Wilder Girls(70)

“I just wanted to talk to her,” I lie. “Just to make sure she’s okay.”

“I don’t believe you.” Taylor’s voice is flat, harsh. “I said get away from the door.”

“Is she all right? Can you tell me that, at least?”

“Back up. Right now.”

Taylor used to be one of us. Underneath everything, she has to care at least a little. If I can just keep pushing, maybe I’ll get her to crack. Maybe I’ll get myself another chance. “What did you do to her? What did you want her for? Tell me that and I’ll go. We can pretend I was never here.”

Taylor shakes her head. “You know I can’t let you leave, Hetty.”

   I put on my best smile. “Sure, you can. You can do whatever you want.”

“I am.” She takes another step closer. “Headmistress and I are getting off this fucking island. And if anybody knows how, it’s your friend.”

I remember what she said at the Harker house that night. How she said she left Boat Shift because we deserved better. What kind of bullshit. This is what she really did it for, why she knocked Reese out, why she left us in that room to die. To get away.

“You really think they’ll just let you leave? The Navy and the CDC?” She can’t be that naive. I used to be, and look what happened.

She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not about to stay here.”

“But what about the rest of us?”

“I am so sick of that question,” Taylor growls. “What about me, huh? What about me?”

I can’t argue with it, can’t push past the guilt sitting in my stomach. “Listen, you can’t just kill me,” I say instead. Taylor scoffs, but I smile like Byatt would. “You want a way off the island. So come with me—we’ll find it together.”

Another step closer. “You’re lying,” Taylor says.

“I’m not, I’m not. I promise.” But Taylor isn’t listening to me anymore, and she reaches for the knife stuck in her belt.

“Put that away. Come on, you don’t have to,” I say, sugar words already crumbling apart. My hand is trembling as I hold it out, try to ward her off.

   “Yes, I do.”

I have to go now. But she’s blocking the way, and there’s no escape, and Taylor, she lunges to grab me.





CHAPTER 22


Fast, so fast it blurs. I see her reaching, I see the white of her hand and the white of her knife, and I don’t know which is which so I grab the one that’s near me, force the other one away. Stamp down hard on her foot.

Taylor smashes her elbow into my nose, and I’m staggering back against the wall, pain exploding in my injured hand, my hair in my eye, blood in my mouth and smearing everywhere, up over my cheeks and into my ears.

Her knife darting out, and I yank her in closer, press the blade flat against me so she can’t use it, and she’s trying to turn it, she’s trying to drag it across me, trying to open a canyon in my chest so I—it doesn’t take much, I just—I tilt and push—and it goes in easy. Like she was waiting for it.

“Oh my God,” I say. “Oh my God.”

She slides off the knife. She falls. The knife does too. She’s leaking everywhere, and I don’t know how to make her stop.

   “Hetty.”

I don’t know if anything could make her stop. Taylor’s eyes are fluttering. There are choking noises in the air as she twitches and shudders, one hand grabbing at nothing, the other pressed to her ribs. And Taylor is Welch, and Welch is Mr. Harker, and everything is always happening over and over again.

A voice from behind me, from somewhere else. “Hetty. Hetty.”

I can’t move. I can’t breathe. The blood is about to touch the toes of my boots. Maybe if I stand here long enough, it will sneak through the seams and my socks and touch my skin too. This stain I will never wash out.

“Come unlock the door,” Reese says.

Reese.

My boot makes a squelching sound as I lift it out of the blood and step across Taylor’s legs. Reese is saying my name again, steadily, covering up the sounds, covering up the sputter and the burble of blood rolling out of Taylor’s mouth.

At the door it takes a few tries to get each of the deadbolts undone, and my shoulder is aching, but I lift the latch and swing it open.

The cot is bare, mattress stained with streaks of blood. On the stool sits a walkie and a shortwave radio, and next to them a knife gleams in the sun coming through the window. Its edge is dulled down with blood, and I almost don’t want to look, because what more could anybody do to her? But there she is, waiting off to the side. Reese, with her moonglow hair and torn-up shoulder, a bruise starting to wake across her cheek.

   “Okay,” she says, and cups my cheek with her silver hand, her thumb pressed to the corner of my mouth. “Okay.”

“I didn’t mean—” I start, but it’s all I can get out.

“You had to,” she says. It’s supposed to make me feel better, I know it is, but bile stings the back of my throat. “Right now we have to go.”

“And do what?” There’s no way out of any of this.

“Step by step, okay? For now, we just gotta get downstairs. That’s it. And then we’ll figure this all out.”