Wilder Girls

by Rory Power

  Part of me really was an idiot.

  After breakfast Reese followed me outside, and she kept watch as I peered through the window into Headmistress’s office. Nothing—just the bulk of her old desk and a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner.

  “Byatt’s not there,” I told Reese, and I told her the same thing as I checked every classroom and every office. Every storage closet, every bathroom. The whole house unlocked like it was waiting for me, like it had something to prove. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t think past the throbbing in my head, couldn’t feel anything but the guilt of failing Byatt like this.

  And Reese took my hand, like she did last night, and she led me back outside. The air bracing and quick, waking the blood in my skin and thinning the pain in my head until it was barely there anymore. “There’s still tonight,” she said quietly. “It’s not over yet.”

  Now we’re on the north side of the house, wandering aimlessly toward the point. Off to the left, the cliff tapering to nothing on our side of the grounds, and up ahead, a tetherball pole and a rusted swing set, both listing to one side, the dead grass around them covered in frost. I can feel the cold pricking in my lungs, points like knives, and my nose has gone numb, but I don’t mind. Out here I can breathe. Out here I feel awake.

  The grounds are so open, nothing like the clustered press of the woods, and I’m thinking about that when I say, “We should get a gun,” so suddenly that Reese nearly trips.

  “What for?”

  My body remembers the shake and the fear as I ran for my life that first time I was out beyond the fence. “Trust me, we want one.”

  “Sure,” Reese says, frowning, “but it’s not like we can steal one from the supply closet without Welch noticing.”

  A set of girls rambles by, on their way to wash their hair or steal some blankets or just be bored someplace new, and we give them a nod, a tight smile. Two are from the year below us, and the others are Sarah and Lauren from ours. I like Lauren, but Sarah’s the girl who stole my last clean uniform skirt and got me a dress code violation my third week here. I can’t stand the way she brags about her flare-up, either. One heart, two heartbeats—fantastic. She thinks it means she’ll live longer. I think it just means she’s that much more fucked.

  “Hey, Hetty,” Lauren says, slowing down. “Do you know if we’re having target practice today?”

  Welch would have said so at breakfast, and part of me wants to remind them of that, but I’m Boat Shift now. I’m the girl they come to with questions.

  “Not today,” I say. “Have a good one.”

  “ ‘Have a good one’?” Reese repeats under her breath, and I know if I look at her, I’ll see her holding back a smile.

  Lauren looks a little disappointed, but she shrugs. “Thanks. See you, Hetty.”

  “Look at you,” Reese says once they’re gone. “You’re like a politician. Or a mall greeter.”

  It’s the way she’d tease me when Byatt was here, the same words, the same amused expression. But it’s softer somehow. Or at least, I don’t mind it.

  I’m about to suggest we go back inside, maybe keep an eye on the storage closet and hope Welch leaves it unattended during the day, when Reese tugs on my sleeve. She nods over my shoulder, to where the barn is standing, empty and dark.

  “Target practice,” she says. “There’s a gun we can take.”

  “How?”

  But she’s already walking, leaving a trail of footprints through the frost.

  The barn’s empty this time of day. Just vacant stalls and dust drifting, and the sliding doors open to the sea, chilled wind whipping through. I follow Reese to the back, behind the bales of hay stacked to make a target, to a long-locked chest meant for saddles and stirrups. Now it’s where Welch keeps the shotgun we use for our lessons.

  “Here,” Reese says, crouching in front of the chest. It’s only got one padlock, the kind with a dial and a combination, and it looks rusted, like it might be easy to break. Welch would notice if we smashed it, but I’m about to say that some things are worth the risk when Reese starts turning the dial, spinning to a set of three numbers: 3–17–03. Her birthday.

  The lock clicks open, and she looks up at me with a grin. “My dad set the combo,” she says. “I figured Welch wouldn’t have changed it.” Reese lifts the lid and pulls the shotgun out from a pile of old tack, fishing for any loose ammo. “Now what?”

