Wilder Girls

by Rory Power

  And I wrote letters and told Tracy they were from Erin. And I had my picture taken with my horrible cousin, and I showed Tracy, told her it was Erin. And then one day I told her Erin wasn’t at home anymore. I told her Erin’s mother had said Erin was sick. And the day after that, I dressed in black, and I told Tracy that Erin was dead.

  Tracy cried. And she cried to her mother, and she cried to our teacher, who took me to the counselor’s office and asked what had happened. And I told the whole story over again. Because I liked—I like—to see what I can do.

  * * *

  —

  I blink, and my mother is at the window, there is a window, and my mother is there in blue like morning.

  “I thought we were past this,” she says.

  We were and sometimes we still are, but there is a gnawing in my heart I cannot get out. The window shuts and disappears, and my mother gets taller and taller.

  “We’re very disappointed,” she says, her head brushing the ceiling. “Disappointed disappointed disappointed.”

  * * *

  —

  Usually, it was an accident. A lie I never set out to tell. A trick I never meant to play. I’d open my mouth, and something strange would come out, new and not mine. Like there was someone else inside.

  I’m sorry, I’d tell my parents, whenever something I’d made came crashing down. I never wanted to hurt anyone. And sometimes I meant it.

  But sometimes I didn’t. Anger, depthless and black, and I couldn’t cut it out of me. Growing and growing until it was all I had room for.

  Go to Raxter, my mother said. Start again.

  And I tried. But we all have things we’re good at.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t miss talking. I thought I would, but it’s so easy this way. The smallest word written down, and they’ll build a version of me in their head. Sounding just the right way, meaning just the right thing. Half my work done for me.

  When Paretta comes back I see her shape through the curtain around my bed. I see her stop in the doorway, and I see her hesitate. Like she’s remembering what I did. But then she’s pulling back the curtain, and it’s the same patched-up blue suit, the same faintly patterned mask. I wonder if they have any spares, or if the other doctors had to stitch up the tears I scratched in theirs.

  “Good morning,” she says.

  My hands are strapped down. Can’t reach for the whiteboard Paretta props against the bed, can’t do anything but give her a thumbs-up, and I certainly won’t be doing that.

  “Do you know what a resonant frequency is?”

  I raise my eyebrows. What a way to start the day.

  “It’s the frequency at which a particular object vibrates,” Paretta explains. She sounds uncomfortable, like she’s not used to putting anything so simply. “When you match an object’s resonant frequency, it can break. Like a glass, if you sing the right note.”

  I clench my fists, wishing she’d let me use my whiteboard. I don’t understand why she’s telling me this.

  “Most everything has one.” She looks at me for a long moment. “Even bone, Byatt.”

  I swallow hard. Remember the pain shattering through me, shaking me apart. Me, and Paretta, and anybody else who heard me scream.

  “There’s nothing,” Paretta says softly, “that ever hits that frequency hard enough to make it hurt. Nothing but you and your voice.” She reaches out and rests one gloved finger against my throat. “What is it doing to you, sweetheart?”

  I don’t know, I want to say. You tell me.

  Instead, she steps back, the sadness sweeping out of her eyes as I hear her clear her throat. “I’d like to show you something,” she says, waiting briefly for an answer I can’t give. “But I think you can understand why I’ll need your word that we won’t have a repeat of the other day.”

  I nod, because what else is there to do, and she bends over me to unbuckle my wrists. This close she smells like sweat, like salt. I can see patches of dry skin at her hairline, a mole at the corner of her eye.

  I’m not strong enough yet to stand on my own, so Paretta has to help me into a wheelchair. Shivering out from under the blankets, legs bruised, toenails broken. Our bodies never seemed odd at Raxter, but here, I pull down the hem of my hospital gown, sit up straight to hide the second curve of my spine.

