Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,16
“You’re welcome for the crackers. Put them back when you’re done.”
* * *
—
Reese doesn’t find us for dinner. She’s made curfew, that’s all Welch tells us when we ask, but we don’t see her, not when I pick up our rations from the kitchen, not when Lauren and Ali come to blows over a fresh pack of hair elastics and Julia has to pull them apart. That’s my job now too, I remind myself. I’m Boat Shift—I’m that girl.
Her bunk is empty when we get to our room, and I think I see the flash of her silver hand out of the corner of my eye, heading farther down the hall. I force myself to look away.
“I should be the mad one,” I say to Byatt as we settle into bed. “She strangled me, not the other way around.”
“You took something from her,” Byatt says. “That’s how she sees it, anyway.”
I hold my breath, tip my chin up to keep the prickling in my eye from turning to tears. She can’t really think I did this to hurt her. But that’s Reese—always protecting herself from some threat I can’t see. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“I don’t think she cares about that.”
There’s a moment as we adjust, me with my back tucked against the wall, and Byatt flat on hers, taking up most of the bunk. We’ve slept like this since the start of the Tox, first to stay warm, and then just because we got used to it.
“You could refuse the spot,” she says once we’re settled.
“I might’ve,” I say sharply, “if she’d asked.” But the anger doesn’t last. I sigh, shut my eye. “I just don’t know how, with her.”
Byatt makes a small noise. “Thank goodness I’m here, huh?”
“You have no idea.” Some days it’s fine. Others it nearly breaks me. The emptiness of the horizon, and the hunger in my body, and how will we ever survive this if we can’t survive each other? “We’re gonna make it. Tell me we’re gonna make it.”
“The cure’s coming,” Byatt says. “We’re gonna make it. I promise.”
CHAPTER 4
Taylor was right. When Welch wakes me the next morning, it’s before sunup. My eye’s gummy with sleep, leaving me blind, and it takes me a beat to put her together.
“What’s going on?” I say. She gives me an extra shake.
“Downstairs, quick as you can. We’re heading out.”
The door clicks shut behind her. Reese is still asleep up on her bunk, but Byatt rolls over and pushes up onto her elbows.
“You’re going?” she says, voice heavy and hoarse.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. You’ll be careful.”
It’s an order, and I smile a little in case she can see. “I’ll try.”
Welch is waiting with Carson and Julia by the time I get to the closet outside the kitchen. Carson’s missing three fingernails after a flare-up had her scratching at the infirmary door, and Julia’s deep brown skin is spattered with bruises that grow every day. Nobody’s sure what puts them there, only that their color never fades.
Julia and Carson aren’t the first Boat Shift girls. Taylor, whose place I took, was the last left of the original team. She got picked with Emily and Christine, twins from some school down near DC who were here on exchange. They were only supposed to be here for a semester. They chose the wrong one. About three months into the Tox, they came back from the woods with their names torn out of their heads. The Tox took who they were, took everything except how to hold a knife. It made them stick each other in the main hall during dinner, made them watch themselves bleed dry.
Carson smiles at me as I get close. She’s wearing a second jacket, this one heavy and lined with flannel, and she’s got her hair tucked up under her hood. Next to her, Julia is bent in front of the closet, pulling out things for her and I guess for me.
“Here.” She stuffs a bundle of clothes into my arms and sits, kicking off her boots to pull on more socks. “Get that on.”
The coat is somewhere between black and navy, with big brass clasps across the front, like on some kind of steamer trunk. It fits pretty well, and with the collar flipped up, I won’t feel the wind on my neck. There’s also a red hat, the kind with flaps over the ears, but I’m not convinced it’ll fit, so I look up at Welch, and she’s got a red scarf. So