  “We should hide it somewhere,” I say, still surprised at our luck, as she slips a pair of stray shells into her pocket, the metal clinging to her skin in the cold. We’ll only have two shots between us. “Near the fence, maybe, so it’s easy to grab on the way out.” There’s a copse of spruce trees off to the left of the gate, where some of the older girls used to bring their mainland boyfriends on visitor days. My face burns at the thought of going there with Reese, but we should be able to hide the gun there safely until tonight.

  “All right,” Reese says, and holds the shotgun out to me. I take it, unsure, only for her to turn around and shrug off her jacket. I’d be shivering if I were her, but all she’s got are a few goosebumps down her arms. “Stick it in my waistband and we’ll run it up my back.”

  It’ll work, but I can’t help a burst of nervous laughter. She looks over her shoulder at me. “What? You have a better way?”

  Maybe it’s her willingness to do this with me, to risk her life for Byatt’s because I asked her to. Maybe it’s the line of her jaw or the lure of her hair. But she’s given me something, and I owe her something back. “Hey,” I say. “You want to learn to shoot?”

  I’m expecting her to snap at me. Instead, she sounds carefully bland when she says, “I know how.”

  “I mean on your other side.” A heartbeat of silence, her expression curdling to something doubtful, but it’s not a no, so I try again. “I shoot righty. I could teach you.”

  “Okay,” she says. Nervous. Determined. Just like me.

  I hand the shotgun back to her and lead her to the front of the barn, point her toward the patch of floor where the sawdust is ground. Reese takes her spot, drawing her jacket around her again, and I come up next to her.

  “Show me how you normally stand.”

  She bristles. A week ago I’d have said it’s because she hates to be told what to do. And she does, but I think she hates, too, to be seen as anything but strong.

  “Just show me,” I say gently.

  Reluctantly, she snugs the butt of the shotgun in against her left shoulder, barrel cradled in her right hand. She starts trying to hook the fingers on her silver hand around the trigger. But her fingers are too fine at the point, and they won’t catch and pull.

  “See?” she says.

  “Right,” I say, “but that’s okay. Now switch your position. Put your left foot forward and angle your hips.”

  They teach us to shoot in what Welch calls a bladed stance, with the support shoulder to the target and the trigger shoulder to the back. She says it’s to make sure we hit right the first time, just in case the bullets stop coming on the boat and we have to make them count.

  Reese adjusts, sets up with the shotgun lifted in her silver hand and her other hand waiting near the trigger. She’s holding her shoulders the right way, but you can tell it’s not how she likes it by the way her hips are still square.

  “You gotta commit,” I say. “Come on.”

  “I can’t really see this way.”

  I laugh. “If I can see with one eye, you can see with two.”

  She’s fussing, trying to get the gun to sit right, but she won’t be able to if she’s standing like that. I come up close behind her, reach out, my hand hovering over her hip. “Can I?”

  She turns her head, baring the delicate skin along the nape of her neck, and my breath catches. A moment ago it was nothing, this was nothing, just me and her th
e way we’ve been a hundred times before. But it’s not the same. Byatt gone, nobody between us.

  “Yeah,” she says quietly. “You can.”

  I rest one hand on her hip, the other sliding to her waist. She’s warm through her jacket, alive and here with me, and if I couldn’t feel it myself, I wouldn’t believe it, but she’s trembling. Reese, stoic and sharp and steel, shaking under my touch.

  “This way,” I say, turning her parallel to me. Her body learning the shape of mine, and I swallow hard. “Keep your form, though.”

  She lifts the shotgun again, and together we guide it into place, my touch keeping her hips bladed, my head ducked close to hers. Her lashes are dark against her skin as she shuts one eye to focus her aim.

  “There,” I say unsteadily. “Perfect.”

