I see it out of the corner of my eye: a blackened tree branch, twisted and ugly. It sits on the top shelf, half-hidden by the flat-screen. I thought it was art the first time I saw it. I stand, and pick it up. Flakes of dead wood crumble away, staining my hand black.
Dr. Gruen said there were others—pyretics—who could set fires, just like Jessica. I’d always pictured kids, boys and girls Charlie’s age. But kids grow up.
“What is that?” Issie says, but my mouth has gone dry as dust.
“It’s a token,” I say, when my voice comes back to me. “Jessica didn’t kill Mary Anne. Dr. Gruen did.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Give it up, Davis.” Brody clutches the nightstick so tightly his knuckles turn white. I’m seconds from feeling metal slap the back of my hand.
“Dr. Gruen is pyretic, like Jessica,” I explain, clutching the blackened tree branch to my chest. “That’s how she knew about the mouse. Issie and I didn’t tell anyone, but Gruen knew because she burned it to death and left it for us to find. So I’d think Jessica was dangerous.”
“Davis, I’m warning you!” Brody shouts.
“And Mary Anne?” Cara asks. Her voice is pure, cold fury. I’ve never been scared of Cara before. “Why did she have to die?”
“Maybe Dr. Gruen found out about the two of you,” I say. “Or maybe she killed Mary Anne so I’d turn on Jessica and bring her what she wanted. She—”
Brody comes out of nowhere. He backhands me, his knuckles digging in just below my cheekbone. I crash to the ground, and my head smacks into the concrete. Pain blossoms through my skull.
Brody kneels in front of me, and rips the branch out of my hand. “Warned you,” he mutters. Lights flicker before my eyes. I taste blood on my lip.
Cara whips around. She moves her arm in a smooth arc, something silver glinting from her hand. Brody stumbles backward. A thin red line appears on his cheek. He lifts a hand to touch it, and the line smears. Blood.
“Bitch,” he spits. He rocks forward, but Cara jabs the knife at him before he can take a single step.
“Don’t come any closer,” she says. Blood coats the thin blade. A drop slides down the edge and spills to the floor.
“Cara,” I breathe. “Don’t.”
Cara doesn’t move, but her eyes move over to me. “Issie was right,” she says. “We have to—”
Brody darts forward and grabs Cara’s arm. He twists it behind her back, cranking her hand around until something snaps. The knife slips from her fingers and clatters to the ground. Cara whimpers. Brody pushes her against the wall. He keeps one hand on her wrist and the other pinched at her neck.
“There’s a good girl,” he hisses into her ear.
I can’t seem to catch my breath. All the things I’ve been afraid of these past few weeks hit me in the same horrifying, surreal moment. This room feels too small, smaller than our dorm rooms or the cells in the Segregation Block. I press my hand against the wall so I can be sure it isn’t inching nearer. Closing in on me. The air seems to grow warmer. Like an oven.
The edge of Brody’s sleeve begins to smoke. I stare at it for a moment, sure that I’ve finally cracked, that I’m hallucinating. Fire curls out of the fabric. Brody flinches, and glances down at his sleeve.
“What the hell?” He shakes his arm, like the flame is a bug he can brush away. But it crackles, and grows. Brody’s face pales. He stumbles backward, letting go of Cara’s arm.
Jessica stands behind Brody, her fists at her sides. She rocks back and forth, her eyes black.
“Jessica, no.” I stand, ignoring the pain beating against the back of my head. Jessica doesn’t look at me. She rocks faster, and the air around her buzzes, electric. The overhead light blinks on, and then off again.
Flames appear at Brody’s feet. They lick the rubber soles of his boots and crawl up over his shoes before leaping to the hems of his pants.
“No.” Brody dances backward. He shakes his feet and stomps on the floor. The fire thickens. The smell of burning fabric and singed skin fills the small room.
“Jessica!” I yell, but I don’t think she hears me. Her hair twitches, then lifts away from her head, surrounding her in a halo of black hair. Brody starts to scream. The fire spreads up his leg in a solid wave of flame. I clutch my chest, awed and horrified all at once.
