Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,35
It’s what people used to tell me when I was small, when my father was deployed. “You’re his daughter,” I say. “You’re not supposed to be the one protecting him.”
She doesn’t answer. Still she has to be listening. “But Byatt’s our girl.” I’m watching Reese’s face, and I have her. I know I do. “We are supposed to protect her. Just like she’d do it for us.” I take a deep breath. “Just like I’d do it for you.”
A flicker of surprise on her face, one that lights an answering spark of shame in my stomach. Is that really news to her?
But she reaches out then, and I feel something catch in my chest as her palm slides against mine. “Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”
There’s nothing more to be done tonight, and the adrenaline is draining from me, leaving me about ready to keel over. I smile at her and let go, duck into my bunk.
I lie on my back, still leaving room next to me for Byatt like always. Above me I can hear Reese taking off her jacket to use as a blanket. It’s too quiet, and as easy as it just was with her, suddenly, I want more than anything for the ground to swallow me up so we don’t have to listen to each other pretend to be asleep.
“Hey,” Reese says suddenly. “It wasn’t my dad, was it? On the walkie?”
“Um.” I’m not sure how to let her down.
“Never mind.” She sounds gruff, embarrassed, and I can picture her shaking her head. “I just…I thought if one of my parents was gonna come back, it would be him.”
A rustle, and a creak in the wooden ribs of our bunk beds as she gets comfortable, ending the conversation. I’m surprised she started it to begin with.
But then, she’s different without Byatt here. Or maybe we both are. I clench my fists, try to work up the courage. I’ve wondered this since I met her, but when Reese doesn’t want to talk, nothing can make her.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I start. There’s a tremor in my voice. I keep going. “But, Reese, where did your mom go?”
I can’t see her, so instead, I watch the patterns of light her braid throws onto the ceiling, trace their soft, blurring glow. “It’s complicated,” she says at last. “Or maybe I just wish it was.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Last I heard, she was still in Maine. Portland, maybe.”
“What?” That’s barely two hundred miles away. I’d always assumed she’d gone far, or even that Reese didn’t know where she was.
“Yeah,” Reese says. She doesn’t sound sad. Or angry. Or anything. “She didn’t want to leave Maine. She just wanted to leave me.”
I don’t know what could soothe that sting. But she’s talking to me. That has to count for something. “I’m sorry,” I say. “You know you could have told me about it before.”
“Some things don’t belong to other people,” she says, tired and drifting. “Some things are just mine.”
As if I needed more proof that we’re built from different things. Reese holds herself so apart, and all I’ve ever wanted was to be half of someone else. Coming to Raxter, it was like I hadn’t found my place until I got here. Like I didn’t know who I was until Byatt told me.
And I know what Reese would say. I know she’d say that’s not healthy, say that’s not how it’s supposed to work. But the whole world is coming down around us every day, and don’t we have bigger problems?
No, Reese isn’t Byatt, but I like her. I like how she talks without talking. I even like that she doesn’t always like me.
BYATT
CHAPTER 7
Trying to blink but what
Slow thick like my tongue hot and dry here a sliver of something here the world sneaking back under my eyelids here I am I am I am
Awake.
Heat running through my head like a current. Light pricking at my eyes until I’m in a bed in a room. And I don’t hurt, but I feel my whole body at once.
The room is big. Built for something different than this. Peeling linoleum floor. Curtain half drawn around me, and through the gap a bulletin board on the wall, hanging at an angle, and three other beds, all empty. I reach out to touch the curtain, to pull it back, to
Can’t move. Hands strapped down, held by my wrists, IV needle slipped in through my skin.
Somewhere a door opening heavy, muffled steps a