Wilder Girls Read online

  Keeping it still with one hand, she fumbles with the other for one of the loose rocks at the rim of the pool. Gets a good grip and slams the rock down on the crab. It writhes, limbs twitching frantically.

  “Jesus, Byatt.”

  She stares down at the shattered crab. Starting at the very tips of its claws, the blue shell is darkening, turning black like it’s been dipped in ink. The sight of it is what sent those girls reeling in biology, what left them dizzy and gasping.

  “Why do you do that?” I ask, looking away. If we’d already had breakfast, I might be throwing it up right now.

  “Because,” she says. She picks up the crab, still moving but only just, and tosses it back into the water. “It’s how you know they’re real Raxter Blues.”

  “You can’t just pick a flower?” The irises do it, turn black as they’re dying. They have since before the Tox, and now we do too. Every Raxter girl, fingers black up to her knuckles as the Tox takes her.

  “It’s not the same,” Byatt says.

  She stands then, leaves me behind and picks her way out to the last of the rocks, her feet sure, boots slick as the tide pushes in. She told me once that it was her favorite thing about Raxter, the way the edges of it change. Earth dropping away and slipping under and there, Byatt with her eyes closed and her chin lifted.

  “Can you remember?” I call suddenly, the winter breeze tearing my voice from my mouth. “What it was like, before?”

  She looks over her shoulder at me. I wonder if she’s thinking of the same things I am. Of watching from the porch while the seniors gathered on the beach in their white graduation dresses, of linking fingers during assembly and squeezing hard to keep from laughing. Of standing in the dining room, the last echoes of sun drifting through the paneled windows, and singing an off-key hymn before sitting down to eat.

  “Yeah,” Byatt says. “Of course.”

  “And you miss it?”

  For a second I think she won’t answer, and then her mouth splits wide, and she’s smiling. “Does that matter?”

  “I guess not.” Above us the clouds shift, let a little warmth through. “Let’s go in.”

  * * *

  —

  We meet Reese at the kitchen threshold, waiting as two girls wash their hair in the sink with a bucket of rainwater. Every few days Byatt and I share a turn, my hair too short to need much more than a scrub at the roots, but Reese’s braid scatters the water like stars, beautiful and hard to look at, and she gets the whole sink to herself.

  “They’re taking forever,” Reese says as we come up beside her. She’s got her braid gripped tight in her silver hand, and I can see the tension in the other girls, see them looking at the door like they might make a run for it.

  “Sorry,” one of them says. “We’re almost done.”

  “Well, hurry up.”

  They look at each other, and then the girls are wringing their hair out and hustling past us. The second one has shampoo suds still glistening at her temples.

  “Thanks,” Reese says, like she gave them a choice.

  Byatt and I stand in the doorway as Reese undoes her braid and dunks her hair into the bucket of water. It takes a few minutes. By the time she’s done, her sleeves are drenched, and she’s still dripping as the three of us find an empty couch in the main hall and settle in to wait. If the shifts are going to change, Welch tells us early, right when the youngest ones have finished their breakfast.

  I slump against the armrest, drop my legs into Byatt’s lap. On the other side of her, Reese is bent forward, damp head ducked down as she rebraids her hair.

  She isn’t nervous. There’s just something winding tight in her. It’s always there, but some days it feels closer to the surface, and today’s one of those. We don’t say anything when Reese starts picking at the upholstery with her silver hand.

  I’ve never wanted anything the way Reese wants Boat Shift. I can still see her at the gate that day Mr. Harker left, reaching through to him. I can still hear her yelling as Taylor pulled her away. Of course she wants to go out, past the fence, past the curve of the road. To see if there’s anything left of him.

  We couldn’t sneak her out, not without breaking the quarantine, like the letter says. And it’s too dangerous, anyway, for a girl on her own, but Byatt and I did what we could. Took her up on the roof deck, just to see if we could find the outline of her old house in the trees. It only made her angry.