“Make it stop!” I hear the click of metal as Brody starts to unbuckle his belt. The fire moves from his pants to his arms and the smell of burning skin grows stronger. Brody’s flesh puckers and boils and turns a deep, angry red. Smoke clouds around us. It’s so thick that it makes me cough. I pull my shirt over my nose. My eyes water.
Brody drops to his knees. I can’t see his face anymore. It’s hidden beneath clouds of smoke, and the growing wall of fire. I push myself into the far corner of the office. I hadn’t even realized I’d been edging backward, hadn’t noticed how badly my knees trembled. I shut my eyes and throw my hands over my ears. I can’t take any more.
It’s a long moment before I realize the fire’s dying. Flames shiver and flicker out, leaving behind blackened skin and the tattered remains of Brody’s uniform.
I hear a dull thump as Jessica drops to her knees. Smoke hangs in the air between us, obscuring her face, but I can tell that her eyes are normal again. The danger has passed.
Brody’s body slumps before her, still as death.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“No,” Jessica says. She bunches her fingers around her mouth, hands shaking. “No. No.”
“Is he . . . dead?” Issie chokes out. She steps closer to Brody’s body, wrinkling her nose at the smell.
“It was self-defense,” Cara says, her voice fast and shrill. “You saw the way he hit Angela. Jessica was just trying to—”
Issie silences her with a look. “Nobody’s gonna believe that was self-defense.”
Jessica starts to rock. “No,” she whispers, again.
“Stop, all of you.” I move out from behind the desk and crouch next to Brody. The stink of burned flesh rolls off him in waves, and I have to hold my breath to keep from vomiting. I hesitate just for a second, then raise my hand to his neck. I press my fingers into the skin below his jaw.
At first, nothing. The bottom falls out of my stomach. I move my fingers to the left. And then the right.
And there it is—a faint bomp, bomp, bomp against the tips of my fingers. Relief makes my knees buckle. I grab hold of the edge of Dr. Gruen’s desk to steady myself.
“He’s alive,” I say. “Barely.”
The room around me goes still. Jessica stops whispering, and stares at Brody with wide, tear-filled eyes. Issie makes the sign of the cross over her chest.
“Jesucristo,” she says. “What should we do?”
“We leave,” Cara says. “Really leave. Now.”
She looks at me. I press my lips together, saying nothing. I think of Charlie learning to ride his bike in Prospect Park. Charlie, who uses pine-scented shampoo now, and has muscles like a man. If we leave like this, I won’t ever see him again. We’ll be outlaws. Fugitives.
And if we stay . . . I glance down at Brody’s blackened face. He looks dead. If I hadn’t felt his pulse myself, I never would have believed he could be alive. He might still die. Seventeen-year-olds charged with murder are tried as adults. And that’s if we manage to avoid SciGirls.
A sob rises in my throat, but I push it back down. Juvie girls don’t cry. If I stay, I might get to see my brother again, someday. But I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison. Or worse, I’ll be taken to SciGirls and become some crazy doctor’s experiment.
“Cara’s right,” I say, looking away from Brody’s body. “We have to go.”
* * *
I push the door open. I expect to see Officer Crane standing guard outside the office, or Dr. Gruen heading down the hallway. But there’s no one. Early-morning light pours in through the narrow windows, casting dusty gold stripes over the floor. I exhale, and motion for my friends to go. Issie
mutters something under her breath in Spanish as she slips past me. It sounds like a prayer.
I think about praying. But, if there is a God, he gave up on me a long time ago. I pull the door closed behind me, holding the latch to keep it from clicking. And then I follow Issie and Cara and Jessica down the corridor.
I don’t remember any of our silent trek through those empty halls and down the twisting staircase. It’s like someone erased that part of my memory. All that’s left is the hushed sound of footsteps, figures moving through shadows, and the smell of smoke, which drifts along beside us like an old friend.
Then I turn the corner and see Ben at the end of the hall. He leans against the security door, staring off into space. Dark circles shadow the skin below his eyes, and his hair flops over his forehead in messy waves. He looks scared.
The world slams back into me in full color, the volume turned up high. I have to physically restrain myself from running to him.