  She tucks the whiteboard in alongside me, folds my fingers around the marker, and then pushes me out of the ward. I try to hang on to everything, every turn we take. The small lobby we pass through, pale squares on the wall where something must have hung, and the hallway Paretta wheels me down, shabby carpet and stale air. But they slip in and out of my head, and I’m not I’m not I’m not as here as I thought I was.

  I think I might throw up. Fold over, press my hands to my forehead, and I feel the brush of Paretta’s suit against my shoulder, but it’s barely anything. I shut my eyes, try to disappear.

  When I open them again I’m somewhere else. At first I don’t know what I’m looking at, and then I blink and it separates out, floor from ceiling. Stacks of boxes, carts of folding chairs, and everything covered in thick plastic tarps. The floor is the same peeling linoleum as everywhere else, but carved into the walls are two deep alcoves. Empty, but lit like something used to be displayed inside.

  I reach for the whiteboard, hold it up in front of Paretta to get her attention before I write.

  What is this where are we

  “Some of it’s storage,” Paretta says, which doesn’t really answer my question, but I think it’s all I’ll get. She wheels me down a narrow path between two shelving units, each draped over with clear plastic so thick it looks cloudy. Here, another part of the room, this one almost like a lab, two tables set up with equipment I don’t recognize. On one table I think I spot the remains of a Raxter Blue, shell broken up in bits, but we turn away, and Paretta wheels me up to another alcove cut into the wall, one I didn’t see from the doorway.

  This one is layered with earth, built up more than a foot deep, and blooming there, in this room, in this building, is a quartet of Raxter Irises.

  Tears prick at my eyes, and I blink, startled. But I miss it. I miss Hetty and Reese, but more than anything, I miss the dawn coming through the trees. I miss the north side cliff and the waves below, and I miss the way the wind steals your breath like it never belonged to you in the first place.

  I’m reaching out to touch one of the flowers before I realize it, and Paretta snatches me back, her suited fingers catching my wrist.

  “That,” she says, “would be being a bit silly, I think.”

  Why do you have these, I write.

  Paretta spins my wheelchair around so I’m facing her. I wish she wouldn’t. I miss the sight of the irises already, the familiar indigo, the satin drape of their petals.

  “We’ve been studying them,” Paretta says, crouching down in front of me. “The irises, and the blue crabs too. All of this is something we’re calling the Raxter Phenomenon.”

  A phenomenon. Not a sickness, not a disease. It burns through my heart—that’s the word I’ve been looking for—but there’s something about the way she says it. The name too familiar, too easy on her tongue.

  “Did they teach you about Raxter Blues at school?” she asks. “About what makes them special?” I nod.

  You mean the lungs

  “And the gills,” Paretta says. “It’s pretty amazing, right? So it can survive anywhere. And I think it’s pretty amazing, too, that you girls are part of it now.”

  Part of it. The way our bodies alter and bend. The way our fingers darken just before we die, pure black spreading up to our knuckles. I used to stare at my hands in the dark, Hetty asleep next to me, and try to will them to change color.

  “Imagine how we could use this.” Her voice is urgent, confiding. “Imagine the people we cou
ld help.”

  I think of the bodies we’ve burned, of the pain we’ve endured.

  I don’t think it’s helping anyone right now

  “Right.” She rests her gloved hand on my knee. “You’re absolutely right. To help anybody with this, we have to be able to cure it, to control it. And to do that, we need to understand why it’s happening.”

  Good luck with that

  She shakes her head, and I think I can make out the shadow of a smile through her mask. “I know,” she says. “I’ve been studying this for years now, Byatt. First the Blues, and the irises, and now you girls, and I’m not any closer.”

  For years, I think, as she stands up and starts wheeling me over to the table where the crab is laid out in pieces. She must mean she was here before the Tox found us. We learned in bio that the Blues were worth studying; it never occurred to me that somebody actually was.

