“We need to keep walking until nightfall,” I continue. “The movement will keep us warm. Or, warm enough. We’ll make a fire as soon as it gets dark.”
I’m worried about the fire. I’ve listened to enough audiobooks to know that you don’t make a fire when you’re on the run. The flames draw predators, and the smoke will alert anyone who can see it to your presence.
But if we don’t find a way to get warm, we’ll die. The darkness should mask the smoke. As for predators . . .
The wolves in the woods aren’t any worse than the wolves in here.
I start walking again, trying to ignore the fear prickling the back of my neck. I wish I knew whether that was true.
We spend our last hour of sunlight gathering bits of wood for a makeshift shelter, and clearing away snow. Jessica scurries around the clearing, looking for sticks, while Issie and Cara lean whatever she brings them against a tree, wedging the edges into a fork in the branches. Most of the twigs are too small, and the larger ones don’t want to behave. They stand straight for a minute, then tumble over as soon as you touch them. Jessica has started speaking in a whisper, like she’s worried that talking too loudly will disturb the trees.
I clear away snow for a fire pit, and gather the driest logs in a pile. I’m so cold I can’t feel my toes. I keep thinking of this documentary about frostbite that Charlie and I watched years ago. I imagine black creeping over my skin. I picture my toes falling off my feet and rolling around inside my socks like marbles.
By the time the shelter is finished, a silver moon hangs high in the sky and the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. I hadn’t realized numb could be painful, like flames of ice. The shelter itself is complete crap. Gaps the size of my fist separate the sticks, and it isn’t strong enough to protect us from a squirrel attack or a heavy wind. But it’s the best we’re going to do.
“Jessica,” I whisper. “It’s time. Can you help us make a fire?”
Jessica picks up a thick, log-like branch that we abandoned because it wasn’t long enough to use for the shelter. It isn’t that big, but she can barely get her skinny fingers around it. She lowers herself to the ground, twisting her legs beneath her.
She glances up at us, her eyes darting and nervous.
“It’s okay,” I say.
Jessica sets the branch on the snow in front of her and folds her hands in her lap. For a long moment, nothing happens. I burrow into my sweatshirt like a turtle. Issie pulls her sleeves over her hands and bounces in place. Cara stares at Jessica’s thin frame, a worry line creasing the skin between her eyebrows.
Jessica’s eyes darken. Issie stops bouncing, and Cara takes a quick step back, colliding with me. Jessica starts to rock. She hums, and the sound is low. Tuneless.
A thin ribbon of silver smoke drifts away from the log. Fire crackles to life, turning the bark black. Issie whoops in triumph, and Cara swears loudly. But she’s smiling.
“That was amazing,” Cara breathes.
Jessica looks up at her, and the darkness in her eyes ripples and fades. “Thank you,” she says.
There are no wolves that first night. We wake early, and spend most of the next day heading deeper into the woods, trying to ignore how weak we all feel. I want to be strong for the others, but hunger makes me slow and stupid. It’s too late in the winter to find any last berries on the tree branches. We see wildlife here and there. A bird’s feathers cast shadows against the gray sky. A thin rabbit darts into the bushes. But we aren’t hunters. We can’t catch them.
“Could she do something?” Issie whispers to me. Jessica trails behind us, singing under her breath. We’ve been walking for most of the morning, but we can’t go much farther. We’re all sluggish and clumsy.
Issie turns to Jessica. “Can’t you, like, hit one of the little bunnies with a fireball?”
Jessica stops singing. “I’m not going to hurt a bunny.”
“Yeah, it’s not like a laser, Issie,” I add.
“Why not?” Issie frowns. “She’s got good aim.”
“Rabbits are fast.”
“So? She’s like a little superhero. She can take a rabbit.”
“It doesn’t work like—” I start, but Jessica interrupts me.
“I’m not going to kill a bunny,” she says.
Cara stops walking. “But you could,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “You could hit one if you wanted to.”
Jessica jerks her shoulders up and down. “I dunno.”
Issie smirks at me. “Told you.”
