Wilder Girls

by Rory Power

  She’s almost out of the room when it bursts out of me. “Is Byatt going to be okay?” My voice is about to crack, and it would be embarrassing if I cared about that at all. “Will she come down soon?”

  Welch stops. Doesn’t turn around. Just the line of her shoulders against the dark, and then she keeps going. Leaves me in the kitchen with my vision blurring. And even though I can still feel her hands around my neck, Reese is all I want.

  * * *

  —

  “I bet it’s nothing,” I try, like it’ll make more sense if I say it out loud.

  “That’s right,” Reese says.

  She’s watching me from the top bunk. I’m underneath on mine, flat on my back, arms folded across my chest. I thought maybe she’d stay away, like she has been since I got Boat Shift, but she followed me upstairs as if none of that ever happened. And I tried to sleep—we both did—but halfway into the night I let out a sigh, and Reese leaned over the side of her bunk to look down at me.

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  But we both know only the sickest girls go up to the infirmary. And most of them never come down again.

  I wrap myself up tighter in my jacket. “I’m worried.”

  “I know.”

  “She’s all I have.”

  A heartbeat of quiet, and I realize how it must sound to Reese. Reese, who is right here.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “It’s okay.”

  I know this is the part where I’m supposed to tell her I didn’t mean it. But the truth is I never think of Reese as mine. As if someone like her could belong to someone like me, to anyone at all.

  “Really, though,” Reese says. “Byatt will be fine.”

  “You can’t promise that.”

  She frowns, rolls back over onto her bunk so I can’t see her anymore. “I’m not promising.”

  “Okay,” I say, and hear her squirm around to get comfortable.

  “What about the time we went to that museum?” she says slowly. “The one in Portland.”

  Byatt and I used to do this, for the first little while after the Tox. Trading stories from before, the two of us on the bottom bunk, and Reese above, never saying anything but listening. I know now she was listening.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “I remember that.”

  “I’d never been to Portland before.”

  “You’d never been anywhere,” I say with a laugh.

  “And we got lunch in that food court, with the soda machines. We kept mixing them all in one cup.”

  “It was a fun field trip,” I say.

  “My favorite part was when you got sick in the planetarium.”

  It’s almost what Byatt would say. Reese is trying, but she can’t get it quite right, because nobody’s Byatt but Byatt, not even the girl in these memories. There’s this place in her, somewhere nobody can touch, not me or Reese or anyone. It’s just hers, and I don’t even know what it is, really, just that it’s there, and that she takes it with her when she goes.

  CHAPTER 6

  I don’t want the morning, but it comes anyway. Hard and bright, sun out from the clouds. I bury my face in my pillow, dreading the sight of the emptiness where Byatt should be.

  The top bunk creaks, and I hear Reese whisper my name. I roll over, ease my eye open, my blind one pulsing with hurt like it always does when I wake. There she is, peering down at me over the edge of her bed. Her hair’s coming loose from her braid, fine wisps of gold falling in her eyes. Small rounded nose and low, flaring cheekbones.

  “Hey,” she says, and my mouth goes dry. Have I been staring? “Did you know that you snore?”

  Oh. I swallow down what tastes almost like disappointment. “I don’t snore.”

  “Sure you do. It’s this little whistling.” She tilts her head. “Like a bird. Or a kettle.”

  My cheeks are hot, and I shut my eye tightly. “This is really nice. I like being bullied first thing in the morning.”

  She laughs. I look up just in time to see it. Her hair full of shine, her head thrown back, throat bared to the sunlight. She’s in a good mood this morning. I can’t understand why. Doesn’t she remember what happened to Byatt? Doesn’t she care?

  She might not care, but I do. And I’m not letting this go until I know Byatt’s all right.

  “Where are you going?” Reese asks as I get to my feet.

  “The infirmary.” I bend down, do up my boots. We sleep with them on to keep the cold from setting too deep, but I always loosen my laces before bed. “I’m visiting Byatt. You coming?”

