Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,36

suit, plastic and pale sleepy blue, I can see it through the curtain as it approaches. Pushing in and shaking an arm to keep the curtain from clinging and it says

Feeling okay?

* * *

—

He is a boy, he says.

His name is Dietrich.

He’s just joking. He doesn’t know why he said that.

His name is Teddy and he’s nineteen. He’s only a Seaman and this is his first day. He was barely at Camp Nash for a week before they sent him here, and he is still not sure why they did because all he does is move equipment and look out of windows. He is sorry, he is rambling, but it’s only that he doesn’t know what the CDC doctors are saying most of the time, and medicine is confusing and he is very nervous.

Look hard, try to remember how a boy is built. Can only see his eyes above his surgical mask, the rest of his body blurred by the plastic suit. Hair brown like mine, skin golden but faded, like it’s missing the sun.

Teddy asks me questions. Teddy asks me what day it is. He asks me my birthday, my last name, the price of milk. I don’t answer I want to but the words won’t line up on my tongue.

Jack fell down and broke his crown, he says. Jill Jill Come on you know this.

Jill came tumbling I say but that’s all can’t and oh god I forgot I forgot how it hurts like a shock like bile stinging in my throat like a shiver in my bones shaking and screaming and if I don’t stop I’ll just break apart and eyes wet stomach heave

Quiet Teddy says please be quiet that hurts us both

Tells me it’s okay. Tilts a cup of water to my lips, drip, drip and swallow. Locks the door behind him when he goes.

* * *

—

Alone, awake, all of me here in my body. Nobody around, just the whir of a fan somewhere beyond my curtain. Tug and tug but the straps around my wrists have no give.

I think I have been a problem all my life. Here I am where problems go. First Raxter and now here, and I have always been heading here, haven’t I, haven’t I. Too bright and too bored and something missing, or perhaps something too much there.

It was my mother’s idea and my father just nodded and went to sit in another room. Silence all that summer until they put me in a car headed for Raxter. Nobody there will know, I told myself. Nobody will know what you do when you’re bored. What you do just because you can.

* * *

—

Teddy comes back with the sun, tells me they’re figuring it out. Quiet for now, he says, and I don’t mind. I remember the hurt. And he lays out a packet of forms, unbuckles my wrists and moves the IV stand and helps me write the answers down.

Byatt

Byatt Winsor

16 almost 17

January 14th

No allergies

Elizabeth and Christopher Winsor

Beacon Hill

What street?

West Cedar

House?

Number 6

You’re getting anxious, Teddy says. Don’t get anxious.

I almost forgot, I write.

But you didn’t.

* * *

—

Wake up before I’m supposed to IV still full a haze I can’t blink away and when I close my eyes I am back back in the woods that night the night I came here

Cold damp irises crunching under my boots and Welch holding me tight for the best she says for your friends like there’s a choice I made but it wasn’t I didn’t and pulled me from the infirmary marched me down the stairs no guards no nothing Hetty asleep somewhere Hetty alone

She needs me I said and Welch said no said she needs you to do this

Through the gate into the trees sounds in the brush animals moving their eyes like torches Welch’s breath warm on my ear and then people waiting

They took me even though I fought even though I ran dart in my thigh and a fog in my brain and Welch leaning over me

I’m sorry she said and I think the worst part is I think she meant it

* * *

—

Something blue out in the bigger room, and I notice, my eyes clear, world firm and real around me. Barely time to see it all, barely time to check my IV and see it’s empty before the curtain’s sliding back, a rustle of plastic pushing through, and then it’s a person, a woman in a suit like Teddy’s, standing at the foot of the