  “I don’t know,” she said as we climbed inside. “Just, fuck.” And then she didn’t speak to us for two days after.

  The door to Headmistress’s office swings open, and Welch comes down the corridor with a sheet of paper in her hands. Reese stands up.

  “Ladies,” says Welch, “please take a look at the revised schedule. Some of you will have changed rotations.” She switches the old out for new, tacking the paper next to the note above the fireplace. “Girls on the Boat Shift, find me when you can. I’ll be by the south storeroom.”

  I expect Reese to rush up there just as soon as Welch is gone, but she’s halting when she approaches, her legs moving like machinery. There’s talk, still, in the hall, but nobody else has come up to check, and that’s how I know they’re watching.

  Reese gets close. I tense up, waiting for the small smile that means she’s got what she wants. Except it doesn’t come.

  Wheeling around, Reese is by the couch in a few strides, and her silver hand locks around my ankle. Jesus, it’s cold, and then she gives one tug, hard, and I’m on the floor.

  “Reese,” I say, shock jolting through me, and I start to sit up, but she’s already moving. Straddling me, her knees pinning my arms, the heel of her hand pushing at my chin, laying my neck bare.

  I’m trying to say something, and my feet are thrashing, and I try to twist my hips, maybe that’ll help, I just need to breathe, just one breath, but she’s pressing harder, landing a silver punch on my chest.

  “What happened?” I can hear Byatt yelling louder and louder. “Reese, stop. What happened? What is it?”

  Reese turns her head just a fraction, and I manage to fight one of my arms free. I reach around her for her braid and yank her head back. She howls, and there’s a slice and a burn across the blind side of my face. She lays her forearm across my windpipe. Leans.

  I try to push her off, but she’s strong—strong like she’s something more than herself, and there’s Byatt behind her, screaming, screaming. One last ragged gasp before the world goes black, and I say her name.

  Reese scrambles away, staggering to her feet.

  “Oh my God,” Byatt says, color drained from her face.

  I can’t move, hurt hollowing out my chest. We’ve fought before, but only over rations. It always ends there. That’s the line we stay behind.

  Reese blinks, clears her throat. “She’s fine,” she says gruffly. “She’ll be fine.”

  She must leave after that, because Byatt kneels next to me, and she’s the one who helps me up when I can find my feet again.

  I almost don’t check the schedule. I almost just go upstairs to rest. But we pass close by, and I squint, skim past the new Gun Shift pairs and the new guard rotations and find my name. And there it is. That’s why. I’m the new Boat Shift girl.

  * * *

  —

  I’m smiling. I don’t mean to be, but I am, and there are whispers coming from behind me, and I have to stop, right now, or Reese will hear about it and she’ll hate me even more.

  Byatt lays her hand on my shoulder. “You should go find her. Talk to her.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I mean, I know it wasn’t right, what she did,” Byatt’s saying, and she’s smoothing my hair off my face. “But she’s—”

  “I have to check in,” I say. “With Welch.” I can’t help the brightness in my voice. I
didn’t want this—I know it wasn’t supposed to be mine—but I’m proud now that I have it. I’m a good shot. I can carry my weight. I know why my name is on that list.

  “Fine,” Byatt says. She pulls back, crosses her arms over her chest, and I can tell she has something else she’d like to say. Instead, she gives me one last look before making for the stairs.

  Around me the other girls are waiting. Watching me, new attention in their eyes now that I’m Boat Shift. They’re waiting for me to show them, to tell them what to do, and it’s more than I thought I’d have to carry. But I have to remember that for all the rules that have fallen apart, there are new ones, stronger and more rigid than anything we had before. Nobody goes past the fence—that’s the first rule, the most important, and now I’m one of the girls allowed to break it.

  I give the nearest girl a smile that I hope is mature and responsible and then hurry out of the room, still feeling the stares. Welch said to meet her so I go, along the south corridor to the storeroom, where I find her taking inventory.