“Bunnies are really smart,” Jessica adds. “That’s why people keep them as pets. You can train them to do tricks, and they can jump, like, a yard off the ground and—”
“Jessica, we have to eat something,” I say. Jessica squares her jaw. Stubborn. “We could die out here,” I add. She exhales, and looks back down at her feet.
“We should practice first.” Cara picks up a thin twig. She tosses it into the air in front of Jessica.
The twig drops to the ground. Cara cocks an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t ready,” Jessica mumbles. Cara shuffles over to the twig and picks it up again. She hesitates, holding it out in front of her.
Jessica makes her hands into fists. She takes a deep breath. The black oozes over her eyes almost immediately. The air around her thickens.
“Cara,” I say. “Throw it now.”
Cara tosses the stick into the air. Jessica’s head shoots up, her dark eyes following it through the sky. The stick bursts into flames. The still-burning splinters rain down on us, then flicker out when they hit the snow.
Issie whistles through her teeth. “Damn.”
We only catch one rabbit that day, but it feels like a feast. We eat it around the fire after nightfall, juices running down our chins. I pick the meat off with my fingers and run my tongue along the bones. It tastes smoky and rich, better than anything I’ve ever eaten before.
Issie huddles next to me, her body blocking the wind. She lifts a rabbit bone to her mouth and, for a second, our campsite almost feels cozy. I half expect her to flash a smile and beg me to tell the story of us.
She rips a chunk of meat off the bone with her teeth. “I saw you making out with my boyfriend,” she says, swallowing.
Guilt hits me like a jab to the chin. I don’t even see it coming until the pain explodes through my head. “Issie . . .”
“Don’t bother lying.” Issie licks the juice from her fingers one by one. “I saw you. With my eyeballs.”
I stare at my feet. Issie’s dental floss has started to unravel and my toe pokes out, my skin practically blue with cold. A bubble of laughter rises above the crackling flames. Jessica and Cara crouch together on the other side of the fire, discussing something I can’t hear.
“It just happened,” I say, wiggling my bare toe to keep warm. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Girl, it’d take an act of God to hurt me.” Issie tosses a rabbit bone into the fire. The flames spark. “I’m talking a tornado or a hurricane. Something with wind and shit.”
I frown. “So you’re not mad?”
“Mad?” She wipes the leftover juice on her scrubs. “You know he wasn’t really my boyfriend, right? That’s just something I said because he’s a hot piece of culo.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Ass,” Issie translates. “See, unlike you, I don’t think I don’t deserve nice shit just because I made some mistakes. That guard has been into you forfuckingever. I’m glad you got him.”
Issie pulls her sleeves down over her hands. “Or had him, I guess,” she adds. “Even for a little while.”
I want to hug her, but juvie girls don’t hug. “Thanks,” I say, instead.
“Anytime.”
Wind moans through the trees, making the branches shiver. I clear my throat. “Ben told me you didn’t take the SciGirls test.”
“Oh Ben told you that, did he?”
I throw a rabbit bone at Issie’s shoe. She laughs, and kicks it into the fire.
“Why didn’t you?” I ask. Issue shrugs.
“I thought about what you said while you were in Seg. About how you had a bad feeling about SciGirls and Dr. Gruen. I shouldn’t have blown you off when you told me that. You’ve always had my back.”
Issie picks up a stick and uses it to poke the fire. “Did you know that everyone who took the test made it into SciGirls? Dr. Gruen made it sound like the program was this big deal, like it was really hard to get in. The whole thing was just a trick to get us to sign up.”
“Yeah,” I say. “She was good at that.”
Issie tosses the stick into the fire, sending embers into the snow. “Do you think they’re okay?” she asks. “Aaliyah and Ellen and the others?”
“I don’t know,” I say. For a moment we’re both silent, watching the fire burn.
“Ang, tell me you brought the photo,” Cara calls. She and Jessica have stopped talking and now both stare across the fire at me, expectantly.
“I brought it.” I lean forward, and slip the newspaper article from my waistband. I edge around the fire, crouching next to Jessica.
