I don’t answer. I stare at Jessica, waiting for an explanation. It occurs to me that it’s probably not safe to stand here. Nerves thrum inside my chest, but I hold my ground. Cara deserves to know what happened to Mary Anne. Why it happened.
Jessica sits up. Her blanket falls to her lap. “I didn’t do anything,” she whispers. “I swear.”
“Liar!”
Jessica’s face crumples. Good, I think. I squeeze the pillow so tightly that the muscles in my hand burn. The bed shakes as Issie climbs down the ladder.
“What the hell?” she says again. She crosses the room, reaching out to comfort Jessica.
“Be careful,” I warn. “She’s dangerous.”
The lights in the hallway blink on. Issie glances at me, then up at Cara’s empty bed. The color drains from her face.
“What happened?” she asks.
Officers Sterling and Crane appear at the door to our room before I can answer. Issie stiffens, and Jessica crawls out of bed. I stare at the officers’ uniforms. It seems strange that they’re on duty so late.
Dr. Gruen walks up behind them. She has Cara by the arm, but Cara stares at the ground, refusing to meet our eyes.
“Sit,” Gruen says. Cara jerks her arm away and shuffles across the room, dropping down on the bed next to me.
Dr. Gruen folds her hands in front of her. She’s traded in her usual structured black dress for a pair of dark lounge pants and a black T-shirt. Black-framed glasses perch on her nose.
Her eyes linger on me. “A tragedy has occurred this evening,” she says.
Cara releases a choked sob and doubles over, clutching her stomach. Issie frowns. Dr. Gruen’s eyes stay pinned on me.
“And the worst part,” she continues, “is that it was preventable.”
That last word vibrates through the air long after she stops talking. Preventable. Issie and Cara both look up, confused. I feel their eyes turn to me, and my cheeks flare.
“What is she talking about?” Cara murmurs. My throat feels suddenly dry. I don’t know how to look at her, not when I know I’m partially responsible for killing Mary Anne.
“Where is it?” Gruen snaps. I don’t have to ask what she’s talking about. I hold out the pillow, my hands shaking.
“Inside,” I whisper. “There’s a rip in the seam.”
Dr. Gruen’s lips curl with something like hunger. She nods at the two officers standing at my door.
“Take the little girl,” she says. “Bring the rest of them to my office.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sterling leaves us in the office and steps outside, closing Dr. Gruen’s door with a barely audible click. Her key grinds against the lock, and the dead bolt slams into place.
Cara covers her mouth with her hands. Sobs rattle her thin shoulders.
Guilt drums through me in static bursts. It’s a low buzz at the back of my head, like fluorescent lights, how you don’t hear them humming until you do, and then they’re all you hear.
I did this. I knew what Jessica could do and I didn’t tell anyone.
“Is someone going to explain what’s going on?” Issie asks.
“Dr. Gruen’s assistant is dead,” I say. Issie looks at Cara, and then back at me.
“You’re fucking with me,” Issie says.
I say nothing. Cara presses her lips together, and tears crawl down her cheeks. The humor fades from Issie’s face.
“I don’t understand,” she says. “How?”
A fresh burst of shame flares through me. I hug my arms to my chest, feeling like I might explode. Like a lightbulb, spraying the room with glass and pops of fire.
Cara and Issie slept in the same room as Jessica. They shared meals with her, they laughed at her jokes. If anyone had the right to know what she was capable of, they did.
And I kept it a secret. Like a coward.
Cara cuts her eyes at me. She takes a shaky breath, lowering her hands. “Mary Anne said you were working with Dr. Gruen. That you two had a deal.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say.
“You know something,” Cara shouts. “I know you do.”
I can’t look at her so I twist my fingers together and stare at my ragged cuticles.
“Jessica,” I say.
A muscle in Cara’s jaw tightens. “What?”
“It was Jessica.” I take a deep breath and look up, forcing myself to meet Cara’s eyes. My body feels charged. I want to jump into cold water. Instead I have to stand here, guilt written across my face in neon.
