Wilder Girls(73)

“Come on,” I say. At first I’m not sure she’s heard, and then something changes in her face, softens, like she’s coming back from somewhere else. “Let’s leave her with the mess she made.”

Reese shakes her head. “She could’ve saved us. She could’ve tossed that gas into the fucking ocean.”

Yeah, I know. I could’ve too.

I take a deep breath, ignore the sick turn of my stomach. “But right now we can save ourselves. Please, Reese. Let’s go.”

She glances at Headmistress, who’s quivering, watching me with wide, helpless eyes. “If she moves a goddamn muscle, I swear—”

   “She won’t,” I cut in. “Right?”

“I won’t,” Headmistress says, nodding frantically.

Reese sighs, and some of the tension drains out of her. Shoulders slumping, head tipping forward. “Look for some food,” she says softly. “I’ll grab water.”

“Thank you,” I say. “We’ll be quick, I promise.”

Headmistress is pressed against the wall, her palms splayed open and empty, so I turn my back to her, leave Reese to keep watch if she likes. There’s a canvas backpack by the bookshelves that line the wall, already half packed with a pistol and a few boxes of ammo. I grab the pistol, check the safety, and hand it to Reese. Her shoulder might be injured, but I’ve never fired a pistol before, and she’ll be the better shot. With any luck she remembers what I taught her about switching her stance.

She sticks the pistol in the waistband of her jeans and crouches by the carton of water bottles. The plastic wrap has been slashed open, and a few bottles have toppled onto the floor.

“You take those,” she says, nodding at the box next to me full of jerky and packets of crackers. “I’ll take a few marine flares. And one of those first aid kits too.”

I load as much of the food as I can into the backpack. It’s strange—at the bottom of the box, there’s a layer of paper, like Headmistress has packed some of the school records. I pull them out and skim through them, Reese looking over my shoulder, but the print is small and my eye is aching, desperate for some rest, so I just shove them deep into the backpack. We’ll get to them later.

   Reese goes back to the water, but a few moments later she says my name, and I squint up at her. She has one of the bottles in her hand, the cap undone.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s already been opened. The seal’s broken.”

I picture Headmistress as we came in, how she was standing over this case. There was something in her hands. I look up at her now, try to catch her eye, but she’s staring straight ahead.

“Is it just that one?” I ask.

Reese takes another from the carton, twists the cap off. “This one too.” I scramble over to her, and we pick through them. Every bottle, the cap opening easily, the seal already snapped.

“Shit,” I say, but Reese is already on her feet, advancing on Headmistress.

“What,” she says softly, “did you do?”

Under my knees the floor is damp, seeping up into my jeans. Headmistress must have tampered with them somehow. But what for?

I hold one of the bottles up to the light. At first I don’t see it, but then…there. Grains of fine black powder, collecting at the bottom.

Reese breaks off as I push past her. Headmistress shies away, but I hook my fingers in the pocket of her slacks and drag her toward me. I’m right, I know I am, and I wish I were surprised, but this is just the same thing over and over. Everything is the same thing over and over.

   “Hetty,” Reese says, “what is it?”

Headmistress is struggling away from me, but I wedge my shoulder in against her chest, pin her as flat as I can.

“Check the bullets,” I say to Reese. “You’ll see.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt anybody,” Headmistress pleads. “It was only to help.”

“Oh,” Reese says behind me, and I know without looking what she’s found. Some of the bullets already cracked open, emptied of gunpowder the way the older Gun Shift girls taught us to do. I never knew how we first found out what a little powder could do to a body with the Tox. Nobody would ever tell me when I asked. But I know it’s a slow death, like sleep if sleep lit you up with pain.

“You put it in the water, didn’t you?” I say, leaning so close my spit flecks across Headmistress’s cheek.

She takes my face in her hands before I can back away and looks down at me, her expression soft even as her grip tightens. “You have to listen to me,” she says. “This is the best thing for you right now.”

“Let her go,” Reese says, but Headmistress ignores her.

“They’re on their way, Hetty. Jets off an aircraft carrier.” Her voice drops, hoarse and barely more than a whisper. “You know what they can do.”

I do. It’s not that I heard things when I was living on-base. It’s that I didn’t. And that said more than anything.

   I push her hands off me and step back. “Why now? They’ve had a year and a half. What’s changed?”

“There was a contagion on the research team,” Headmistress says, “and then one of you girls broke the quarantine.”