I’ll never see him again either, I think, and then I swat the thought away, like a fly. If I really thought about that, I wouldn’t be able to make myself leave.
Ben looks up. He jerks forward, then freezes when Issie, Cara, and Jessica stumble down the stairs behind me.
“If another guard sees you down here . . .” His eyes narrow in concern. “Brody . . .”
I glance at Cara, and something passes between us. Issie lowers her head, whispening another Spanish prayer.
Ben swallows. His Adam’s apple rises and falls in his throat. “What happened to Brody?”
“He hit Angela,” Cara says. Ben’s face tightens.
“He what?”
“I’m fine,” I insist. “But we have to get out of here. Now.”
Ben’s walkie-talkie buzzes to life at his belt.
“. . . be on alert . . .” a female voice says. I strain to listen, but it doesn’t sound like Dr. Gruen. Officer Crane, maybe. “. . . four girls have escaped their dorms. I repeat, four prisoners are loose in the halls. Be warned, they are extremely dangerous, and possibly armed . . .”
The voice fades to static.
“What did you do?” Ben asks, looking at me. Above us, the fluorescent lights begin to flicker. Nerves creep down my arms and my legs. I turn to Jessica, but her eyes are clear. She’s not doing this.
Dr. Gruen’s coming.
The story I’d been about to tell turns to ice in my throat. I don’t have time to explain everything that’s happened and, somehow, convince Ben to believe me. I grab his arm.
“We’re in trouble,” I say. “Please. We have to get out of here.”
Ben opens and closes his mouth. Some emotion I don’t quite recognize flashes through his eyes. I’m going to lose him.
“Ben,” I say. His face softens at the sound of his name. He looks over my shoulder, at Cara and Issie and Jessica.
“Come on,” he says, swallowing. “I might know a way.”
The lights blink on, and then off again. Ben leads us down a dark, narrow hallway that I’ve never seen before. He pulls a thick door shut behind us and fumbles with a key ring clipped to his belt.
“This should give us some time,” he says, jerking a key into the lock. He turns, and the dead bolt slides into place with a heavy jolt.
“Hurry,” I whisper. Ben clips the key ring back to his belt and we start to run.
The hallway twists through a part of Brunesfield I didn’t know existed. There are no windows, and the only light comes from the naked bulbs dangling from the ceiling. There’s an unmarked door every few feet, and I find myself glancing back at them as we run, wondering where they lead. Our shadows stretch across the concrete floor, and our ragged, gasping breaths echo back at us from the concrete walls.
“Here,” Ben says, skidding to a stop in front of a metal door emblazoned with the word Exit. Issie, Cara, Jessica, and I stumble up behind him. He thrusts a key into the lock and pushes the door open with a grunt.
Icy air slides in through the crack. I wrap my arms around my chest, suddenly aware of how woefully unprepared we are to run away. We don’t have coats, sweatshirts, hats. Even our shoes are ridiculous, just thin slip-ons that won’t last more than a few days in the bitter northern cold.
Ben seems to realize this at the same moment that I do. He glances over the four of us.
“You’re going to freeze to death,” he says.
I’d thought the same thing myself, but saying it out loud won’t help anything. “We have to go,” I say, instead. Ben holds up a finger.
“Wait. Just a second.”
Before I can respond, he’s dashing down the hallway, throwing doors open at random. At the third door, a smile curves his lips, and he pumps a fist into the air.
“Jackpot,” he says. He reaches inside and pulls a stack of bright orange sweatshirts out of a closet. He hands them to Cara, then digs around again and tosses us wool hats and extra pairs of socks.
“You’re a god,” Issie says, pulling a sweatshirt over her head. I yank a sweatshirt over my head, and tug a pair of socks over Jessica’s hands, like mittens.
“Thank you,” I say to Ben.
The light at the end of the hall explodes, showering the floor with broken glass. Fire crackles from the ruined bulb at the ceiling. The next light bursts, and then the one after that, until every light in the hallway has cracked. Ben pushes us through the door.
“Go,” he says. “I’ll find a way to stall.”
