Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,29
My voice is about to crack, and it would be embarrassing if I cared about that at all. “Will she come down soon?”
Welch stops. Doesn’t turn around. Just the line of her shoulders against the dark, and then she keeps going. Leaves me in the kitchen with my vision blurring. And even though I can still feel her hands around my neck, Reese is all I want.
* * *
—
“I bet it’s nothing,” I try, like it’ll make more sense if I say it out loud.
“That’s right,” Reese says.
She’s watching me from the top bunk. I’m underneath on mine, flat on my back, arms folded across my chest. I thought maybe she’d stay away, like she has been since I got Boat Shift, but she followed me upstairs as if none of that ever happened. And I tried to sleep—we both did—but halfway into the night I let out a sigh, and Reese leaned over the side of her bunk to look down at me.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
But we both know only the sickest girls go up to the infirmary. And most of them never come down again.
I wrap myself up tighter in my jacket. “I’m worried.”
“I know.”
“She’s all I have.”
A heartbeat of quiet, and I realize how it must sound to Reese. Reese, who is right here.
“Sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay.”
I know this is the part where I’m supposed to tell her I didn’t mean it. But the truth is I never think of Reese as mine. As if someone like her could belong to someone like me, to anyone at all.
“Really, though,” Reese says. “Byatt will be fine.”
“You can’t promise that.”
She frowns, rolls back over onto her bunk so I can’t see her anymore. “I’m not promising.”
“Okay,” I say, and hear her squirm around to get comfortable.
“What about the time we went to that museum?” she says slowly. “The one in Portland.”
Byatt and I used to do this, for the first little while after the Tox. Trading stories from before, the two of us on the bottom bunk, and Reese above, never saying anything but listening. I know now she was listening.
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “I remember that.”
“I’d never been to Portland before.”
“You’d never been anywhere,” I say with a laugh.
“And we got lunch in that food court, with the soda machines. We kept mixing them all in one cup.”
“It was a fun field trip,” I say.
“My favorite part was when you got sick in the planetarium.”
It’s almost what Byatt would say. Reese is trying, but she can’t get it quite right, because nobody’s Byatt but Byatt, not even the girl in these memories. There’s this place in her, somewhere nobody can touch, not me or Reese or anyone. It’s just hers, and I don’t even know what it is, really, just that it’s there, and that she takes it with her when she goes.
CHAPTER 6
I don’t want the morning, but it comes anyway. Hard and bright, sun out from the clouds. I bury my face in my pillow, dreading the sight of the emptiness where Byatt should be.
The top bunk creaks, and I hear Reese whisper my name. I roll over, ease my eye open, my blind one pulsing with hurt like it always does when I wake. There she is, peering down at me over the edge of her bed. Her hair’s coming loose from her braid, fine wisps of gold falling in her eyes. Small rounded nose and low, flaring cheekbones.
“Hey,” she says, and my mouth goes dry. Have I been staring? “Did you know that you snore?”
Oh. I swallow down what tastes almost like disappointment. “I don’t snore.”
“Sure you do. It’s this little whistling.” She tilts her head. “Like a bird. Or a kettle.”
My cheeks are hot, and I shut my eye tightly. “This is really nice. I like being bullied first thing in the morning.”
She laughs. I look up just in time to see it. Her hair full of shine, her head thrown back, throat bared to the sunlight. She’s in a good mood this morning. I can’t understand why. Doesn’t she remember what happened to Byatt? Doesn’t she care?
She might not care, but I do. And I’m not letting this go until I know Byatt’s all right.
“Where are you going?” Reese asks as I get to my feet.
“The infirmary.” I bend down, do up my boots. We sleep with them on to keep the cold from setting too deep, but I always loosen my laces before bed. “I’m visiting Byatt.