  She positions me in front of the table, still talking about something, but I don’t hear her. There’s the Raxter Blue splayed out, limbs snipped from its body, shell carefully set to one side to lay the inside bare. I wait for my stomach to turn, but instead, all I can feel is the sea spray from that day on the rocks with Hetty, the crab turning black in my hands. It was still alive as it broke apart.

  I wonder if I will be too.

  * * *

  —

  “I have something special for you,” Teddy says. The clock tells me afternoon but not the day. Same blue plastic suit, the same surgical mask. I like his eyes, I think. They look like mine.

  First the left strap undone, then the right. Whiteboard in my hands, a cramp in my fingers.

  Good special?

  “Is there any other kind?” he says. “We’re going outside.”

  Seriously

  “Seriously.”

  Why outside

  “Dr. Paretta wants a little more color in your cheeks.” Teddy draws back the curtain. Ward awry, beds pushed to one end. “She suggested a walk. Outside was my idea. Close your eyes, though. I want it to be a surprise.”

  Teddy, eager and happy to help, and invisible to the doctors here, with their world narrowed down to my charts and me. Breaking rules, because nobody’s told him what they are.

  I start to push myself up, but he rests a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll help you.”

  He lifts my legs. Swings them around to hang off the bed. Hands cold through the suit, hair on my legs static and standing.

  My jacket is stuffed in the cabinet against the wall, and Teddy helps me into it, does up the clasps before crouching down to lace my boots.

  “Right,” he says once he’s finished. “We’re all set. Need some help getting up?”

  I shake my head and stand up. I think I’m getting stronger. Even if I’m not, I don’t need help.

  I carry the whiteboard, marker in my pocket. Teddy takes my hand. Guides me out and around three corners. I memorize them, lay them out in my head. When he says I can open my eyes, it’s in front of a narrow, dented door. Not all the way closed, and through the gap at the bottom I see grass just starting to die.

  “Go ahead,” he says, and helps me lift my hand to open it.

  Wind pulling at me, whipping the hem of my hospital gown. So cold I know it’ll steal the feeling from me, but I won’t mind.

  “Deep breaths. Nice and easy.”

  I nod. Try not to gulp it down, the air, the spice and sweetness. Together we step out and let the door creak shut behind us.

  A fence, the kind with wire across the top to keep you from getting out. Trees pressed up against it, their branches curling through. Between it and me, the ground is restless, cresting and breaking in small hills, splitting where the cold has reached deep. Turning brown and brittle.

  “Come on,” Teddy says. “Let’s walk.”

  My bare legs prickle with goosebumps, sweat chilling me to the bone, but we keep going. The closer I get, the clearer the fence is. Step, and step, and a give in my knees, and Teddy wraps his arm around my waist. At last, there with the forest encroaching. I wind my fingers around the chain link.

  Camp Nash. It must be. If I squint, I can make it look like Raxter, like home.

  Teddy says something. World too loud. I prop the whiteboard against the fence.

  Can’t hear, I write.

  He tries again—fuck, he says, it’s freezing—but I pretend I don’t hear, shake my head. Reach out, flick the fabric surgical mask over his face. I want him to take it off.

  “No way.”

  We can go inside

  If you want

  “Hey, don’t be like that. We’re having fun out here, right?”

  I learned when I was little. Quiet. That’s how to get what I want.

  “You know I’m really not supposed to.” He waits. Then a sigh, probably, and he backs up a few steps. “Okay, but you stay over there.”

  Because he is nineteen, because he isn’t thinking. Because I’ve practiced this smile enough times to know what it can do.

  Teddy reaches behind his head, to where the mask ties, and fumbles with the knot until it drops. And there he is. Full lips. Jaw cut sharp. Teddy.

  “Byatt.”

  I wave, and he grins. I lift the whiteboard, prop it on my hip as I write.

  Can’t I come say hi

  “No,” he says immediately, holding out a hand to ward me off. “You promised.”

  I didn’t actually, and I make sure I look just right, a little shy, a little curious.