  “No,” Reese says, her chin propped on the edge of her bunk, “considering Headmistress will never let you up there.”

  Maybe not, but I’m Boat Shift now, and I have the knife in my belt to prove it. If there’s an exception to be made, Headmistress will make it for me. “She’s my best friend,” I say. “It’s worth trying.”

  Reese is quiet for a moment, and when I look up she’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite place. Not anger—I know that on her too well—but something softer. “I don’t know, Hetty,” she says. “Is it really friendship with you and Byatt?”

  I’ve wondered. Of course I have. And I love Byatt more than anything, more than myself, more than the life I had before Raxter. But I know the warmth in my heart when I look at her. How it burns smooth and even, without a spark.

  “Yes,” I say. “She’s my sister, Reese. She’s part of me.”

  Reese frowns and sits up, swings her legs over the edge of her bunk. “Look, I get it’s not my business—”

  “You apparently feel the need to comment on it anyway.”

  “Because it affects me,” she says, and I’m taken aback by the sting in her voice, by the snarl of her lips. “I like Byatt, okay? But I don’t want you to be with me the way you are with her.”

  “You don’t want us to be friends?”

  Reese sighs like I’ve said something wrong, like there’s something more I’m supposed to understand. “No,” she says plainly, “I don’t.”

  I can’t pretend it doesn’t send me reeling. “Well, that’s—” I start, but there’s nothing after, just an emptiness, and not as much surprise as I’d like. “Okay,” I finish at last, and head for the door. I can hear Reese saying my name, but I don’t listen, just yank the door open and hurry out into the hallway.

  It shouldn’t matter to me. I have Byatt to worry about, and besides, I wrote Reese off years ago. Too closed, I remind myself, too cold. She’s only with me because she has nobody else.

  The hallway opens onto the second-floor mezzanine, and talk drifts up from the girls gathered below in the main hall, their voices soft with sleep. A few of them will go back to bed once they’ve eaten breakfast. Sometimes that’s all there is to do.

  But across the mezzanine is the door to the infirmary staircase, and up there somewhere is Byatt. I’m wondering if I can work the lock with the point of my Boat Shift knife when the door jerks open, and there’s Headmistress, stepping off the last of the rickety, narrow stairs.

  “Excuse me,” I call, hurrying over. Headmistress looks up from the clipboard she’s carrying. As soon as she sees me, she shuts the door behind her. “Is Byatt all right? How’s she doing?”

  “I think perhaps there’s another way you might begin this conversation,” Headmistress says. She’s dressed the same as always, slacks and a button-down shirt, her sturdy hiking boots the only concession to what’s happened at her school. In her slacks pocket I can spot the edge of a bloodstained handkerchief, the one she uses when the sores on her tongue burst. “ ‘Good morning,’ for instance.”

  I stop and take a deep breath, fight the impulse to push past her. “Good morning, Headmistress.”

  She smiles brightly. “And good morning to you. How are you today?”

 
This is torture. That’s what this is. “I’m good,” I say, through gritted teeth, and she raises an eyebrow. “Well. Sorry. I’m well.”

  “I’m very glad.” She peers down at her clipboard and then, when she realizes I’m not leaving, clears her throat. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Byatt’s up there,” I say, like she doesn’t know. “Can I go see her?”

  “I’m afraid not, Miss Chapin.”

  “I won’t even go into her room,” I plead. “I’ll just talk to her through the door or something.” I don’t care if I don’t see her. I just have to know that she’s okay. That she’s still her.

  But Headmistress is shaking her head, giving me that smile adults always have in their pocket, the one that says they feel sorry for you in a way you can’t understand yet. “Why don’t you go downstairs for breakfast?”

  This isn’t fair. This is my home as much as hers. I should be able to go where I like. “It’ll only take a second,” I say.

