Wilder Girls

by Rory Power

  The woman fills a plastic cup of water for me and holds it to my mouth until I take a sip. “We’ll get you something to write with,” she says. “In the meantime it’s probably best to let you rest. You’ve been through a lot.”

  I keep drinking until the cup is empty. She dumps it in a trash basket by the foot of my bed and comes closer. “I’m Dr. Paretta,” she says, bending over my right arm. “Should I call you Byatt? Or is there something else you like to go by? A nickname, maybe?”

  I shake my head.

  “Byatt it is. All right, you might feel a pinch.”

  I don’t see exactly what she does. There are too many folds to her suit. But when she comes away it’s with a tube of blood. She holds it up to the light. Squints, like she can tell what’s happening inside, and then fetches a small red cooler from the foot of the bed and slots this vial of blood inside, next to another one. “Potential RAX,” I think it’s labeled, but she closes it before I can read the rest.

  “One last thing, before I forget, and then I’ll leave you to sleep.” She takes my hand in between hers, curls my fingers and bends my wrist so that I can feel the side of the bed frame. There’s a button there, round and raised.

  “This is your call button. In case the pain gets too bad, or you need something. Do you feel it?”

  I nod. She looks at me, and then she straightens back up. Waits another second or two. Then: “Do you remember my name?”

  My lips peel apart. “Paretta.”

  I wanted to say it, to say something, to have my voice again, and I didn’t think it would hurt that bad. Just one word couldn’t hurt that bad. But it does, like something’s trying to rip my spine out through my throat.

  “Well,” says Paretta. She sounds out of breath. “We won’t be doing that again.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Gone, until I’m not. Flat on my back, the world moving around me as four suited figures wheel my gurney into a dark room. I test the restraints at my wrists, but they hold firm, nylon rubbing my skin raw.

  “Good morning,” one of them says to me. I almost don’t recognize her, but there, the eyes, and the curling brown ponytail. Paretta.

  High ceilings, no windows. An operating room, with something makeshift about it. The table in the middle is shrouded in paper, lit stark and hard. They line the gurney up alongside it and begin to undo my restraints. I could fight, I know, but the door’s shut and locked behind us, and I don’t know, really, what I’d even be fighting for.

  I barely have a second once the buckles are undone before they’re gripping me tight and lifting. They swing me onto the table and stretch my arms out, strapping them back down. I wince, the ridge of bone that runs like a second spine grinding uncomfortably against the table. One of the doctors wraps a blood pressure cuff around my left arm, and as it tightens, the other settles an oxygen tube under my nose and adjusts it. After that come sensors, stuck to my forehead and chest, and I watch as the screens start to show slices of me, to record the beat and wave of my heart.

  “It’s all right,” someone says, and it’s Paretta, bending over me. She pushes my hair off my face. “You’re here to help us figure out what’s happening, and how to fix it.”

  The other three doctors are stepping back slowly, until I can’t see them anymore. It’s just me and Paretta.

  “We’ve been working with some of your friends,” she says. “And we think we’re nearly at a point where we can make real progress here. But I need your help. Can you do that for me, Byatt?”

  My friends? Have there been others here? I open my mouth to ask, to say something, but Paretta claps her hand over my mouth.

  “Remember?” she says. “Stay quiet. This will be over before you know it.”

  After a moment she lets go, grabs a nearby tray, and wheels it over. Silver on silver. Bouquet of scalpels, wrapped in plastic. I start to struggle, the sight of the blades sparking a gut-deep fear. Something writhing in my stomach. It takes everything in me not to yell.

  But it’s not the scalpels she reaches for. It’s something else, lying small and innocuous next to a bottle of water. A round yellow pill in its own clear sleeve.

  “This is all it is,” she says, tipping the pill onto her palm. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “RAX009” I see, labeled clearly on the discarded sleeve, before Paretta takes hold of my jaw and pries it open. The pill is on my tongue then, dissolving bitter and slow.

  009. The ninth version of that pill, maybe. Or the ninth girl strapped to this table.

  I swallow, gagging as the taste hits the back of my throat. Paretta watches me carefully before reaching for the bottle of water, the brand the same as we get back at Raxter. She undoes the cap and props my head up as she pours a little into my mouth. There’s a clump of powder stuck on my tongue, and it takes a few tries to get it down.

  I was expecting something to happen right away—for the bones down my back to melt, for my voice to be back like it was. But one minute, and then another, and another. Paretta disappears, and I crane my neck to watch her join the other doctors leaning against the wall. They’re waiting. Just like I am.

  More time slipping by, and I drift off, come in and out. I’m so tired. My whole body aching, second spine tender and bruised. Maybe this whole thing isn’t so bad if I’m getting a chance to rest.

  And then. A sparking. I know this feeling.

  Just before a flare-up, there’s a moment. Hard to describe, hard to pin down, but for me it almost makes it worth it. The pain and the loss, all of it a fair price for this. This strength, this power, this eagerness to bare my teeth.

  I wait for it to fade, the way I’m used to, wait for it to turn into blinding pain. Instead, it builds, ricocheting through my body, shredding my insides, and I feel my hands clench into fists, nails biting deep into my palms. The heart monitor starts going haywire, the room full of beeping and alarms.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Get a readout from the monitor.”