“Something could happen to you,” I say. “Dr. Gruen—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
Cara races through the door, Issie at her heels. There aren’t any barbed-wire fences or security gates back here. Ben brought us to an exit only guards use. Empty white fields stretch before us, and the snow is so bright and so clean that it dazzles me. The woods leave a dark mark on the horizon. They look close, but we’ll need to book it in order to make it to the trees before anyone realizes we’ve escaped.
Jessica slips through the door. I move to follow her, but Ben catches my arm, holding me back.
“Where are you gonna go?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” I feel heavy. Like someone dipped my feet into lead. “Somewhere far.”
Ben nods, and everything that’s lovely about him seems suddenly heightened. His messy hair curls around his ears, and there’s a night’s worth of stubble on his cheek, but it’s perfect. Like looking at a painting.
This must be what love feels like, I think, almost giddily. The singers got it wrong. It’s not like falling; it’s like lying in the grass. Like the sun warming your skin.
“Be safe,” Ben says.
I knot my hands around the front of his shirt and tug him toward me. He looks surprised, but just for a moment. Then he leans into me, his nose brushing against mine.
He tastes like coffee and oranges. His stubble scratches my cheeks, and his hands move along my waist, pulling me closer. I want to disappear inside this kiss, but Dr. Gruen’s coming, and my friends are waiting, so I move away. Icy air finds the space where his lips were, and the sensation is so awful that I almost cry.
Ben takes my face in his hands. “I’ll find you,” he promises. “When things settle down here, I’ll come after you.”
I hear something behind him that might be footsteps. Ben glances over his shoulder, then at me.
“Go,” he says. “Now.”
I take a step back. I start to run.
Then we’re all running, and Ben is farther and farther and farther away.
And then he’s gone.
Chapter Thirty-Six
At first I don’t notice the cold. My heart beats like a drum, and everything is sweat and adrenaline and fear. The sun peeks through the trees, sending long shadows over the grounds. I think of the glare the light leaves on the windows early in the morning, how it bounces off the snow until it’s so bright you can’t even see your reflection in the glass. I hope it’s enough to keep us from being spotted. Snow crunches beneath our feet. It’s so crusty
and hard we don’t even leave footprints.
I stop running a few feet from the tree line and double over, my breath forming white clouds. Brunesfield looms behind us, all shadow and gloom. Two round windows stare out at me from the second floor, set above a row of barred windows that look like teeth. They give Brunesfield a giant, snarling face.
I’m not just putting Dr. Gruen behind me. I’m leaving my tiny cell, and scratchy sheets. I’m leaving the stuffy kitchen covered in grease where Issie and Cara used to read my brother’s letters to me. I’m leaving concrete floors, and girls who scratch the walls of their cells until their fingers bleed. I’m leaving Ben.
I’m leaving it all.
“Where are we going?” Cara asks.
We’ve been on the run all day and all I’ve come up with is “far.” I lick my lips, and the wetness freezes in the corners of my mouth. We’ve been eating snow so we don’t get dehydrated, but I still feel dried out. I wipe my mouth on my sweatshirt sleeve. If I let the moisture turn to ice, it’ll crack my skin. The corners of my lips already feel tight and brittle.
“Pretty,” Jessica whispers, looking up. The sun has just started to dip behind the trees, painting the gray sky with flames of orange and pink. It’ll be dark soon.
“We should find somewhere to camp,” I say. The cold seeps into my skin, making my lips slow and clumsy.
“Like a cave?” Issie says. Her lips are nearly blue.
“Bats sleep in caves,” Jessica adds. “And bears.”
I cut my eyes sideways, studying her. I don’t want to tell them the truth. That when we first started running, I kept checking to make sure Dr. Gruen wasn’t behind us. I expected to see her weaving through the trees in one of those tailored black dresses. Stopping to dig a high heel out of the snow.
It took me hours to realize that Dr. Gruen didn’t need to chase us. We’ll freeze to death the minute we stop moving. She just needs to wait.
“We aren’t going to find a cave.” My voice shakes with every word. “But if we stay out here, the cold will kill us.”
There’s a beat of silence. Cara and Issie exchange a look over Jessica’s head. This was never part of the story.
Burning Page 22