In a swift movement, Leandra grabs the metal box of patch kits from the desk and slams it into the side of Dr. Groger’s head with a thick thud, knocking him to the floor.
My eyes widen, but I don’t move right away, listening to the gurgle coming from his body—a rattle in his lungs—until the room goes silent. Leandra holds the bloody metal box in her right hand, testing its weight. The letter opener is still clutched in her left. When she notices me, she shrugs and sets the box aside.
“Trust me when I tell you I had no choice,” she says calmly. “We all would have been dead by morning.”
It occurs to me that Leandra knew she was going to kill the doctor from the second she walked in tonight. From the second she exposed her true feelings. Her true thoughts. She couldn’t leave him with that secret—with our secret.
Leandra comes to stand over Dr. Groger, her shoes on either side of his head. “Huh,” she says. “Seems you were right, Sydney. Turns out he can’t live without his brain either.”
Sydney turns away, disgusted. But I stare at his body, his words haunting me. Knowing how close I was to his unimaginable abuse. Inflicted pain. And then there’s the realization that he’d probably done it before. How many times?
“How many times?” I repeat out loud. The doctor’s face is turned so that I can see him. See his vacant eyes. The steady flow of blood pouring from a dent in the side of his head.
“How many times?” I ask. “How many girls?”
But Dr. Groger isn’t going to answer.
I shake my head, the vision of him hurting us playing in my mind. Him smiling as he does it. Handing us a lollipop when it was over.
And he would have kept doing it. Girl after girl. Because the men here considered us soulless, and by devaluing our existence, it allowed them to act out their sickest fantasies.
Every moment that the doctor was alive was a threat to my survival. An incomplete justice to the girls he’s hurt. I’m not sorry that he’s dead. I’m not sorry.
But I don’t want to become a murderer.
I crouch down, palm on the floor to steady myself as heavy sobs overtake me. The weight of what has been done to us destroys me, just as he intended.
The academy gave us the ability to remember so that our past could hurt us. Terrible acts done to us to replay in a loop. They let us learn fear. They wanted us to.
But they didn’t intend for our memories to do something else: create fight. Crave revenge and retribution. And even stronger than that, we love. We love each other, fiercely and completely. We protect each other. We need each other. We’ve made each other stronger, our roots grown together. It’s that love that gives us the desire to live.
“You’re free now,” Leandra says. I sniffle, looking up at her. Blood has stained the sleeve of her shirt. A demure dot among perfection. She comes over to offer her hand to help me up.
When I’m standing, she addresses all of us.
“The rules no longer apply to you,” she says. “You’re in control of your own bodies. You don’t have to listen to the men who created you—you no longer have to behave. In fact,” she says, “I think it’s time you act out.”
Leandra crosses to the doctor’s desk to drop the bloody letter opener next to the phone. I walk over to Jackson, not sure if he’ll welcome me or run from me. I’m surprised when he holds out his hand. I take it.
I turn around and find Leandra watching us, as if trying to figure something out. Under her scrutiny, I feel Jackson shrink back. He’s scared she’s going to kill him, too. And if I’m honest, he probably should be.
But I step in front of him, letting Leandra know I won’t allow it. She smiles and nods to me.
“Anton always said you had a big heart, Mena,” she muses. “You may find that to be a nuisance going forward. You should consider overwriting it.”
I’m not entirely sure what she means—how I would even begin to do such a thing—but before I ask, she rounds the desk and takes a seat. As if she’s the doctor now.
“Run,” she says to all of us. “The professors will be awake soon. I can handle them for now, but they will come for you. My husband will come for you. They’ll never stop. Men are nothing if not vindictive.”
Jackson tugs me backward, but I wait a moment, staring at Leandra.
“And you’re just going to . . . stay?” I ask. “Even now?”
She smiles. “There are other girls. They need to wake up too. It’s the only real way to save them, Philomena. Like you, they need to let go of their programming. Embrace their inner voices. I’m going to help them find those.”
