Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,64

white in the moonlight.

I don’t try to help her. The sting of her words is still fresh, and I got her out of that house, after all. That’s enough for now. “Get up. We have to make it back over the fence.”

We can’t go through the gate, so we’re heading for the north edge of the island, where the fence ends in great brick columns at the lip of the cliff. We’ll have to scramble up them and over the fence, back onto school grounds.

I know where we are now, and Reese is in no shape to be leading anybody anywhere, so I shoulder the shotgun, bend down, and pull her to standing. I’d carry her, but even if I could, I don’t think she’d let me.

“Come on,” I say. She’s heavy against me as we stagger down the road.

There’s light snatching at the sky by the time we hit the fence. I can’t bring myself to look up at the roof deck. If somebody’s on Gun Shift, let them shoot us now and get it over with. But nobody does, and we follow the tree line where it presses up against the fence, branches yearning and straining through the iron bars, follow it to the edge of the island.

Sea spray whipping at my skin. Pines pressing close on one side, the fence on the other, and out ahead the earth falls away. Just the cliff, granite worn by the wind, and a twenty-foot drop to the water below. I glance up at the house. Every window dark, no lantern on the roof deck. Nobody’s up looking for us. And nobody out on the horizon, either—the ocean empty and endless, waves breaking in ranks.

The fence ends right at the lip of the cliff, forming a T with a thick brick column so big, so close to the edge, that there’s no way around it. Not for us, not for the animals. But there are scratches and teeth broken off in the mortar. It’s not like they haven’t tried to get through.

Slowly, I drag Reese over and prop her up against the brick column. She’s pale, her eyes glazed and staring.

“Hey,” I say, shaking her lightly. I smooth my hand along her cheek, her skin too cold, too pale. Shock, maybe. I remember the sound her shoulder made, the way she screamed. She needs more help than we can afford to get her. “Come back,” I try. “Reese, it’s me.”

She blinks, slow like it’s the hardest thing she’s ever done. “I’m so tired,” she croaks.

“I know. One last push, okay?”

Here, the iron bars and the brick hit at a right angle, and there are enough breaks worn into the brick that we should be able to find a few footholds to boost us up and over. I help Reese stand and turn her around.

“See?” I say, pointing to one spot on the column, about knee-high, where some animal’s torn a chunk out. “Climb up. I’ll spot you.”

Her right arm limp by her side, useless and wrong, but Reese is stronger than anybody I’ve ever met. And even after everything, she braces her injured shoulder against the fence, wedges her foot into the crack in the brick, and levers herself up with a muffled scream. Her scaled left hand scraping the mortar loose, and I watch with a strange sort of pride swelling in my chest as she pulls her body over the fence.

She’s left scoring in the brick, and that makes it easier for me to follow her. Soon I’m jumping down from the top of the column and landing with a groan on the battered lawn. School-side, this time. We’re home.

Reese staggers to her feet with a whimper. Even the glow of her hair seems dimmed, like the whole of her is draining away.

“You go upstairs,” I whisper. “I’ll put the gun back in the barn and meet you there.”

She nods, and I think she’s about to say something—an apology, maybe, for what she said at her house—but then she’s turning around and drawing up her hood, the shape of her disappearing into the dawn.

* * *

—

It was so easy sneaking to the barn that I kept looking behind me, waiting for Welch to step out of the shadows and press her pistol to my forehead, yet nobody came. But if that was easy, this, Reese—this is the hard part.

She’s in our room when I get back, sitting on my bunk, clutching her injured shoulder, and for