  We hold there, her frame inside of mine, and then she relaxes. Just barely, and not all at once, but it brings her back flush against my chest. My heart hammering, beat after shaking beat roaring in my ears. I’ve never been this close to her before, never seen the scar on the side of her nose or the spot behind her ear where her hair sweeps away. It looks soft, tissue-thin, and I don’t mean to, don’t realize I’m moving, but I reach up and brush my fingertip over the vein that’s just showing, barely blue.

  Her head whips around. I snatch my hand away. Mouth open, panic rising. I can’t believe I’ve ruined it. Pushed too far, and got too close, right when we were just starting to figure out how to be friends.

  “Sorry,” I choke out. Anything to get us back somewhere safe. “I shouldn’t have.”

  She’s just staring at me, breathing shallow and quick. The cold catching in clouds around her, shotgun dangling from her silver fingers. “What was that?” she says at last.

  I managed three years without giving it a name. But there she is, Reese with her starlit hair and her wildfire heart, and I knew what to call this last night in our room, her face beautiful and strange in the dark. I knew the day I met her, when she looked at me like I was something she didn’t understand. I’ve known every minute in between.

  “Nothing,” I say firmly. Nothing, nothing at all. I can close this door. I’ve had plenty of practice. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

  “No, Hetty, you have to tell me what that was.” She sets the shotgun on the makeshift table, never taking her eyes off mine. “You have to, because I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind.”

  “What do you mean?” I say, keeping my voice as light as I can. I can do this—I can pretend, explain everything away.

  She’s not falling for it.

  “I mean you’ve been different with me,” she says, and I could swear she’s blushing, but there’s the stubborn push of her jaw, the fierce resolve that I know so well. “I mean, you’ve been looking at me like you finally noticed I’m here.”

  Like I finally noticed her? God, she has no idea. She really has no idea. “That’s not—”

  “So,” she presses, ignoring me, “I need you to tell me what that was just now.” A step closer, the cool shine of her braid washing over my skin. “I need to know if you’re where I am.”

  My breath catches. She can’t mean it, can she? I’m not used to this, to the tight bloom of my heart. It’s been too long since I hoped for anything. “And where is that?”

  “Here,” she says. She reaches out, tangles our fingers together. Watching me the whole time, and she sounds so sure, so confident, but I can feel her shaking, just like I am. Like she’s spent as long wanting this as I have.

  And maybe she has. Every time she cut me down, every time I couldn’t reach her, all because she wanted me, and she thought I’d never want her back. And if there’s anything Reese does well, it’s self-defense.

  But I can see through it, now, and I know what we’ve done for each other, the concessions we’ve made, the slights we’ve swallowed. Neither of us able to let go, no matter how much the holding on hurts.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I’m here too.”

  For a moment we don’t move, and all I can hear is my heart marking time. Until Reese lets out a shaky breath, and then we’re both laughing, leaning into each other, practically giddy with relief.

  “Okay, good,” she says, her silver fingers careful as she traces the line of my jaw. So soft I barely feel it, but I do, I do, and it lights me up like a match to paper. Our laughter falls away as the curve of her body fits to mine. She’s still smiling when she kisses me.

  So am I.

  CHAPTER 10

  Evening, and we’re back up in our room. After leaving the barn we snuck the shotgun out to the spruce copse by the fence, buried it there under a layer of rotting leaves. Reese next to me like always, nothing different between us but the look in her eyes and the heat in my veins.

  Now she’s sprawled on my bunk, watching me as I pace from one end of the room to the other. Every inch the sun sets is another notch of dread, a spring coiling in my gut. Closer and closer, the gate swinging open and Welch taking Byatt out into the woods.

  Out in the hallway the other girls are drifting upstairs, back to their rooms in time for bed check. We stayed in the spruce copse clear through dinner, neither of us speaking, the iron bars of the fence looming larger and larger. I’m not hungry—just thinking of food still makes me sick with guilt—but Reese’s stomach picks that moment to grumble so loudly I can hear it from across the room.

