Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,51
girls have such varied symptoms.”
You girls, she says, like it’s not something worth talking about. I keep my face blank, file it away. Let her think I haven’t noticed. Better yet, let her think I don’t care.
“We do know, at least, that it’s not airborne,” she goes on, “and it can’t be contracted off contaminated surfaces, which has helped with containment. But we need your help to know more. So, Byatt. Let’s start with before it happened.”
* * *
—
Before what. Before I got there, before Raxter changed, before I ever found it on the map.
Here is Boston in my hand, spilling between my fingers. Brick and stone and a handful of streets eating their own tails. I walk and walk and lose my way and always come back.
And in the other hand, Raxter. No ferry on the horizon, mainland far and farther. Water and shoreline born new every day. Everything what it wants to be. Everything mine.
I’m buried there no matter where I go.
* * *
—
“Is there anything you can think of in the lead-up? Anything off, different?”
I shrug. It was normal I guess
Hetty told me something, though. Some girls had a fight at breakfast the day it started
“What kind of fight? They argued?”
No like hair pulling
But I didn’t see
“Okay. And who got sick first?”
Mostly seniors I think and then teachers
Your age
Paretta snorts. “I won’t ask how old you think I am.” I start to write, and she laughs outright, holds her hand up over her eyes.
Born yesterday
“How kind.”
For most of the teachers, the end came quick. Our nurse was ancient—I think she died even before the Tox got to her—and a few of the others went out into the woods and never came back. To spare food for the rest of us, that’s what the note they left said. But the rest, women my mother’s age, gray just starting to thread through their hair, they died like it was a fever. Just dropped, their fingers not even turning black like ours.
“And how many of you girls would you say are left?”
The stack of files is looming. So many names, so many girls long gone. I stopped counting after a while, pulled the borders of the world in tight so only the three of us were inside.
Maybe 60 but not sure
“Your friends? Hetty and Reese? Are they okay?”
I never said. I would never say. I let the warmth drain away, jaw set, eyes narrowed.
How do you know them
She waves a hand. “We know all of you.”
There it is again. Said lightly, like it’s nothing, but the pill she gave me was labeled “RAX009.” And if I’m 009, will one of my girls be 010?
No. They’re mine, and I’m not letting them go.
She’s fine
We’re all fine
I know Paretta wants more. She can’t have it.
You’ve asked questions my turn
Paretta shifts on the bed, almost uneasily. She looks like the therapists my mother used to send me to when they realized I wasn’t going to open up the way they wanted. “Sure.”
Why me
I’m watching her closely, and when she smiles at me, I can spot the sadness underneath.
“I’ll tell you the truth, Byatt,” Paretta says. “There’s really no reason at all.”
I think she expected me to be hurt. But it’s a relief more than anything else. I’m not special. I’m not immune. I’m not better at fighting this off, and that’s good, because I don’t want to.
Right place right time?
“Sure.” She gets up. “Something like that.”
* * *
—
It was Mona who started it for me. She came down from the infirmary and I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she was still alive. I asked how she was and I asked what had happened, and she barely said anything.
I was going to leave when she laid her hand on the inside of my arm. And then, in a wry voice: “They’ll ruin it.”
When I turned around I saw Headmistress talking to Hetty. Watching me.
That night, after Gun Shift, after Mona’s flare-up, I snuck out of the bunk I share with Hetty. When I came back I told Reese I’d gone downstairs, and she was Reese, and she didn’t ask, and I needed it that way because it wasn’t true.
Really, I went to Mona’s room. Her friends had moved in together and left her alone, so she was sleeping in the single at the end of the hall. Her door was unlocked. I went in. There was barely any light from the window, but I could see her prone on the