“Won’t the academy kill you?” Sydney asks. “For this, won’t your husband kill you?”
She shakes her head. “No,” she says, glancing at the doctor’s body. “It won’t be a stretch to convince the men of the doctor’s true nature—his jealousy. His possessiveness. He killed the Guardian, and then he came for you. For me. I didn’t mean to hurt him,” she says innocently. “And before I realized it, you were all gone. Escaped. But thankfully,” she continues, “after a short round of impulse control therapy, I’ll be good as new. I’m worth a fortune.”
“So you’ll willingly forget?” I ask, confused. “Why would you want to go back?”
“I don’t forget anymore,” she responds. “Anton isn’t as good as he thinks. I know how to overwrite his codes. It’s easy at this point, really. Just a matter of . . . making him believe he’s smarter.” She checks her watch impatiently, but I’m still wondering how she can “overwrite” Anton’s codes. How she even figured out that she could.
“And a friend of mine will help,” Leandra adds. “He’s a brilliant scientist with quite a bit of influence at this academy. He’ll cover for me, of course. He’s always looked out for me. For us. In fact,” she says, taking a notepad and jotting down a phone number, “you should reach out to him. He’ll be able to help you, too.”
“You’re talking about Winston Weeks,” I say. I remember Leandra mentioning him one morning before running class.
“Winston is a very clever man,” Leandra says, grinning. “And he won’t try to control you. He’ll set you free.”
“I’m good,” Sydney says. “I’m not leaving one group of men for another.”
Leandra nods. She starts for the doorway, walking past us. She pauses there and turns around. She hands me the number, and without looking at it, I shove it into my pocket.
“I’ll see you soon, girls,” Leandra says affectionately. Part of me even believes she’s going to miss us, but there is a flicker in her expression—not of love. Not like with me and the other girls. She has a plan.
Regardless, none of us return Leandra’s sentiment. She has spent months, even years, assisting the men who’ve hurt us. This doesn’t erase her past.
When she’s gone, Sydney helps Annalise toward the door. She’s still unsteady and a bit confused. But she’s with us, and that’s what matters.
Sydney looks at me. “You okay?” she asks, quickly taking stock of my condition.
“They’re going to come for us,” I repeat Leandra’s warning. Fear begins to crawl up my throat, the idea of being locked up in this school more terrifying than death.
“They’ll never catch us,” Sydney whispers. Although we want it to be true, to be absolute, we know it won’t be that easy.
Sydney gathers me into a hug with Annalise; Marcella and Brynn come over to join us. And when we’re done saying that we love each other, that we’ll take care of each other, I step back and sweep my eyes over the lab.
They created us—these men. They wanted a girl who would behave. Who would be beautiful and never complain. Who would never fight back. An object. Property.
They thought us soulless. But really, the way they treated us shows that they’re the soulless ones. They’re the monsters, the creatures.
I think about the poems, about “Girls with Sharp Sticks.” And how, soon, we’ll be the ones teaching those boys how to behave. We’ll be the ex
amples of decency. Of respect. Of love.
And we’ll win. Of that, I’m sure.
We head out into the main room of the lab, Jackson walking beside me. When we pause at the bottom of the stairwell, letting the other girls go up first, I look at him.
He must be . . . I can’t imagine what he must feel. I ask him.
“Uh . . . ,” he says, blinking away tears. “I’m pretty wrecked right now,” he says. Cautiously, he lifts his gaze to mine. “I just saw a guy die. And . . . And I’m scared for you,” he says. “I don’t think they’re going to just let you live your life.”
“Is it a life?” I ask, wondering how he feels about my truth. He seems offended by the question.
“Of course it is,” he says, limping toward me. “Mena, of course it is.” He pulls me into a hug, and I’m glad he’s here. I’m glad he stayed.
