by Rory Power
“Are you quite all right?” she says.
I nod, ignore the building pressure in my chest. “I’m fine. It’s just a lot to take in.”
“Why don’t you head upstairs?” Headmistress lays her hand on my shoulder, fingers trembling like the Tox is alive inside them. “Some rest will do you good.”
“She’s right,” Byatt says. “Come on.”
“But the food…” A rest is all I want, but I’m supposed to wait until the girls have taken their share, then help carry what’s left into the pantry. It’s my job.
Welch comes up alongside me and eases me away from the crowd. “We’ll take care of it,” she says. “You go sleep.”
I don’t have the energy to argue. “Okay.” I reach for the bowie knife, to give it back to her, but Welch shakes her head.
“You earned it,” she says. A knife in my belt like Julia, like Carson. I guess it’s official.
I let Byatt lead me up the stairs, and after a step or two I shut my eye. Behind us I can hear the girls scratching and clawing for the food, and I think of the ocean at the pier, of everything we threw overboard. Of the chocolate I ate without a thought for anybody stuck here.
Finally, our room, and I climb into our bunk, lie on my side. Byatt sits on the edge of the mattress, my body curling around her.
“Do you want some water, maybe?” she says.
“I’m fine, really.”
“What happened out there, Hetty?”
And I want to—oh, I want to—because if anybody knows what to say, it’s Byatt. But I swallow hard, fold a little more into myself. Everything is fine, I hear Welch say. “Nothing.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and then she leans back against me, the knobs of her second spine pressing hard into my hip.
The lines of her face are lit with the last of the sun. Sloping nose and long neck so familiar I could trace them in my sleep, rich chestnut hair hanging down around her shoulders. Mine used to be long like hers, until she cut it for me during freshman spring. The two of us out on the porch, Byatt quiet and methodical as she trimmed it so the ends brush my jaw. She still does it, every few months, the ends splitting and fraying against the blunt blade of whatever knife she’s managed to borrow from the Boat girls.
I nudge her a little, and she glances down at me. “You okay?” I ask. I forget to, sometimes. I forget she’s like the rest of us. But she just smiles fondly.
“Get some sleep. I’ll be right here.”
And I did what I did, and I saw what I saw, but Byatt is here, and I fall asleep like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
CHAPTER 5
Reese isn’t at breakfast the next morning. It’s been nearly two days since I saw her last, since I got Boat Shift, but Byatt says she’s seen her on the grounds, seen her holed up in what used to be a teacher’s office at night.
We’re sitting by the fireplace today, sharing one of the couches with Cat and Lindsay. They started the same year we did, and I never used to talk to them much outside of class. After the Tox we started drifting together, trading food and blankets. Everybody needs more help now than they did before.
Usually, I’m the one who goes for food, but I still feel sick when I think about yesterday, about the rations we tossed into the water. Byatt went today instead, and she managed to wrangle a bag of croutons. Now she takes a handful, nudges the bag in my direction.
“You have to eat something,” she says.
“Later.” I can’t. I know, I know, we threw that food away for a reason, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch Byatt counting every bite she takes.
“Hetty, a word?”
It’s Welch. I twist around on the couch to see her. Her mouth is flat, a tight, thin line, but she seems almost nervous, like she did before the Tox when she’d catch you breaking curfew.
“Sure,” I say, and get up, start toward Welch.
“I’ll save you some food,” Byatt calls. “Whether you like it or not.”
I wave over my shoulder. “Thanks, Mom.”
Welch leads me to the mouth of the hallway. This close I can see frown lines setting in her forehead, and her eyes look bright, like she’s on the edge of a fever.
“What’s up?” I say.
“Byatt is right. You should eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.” I can’t. I can’t take more than what I’ve taken already.
Welch lets out a breath. “Hetty.” And she sounds serious. “I need you to work a little harder, please.”
“What?” Just the fact that I’m in the main hall is already more than I can take.
“I told you it was your job to show everybody here that things are fine. But instead, you’re sitting there looking, quite frankly, ready to vomit.”
“I’m trying, okay?” I say, frustration bleeding into my voice.
“Not hard enough.” She looks over my shoulder, to where I know Byatt is sitting. “There are usually three of you. Where’s Reese?”
“That’s not related.”
Welch scoffs. “Everything is. After that stunt she pulled when you got Boat Shift, the two of you are on the radar.” She leans in. “The girls are watching you, Hetty. So whatever your little fight was about, I need you to fix it. Kiss and make up. Anything that gets the three of you back to normal. Normal, Hetty.”
“It’s Reese. Sulking is normal for her.”
“I’m not asking,” Welch says sharply. Her jaw set, her eyes glinting.
“Yeah.” I hold up my hands in surrender. “Okay. I’ll talk to her.”
“You won’t tell her anything you shouldn’t.”
I barely tell her anything on a good day. “I won’t.”
Welch smiles, or gets close to it, and rests her hand on my shoulder. “Thank you,” she says. “Sometime today would be good.”
She makes it a few steps away before it slips out of me. “Doesn’t it bother you? Lying to everyone?”