  “Hetty, great,” she says. She looks so tired, and for a second I’m grateful. The Tox doesn’t hurt her as badly as it hurts us girls, but at least between flare-ups, we can count on a moment or two of peace. “Come and help me for a minute.”

  She dumps a stack of blankets into my arms, and I hear her counting softly. I drop my forehead against them, make sure I’m breathing slowly. I think the stitches over my eye have opened up.

  “We’ll probably go out again tomorrow or the day after,” Welch says, taking the blankets back from me. “Yesterday’s shipment was small, so with any luck they’ll supplement it.”

  The best we can hope for is some extra food, and maybe a blanket or two. In the early days there was more. Contact lens solution, so Kara didn’t have to wear her glasses. Insulin for Olivia, and Welch’s birth control, to manage her hormones. But they stopped coming after a month or so, and even Headmistress couldn’t get them back. Left Kara without her lenses, Welch without her pills, and Olivia dead.

  “So where do I meet you?” I ask. “And what do I bring? Is it—”

  “I’ll come fetch you.” Welch gives me a once-over. “Make sure you’re getting some good rest. And try to avoid displays like that fuss in the main hall, if you would.”

  “Tell that to Reese,” I mutter.

  “Oh, sorry,” I hear from behind me. I turn, see Taylor shifting from foot to foot in the doorway. At first I think she’s here to give me a hard time about taking her spot on Boat Shift, even though she’s the one who gave it up, but she’s focused on Welch.

  “Didn’t mean to interrupt,” she continues. “Welch, can I catch up with you later?”

  A look passes between them—quick, almost nothing, and gone before I can pin it down. “Sure,” Welch says lightly.

  Taylor ducks down the hall. I stare after her, trying to spot whatever the Tox did to her. Nobody’s sure what her flare-ups have left her with, not even the other girls in her year. Whatever the changes, they must be hidden under her clothes.

  “Remember, Hetty,” Welch says as she finishes tallying the blankets. I snap back to her. “Rest and hydration, and no fuss. Away with you now.”

  Out in the corridor I’m just in time to see Taylor disappearing into the kitchen. Welch wouldn’t tell me what to expect past the fence, but Taylor might.

  I follow her, sidle into the kitchen to see her kneeling by the old fridge, one arm wedged behind it.

  “Um,” I say, and she jumps, free hand flying to her belt where she used to keep a knife during her Boat Shift days.

  “God, Hetty. Make a noise, won’t you?”

  “Sorry.” I inch closer. “What are you doing?”

  Taylor glances over my shoulder, still holding herself coiled and tight, and then smiles a little. I watch the tension drain out of her. She sits back on her heels and pulls a plastic sleeve of crackers out from behind the fridge. “Want a snack?”

  Hiding food is strictly forbidden. A few girls tried it near the beginning, and it wasn’t the teachers who came down hard but the rest of us. Boat Shift took them outside to have a talk and left them bloodied in the courtyard. Taylor, though—she’s earned some leeway. I can’t imagine anybody punishing her.

  “Sure,” I say, and sit down next to her on the checkered tile. She hands me a cracker. I feel her watching me as I take a bite. “Thanks.”

  “I put these here sometime last summer. Figured one of you girls would’ve found them by now.”

  “Nobody’s gonna look back there,” I say. “Too many gross cobwebs. And, like, mice or something.”

  Taylor scoffs. “When was the last time you saw a mouse around here?” She swallows a cracker down in two bites and wipes crumbs off her mouth. “So? Ask what you want to ask.”

  “What?”

  “Your name shows up on the Boat Shift list and you’re in here talking to me by accident? Okay, Hetty.”

  I take another cracker, but my mouth is dry, and I wind up just holding it in my clammy palm. “I guess I’m wondering what I should be prepared for. I mean, what, we go pick up the stuff and come back? It can’t be as easy as that.”

  Taylor laughs, and it’s the kind of thing where you hear it and laugh along with her because if you don’t, she might cry. “They use the lighthouse at Camp Nash to tell us they’re coming. Morse code or some shit. I don’t know. But Welch’ll come in and wake you if they give the signal. She likes to leave early so you can get home before sundown. It’d be nice if they could just drop the stuff here, save us a trip.”