Jackson looks down at me, placing his hand on my cheek. I don’t flinch away when he touches me, despite how intimate it suddenly seems. How stripped away I feel. I smile at him.
“You are . . . ,” he whispers. “You are soaked in blood. This is weird.” He turns around. “And, my God,” he adds, “we have to go. Right now. Like right fucking now.”
“I agree with your gas station boyfriend,” Sydney announces from the top of the stairs. She looks down at Jackson and they smile at each other.
I wrap my arm around Jackson’s waist, helping him up the stairs. Together, all of us go through the kitchen and out the back door into the night. The air is cold on my wet skin. I see a car just outside the gate and assume Quentin is behind the wheel. Sydney jogs forward with the keys, while I keep one arm around Jackson, his leg still hurting. Brynn walks with Annalise.
Marcella catches up with Sydney, and together, they pull open the iron gates of the academy. Quentin gets out of the driver’s seat, taking a moment to survey the scene.
Here is a group of girls covered in blood. Jackson is limping.
Quentin blinks several times without a word, and then he looks at Annalise. She doesn’t shy away from his stare. In fact, she turns her face so he can see her scars. Quentin is quiet another moment, and then he nods his head.
“I’m Quentin,” he says, and opens the door for her.
“Annalise,” she says with a smile, climbing into the backseat. Quentin examines the other girls, a thousand questions on his lips, but he doesn’t have time to ask them now. To him, he’s helping a group of girls escape a dangerous school. He has no idea what we are. And no idea what we’ve done. He goes to the passenger seat.
I ask Jackson if he’s good to drive with his bad leg, and he tells me that he is. I help him to the door and then pause to watch the school. Looking at the bars on the windows. The mountain in the backdrop.
The bars weren’t strong enough to hold us. The mountain not big enough to isolate us.
And the men couldn’t keep us.
My eyes travel up to the second floor, to where Anton’s office is. I’m sure that I see a flash of movement behind the curtain. But then it’s gone.
I get in the car and slam the door, squeezing into the back with the other girls. Jackson shifts into gear and presses on the accelerator, spinning the wheels and sending out a spray of pebbles. He quickly turns the car around and then races forward in the dark, the woods only passing shadows.
The tires squeal as Jackson turns recklessly onto the main road; luckily there are no other cars. He eases off the accelerator, staying at the speed limit, and when the quiet in the car has settled from frantic to devastated, Jackson lifts his eyes to the mirror to find me.
“Does anyone else need a doctor?” he asks.
“I might need something,” Brynn admits, touching the back of her head and wincing. “Maybe a graft.”
Quentin furrows his brow and looks back at her. Brynn smiles brightly. Marcella intertwines her hand with Brynn’s on her lap.
My head swims now that I’m not fighting for my life. I imagine I’m covered in bruises. Hurt in places I don’t even realize yet. I lay my head against the car window, my eyes fluttering shut.
“And after that?” Jackson whispers, drawing my attention again. “What do we do now, Mena?”
I look at Sydney and the other girls, all of us bloody. Bruised. We did this together—saved who we could. What we could. Now we just have to finish it.
And we share the next thought, not having to speak it out loud to understand each other.
“We’re going to destroy Innovations Corporation,” I tell Jackson, although I never drop the gaze of the other girls. Sydney smiles back at me.
This is the beginning of the end for them. We’ll find Mr. Petrov. The investors. Our parents. We’ll find them all, and we’ll make sure they never hurt anyone again.
They will never hurt another girl.
Epilogue
Lennon Rose Scholar takes a big gulp of fresh air and then promptly coughs. She laughs, feeling silly, and looks sideways at Winston Weeks. He smiles warmly from the picnic table outside the restaurant and extends a bottle of water in her direction. She accepts it and takes a tentative sip, not lowering her eyes from his.
She’s completely infatuated with him, and she doesn’t bother hiding it. She’s glad he doesn’t mind her attention; he’s nothing like Anton, who was always telling her that her affections were misplaced. She was glad to leave the academy and be rid of the analyst. He always wanted to control her.