“Did Cara tell you who we think this is?” I ask, holding out the paper.
“My mom,” Jessica says. Her voice barely lifts above the spitting and crackling sound of the fire. She jiggles her knee.
“Don’t be nervous,” I say. Jessica nods, and takes the folded article from my hand. She holds it in her lap for a long moment, then breathes in deep, and unfolds the paper.
I can tell the woman in the photograph is her mother before she says a word. Her knee goes still, and her lips part, slightly. She stares at the photograph, mesmerized.
“Do you remember her at all?” Cara asks. Jessica swallows.
“She liked plants,” she says without looking up. “We had them all over our house when I was little. She used to sing to them.” She smiles. “It was funny.”
“Do you know if she was like you?” Cara asks. “If she could . . .” She nods at the crackling fire. Jessica frowns, the flames dancing in her black eyes.
“I don’t know.” She folds the paper twice, clutching it like she might bite you if you tried to take it away.
“Maybe it’s genetic?” Issie says. I shake my head.
“Dr. Gruen said it wasn’t. No one knew how Jessica was infected.” I point to the article. “That photograph looks exactly like her. If her mom could start fires too, then genetics would have been the first thing they tested.”
“Can you think of anything else?” Cara asks. “Anything weird that happened when you were little?”
Jessica thinks for a second. “I got burned once,” she says. “It was pretty bad. We had to go to the hospital.”
“Maybe that’s how it spreads,” Issie says. “Like, if you get burned and don’t die—boom. Superhero powers.”
I press the tips of my fingers together, recalling the tender pink wounds I got from the tray. “I got burned, and I don’t have superpowers.”
“Your fingers were barely hurt,” Cara points out. “Jessica said she had to go to the hospital.”
I catch Cara’s eyes over the flickering light. “So you think you have to be really badly burned for the power to pass over?”
She shrugs. “Maybe.”
Something blinks in the darkness behind her. I freeze, a piece of rabbit halfway to my mouth. Cara frowns, then turns to look over her shoulder. I see it again—two dots of light. Eyes.
It’s too dark to see the wolves clearly, but I can make out the shaggy outlines of their bodies, and I can tell by the sound of their footsteps that they’re big. Bigger than I thought they’d be.
They hover in the woods around us for the rest of the night, but they never enter the circle of fire.
I wake to the sound of helicopters. I can’t see them—it’s still dark—but I hear an engine roar and the sound of propellers beating against the sky. A spotlight flickers through the trees. I watch it sweep over the woods. It’s miles away from us, but it won’t be long before it comes closer.
It won’t be long before we’re found.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“I’m hungry,” Cara says.
“No shit,” I say. My stomach rumbles beneath my sweatshirt. We’re all hungry. We agreed it would be too risky to let Jessica start a fire this morning, even if that meant going without food. I keep checking over my shoulder, listening for the sound of helicopters.
“Just keep going,” I add. We’re moving so slowly it barely feels like walking, but my muscles scream with pain every time I lift my leg from the ground.
“Go where?” Cara kicks a pile of snow, spraying the path in front of us. Gray light filters down through the tree branches, and the sky above is solid white. A blizzard’s coming.
“Don’t,” I warn Cara, my voice hard. She glances over her shoulder at me, lifting an eyebrow.
“Don’t what? We’re walking in circles.”
I bite back a groan. I don’t have the patience to deal with Cara right now, not with hunger clawing at my stomach and fear making my muscles weak.
“You wanted this, remember?” I say. “You practically blackmailed me into leaving with you.”
Cara huffs and turns back around. “I never wanted this.”
“You’re welcome to try to do better,” I say.
Cara shakes her head. Under her breath, she says, “Like you’d ever let someone else be the leader.”
“What does that mean?” I snap.
Cara shrugs jerkily and hugs her arms to her chest. Mary Anne’s vegetable charm bracelet dangles from her wrist. “Just stating the facts,” she says.
Issie stops walking. “Guys,” she says.
