Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,86

are lying in wait, ready to lock me up just like Reese. Nothing for it, though, no plan to make. I don’t have anything left. I start up the stairs, leaning heavily against the wall as the pain in my hand gets worse.

The infirmary is dark, shut doors blocking the morning’s sun. The last time I was here I was looking for Byatt, and it felt like the answers were just out of reach. Now I have them—I know they’ve taken her off the island, and I know Welch was tied up in all of it—and it’s drained the fight from me. I don’t need the truth anymore. I just want to live.

Nowhere to hide down the narrow corridor. I think I’m alone up here. I stumble from door to door, listening for something, anything. Until there, the last door in the corridor, to the room where I found Byatt’s needle and thread. The locks done up, and a muffled sound from inside, like the springs of a mattress.

Reese.

Easy, I tell myself. If she’s there, someone else might be too. I lie down on the floorboards, my left eye to the ground. I can see under the door, through a gap maybe an inch or two tall. There are the legs of the cot, and what looks like a stool pulled up next to it. No Headmistress and no Taylor.

I start at the top, undo the deadbolts one by one. They’re driven deep into the wall, and with only my right hand working, it takes all my strength to slide them back. I’ve just finished the first one when I hear it. Soft, hardly there.

“Hetty?”

I press my forehead against the door. It’s her. It’s really her. “Hey. Are you okay?”

A beat of silence and then: “I think so.”

“What did they do to you? What did they want you for?”

“They wanted…,” she says, trailing off, and she sounds woozy. “They wanted a way off the island.”

The blow to the head she took back in the music room must have her dazed still, and the way she’s talking is strange, like she’s not all there. I pull at the next deadbolt, and it barely moves. “Hang in there,” I say. “I’m getting you out.”

I hear her take a catching breath, and I think she’s about to say something when somebody, somebody not Reese, says my name from down the hall.

Taylor.

I turn around slowly. The edges of her are smudged in the darkness of the hallway, but there she is. Watching me.

“Back up,” she says. “Get away from the door.”

“Taylor?”

She takes a few steps toward me, and I can see her face now, can see the stubborn set of her jaw and the knife in her belt. I turn more fully toward her, make sure the makeshift bandage on my hand is visible. If she thinks I’m not a threat, maybe we can find a way out of this.

“I just wanted to talk to her,” I lie. “Just to make sure she’s okay.”

“I don’t believe you.” Taylor’s voice is flat, harsh. “I said get away from the door.”

“Is she all right? Can you tell me that, at least?”

“Back up. Right now.”

Taylor used to be one of us. Underneath everything, she has to care at least a little. If I can just keep pushing, maybe I’ll get her to crack. Maybe I’ll get myself another chance. “What did you do to her? What did you want her for? Tell me that and I’ll go. We can pretend I was never here.”

Taylor shakes her head. “You know I can’t let you leave, Hetty.”

I put on my best smile. “Sure, you can. You can do whatever you want.”

“I am.” She takes another step closer. “Headmistress and I are getting off this fucking island. And if anybody knows how, it’s your friend.”

I remember what she said at the Harker house that night. How she said she left Boat Shift because we deserved better. What kind of bullshit. This is what she really did it for, why she knocked Reese out, why she left us in that room to die. To get away.

“You really think they’ll just let you leave? The Navy and the CDC?” She can’t be that naive. I used to be, and look what happened.

She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not about to stay here.”

“But what about the rest of us?”

“I am so sick of that question,” Taylor growls. “What about me, huh? What about me?”

I can’t argue with it, can’t push