  I stop pacing and watch as Reese sits up, takes the leftover jerky from breakfast out of her pocket and crams most of it into her mouth.

  There should be more food here for us, I think, trying not to flinch. And there would be if I hadn’t helped Welch on the pier.

  When she sees me watching, Reese swallows thickly and holds out what’s left, barely a bite. “Sorry,” she says. “Did you want some?”

  I let out a wheezing laugh. This is ridiculous. Welch took my best friend from me, and here I am still keeping her secret. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I say.

  And then I describe it as simply as I can. The bags, overflowing with food in its strange packaging, and the way Welch rested her hand so casually on her gun as she asked whether she’d made the right choice. Reese’s mouth goes slack as I talk. Dark eyes looking up at me from the bed, wide and incredulous.

  “You’re serious,” she says when I finish.

  I nod. I haven’t told her about the chocolate, but I can’t see what good it would do. And some part of me wants to keep it for myself. “Yeah,” I say. “And we just tossed it over.” She doesn’t say anything, just stares out the window, fists clenched, and I feel a gnawing in my gut. I can’t have ruined things with us. Not already, not before it’s barely even started. “Are you angry?”

  She scoffs. “Of course I’m angry.”

  “But I mean with me.”

  She looks at me then, and tentatively hooks her fingers through one of my belt loops. How could I have missed it? The warmth in her eyes, just mine and nobody else’s. “You didn’t have much of a choice, did you?”

  It shouldn’t, but it makes me feel better.

  Outside I can hear Julia making her way down the hallway, stopping at each room for bed check. Reese and I exchange glances, and by the time Julia pokes her head inside our room, we’re side by side on my bunk. Right where we should be, two girls following the rules.

  “Three,” Julia says, and then she coughs delicately. “Sorry. Two.”

  I stare at the floor after she goes, let my world narrow down to the slivers of dark between each floorboard. Welch will go out to the Harker house in a few hours, and so will we. Picking our way through the woods, breaking the quarantine. Fighting for our lives and Byatt’s too.

  I can do this for her. I have to.

  Reese’s cold, scaled fingers close around my wrist. The dark deepening around us, and when I turn to her, the aura of her hair is skimming o
ver our skin, the pattern of her braid playing on the ceiling.

  “You should get some rest,” she says, so gently I barely recognize her. “You’ll need it out there.”

  “I can’t.” Out the window, the moon is rising, and I only have the memory of how it lit the sky last night to mark the hours. I choke back the worry throttling me. “What if we miss it?”

  “I’ll stay up.” The mattress shifts as she moves, and she drapes her jacket over my shoulders. “Go on.”

  At least if I’m asleep, I can’t worry over what we’re about to do. I let her urge me back, toward the wall, and stretch out on my side, leaving half the bed open for her. They’re narrow, the Raxter bunks, built only for one, but I’ve shared one with Byatt since the first day of the Tox. I’m used to it.

  Or I thought I was. Reese lies down next to me, her shoulder pressed to my chest, and it’s nothing like that. Nothing like Byatt, whose body felt almost like my own. I can feel even the slightest spot where I’m touching Reese, can hear every breath she takes like it’s the only sound in the world.

  “Okay?” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  I settle in, tuck my face against her neck. Close my eye, hope I dream about Reese, about this afternoon in the barn.

  Instead, it’s Byatt waiting for me, and I take her by the hand, lead her into the woods. There’s no light, but somehow I can see as I stitch her into her shroud.

  BYATT

  CHAPTER 11

  I told a story when I was ten years old.

  It was just after summer break. My best friend was a girl named Tracy, whose clothes were always freshly ironed, and when Tracy got back from summer break, she told me she’d met a new friend at camp.

  I didn’t go to camp. I didn’t meet a new friend.

  So I told Tracy something else. I told her I’d met a girl named Erin, Erin who rode horses and swam all year round. She goes to a different school, I said, and she lives on my street, just a few houses down.