Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,52

bottom bunk.

“Hey,” I whispered. “You still alive?”

She didn’t answer, so I went over, shook her until her eyes opened. She looked awful, the gills on her neck fluttering slowly, their edges frayed and bloody.

“Go away,” she said.

Instead, I knelt down in front of her. I wasn’t going until I got what I wanted. “What did you mean? In the hall this morning.”

She sat up. So slowly, like it was the hardest thing, until at last she was looking at me, her legs crossed underneath her, red hair shining so dimly I almost didn’t notice. She took a long breath, and by the end of it, I thought she’d forgotten I was there. But then she reached up, ran one shaking finger over the scalloped lips of her gills.

“You’d keep it,” she said. “If you could. Right?”

I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know what she meant. Hetty cried when she lost her eye, and I even caught Reese sometimes looking at her scaled hand like she’d rather just cut it off. Me, I never minded. Bled, and screamed, but that’s the cost of sleeping easy.

“No,” I lied. “Would you?”

She looked so tired. I almost felt bad for her. “Go to bed, Byatt,” she said.

But I couldn’t face my room and my bunk, so I went downstairs, wandered the length of the main hall, walking the cracks between the boards. And I thought about Mona, and I thought about me, and of course I would keep it.

Because I think I’d been looking for it all my life—a storm in my body to match the one in my head.

That’s where Welch found me. I told her I had a headache, and she felt my forehead, led me up to the infirmary, and took my blood—for good measure, she said, just in case—and then sent me back to my room. And when I got there, I climbed into bed with Reese, Reese who wouldn’t force a lie out of my mouth.

If I hadn’t spoken to Mona. If I hadn’t left my room that night. There are a million ways coming here doesn’t happen, but none of them feel possible. I was always on my way. This has always already happened.

CHAPTER 12

“And how have you been feeling?”

I shrug.

“No stress? Anything you felt a particularly pronounced emotional response to? Because you’ve been through quite a lot.”

I’ve never seen this woman before now. She came in after Paretta. Didn’t tell me her name, just pulled a wheelchair over to my bed and sat down like the room was hers.

“Is there something you’re uncomfortable with?” she asks.

She’s dressed the way Paretta usually is, that same protective suit and a surgical mask. Only her mask is clear plastic. So I can feel connected to her, I think, but it only distorts the bottom half of her face.

“Byatt?” she says, leaning forward.

I look away, hunch over the whiteboard. I’m not uncomfortable, I want to write. I’m just bored.

Instead I settle for No

“No?”

Not uncomfortable

She nods, sits back. I stare down, at where the covers are pulled up over my legs.

“Do you know my name?” she asks.

No

“Would you like to?”

I point to the whiteboard.

“Why not?”

I keep my mouth closed, just blink at her slowly, and she nods like it means something.

“What about what I do?” she asks. “Would you like to know that?”

You’re a therapist

“How do you know?”

I roll my eyes.

“Have you been to one before?”

What do you think

“Let’s try something else,” she says. I know her. Brand-new, but I’ve met her a thousand times. This is how they look at me when I don’t give myself away.

She lifts up her clipboard, hands me a thin, bound book she’s been holding underneath. Navy, with gold embossed lettering. I recognize it. A Raxter yearbook. The last one we made before the Tox, the only year I had whole.

I fumble for the whiteboard.

How did you get that

She doesn’t answer. Opens it, flicks through it slowly. “This was your first year at Raxter, yes? The year before the Tox?” I shrug. “You’re not in here very much.”

Don’t like pictures

“Oh, look. Here’s one.” She holds the book out to me, and I take it, rest it on my lap.

It’s me, Hetty, and Reese, sitting in a row on the couch in the main hall. Hetty’s facing me, telling a story or something, and Reese is perched on the arm of the couch behind me, in the middle of braiding my hair. She’s smiling—only a little, but it’s there—and I have my eyes closed, my