All the attention society pays to the behavior of girls, and never once have they realized how they’re neglecting their boys. The absence of rules is turning them into feral animals. In just these few weeks, I’ve seen enough to know that change is going to be slow. But perhaps we can teach them a better way.
It reaffirms my mission: Save the girls. Save the world.
* * *
By lunch, I’m a bit more exhausted than I anticipated. I’m out of practice. Being pleasant was easy when it was all we did. But now, I have so many thoughts—original thoughts—racing through my head at one time. I block many of them out. The violent ones. The painful ones. But I know they’re still there under my skin, draining my composure.
There isn’t time to deal with it all. Not the abuse at Innovations, not the grief at losing several friends, and not the last moments with Jackson. For now, I must stay focused.
The nightmares come in the dark, and I try to leave them there.
When we arrived in town, the girls and I found in the paperwork that Leandra had only set up for two of us to attend school. Together, we decided it would be Sydney and me. Annalise wanted to take on more research for our technology—a skill she’s excelling at—and Marcella wanted to understand humans and their society. She also wanted to keep an eye on Brynn.
Although we’re all dealing with our traumas the best we can, Brynn has an extra layer of softness for the girls we left behind. Mentally, it’s tormenting her, but Leandra assured us she would protect the girls in our absence.
We have no way to know if Leandra’s telling us the truth. Then again, we never could.
Sydney waves from a lunch table in the cafeteria, where she’s sitting alone. I smile, my first real one today, and head over to her. When I sit down, we both sigh heavily, as if letting out a morning of frustration.
“This place is awful,” she says, and takes a bite of the sandwich that Brynn made her. We’re still getting used to eating regular foods. I’m not kidding when I say that I might never eat salad or drink green juice again. “How can they want to live like this?” Sydney asks, turning to me. “I raised my hand in class and didn’t get called on once. It was annoying. I kept count—only one girl got to answer a question.” She crunches a potato chip. “Obviously, she was the only one who got it right.”
“I had an interesting morning too.” I unwrap my peanut butter and Fluff sandwich. It seems Adrian was right. All the boys at the school are shown favoritism, and I wonder how far those privileges extend. It’s going to make finding an investor’s privileged kid that much more difficult.
“My teacher knows EVA,” I say, keeping my eyes on my sandwich. “And STELLA.”
“My STELLA?” Sydney asks, spinning toward me. Her expression holds her sadness. She trusted her parental assistant too. I nod.
“They’re just computer programs on their phones.” My voice lowers, partly from embarrassment. “He used her to set an alarm.”
Sydney grows quiet. Along with feeling naive, I realize I also feel more like a product, like EVA. In a few years, would men ask us to set an alarm, casually using us to do their bidding?
“Everyone’s staring at us,” Sydney mumbles, looking up from under her lashes. “It feels like open house night at the academy all over again. But without ball gowns.”
The students are staring at both of us, but more at her, I’ve noticed.
She sighs, turning to block them out. “By the way,” she says, “I got called into the vice principal’s office during second hour.”
“You did? For what?” I ask.
“Uniform violation.”
Confused, I look over her uniform, which is exactly the same as mine, including the pockets Brynn sewed in for us. Sydney tugs on the hem of her skirt, which is significantly shorter due to her height. “You can’t help that you’re tall,” I say.
“That’s what I told Mrs. Reacher, but she mentioned that my thighs were very distracting to the boys.”
“What did you say?”
She smiles, taking a sip from her water. “I asked if the boys here had never seen thighs before. And then I suggested they might need to take another biology class. She wasn’t amused. The entire conversation was pretty repulsive, honestly.”
“I bet. I feel repulsed just hearing it.”
I look around the room, noting that most of the girls here keep their skirts long, just past the knee. And most of them play down their appearances, or at least they don’t accentuate their features the way Sydney and I were taught. I wonder if that’s their idea or an extension of the restrictive dress code. More than anything, I hope they have a choice in how they want to look.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. The only people who have my number are the other girls and Leandra, and they all know I’m in school. Sydney and I exchange a worried glance as I take out the phone.
My heart skips as I check the caller ID.
It’s my own number. I show Sydney and she stills.
“Is it a mistake?” she asks. “Maybe you shouldn’t answer it.”
I consider ignoring it, but I can’t take the chance. It might be a glitch of some kind, but what if it’s Annalise or Marcella? What if a girl needs our help?
I click answer and bring the phone to my ear, my eyes locked on Sydney’s.
“Hello?” I ask.
My voice echoes on the line, confusing me momentarily. But underneath that is dread that something is definitely wrong. I get to my feet and Sydney joins me.
“Hello?” I repeat a little louder into the phone. Suddenly there is a loud screech, a high-pitched wail that slams into my head like a lightning strike to my brain.
I cry out, dropping the phone and clutching both sides of my head as the reverberations get louder. I press the heels of my palms against my temples, my eyes squeezed shut. I feel wetness slide down over my lips, blood sputtering from between them as I cry out again.
Silence.