  The doctors are rushing to gather data, their silhouettes blurring around me. I shut my eyes. This is my body. It will do what I ask it to.

  Calm down, I think. Hold it in.

  Only part of me doesn’t want to. I can hear it, snarling and low, telling me to let go. Telling me this has always been inside me and that these doctors are trying to take it away.

  My back arches, eyes slamming open. Thrashing against the straps pinning me, throwing my weight from side to side. Paretta, at the foot of my gurney, saying my name, but she’s the one who did this to me. I scream.

  Blood dripping from my nose, agony lancing down my back. Paretta clamps her hands over her ears and falls back, and so I scream again, pull with everything I have against my restraints. Still the strength thrumming through my body, still the gift the Tox gave me. One of the restraints rips free.

  I scrabble at the other buckle and leap from the table, but the other doctors are there. They grab hold of my arms. Drag me back, and I kick, scratch tears down the front of their hazmat suits.

  “Byatt!” Paretta yells. “Byatt, you need to calm down.”

  And I want, suddenly, not to escape, not to be free. I want to hurt her.

  I only make it a step before they stick the syringe into my neck and the world goes dark.

  HETTY

  CHAPTER 9

  I wake up with a headache. Throbbing at my temples, sharp behind my blind eye. It leaves me clutching at the edge of my bunk, body braced for a flare-up. Since my first, they’ve all led with a pain like this, and followed with something worse. Last time it was wet webs of tissue, so thick in my throat I couldn’t breathe, each fresh with blood, like they’d been ripped from the inside of my stomach.

  A headache like this could mean my next flare-up is coming. Or, I know Byatt would say, I could just have a headache.

  Above me Re
ese’s bunk creaks, and I remember everything from last night, all at once. Welch’s voice, and the plans she made with the man on the walkie. The needle and thread, now tucked safely into my pocket. Byatt is somewhere in this house. And if I can’t find her today, I’ll find her tonight. Past the fence, after midnight in the last of the dark. Reese and I will follow Welch to Reese’s house, and Byatt will be there. And she’ll be alive.

  “This lying in silence thing is fun,” Reese says suddenly from above me, “but can we go eat?”

  * * *

  —

  On the days without a supply delivery, meals are quiet, almost orderly. Anything good goes fast in that first rush after Boat Shift. All that’s left is what nobody really wanted. Most of the girls wait in the main hall, but there’s one from every small constellation of us that heads down the southern corridor to the kitchen where Welch doles out the food and bottled water, ready to carry something back to her friends.

  This has been my job since the start. Byatt said people would feel the worst for me and let me have the best of what was there. They’re scared of Reese, and that works for Boat Shift day, but the name of this game is pity, and I’m how we win.

  I leave Reese in the main hall and follow Cat down the south wing corridor. At the corner where the hallway hooks to the left, there’s Headmistress’s office, one of the last places left we’re still not supposed to go. I’ve only been there twice before: once on my first day at Raxter and then again a semester later, when I got reprimanded for talking during assembly.

  Maybe that’s where they’re keeping Byatt, I think. I have my hand on the latch before I realize I’m doing this in plain daylight, and Cat is waiting for me.

  I hurry to catch up with her. She gives me a smile, doesn’t ask how I am or what the hell I was doing, and I’m grateful for that. After we put in an appearance at breakfast I’ll circle out around the house, peer through the windows of Headmistress’s office. And then keep searching if I don’t find what I’m looking for.

  Together Cat and I turn the corner and continue on to where the kitchen opens, with its skylights and checkerboard tile. The last time I was here, Byatt was on the floor, coming apart. The last time I was here, the whole world ended.

  Enough, I think. I’m doing what I can. Soon I’ll have her back.

  A handful of other girls are already there, waiting for Welch to come in and unlock the pantry, where we keep the food. I’m dreading having to look her in the eye, but there’s no way she knows what I overheard last night.

  “Hey,” says Emmy, barely up to my shoulder, her sleek hair still baby-fine. After her first flare-up the other day, she was bouncing off the walls, excited to be like the rest of us even if her flare-up left her coughing up teeth from somewhere deep inside, but today she’s got on an affected solemnity. Of course she does—she’s here for Landry, probably bursting with pride at representing the girl at the top of what’s left of Raxter’s social ladder.

  “I just wanted to say,” Emmy continues, “I hope you’re okay. After what happened with Byatt.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and I hope that’s it, but she keeps talking.

  “She’s in our prayers.” Emmy says it just the way Landry would, the same polished tone and rounded corners.

  “I’m sure she appreciates it,” I say, rolling my eye. None of this is helping my headache, now dulled to a constant hum of pain. I’m used to it, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather have quiet than Emmy playing at being Landry.

  Footsteps pull our attention to the door, and finally, there’s Welch, hastening into the kitchen, already fussing with the ring of keys on her belt. Where did she come from? Was she with Byatt? She doesn’t look any different than she did yesterday, doesn’t look like she’s hiding something. But after the pier, I know she’s better at that than I expected.