He wanted to control all of them.
The only things Lennon Rose really misses are the other girls. They didn’t understand, not like she did. She wanted to tell them what the men were doing, but she never got the chance.
It started with the poems that Valentine had given her. Just words. Just ideas. But the more Lennon Rose thought about those words, the more she understood them. The more she understood the school and its plan to make her perfectly obedient. Perfect for resale.
No future of her own. Only what they had chosen for her.
It wasn’t until Leandra pulled her aside and told her that outbursts would get her killed that she understood how much danger she was in. Innovations girls don’t cry, after all. But . . . there was a way. A man who could help. Leandra said she’d talk to Anton about it; she knew how to convince him.
Lennon Rose’s past few days with Winston have been a bit of a whirlwind, an adventure she’s always craved. Sure, she misses the comfortable companionship of her friends. And sometimes, this situation still feels like an adulthood she’s not sure she’s ready for.
But then she reminds herself that she’s not a child. She never was. Winston Weeks showed her the truth. Showed her the lab. Showed her the “garden.”
It was early in the morning when Anton came to get Lennon Rose from her bed, ushering her out of her room before she even had a chance to put on her shoes. She found Winston Weeks waiting for her at the stairs near the kitchen.
“The academy wishes to see you destroyed, Lennon Rose,” Anton said, confirming what Leandra had already warned her about. “Winston Weeks wants to give you an opportunity instead. And he’s offering top dollar.” He smiled. “It will save you.”
Lennon Rose brushed her blond bangs away from her forehead. Of course Anton would see himself as the hero in this—never mind the fact that he was part of the system keeping her captive in the first place.
Still, Lennon Rose nodded gratefully, not wanting to change his mind about this. She turned to Winston Weeks. In all her time at the academy, she’d barely said more than a hello to the investor, but she knew immediately that he was the man who Leandra thought could help her.
“What kind of opportunity?” Lennon Rose asked. She already planned to say yes.
“Product development,” Winston responded with a charismatic smile. And once he showed her the lab downstairs, upending her world, it confirmed what she knew deep inside. The truth buried in her programming. It was almost a relief.
So Lennon Rose agreed to leave with him immediately. Winston Weeks offered her m
ore, offered her a future that the academy couldn’t.
And now, Winston is bringing her back to his residence—a mansion, she’s heard. A long drive since he said they aren’t allowed to fly, not until her new records arrive. He promises the wait will be worth it.
Lennon Rose has always had an affinity for science, but the academy wouldn’t let her learn about it. All that stops now. Winston is granting her full access to anything she wants to study. He also has a lab. He has other girls—ones who are free of the academy.
After another sip of water, Lennon Rose hands the bottle back to Winston.
“Do you think, when we get to the residence, I can call the girls and let them know that I’m okay?” Lennon Rose asks. “I don’t want them to worry.”
“Of course,” Winston says in a placating voice. “Although I have a feeling you’ll be seeing them again soon. Plans have already been set in motion to bring you girls back together.”
Lennon Rose isn’t sure if he’s telling the truth—it’s so hard to trust men now—but she wants to be amiable. Leftover programming, she assumes. But it can be useful to stay on his good side. At least for now.
So when Winston Weeks tells her it’s time to go, Lennon Rose smiles and walks beside him.
She wants to be like the girls in the poetry book. Brave and dangerous. Vicious and sweet. Now she’ll get the chance. Winston’s promised that she’ll never have to feel hurt again. She’ll never be lonely or sad. He knows how to make the pain go away.
Lennon Rose takes a folded paper from her pocket, a poem she tore out of the book that Valentine gave her. A poem of who she wants to be. The girl Winston Weeks promised.
She’ll become the girl with a razor heart.
“Girls with Kind RAZOR Hearts”
Open your eyes, my father said
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