For a second she doesn’t answer, and then she turns. I can see it in her face, how she wants to do it right, how she wants to say the adult thing. “Yeah, it does.” And she shrugs. “So?”
So doesn’t that mean something? I want to yell. So doesn’t that matter?
“So nothing, I guess.”
She nods. “Today, Hetty.”
When I get back to Byatt I can tell she’s been watching us. Fingernails freshly bitten, frown lingering.
“I have to talk to Reese,” I say. “You better come find us in about five minutes in case she tries to kill me again.”
“It was only choking,” Byatt says, but she nods, and hooks her fingers in my belt loop to stop me as I pass. “Careful, yeah?”
I give her a smile. I’m always careful with Reese, even though she rarely is with me. “Sure.”
* * *
—
It was easier with Reese when her dad was here. Right when they set up the quarantine, they brought Mr. Harker to our side of the fence, stuck him in the wing with the teachers, and we all pretended like it wasn’t the strangest part of what was happening, having a man in the house with us.
He was here for maybe a month. We kept track of things like that, then, but now it feels so long ago I can barely remember. All that’s left are flashes. Reese and her father eating breakfast in the dining room, back before we trashed the furniture for burning. Reese and her father rigging up the generator out back. The two of them on the porch tracing constellations in the sky, Reese laughing in a way she never did with me and Byatt.
And other things too. How he started to change—slowly, at first, just an eagerness in his hands, to scratch and tear apart. The Tox, though we didn’t call it that yet. All we really knew was that one day Mr. Harker was safe and the next he wasn’t. One day he was himself, and the next he was throwing up a black sludge, grainy like dirt, a
nd looking at us with empty eyes.
Reese ignored it, pretended it was fine, picked a screaming match with Byatt, and then the next day Mr. Harker was gone. He left a note tucked in Reese’s jacket while she was sleeping, saying he had to go. Saying it was safest that way for everyone.
She ran to the fence that morning, I remember that. Cut her palms to ribbons clawing at it, trying to get through. But Taylor held her back, and me and Byatt, we watched Reese fall apart. When she came back together again, there was something gone.
It was never like that for me. Goodbyes at airports and watching the news, but my dad always came back.
* * *
—
I find Reese in the jack pine grove by the water, in the same spot where we were sitting the first day of the Tox. She’s there, now, on that same low branch of that same tree, and the only thing different from that day to this one is the glint of her silver hand as she shivers in her thin jacket.
I come up slow, in front of her where she can see, which is always safest. In the nearly two days since I last saw her, circles have darkened under her eyes. She looks hungry, I think. And cold. But it was never her who needed us. Always the other way around.
“Hi,” I say. She doesn’t look up, and I bite my lip to keep from saying something I shouldn’t. Remember what Welch said, I remind myself. Remember this is important.
“About Boat Shift.” I lean against the trunk, leave plenty of room between us. “I didn’t know I’d get it. I thought it would be you.”
“Me too,” she says, voice gritty and hoarse like it was her throat that got crushed, not mine. And I want to scream, want to wring an apology out of her. But then she looks at me, frowns. “You okay?”
It’s something. Maybe the most I can expect. “Fine. Really, fine.”
“Are you sure?” She tries for a smile. “Because you look terrible. Like, that’s a Beth in Little Women face.”
“Oh no,” I say flatly. “Do you think I might be sick?”
“At Raxter?” She raises her eyebrows, face stamped with fake surprise. “Never.”
We fall quiet, both of us I think in shock that we’ve managed to make even the weakest joke. Byatt needs to get here, and quick, before we ruin it.
I twist around to peer through the trees, and when I face front again, Reese is swinging her feet. She looks almost shy. But Reese doesn’t do shy. Even when she came out to me, it was like a weapon. “Queer,” she said then, as though she was daring me to disagree.
“You went on Boat Shift yesterday,” she says now. And waits.
“Yeah.”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s different.” I barely get the words out.
“Different how?”
“Um.” Remember Welch, remember my job. Everything is fine. “There are more trees,” I say stupidly.
“Look, Hetty, I have to know. I have to. Did you see him? My dad? My house? Anything?”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry, Reese.” She looks away, but not before I see the tears she’s blinking back. I clear my throat awkwardly, wish more than anything I could just disappear. “Where is Byatt? She was gonna come find us.”
Reese doesn’t answer, so I start toward the house. But I’m only a few yards out of the grove when Cat comes running, breathing hard. I try not to look at the blisters scattered across her hairline, each of them torn and bleeding.
“Hey,” she says. “You better get inside.”
Dread, creeping and bitter. I swallow hard. “What for?”
“It’s your girl. She’s having a flare-up.”
At first there’s nothing. Just a tingle in my fingers, a dull ache behind my blind eye. And then a dizziness, and I sway as my knees buckle.
“No,” I say. “No, I just saw her.”
“Sorry,” Cat says. “I came as quick as I could.”
It’s impossible. I was with Byatt barely ten minutes ago, and she was fine. She has to be fine.
I turn, searching for Reese, but she’s jumped down from the branch, followed me out of the grove and is right there behind me, mouth drawn in a tight line. Without a word we run for the house, faster and faster, until I’m tearing into the main hall.