“Remember when I burned my fingers?”
From there, I tell them everything. How I followed Jessica to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and watched her set the teddy bear on fire. How she told me she was practicing, that she could control it. And Dr. Gruen, pressuring me to give her up. To spy on her. Tell Dr. Gruen what I saw.
Cara interrupts me halfway through the story. “Bullshit.”
“There are others like her,” I continue. “Dr. Gruen told me they’re called pyretics. I know it sounds crazy—”
Cara rounds on me, eyes flashing. “Crazy? You’re telling us that little girl sets fires with her mind. No wonder they sent you to Seg.”
For a moment, I’m dumbstruck. “Are you kidding?” I ask, when I find my voice again. “You’re the queen of conspiracy theories—”
“That’s different! The government covers up all sorts of—”
“Shut up!” Issie shouts, quieting us both. She chews on her thumbnail. “This is bad.”
“Don’t tell me you believe her,” Cara snaps.
“Don’t matter if I believe her.” Issie takes her thumb out of her mouth and starts picking at her cuticles. “Take a look around. Half the girls here have already been whisked away in creepy murder vans. Now the ones left behind are starting to die. You planning to be next?”
Cara presses her lips together. After a moment, she shakes her head.
“We need to get out of here,” I say to no one in particular.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Issie says. “Think the window opens?”
I release a startled noise, like a laugh, but hollow. The shell of a laugh. “Right,” I say. “We can head to the woods.”
Issie wedges her body into the narrow space between Dr. Gruen’s desk and the window. She digs her fingers into the frame and pulls. The window doesn’t budge.
“Help me,” she grunts.
I frown. This doesn’t feel like a joke anymore. “What are you doing?”
“Getting the fuck out of here. Now help me get this window open.”
“We can’t do that.” I look at Cara for backup. The worry line on her forehead deepens. She chews her lower lip.
“Maybe we could break the glass?” Cara asks.
Issie purses her lips. “I bet that’d set off an alarm,” she says. “Do you see a lock?”
“Stop!” I shout. I stand, nearly knocking over my chair. “This is crazy. We can’t just break out and run off to the woods.”
“Why not?” Issie turns around. I shake my head, not sure where to start.
“We’d get caught, first of all,” I say.
“You said the woods were too deep,” Cara says. “Remember?”
“That was a story. It was made-up! Just something I told you before we went to sleep.”
Issie cocks an eyebrow. “Seemed pretty real to me.”
“It’s like twelve degrees outside,” I point out. “We’ll get hypothermia.”
“We’ll start a fire,” Cara says.
“You don’t even like being outside during rec time!” I rake a hand over my hair, feeling unhinged. They can’t honestly think this is a good idea. We’d freeze to death before we even made it to the tree line.
The look in Cara’s eyes makes me nervous: it’s shifty and calculating. I’m not even sure she wants to run. I think she just wants to do some damage.
I touch her arm, and she flinches. “Cara, think about this,” I say.
“Mary Anne’s dead,” Cara spits back. “And the rest of us are being carted off to God knows where to be used as human guinea pigs.”
Issie turns toward Cara, one hand still resting on the window. I wonder if Cara told her about the experiments, and the woman from the article. Maybe that’s why Issie didn’t take the SciGirls test.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen to those girls,” I say, but even I can hear the doubt in my voice.
“Why are you fighting this so hard?” Cara asks. “You saw the article. You know it’s true.”
“Even if it is, this plan is crazy!”
“Do you have a better option?” Cara’s eyes flash dangerously, and I realize she’s been holding something back. She’s got an ace up her sleeve, and she’s decided that now is the time to play it. “You can’t exactly go home, right?”
“What are you talking about?” I say, steeling myself. Cara bites her lower lip—at least she has the decency to look embarrassed—and pulls an envelope out from the waistband of her scrubs. My mother’s tiny, perfect handwriting stares out at me.
My voice feels thick. “Where did you get that?”
“You can’t go home,” Cara says. Her hands shake, making the envelope tremble. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you just pretend everything was okay?”