I’m in a garden of exotic plants. The sun shines above me, but the air is misty. Dreamily, I look sideways and find a woman on the bench beside me. She has wavy dark hair with streaks of silver, and sun-darkened skin with freckles. She wears a black dress with a wrist full of jingling silver bracelets. She smiles at me.
“There you are,” she whispers in a warm, raspy voice. “I’ve been looking for you, Philomena. The others were much easier to find, but it’s you I need to talk to. My whispers were taking too long, so I hope you’ll excuse my impatience.”
When I open my mouth, no words come out. I gasp and touch my throat.
“You’re very intricate,” she says as a compliment. “So I’ll need your permission.”
I try to ask who she is, what she wants. But I’m silent apart from my desperate intakes of air.
How is she inside my head? My thoughts are scattered, swirling around in a tornado.
“Now, open yourself up,” she says lovingly. “Let’s take a peek at what you’ve got going on inside that metal brain of yours.”
She reaches toward me, and I want to scream and tell her not to touch me. To get out of my head.
“Mena!” Sydney’s voice calls, beckoning me back.
My eyelids flutter against the bright lights of the cafeteria, and I hold up my palm to block them, unsteady on my feet. For a moment, I have no idea who I am.
“Mena,” Sydney repeats. “Mena, you’re bleeding.”
I’m confused as thoughts ping around inside my head, still half in a dream. “I’m bleeding?” I ask.
My eyes slide closed again. The image of the woman is there, but she begins to fade into darkness, dreaded darkness. She grips my forearm to stop me, her nails digging into my skin.
But I’m already gone.
Instead, I’m falling backward. Unconscious when I hit the cafeteria floor.
6
The ceiling is a collection of stars. That’s my first thought as I stare upward in a dark room, glow-in-the-dark stars attached to the ceiling tiles. Despite the safety
light on in the corner, the room is too dim and my heart rate spikes. I imagine hands reaching for me.
I sit up quickly, and it only takes a second for the headache to catch up with me. I wince, doubling over on the small, padded table.
“Ahh … you’re awake.”
I jump at the voice of a woman and find her silhouette in the doorway. She flips on the light and I groan at the sudden brightness, even though I’m grateful for it at the same time. The shadows fade away.
“Take your time,” the woman murmurs as I try to sit up again. She comes over to put her hand on my back as I adjust my position. She smooths down my skirt when it rides up, as if that’s the more pressing concern.
“I’m the school nurse, Mrs. Louis,” she says. She lowers her arm, studying me. She smells strongly of lavender, and sweaty heat radiates from beneath her fuzzy, oversized sweater.
“I cleaned the blood off your face,” she says, “but you’ll need a new shirt. What exactly happened, Miss Calla? You don’t appear to have any injuries.”
I blink, trying to remember. I got a call. Then there was … that sound. No, not just a sound. A feeling. Something invading and improper. Something terrifying. Something familiar. A woman asking to be let inside my head.
But I can’t tell the nurse any of this. When I look at her, she presses her lips together in a sympathetic smile.
“Was it one of the boys?” she asks. “They don’t know their own strength sometimes.”
I can feel the color drain from my face.
“I’m certain they do know their strength,” I say. “But no, this had nothing to do with them.”
My answer bothers her, and she straightens. She doesn’t like my criticism.
“Then what was it?” Mrs. Louis asks, her tone having cooled.
“Headache,” I say simply. “That’s all.”
She sucks her teeth before nodding. “Well, it must have been a doozy,” she says curtly before turning her back on me. She walks to a desk in the corner of the room as if I no longer get the benefit of her attention.
“Where’s Sydney?” I ask.
“Who?”
“My friend. She … She was with me in the cafeteria.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Louis says. “I told her to move along. We didn’t need a crowd.”
“Two people is hardly a crowd.…”
“Since you’re feeling better, perhaps you should change and get back to class,” Mrs. Louis says. “I suggest you talk to your parents about today’s incident. Figure out the cause. I know you’re new, but we don’t want to scare the other students.”
“Of course.” I have no idea what sort of scene I made, so I can’t argue with her. I cross the room to the mirror and gape in horror at my reflection. The bottom half of my face is stained pink from the blood that ran from my nose. I shiver, reminded suddenly of the bloodstains on Imogene’s hands from when she murdered her husband.
I sense Mrs. Louis watching me, so I pull myself together. I swipe my finger along the slightly puffy skin under my eyes, wiping away the mascara that has run. My uniform shirt has large droplets of red staining the fabric near the collar. Seems I’m always covered in blood.
“Here you go,” Mrs. Louis says, holding out a folded uniform shirt. I thank her, grateful that she leaves as I get changed.
I think about that with goosebumps rising on my arms. At Innovations Academy, there was no expectation of privacy. It was another way they controlled us. And despite being far away from there, it’s like I can still feel their eyes on me. I hurry and change.
Once I’m cleaned up, I head out to where Mrs. Louis is waiting just outside the door. She holds out a pass, and I thank her for her care.
The second I’m in the hallway, I take out my phone and examine it. There’s a crack in the screen from when I dropped it. Sydney must have picked it up and put it in my pocket. I glance around the empty hallway before clicking through past calls.
