she always has hanging from her belt. I clench my fists to keep myself from ripping it off her. What does any of this matter? We’re all sick—it’s not like seeing Byatt will make either of us worse. “I’m sorry. I know you must miss your friend.”
My friend. My sister, that’s what I told Reese. I should’ve called her my lifeline. “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
It’s clear Headmistress won’t change her mind, and I’m about to turn and leave, to think of some other plan, when she presses the back of her hand against my forehead, the way my mom used to, to check for a fever. I reel back, startled. She only makes a disapproving sound and does it again.
“How are you feeling?” she says. “You don’t seem warm.”
It takes me a minute to remember, but she’s talking about when I got back from Boat Shift. That was the day before yesterday, but it feels like ages ago.
“I’m fine,” I say, inching away uncomfortably. Headmistress doesn’t usually like to let you know she cares.
Before the Tox it was different. I remember the first time I met her. How nervous I was, coming up here from Norfolk all by myself. Thirteen and alone, and I missed my mother, and when Headmistress saw me getting teary during the school tour, she told me her door was always open if I ever needed someone to talk to or even just a little space away from the other girls.
“Well,” Headmistress says, plucking a piece of lint from the collar of my jacket, “I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better. I’m sure your friend Miss Winsor will follow suit. And in the meantime she’s lucky to have you looking for her.”
It runs through me like a current. “Looking for her?” Like she’s missing, like she’s gone, and I heard Headmistress right, I know I did.
For a moment her expression freezes, and then she smiles, strain showing through. “Looking out for her,” she corrects me. “Now why don’t you go down to breakfast? You must be hungry.”
I linger for a beat longer, enough to see Headmistress’s knuckles turn white where she’s gripping the clipboard, and that does it. I back up, give her my best smile, and head down to the main hall. There are the other girls, dotted in clusters, taking small, controlled bites of molding bread and breaking the edges off stale crackers.
It punches back into me. Everything that’s happened, everything I’ve seen and the secrets I’ve kept. The others are rationing food and starving themselves through breakfast, and I held what they needed in my own two hands.
I can’t do this. Not now.
I pick my way through the others, to the double doors at the front entrance, and slip outside. My jacket is too thin to keep out the cold, but it’s better here than in the main hall. At least this way nobody can remind me of what I’ve done.
* * *
—
I spend the rest of the day out by the water, at the point where the stones are bleached and smooth. I count my fingers as I lose the feeling in them, let the weak sun scatter across my numb skin. When I get back to my room for the night, Reese is already there, sprawled on her top bunk. Asleep, or pretending to be. This distance between us is getting too familiar. But at least this time she’s not avoiding me. At least this time she’s here.
I don’t know if Byatt ever will be again. And I can’t let that stand.
I wait until the moon is high. My mattress groans as I get out of bed, and I hold my breath, wait to make sure Reese hasn’t heard. Nothing from her bunk. I edge toward the door, and she’s still, her hair burning in the black as I slip into the hallway.
It’s empty; only a few snatches of talk from the dorms breaking the quiet. The youngest girls are whispering about something, laughter here, a hush there, and they don’t hear a thing as I tiptoe past to crouch where the hallway opens to the mezzanine.
There’s the door to the infirmary staircase, shut tight as always. Without a key, there’s no way past it for me. So the best way to get to the infirmary rooms, then, is the roof. It slants up from the second floor to the roof deck, with dormers for each window poking out. If I get up there, I can sneak