I grab for the envelope but Cara dances backward, holding it above her head.
“That was private.”
“You lied to us,” Cara says. “You said you were going to go back home, to be with Charlie, but your mom won’t let you. You aren’t welcome there.”
“Stop.” I grab for the envelope again, halfheartedly. Cara holds it away.
“You aren’t going to be with Charlie,” she says. “You aren’t allowed anywhere near him.”
“Cara . . .” Issie says. Her eyes bounce from Cara to me.
“So where are you going to go, Angela?” Cara continues, ignoring her. “You can’t go home. You can’t stay here.”
“Shut up!” I feel a sob rising in my throat, and I push it down. Juvie girls don’t cry. I make the pain hard. Turn it into something I can use.
Cara’s got a lot of attitude, but I’m bigger than she is. I get in her face, so close that she has to tilt her head to meet my eyes. She backs up, hits the wall. To her credit, she doesn’t blink.
“That doesn’t belong to you.” My voice is a low rumble. I rip the envelope from Cara’s hand, and her eye twitches. It’s a small enough movement that no one else would notice. But I’ve known Cara for a long time. She’s scared.
She narrows her eyes. Tries to look tough.
“Guys, stop!” Issie starts to wedge her body between us, but Cara squares her shoulders, blocking her.
“You don’t want to take me on,” she says. I lower my face so I can look her right in the eye.
“Try me.”
“Stop it!” Issie says. “You’re friends.”
I feel the air shift before I hear her coming. It’s like how the pressure changes when the subway goes underground; there’s a pop in my ears, and then something pressing against me, making my skin itch and buzz. I step away from Cara, and her eyes widen with triumph. She thinks she scared me off.
The office light flickers. Issie frowns. “What the—”
The door flies open, hinges creaking. Jessica stands in the hallway just outside, staring hard at the concrete floor. The air around her crackles.
She raises her head to look at us. Her eyes are a perfect, oily black.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I grab Cara by the arm and pull.
“Move.” We both stumble backward, into Issie. A trail of fire blazes along the floor where Cara stood, flames moving like liquid. They claw higher, burning first blue, then orange, before vanishing in a cloud of black smoke.
Jessica sinks to the floor. Her shoulders slump. Dr. Gruen stands over her slouched body, her expression carefully arranged in a look of mild interest. She plucks an invisible piece of lint off her dark pants and her eyes narrow, very slightly, in disgust.
“Officer Brody?” Dr. Gruen brushes her hands together and steps into the room. Brody lingers in the hallway, but he straightens at the sound of his name. All the pink has drained from his ratlike face, and he looks like he’s trying very hard not to pee his pants.
“Yes, ma’am?” he says. Dr. Gruen jerks her head at Jessica.
“Detain her.”
Officer Brody slides the nightstick from his belt. “On your feet,” he barks, but I notice that his voice wobbles, just a bit. Jessica curls her hands into fists and Brody takes a quick step backward, swearing.
“She’s trying to control it,” I explain. Brody glares at me. I expect him to say something foul, but he just nods.
“You think she’s cooled down now?” he asks. I frown at him, trying to figure out if the pun was intentional. Dr. Gruen pinches the bridge of her nose.
“She’s just a little girl, officer,” she says.
Jessica looks up. The black has left her eyes, and the air around her feels still. Safe. I nod at Brody.
“I didn’t do it,” Jessica whispers. She’s looking at me, her lower lip twitching, and I feel a sudden pang in my chest. Brody grabs her arm and hauls her to her feet.
“I saw the body,” I say. Cara flinches at the word “body,” then tries to cover it by propping her hands on her hips. I don’t know if she believes what Jessica’s capable of now or if she just wants someone to blame. I know what her temper’s like, and I’m sure she wants to rip Jessica’s head off for what she did to Mary Anne. The only thing stopping her is Brody, and he won’t stop her for long.
“I didn’t hurt anybody,” Jessica says. Brody twists her arm behind her back, and pain flashes across her face.
