Wilder Girls(69)

When we’ve finished, everyone’s quiet, just the sound of muffled crying breaking the stillness. About forty of us left, and we feel so small. I see Emmy sitting by the bodies of the girls in her year, combing their hair out with careful fingers, and my heart catches in my chest.

“This is Headmistress,” Cat says, her voice cracking. “She did this to us. We can’t let her get away with it, with killing our friends. With trying to kill us.”

“What is there to do about it?” Lauren says, and I look over to where she’s standing by her friend Sarah’s body. “She’s gone.”

   “I can find her,” I say, ignoring the throbbing pain in my hand. I have to. If I find her, I find Reese. And Reese is depending on me.

“And then what?” Lauren laughs harshly. “We kill her?”

“Yes,” says Cat. “That’s exactly what we do.”

There’s a murmur of agreement, starting low and building, but Lauren shakes her head. “There’s still a bear outside. The gate’s open. This house is done for and so are we. Isn’t that what we should be worried about?”

Cat starts yelling, and the room fractures into sound. I look to Julia, who hasn’t said a word. She’s got her arm around Carson, whose head is tucked in the hollow of Julia’s neck. She has her girl. I’m missing both of mine.

“Hey,” I say softly. “What do you think?”

Julia looks at Cat and Lauren as they argue, and then back at me. “Go find Reese,” she says. “She doesn’t have time for this.”

I smile gratefully, give her hand a squeeze with my working one before backing up slowly, inching toward the door. When nobody gives me a second glance, I duck through, and step out into the corridor. Hurry back to the main hall, my gait uneven, head still clearing from the fog. My left hand is pulsing in time with my heart, blood still seeping through my bandages, and I know it’ll never straighten and bend the way it used to.

Through the windows the day is bright, full of sun, and if I listen close, I can hear the bear, huffing sharp breaths just outside the door. It must have finished with Lindsay’s body. And now it’s coming for the rest of us.

   There are only a few places secure enough for Headmistress to use to hold Reese. One of them is her office, but I can see from here that the door is open, and so I don’t bother checking. Just hurry up to the second floor, every step stronger than the last. Headmistress tried to take me down and she couldn’t—I’m not letting her take Reese, either.

There, the door to the infirmary staircase. It’s ajar, swinging slightly like somebody just went through. But I don’t hear anybody up on the third floor. Maybe Taylor and Headmistress are lying in wait, ready to lock me up just like Reese. Nothing for it, though, no plan to make. I don’t have anything left. I start up the stairs, leaning heavily against the wall as the pain in my hand gets worse.

The infirmary is dark, shut doors blocking the morning’s sun. The last time I was here I was looking for Byatt, and it felt like the answers were just out of reach. Now I have them—I know they’ve taken her off the island, and I know Welch was tied up in all of it—and it’s drained the fight from me. I don’t need the truth anymore. I just want to live.

Nowhere to hide down the narrow corridor. I think I’m alone up here. I stumble from door to door, listening for something, anything. Until there, the last door in the corridor, to the room where I found Byatt’s needle and thread. The locks done up, and a muffled sound from inside, like the springs of a mattress.

   Reese.

Easy, I tell myself. If she’s there, someone else might be too. I lie down on the floorboards, my left eye to the ground. I can see under the door, through a gap maybe an inch or two tall. There are the legs of the cot, and what looks like a stool pulled up next to it. No Headmistress and no Taylor.

I start at the top, undo the deadbolts one by one. They’re driven deep into the wall, and with only my right hand working, it takes all my strength to slide them back. I’ve just finished the first one when I hear it. Soft, hardly there.

“Hetty?”

I press my forehead against the door. It’s her. It’s really her. “Hey. Are you okay?”

A beat of silence and then: “I think so.”

“What did they do to you? What did they want you for?”

“They wanted…,” she says, trailing off, and she sounds woozy. “They wanted a way off the island.”

The blow to the head she took back in the music room must have her dazed still, and the way she’s talking is strange, like she’s not all there. I pull at the next deadbolt, and it barely moves. “Hang in there,” I say. “I’m getting you out.”

   I hear her take a catching breath, and I think she’s about to say something when somebody, somebody not Reese, says my name from down the hall.

Taylor.

I turn around slowly. The edges of her are smudged in the darkness of the hallway, but there she is. Watching me.

“Back up,” she says. “Get away from the door.”

“Taylor?”

She takes a few steps toward me, and I can see her face now, can see the stubborn set of her jaw and the knife in her belt. I turn more fully toward her, make sure the makeshift bandage on my hand is visible. If she thinks I’m not a threat, maybe we can find a way out of this.