  I’d never even thought that was a possibility. “Why don’t they?”

  Taylor takes another crumbling bite of cracker. “They say it would risk contamination,” she tells me, mouth full. “Really, I just think they can’t get around the rocks off the point. Not like they’re the Navy or anything. Not like the Navy’s supposed to be good at that whole sailing thing.”

  It’s startling, hearing this hallowed process rendered in bitter words. But then, she’s been a lot closer to it than I have.

  “Is it…” And I have to stop, find the right words. “Is it as big as it looks out there?”

  “Big?”

  I think of the grounds, the way the pines have gotten taller, the way they seem nothing like what I’ve seen from the roof. In the woods the Tox is still wild. No girls for it to pick apart, so it got into everything else. Out there it blossoms and spreads with a kind of joy. Unbridled and vicious and free.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”

  Taylor leans forward. “Do you remember what it was like? That first day?”

  A year and a half back, in early spring sun. I was out in the jack pine grove when it happened, in the tangle of trunks and limbs, Reese and Byatt watching as I walked out on the lowest branch as far as I could go. And I fell, which wasn’t strange; we were all of us covered in scabs and nicks then, some of us turning a corner too fast, some of us sewing our hems too short, some of us pressing sharp things into ourselves just to see what it would feel like. It was what came after.

  I stood up, laughing, but then blood started dripping out of my right eye. Slowly at first, and then faster and faster, running down my cheeks and pooling in my mouth. Hot like it was about to boil, and I started to cry because I couldn’t see.

  Byatt swore and grabbed my elbow. Reese took the other, and they rushed me to the house. I kept my eyes closed. I could hear other girls, hear them talking and giggling and falling silent as we passed by. Byatt tucked her body in close to mine. She was the only thing that kept me on my feet.

  In the main hall, Byatt sat with me on the stairs while Reese ran to get the nurse. We sat there for a while, I don’t know how long. Byatt held my hand in both of hers while I leaned on her shoulder and bled on her shirt. When Reese came back, she had Welch with her, and they pressed gauze to my right e
ye until it dried. Until they could see the skin of my eyelids fusing together.

  The nurse was gone. Three other girls were sick. Everything was starting.

  They quarantined the island the next morning. Helicopters overhead, military issue. Days of doctors in hazmat suits swarming the house, tests and tests and no answers, just a sickness spreading through every one of us.

  “Yeah,” I say. I have to clear my throat. “I remember.”

  “It’s still like that outside,” Taylor says. “Here at the house you have it so easy, but out there it’s like the first days. Like we don’t know a damn thing.”

  Maybe she’ll tell me the truth. Maybe I’ve earned it, now that I’m Boat Shift. “Is that why you quit?”

  It’s the wrong question, and Taylor’s face changes the second I ask it. Eyes cold, mouth a flat line. She gets to her feet. “You’re welcome for the crackers. Put them back when you’re done.”

  * * *

  —

  Reese doesn’t find us for dinner. She’s made curfew, that’s all Welch tells us when we ask, but we don’t see her, not when I pick up our rations from the kitchen, not when Lauren and Ali come to blows over a fresh pack of hair elastics and Julia has to pull them apart. That’s my job now too, I remind myself. I’m Boat Shift—I’m that girl.

  Her bunk is empty when we get to our room, and I think I see the flash of her silver hand out of the corner of my eye, heading farther down the hall. I force myself to look away.

  “I should be the mad one,” I say to Byatt as we settle into bed. “She strangled me, not the other way around.”

  “You took something from her,” Byatt says. “That’s how she sees it, anyway.”

  I hold my breath, tip my chin up to keep the prickling in my eye from turning to tears. She can’t really think I did this to hurt her. But that’s Reese—always protecting herself from some threat I can’t see. “I didn’t ask for this.”