into seven lines. Back before there’d be fourteen or fifteen girls in each line, but now it’s like some of them never existed, and we used to start when we were eleven, but now the youngest of us is thirteen. So many girls are ghosts now, and the lines are short and ragged, and this is why we don’t stand like this anymore, because it hurts too much.

I’m Chapin, so I’m first, then Reese. Beyond her, Dana Kendrick, Cat Liao, Lauren Porter, and Sarah Ross. I can’t help looking at the space at the end of the line, empty, where Byatt would be.

“Thank you,” says Headmistress when we’ve finished shuffling into place. “Now, as you all apparently already know”—and I can hear a crack widening in her voice—“early this morning the fence suffered a breach. Nobody is allowed out onto the grounds until further notice.”

I close my eye. I have to get used to it, to this guilt twisting inside me. I don’t think it’s ever going away.

   “To work on our emergency preparedness,” she continues, “we’ll be conducting a safety drill this morning. Follow me, please.”

It’s ridiculous. Of course it is. But we follow her down the north hallway, past classrooms and faculty offices, around the corner and all the way back to the music room. It’s big, high ceilings and no windows, with risers built in along one wall. We reform our lines across the wide, empty floor.

There were music stands, before, and a piano. Some girls had violins they brought from home. But everything’s long gone. Only the teacher’s desk left, bolted to the floor at the front of the room. Next to me, Cat shivers. It’s cold in here, where the sun never reaches.

Once we’re inside, Headmistress counts us and counts us again. I wait for her to explain, but she stands in front of us with her lips moving silently, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was shaking. And then she nods to Taylor, who takes a step out of line.

My stomach drops. I should have known. I should have seen it coming. She was the one carrying Mona to the Harker house. I thought she was ours, but she’s not. She’s theirs.

“Take her,” Headmistress says.

Taylor pushes toward me, and it must be me, it must be—they know I broke the quarantine. Headmistress must have found out. But Taylor strides past me, her eyes fixed on someone else.

   “Wait,” I say, but it’s all I have time for, and then Taylor is wrapping Reese’s braid around her fist and dragging her to the ground. Reese cries out, but Taylor wrestles her onto her front, pins her arms behind her back. It jerks her injured shoulder, and she screams something that sounds like my name.

Somebody yells, and I’m pushing past Cat, fighting to get to Reese through a crowd of confusion as Taylor cuffs Reese on the back of the head. I see her go limp, blood blooming fresh as her eyes flutter. Before I can blink, Taylor has Reese heaved over her shoulder and she’s making for the door. What the hell is going on? Where are they taking her?

“Hey,” I call, and lurch after them. I’m almost to Taylor when somebody grabs my collar and yanks me back, tosses me to the floor. Headmistress stands over me, her outline blurred as my vision swims and clears.

And then they’re out of the room, Headmistress shutting the door behind them. I struggle to my feet, pull at the handle, but there’s the heavy click of a lock being turned.

“Reese!” I yell. “Reese!” But they’re moving down the hallway, quick footsteps until they’re gone. Why would they take her? What will they do to her?