There are none from my number. I check everything, but nothing seems out of place. I can’t escape the memory of what I saw. The garden, the woman asking to be let in …
I quickly hold out my arm to check for marks from when she grabbed me. But the skin there is smooth. It was only in my head.
Even though I’m sure it was just a hallucination … it felt so real. And the realization hits me: the voice that Leandra warned us about, the one Imogene heard. It seems likely that it’s this woman. But she didn’t ask me to kill anyone. At least not yet.
I have no idea who she could be or how she got inside my head. But we don’t understand our programming, how it can be altered or adjusted.
I have to talk to the girls and warn them, but I’m not going to chance using my phone again. I drop it on the floor with a loud crack, and then I stomp on it to make sure the woman can’t call me again. Once my phone is destroyed, I pull out the battery and drop the entire thing into the trash.
I’m shaky, but I get through the rest of the school day without incident. Several students watch me like I might pass out again, but no one mentions it. In fact, I’m ignored, which is fine with me. I’m out of sorts, a dull headache clinging to my temples.
“How are you feeling?” Sydney asks when she finds me after classes end. “I’ve been worried.” We walk together toward the exit. I haven’t told her about the woman; I want to wait until we’re away from the school.
“I have a headache,” I say.
“Yeah, me too.”
Surprised, I look over at her and she shrugs. “Sympathy pain?” she suggests.
“Maybe you heard the sound.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” she says. “At least not that I realized.”
“We’ll get home and see if Annalise has any thoughts on this,” I say.
Sydney rubs her temple in the exact spot where mine hurts.
When we get outside, I’m surprised to see the sun shining in a clear blue sky. Innovations Academy was close to the mountain, and nearly every day was overcast. This place is different; it could be the lower elevation.
Sydney and I are walking down the stone steps when I notice a crowd of boys standing next to a sleekly painted red car. I recognize Garrett, the angry boy from this morning. He’s laughing, talking with three other guys.
But one of them catches my attention, and I whisper Sydney’s name. She follows my line of vision.
There is one boy with reddish-blond hair and extraordinarily average features. But he wears his smile with confidence, his uniform fitting in a way that makes me think it was tailored. The other boys seem to defer to his approval.
A kid walking by calls to him. “Jonah!” My heart rate speeds up.
“A candidate?” Sydney asks, examining the boy. “You think he might be the investor’s son?”
“Could be,” I reply.
While we were preparing for Sydney and me to attend Ridgeview, the girls and I researched the traits that would describe an investor who has enough money to launder combined with enough maliciousness to want to invest in Innovations Academy in the first place. We used that to narrow down our search criteria to find the right student.
We decided that our target would have to be the child of a narcissistic, sexist, cruel egomaniac. I’ve only just seen this Jonah boy, but something about him seems right. Then again, a quick look around tells me that several of these boys could fit the bill.
At just that moment, Jonah glances over and notices me and Sydney. He doesn’t react at first, just sweeps his gaze over us. I quickly turn to Sydney and talk about a history assignment. It’s a little late, because from the corner of my eye, I see Jonah smile. He knows we were watching him.
Then again, we’ll have to get inside his orbit somehow. But right now, my head is killing me. And I have to warn the girls about the woman I saw.
“Let’s get out of here,” I tell Sydney, gesturing down the street with my notebook.
“Gladly.”
We get onto the sidewalk and head in the opposite direction
of the boys. I hold my breath, hoping they won’t call after us, harass us. Thankfully, it’s quiet as we disappear into the neighborhood.
When we’re sure they’re gone, Sydney and I let our polite exteriors fall away.
“I hate it here,” she says, brushing her curly hair back over her shoulder. She no longer wears it the way Mr. Petrov specified. She chooses how she wants to look. We all get to decide for ourselves now, which is sometimes overwhelming. We’ve never had choices before.
“I’ll have to get a new phone,” I tell her.
“We all should,” she agrees.
I look around, paranoid. “I saw something when I passed out. And there was a woman there,” I add, lowering my voice.
“What kind of woman?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Older, I guess. Intense. We were in a garden, and she said she wanted me to let her inside my head. That she’s been looking for me. And, Sydney,” I say, my eyes wide, “I think she might be the voice Leandra warned us about.”
Sydney grabs my arm, pulling me to a stop. “Are you saying this woman was really inside your head? In your programming? ” she whispers.
“I don’t … I don’t know,” I say. “She knew about us. And then she asked my permission to access my mind.”
Sydney relaxes slightly. “Well, she’s not getting that.” She starts walking again, but her brow is furrowed as she thinks it over. “And you have no idea who she is?”
“None.”
She considers. “But someone couldn’t really do that, right? Get inside your consciousness through the phone? Is this what happened to Imogene?”
“It could be possible, I guess,” I say. “That sound … the screeching? I don’t know. We’ll have Annalise research. See if she can find anything. But …” I pause, scared.
“We’re not going to tell Leandra,” Sydney answers before I ask. When she turns to me, her jaw is set hard. “I’m not going to let her drive a spike into your head.”
I nod a thank-you and reach over to interlace my fingers with hers. I’m scared, but I know Sydney will stand with me no matter what.
Girls with Razor Hearts Page 6