  “You know the rules.” She locks the door to the infirmary stairs with one of the keys on the ring she always has hanging from her belt. I clench my fists to keep myself from ripping it off her. What does any of this matter? We’re all sick—it’s not like seeing Byatt will make either of us worse. “I’m sorry. I know you must miss your friend.”

  My friend. My sister, that’s what I told Reese. I should’ve called her my lifeline. “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”

  It’s clear Headmistress won’t change her mind, and I’m about to turn and leave, to think of some other plan, when she presses the back of her hand against my forehead, the way my mom used to, to check for a fever. I reel back, startled. She only makes a disapproving sound and does it again.

  “How are you feeling?” she says. “You don’t seem warm.”

  It takes me a minute to remember, but she’s talking about when I got back from Boat Shift. That was the day before yesterday, but it feels like ages ago.

  “I’m fine,” I say, inching away uncomfortably. Headmistress doesn’t usually like to let you know she cares.

  Before the Tox it was different. I remember the first time I met her. How nervous I was, coming up here from Norfolk all by myself. Thirteen and alone, and I missed my mother, and when Headmistress saw me getting teary during the school tour, she told me her door was always open if I ever needed someone to talk to or even just a little space away from the other girls.

  “Well,” Headmistress says, plucking a piece of lint from the collar of my jacket, “I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better. I’m sure your friend Miss Winsor will follow suit. And in the meantime she’s lucky to have you looking for her.”

  It runs through me like a current. “Looking for her?” Like she’s missing, like she’s gone, and I heard Headmistress right, I know I did.

  For a moment her expression freezes, and then she smiles, strain showing through. “Looking out for her,” she corrects me. “Now why don’t you go down to breakfast? You must be hungry.”

  I linger for a beat longer, enough to see Headmistress’s knuckles turn white where she’s gripping the clipboard, and that does it. I back up, give her my best smile, and head down to the main hall. There are the other girls, dotted in clusters, taking small, controlled bites of molding bread and breaking the edges off stale crackers.

  It punches back into me. Everything that’s happened, everything I’ve seen and the secrets I’ve kept. The others are rationing food and starving themselves through breakfast, and I held what they needed in my own two hands.

  I can’t do this. Not now.

  I pick my way through the others, to the double doors at the front entrance, and slip outside. My jacket is too thin to keep out the cold, but it’s better here than in the main hall. At least this way nobody can remind me of what I’ve done.

  * * *

  —

  I spend the rest of the day out by the water, at the point where the stones are bleached and smooth. I count my fingers as I lose the feeling in them, let the weak sun scatter across my numb skin. When I get back to my room for the night, Reese is already there, sprawled on her top bunk. Asleep, or pretending to be. This distance between us is getting too familiar. But at least this time she’s not avoiding me. At least this time she’s here.

  I don’t know if Byatt ever will be again. And I can’t let that stand.

  I wait until the moon is high. My mattress groans as I get out of bed, and I hold my breath, wait to make sure Reese hasn’t heard. Nothing from her bunk. I edge toward the door, and she’s still, her hair burning in the black as I slip into the hallway.

  It’s empty; only a few snatches of talk from the dorms breaking the quiet. The youngest girls are whispering about something, laughter here, a hush there, and they don’t hear a thing as I tiptoe past to crouch where the hallway opens to the mezzanine.

  There’s the door to the infirmary staircase, shut tight as always. Without a key, there’s no way past it for me. So the best way to get to the infirmary rooms, then, is the roof. It slants up from the second floor to the roof deck, with dormers for each window poking out. If I get up there, I can sneak around the back side, climb through one of the windows without Gun Shift or Headmistress catching me.

  I count to ten. Even steps so the floorboards don’t creak.

  I never minded the dark before Raxter. Never had it, really, not on the base with the steady glare of the floodlights. Here, it feels different, somehow alive.

