Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,41

from behind me.

“Oh, good, another one,” Reese says, but she sounds a bit gentler, looks almost rueful as she smiles at me.

I sit down next to her, try to keep from raising my eyebrows as Julia takes a seat opposite me. We keep mostly to our own circles, but now that I’m Boat Shift, are Julia and Carson part of mine? Or are they here to make sure I’m keeping all the right secrets from Reese?

It’s a stifling quiet as we eat. I have nothing to say, and I know Reese certainly doesn’t, and every minute we spend here is one I’m not looking for Byatt.

Carson sits up straighter, opens her mouth to start a new conversation, and Reese levels her with a look. “We don’t always have to be talking, you know.”

“Sorry,” I say, giving Reese a sidelong glare. She has the decency to look a little guilty. “We’re just tired.”

“No problem,” says Julia. If anything, she seems re-lieved to not have to make any more conversation. There’s a fresh bruise peeking out from under the hem of her shirt, and she looks exhausted, like it’s sucking the life from her as it grows. I watch as she spits out a mouthful of blood, and leaves it there on the floor, not bothering to wipe it up.

I can’t finish my half of the jerky. Just the smell of it’s making me sick, and if I pay attention, if I think about it too hard, I can feel a tingle starting behind my blind eye, breaking through the low haze of pain. Reese doesn’t say anything, just takes the jerky from me and stuffs it into her pocket for later.

She looks like her dad in this light. Like the way he looked before. The same strong chin, the same eyes, all washed over with gold.

I wonder what she thinks of when she looks at me. Not my parents—I never kept a photo of them pinned to my wall like some of the other girls did.

I don’t think of them much, my parents. I know I should. I did right after the Tox, for the first month or two. I lined up for my radio call and we had short, stilted conversations. But then they cut off our access, and things got worse, and then it didn’t matter anymore. Because if I see my parents again, they will want to hear how I missed them, how it was the worst thing that ever happened. And I’ll be lying, if I can say it at all.

* * *

—

Part of me really thought it would be that simple. A locked door, somewhere deep in the house, and Byatt on the other side of it.

Part of me really was an idiot.

After breakfast Reese followed me outside, and she kept watch as I peered through the window into Headmistress’s office. Nothing—just the bulk of her old desk and a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner.

“Byatt’s not there,” I told Reese, and I told her the same thing as I checked every classroom and every office. Every storage closet, every bathroom. The whole house unlocked like it was waiting for me, like it had something to prove. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t think past the throbbing in my head, couldn’t feel anything but the guilt of failing Byatt like this.

And Reese took my hand, like she did last night, and she led me back outside. The air bracing and quick, waking the blood in my skin and thinning the pain in my head until it was barely there anymore. “There’s still tonight,” she said quietly. “It’s not over yet.”

Now we’re on the north side of the house, wandering aimlessly toward the point. Off to the left, the cliff tapering to nothing on our side of the grounds, and up ahead, a tetherball pole and a rusted swing set, both listing to one side, the dead grass around them covered in frost. I can feel the cold pricking in my lungs, points like knives, and my nose has gone numb, but I don’t mind. Out here I can breathe. Out here I feel awake.

The grounds are so open, nothing like the clustered press of the woods, and I’m thinking about that when I say, “We should get a gun,” so suddenly that Reese nearly trips.

“What for?”

My body remembers the shake and the fear as I ran for my life that first time I was out beyond the fence. “Trust me, we