Wilder Girls(75)

“Yeah.” I stare down at the water and lick my lips. When I look back up at Headmistress, she’s watching me with warmth in her eyes, and she reaches up to touch my shoulder.

“It won’t hurt,” she says softly.

I lean in close. “Prove it.”

   She gasps, and I shove the bottle into her mouth, throw all of my weight against her jaw, holding it open as the water tumbles in.

A muffled yell, and a whimper as she thrashes under me. Water spilling down over my hand, drenching the front of her shirt. She can try not to swallow, but soon enough she’ll have to. Her lips are wet against my palm, but I don’t give, just press harder, touch my forehead to hers. She did this to us. Now it’s our turn.

Snot dripping from her nose, and she starts to choke as spasms rack her body. I’m watching her throat, waiting, waiting, and finally, a moan slipping out of her as she swallows.

I stay there, hip to hip with her, until she goes limp and I can’t hold her up anymore. I step away, let her body drop to the floor. On her hands and knees, gasping for air. She looks small. I can see the narrow taper of her wrists, skin sallow and pale. I crumple the water bottle, toss it down next to her.

“Leave her,” Reese says, “and let’s go. It’s getting nasty out there.”

I look back at her, confused, and she nods toward the hallway. Hit after hit against the double doors closing off the main hall. If the front doors didn’t hold, these don’t stand a chance. I can hear Julia, yelling at the other girls, urging them to keep supporting the barricade. But it’s no use.

“Okay,” I say.

   I hoist the backpack up, staggering a little under the weight of it, but soon it’s on and we’re heading out of the office. Not a backward glance, not until we hit the kitchen and I check to make sure none of the other girls is following.

Empty space, and the sound of screams. We need to hurry.

Reese crosses to the emergency exit door, the sign above it dark and cracked. I follow, and she goes first, opens the door just a few inches, and looks out.

“Seems clear.”

I laugh a little. “Either way, we’re going.”

She holds out her silver hand to me, and I take it. “Stay with me,” she says, “and I’ll stay with you, yeah?”

I close my eye. Raxter behind me, and who knows what ahead.





CHAPTER 24


The door spits us onto the south side of the grounds. Strong sunlight through the clouds as the morning fills out. Lawn empty ahead of us, just a few stands of coastal pine between us and the ocean. To my right, across a hundred yards of frost-dusted grass, the fence, and the way out.

“If we get separated,” Reese says, “find my house. I’ll meet you there.”

“And then what?”

“My dad’s boat,” she says. “More like a dinghy, I guess. It’s hidden along the shore somewhere.”

A crash from inside the house, maybe one of the doors giving way, and I hear the other girls start to shout. I squeeze Reese’s hand. The jets are coming, I think. I hate how it sounds like an excuse.

“Count of three,” Reese says. “Break for the gate.”

I nod, and together we whisper, “One. Two. Three.”

   We sprint, so quick I lose my breath, let my mouth go slack as I throw everything into my legs. Overhead the first flurry of snow, stinging against my cheeks. The backpack is too loose, jerking from side to side, and I stumble, but Reese won’t let me fall.

“Almost there!” she yells.

The fence coming up quick, but I can’t stop. I’m tired, so tired, and my legs go loose, my stride turning wild. But at last, the gate.

We stagger to a stop. My hand is throbbing, and Reese is leaving bloody tracks in the snow, but adrenaline is sharp and bitter in my mouth, the cold waking against my skin. I’m alive. I’m here and I’m alive.

I tighten the backpack straps as Reese slides the pistol out from her waistband. The gate open ahead of us, and she bites her lip against the pain as she lifts the pistol, her stance and firing hand switched like I taught her, and aims it into the shadow coating the trees beyond the gate.

“Just to be safe,” she says.

I almost laugh.

We take a different route to her house. Keep out of the wilds, stick to the spidery deer paths that run through the trees, both of us keen to face the danger we know instead of the danger we don’t.

The woods are strangely quiet, even for Raxter. Snow speckled on the ground, falling more thickly than it usually does this early in the winter. We scan the ground closely for tracks, but every time we find some they’re heading away, toward the school. If we’re safe out here, it’s at the other girls’ expense.

   Eventually, the ramshackle shape of the Harker house is visible ahead. I blink the snowflakes from my lashes and hurry forward, eager for a bit of rest.

Reese goes in first, wipes her feet at the door absently, and it makes something clench in my chest. And then she gasps, lets out a sob, and of course, I forgot. Mr. Harker. The body.

I rest my working hand on her shoulder, step up next to her, ready to offer some comforting words. But they won’t do anything, because crowded around what’s left of Mr. Harker are three gray foxes, their mouths dripping black as they rip into his torso.