my damn self. How about you, Zo?”
“Probably more,” she said. “Having a gun and all. I set the goal for a hundred.”
“See?” Cassandra said, gesturing with hands so picked clean of nail polish they looked almost unpainted. “The power of positive thinking.”
“How many of them were there supposed to be again?” Mowse asked, even her voice sounding quiet and meek.
“A hundred,” I said. “One hundred soldiers including the artillery. But we’ve got this. We do.”
No one said anything.
There was a knock at the door then. Cassandra answered it, and Asa stepped in with a coat over one shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot. His teeth were sharp, and his hair looked wilder than ever, but at the same time he looked sure of himself, calm. Like a man making his peace before being taken to the gallows. Olivia went to him and put her arms around him, and they stood there, holding each other for a long time before he turned to me. “Tonight’s the night,” he said. “Are you ready to make it right again?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, conscious of the weight of the black stone in my pocket. “How about you?”
But before Asa could answer, there was another knock on the door.
“My, we’re popular today,” said Cassandra. She opened the door.
“Is Sal here?” said a voice, and my heart leapt. Lucy stood there, makeupless and kerchiefed, but somehow she was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. I wanted to run to her and hold her close, but something about her manner held me back. She seemed so fragile she might break in two.
I knew she’d been spending more time at the hospital lately. The two days in which I hadn’t seen her seemed like weeks. But she had come to visit tonight, and when she saw me, she smiled, and that’s all that mattered. Across the room from me, Zo made a confused Who is this? expression, then winked and gave me a thumbs-up. I ignored her.
“I just came to say good luck,” Lucy said, coming into the kitchen. “Y’all are the bravest girls I’ve ever met. And you too, Asa.”
“Thank you kindly,” Asa said from his place by Olivia and Rosa. “Though with all your work at the hospital, I think you’re pretty brave yourself.”
Lucy smiled a tired-looking smile. I pulled out a chair for her, and she sat.
“Not long now, huh?” she said.
“Nope,” I said, taking a seat beside her. “About three hours left.”
“Wait a minute.” Judith squinted at her. “You’re the one Sal was talking about. The one who sells makeup.”
“Not much these days,” Lucy said. “But I still got this.” She opened her sack and put it on the table. The girls gathered around to see inside.
“This is mascara?” asked Cassandra, with a hand on her chest. “Oh, I never thought I’d see mascara again!” She held up an eye shadow palette. “Judith, this would look striking with your blue eyes.”
Mowse reached for a tube of lipstick and Susanah gave her a look. “Not till you’re older.”
“I might not get older,” Mowse said. Susanah nodded, and Mowse took a corncob-disguised tube of coral lipstick and smeared it over her lips.
“None for you?” Lucy said when she noticed Zo sitting back, completely away from the makeup in her suspenders and boots. “You have great bone structure.”
“It’s just not my style,” she said, smiling. “But thanks.”
Zo looked at Lucy in a slow, appraising sort of way, and something strangely like envy rose in me, but I pushed it back down as well as I could.
“Oh, come on, Zo,” said Judith, swiping fawn eye shadow over her lids. “You’d be pretty.”
“Yep,” said Judith. “The prettiest sharpshooter I ever did see.”
“Aww, don’t make me blush,” laughed Zo. The girls milled around the spilled contents of the bag, trying this, considering that. And for a moment, I saw them as they could have been back in the real world: just teenage girls living their lives as they were meant to.
“You scared?” Lucy said quietly as she watched them. She extended her hand to me.
“Not as scared as I thought I’d be,” I said. I took it.
“I’m not scared at all,” said Mowse unconvincingly through her coral lips. “We’ve fought them before, you know.”
“I heard,” said Lucy. Then her eyebrows furrowed. “That mark,” she said, pointing to Mowse’s hand. “You have one too?”
Mowse nodded. “Half my class has them,” she said. “The teacher says it’s probably ringworm.”
“I knew it,” muttered Judith, scratching at the spot on her