Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,85

kneeling over me. “Did it work?” I croak.

“It’s okay,” she says. “The air’s clearing. Here, lift your arm. I think you’re supposed to keep it elevated. You’re bleeding pretty bad.”

She hoists my arm up by the elbow and peels my jacket from around my shattered hand. It feels like skin ripping off me, but it’s nothing, just more pain, and I have enough of that already.

The rest of the room is coming back into focus, and around me, I’m starting to see. All of us girls, collapsed and sprawled out where we fell. Julia and me by the door, the others spread out across the room. Every one of us, some more awake than others and starting to stir, but all with the same hazy nothingness behind our eyes.

“Outside,” I say. “We have to get out of this room.”

Slowly, the sprinklers stop spitting down, and Julia helps me cradle my arm across my chest as I get to my feet. Glass scattered, blood staining the checkered floor. I watch the girls left living drag the bodies past me, out into the hallway, and I stagger after them.

How could Headmistress do this to us? After all this time, after everything we’ve survived, how could she give up on us now?

CHAPTER 21

Sixteen dead. We take stock in the main hall, away from what’s left of the gas, Julia binding up my hand with strips of cloth ripped from a dead girl’s jacket. It’s mostly the little ones, only Emmy left from the youngest year, but Dara from my year is gone, and so are three from the year above. We line up their bodies and close their eyes.

When we’ve finished, everyone’s quiet, just the sound of muffled crying breaking the stillness. About forty of us left, and we feel so small. I see Emmy sitting by the bodies of the girls in her year, combing their hair out with careful fingers, and my heart catches in my chest.

“This is Headmistress,” Cat says, her voice cracking. “She did this to us. We can’t let her get away with it, with killing our friends. With trying to kill us.”

“What is there to do about it?” Lauren says, and I look over to where she’s standing by her friend Sarah’s body. “She’s gone.”

“I can find her,” I say, ignoring the throbbing pain in my hand. I have to. If I find her, I find Reese. And Reese is depending on me.

“And then what?” Lauren laughs harshly. “We kill her?”

“Yes,” says Cat. “That’s exactly what we do.”

There’s a murmur of agreement, starting low and building, but Lauren shakes her head. “There’s still a bear outside. The gate’s open. This house is done for and so are we. Isn’t that what we should be worried about?”

Cat starts yelling, and the room fractures into sound. I look to Julia, who hasn’t said a word. She’s got her arm around Carson, whose head is tucked in the hollow of Julia’s neck. She has her girl. I’m missing both of mine.

“Hey,” I say softly. “What do you think?”

Julia looks at Cat and Lauren as they argue, and then back at me. “Go find Reese,” she says. “She doesn’t have time for this.”

I smile gratefully, give her hand a squeeze with my working one before backing up slowly, inching toward the door. When nobody gives me a second glance, I duck through, and step out into the corridor. Hurry back to the main hall, my gait uneven, head still clearing from the fog. My left hand is pulsing in time with my heart, blood still seeping through my bandages, and I know it’ll never straighten and bend the way it used to.

Through the windows the day is bright, full of sun, and if I listen close, I can hear the bear, huffing sharp breaths just outside the door. It must have finished with Lindsay’s body. And now it’s coming for the rest of us.

There are only a few places secure enough for Headmistress to use to hold Reese. One of them is her office, but I can see from here that the door is open, and so I don’t bother checking. Just hurry up to the second floor, every step stronger than the last. Headmistress tried to take me down and she couldn’t—I’m not letting her take Reese, either.

There, the door to the infirmary staircase. It’s ajar, swinging slightly like somebody just went through. But I don’t hear anybody up on the third floor. Maybe Taylor and Headmistress