  “Look,” he says, “I know it must be lonely in that ward all by yourself. I’ll try to come hang out more, but I—”

  I hold up my hand, and his voice falls away. Not the same, I write. And then, when his eyes widen just that little bit, I add:

  You can’t catch it

  He lets out a bark of laughter. “Is that true?”

  Of course not. But I want what I want. No boys allowed

  He’s thinking, biting his lip as he frowns at me, and then I see his shoulders drop like he’s let out his breath. Whether he knows it or not, he just gave up.

  I take a step. Take another. He doesn’t say a word. Watches me, and when I see his fingers flex—they look ridiculous through that suit, but I won’t tell him that—I know I have him.

  His mouth is slick and dark. I can see a nick on the slope of his jaw, can see the speckled blood he must’ve forgotten to wash off. I close the distance between us, lean my face in close to his. A piece of my hair slips loose, blows forward. Sticks to his bottom lip. I watch his eyes flutter shut.

  It’s simple. It’s nothing at all. I inch that little bit closer, tilt my head up, brush my fingers against his chin, and guide his mouth to mine.

  He kisses like he’s afraid of me. And he is, but I don’t think I mind it.

  When he steps back it’s not far, and he wraps my hair around his fingers, his other hand brushing my hip. I can tell he wants to ask. It’s in every glance, every touch that’s barely there.

  I lean the whiteboard up against his chest, and he laughs as I try to write upside down, so he can see without letting go of me.

  Go on

  Ask

  “Ask what?”

  I give him a look, roll my eyes, and he smiles sheepishly.

  “I’m just wondering about what exactly it does to you.”

  I take his hand from where it’s resting on my hip and slide it around to my back, where the ridges of my second spine are clear even through my jacket. His eyes go wide as he feels the curve and spike of new bone.

  “Shit,” he says, and I smother a laugh. “Do all of you have that thing?”

  I shake my head. Some of us just die

  “But I mean—”

  I know

  I write a list. Mona’s gills. Hetty’s eye. Even try to draw Reese’s hand
, and there are a hundred more flare-ups I can’t remember from a hundred other girls. It startles me, seeing it all laid out. How the Tox models us after the animals around us, tries to change our bodies, push them further than they’re willing to go. Like it’s trying to make us better, if only we could adapt.

  “That sounds scary,” he says when I finish, his eyes wide, face solemn, and I can’t help laughing.

  I guess hard at first

  “And then?”

  And then. Hetty and Reese and someone needing me. A wilderness in everyone, like the one I’ve always felt in me. Only real this time. In my body, and not just my head.

  Not so much

  “They’ll figure it out.” He touches my cheek, plastic glove catching on my skin. “Whatever the Tox is, they’ll fix it.”

  Movement in the woods, a bird taking flight. He jerks around to look. I can’t see anything but blood, flaking off his skin in the wind.

  Let’s go back in

  * * *

  —

  Back in the ward, in my bed. Curtain drawn, jacket and boots off. Hands free, whiteboard wiped clean.

  “Dr. Paretta will be by in a minute,” he says. Winks as he draws his mask up, ties it tight. “If she asks, you thoroughly enjoyed doing laps of your room.”

  When she comes it’s in that same blue suit, and she’s carrying a stack of files and a pad and pencil, along with a tripod and a camera. Her hair is all dark and shine, and there are deep lines around her eyes. I wonder if there are matching ones under her mask, at the corners of her mouth.

  “How are you this afternoon, Byatt?”

  Shrug. Fine

  “We’ve been easing back on your dosage of diazepam. I hope you haven’t been in pain.”

  Shake my head. Point to the whiteboard.

  “It was very helpful talking to you yesterday. I’d like to ask you some more questions, if you’ll let me.” She rests the camera on my bed and begins to set up the tripod. “Now, I know this will be a little unconventional. Normally, I’d take notes in an interview like this. But since you’ll be writing things down, this might be easier.” The tripod stable, she slots the camera into the stand.