Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,65
a second I just watch her, watch the play of light on her skin. It was her life that fell apart out there, not mine. I have to be the one to put us back together.
“Hey,” I say. “You okay?”
She chuckles, shakes her head. “Okay?”
“Sorry. Stupid question.” At least she’s talking to me. I come farther into the room, shut the door behind me. “Let me do something for your shoulder.”
She doesn’t answer, so I step around her and reach for my pillow. It still has a pillowcase even though most of the others got stitched into makeshift blankets. I peel the pillowcase off and start ripping down the side seam.
“I don’t think it’s popped all the way out,” I say, but that’s not why she’s angry, and we both know it. “I’ll make a sling, and you can just rest it for a bit.”
I help Reese cradle her right arm against her chest and loop the pillowcase around. I bend over her to make a knot in the sling, and freeze when I feel her let out a shaky breath, her forehead leaning against my chest.
“What the hell happened to him?” she whispers.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He was out there a long time.” And, I want to say, he’s not like us. The Tox swallowed him whole the way I’ve never seen it touch a Raxter girl.
I take one more moment, brush my thumb against the nape of her neck, and then I drop onto the bed next to her. “Maybe we can get you a real bandage tomorrow. Or some painkillers.”
She doesn’t answer. I’m not even sure she’s breathing. I can’t let her disappear into herself. I can’t let the Tox win.
I reach out, rest my hand on her knee, and squeeze. Just to reassure her, just to remind her I’m with her. But she flinches away from me.
“Reese?”
“Don’t,” she says, and I jerk back as she lurches to her feet, scrubs at her face with her silver hand. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve asked.”
“I mean all of it,” she says, and when she turns to look at me, it’s like I can see it, the mask of calm she’s wearing and the anguish underneath. “You have to stop, Hetty.”
“Okay,” I say, holding up my hands. We just need to calm down, and we will figure out a way to fix this. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” Reese snaps. “It’s not fucking okay.” She sounds so resigned, so close to giving up, and I feel a bright flare of panic, because I can’t lose her too. “I don’t know how any of this is supposed to work after what you did.”
And no, I can’t lose her, but there are only so many ways I can explain this. Only so many times I can justify keeping us alive before I lose my grip.
“There was no other solution,” I say. I’m struggling to keep steady, my fists clenched so hard I can feel my fingernails biting deep. “It was him or us, and I made the only decision I could.”
“So, what,” she says, acid dripping from her voice, “I don’t get to be mad that my father is dead? That the Tox ripped him apart so badly you had to put him down?”
I shoot to my feet, and I don’t know what it is—anger or pure desperation—that has me so wound up I’m shaking. “No, actually,” I say, “you don’t get to be mad that I saved your life.”
Reese narrows her eyes. I brace myself for whatever’s coming next. I’ve never met anyone who likes fighting the way she does, never met anyone so good at it. But the silence beats on. At last she lets out a long, slow breath, tension draining from her shoulders.
“Do you think I want this?” she says. She sounds hoarse, and I can barely pick out one word from the next, every ounce of exhaustion crashing down on both of us at once. “We don’t get to choose what hurts us.”
My heartbeat thundering in my ears, the slow coil of dread tightening in my chest. Please, please don’t be doing what I think you are.
“Reese,” I start, but she shakes her head.
“I understand what you did. I think you did the right thing. And I’m still angry about it.” She shrugs her good shoulder. “What else is there to say?”
For a moment I’m back there in the dark, my life in my hands. There was no other way. It was kill