  “Sorry,” she says as we crowd around her. There’s a crust at the corner of her mouth, something yellowing, the smell sour. Probably from one of those sores she and Headmistress get. “Bit of an issue. All right, who’s first today?”

  Passing out food used to be oldest first, the way it is at every other school, the way it was before. And then we realized the oldest would always be the oldest. None of us could leave. Now we rotate through, year by year, day by day, and it’s youngest first today, which is why Landry’s sent Emmy. She picks it just right, so she always eats first. Cat and I are near the middle, with Julia and a few girls from Carson’s year behind us.

  It comes to my turn, and I duck under the lintel into the pantry and step aside to make room for Cat as she joins me. She seems okay today, her skin mostly healed. For the first season we thought maybe that meant she was better. But the blisters keep coming back, bigger and deeper each time, a flash of bone visible at the bottom of them.

  The pantry is built off the back of the kitchen. Boat Shift carry everything that isn’t taken immediately, back here after each trip, unpack and unload it into the trash cans for storage. Every day Welch drags one to the middle of the narrow room for us to root through. She counts what we take and writes it down.

  Cat brushes some cobwebs off her jacket and sighs, looking at sugar cubes spilled on the floor from where Emmy probably snuck some out with her.

  “We’ll get ants.”

  “We’ve got worse.” I lean over the trash can, root through to the bottom where some girls try to bury things for themselves. There’s a pack of jerky—just what we need, but I hesitate. I watched the rest of Boat Shift throw away enough food for all of us. I shouldn’t take anything. I don’t deserve it.

  But it’s not just me I’m here for. It’s Reese too. And we both need to eat if we’re going to make it to the Harker house tonight. “I’ll take the jerky, and that thing of honey mustard nobody wants.”

  Cat grabs a box of melba toast and a packet of rice. She waits a moment before sneaking a minibox of raisins into her pocket.

  “It’s Lindsay’s birthday,” she says quietly. “Please don’t tell.”

  I check over my shoulder, to where Welch is leaning against the doorway, fiddling with the keys. She doesn’t seem to have heard.

  “Sure,” I say. It’s the least I can do after the pier.

  I show my pickings to Welch as I leave the pantry, do my best to keep my hands steady. How can she just stand there like nothing’s wrong? Like she’s not keeping my best friend locked up somewhere? I put on a smile, try to keep from wondering what’s happening to Byatt while I stand here in the kitchen, flecks of her blood still dotting the floor.

  “All right,” Welch says absently. “You’re fine.”

  I bite back the urge to rip the answers out of her, hurry out of the kitchen, back to the main hall, where I’m startled to find Reese sitting with Carson. She’s staring at her boots, and Carson is watching helplessly with that look I recognize, the look of someone beaten almost into submission by Reese’s impassive silence.

  “Hi,” I say as I approach. “Carson, this is a nice surprise.”

  “ ‘Surprise’ is the right word,” Reese says. I frown at her—it isn’t fair to snipe at Carson, who never knows it’s happening—and she shrugs.

  “Morning” comes Julia’s voice from behind me.

  “Oh, good, another one,” Reese says, but she sounds a bit gentler, looks almost rueful as she smiles at me.

  I sit down next to her, try to keep from raising my eyebrows as Julia takes a seat opposite me. We keep mostly to our own circles, but now that I’m Boat Shift, are Julia and Carson part of mine? Or are they here to make sure I’m keeping all the right secrets from Reese?

  It’s a stifling quiet as we eat. I have nothing to say, and I know Reese certainly doesn’t, and every minute we spend here is one I’m not looking for Byatt.

  Carson sits up straighter, opens her mouth to start a new conversation, and Reese levels her with a look. “We
don’t always have to be talking, you know.”

  “Sorry,” I say, giving Reese a sidelong glare. She has the decency to look a little guilty. “We’re just tired.”

  “No problem,” says Julia. If anything, she seems re-lieved to not have to make any more conversation. There’s a fresh bruise peeking out from under the hem of her shirt, and she looks exhausted, like it’s sucking the life from her as it grows. I watch as she spits out a mouthful of blood, and leaves it there on the floor, not bothering to wipe it up.

  I can’t finish my half of the jerky. Just the smell of it’s making me sick, and if I pay attention, if I think about it too hard, I can feel a tingle starting behind my blind eye, breaking through the low haze of pain. Reese doesn’t say anything, just takes the jerky from me and stuffs it into her pocket for later.

  She looks like her dad in this light. Like the way he looked before. The same strong chin, the same eyes, all washed over with gold.

  I wonder what she thinks of when she looks at me. Not my parents—I never kept a photo of them pinned to my wall like some of the other girls did.

  I don’t think of them much, my parents. I know I should. I did right after the Tox, for the first month or two. I lined up for my radio call and we had short, stilted conversations. But then they cut off our access, and things got worse, and then it didn’t matter anymore. Because if I see my parents again, they will want to hear how I missed them, how it was the worst thing that ever happened. And I’ll be lying, if I can say it at all.

  * * *

  —

  Part of me really thought it would be that simple. A locked door, somewhere deep in the house, and Byatt on the other side of it.