Mostly empty this time of day, with only a few girls clustered by the fireplace. No Byatt. I should’ve asked Cat where she was, I should’ve, I should’ve.
“Easy,” Reese says quietly, and I reach out, fumble for her hand, squeeze tight.
I’ve been there for them all, for the flare-up that stole Byatt’s voice for nearly a week, for the one that sliced a line down her back and left her with a second spine. I have to be there for this one.
A shuddering whine breaks the air. Fear crashing over me, cold and fresh, and I tear away from Reese. That came from the back of the house, down the south wing toward the kitchen.
I elbow my way through the group by the fireplace and sprint along the hallway, classrooms and offices rushing past. Each one empty, and no Byatt, no Byatt, no Byatt. Until at last, there she is. Sprawled on the kitchen floor, her dark hair covering her face.
Please. This can’t be happening.
I crash to my knees next to her. Twin lines of blood trail from her nose, streaking across her teeth as she gasps for air. She’s crying, I think, but it’s hard to tell. One hand gripping a packet of crackers, the other clawing at her throat.
“What happened?” I say, words tumbling frantically over one another. “What hurts? What is it?”
She mouths something, and it looks like my name, but then her eyes roll back. She convulses, her muscles snapping tight as a curve sweeps up her body like a wave.
I think I’m screaming, but it sounds like nothing. Hands on my shoulders pulling me back. I bat them away, feel for a pulse on Byatt’s neck.
“Hey,” I say as she opens her eyes, both of them bloodshot. “It’s me. You’re okay.”
“I sent someone to find Welch,” Reese says. She sounds calm, deliberate, but I know Reese, and I know that means she’s panicked. She comes to stand on the other side of Byatt’s body, only she’s not watching Byatt. She’s watching me. “Hold on, okay?”
Last time there was so much blood. Blooming underneath her, pooling in the cracks between the floorboards. This time there’s only her nosebleed, smeared across her mouth, dripping onto the floor. I push up her sleeves, search for marks or wounds, anything.
“I need your help,” I say, kneeling over her. It empties me out to see her like this. “You have to tell me what’s wrong.”
She reaches up, her hand shaking, and hooks her fingers in the collar of my shirt. I bend so close I can feel her saliva sticking to my cheek.
“Hetty,” she says. “Hetty, please.”
It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Her voice sounds like metal on metal, like a million people all together, a scream and a whisper and everything in between, and it hurts, a real hurt reaching all the way to my bones. Like they’re cracking, like they’re glass.
I curl in on myself, press my hands to my ears. It feels like it lasts forever, until finally the rattle is gone from my body and I can think again.
“Shit,” Reese says, airy and weak like it hit her too. “What was that?”
I ignore her and crawl back to Byatt, who’s nearly hyperventilating, trying to sit up. And she looks afraid. A year and a half of the Tox. I’ve never seen her afraid until today.
“You’re all right,” I say, reaching out. But she shakes her head and presses her hand to my cheek. Like she’s asking, What about you?
Down the hall I can hear voices getting closer. Welch and a few others—probably Julia and Carson. This is what Boat Shift does. Clean up the mess, put it away. Except now the mess is Byatt, and I won’t let them take her from my sight.
“I’m fine,” I say when Byatt tugs on my earlobe,
pulling my attention back. “Welch is coming, okay? She’s gonna look after you.”
Byatt takes a breath, ready to say something, and Reese is there in a second, her hand clapped firmly over Byatt’s mouth.
“Don’t talk,” Reese says. “It’ll hurt.”
Welch jogs into the room, Julia and Carson a few steps behind. They’re watching Byatt, Julia’s hand lingering too close to the knife in her belt, but Welch turns to me. “Can she walk?”
I know what Byatt would say—that she’s right here, that she can speak for herself—but I don’t ever want to feel the way I did when she spoke. “I think so.”
Welch nods to Carson and Julia. “Take her up.”
I scramble to my feet, swaying a little. “I’ll help.”
“Absolutely not,” Welch says, shaking her head.
“It’s Boat Shift’s job. I’m Boat Shift.”
“Not for this you aren’t.”
Julia and Carson come closer, boots squeaking on the checkered tile. They keep from looking at me as they crouch on either side of Byatt and grab her elbows, help her up.
She doesn’t fight it. I think she knows there’s no point. She just looks at me as they take her past, and at the last second, she reaches out and smacks something into my palm.
The packet of crackers. Broken to pieces, now. She must’ve found Taylor’s stash.
I clutch them to my chest, try not to cry. She wanted me to eat. She said I shouldn’t go hungry.
“You’re going to have to put those back,” Welch says, and I swing around to look at her. She can’t be serious.
“Excuse me?”
She nods to the crackers. “Food is food.”
I hardly know what to say. But I don’t have to.
“No, thanks,” Reese says. “I think we’ll keep them.”
She looks at me, and my heart feels too big for my chest. So this is what it’s like to have Reese go to bat for you.
Welch glances between us and then shrugs. Nobody is here to see her give in, and she’s still got a soft spot for us, when she can afford to let it show.