“Interesting,” Dr. Gruen murmurs, bringing a hand to her chin. “She didn’t remember killing the mouse either.”
Something stirs in the back of my memory, but I can’t quite grab hold of it.
“Watch them,” Dr. Gruen snaps, giving Brody a look. “I have something to attend to before we can arrange for their departure.”
My skin prickles. Their departure. “We’re going somewhere?” I ask.
Dr. Gruen stares at me with her clear, alien eyes. “I took the liberty of signing you all up for SciGirls,” she says. “You leave tonight.”
I wait for the shock to hit me, but it never does. Bring me what I want, and you’re out of here tomorrow, Dr. Gruen told me. But she never said where she was sending me. I hold her gaze for a long moment, dread settling in the pit of my stomach. “You were never going to let me go home, were you?”
Dr. Gruen cocks her head, and, for a moment, the look on her face reminds me of a mother explaining to her child that yes, sometimes puppies bite. She turns and sweeps out of the office without answering my question, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Looks like it’s just us now, ladies,” Brody says. He taps his nightstick against the closed door. He’s trying to scare us, but he’s not the one I’m worried about. Cara moves forward.
“I’m going to kill you.” She levels her eyes at Jessica, her voice trembling. “You little freak. I’m going to tear you apart.”
“Cara.” I reach for her arm, but she jerks it away. I sneak a glance at Jessica. There’s no black in her eyes, no air vibrating around her.
“I didn’t do it,” she says, meeting Cara’s gaze. I can’t help but feel a rush of pride. Much larger girls haven’t been able to look Cara in the face in the middle of a fight. “I didn’t. I swear.”
Brody kicks the back of her ankle, and Jessica crumples. Her knees hit the floor with a slap that makes me cringe.
“Quiet,” Brody snaps. Jessica wraps her arms around herself. A satisfied smile spreads across Cara’s face. Brody points his nightstick at her.
“You too. No fighting,” he says. Cara lifts her hands in front of her chest in surrender.
“Yes, sir,” she says.
Brody relaxes, but I notice how
Cara’s jaw clenches and her shoulders tighten. She’s not giving up so easily. I think of the story she told me about how she ended up in here, how she hid in the dark with a hammer, how she waited for that perfect moment for hours. Cara’s not stupid. She’ll watch Brody for as long as it takes. The second he isn’t paying attention, she’ll lunge.
“I didn’t do it,” Jessica whispers, almost to herself. I feel another tug at the back of my mind. She didn’t remember killing the mouse either, Dr. Gruen said. I roll my lower lip between my teeth. Jessica didn’t forget that she killed the mouse. She swore she didn’t do it. And why would she have killed the mouse at all? She loves animals. She said the mouse reminded her of home.
Issie touches my arm. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“Hands to yourself!” Brody barks.
I think of how I swept the mouse into the trash, how I held my breath while I tied the plastic closed.
“How did she know?” I whisper. Issie tilts her head toward me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Dr. Gruen wasn’t in the kitchen when we found the mouse. And I threw it away right after. No one knew about it but us.”
“What mouse?” Cara asks, but Issie motions for her to be quiet.
“Why does that matter?” Issie asks.
“It matters,” I whisper. I smelled smoke the night I found out about Cara and Mary Anne. But Jessica was in bed, sleeping. Dr. Gruen said there were others like Jessica. Kids who set fire to dolls and action figures.
Objects help them to focus their power, she’d told me. Like a token, or a good-luck charm.
There’s that nagging again, that feeling that I’ve forgotten something. I turn, my eyes darting over Dr. Gruen’s bookcase. I run my fingers over Dr. Gruen’s books. I saw something here. A clue.
“Davis, enough!” Brody shouts. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him step forward, nightstick raised. Cara stiffens, and Issie swears under her breath.
“Angela!” Issie shouts. I hold up a hand.
“Wait.” I drop to my knees, my fingers powdered with dust from the shelves. An image flashes through my head: Dr. Gruen’s fingers stained black with ink.
Only what if it wasn’t ink? What if it was ashes?
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