“No, really.” Heat rises in my cheeks. “Cara thinks she’d be a better leader. So let’s let her lead.”
“Anyone would be a better leader.”
“Guys!” Issie shouts.
“Go for it, Cara. Show us how great you are at navigating a frigid, frozen forest with no tools and no food and no—”
“Angela!” Issie grabs me by the shoulders and spins me around. “Shut the hell up and look!”
I’m so angry and cold and scared that, for a long moment, I don’t see anything. Issie points at a thick patch of trees covered in snow. A squat log cabin sits behind them, not even fifty feet away.
Cara blows air out through her teeth. “Oh.”
“Maybe Issie should be the leader,” Jessica says.
We approach the cabin like it’s a wild animal about to dart away. Excitement hammers at my chest. The door will probably be locked, I tell myself. Or else the owner’s here. I bet he already called the police.
But the cabin looks empty. There’s no smoke drifting from the chimney, no car in the drive. The windows are dark. I put my hand on the doorknob. And turn.
It creaks open.
“Holy shit,” Cara breathes. We hover together on the doorstep, both of us too nervous to make the first move. Jessica slips past us, and wanders through the door like she belongs.
“Screw this,” Issie says, and follows her inside.
The cabin is small. Just one room, with a tiny kitchen shoved up against the far wall. There’s no heat, but the temperature rises a few degrees as soon as we step through the door.
“Look. A fireplace,” Issie says, teeth chattering. She tugs a flannel blanket off the futon in the corner, and wraps it around herself.
“It’s not dark yet,” Cara says, collapsing on the futon. She props her legs up on a small wooden trunk.
“What’s in there?” I ask. Cara reluctantly moves her feet, and I pop the trunk open. A stack of neatly folded blankets sits inside, looking so warm and cozy that it makes me want to cry. I toss one to Cara, and one to Jessica, and drape a third over my shoulders, shivering. The heat has started to climb back into my arms and legs.
“No fire,” I say, closing the trunk. “But look around for anything we can take with us. Food, blankets, winter clothes. Anything we can carry.”<
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“Take?” Issie says. She and Cara share a look, and she tugs her blanket tighter around her shoulders. “We’re not staying?”
“They’ll find us here,” I explain. I cross the small room, and push aside the flannel curtain covering the window. The woods outside look quiet. I don’t see helicopters dotting the sky, or hear the distant sounds of propellers. But it’s only a matter of time.
“We can’t leave this place.” Cara leans forward, and the futon groans beneath her. “Angela, we could have died out here!”
“They’re going to check this cabin the second they find it. We’ll get caught.”
“Well, maybe . . .” Cara stops talking. She bites her lower lip.
“Maybe what?” I ask. She doesn’t answer. I sink onto a rickety kitchen chair, stunned. “Maybe we should get caught? Maybe we should go back to Brunesfield? I know that’s what you’re thinking.”
Cara lowers her chin to her chest and covers her face with her blanket. “I didn’t mean it,” she says, her voice muffled by flannel. “I’m just cold and tired and hungry. And those wolves.”
“Wolves don’t usually attack humans,” Jessica says in a small voice. “They’re too scared.”
I twist around to tell her enough with the animal facts already, but something about her posture stops me. She’s crouched next to the fireplace with her back to us, her shoulders stiff.
Cara leans forward. “You okay, Jess?”
Jessica swipes a hand across her cheek. “This is my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say. Cara cocks an eyebrow. She doesn’t say a word, but I know exactly what she’s thinking. Maybe this isn’t Jessica’s fault, but she’s the reason we’re all here.
“You were all fine before I got here,” Jessica whispers.
“Girl, none of us were ever fine,” Issie says.
“We can’t stop,” I say. “We can’t go back.”
Cara peeks out from under the blanket. “I know.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to leave now,” Issie points out. “We should rest for a few hours. Regain our strength.”
I shoot her a look, and she raises her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Look, Ang, you’re right, they’ll find us if we stay here. But your troops are not doing well. Morale is down. Let us get our energy back, will you?”
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