Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,59
longer I can do this. How much longer I can keep hope burning in my heart.
I lose sight of Welch and Taylor as the house swallows them up, and then I catch a sliver of Welch’s face through the gaps in the walls, the beam of the flashlight bouncing off the white bark of the birch.
“Let’s put her down,” Welch says, “before my arm falls off.”
I bite my lip to keep myself from calling out. Her. This is real.
“Where are they?” says Taylor. She must mean whoever was on the other end of that walkie call.
“They’ll pick her up,” Welch says. “We can leave her here.”
“What about—”
There’s a fizzing sound, and then the house bursts with red. Through the holes torn in the wall I can see Welch holding a flare, the bloodlight harsh and sparkling. “This should keep the animals back,” she says. I shift to one side to get a good look as she wedges the flare into the branches of the birch.
I hear Taylor’s voice from inside the house. “Is that it, then?”
A pause, and I squint into the dark. Welch is facing the birch, peering at something on its trunk. She’s quiet for a beat too long, and then she turns back to where Taylor must be standing.
“That’s it,” she says. “Let’s get back.”
“Wait,” Reese whispers, like she knows I’m only a few seconds away from dashing into the house and tearing open the body bag. “Just a little longer.”
Welch comes tramping out of the house, with Taylor close behind. Taylor looks like she’s about to be sick, and against my will I feel a pang of pity. Maybe she didn’t ask for this. But then neither did I.
They head off down the path, and I track their flashlight beam through the trees. Smaller and fainter, until I can’t see it anymore. I stand up, branches cracking underfoot. I don’t wait for Reese, just snatch up the shotgun and make a break for it across the reeds. I don’t know how long we have before the others show up. I won’t lose my chance.
Into the red light of the house. There’s the body bag, tucked at the base of the birch, black plastic and rubber. I stop short, the shotgun falling to the ground.
This is it. The end, or something starting.
Carefully, I step around the edge of the body bag and kneel down next to it. Think of the last time I saw Byatt, how I bent over her just like this. How she looked at me like she needed me.
Please, I think, and I reach for the zipper.
The plastic peeling back. The zipper catching, my hands shaking, and there, there—pale, sallow skin, ink-dipped fingers, and curling red hair.
Mona.
A sob shatters out of me. I pitch forward onto my hands, gasping. It’s not her. Not her not her not her.
“Hetty?”
Reese comes up behind me, lays a hand on my back. I close my eye. My whole body trembling with relief, and I think if I stood up, my legs might collapse under me.
“It’s Mona,” I say. As sorry as I am, I can’t hold back a smile, and I don’t want to.
“Shit,” Reese says. “Where the hell is Byatt, then?”
She crouches down next to me and starts zipping Mona back up. But I’m not watching Mona’s bloated face disappear. No, I’m looking at something else. There, on the trunk of the birch tree, where Welch was looking before she left.
I stand up, step over Mona’s body. The bark is curling, light from the flare casting long strange shadows, but I can see it. Carved faint and unsteady, but I recognize it. BW. Byatt Winsor.
“She was here,” I say. It’s the best thing in the world, relief sweet and soothing. “Look. She was here, and she was alive.”
I wait for Reese to tell me I’m wrong, to remind me how things usually go, but she doesn’t. Just rests her chin on my shoulder, her cheek tilted against mine. The birch bark is smooth, and my fingers leave trails of blood behind from where Reese’s silver hand punctured my skin.
“Do you think she misses us?” I say. I’m aching for it, for the day I’ll hear Byatt tell me she wanted to come home as much as I wanted to find her.
A moment, and then Reese steps away from me, into the shadows. I turn to face her. Of course she misses us—that’s all Reese has to say. But she only looks at me and