  I tug my jacket around me tight. And go, across the open mezzanine, past the top of the staircase and into the mouth of the north wing. There’s no one here as I make my way down the corridor. Just empty rooms. A handful of faculty offices, papers long since burned. Bare bed frames in teachers’ dorms. Chairs broken up for kindling. At the end is the Gun Shift room, the admissions sign still on the door. The open window, chilled fall air gusting through. My way out.

  It’s easy, hoisting myself up like I did every day for Gun Shift. Strange without Byatt behind me to swat at my heels, but soon enough I’m crouched low on the slope of the roof, shingles wet with melted frost under my hands. On the deck above me, I can see the silhouettes of two girls with their guns aimed. They’re looking straight ahead, out at the woods as they talk softly to each other. Good. As long as I’m quiet, they won’t notice.

  I crawl forward, toward the nearest dormer. Through it I can see one of the infirmary rooms, just a bed and bare mattress draped in shadow, door closed to the hallway. No Byatt, but no Headmistress either. I notch my shoulder in under the window frame and start to work it up.

  The wood’s warped after a year and a half without maintenance, and I have to stop every few shoves, make sure the girls on Gun Shift haven’t heard me. Feet slipping on the shredded shingles, and below me the night swallows the ground, but I don’t look. One, two, three, and the window shudders up, opens maybe a foot.

  I don’t go through. I wait, crouched on the sill, and I watch as Headmistress’s candle lights up a strip at the bottom of the door and fades out. Footsteps tapping on the stairs as she heads down to the second floor. And then quiet.

  I go in headfirst, scramble up to standing. There are six rooms on the third floor, three at the front and back each. I’m in the one closest to the stairs. Five more to check before someone catches me.

  Cross to the door, test the latch. It’s unlocked. These doors have bolts on the outside, left over from the house’s earliest days and put to use after we got sick, but with nobody here, Headmistress must not bother doing them up. I pull it open with both hands.

  Out in the narrow hallway I stop again and listen. The house is never silent, not one this old and not now that everything’s changed, but I don’t hear Headmistress or Welch anywhere. Don’t hear Byatt either, but I tell myself she’s probably just asleep.

  I try the opposite door. Unlocked, too, and the room empty just lik
e the other.

  It’s fine. Four more rooms. Four more places she could be.

  But the third one’s empty, and the fourth, and by the time I get to the fifth room, I’m breathing hard. I can hear my heart beating in my ears, and she’s not here, she isn’t, she isn’t.

  Sixth door. Swinging wide. The bed empty, mattress askew and dipped in moonlight. And there, amid a set of scuff marks on the floor, a needle and thread. Byatt’s. The ones she always carried in her pocket, the ones she used to fix me.

  She’s gone.

  Dread, cold and spreading, but I push it away. Something happened, but whatever it was, she got through it, like she gets through everything. She’s somewhere, and she’s alive. I should check the offices on the second floor, and every classroom, and hell, maybe the big storage closet just to be—

  A sound on the stairs. Someone’s coming.

  I freeze, then snatch up the needle and thread and hurry back to the first room. The open window still waiting, air gusting through. No time, can’t climb out without making too much noise, and there’s a light, Headmistress’s candle, closer, closer—here. It stops in front of the door to this room.

  Can’t move. Can’t breathe. If Headmistress comes in, if she catches me, I don’t know what she’ll do.

  And then something I haven’t heard in a year and a half, not since Mr. Harker left. The crackle of static, the filter and hiss of a walkie-talkie, and a voice. A man’s voice. It’s like cold water in my veins, and a shiver scrapes over me.

  “Raxter, call in, over.”

  There’s a beep, and then a hitch in the static. “This is Raxter, over.”

  I jerk with surprise and narrowly miss hitting my head against the window frame. It’s Welch, not Headmistress like I was expecting. Welch doesn’t come up here much, if ever.

  “Requesting status report,” the man says. “Over.”

  It must be someone from the base on the coast—the Navy or the CDC. They’re the only other people in the world who know what’s happening here. Even our parents don’t know the whole truth. Influenza, I think that’s what they were told. I wonder if they knew it was a lie.